He got up once and almost left the room before Carly caught his attention. He said “Mama!” and jumped back in bed with her rather like he did with me yesterday. I was up before 6, but then went back in the bedroom to do Arabic, upload videos, and watch Too Old to Die Young. August sat up before 7 and saw me and came all the way across the beds to me. He initially lay down on the pillows, then curled up right against me. He eventually curled up on the bed, but was asleep on my headphones.
We went out and I read for a bit. He got up at 7:30. Everyone except Thatcher was up. He took a few minutes with Carly, then had me hold him for a couple minutes. I took a shower and I think he had a crepe. Thatcher was up and the other kids all went down to play foosball. August went in the bedroom and watched Craig of the Creek instead. He watched two episodes, and Vivian joined him for the second episode. He turned it off after that, and they went downstairs to play. He was back a bit later though and watched more.
Carly got him out to eat a crepe for breakfast, then he was downstairs playing. He saw me block Colin in the hallway, and Colin went into a karate stance. Half-jokingly and half-seriously, I think, August said “He’s not your children!” He was then downstairs playing with Thatcher. There was talk of going to the beach soon, and when Thatcher said that to August he said “It’s too early!”
We got going and walked down to the beach. Vivian pushed August in his stroller. We stopped at the climbing tree for a couple minutes, then made it to the swings. August and Kayla went on the swings, and Vivian and Thatcher headed down to the beach. Carly went with them. Colin realized he had the wrong trucks, and Cassie had to head back to the house with him to get the correct ones.
We were there for awhile, with August swinging on his stomach, and talking about the currency value of the rocks, then headed over to the rope swing area. They went down looking for crabs first, and I sat and read my book. They then came up and were taking turns on the rope swing. August wouldn’t take a turn when Chuck was pushing, but he went on a couple times when Carly was pushing. One time on the swing he had a nice chant that went on for quite awhile: “When humans die, they turn into zombies, when zombies die…” There was about 10 things in a row, then it went back to humans.
The other kids headed down to the beach again, and August observed “I think they got swinged out…When do you think Thatcher will get crabbed out?” He excitedly got off and ran over to Derek when Derek was counting for Kayla to do something and accused him of skipping a number. They were then talking about something and ended up discussing an octopus s a measure of time. Back on the swing he said “I love this. We should never leave here… maybe two hours more.”
As we left at 11:25 and walked back to the stroller he told me about the “Candy flower…you take out the nutratoobs, that’s where the nectar comes out, and you suck out the nectar…” Colin wanted to ride in his stroller, so they switched, and Cassie pushed him back and Vivian pushed the Colin.
We ate pisole for lunch, then he went in the bedroom and watched Craig of the Creek. We were in the middle of a Brother game where he was drawing the map of where Brother had to go to get his iPad back when Thatcher knocked and asked if he wanted to play video games. Andrea had said they could. So we went down and played Minecraft. Thatcher wanted survival mode, which I said wasn’t a possibility. August agreed: “I will NEVER do survival mode in my ENTIRE life.” Vivian wasn’t ready for it either, as the first time they saw a zombie in the creative mode she went running upstairs until I reminded them they couldn’t get hurt. Colin was also there. All was fine, them all playing together, until August and Vivian were talking about getting the character stuck again and Thatcher didn’t like the idea. Carly had just come down, and Andrea was talking to Thatcher, and they implemented turns. They each had a turn, then it was over.
We then all got ready to go to the pool. As we did so, August told me that “The first even number counting by threes is six.” And he listed several other multiples of 3 that were even numbers. He was then counting by 30s to 600.
Before we were able to go though we had a moment where he got upset about not being able to climb on the railing to spit over the edge. It took a few minutes, but the solution/compromise was that he had to be spotted by one of us to do it. We got to the pool after 2:30.
I went and worked in the clubhouse, and they had a great time in the pool. I heard him yelling a couple times, but it was all in fun. They were in the water for over an hour.
We drove home, taking Vivian in our car. It had started to rain, lightly. August hadn’t noticed it raining in the pool, but now watched it making the hood of the car wet. Soon after we got home they had an early dinner. It was just after 4:30. I tried to resist eating dinner so early, knowing I’d get hungry again, but sat with them and drank some wine. Eventually got hungry though, so gave in. Cherie had spent a long time making the nutty noodles.
Someone suggested watching something on the big screen, so I got August’s iPad hooked up to the big TV. They watched a few episodes of some short show that Vivian liked, then switched to the Magic School Bus. Eventually Netflix stopped loading new episodes. Cherie handed out her presents from Mexico to all the kids. They each got two shirts and a hummingbird thing. Then she did “Going on a bear hunt” with them. August really liked that one, but then skipped out on the song she did after that.
Instead he had us go in the bedroom and play Brother games. There was one where a snake granted wishes, but the wishes always had a catch to them when granted. Then there was the usual finding of a baby dragon caught in a trap. That didn’t last long.
We went back out, and several of the kids ended up with Cherie in her room. They watched more Magic School Bus in there. They also had cookies at some point. In our room, Vivian told August she didn’t have to take a bath today. He had just washed his hair yesterday, so I said he didn’t have to have a bath either. About 10 minutes later I heard Cassie talking to her about taking a bath, so apparently that hadn’t already been decided.
We got his teeth brush, and he sort of knocked on the wall and asked “Is this made of wood?” When I said it was he replied “Really? I hate wood. I like steel.” And looking outside he said “Yep, it’s raining. Definitely not the part I was looking for.”
With the lights out he leaned against me and did a bunch of math on his calculator. He had figured out a cool pattern in that, I think, he realized that if 1/9 = .11111111 if he kept moving the decimal point on the one, making it smaller, that the answer had more zeroes in it before the ones. There was another interesting one he’d found as well. Then, we discovered together that some fractions ending with 5s make interesting repeating patterns, like 1/135 and 1/35. He spent quite a while dividing up pies and peaches and other things into smaller and smaller fractions, telling me what fraction I would get, and then also what decimal number that translated to.
I left him and Carly about 8:50.
On the climbing tree:
Being pushed in the stroller by Vivian:
Rope swing 1:
Rope swing 2:
Discussing candy flowers:
Going on a bear hunt:
Bedtime math:
