We had planned to go see the robotics lab after school, but Shmuel then told us the technician was supposed to come fix our air conditioner at 3. He finally showed up after 6.
August sat up and I put him back to sleep just before 6. Then again he was up at 7. I carried him back in to bed and fell asleep a bit again myself. He was up for good at 7:50. We went downstairs and the first thing he asked for was our few minutes of Green Planet, so we did that and I got him vitamins.
He wanted to play Prodigy Math and we did that. He worked through making fraction equivalents and adding numbers with decimals. The game used the word ‘ambush’ so that was a word of the day. He was doing tons of sneezing this morning. I lost count several times.
We played a Brother and Sister game where a robber tries to break in and is attacked by all the animals. We then played that they found a raccoon dog in Japan. It was animal “Number 1,220.” He got off track from that, talking about his superhero powers and said that he blew up Statue of Liberty for the sound of it. He then talked about his heating system after he asked why the water in the sink upstairs doesn’t get hot on ‘cold’ like it does in the kitchen, and we speculated about pipes being in the sun. “Alsoway” was an allow he invented. And he declared 1 leptomile equals a 1000 photomiles. Photomiles are his measure for the distance between universes, basically.
He watched one Wild Kratts and I worked. When it was over he asked, “Did you know I used high tech equipment to make a worm slime shooter?” He used it to catch bad guys. He played Toca World while I got him oatmeal. He had had mango and banana bread earlier.
He asked, “Is 104 plus 104 208? 208 plus 208 is 416?” For lunch I made a strawberry smoothie and we had crackers and meat and we played chess while we ate. Shmuel then called and said the installer was coming at 3.
We went up and moved the beds. August then made a crazy setup on the real chess board, putting the pawns behind the other pieces (something the iPad app won’t let you do). We then played Magnus Kingdom. He had really used up all his screen time for the time being and almost got upset, but then calmed down. He’s really been doing well the last few days.
He asked “What does ‘rank’ mean?” He knows it in chess, as one of the rows, and also from Prodigy Math, where you gain ranks as you go improve in the skills.
Rank in chess versus in the Prodigy Math game. He started talking about how he was going to make a more complicated Magnus Kingdom game with much bigger boards and clues to figure out. Millions of ranks etc. Went on for a long time.
He went to the bathroom, and requested we change Drops, the language learning app, to English on his phone. He then made up a story about shrinking me to down to the size of a “pyhthocon” to help fix a boy’s computer. He was walking around without his pants on, talking up a storm, like he often does after going to the bathroom.
He washed his hands and got dressed, then requested some frozen mango. While he ate that on the couch he said, “I have a question for you: do you ever have the Chook?” “Babu chooks?” So we had a good conversation about that. We then played the Brother and Sister tiger game from the beginning.
We went downstairs and exercised indoors. Couldn’t get him outside, even though it was cloudy on and off and breezy. In the early afternoon I had looked out and thought about yardwork, but Carly had swept the tree things. Later, around when she got home, I looked out and there were a bunch from the wind that had picked up.
We played 15 minutes of Polytopia and he had the last of the banana bread. He asked, “What’s 66 plus 66? 132?” He asked about what ‘Tri’ meant and told me, “The trisopod has three nozzles that spray water. You know what I use it for? To clean people. And it has a shampoo button that sprays shampoo.”
We read someBen Braver. He asked about the word ‘psychokinetic’ and asked what ‘kinetic’ meant, so we talked about both parts, and about kinetic energy versus potential energy. He said that psychokinesis is his real power. He also said he can make a picture of something into a real thing. We read some more, then he wanted to track Carly as she walked home, so I let her look at my phone.
The AC repair guy hadn’t shown up; he finally called, and said 6 or 7. At first I thought he meant minutes. August set a 7 minute timer on the HomePod, but that came and went. Eventually I realized he meant 6 or 7 o’clock.
Carly was home after 5. She and August did math with negative numbers. I flew him around for awhile as Super Zinnie, then we read more. He said, “Did you know my powers are inpenetrable?” But then asked what it meant. Another word of the day. We ate the ginger curry and he said, “I made the walls is the house inpenetrable.”
I went up to work. The AC guys showed up after 6. August watched for a minute, but was nervous, I think, as there were two of them. Downstairs he told me, “They’re actually robot persons and I’m controlling them with my mind.”
August and I played chess. Like, competitively. We set up and just started playing. I told him I’d play by a formula though, moving one piece, from right to left, at a time. I would capture if the piece could, otherwise it would move forward. He was able to defeat me rather easily.
Carly took him up for a bath. We got him ready for bed, and he chanted “That’s a silly thing to do, that’s a silly thing to say.” He had said it a couple times through the day. It was something I had reminded him of earlier today or yesterday that he had chanted back in kore.
I left them about 9:40.
Exploding the statue:
His heating system:
Getting stuck doing math:
Removing screws with the drill:
