August was up at 6:45. Carly greeted him upstairs. She headed to school and he watched Pink Panther and one Aardvark and the Ant. He stopped, and asked me, “Do you want to babysit 10,000 friends?…There’s 150,000 people in my lab. And 10,000 kids. There’s also a built-in science school.” His lab is down in the lava.
He was getting money from me by selling things for American coins. He said it was because Carly had told him that she lived in an apartment building in the Unites States where she had to use quarters. So he was getting change to exchange at a store. Apparently he plans on moving out and doing his own laundry soon. He asked and answered his own math question to figure out how many quarters were in 10 dollars: “So how do we figure out how many quarters are in ten dollars? 4 times 10? 40?” He then did it up to a billion. That is, showing that he knew how to do 4 times 100, 4 times 1000, etc.
We did multiplication on the calculator, then I suggested Khan Academy and we did some of that, but then I compared how they do fractions to the points/possible points in Infinite Arcade and he wanted to do that. We played that for awhile, then I went outside for a second to see if the smoke from last night’s bonfires was dissipating. Not really. When I came back in August came up to me and said “I have a sore throat.” I picked him up and held him for awhile. He had woken up pretty stuffy. I told him it was probably just the smoke, and to drink water. He did that, and I went up and got the Ricola. I broke one up with the hammer and gave him small pieces.
I had read an article about how The Who’s Tommy turns 50 today, so we listened to that. So I’ll always know that the album is 7 years older than me. We did our short session of Green Planet and I made French toast—he had already had oatmeal soon after Carly left. When it was ready he told me wanted swedish pancake instead. I would have said no, but there was leftover egg mixture, so I had the idea to add a little more milk and some flour, and voila, a cinnamon swedish pancake. He ate the whole thing, but said it was too thick. Too much flour, I guess.
We then did calculator math, but this one was really interesting. He’s into knowing what, for example, a trillion times a quadrillion is. The trick is in simply adding the number of zeroes. So we started doing this on the calculator, but only in calculating the number of zeroes. So, for ‘a million times a million’ you add 6 plus 6 and the calculator says 12, which you then know is a trillion. We kept going and going, to things like ‘a nonillion times a nonillion times a nonillion’, and eventually ‘a googol times a googol’ etc. I was of course interpreting the large ones, but he really got the idea and understood what was happening.
He asked me about the backs of his quarters, as they are different, and I talked about the designs (76, the regular one, and state quarters) and said he could look at all of them this summer with Gramma and Grampa. We then played a game with a Duplo horse tied to the end of the kite string. First we had to piece together a string long enough as the kite string got all tangled. It was the usual sort where Brother tried to take the horse home but it kept getting pulled away. I took the opportunity though to clean the house every time Brother walked away from the horse. It then turned into a game where Brother was late to babysit someone. We took the game upstairs and it turned into a wrestling game where more and more kids came for him to babysit and they jumped all over him.
Back downstairs I was still having a headache, so I pulled out the couch and rested for awhile and he watched something. I got up and went to look outside. August started telling me (inspired by the bonfire holiday last night) that he designed our house to shoot fireworks out of it: “On a special holiday the house shoots out lightning-hot fireworks…”
He watched the Curious George Christmas special as I started to make baked salmon for my birthday lunch. He also played with music apps like Musyc. We sat down and ate lunch and he ate his whole serving of salmon.
We read Ben Braver, made the beds, then he read Samantha to me. I let him play Polytopia while I did dishes and cleaned. He then asked me “Do you like to fail?” He tested how I respond to failure by having me build a circuit with the broken capacitor. He had me pretend to be upset, and he talked about the poster we have on the wall with strategies for when you’re upset. So I was modeling and talking about them. It’s the first time he’s really been interested in that part of the poster. We actually completed a couple of circuits.
He wanted me to draw a picture for him (he refused to draw a picture for me through the day) and he brought me paper, a stencil, and a pen. I made a picture of shapes and he gave me a timer, which he extended with a two minute timer. I colored in a lot of the shapes I drew with markers. He really liked it: “Wow. This is really impressive. I love it.” We discussed the strategies chart more. Then he had me use his bus card as a credit card to buy things and he’d do the subtraction math from my credit limit. But then it turned into a funny game where everything was just above my credit limit, so I couldn’t buy anything.
We went outside and worked on the vacuum cleaner, getting the motor out and a couple screws off of it, but getting stuck on how to get it actually open. It was really dirty, so August took the hose to it and the rest of the vacuum cleaner to clean it all of.
Carly got home about 4:45. He did more buying and math with her. He explained how to do math in the billions etc. using the basic numbers. They were doing multiplication and division and going into negatives. And he used tape to hang up the picture I made for him.
I finished making dinner for me and Carly and we all ate. August told us how “There’s an asteroid that’s going to hit the earth in 1400 years.” I was packing up the backpack and he got his headphones and turned them into a necklace again, putting his animal-summoning paintbrush on it “In case I want to eat a little rat.” He was saying ‘attracting’, and Carly taught him what ‘summon’ means.
We drove to Gabi’s office. We were meeting with him and August watched Curious George and a Cat in the Hat. August fell asleep on the way there, and was still really groggy when I set him down and he started watching. After Curious George he came in and I went out and helped him find Cat in the Hat. He still looked half asleep.
As we walked back to the car he insisted Carly make the pie tonight and got upset when she said she wouldn’t have time. We got him to the car, and he asked to have Carly sit next to him, so I drove home.
At home he did his turn on his phone game since he’d reached his 60 minutes. I got him a little oatmeal, then my parents called and we skyped with them for quite awhile, discussing summer plans, primarily. August was doing math with Carly and she taught him about ‘estimation’. When he was still hungry he ate 4 pieces of frozen strawberry.
After Skype Carly took him up for a bath. When he came down he said he was lucky to get a second power to scan underground for bones. They had some cereal and milk. He asked her, “Can you sense I’m happy right now? How do you do that? So you scan my nerves?” Carly told him she could make ‘inferences’ based on evidence. August immediately asked “So it’s not 100% accurate?” Carly said he understood ‘inference’ better than some of her students. August talked about how Carly’s power (of inference) wasn’t as accurate as his powers. Her inferences are 75% correct.
We took him back upstairs and I said good night to him as she got him to brush his teeth. I left them some time after 9. They slept in the office on a mattress on the floor so they had the air conditioner. Carly asked him why he got upset he said something like “No hard questions, only scientific questions.”
Fireworks from our house:
[YouTube https://youtu.be/QWwo72DqC2Q]
Listening to music on the circuit set:
[YouTube https://youtu.be/24cA2DnNA6w]
Cleaning out the gunk from the vacuum cleaner:
[YouTube https://youtu.be/e0Z–vAI0IM]
