Thursday, December 12: Gilad comes over, lots of rain, and Eve and Zoe in the afternoon

He got up to go to the bathroom in the dark. I went with him and got him back to bed, and when I got back to my bed it was 5:30. I thought it was a good hour earlier. So then Carly was getting up a few minutes later, then my alarm going off. But he’s doing a great job sleeping in his bed, after not calling out to me at all the previous night as well. So the next step is probably just walking him back to his bed when he does get up and seeing if he’ll go back to sleep on his own so I can return to the couch. Then at some point maybe I can move back to the big bedroom, and just keep both doors open. Kind of the wrong time of year to do that though.

He went up to wake him up at 7:50. He sat up and flopped back down a couple of different ways before getting up. We went downstairs and I started to read Presto & Zesto in Limboland. But he then remembered his countdown. He went and changed it to 13, then I read a few Prelutsky poems. We then played Minecraft.

Cereal and strawberries for breakfast. We watched a video about updates coming to Minecraft. That led to a Brother game of him living in the nether (because the update is about improvements to the nether) and Myna turning into a cat. I paused the game so we could get ready for Gilad and Lauren coming over. He had a funny saying in the mirror as he got dressed: “Mesh me smoosh smoosh.” He put his shirt on backwards but wanted to keep it that way: “That’s my argument: comfy.” He played “Yankee Doodle on the toy piano: “I think I’ve mastered ‘Yankee Doodle’.” “You said the chorus was downright super hard.” And he requested pineapple upside down cake for his birthday.

August then typed on my iPad in Pages as I did some cleaning and set up MEL Chemistry on his iPad for experiments. I also tried cancelling the Christmas lights, as I couldn’t figure out if they were for 220V. No luck, even though it was hours before the status of the lights changed to ‘shipping’, so I think we bought lights we can’t use.

Gilad and Lauren showed up. August said hi, but initially walked around and said, “I’m bored.” I suggested they start with Legos and they did. They made an abstract city sort of thing and August showed me a few times. I suggested he had been inspired by his building in Minecraft, which is often things on pillars up in the air, and he agreed with me, and repeated that a couple times.

We then, at August’s suggestion, got out the keyboard and they played in GarageBand. Lauren was really interested in it, and how Gilad could put on headphones and play with music as much as he wanted. It is difficult right now with a piano right in the middle of their apartment, and his dad working from home and other siblings around.

Finally, we did one of the Egyptian Night experiments from MEL Chemistry. It was simple: sprinkling iron dust on candles. They loved it, and it brought up questions about how fireworks work and the different colors, which we’ll be able to research later. Along the way they had shared a container of homemade cashew crackers that were really really good. August asked her in detail how they were made. We also cut up strawberries.

She got a call from her husband saying their oldest son was sick and needed to be picked up at school. She called him and had to convince him to leave school; he’s been soldiering through for a few days, and was worried about what his teachers would think. They left about 12:30.

August and I did timelapse photos of candles. We set up a new one and propped up the phone and did a timelapse of its entire burn. Meanwhile, August wrote a few sentences in Free Speech. Not a long reading time today, but okay, and at his request. He then requested Circle Round and we listened to “The Magic Cloth” and he colored on his picture and I exercised. When he finished his picture, he walked around the room in sort of his usual circles, listening to the rest of the story.

We played 30 minutes of Minecraft. We exited the nether this morning, which put us a long way away from ‘home’ in the regular world, and were now working our way home. We were then cleaning up before going to get Eve. I was putting the MEL Chemistry set away as he didn’t want to do an experiment with her today and one of the class containers slipped and broke on the floor. He handled it pretty well, just asking for another. Think the small ones at Max or Ikea are the same size.

As we left he had a Brother game with him practicing kidding tricks. He gave Brother a level 7 test, trying to get Christmas presents early. He really wanted me to have Brother figure this one out and overcome the arguments of his parents; I didn’t really want this to succeed, lest August then expect the same arguments to work on us. So I had him succeed in convincing them to let him open one present early, specifically one that his siblings could also play with. August then said the gift Brother opened was a present from Bar: “It’s a Polytopia board game.” The video this morning mentioned a board game about Minecraft, so I think that’s where that idea came from.

There were crazy winds as we left at 2:30, and the sound of thunder off in the distance. About half a block from the house we felt the first drops, then it quickly started pouring. We were lucky to have gotten out of the house, but then there was another problem: getting August out of the car at the school. I was contacting both Heather and Carly, about holding onto Eve for a few minutes or bringing her out, but then the rain stopped enough to get August out of the car in his raincoat. It was still quite stressful for him, and he insisted I also have the umbrella up as it started to rain a bit. We made it to the school, then I had to hold him for a few minutes.

When we went down the stairs he saw Natalie. We talked to her for a couple minutes about how quickly she had grabbed all of their rain gear before jumping in the car to come to school. He finally felt better as we waited for Eve to come out. She came out, and as we talked about the rain and our plans headed to the library. I then realized we hadn’t checked in with Heather and Zoe and circled back around to the elementary school and found them. Zoe looked a bit upset, and I think it was because she thought we had left. On the way back from the library Eve said that Zoe didn’t have a ukulele lesson today and had wanted to come with us.

So we happily took Zoe, and all four of us went to the library. I returned a few books and found the Nicola Davies book What’s Eating You? about parasites and checked it out. Heather had brought bags of snack mix to them in the library, so we left and headed home so they could eat those.

The rain had stopped so no issues. The kids were great until we got in the house. Eve immediately went to the chalkboard, before I was even really in the house, and erased it. It was August’s Christmas countdown and he got upset and pushed Eve. I separated him, and I talked to him and Zoe did a wonderful job talking to Eve. I heard her tell Eve how she needed to ask before doing things like that, and that she could apologize for it before August apologized. It took August a couple minutes to cool down, but it was all sped up by me offering everyone chocolate milk. There was a little further negotiations over who got the last of the banana milk in theirs, but then they all drank their milk and Eve and August said sorry to each other and everything was fine after that.

First, they played with the musical instruments, sort of playing a keyless version of “Jingle Bells” together. They also hooked up the keyboard and did a good job of sharing that; that got played on and off for the rest of the playdate. Eve and August then taped me into the black chair, which allowed me to rest and be still, then August, and Zoe a bit, were taping Eve in. It was uncomfortable for her arms, so they mainly taped in her feet and were talking about them as if they were entities of their own, calling them “leggies.” August said, “Who’s the boss now, leggies?” I put out crackers and cheese and they ate several of those. Later, about 5, Eve was hungry and she and Zoe both had a peach yogurt, and August requested crackers and pate. I realized that August had never had lunch; while we had played Minecraft I had heated leftover fishsticks for myself. He had said he would eat the leftover salmon, but that he wasn’t hungry at that time. I told him to tell me when he was hungry, and he never did.

Carly had gotten home around 4:30. She was still getting over a headache that had been affecting her since yesterday, I think, but thought it was near the end. She went upstairs. August called one of us queen, and asked, “What do you need, my Majesty?”

They were then playing with all of the mixed up play dough. Zoe asked August “Do you know what an asteroid is?” He replied, “A big space rock in space that sometimes collides with a planet or a comet or an asteroid or a black hole…or anything in space.” There was also a play dough lasagna made, and they were putting Lego people in balls of play dough.

About 5:10 August and Eve started potions. Heather got here at 5:30 and probably stayed about 15 minutes to chat and let the girls clean up. We talked about winter break plans and she told us about a castle in northern Israel that you can stay close to and is supposed to be really nice. We looked it up and it is 2 hours away.

They left, then Carly went to the store for a few things, and August and I played the rest of his Minecraft time (he had earned it all earlier, but agreed to save half of it until the evening). Carly got home as we were finishing up. We then had a Sister and Myna playing Minecraft game. And we listened to “Always”; he had started figuring out on his own how to play the melody earlier while playing with Eve.

I got him nutty noodles and he ate firsts and seconds. He then offered to come up with a parenting trick for Carly. When she asked for a way to get him upstairs he passed and wouldn’t address that one. Traveling came up, and he wanted to go to another country (he asked for Athens again). When I mentioned Germany he thought it sounded like a bad country. I think this was because we had talked about World War II yesterday or the other day (we were on errands walking around somewhere). So we talked more about it now, and how all the Nazis were put in jail and it is a different country now. He’s brought up World War II and I a couple times, asking who was on each side a couple times, and which was the most intense war and why.

We then read much of the What’s Eating You? book. Carly took a photo of the page about how people choose mates that smell good to them because they have complementary parts of immune systems to use as an interesting fact for her homeroom. He wanted specifically things about the immune system. He then went and hung out with Carly in the red chairs while I looked for another book on the immune system.

He used her phone to take photos and slo-mos of the fan. He then left it pointing at the ceiling for a timelapse. I didn’t realize it was there, and he got some good timelapse of my elbow. He ate a couple pickles, and shared some pita and hummus with me. I checked out a DK book on the human body and we read the pages on the immune pages, then pages about other topics. Pathogen, superbug, and glossary were all words of the day from that (there were other words through the day that I forgot to write down; there usually are, but today it seems like I was forgetting to write down a lot of them, including one Carly had just taught him as they sat in the red chair).

Cassie called on FaceTime. August ran over to Carly at the red chairs, and the first thing Colin said was “Poop!” So I’m not sure who is entertaining whom with the poop talk; seems a pretty two-way street. They were all back in Pennsylvania now. Vivian and Colin had each gotten a (presumably small) Christmas tree of their own so they could each decorate one. They saw August’s presents and Colin wanted August to open them. Cassie was impressed we could have them out like that. August said, “Could you ask Tia Cassie if she can teach me all about the immune system because she knows everything and I really want to know about the immune system.” When she was struggling to remember something for him I said he should tell her something. And he told her about how fevers are good for the body. She agreed and talked about how sometimes doctors tell you not to take fever-reducing medicine. She joked that she takes it anyway, and they discussed whether you should or not. I think August was teling her you should listen to the doctor.

While they were talking he came and whispered to me that he hadn’t watched educational videos today. Watched Ted-Ed and Kurzgesagt videos about the immune system.

August succeeded in wearing his shirt backwards all day. After Skype, he and I had a Brother game where he was an axolotl, after we had seen a picture of a stuffed one at the end of the video. Brother was using the scuba gear that Bar had given him and found it.

We then headed upstairs. August had been talking about his kidding tricks website, and was typing with his hands in the air, adding information to the website. As we went up, he was using his ‘tricks’. I caught him at one, as he started to tell Carly an interesting fact about axolotls or something to delay her.

Upstairs, Carly gave him a bath. I heard her reading to him about Garfield being shot and his infection and how people blamed the plumbing/fumes in the White House, and not the open wound that doctors kept digging around in with their fingers for his death. And it how it was because they didn’t understand germs yet. I think it was from a PBS article or something.

They brushed his teeth and he flossed seven of his teeth. He made sure she was reusing his floss stick, and talked about how he was saving plastic. We talked more about that, and how we reuse water bottles and don’t buy plastic bottles. He remembered the bottles of water that were waiting for us when we moved in and how he liked them. He remembered them because they had colorful tops. I don’t really remember, but Carly does. That led to a discussion of his favorite colors. We remembered his list, and he now added gold to purple, pink, peach, lavender, violet, and ultraviolet. I think because he likes the gold stuff in Minecraft.

We weren’t in bed until after 9:30. We read a couple chapters of The 117-Story Treehouse. We had brought Cheerios up with us, but he now finished them and requested more at 10 again. We listened to a Circle Round story called “The Owner of the Sun”. I was basically asleep at the end of it, but he then said he should go to the bathroom, so we did that. Back in the room we listened to the Tallis Scholars and he was finally asleep a little after 10:30.

Changing keys and octaves 1: