He woke up at 6:10. They let me sleep an hour longer. When I was up, August came running up to show me a big flying “spider” that they caught. Actually more like what we would call a mosquito eater. They had been plying with the electricity kit as well. And he’d had oatmeal and watched something. When I came down they started reading Pippi Longstocking. “Unless you put them in my mushroom machine that makes wild mushrooms okay to eat…spins at the speed of light and a chemical goes through a giant poop tube…” She taught him what ‘precipice’ meant so that was a word of the day.
He was getting really hyper, so Carly went outside. He went with her for a second but came right back. He asked me for a ginger snap, so I delivered his vitamins to him on a ginger snap. He came and sat on the couch quietly for awhile, then asked, “Why does humans have shoes?” “Would eagles’ feet be strong enough to poke through the roof of our house?”
He was looking at his insect, and asked what it ate. We looked it up, and I remembered it is a crane fly. He was surprised to find that some of them don’t eat anything as an adult, and they definitely don’t eat mosquitoes. He went out and put some leaves in it. He then started telling me about his insect machine, which killed and cooked insects so that you could eat them. The machine could actually turn them into anything you want, including treats and cakes and pies.
We read more of the Disney version of Treasure Island. He asked if islands were as big as countries. We looked at them on Google Maps and looked at Madagascar, New Zealand, Australia, and others. I taught him ‘archipelago’ as another word of the day.
He went upstairs with Carly to wrestle for a couple minutes, and came down with my keyboard, and said that when it stops working he wants us to take it apart. I told him I hoped that would be a long time. He wanted me to hook the keyboard up to Carly’s computer, so I did, and he did his satellite work. I asked what his satellites were doing, and he said they were detecting “rivers, ponds, streams, oceans…everything that includes water.” And measuring things about them, like their size and how loud they are. “My robot mom takes a day to type a very long document. It takes me minutes.”
I went up and took a shower, and when I came out he came up, showing me his funny outfit. He had put his shirt on as pants, with his feet coming out of the sleeves. He wanted a belt to hold it up. He then put a pair of pajama pants on as a hat and did a funny not-safe-for-YouTube dance. He then found a pair of Carly’s socks and put them on all by himself. When I pointed out that he had put socks on all on his own, he said he can only put socks on when there isn’t a reason.
I then got him going for a walk. Got him dressed, then he asked for his shirt. I pointed out that he already had it on, and he said, “THAT’S Why I didn’t feel a breeze.” August and I got going on a walk at 10:20, and Carly headed to the store. He spotted several crane flies and asked, “Why do I see crane flies everywhere?” We talked about ‘psychology’ (word of the day) and how you notice patterns once you know they exist, but also the biological reason in that they might be hatching now.
We walked north and around, coming back along the Holly block. We found a spider and crane fly and caught them. He chose to take the ‘long route’ down by the old high way. He stopped when he noticed an odd antenna/box on top of a pole at the edge of the empty field and we speculated what it was. We stopped in our now usual spot for insect catching, and he was catching caterpillars. Then he found a nest of baby caterpillars and had no qualms in reaching into the sticky nest to get them.
We got walking, and stopped by the little park to eat a bar. We then walked over towards the big flag. Our first goal on this walk was to find things to take apart, although I wasn’t expecting to find anything. No luck at the garbage spot over that direction, so we headed home. We were home at 11:45 or so.
On the couch I was messaging Simone’s mom and Candy’s mom about play dates. August was bothering me and made it clear he wanted my “Full attention”. I got us noodles to eat. He spilled some water drink on his pants and was takign them off as Carly got home and brought in the groceries. August wanted to try the seaweed snack, and ate a whole packet. Then ate his lunch. Did a good job of that, so I let him have some of the last lemon cake. A little dry, but still good. He finished off the cake, and asked “What’s an invertebrate?”
Not sure which of us brought up the subject, but he said, “I’m not getting a job when I’m an adult because I already have one: making inventions, doing electrical work, satellite work…” Carly was getting stuffy, and felt like a walk would help, so she went out for a walk. He made a spicy soup, but made it clear he wouldn’t add clove this time. Randomly, Siri told us a tongue twister: “Cats and boots and cats and boots and…” She said “I could do this all day”—a phrase that August picked up on and repeated a few times later. Not sure WHY she said a tongue twister, and when I tried different commands later it seemed like Siri didn’t know what a tongue twister is.
August asked about gunpowder, which one of the characters puts in their tea in Treasure Island. I looked it up, and told him how gunpowder actually started as a medicinal thing. Carly got home, and he had more of the seaweed snack. I had him practicing saying ‘Hilo’ to work on the ‘l’ sound, then he asked, “Could you not interrupt me from my seaweed?”
I went upstairs to do some work, and they went out to plant tomatoes. Carly wasn’t happy when he picked a bunch of the flowers to put in his spicy soup. Inside, they watched their usual documentary and had popcorn. They learned about weasels and how they kill voles and use their fur as a blanket. They made a weasal cave out of the chairs and pillows and blankets.
I then read a chapter of The Witches, then we went and ended up combining the circuits kit and Legos. Made quite a mixed structure. He then went over to Carly as she was making tempura. Ate some of that. Deborah had asked when August had stopped bottle feeding, then Megan, in India, asked about the same thing. So I was gong through our past photos and journal and found that the last evidence we have of him using a bottle was April 17, 2015. I also found a photo of my old tea infuser, the one with a polar bear on top. August said, nicely, “I can make you one of those in my laboratory” Then added, “if you pay me.” He was then charging us for other things. 90 dollars for an artificial sun for Carly. He said, “You’re pushing it, bub.” for something. And he requested his payments through the internet, so I was paying him through PayPal.
We added more to the Lego and circuits structure. His left hand was getting dry again, so we put on more lotion. Carly made new sushi. Had crab in it, which Carly had found. Another kind had tempura. August said, “It’s the best sushi ever. Really; the best.” He was making yummy noises, which I realized were to the tune of “Rocket Man”.
I tried to get him interested in a puzzle. No luck. He instead made a mango, sugar, and honey drink and put three straws in it so we could all try it. We then went upstairs to wrestle. We developed a game where I catch an invisible elf or sprite or fairy or whatever in my hands and he pulled my fingers apart to let it go and capture it himself. We had started this downstairs earlier.
We went downstairs so I could have more sushi. He decided to take apart the magnet writing board from Korea. He then taped a bag of prices from the light fixture we took apart to it. As we did that, he said, “Dada, it’s really good I grew up to be a person in Israel; and not a Buddhist monk. I’d hate being a Buddhist monk.”
We watched the Nisse episode of Hilda and ate the last of the gingersnaps. Took him up and washed his hair. No lollipop, and he whined more than the last several times, but not nearly as bad as it used to be. In bed we read another chapter of The Witches, then had the lights off. We did a grasshopper visualization, imagining the jumping and getting caught. He pulled the covers up over most of his body and eventually fell asleep that way. I was falling asleep as well. As usual, he had one last thing to say before he fell asleep, and he woke me up to ask if we needed a small or big ax to cut things down, like he’d seen at the hardware store. He was asleep at 8:55.
Baby caterpillars – time to giddy up:
Magic insect cooking machine:
Lots of syrup in his soup:
Singing and wires:
Legos and wires and singing:
Another song:
A dance before bed:
