He slept until close to 8:40. We read a few chapters ofBen Braver. As he went to the bathroom he told me “Oh, and my second power is to shoot fireballs the size of a skyscraper. And it can go down to the size of a bullet…but I can only do it when I’m running.” “I know a boy from Kepler Academy that can lift like big tall buildings and stuff.”
He played Magnus Kingdom and I got breakfast. We played a game of chess against the computer while we ate together. He sang a song that went “Every minute is a thousand days” And he asked, “How many picoseconds in a galactic year?” We then discussed scientific notation after Siri answered a different question using it. I drew some examples. He was then asking her other math questions, and got lucky when he asked questions like zero divided by zero and infinity times infinity. Then 8^80 power or something like that. I didn’t hear exactly what it was, but the answer went on and on and on until we shut her off.
We made a list on paper of our things to do today. He wanted to type on my iPad. When I talked about how he could tell a story and I could be his scribe, he told me a series of “boring” stories:
Once a story met a story. The end.
Once a book met a slug and got all slimy and then got thrown in the trash. The end.
Once a slug met a baby slug and they both dried up in the sun. And died. The end.
Ten men marched to the edge of the land. Then they fell in the deep water and drowned. The end.
Here’s a lightning fast one: bleep. The end.
He told me more about Joseph, the scientist that had died. He also typed on the iPad using the predictive text and had me read the nonsense that resulted. That turned into a game where he was typing on the keyboard but I was Brother and I was across the room. When August typed random stuff I at first thought I was controlling it with my mind, then was scared, then upset when he said he was the kid I had been babysitting and he had stolen my keyboard. As it kept going, I was trying to read out what he typed, then I was making songs out of it, singing the random words/numbers/letters. Finally, he had a story where I had come around the world to babysit him, but now was stuck and needed money to fly home.
For lunch we did platter style, with watermelon, strawberries, crackers, and meat. And we played Polytopia. He read Willy’s Wish to me, making it funny by changing the words and pronunciations. He knew it well enough to make jokes throughout, so that went into his I can read it pile, as did Before and After after that. 22 now. I’m kind of hoping he’ll make the step up to ‘I Can Read!’ books before we leave for summer—not that he needs to learn to read faster, but logistically it would be nice as there are tons of them available digitally through the library and to buy. There are more Bob Book sets to buy as well, but they are more complex too. It would save having to pack a bunch of Bob Books.
We played our few minutes of Green Planet, then he played Magnus Kingdom again while I got things ready to make banana bread. He switched to Toca World, but then did a good job of stopping and coming and helping me with the banana bread. As we made it, he asked me to sing the Big Numbers song.
We took some things apart. He and Carly had gotten a a couple things at school. One was a compact CD player/radio thing. I had to force it open a bit as two of the screws were too deep for our tools. He played with the wristband thing that grounds you. It has a stretchy cord on it, and he said that he had the power to charge my phone. He clipped the end of it to my phone strap and kept talking about it. He also talked about Polytopia, and asked what ‘puny’ and ‘mighty’ mean (words that come up in the dialogues when you meet other civilizations). Good words of the day.
He kept talking about his powers (all inspired by the Ben Braver books and Kepler Academy now) and told me he can control things with his mind. I joked that was why I gave him 10 lollipops yesterday. He was then hypnotizing me and asking me to get him candy. I would then get upset when I realized what he had done, then he would wipe that memory from me. He then said, “If I had a freak out I could take the memory from you.” And he brought up the chook, saying “The chook is still here. It just can’t control me.” So we talked a little about the chook a few times today. We played the making me give him candy, me getting upset, him erasing my memory game over and over. He had several pieces of banana bread when it ws ready.
I finally went up to brush by teeth, as we were going to go to the school soon to swim. That was something he brought up that he wanted to do. But he called up,”There’s still some things on the list I wanted to do: Brother and Sister game.” So we went upstairs. First, distracted by the clock. We counted the blinking to make sure it was seconds, and it was. He then went back to talking about Ben Braver, and said that Mama wasn’t a part of the Seven Keys, so she didn’t have a power, but that Grandma was. Didn’t say what her power was. He said there was a kid at Kepler called Cockroach because he likes bugs. We then did a Brother and Sister game, one where they wake up on an island, not knowing how they got there, and a seal helps them out, then they are scared by a tiger and make raft.
We went downstairs and looked at the globe after he had asked what ‘tropical’ meant. It was now well past 3, but he kept wanting to play a little more. As we finally got ready to go, he was playing with the thing with the clip on the end. He swung it around inside, then outside. When he realized the clip part was missing we figured out that it had come off when he was swinging it. But where? He was a little bothered by it, and as we were looking I was afraid he wasn’t going to want to go to the pool now.
But he said he was okay and could go to the pool, and talked a couple times about how he didn’t need the clip part, but we could look for it more later. As we left the gate it was close to 4, and Carly was coming in. So we saw her for a minute, then Gil, across the street, pulled up and got out of his car. Talked to him for a couple minutes, and he talked about how August could hang out with his kids (the twins are 9). Also, he hopes his pool will be done in July and we’re invited.
August and I got going, and finally got to the pool a little after 4. We took him into the bathroom to change. He was acting weird, making funny faces in the mirror, then pretending to push buttons all over the place. When I asked what it was, he said, “Don’t think about it.” But then told me it was some security system. He then asked me how I defeated the supervillain. I said with my gum power. He kept asking questions about my supposed fight with a super villain, leading me along with more questions about what I did next, and who helped me.
We got in the pool. Andrea came and went swimming a couple minutes later. We’ve never seen her there. He wasn’t convinced it was her, as she was wearing goggles and a swim cap. He played on the steps with the board for several minutes before requesting his floaties and getting in. Later, near the end, he then went from lane to lane to sort of spy on Andrea to see if he could tell if it was her. Still not convinced. While we were swimming he kept repeating “Flippin eggs” and “Spill the beans!” Funny phrases from Ben Braver.
We got out and left the pool at 5 after changing him. We checked the junk box on the way out. He took some old CDs to use for a project or something.
We were home at 5:15. He started smothering Carly, but then went and did alone time. I started making dinner. He took things apart, and swung my keys around, doing something every 60 swings to mark minutes, I think. They then read some Skybrary books: Frida Gets Lost andDilly Dog’s Dizzy Dancing. When he went to the bathroom he told Carly about knights in chess, and repeated the line about them in Magnus Kingdom: “I’ll jump at the chance to save my king.”
He told us that he has cheap kimbap in his lab. When I joked about reasons it might be so cheap he decided it was radioactive. He asked about radiation and I told him about different particles. He made one up, saying his “Send out ultraneumans.” He has a powerplant in the core of the earth that runs on ultraneumans becuase there are a lot of them down there.
He had been told he had 12 minute of iPad time when we got home, and he had decided to conserve it. He still wanted to conserve his iPad minutes, and they went to do a circuit. They then did a lot of good math, with Carly writing out problems to show him. He asked me to take the percentage off the battery on his phone, as seeing the number goes down bothers him and he keeps wanting to plug it in.
While playing with Carly on the couch he bonked his head on the wall a bit. Earlier he had stepped on something on the rug and handled them quite well. They were doing math still, and did 22×3 when Carly asked. I then asked, from the kitchen, what 22×5 was. Carly thought I was being silly, getting too hard, but as she tried to move on to another problem he called out “110!” They were working on multiplication and division, going through thing like 12×6 and 12×7. He got that pattern pretty easily. And then he was dividing 120 into halves and by 60 etc.
We talked about the Chook again for some reason, and as Carly went up to the bathroom I was being the Chook and he was using the wrist band thing as a “Chook shield” and I was bouncing off. He wanted to finally use his iPad time to play Polytopia on my watch, so we did 15 minutes of that. When we stopped we had exactly 10000 points. When I told him he said, “Oh, I like exactlys.”
He was then singing a funny song, and still hungry. He ate a bunch of frozen mango, then a small bowl of oatmeal. He then said he was still hungry. He told me he needed one Cheerio. Just one. I gave it to him and he patted his tummy and said “Great.”
We went upstairs to his bath. Carly was finishing up grading. August washed my arm in the sink as I stood there, then as I went to take a shower he wanted to spray my legs with the sprayer. So he came in with me. I suggested he spray himself, and he started spraying his feet. Soon, I was done with my shower (I let him rinse my hair) and he kept playing with the showerhead for several minutes. I eventually had to apply a little soap, but he mainly took a shower on his own.
In on the bed he told me he was getting tired of Creepy Pair of Underwear. When he hypnotized me to make me read a story, I recited, pretty well, Where the Wild Things Are from memory. After we brushed his teeth he told me that when his next tooth is loose that we shouldn’t brush it because that hurts. It turns out it was hurting when we would brush his teeth, but he didn’t tell us about it. When I asked why not, he said, “Teeth are secret.” Carly came up and I left them just before 10. He was quite chatty. I don’t think he was asleep until 10:15 or after.
Hey Siri – zero divided by zero:
Hey Siri – infinity times infinity:
Hey Siri – 80 to the power of something:
His second power – charging things:
Hypnotizing me:
Discussing his superpowers and Kepler Academy:
Multiplication and division:
A funny song:
