He got up to go to the bathroom sometime before 6. I took him. Sitting on the toilet he said, “My headphones.” We went back in to bed and he was quiet for quite awhile. But at some point he climbed over me and went down with Carly. They lay there for awhile, but eventually got up and went downstairs a little before 6. I fell back to sleep and got up just after 7. He watched Wild Kratts about seahorses and dolphins. He then wanted to be dolphins and Carly had dolphin names for each of them.
When I came down he had been drilling holes in a cardboard box and drawing his inventions on it outside. He brought the box in and said one invention was related to sound and he was going to install it on himself. He wanted to drill holes in the box inside, which we allowed for a minute, but then he started drilling in the greensand. We made him take that outside, which he did for awhile. Carly made him oatmeal, and he came back in when he was hungry. They watched a Brain Pop video on the British Empire.
He went outside with her again. Came in and tried to request “Such a complicated place” to Siri. The song is actually called “Beautiful” by Jon Auer. I requested it for him. He paused it after awhile though, and went outside to sing it, as he said I couldn’t hear him sing.
He came back in and played ThinkRolls. Carly came in and they were seahorses (after Wild Kratts in the morning). I went upstairs for a shower. When I came down I found the pillows a mess on the couch and that he had filled the cardboard box with books from the shelves. Carly went upstairs to get ready to go. He dragged his shoe around on a string of the bracelet string. He had a game where he controlled me by pointing the shoes in different directions.
At we got going, Carly told me the key wouldn’t come out of our wonky lock again. But it turned out to be good news: the lock is suddenly back to the way it is supposed to be and will retract fully, then you can take it out. We joked about what could be causing it to behave like that, and August suggested “Maybe there’s a dead cockroach in there.” We liked that hypothesis.
I sat next to him. We tried reading The Goblin’s Puzzle but he wasn’t in to it. Not enough pictures, he said. We switched to the second Shivers book and read a good chunk of that. As we got close he said he was done, then tried closing his eyes. Luckily, he stayed awake until we got there.
We parked in our usual spot at the dead end and walked to the science center. Paid (perhaps the last time before we also have to pay for August) and were playing at noon. We went to the play area for a minute, and August said, “Let’s play birdie here like we used to.” He had a nest in the dodecahedron. Carly came back and he was ready to head to the science. We started in the sound room. I was going to sit and read, then I remembered that the special exhibit closes at 1. So we went over there.
It was the one that August and I had been to last time. Much less crowded, so we were able to go straight to the fun things: the big screen that blurs your motion, the screens that project your face really big, the maze. Then there is the wall that judges how happy or sad your face is. We played around with that. If your mouth is open to show teeth it thinks you are happier. The scene was different where you draw a picture then scan it and it shows up. August colored the picture of a cat. Then into that dark room with the ‘Gravity’ video thing. Only a few minutes this time. Last time had been a half hour or more.
We played around with a voice thing where you try to make it sound scary, etc. Then he went to the area where you can talk to a stranger in the same room. He mainly liked grabbing the mic and singing really loudly. Carly was sitting by the mirror that tries to tell how old you are. August went and put on a rainbow wig and a couple hats and we played with the mirror.
August was hungry, so we went out and sat on the Pi bench. On the way he was an echo machine and explained how he makes a sound wave with his vocal cords. He then wandered over and played with the pulleys that pull up the ships.
He wanted to head inside so I went with him and let Carly read. We went into the da Vinci exhibit. He played with a bunch of the machines. At each he pretended to be a different kind of craftsman and I was his customer. It started with the lathe, where he would carve table and chair legs for me. But he was also a blacksmith making horseshoes, someone making cloth and thread, and a person driving fenceposts for me.
We went upstairs and down to the chemistry room, where we were playing with the bubbles when Carly found us. She took over and I went and sat on a bench and read. They looked around upstairs for awhile and went to the bathroom. August had them act out a town council where people gave bad ideas, like in Berenstain Bears. We left at 2:30 when he was ready to head to the cafe. I asked if he had had enough science for the day. He said yes, but then he clarified that he had had enough science center, “But I’m constantly figuring out more science.” And mentioned his brain and in his lab.
We walked up to the Tea Pool Cafe. Carly had. Gone here when we were at the science center with her parents. She just had coffee though. August was loud at first. Carly tried playing with him using the checkers and backgammon board that was there. We joked about how his teachers have done a good job of teaching about mistakes, and now they need to teach that it is okay to lose at games as well. I then read Shivers 2 to him while we waited. We ordered a shakshuka with goat cheese, a pizza sandwich thing, and tahini with veggies. I mentioned we didn’t have a word of the day and he randomly chose ‘transmit’ as the word of the day. So we discussed what it meant, as well as a transmission (and in a car). Carly took him to the bathroom and while he was in there he was singing the whole time—using only poop words, as he would point out to me.
We left at 4:15 and walked the slightly artsy street back to our car. Right by the car he saw some art on a wall and asked me to take a photo of it. I took a photo of it with him in the frame and showed him. He said, “Oh, thank you…I like the angleness of it.”
On the way home he threatened to fall asleep. I opened the Cat and the Hat TV show, which I had downloaded for him on Netflix but he had never watched. He really liked it and was laughing a lot. Made it home.
I went up and wrapped some of his presents. Carly gave him a bath, then we let him open his reindeer pajamas from Cherie. All of the kids got the same pajamas. August was excited and immediately asked to wear them to bed. He then found an empty tissue box and turned it into “storage for beautiful paper to use in my art project.”
We finished reading Shivers 2, then read Pete the Cat Saves Christmas, then a new book we have on the iPad called The Bad Seed. He had me repeat it, then we read Tallulah’s Solo and Tallulah’s Tap Shoes. I brushed his teeth and Carly came in. I left them at 8:20 and went for a walk.
Drilling the greensand:
Shoe on a string:
The screen:
Giant echoy August head:
Scary face collage with August:
In the Gravity art installation:
Talking to a stranger through the mics:
His echoes:
Being a woodworker:
Funny movements with Carly:
First present on Christmas Eve. Ugh. YouTube has decided that videos of August without a shirt are forbidden:
