Monday, April 1: Home and a bug walk

I let him sleep until he woke up just after 8:30. I picked him and held him for a couple minutes, his head on my shoulder. He then sat on the couch and I for him vitamins and his allergy medicine. For reading he requested the Skybrary book where someone has homework problems. I didn’t know what he was talking about, but we figured out it was Oliver Otter’s Own Office. We read that, then he wanted to watch the Magic School Bus episode where they build a rover. We found it – it’s an episode from the new series.

He told me of a super medicine he invented. One drop of it could cure you or protect you from thousands of things. He then asked me for things for him to make. I said a machine that would do my work for me. He said I wouldn’t have to pay for it up front – since I would use it over time I could pay for it monthly like Siri or electricity. Thought it was really interesting that he thought of that.

We made oatmeal and discussed his straws as he played with the rainbow one. We discussed the difference between ‘beverage’ and ‘liquid’ and he came up with “snake poison” as a liquid that wasn’t a beverage. So ‘beverage’ was a word of the day.

He watched Wild Kratts and Magic School Bus and ate all his oatmeal and I worked. We then did more work on the printer, taking it apart, and used some of the parts to add more to his hot glue sculpture. He was being a bit cheeky with me, telling me I was at fault for getting burned: “Then you shouldn’t hold it awkwardly like that, silly.” And when he didn’t hold a piece long enough for it to stay glued he said, “YOU shoulda holded it. YOU’RE the expert.” I told him he was the hot glue expert. And when he picked up the glue gun to glue something he said, “Turn on supervision.”

At some point he randomly said, “At my birthday party, I’m never going to invite my teachers. Cuz they’ll just want to teach.” I went upstairs to look for the cream for his lip. When I came down he said, “I hung that up.” It was his green/red chart from his last day, from the previous week, when he didn’t get any red dots. He had found it over on his art kitchen, I think, and hung it up on the refrigerator with magnets. He stood on the stool, leaning back against the counter and gave me a sort of sheepish look. I went and gave him a hug.

We went upstairs, and he told me the cream was taped up in his wall creation. I took it out to use on him, and he wasn’t too happy with his sculpture being touched. He responded by fixing it, adding to it. He did that while I went and took a shower. When I came out he had quite a creation, and said it was a machine. He had the fan included in it, and said, “It has to be on for a full hour…it’s making Siri stronger and smarter.” He had me sitting out on the couch so he could surprise me, as he added more. He ran out of tape. I knew there was a full unused roll in the bedroom and told him, “So get that other roll.” He replied, “I taped it.” We had to go downstairs and get another roll.

He asked, “Why am I good at electrical stuff?” I said something about practice. He said, “No, you’re wrong…because I practice on my world.” We went downstairs, but then found something he wanted to add, so we went back up. We watched a little racing. He talked about making insanely fast things in his lab and told me, “I like to make things that are insanely fast so I win trophies and stuff and hang them up.”

We went downstairs for lunch, having pizza and crackers with cheese and meat. We sat on the kitchen floor and kept watching. He asked if an insanely heavy car would hydroplane. He then talked about a skyscraper from the bottom of the ocean. He talked about how you could see sharks and everything out the windows. There’s a sort of electric fence that will keep them from touching the skyscraper though, but not scare them away though as you’d still want to see the baby sharks and things.

Before we left, he had the idea of letting the snake go. I think I had mentioned a day or two ago that we didn’t know how to feed it, but I hadn’t mentioned it again. This was his idea. We took it out and let it go in the garden and watched it as it crawled several feet until finding a rock to crawl under. He said, “Bye, wormy! Bye, snakey!”

We headed out for a walk at 1:30. We wandered around, and he told me, “I discovered a color…sonic green…a kind of green people can’t see. But I can.” He asked, “What’s an exoplanet?” Another word of the day. He had learned it on Magic School Bus. He also asked, “What predators is guard ants good at keeping away?”

Our initial goal was to find rocks to turn over to find another snake. We tried a few rocks across the street, but no luck. We wandered the back streets then headed up to our usual stopping spot and looked around there. He did find a new green bug that we hadn’t seen before. And he found a metal piece on a pole that he said was like something he’d seen before. And at a garbage area we found a sort of motion detector to take apart.

We headed back south, and down to the pathway starting by the cloud bridge and then over to the old highway area. We tried different paths down there. The highlight came when I turned over a rock to find I had broken open an ant nest. We realized there were hundreds of little white dots. It was the ant larvae, and over the next couple minutes we saw the ants pick them all up and take them somewhere else. We watched them for several minutes, and August got a stick to go poking under other small rocks and old paper towels and things.

We got home at 3. Inside, we took apart the motion detector. And we were both a little itchy-eyed from our walk. He went and washed his hands and eyes a bit. We started watching the Formula 1 race, and did the car game with me lying on my back on the floor.

He then wanted to play on his iPad and play Dragonbox Big Numbers. He started from the beginning, and was having a lot of fun doing it all by himself. Carly got home, and he got hyper. They started doing more hot glue. They went upstairs to wrestle and he added to his machine up there. Then were were back downstairs and doing more hot gluing. He was being mean to her again and had a timeout at some point.

He got the sushi rice and we put some in a lavender balloon and played with that. He then had another time out because he responded badly to me making him stop tipping on the dining table chairs. He and Carly had chicken soup for dinner (I’d already had some food) and I sat with them. He then played with the lavender balloon with her. She took him for a timeout when he hit her because he didn’t like how she was passing the balloon.

He got two little wrenches and wanted to make a horn on his head using one of the headbands. I went up to do some work, about an hour, and they did that. They made it, but realized it needs a counterweight. She took him up for his bath, and I heard him singing on and on, “Da da da…” He said it was to postpone his bath. Eventually he had his bath.

I then came in and we read Nick and Tesla. Took a long time to get him to sleep. We did a visualization being a photon going away from the sun. We had fun thinking about that, and how long photons could be traveling and what happens to them. I talked about having lots of “brother and sister” photons. He didn’t like my anthropomorphizing: “Brothers and sisters protons? Protons aren’t alive.”

I sang him some songs, and he requested “Always” by Erasure and wanted to record me singing it on his iPad. He had done that once, and said that he could record me singing all the songs, then he could just play the recordings of me singing the songs. So I let him record that, then we turned off the lights, a little after 9. Sang more songs, then it was quiet time. He asked two questions this time before finally falling off to sleep: “How does a photon travel so fast? I know it doesn’t have any mass.” Then right before falling to sleep he asked, “Can I have a soft-boiled egg for lunch tomorrow?” Not sure when he learned about soft-boiled eggs, but they come up in discussion every few weeks or so.

Hot glue gun: