He got up at 6:50 and told me to keep sleeping as he left the room. Downstairs they read some Pippi and he used the food processor to figure out how to use the other kind of blades and shredded up a hot dog. When I came down Carly was making Swedish pancakes and he called me Mr. Grumpyface and tried to convince me to try the hot dog. He gave us a long explanation about air pressure pushing something from a balloon and through a straw into an empty glass.
He ate his swedish pancakes, then watched some Wild Kratts. He finished an episode and then went out to Carly. They decided to go on a walk and Carly went up to get ready. The power went out right at 9. I figured it out when I started asking Siri to play some music and she wasn’t responding, and simultaneously August went to turn on the bathroom light and it didn’t work. I texted Mikaela to let her know the power was out. She and I had both heard a loud sound right before we realized the power was out.
I noticed a bruise on his knee. He told me he had made bruise paint in his lab, and also made permanent bruise paint. I told him I didn’t think there would be much of a market for that. They left for a walk at 9:10. But were back after just a minute. They had taken his bug catcher, but when she said they could take turns carrying it he hit because he didn’t want to. She took him up for a timeout. Eventually, they ended up going for a walk around the neighborhood without the bike. They came back, then headed out with the bike, headed for a coffee shop at the mall.
I typed and worked for awhile (and chatted with Mikaela and Derek, back in Korea), but with batteries running down and not knowing how long it would be, I decided to go out for a walk at 11:10 and find them. I first walked over to the transformer equipment that August and I had just looked at yesterday. Nothing obviously wrong, but there was a layer of fresh dirt put down on the sidewalk and street under it. I don’t know what the connection would be, but it was new.
I then walked over to the mall and met up with them as they were leaving Aroma. They had gotten an egg and mushroom dish. He’d eaten a good amount of that and also had a pastry treat. They had read some Pippi Longstocking. August spotted the playground and we went there for a few minutes. He stood on the plane and explained a big long scenario that I didn’t catch. He had me pilot the plane and repeated it. Basically, I was piloting a plane and realized there was a boy/robot on the wing. I was making announcements to the passengers as I tried to get him off the wing. He weighed more and more until I had to do an emergency landing.
He wanted to keep playing, but Carly pointed out it was supposed to start raining. We walked back, and it started raining right as we got back to the house. We went in and he wanted his pants changed, although there were only a few drops. Carly figured out how to call the power company and did that. Meanwhile, the rain had slowed and I heard a gate, so I went out to try to find someone on our street to see if their power was out. When I failed to find someone and came back August hit me or said something and I took him up for a timeout.
As we were sitting and talking after the timeout, Carly told us the company said the power would be on at 2:40 (an oddly precise time estimate). August was stressed out about the power being off and started crying. Took him downstairs to calm him. He figured he could watch some Sarah and Duck on his iPad since it was downloaded
Carly left a little before 12:30 to go to work and do some work and grading. She spent a lot of time on the phone, calling the occupational therapist and speech therapist that Vicky referred us to, and also setting up a doctor’s appointment for tomorrow. He’s almost 5, so might as well get the annual checkup and vaccinations out of the way while we have the time.
He gave me an earring he had made from 3 treasures and glued together. I think Carly helped him with it. I wore it as we went upstairs to have a pillow fight. He told me I should take it off, and he put it on the counter while we played. We had a pillow fight, then played more brother and sister game. He then came up with a prank or experiment we would do, making a metal box and bolting it to a wall and putting a sign on it that says ‘fire danger’. We would “Sneakily put a tube in there with a toxic flame…” and install video cameras and watch fron another house that had monitors in it. Wasn’t clear what was supposed to happen, but he acted that part out.
We went downstairs and shared a bar. He said since we don’t have parents “do you know what that means?” We could buy whatever we wanted. To him that meant, “Drill and drill bits…fishing pole, net…”
We read some of The Witches, then he found a 3 color ball point pen and played with it, then quickly took it apart to figure it out. Carly called me about the appointments. We were then brother and sister again. We played catch with one of the paper mache balls, then he wanted to play with Cubetto. We used the magnet blocks to make a house for Cubetto, then he closed it up and had Cubetto pushing it around. He was frustrated when it fell down.
We went back up to play on the bed, then came down for crackers. He gave a long monologue as a plane captain about having to make an emergency landing (basically what I had said earlier, I think) and I complimented him on his monologue. ‘Monologue’ was the word of the day. He sang a song that went, “mama is the best thing in the world. Better than you, better than Oma, better than anyone in the world, better than anything in the world.”
He wanted to go to town and buy a net for catching fish. As we got ready, the power came back on right at 3. Outside, he was trying to scratch paint off the book shelves. He said, “Me and the clouds working together as a team…” We were walking at 3:20. We saw Mikaela walking home and he told her we were going to buy a net. As we kept walking he said she sounds like Ms. Ilana. Not entirely obvious to me.
Straight walk into town and right to the little pet store. The woman helped us and he had about 5 sizes to choose from. Chose the second smallest. He played with it as we headed back out and went over to the bank. The ATMs were working and we got cash. We started to walk home and got as far as across the street and suddenly it started pouring. I pointed us to the covered area outside the old Sushi Ishimoto location (it has moved into the new mall) and we sheltered from the rain for a few minutes and put on raincoats. It lightened, and I used the umbrella for a couple minutes as we got going.
It stopped, and he played with the net in the water from the gutters at the older mall. Closer to home he spotted a big SUV and decided that’s what he wants. He told me, “I just love big cars.” He also learned ‘SUV’.
At home we had hot chocolate and were drinking that when Carly got home at 4:45. They cuddled, then I went up with him to wrestle and she started making the bean soup. We did lots of superhero battling. He was Brainiac and Hilo and I was Super Dada. We went downstairs and Carly FaceTimed with Cherie and Chuck, and we read I Broke My Trunk, then Hilda and the Stone Forest. We first looked at the end, the started it again.
Carly came down and they played Dragonbox Big Numbers on the couch. Did a great job stopping it and putting it away when he was done with a math problem. He told us, “Don’t be proud of me.” We had soup for dinner. He took his under the table to eat, but then rejected it and looked kind of guilty when he told me he wasn’t hungry.
He was scaring us, mainly Carly, from where he hid under the table. Did that too many times then got him on to something else. Carly tasted his soup and realized it tasted funny from being in the freezer to cool down. She got him some fresh to try, but he didn’t at first. We played on the couch. I was as moving his hands faster than light and exploding etc. Carly then took him up for a bath. He said, “First let’s do the bathroom action thing we invented…” I’m not sure what that is, but there was a lot of laughing. She then washed him, and I took over.
We wrestled and then read The Witches. In it, it talks about the boy’s parents having a will. After we finished reading he asked, “Did you make one of those things?” He seemed happy to know I had, but didn’t ask more. I told him that Opa helped us though.
We went downstairs. He tried the soup and liked it now, so I gave him a bigger bowl. He ate that, then I let him have one of his quiche cookies. We went back upstairs with a few Cheerios as a final snack. He talked about how the glue didn’t work on the earring as it was coming apart: “So I’ll just solder it together.” Except when he says it it sounds like ‘saldred’ He also talked about the speakers he had seen in a box that Carly was looking in. They are the speakers we had in Korea, but haven’t used here. He said they were really loud, and he had paid 2 billion dollars for them. If they get broken it takes 90 weeks to fix them.
He said good night to Carly, then we did the raining school visualization that he requested and had lights off at 9:15. He was snoring about 9:30.
Explaining the toxic flame experiment:
Cubetto in a house:
Playing with the new net:
Scaring us:
