He slept until close to 8. They were in the bedroom for a few minutes. When he came I out I was watching the start of the Nurburgring 24. He saw a hot air balloon and we talked about how they use drones and helicopters and other things for cameras, and then he went on about what he used to film a race: “67 horses with cameras on them…a space ship…” We went upstairs for food. He ate a whole banana, then a whole English muffin. I took a shower, and he was watching something, then we went downstairs and played a Brother game. He had a dog named Noodles. The dog ate his sculptures made out linguini. Brother was then climbing a mountain of linguini with his friend JoJo, after they were shrunk. At least a good amount of it was from an episode of Magic School Bus.
We went upstairs for water, then he ate a hard boiled egg, then some “special” (honey nut) Cheerios. We went back downstairs. I started music on the iPad, and August lay on the bed choosing songs and listening to them for several minutes. He added two TomPepe songs to his playlist and listened to all of Yoko Ono’s “I Love You Earth”. We then played a little Green Earth. He then found an apple of Carly’s. Mom has hung up a few of August’s close up photos in the house, including three down in the bedroom. He now wanted to go upstairs and play with the macro lens. We went up and did that. He mainly played with settings, making things blue, so not a lot of photography came out of it this time. He also saw how the camera changed the ISO setting. He said it was “Centigrees” and was some sort of other setting that he had changed.
I went up to work for a half hour and came back in at noon. Carly had a phone interview with someone who is writing a paper on international education. He was talking about a superchook, but also talked about how he hasn’t gotten upset since we’ve been in the U.S. Not entirely correct, given his bedtime meltdowns at the beginning, but there is some truth to that. He said, “The Chook is upset because I haven’t been getting upset.”
We then did a long Brother game, in which he met someone who was digital and made of ones and zeroes. This was mostly really cool, but also meant that the girl couldn’t feel anything, etc. I told him the story of King Midas. He liked the story and asked me to repeat it later. I was getting tired eventually, and his story had gotten quite random, so we went upstairs so I could have some coffee.
I then got him outside. I found the box of sand toys and squirt guns and he first played with the squirt guns, squirting me a bit, but mainly the grass, etc. He then threw the big beach ball around with Mom and Dad. Dad had also prepared the sheet of metal for the chair, and he took August into the garage. August had a ton of fun and did a great job with using the drill press to drill the pattern of holes on it. When they were done doing all the ones they could reach with the drill press, August used it on his own, drilling a ton of holes in a piece of wood while Dad finished the holes in the metal with a hand drill.
He had me Shazam a song playing on the little radio. It was called “Never be the Same”. August said, “Yeah, that’s cool. That what I say: ‘never be the same.’”
Carly, Mom, August and I got walking at 2:45. August said, “When I’m digital my middle name is Math.” We got to the library just at 3. We found seats for the Book-It performance of The Odyssey. August was hungry, so I took him out to the front and he ate some banana. He wanted to get back in for the performance. We went back in, and he sat for the whole performance (20 to 30 minutes), sitting on Carly’s lap for the last few minutes. He quite liked the pigs, and when Odysseus was listening to the Sirens he said that Odysseus was “hypnotized.”
He enjoyed it, but the second it was over he was ready to leave. He sat in the stroller and ate cereal while we got ready to go. I got a sticker for him that they were handing out and he put it on Carly’s shorts.
We checked the library on the way home. Once here we went downstairs for some Brother and Sister, then upstairs for a snack when he found a pack of gummy fruit snack. He agreed to real fruit first, eating a couple strawberries and a raspberry, then having the fruit snacks. Back downstairs we finished readingThe 104-Story Treehouse, then boughtThe 52-Story Treehouse. Carly came in to switch with me and I went out to work.
She also finished dinner (macaroni and cheese, broccoli, and asparagus) and I cooked the asparagus on the grill. August told me the story of Brother playing hide and seek with a kid with a giraffe neck. The kid with the giraffe neck counted, and then could just spot Brother from the porch using her neck.
We ate outside. Mom noticed that the beach ball was losing air. August suggested using tape. He said, “You like your glues…You like your wood…I think grampa really likes cars.” August played with the squirt guns some more, worrying us about spraying us, but we got past that. I switched the hose to the nozzle so he could spray the vegetables.
I went up to do more work and came in at 8:40. Carly had given him a bath, and he had been taking apart a hard drive with Mom. On the toilet he sang a song about binary code. When I came in they were playing I Spy, with August giving the hints. He was doing trick stuff. He said he saw something moving, and it turned out to be “It’s the light traveling 300000 kilometers per second…I’m doing un-ordinary things.”
He was still hungry, so had strawberries, then a Cheerio mix. He told Mom and Dad about Kai after they asked if he knew any little kids. Then he explainted that Kai was wearing a lifevest. It took me a second, but I realized he meant the clothes that August made up with all the safety features: “helium balloons, parachute…will float in the sea.”
We went downstairs. He had a short Brother story where Brother was having trouble with math. Zero, since she is made of numbers, helped him. We brushed his teeth, and I left them at 9:25.
Listening to music 1:
Listening to music 2:
Being digital:
Spraying me:
Beach ball 1:
Beach ball 2:
Beach ball 3:
Drill press 1:
Drill press 2:
The Odyssey:
Music at dinner:
