He was up just before 7:40. We spent a few minutes upstairs on the couch. We went downstairs and he played Dragonbox Little Numbers. At 8 an alarm went off on Siri that August had set for the fun of it yesterday. He grinned. We went upstairs and played a Brother game where the woodpecker was stolen by the zookeeper, then Brother had to get a raise at the farm, then eventually make even more money mixing chemicals at a factory to buy back the woodpecker from the zoo. I finally convinced him to go down and get breakfast at 9:05.
While he was eating oatmeal I went up to put the chair fabric in the washing machine. August yelled up a joke he had made up: “Why did the elephant bite it’s nose? To get to the other pig!” We played Prodigy Math together. The quesrions on telling time we’re good for him. But then there were series, probability, and chart questions. He got ‘mode’ pretty well. I explained it, and he said “most popular?” A word of the day. We also discussen ‘equal chance’, ‘mean’, and ‘median’.
We read some of Monsters Beware and ‘repugnant’ was another word of the day. He discovered the x^2 and x^3 buttons on the calculator and I explained them. He had initially thought that the first one meant times 2, as he had tried it on 2, but ended up understanding it. He read the Willy’s Wish Bob Book to me, then we went up to make the beds. He made up a Brother game where Brother couldn’t get his math homework done because of the animals. His mean teacher then sends him to high school as punishment. The woodpecker goes with him, and is stolen by Dexter Dunn, a high school bully. He tries to get it back, but Dunn punches him in the face. He tries to trick Dexter a few times, but fails. He ends up stealing the bird back after he does a stakeout of Dexter and knows when he leaves to go to work.
At one point he asked me, “Is 6 minutes 620 seconds?” I said no, and he said, “720?” He finally made the beds, earning 30 minutes of Polytopia time. He can totally play on his own now, but wanted to show me something every few seconds, so it was hard to get work done. It was difficult for him to stop when his time was up, but he did it. While he went to the bathroom, an alarm he had set on his phone went off and he thought it was really funny when I pretended to think it was a door bell.
I was desperately trying to get us out of the house, but he was really dragging. He wasn’t excited about walking over to the mall. He took out the passcode he had written on a piece of paper a few days ago and said he didn’t need it anymore, as he had installed a fingerprint scanner for his network/internet. He was acting a bit grumpy. We had had some crackers and cheese, but I asked if he was hungry, and he agreed that was probably it. He did more calculator math as I got him frozen strawberries and peanut butter on crackers.
We finally headed to the mall. I took his bike, but he walked quite a bit on the way there. At the mall we went to the health food store. We picked out a pack of coconut ball things. Kind of like cookies, but not overly sweet. A good choice. We went to the art store and bought the 3 bottles of baby blue that they had and a pack of dark blue fabric dye.
We walked home, and played 15 minutes of Polytopia (our daily time) together on the couch (I would have said outside, but it was hot). He did even better ending this time. He helped me put the fabric from the chair in the dye, then helped sand the lounge chair. He then lay in the center of it and said, “By order of the robot government, it is night night time.” We then painted. As usual, we were just short on paint. I had three and a half tubes. One more would have done it. Two would have been even nicer.
He wanted to send me messages from his phone. So I got Skype set up for him. He then send me messages, and read some of mine. He did a voice call to me as I was outside and pretended to be a kid that Brother babysits, and told me that he could see that the smoke machine on the top of our house is broken and clogged. I then suggested he call Carly as she was walking home. He did, and when she showed him where she was he said, “Oh, Vatikim!” He then directed her home, working on his left and right.
At home, they did a couple of other games, where he sent her out, via Skype, to find something outside. He sent her over to the junk pile, then watched through Skype as she walked down the dirt path by the orchard. He then wanted to climb the big hill of dirt, so I took him over to her.
I read a little Ben Braver to him. Carly was doing math time with the whiteboard and I went up to work for an hour, coming back down at 7. He had had strawberries, carrots, and oatmeal. He was now doing multiplication in Math Tango, although he was doing a lot of guessing. We worked together on it though, and he was doing a lot of thinking. We had one of the coconut cookies, and he was jumping from rug to rug in the living room and kitchen. He got his activity goal on his watch, so we did his turn on his watch game, then went upstairs.
On the bed he jumped around with the phone, trying to make messed-up panoramic photos. We did a short Brother game where he made a paper airplane and it was crushed by one of the cats. Carly took over and gave him a bath, then got him ready for bed. I left them at 9. He had wanted me for a few minutes and started to hit me when I went to leave. He then clung to my arm for awhile before calming down and being okay.
Dyeing the fabric for the chair:
Painting and humming:
Leaving me a message on skype:
Talking to mama 1:
Talking to mama 2:
Talking to mama 3:
Railroad museum:
