I was up at 5:30. Pretty perfect. Carly was already up, talking to Cherie. She went back up with August for awhile.
Andrea took Thatcher to school. Friday is his last day. Carly finally got August awake at 8:45. I had tried a few minutes earlier and just got him to flip his head back and forth six times. As he came out of the room I said good morning. He replied, “I know.” He said the same thing to Cherie when she said good morning a little later.
She took him into the big bedroom, where Kayla was watching some animated show about dogs. August said, “I’ve seen it before…well, you know how I have a lost and found room in my lab? I put a TV in there and put this on so they can watch this…you know the living cars? That too.”
I stayed with him as they watched for awhile. August was confused when commercials came on and they lasted so long. He asked if it was a big 3-minute ad, and I explained how television has multiple ads in a row that you have to watch.
We went down and he had an amazing conversation with Chuck. August walked around in circles as they talked about science and the sun burning out and moving to Mars. At one point Chuck had a soft ball and asked, “Do you want to play catch.” August replied “Ugh, no” and ignored the ball as it went by him. He talked about making a milk carton rocket: “thousands of liters of gas…” But “For a life-sized ship you’d need 36000 milk cartons.” Chuck taught him the word ‘rudder’.
The conversation continued with Cherie down as well. They invented a goose poop power plant. Chuck asked him how many beads he would estimate were in a box. He told him how many it was, and when Chuck asked how he knew that he said “I’m a genius.” Chuck also taught him ‘uniform’, as in the same size.
Cherie had made oatmeal at Kayla’s request. When he was finally hungry I heated some up for August. He said it was better than what we have at home. It was just me with Kayla and August now. They played around, and when Kayla also wanted more I gave them a bunch of fruit instead. She mainly ate the mango, while August had strawberry and blueberries.
The stereo kept saying ‘Connected, ready for use.” I said it might be Opa’s phone. August was a little disturbed by the voice, so he headed upstairs to find Opa. He wasn’t up there though. Back downstairs I turned on music and August requested the Chemical Brothers. He liked “Bango” and danced to it and I added it to his playlist. He chanted “Connected, ready for use” to it.
August and Kayla played with a robotic insect. August said, “I hate it!” The two of them just played with that together for quite awhile, putting it in a bug container, and having it run across the table and floor.
August remembers playing that tablet game with Cherie, and he started mentioning it to her, and repeated about a dozen times how excited he was to play it with her. He said it was better than Polytopia. At one point he told me it was “better than everything except Mama.”
He and Kayla kept playing and playing so well together. Chuck made August a tuna fish sandwich and he ate a good half of that, along with two slices of pickle. Andrea’s mom showed up to take Kayla, and we all got packed and left at 12:15.
Chuck drove, Carly in the passenger seat. August was in the middle in back with Cherie on the left and me on the right. They played a good amount of the Cookie Cat Blast tablet game. It lived up to August’s expectations. I realized we didn’t have August’s water bottle. I had filled it before we left and put it by our stuff, but it didn’t end up in the car. August was okay with it, and Carly let him use her water bottle. He took a big mouthful, but then sprayed it all over his shorts. He got frustrated, but we didn’t have to change his clothes.
Cherie sang “If I Had a Hammer” and “Kum By Ya” He said he didn’t like the first one, then when she started the second he instantly said “I hate it!” as a joke. When she sang “I love you, You love me” he started to do some of his dance moves. She then told/did the “Going on the bear hunt” thing. August suggested ‘mud’ and ‘claw trap’ for two of the verses.
We stopped at the rest stop. I took him to the bathroom. He found a heart-shaped ornament on the drinking fountain that said ‘I need a home’ on it and carried it around. We went and sat at a picnic table with everyone, and I took him back and donated a dollar and he got an M&M cookie and I got chocolate chip.
He told me, “There’s an epinomic experiment going on in my lab right now.” The word he was looking for wasn’t ‘epic’ or ‘economic’. We later figured out, as I readBen Braver, that he meant ‘experimental’, as Ben refers to ‘experimental science’.
We got driving again and we read Ben Braver from the beginning. Read a good third of it. He and Cherie debated the efficacy of meditation, and their powers of traveling through glass and other things. She taught him the word ‘infinitesimal’, another good word of the day.
We then played Green Planet. Earlier, while he’d been playing with Cherie, I had edited Peter’s novel, and now that I have data access on the iPad was able to share it with Peter as we drove over the pass.
August surprised us when he was doing math and he demonstrated that he knew all the squares up to 10 times 10. I then asked him what 11 times 11 was. He figured out what it was by counting to 110 by 11s, then added another 11 to get to 121. Another new phrase for him was ‘nick of time’ when someone used it.
We got to Chelan just after 4. We unpacked and said hi to my parents. Chuck and Cherie went to check in to their place, and Carly went down to rest. I took August out to the garage to look around. He remembered a lot of things, and asked Dad if he’d done the chair like he had suggested last summer. Dad showed him that he had the piece of metal, and that they’d work on it together. I liked the progress on the garage, and will set up office there, I think, but we ultimately decided to stay inside for the real beds. August also suggested Dad use sealant on the ball end of the handle of the vice that keeps coming loose. So dad did get a tube of sealant and they tried it on one end to see if it would work.
We went inside and took a few screws apart on the TV that Chuck and Cherie had given us from their motorhome. They had gotten a new one, as this one was having problems. August found a solar powered calculator, and did a lot of calculator math with Mom. He then kicked the stuffed bears out of their spot on the green chair, and cuddled behind Dad, acting like a cat, before sitting next to him.
When he needed to use the bathroom I took him, and August told me, “Do you know I’m actually a her? A girl. For real.” Carly came up from resting, and we ate dinner: fish sticks, chicken nuggets, tater tots, salad, and carrots. He liked the fish sticks in particular, but rejected the tater tots.
Chuck and Cherie came over, and August went downstairs with me and we watched soccer with Paul: Guyana versus the US. August was asking a lot of questions about the rules, and really seemed to be understanding it this year. Everyone else went outside and sat at the big new table that Dad made and were talking.
August started doing funny math today, and has been chanting “9 times 9 is 3 hundred sixty nine.” August found the the old typewriter, and I got the newer one out and Paul got him paper. I warned him that it might not work at all, and August did a great job of not getting his hopes up. He said, “I’d like to, but I don’t EXPECT it to…” He had done a similar great job before Chuck and Cherie had come back over. He had been excited to play the tablet game with her again. When I warned him that she might not be bringing the tablet, he said much the same. And, in fact, I don’t think he even asked her about it.
But the typerwriter worked, and he did some typing, then had me doing typing. It was all in Mooka Mook. I asked him what I had written and he looked at it and said, “Oh, you want me to eat blueberries. Yeah, good advice.” He then wanted the typerwriter outside, where he typed a bunch, then Cherie translated it into a story. August remembered his tree, and we all went over to see how it is growing.
Chuck and Cherie got going, and we went inside. He had been doing really well, but then something happened upstairs and he started melting down. Carly brought him down, and she and I had him in the bedroom for a good 20 minutes. He was really fighting sleep, and was often just sliding down on the floor, sort of making babbling noises. Finally, he provided his own method for calming down, asking us to turn on the fan. The noise seemed to really do the job, as he calmed down right away. I left them about 9:40. I hadn’t been able to move the dresser or make the lower bed, which was what I’d been working on when they came down.
When I went to bed an hour later August was close to the edge of the big bed, and Carly had also fallen asleep. I made the lower bed and carried him down and slept next to him.
Deep conversation with Opa 1:
Deep conversation with Opa 2:
Calculator math with Gramma:
Watching soccer with Uncle Paul:
Corn on the cob:
Story problems with Oma:
Fun on the deck:
