So the phone issue dragged on all day. I finally got the laptop to attempt to restore it, but it would quit right away. Did all the updates on the laptop and still know luck. It was giving me a USB error, and I realized that I hadn’t been able to restore the last thing, August’s old iPad, that was having troubles with this same computer. So, I thought it might be the laptop. So I tried the 10-year old laptop upstairs in the afternoon. It was getting further, but still no luck. Finally, Carly brought home her laptop from school. I gave up after it was getting just as far, but returning an error related to a touch ID button, and my phone has no touch ID button. So, it will be a trip to the service center tomorrow. Carly let me use her phone in the meantime.
He was up at 7:10. Carly said he had been pushing her out of bed, talking in his sleep a lot, and rolling around. I was dealing with my phone suddenly deciding to be full and then not start last night. So when he asked to play Minecraft straight away I agreed. We built a giant slug, as per his page marking last night. We then did a little mining. He also updated the Christmas countdown to 16.
He chose nutty noodles for breakfast. I had cereal and strawberries. We played Brother and Sister games. He added “Oh my gosh, Brother. Oh my gosh.” Started in Minecraft, but moved to Brother peeing stories, which get very repetitive quite quickly.
We then did music time. Short, but recorded a couple of videos for our project for Mr. Minke. We then played Simple Rocket 2 for a long time. It’s right on the edge of between just being for fun or being really educational. But, I was able to talk about things related to orbits, like geostationary and escape velocity. We then made connections by watching a space shuttle launch again and watching a Bright Side called “Why Space Shuttles Take Off Only Vertically”. He ate a piece of french toast for breakfast. He then told me a bunch of ideas for machines to get people into space. He had the Family taking their car in one and forgetting their space suits.
For word time he chose DR. We watched the Preschool Prep video on it, and then made a list of words. This time I also got him practicing writing it. We then did more playing instruments. He had me playing London Bridge on the piano and he’d change the sounds every few notes.
There’s still one small poster on the wall from when we had a calm area over there for him. We discussed it, then he wanted to see the bigger posters. They were upstairs, so we went up and found them and discussed the one with all the emotions on it and calming strategies. We talked about the ones he does well (like closing his eyes) and might like to try (he chose doing art). He then wanted to make me angry so that I could practice the calming strategies. Of course, trying to make someone angry and telling them that is what you are doing is actually pretty funny, but I pretended, and suggested listening to music.
Back downstairs we did more music for Minke, including singing songs this time. I finally got him to do alone time. He did art. He started by drawing things out of the dictionary that he had marked, but then made a chart of three circles that showed the three states of matter: a straight line was a solid, the curved line was a liquid (to show surface tension), and the wavy line was a gas to show them floating everywhere.
It started raining really hard and we watched. He had me do slo-mos of the rain. He declared today the start of the rainy season. In Minecraft we put the riptide enchantment on tridents, which allows you to basically fly through the water, and through the air when it is raining. We had fun doing that.
We had to go pick up Carly and take her to her dentist appointment. It was raining a little so he wore his rain coat. We picked her up in front of the school, listening to a Thanksgiving episode of Story Pirates (on Carly’s phone, which she had left with me). While we waited he asked, “What’s pride?” and “What’s better done than said mean?”
We dropped Carly off at the dentist. August had wanted to watch, but when she said she’d walk home and we didn’t have to wait he was fine with going. At the house we sat in the car so he could listen to more of the episode. We were home at 3:10, and when we went inside it started to rain. I heard it first and told August to hurry to the porch. Then after a couple seconds it let loose.
He asked, “What’s_ live_ mean?” As in, “The Story Pirates Creators Club is now live!” We did a long story line of brother rescuing two cheetahs. Similar, but different from the jaguars one. Almost caught by Greena but convinced her his cave held a present for her. Myna started mining nearby to get iron for pick axes and it was a crossover with Minecraft that had him questioning what was real.
He did his second alone time. He was singing pretty loudly as he did some art. He was interrupted when he spotted a spider. I had been upstairs dealing with the phone/computer and came down to help him catch it. He talked about how it was the ordinary kind of house spider here in Israel.
Carly got home. He did Minecraft with her, then me. He did a great job stopping. We did a Brother and Sister game where Dad plays Minecraft. He was trying to build up to aliens. August was laughing hilariously. First Dad fell off his pillar and had to start again. He was then knocked off by the space station, then it happened again. Finally, he got to other planets and Bar realized she hadn’t turned on the ‘aliens’ option.
August and Carly then painted. He analyzed her Lady Bird Johnson and told her, “Maybe you overdoed the funniness…just a bit.” They painted. I messed with iPhone stuff. He mainly did his color mixing, which he loved, but he later also showed me where she had let him use her tiny paintbrush to paint a little on the cheek.
He quoted the poem from I’m Really No Good at Rhyming that ends “And on it’s sister island everyone’s named Rory…but that’s another story.” He then asked why the author didn’t write that story. I suggested he might write it in his second book. August said we needed to stay in Israel until that book came out. “I need that book!” I assured him we could get it in any country we lived in, if it ever happened.
He was then arguing for more Simple Rockets time. He was really quite convincing. I tried to use humor and he shut down my volume using an invisible nob. He then wanted to argue with Carly. They argued about the best food.
We decided on watching more documentaries. He ate a couple bowls of nutty noodles and watched the last 10 or so minutes of the first episode of The Body, then watched the second episode as I sat next to him and typed. He learned all about arthritis and osteoporosis. Carly joked we were all drinking milk, and he actually wanted some. He stopped the video at one point to tell me about his machine “the undoer”, which takes apart people (from wars) and reuses those body materials to make babies. When I must have given him an interesting look he said, “What?” and compared it to reusing plastic bottles to make new ones.
He again stopped the video with a few minutes left, but only about 5 this time. He was totally in thinking mode, but focused on space stuff, not the anatomy stuff he’d just been watching. He taught Carly the phrase escape velocity. I mentioned a book I had read (2312) where they had hollowed out asteroids and turned them into cities: “I read that book and it inspired me to do something real, not just in a science fiction book…” He said he connected five space shuttles together and went to asteroids. They separated and went to different ones and used the materials to build a black hole bomb. Apparently that is from a Kurzgesagt video. “I’m going to a new state of humanity.” It was all about creating enough resources so that humans could move to other stars before the sun burns out.
I lay down on the rug and he played with my head on the floor, which got him laughing, and he was going crazy with Minecraft references. Before we went upstairs he told Carly, “I saw something that isn’t good in your painting: Symmetry. You need more symmetry.” “And don’t overdo the yellow!” He wanted her to work on it while we were upstairs.
He was really giggly and funny and said, “I’m in funny mode.” We wrestled on the couch, which we haven’t really done recently. He was chanting “That’s a silly thing to do, that’s a silly thing to say” which is from years ago, and I think I mentioned it earlier in the day.
Bar invented an “infinite treats machine” and Myna and Brother went crazy eating treats. Carly came up a little after 8 to give him his bath. He was a little reluctant to go take a bath, but he was starting to fade just a little (he had turned the heater to fan mode a while ago) and he just lay across the top of me for a couple minutes then called out to Carly and went out to her on his own. She gave him a bath. He was talking about how he still doesn’t like Uncle Paul’s car, and how he is upset with Nava for the whole poop incident.
When they were done she read him more of Timmy Failure. He and I had read a few chapters of it but then kind of forgotten about it. She said she had started reading it to him yesterday and he was laughing a lot. I had him show her what he noticed earlier about the new pillow case we had bought: it was missing one of its red dots. Timmy Failure was a bit too difficult for August (the jokes are pretty complex) so Carly was looking at reading levels and decided to try Clementine again. They read the free sample of the first book.
He said good night and I took him in to bed. Preschool came up some how and we discussed his negative views of preschool and teachers he hated. Of one of the nicer teachers, he still said “She’s on the list,” although he didn’t say where on it. We read a few Perlusky poems, then “The Porcupine” from Dahl. He had me repeat it.
We turned off the lights and listened to Beethoven’s Fifth. He told me the parts he liked from it. He popped up a couple times and talked about a video about polluted water and asked why they didn’t use waste water treatment plants. He popped up a minute later and was telling me about some filter machine he had made. I was half asleep, but I remember something about “poop molecules can’t fit through” He was asleep by 10.
Carly learned today that Brian is leaving as the middle school principal. He’s taken a job with Search Associates.
Rehearsing for Minke:
Music for Minke 1:
Music for Minke 2:
The air vacuum launcher:
Music for Minke 3:
Music for Minke 4:
Chair music:
Rain slo-mos:
