He called to me twice during the night. One time he said something about sleep and I think was asleep before I even got to him. The second time I pulled the covers over him. It was in the morning and Carly was getting up, so I went ahead and moved in with him and slept on the lower bed until he was up after 7:15.
Downstairs he sat on the couch while I got went back upstairs and got dressed and got our iPads. He said he wanted Minecraft, but then I said Carly was outside and he ran out to go cuddle with her. I heard him say something about the air being “fresh as rosemary…” When they came in he showed Carly the paper he had drawn yesterday of his idea for his birthday cake. He wants a raspberry cake, and there are holes that are yellow that are in the shape of a face.
We played Minecraft. He gave Brother lessons in Minecarts. Carly came in and asked about going to a Thanksgiving brunch at Alix’s next Sunday. August said we could take “small tea cakes.”
He had a Brother game where he finds a cat and takes it to Greena’s house. She forbids him from bringing more as they are eating jungle birds. It started with the walking in the park song, then I randomly sang the Alligator Chomp song and then he requested the Juicy Juice store song. That got us talking about Korea and our Korea bucket list. So far it includes noodle pizza, Children’s Grand Park, and a juice store. After that we did a Brother game where he sets up a server so he can play Minecraft with Bar, Myna, Greena, and Sister. They started in a mesa biome.
We then read more of The Last Kids on Earth. We then looked at some pages he had marked in The Scientist. Funded was the word of the day when we talked about something that, I think, Louis XIV had funded. There was also an Escher picture in it so we looked at Escher pictures on Google Images. I remembered how I had mentioned music with car/street sounds in it, so we listened to the Reich Remixed album. He had Brother be spooked by the sounds and voices in “City Life”.
When he went to the bathroom he said, “Dada, here’s something that’s really fun for me: planning ahead for Minecraft.” We read more of The Last Kids on Earth. Carly made a fruit plate. August also had oatmeal, and said the mango was like candy. We then kept reading on the couch, getting to chapter 13.
They then painted. He mainly mixed paints and painted his hand a bit. Carly was using her British accent. At one point August asked, “Aren’t you feeling a bit peckish?” He went upstairs to get the new blanket all on his own. Then he set up his keyboard and iPad to pay music. He played and Carly made popcorn. He asked Siri for waterfall noises. Carly said it made her need to go to the loo. August actually knew the word, as I think we just read it somewhere in the last day or two.
He asked for some cake and Carly got him some (she missed the opportunity to say “Let them eat cake”). As he carried it to the table he randomly sang, “If you eat pizza with a fork, people make fun of you.” When we were at VIPizza with Zoe and Eve Zoe had taught him how they fold up their pizza to eat it, like in New York. I think I was the one that added the bit about people making fun of you if you eat it with a fork there.
I picked him up and he asked me to spin him in circles. And then back the other way to unwind. I told Carly how Lauren a couple weeks ago had told me about an Israeli woman yelling at her children on a merry-go-round to go back the other direction so they didn’t get too dizzy. Then Justine following week Shani said pretty much the same thing to August when was spinning on her swing.
August and I had some chicken soup and she read some of the Comic Science: Plague book to him.
They left just before 12:30. They first went to Gabi’s, where August said there wasn’t any instruments, but Gabi was going to try harder to find them. They did some sort of doctor thing, and also played a game where you act things out, like charades (but August didn’t know that word).
They then went to the art store and replenished some of their paint colors that are running low. They stopped at their usual pizza place and got slices, including a slice they brought home to me, then played on the beach. August said they made an even better wave blocker than the one they had made two times ago. Finally, they stopped at the grocery store on the way home for a couple things, including bacon for the quiche.
They were back by 5:40. I had had a quiche ready, just waiting for the bacon, but we decided that was too late to finish the quiche, so I refrigerated the parts. August asked me, “Do you want m to solve the war between Palestinians and Israel?” He said he’d use a time machine. He asked how many particles are in a cell, so we looked it up and read https://www.thoughtco.com/how-many-atoms-in-human-cell-603882 August said, “So the number of atoms in the human body is a hundred trillion times a hundred trillion.”
He ate rice and sweet potato and fruit and we did some Brother and Baby Sister stories. He played the human body app, and was naming off the cells he saw as he gave it an infection: “Phages.”
We headed to the middle school play, Peter Pan. He was singing as we walked from the car and into the school and into the auditorium. He sang, “I’ve been waiting for a play, and this is a play.” Carly and I were discussing the program and he said, “Less reading and more watching!” He took over both armrests and when Carly protested he said, “Well, what’s the point in having them if I can’t take them?” He also talked about how he thought this would be more amazing than Beauty and the Beast.
Right before the play started, a big tall guy sat in front of August. He asked to sit in Carly’s lap, and basically spent the whole play there. The sets and costumes were really good, but it was really difficult to understand the actors. Not sure if it was an enunciation issue or their sound system. So August was asking Carly what was happening several times, and he didn’t like the narrators when they came on (“Ugh, narrators again”). But otherwise he seemed to love it.
At intermission Carly was able to get out ahead of us and grabbed two cookies for August from the snack table. He ate those and we went back in. We asked him what he thought of the play and he replied, “Amazing.” We saw Jonathan behind us and he said hi. August then started humming a tune, and conducting like Jonathan taught him.
After the play we saw Grace, who had been in the play, and said hi. He noticed and liked the skirts made out of book pages that some of them were wearing. As we headed to the car he told me how he makes plays. He’s made adaptations of Bone and Hilo (with actors using jet packs), and also his own. He also said he made a “Boring play” that was just a tree growing.
We headed home at 8:40. When we parked he asked to earn iPad time inside, and got upset when he was told it was time to get ready for bed. He said he wanted something fun to do. He huddled on the couch for several minutes and then talked to me. Carly was exhausted and needed to get to sleep. I got him up and ready for bed (no bath) and he said good night. We read Little Miss Naughty and I told him about how Chelan used to have apple bin races, and the festivals in the park, and how I remember getting an orange (for Orange Crush, I think) frisbee at one of them.
Painting his hand:
Playing at the beach:
Singing on the way to the play:
