He slept much better during the night. At one point he woke up and said, “Blankets, please.” I think there was one other point where he ws restless or sat up and I sat up and straightened the covers on him, but that was it. In the morning I finally got up before him, so this was the first time he was waking up in the Zinnie room on his own.
He was finally up after 7:50. I went up and he pointed to the room and said, “I didn’t see you.” I asked how he felt about that and he didn’t answer, but he seemed okay.
Downstairs, Carly showed him a big beetle that had died on our floor. He was pretty excited by it, and speculated about how it had starved. But then it was actually moving. August told us all about the features of his bug catcher as he went out and got it. We put it in the bug catcher and he looked at it a bit. We got it a chunk of carrot, but then he decided to let it go, so we took it outside and he released it by a bush.
Back inside we watched a few minutes of Formula 1 qualifying before he wanted his iPad time and we played Minecraft. He ended with a Mumbo Jumbo video of building silly Redstone things. That got his mind going and he was telling us about a Redstone city where people spawned over a slime block that they bounced on, then into a mine cart where they used buttons to choose where they wanted to go. He wanted to do a Minecraft Brother game with Carly. When she complained about being called Brother in the game he ended up joking about calling her Sissy instead and was laughing hysterically on the floor.
They went outside for a while, watering plants, then came in and played the Minecraft game over in the parlor/ply room (they argue about what it is called). I marked poems in the I’m Just No Good at Rhyming book to make copies of. They painted their sculpture thing that they started a couple weeks ago.
August then wanted a fort in which to test and mix colors. I made a fort with him over by the red chairs and found one of the new pads of paper. That’s as far as he got with that idea though. He was hungry and ate part of the rest of his sushi, then was really disappointed when the avocado that I cut up wasn’t good.We read more of Bone #7 and Carly made a berry smoother. I had him practice getting closer to the blender. He found he could walk all the way over and stand next to it. I congratulated him, and he was proud of himself and said, “I can get more comfortable, but still.” He called Carly’s smoothie “Amazing.”
They got going about a quarter to twelve. They went by the school for a bit. He rode his bike from the car to her classroom, and played with bubbles that she had leftover from something. They then headed to Mr. Gabi’s. August said they just did play dough and Monopoly, but did each for a long time. He left his hat there, so will get it next time.
They then went to the same pizza place they went to before in Herzliya, then down to the beach. He rides his bike from the car to both of those. Carly sent me a couple photos of his sand structures near the water. I noted that he was close to the water, and asked if he had actually gone in at all. She said that a wave got him a little at one point.
They got home about 5:15. I was still sitting outside at the table, working. Carly called her parents, and August told him about the band room. He said the marimba was his favorite instrument. He then wanted his evening time, and watched Phineas Rage doing an island survival challenge in Minecraft.
We switched to educational videos and watched a few Kurzesagt videos that went together. We started with the video “How Evolution Works” (https://youtu.be/hOfRN0KihOU) but it was pretty technical and we skipped the rest of it. We then watched “Are You Alone? (In the Universe)” (https://youtu.be/PKMQzkIiB0Y) and that may be my favorite Kurzgesagt video yet. We then watched the two-parter on the Fermi Paradox (https://youtu.be/sNhhvQGsMEc andhttps://youtu.be/1fQkVqno-uI
).
That got August wanting to play a Brother game and we went upstairs. Bar was building a robot city with other aliens outside Brother’s window. That went on for a while, then we switched to a storyline of Brother being fascinated by the zookeeper doors at the zoo and seeing a baby ocelot. He eventually steals the ocelot from the zoo, then is just sneaking in at night to visit it. When he falls asleep and is found in the zoo the zoo makes him a junior zookeeper and he works with all of the cats.
Carly came by and heard us talking about ocelots. She asked what an ocelot was, before August closed the door on her. I told him a joke, and he opened the door and told her, “Well, it’s a lot bigger than an ocelittle.” He was very happy with that joke. The game continued on with ocelots and servals.
When I wanted to stop he called me a dummy. I switched with Carly and I finished the dishes. She got him an apple and carrots for his final food of the day. He has also decided that he wants to have chicken noodle soup sometime.
I took a shower Then Carly gave him a bath. He told her a story about how he had videotaped someone turning on the air conditioner of their car and ants had come out. He had put it on YouTube for people to watch.
He then told her, “Wait a second, I’m feeling a little peckish.” We tried to figure out where he knew that phrase from, and he remembered it is from “Mr. Greedy and the Gingerbread Man”, although it is phrased differently (something like “his stomach was peckish”). So it seems like he heard it somewhere else as well, and clicked again when hearing that story recently.
They said good night. We insihed reading Bone #7. We talked about people dying in war (after discussing the one, maybe two people that we know have died in the Bone series). He was then lying on his bed turning the lamp and light on and off as the sun for the planets on the ceiling: “Actually, logic kicks in…logic wins.”
For his story from my past I told him about being in Campfire and the Natural Wonders book I got. He thought it was funny it was called Campfire and we never had a camp fire. Also, at first he wanted me to just call it Sparrow Scouts, like in Hilda.
He admired Cherie’s fish picture again and said, “She can draw anything…I want to be like her when I grow up.”
We listened to the rest of the Haydn #2 string quartet, then part of #3. He was asleep about 10:10.
Releasing the beetle:
Laughing at Marshy again:
Making a robot civilization:
