He woke up at 6:20. I was awake but still in bed. He told me “You can go back to sleep.” He then left the room and as he closed the door he said, “Good night!” A few minutes later there was some good thunder. When I came down they had been experimenting with putting together cardboard with nails and screws and were now making a river out of blue paper to put a bridge over it. August said he could put garbage in the river.
It started pouring and we had the sliding door open for awhile, watching it. Carly thought August smelled like incense, but August said, “Metal! I smell like iron…iron and steel.” They kept adding to the river scene. They built a portal at the end, so that people going down the river would go to another world. August then built what he said was a catapult: “The river is in another world. The portal goes to your world…the portal is good. The catapult throws you away…these are obstacles.” He then decided that the catapult was bad, and flung you to where there were bad things that you could defeat with the right equipment. He said you could get killed if you didn’t: “Natural consequence.” Carly thought he was inspired by the books (Monsters Beware! Etc.) that he’s read with me. I said no, I think he was inspired by the commercials he sees but I’m not always able to skip on YouTube for these fantasy battle games. He agreed, and Carly asked if he was saying yes to me just so I’d be right. He said, “No, I’m actually inspired.”
They kept adding, but he told her “You need to stop making spiral thingies.” They built a bit more, and Carly called it ‘menacing’ and said that was the word of the day. August then wanted his iPad to make mandalas. He was making black and white ones, and I suggested that Carly could print them out and he could take them to preschool so kids could color them. He had a different take: “Mama! Can you print these out and take them to your class so your students can color them?” Carly said she could as long as he also made a video explaining what they are supposed to do. He kept doing mandalas, humming as he did so.
He switched to the synthesizer app and had us play the teasing game, where I tease that it’s just a boring keyboard. Carly went outside, and we read some of Shivers. Carly cooked some of the potato bun things. August had the idea of using matches to set things on fire and drop them in water and see what happens. I was about to say no, but then figured it would be a good experiment/lesson. We got a big bowl of water and did it on the stone floor. We talked about what fire needs to burn, and about fire safety. He went and got things from the yard. We dropped just a burning match in, a tree thing, and a leaf.
While I cleaned that up he went and added to the paper scene he’d made with Carly. He used the bathroom, then asked for the measurement app on my phone. He did that for awhile. He was trying to talk to me and was being hyper and I tried to get him to slow down. He said, “But I’m in super fast thinking mode!” We did a preschool game were he built a teleporter in the safety room. Carly peeled a grapefruit and he ate a bunch. we then did another emmo game: “Skwee! Skwee!”
He ate some oatmeal, and Carly opened the windows to water plants. He climbed up with her. “I’m so sensitive I can feel a photon of light going by me.” He then had the idea of making a card for Mikaela, and while he made a picture he turned on Josh Ritter. I asked what the picture was, and he said, “Different patterns of shapes, of colors.” He also sent her candy, putting in a bag of Skittles. He had a purple bag of Skittles and made up names for the different kinds. He cuddled on my lap, eating Skittles, as I sat on the floor and added to the shopping list.
Popcorn together. They were cats as I left to do the shopping at Tiv Taam.
While I was gone they watched Shrek, beginning to end. It is the first full movie he has watched that way. The only ones that came close are Alice in Wonderland, which we watched in two or three chunks, and the Curious George Christmas special, which is just under an hour. I can’t remember if he’s ever watched that beginning-to-end.
The went outside for awhile, and tried to get the microscope working with her computer, but couldn’t get it to work.
I took a lot of time at Tiv Taam, figuring things out. As I got to the door he asked me to let him watch more YouTube. Carly had just said no. He ended up upset and Carly took him upstairs. I unpacked, and took his new bento-ish lunch box up to show him.
They then skyped with Vivian and Colin. A lot of hyper by the time they were done. We learned that Jeff would be coming to Israel for work in a couple weeks. He sent things to Vivian on Wizard School, and at one point he was singing “I love you pivot point.” Colin got more and more hyper, and ended with “Stinky cracker!!! You’re a Stinky cracker!”
After that, August did more mandalas and ate strawberries and pita. Carly skpyed with Cherie. He was talking and playing by himself, and said things like, “Here you go, land lady! Your chemical!” He was making more chemicals. And ‘Land Lady’ is the name of the ship in the Shivers book. He did a decent job of talking to Cherie and Chuck. Although he was mainly lying to them when they asked questions about preschool.
I was then making broccoli and mushrooms in a cream sauce with linguini. August played in the main kitchen drawer and made a mess of it. When it was all ready we ate together. Carly then read him The Gingerbread Man: “I love The Gingerbread Man!” Carly finished reading and thought it was morbid.
August was saying “As a matter of fact…” a lot today. He told me about “The centenic and oceanal parts of your brain…” Robots have them, but humans do not. He went to the bathroom and was in there for a long time.
Carly gave him a bath and washed his hair. She called down to me to bring up a lollipop. They were a new kind that Carly had bought at the store, and he ended up really liking them. He licked it as she finished washing his hair, then blowed it dry. I was cleaning up the kitchen. Downstairs, he continued with it as she trimmed his hair. We then read more Shivers. He was hungry, and asked for food. He ate the rest of his dinner and told me “You’re good at making this.”
We discussed what we could do if we didn’t have muscles or bones, and I demonstrated on the floor. I said you wouldn’t be able to breathe, and we talked about the diaphragm. He said, “I actually have a compressor that compresses the air…” He then had some toast and peanut butter. He talked about worms eating wood. He said he saw it at school. We made up Gaston verses. He then asked to read one of the children’s dictionaries that we have, but when he spotted a nautilus on the cover he started a game where he was a nautilus and I woke up to find him on me. Next, he asked “Can I be a lizard? Can I be a hummingbird?” In the next game I found a hummingbird in my house.
I took him upstairs and we read a little of Shivers and brushed his teeth. He was really tired, but insisted on a preschool game before he went to sleep. We did a short game, then when I went and turned off the lamp he curled up on the pillow I’d been using. I crowded in next to him, and he was asleep by 9.
Watching the rain:
Humming and mandala making:
Waveform slo-mo:
Straw slo-mo:
Window box gardening:
Making time:
Haircut:
Explaining his projector machine:
