He was up just before 7. He went straight to the bathroom once I got upstairs. Downstairs I read four chapters of The Berenstain Bears and the Great Ant Attack, the first such chapter book we’ve tried. He wanted iPad time, and spent a few minutes with GarageBand as that was still up from yesterday.
We played Minecraft. He then wanted a Halloween candy, so he had apple slices, then M&Ms. Then a series of Brother games: buying orange an lollipop and hating it and vowing never to shop there, buying M and Ms from the new candy store across the street and finding out they were peanut (the man was rude and refused an exchange and Bar blows them both up), buying orange from fruit stand but it turns out to be moldy inside; the fruit stand wouldn’t replace it.
He then switched to being Bar and talked about her scientific research, finding new galaxies. She takes Baby Sister to look for aliens. On her own. Baby Sister ended up working in Bar’s lab.
We went upstairs, and he reminded me that Zoe had said there were an earwig in his bathroom drawer yesterday. He wanted me to catch it. She had also told him the myth about how earwigs go in your ears and lay eggs. I had to look up articles to convince him that wasn’t true. It turns out it was just a silverfish, anyway. We caught it in his bug catcher, and that evening I let it go outside.
He also asked, “Is coffee good for trees?” Zoe was also telling him that one. There is more truth to that one, as we also looked that up.
We then put the MEL Chemistry app on my phone and did our first experiment from one of the sets. It was using a blue dye in water, then adding chemicals to change the pH of it and it would change color. The app is great, and August was able to put the drops in the water. There was a second one we could do, but that took a good chunk of time and he was done for now.
He switched to story mode and had Bar having Brother do science experiments in her lab. He then had cereal and milk and watched a Bright Side video about things to not put down your kitchen drain. Then, since we had had questions about the pH scale, I found us a couple of videos about that. Basically, the take away was that it acids shed hydrogen ions while bases absorb them.
Then a Brother and Myna Minecraft game. He was grumpy when I stopped, but it had just been so much Brother and Bar this morning. We got an email from Jonathan Minke thanking August for the cookies and inviting him back some time, as he has other instruments for him to try. August was very happy about this.
We got going into town. He was humming songs along the way. We did some shopping at Stop City! Nothing too exciting, but we found crackers we liked, after the stores being out the last couple of times, and I got a Chimey beer for my book group meeting tonight. We then went to the bulk foods store and got a big bag of cashews and a small bag of sunflower seeds. We sat out on one of the benches and ate sunflower seeds for several minutes. He was kind of annoyed with them, but liked them well enough if I did the cracking with my fingers. I tried cracking them in my mouth, but the shells disintegrated much more easily than the ones in the States.
One of the things we had bought was a small jar of honey. So when we got home he did some L sound work. Sadly, he didn’t like that honey (it wasn’t so sweet) and we switched to the regular honey. That was going well until he was pulling out and pushing back in the end of the table as he did it and he pinched his finger.
He curled up on the couch, then we watched a My Little Pony episode. After which I was trying to get the bike rack together so we could take my bike on the car and go for an adventure. However, he hadn’t been excited by that plan at all today, and now he was being really impatient about the rack. I got it set up, but decided to postpone actually using it. He agreed to a ride around the neighborhood instead. As we went outside he told me about how he sells science experiments at his everything store.
We rode around, a total of 1.67 miles. At home we watched some educational videos, then he did alone time, playing and listening to music. We then did an hour of Minecraft. The idea is to squish his evening time into earlier in the day, then just not do iPad in the evening when he is tired and more likely to have a meltdown. Difficult though when he hasn’t wanted time earlier in the day.
It worked though. We played the hour, and Carly got home during it. Her Get to Know You Day had gone well, but it became clear as the evening went on that her body had finally given into the cold. He watched a Brave Wilderness, where he is bitten by the bullet ant, and then was done, just fine, with iPad for the evening.
He was more excited about quiche this time, having a second slice. Then a Brother game where he was hurt by a tiger, then by his animals back in his house. We then read the Rainbow Dash and Spitfire Friends Forever issue. Then he had another Brother game – him and sister in jungle for the first time. Then more Brother game. He had one with Brother finding an alipony in the jungle. It was quite out there and I wasn’t really following it.
We finished that up, and I said we could find something to do. He said, “Finding something to do is my favorite thing.” Which it definitely is not. He told me about how he had earned two world records at once: he made a model of the Statue of Liberty out of pistacio shells and it was also judged the funniest world record ever.
He asked me, “Is this a real person? Ven-ee-on-cari.” He said it was someone I had talked about and the person had to do with music or maybe it was a famous actor.
We then did lots of music playing time. He was learning the first three lines of Yankee Doodle from me, and he was playing Ode to Joy with all his fingers, not just one. I was learning “Sentimental Wars” after he quizzed Carly to see if she recognized it.
He ate some cereal and had pomegranate. When he asked me to fill his water bottle he wanted ice cubes and mint in it. He went out on his own to pick some mint and called back to us, “Come! It’s lovely out here!”
We got him upstairs by 8. He told Carly about being a teacher: “I teach…and on the weekend I plan…take notes.” He suggested she should plan on the weekend as well. He made a mixture in the sink that he wanted to remember the recipe of: green soap, contact solution, and a little water.
We got him ready, and I left them after 8:30. I went for a run, then slept in the other room as I had my book group meeting that night. Carly was getting quite sick now. August woke up to use the bathroom around 12:30 or 1. I got up and had my meeting at 1:30. Carly had stayed awake and was still up.
The meeting went fine. Breysse wasn’t there as he had to attend a funeral in Centralia. The group did a good job of discussing Severance given that it wasn’t that great of a book.
Chemistry experiment 1:
Chemistry experiment 2:
Clickity clack an ant on your back:
Honey and pronunciation practice:
Music time 1:
Music time 2:
