I had my book group meeting at 1:30 to discuss Red Leopard, Black Panther. I stayed up this time. A rather painful meeting, as only Peter Breysse and I finished the book. So there was a lot of talk about Avengers movies and Jack Reacher books, etc.
So I slept in. He was up at 7:45. I headed him downstairs, then went back to sleep for an hour. When I was getting dressed he yelled up, asking if I could bring his iPad down. Think he got lucky, and hadn’t actually heard me up. Downstairs I made him oatmeal and he watched Pink Panther. He changed the countdown to 29. he said it was less than a month, “except for February on a leap year.” The poem is already working on him.
He then made up a Brother and Sister game with a blue-billed, blue-footed, blue woodpecker. Then back to the tiny robot game. The little robot that was injured ended up being part of the Quadrillion. There were tiny robots from dozens of planets fighting for control of Earth, but humans were unaware off all of this going on because they are so tiny (a nod to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy). He was then a rabbit that digs up a tree. It turned out to be a jungle rabbit, also endangered, like the other animals that Brother and Sister have discovered (like the Blue Mook). The exterminator finds out just as he is about to blow up the yard, so they are stuck with the rabbit as well as the blue woodpecker. The family ends up with a house full of endangered animals and decides to open a zoo to raise money. Brother had been working watering plants, mowing lawns, etc. as they could no longer afford to go on their scientific expeditions.
He and Carly went outside and she was hiding things for him. He kept kicking off his shoes inside and Carly gave him a timeout. He said he would do it outside, and if he did it inside he wanted to be reminded. That worked well for the rest of the day. He slipped a couple times, but when just reminded he apologized.
I went outside with them and sat at the table and typed. August decided to go in, and we ended up opening the sliding door so he could see us. He made elf playground and hummed. I was supposed to copy it. As I did that he went and started playing GroForest. When he went to the bathroom he told me about his venom: “All the particles clog up the veins to go to the heart…Do you know how it gets between the nerves? There’s little cracks between one nerve and the next and when the signals are traveling through the venom gets in the way so the heart stops beating.” He learned about venom from Wild Kratts.
I made schnitzel and broccoli for lunch. We all sat and ate. I then read the Ben Beaver to him. ‘Stalling’ and ‘acts’ (as of a story) were words of the day. He then really wanted to play Polytopia. I said we could play later at the restaurant. Carly came down and they went outside. He then started explaining decimals to her: “20.93…twenry inches, and 9 hundredths and 3 hundredths.” He also did ones with thousandths. I don’t know how he learned that, and nor does Carly doesn’t either. He just figured it out.
Carly went to do recycling. He and I watched the recent Wintergatan videos. He had had me start to hide the kite string, with him holding the end so he could ‘find’ it when Carly got back. I went up to rest for awhile. When I came down he told me he had his 60 minutes. I asked how that could be. Carly said he had been pacing around the house basically the whole time as they talked and did math and whatever else they did.
So now I hid the kite string from him a lot. He cut that off after 10 or 15 rounds and attached a part from the projector. We were getting ready to go and I was in the kitchen doing dishes and he was swinging a cord around in the air. Carly asked him to stop, or at least move to the other end of the house. He fought it, but eventually made a good choice. Then a short little game where he was pretending to sleep on the couch and was upset with the music coming from the HomePod. He would pause it, just for me to start it again with my phone. He would be confused and upset, etc.
We left at 5 and walked up into town. We went to Sushi Ishimoto and got our ‘usual’ (second time) table right in the middle. He chose the chicken chong, and we also got the mushroom noodles. I decided to also get edamame, which he’s never had. He ate a good amount of that and also the chicken and peanuts and rice from the chicken chong. Carly and I had cappuccinos. He had me add the lemon to his water bottle. We played Polytopia until we left at 5.
On the walk up August had actually had us take a “long cut” to go through the back entrance to Snakes and Ladders. On the way back Carly chose the long cut and we took back streets down past the pine tree park.
On the way up he had sung a song about “78 trillion miles per second” and we had reminded him of his sidewalk sealant song. He said he had a new version that was better and sang that. On the walk home he started counting cats again and when we went by barking dogs in yards he commented on how he used to not like them. For dogs on the street he would cross to the other side, but is getting calmer about it. He also talked about how he is heavy enough to make a 747 stop flying. We walked the Holly block to check the garbage pile. Nothing interesting, but he got a long piece of styrofoam. Carly also pointed out a scary insect. He touched it with the styrofoam and it flew away.
We were home before 7. Carly had brought an old vacuum cleaner back from the recycling area earlier. August and I made some progress taking it apart now. We were outside, and August started playing with the hose and ran water through the tube of it, getting a lot of gunk out. August asked, “What’s a coma?” From the Ben Braver book we are reading. Inside we did more of the hiding and pulling the string game, now with a spray bottle attached to the end of it. I had fun, and he thought it was really funny, when I hid it behind him on the chair, and under the chair another time.
I took him up for his bath. He played with his coins, buying berries from me. He then developed a scenario where Brother and Sister fight over the bathroom and one of them pees their pants. Wanted it over and over. Washed him, then did more of that. He was a little upset when I was stopping, but it was time to go to bed. We finished getting him ready and I left the two of them at 9:15.
Humming and building while we’re outside:
Figuring out decimals:
Hiding the kite string game:
78 trillion miles per second song:
New sidewalk sealant song:
Hiding it right behind him:
