I was in the room when he sat up at 8:04 and looked at me. He lay back down and slept until 8:28. We went downstairs and I got allergy medicine. I sat next to him on the couch and picked up a Paddington book. He took it out of my hands and set it down. So we sat in silence, his shoulder against mine. He finally said something after 8:40 when he asked “Can I go to the bathroom?” He had oatmeal and frozen mango for breakfast. And we read two chapters of Bodie Troll. He asked “Is fauns real?” I discussed ‘faun’ versus ‘fawn’, which was also a new word for him.
He found the mouse ball and we played a Brother game with it. It was the largest mosquito egg ever. It hatched and got bigger and bigger and destroyed the house. There was then a short one about finding a baby bat.
We went downstairs and he did his iPad time. Started with one of those marble videos I don’t like. Then “What if you didn’t drink water for 7 days?” From Bright Side. He turned to me and asked “Are you listening to this?” when it gave advise on staying hydrated. At the end it mentioned H2SO4, so we looked it up and that is sulfuric acid. We discussed what would happen if you drank sulfuric acid and also the little poem they shared about it. I exercised and he ate mango and crackers and meat. He answered the phone when Carly called to ask about our plans.
He never mentioned going to see Carly for lunch. So we discussed our plans, and he wanted to get to Ikea soon so he could have ice cream. But first he played with the little transforming plane/robot from a Kinder egg. It turned into a Godzilla/King Kong sort of game, with me as the monster. I also told him about the Rampage video game, which I remember from Yesterday’s in Chelan.
He then taped things to the multimeter, including his watch, which he then didn’t wear today, and made a magnetic-ifying invention. It made everything magnetic. We played with that, then when getting ready got a text measure for Ikea. We first found the small one, but then he wanted the bigger one from his set, out in the Zinnie house. He likes it better, and said “That’s something my lab robots always say: You should use the bigger one.” He also realized it has a clip, and had me clip it onto his shorts before we left.
We drove down to Ikea. For some crazy reason the store was packed, as in there were no parking spots and people were parking illegally and also circling around. Some nice guy flagged us down to give us his spot as he left. We headed in, and got to shopping.
We were looking for boxes for storage for his toys in the living room. Carly had found one option on the website, but then we found a couple more. We then used math on the calculator. He typed in the equations, and we figured out that the bigger, nicer box (50x50x50) had 3.6 times the volume than the smaller box that Carly had seen. It was more expensive, but turned out to be less per volume. It was also nicer and had a lid.
We stopped to look at desk chairs. August started trying them out, then he sat at the doctor’s desk. It is one of their desk mockups, and it has x-rays on the fake monitor, and then charts of bones and other x-rays on the wall and on the desk. He was the doctor, and I was patients coming in, injured, and he was telling me about how my bones were broken. That went on for a good 20 minutes. And was long after he was supposedly hungry for ice cream. We finally kept going when he pointed to the clock by the desk and said “I have a very high tech clock. See, it’s pointing to ‘hamburger’. That means it is time for food.” But then he decided he had time for one more patient.
We also looked in the closet area, and when I slid open a door but didn’t close it before walking on he told me “You should close it before you leave it. That’s the proper way to treat a store.”
He also told me “I write-ed a book called The Hungry Fly.” Can’t remember where that idea came from. We also discussed what n abacus is, as they have them, but didn’t buy one.
We found the box we were buying down in the warehouse, paid for our stuff, throwing in a box of plastic sandwich bags and 4 packs of fruit snacks along the way, then got food. He got a hot dog and I had falafel. The line was short, and the sitting area, while pretty full, started to clear out and we got the little kids table. And when we were back out in the parking lot there were tons of free spaces. No idea why it was so busy early in the day.
He ate a pack of the fruit snacks and half a hot dog. He sang a “I told you we didn’t need a backup plan” song, and sang about how it had been a waste of time to talk about one earlier when I was afraid the store/eating area would be really busy. He had eaten a ton of frozen mango back at home. He then got an ice cream with chocolate in it, and ate it as we walked out to the car.
As we walked back to the store he said “The little mall is our main grocery store. And the first store we went to in Israel.” Don’t remember how true that is.
In the car we were listening to Massive Attack, which we had also listened to at home. I asked if he wanted to keep listening to it, or something else, and he stayed with Massive Attack.
We drove up to school. As we went in the library both the custodian and Amanda commented on how tall August was. We read a book called Pigeon P.I. It is in the style of a classic detective story. August liked it, and said he wanted other detective books.
We went to Carly’s classroom at 3:30. Maya was already there. They played, decorating the large box with markers and paper. There was a lot of disagreement and negotiating, but they both handled it well. Maya, older, had strong opinions on the “rules” of their art. She agreed that one end of the box could be for imaginative stuff, but even then kept saying “No imagination!” to him and Carly, who was helping.
She left about 4:40. They both wanted to keep decorating it together sometime. August and I changed for the pool in the bathrooms next to her classroom. He was convinced they had rearranged the bathroom. I told him it was probably that he was thinking of the women’s bathroom, which was probably reversed, or a different bathroom in the school. Not sure he was convinced.
We discussed measures of light as we walked over. We know of 3 measures now: lumens, magnitude, and the Night Sky app measures light output of stars in comparison to the sun, so 50x sun, etc. We got to the pool at 4:50. Carly caught up a minute later.
It wasn’t very busy, but after a few minutes a woman showed up with two girls. They are new. Her name is Natalie and the girls are Elise and Corinne, 3rd and 1st grade. They got a house just across from the school. August was instantly about talking to them and making friends. It was the most outgoing I’ve seen him. Natalie asked us for advice on places to go. August picked up on this and really liked offering advice on things. He asked Natalie if the girls ever get upset, and why, and what happens when they do.
When they asked what grade he is in he replied “homeschool kindergarten”, which I thought was a great description. August wanted to ask for their phone number so they could have a play date. Carly asked with him. Then, as we were getting out of the pool around 5:15 he asked if they could play tomorrow. I talked to Natalie and we agreed to finalize over email.
When we were talking to them in the pool (they’re from Chicago) August talked about Gramma and Grampa (that’s where he had seen a Donald Duck cartoon and he told them about it after Donald Duck had come up) and when I said they lived in eastern Washington August said “That’s my favorite country, Eastern Washington. Because it has ‘Easter’ in it and that reminds me of Easter eggs.”
As he and I got changed he asked to buy a swim cap. The girls had them. I asked why he wanted one and he said “It’s super adorable.”
He was still thinking of advice, and remembered how if he really wants to do something the next day the best way to get to it is to go to sleep. He said he wanted to tell Natalie and the girls, and he went out when Carly got back (she had left a few minutes earlier to change and take more cardboard boxes to the car) and I heard him telling them. That ended up as a conversation about sleeping on airplanes. He said he didn’t like to sleep on planes because he likes doing stuff on them, and he told them “it was so funny” he missed a bagel on our last flight.
We headed home. Had mac and cheese and broccoli for dinner. He then watched a Berenstain Bears with headphones on, as workers were working downstairs. Sounds like they were literally taking out a wall down there. 7:15 seemed pretty late to be working, but luckily they stopped by 7:30.
Carly and I were cleaning up, and when he finished his episode he helped. He helped vacuum and also cleaned the toilets. He told me “Going to the pool for a long time really paid off cuz I made 30 agorot and I made friends.”
He then played with my keyboard in the office. He was Bar and it was some sort of echo machine that she used to send messages to other countries. He had me send messages with it as well. We went downstairs and read part of a My Little Pony comic from Hoopla while he had more mango and crackers and meat (after dinner and during cleaning he had also had two bowls of oatmeal).
I gave him a quick bath in the shower, then we got him into bed. I left them at 9:45. He was doing some last jumps from the bed.
Descending:
The magnetifier:
Ascending on the office chair:
X-ray game:
It was a waste of time – song:
Decorating with Maya:
Echo reactor:
