I had slept with him the first part of the night, but at some point he sat up and asked for Mama. She and I switched spots. I then couldn’t get back to sleep so did some reading. I got up around 8.
Carly brought him down about 9:50. He lay on the couch for several minutes. Hard for him to wake up. But a good night of sleep.
When he was hungry he wouldn’t try a fig, so he had some toast and several frozen strawberries. He wanted to watch something, so I got his iPad. I told him we had changed the time on his iPad, so he could have a total of 30 minutes of watching in the morning, then we could use the iPad through the day for reading and educational games, and he can earn more watching time by doing independent reading.
He watched a new Storybots, as there’s a new season. Exciting news. A lot of laughing, and after one character used the word he said “Ha. Salutations.”
He handled it well when his time ran out. I made him oatmeal, and he went out and cuddled with Carly for a minute, then came back in and ate his oatmeal. It had been a bit windy and cloudy out there, and Carly, who had been sitting out there, said it was almost chilly for a minute.
They checked an experiment they had done with the freezer, putting in a piece of wet paper and dry paper. They had left it too long though and the wet piece was all dried out. She finished reading Dog Man #2 to him. She taught him the word ‘Epilogue’.
They finished, then bought book #3. Did some calculator time while it downloaded, but then he asked to go outside “Just to do some secret talk.” It turned out he wasn’t happy with the new limit on his iPad time and he did a really good job explaining that. They came in and we all talked about it. At one point he suggested dividing his time in fourths for every 6 hours of the day. We ended with giving him a little more time in the morning so he could finish a second episode of something, then dividing the rest of the time into a mid-day and evening chunk. He’ll only get the middle time if he does independent play first. And we reduced the overall time, but will make it clear that reading and doing educational apps, like for homeschool, don’t count towards his chunks of choice time.
He finished his episode, then Carly read Dog Man. I was upstairs, and he came up and put his coins in water again. He had left a bunch of coins in some concoction of soaps and water before we left for the summer, and one of the last things I had done before leaving the house was dump them out. The poop spinner wasn’t moving well after putting it in the water last night. He randomly asked what ‘psychokinetic’ means, so I explained. A word of the day.
We went down and fixed the poop spinner with WD-40. He then talked about WD-H, which he says helps plants. He saw a plane flying low and talked about the different heights of airplanes. He then had another chemical called WD-H392 that cleans rugs: “It seems like magic, but it isn’t.”
He helped me put down some ant poison and he wanted to catch ants. He decided on a plastic bag and we mixed up sugar water to put in it. He lay it out on the step. He used a two liter bottle to fill up with the hose and pour under the teeter totter, then watered a few plants with it. But then he wanted a dry bottle to catch ants in. He tried putting a paper towel in it, which didn’t work. So he wanted a dry bottle.
We walked to recycling. He walked the whole way. He did ask me once to pick him up on the way back, but I pointed out how he’d done so well on the way there, and that it was now clear that it was a short walk for him now, and he said it had been for a year. But it did the trick, and he walked back. The next big one will be when he considers a walk to the mall and back to not be a big deal.
Anyway, at recycling we found an old dishwasher. Which he wanted to take apart, but settle for just inspecting. I asked him if it looked like the one that Jeff had worked on at their house. I then found a metal box with a lid that latches shut. Kind of like a heavy duty metal lunch box. Perfect for treasures or for playing out in the Zinnie house or something. We walked over to the plastic recycling and he showed me his method for “walking” a plastic bottle out through the hole.
We went back to the house and he tried catching an ant. He thought he had trapped one, but then the bottle blew over and he thought he lost it. He then asked me to catch an ant using the lid and I managed that. It then turned out he had two ants trapped in the bottle. He was pretty excited about that. We put some bread crumbs in for the ants.
He talked about hydrogen and quarks and we got ready to go swimming. He wanted to drop the old camera to break it open. He took it out and dropped it on the boards. The batteries fell through the cracks. It did manage to break it a bit. He had put on his swim goggles as eye protection.
We got to the pool and swam for an hour or so. It was pretty busy today, but he was fine with it. It provided some entertainment too, as a volleyball got stuck up on one of the covers, and it was quite a show watching a guy use a long pole and kids using other balls to try to get it down. We played the kickboard game using the one rope set up to denote a lane.
We headed home at 4 when the pool closed. He was outside with Carly for a while. He then came in and went to the bathroom. He stood up to go, something he had done a couple times starting in Pennsylvania. He said it was the “Power of the penis.” As we went back out he asked me “You have a boyfriend, right? Omar?”
He then had a bunch of things he wanted to do: first he said he wanted food, then just a minute later he said he wanted the tire pressure gauge from the car, then a minute later to take apart the camera. So we started with the camera. He used the drill to try to drill through the plastic, then we used the screwdrivers and got it mostly apart. Carly took over for awhile, then I read some Bodie Troll. He ate a bunch of crackers and meat. Carly went to the store. When we stopped reading he said “I’m swarming with things to do.” And they didn’t involve the iPad.
We did a Brother game, where he found a new animal. Didn’t get far into it and he wanted to build a fort. We built a fort, listening to Yes, and he got up on the chairs and danced to it with his eyes closed. We did a little of the silk worm game. He said, “I love the evening…cuz I get to play with Eve tomorrow.”
Carly got home, and about 7:30 I went for a run. I got back at 8 and Carly decided it was too dark for her to go for a walk. She had made the seitan, rice, and broccoli for dinner. He was watching StoryBots, finishing a song about the planets. He asked me “What’s a planetesimal?” And we talked about that. He said “I still have a ton of things I want to do!” But then got a little upset about not being able to play Green Planet.
He made some sort of listening device with the stethoscope and tape. Carly said that was 4 minutes of iPad time as he’d played on his own. He said, “Oh! I didnt even notice!” He asked about trying out the speaker with a suction cup. Got a cord and plugged it into the computer, and it turns out it is actually a bluetooth speaker. Later, I would also realize that it has a rechargable battery and doesn’t need to be plugged in. Might be fun for playing music in the Zinnie house or something.
Carly went and took a shower. He had done more independent play, and I let him use his ten minutes playing Green Planet. When I had him help me clean up from our fort earlier he got really grumpy about it, then, when She told him he could get his stool to wash his hands he refused to do it and lay on the floor. He eventually told me he was just tired, then a bit later he had a good talk with Carly about what was fair and not fair.
He ate a banana, then went upstairs and played in the sink for a long time. He was still hungry, so Carly got him oatmeal, and we skyped with my parents for a few minutes. I then left them at 11:20. Carly read to him, and apparently could have put him to bed earlier, as when she went to turn the lamp off he said “No”, but by the time she turned it off and turned around he had rolled on his side and was asleep.
Filling the bottle:
Examining a dishwasher:
Getting a bottle out of recycling:
Drilling a hole in plastic:
Hands waterfall:
