He slept soundly. I went up and woke him up at 8. He cuddled with Carly on the couch. After a bit he asked to do Minecraft, asking Carly, “Can I make beautiful houses with you?” Carly reminded him that he was going to teach her about survival mode, so they did that. He and I had cereal and strawberries for breakfast. I started putting up our new Christmas lights. He watched for a while, then went out in the yard with Carly. They came back in as I was putting the third strip of lights on the stairway. Carly had put up his stocking on his art kitchen. I told Carly we had fulfilled our obligation to raise our child with the Judeo-Christian values and traditions we were raised with.
August was doing alone time, listening to my Christmas playlist, and playing under the table, at Carly’s feet. She and I were obliquely discussing what to put in his stocking and wrapping presents. When we were joke arguing about whether the pillow over in the red chairs (the pillowcase Cassie got from Turkey) goes with the chairs and wall hanging (it doesn’t, for the record) August told us to stop arguing and claimed we weren’t parenting. He also asked me to give him some kidding trick antibodies, which he said would overcome parenting tricks. I told him that would be like the human body telling a virus how to get past the antibodies. When his 15 minutes was up he told us he was giving us an early Christmas present of 5 extra minutes and set another timer.
When he was done with that he wanted to play more Minecraft with Carly in their Mushroom Island survival world. She was finishing up messaging Glecy and Tori about meeting Nena last night. They played, and Carly mentioned being claustrophobic in a cave and he asked what claustrophobic means.
After they finished, I finished reading A Pizza the Size of the Sun. We’ll have to check out another Prelusky book before winter break. He then had us play Sister and Myna games, where they met on the server, then Sister thought that Myna was a cat, both in real life and on Minecraft, but then she woke up to find it was just a dream and Tigey was sleeping on her. Brother was upset that Sister was playing Minecraft, but he couldn’t as he was only 2.
August then colored on his iPad, coloring more of his living room picture. He ate two bowls of oatmeal, then they got ready to go and left at 12:30. They went to Gabi’s. All I know is it went fine, as August wouldn’t give me any details when I asked later. Kind of grey today, so they decided to just walk to a cafe. Carly found a place on Google Maps a couple blocks away and they walked. It turned out to be a waffle place, and when she got the menu it was complete dessert waffles. They got one that ended up being piled high with dulce de leche and whipped cream. Carly was reminding him this was a mistake and wasn’t going to be a weekly thing and he told her she was being too dramatic.
While they were gone I did some work and was then wrapping the presents from Cherie and Chuck and watching a documentary about Palestine when they got back. He did his alone time, then came up to get me. He helped carry the presents downstairs.
We played Minecraft in our original survival world. We haven’t played that in several weeks, and it is kind of fun to see how much more we know about the game now. We were working on organizing things and crafting stuff we need, and enchanting some of our items. Efficiency and looting were words that came from that.
We then did educational videos. We watched part of the first Crash Course: Mythology video, then he remembered CGP Grey videos. He watched “‘Indian’ or ‘Native American’?” and “The Rules for Rulers”. The latter in particular was pretty complex (and cynical) for him, but he watched the whole thing. He has been exposed to the concept of leaders and their failings through some of the myths we’ve listened to and read recently.
I was watching with him and making word lists on the back of our phonics cards (transposing the lists we brainstormed on paper) and he brainstormed more words. Then he had the idea of brainstorming space words and we did that in our notebook on the iPad. He asked Carly to print out more pages of words he could read. He then did art in his art notebook on the iPad.
Meanwhile, Carly had skyped with Glecy and had also made corn, tofu, and broccoli for August. He ate, then she called her parents. August was getting silly with them, and eventually I read The Last Kids on Earth to him so Carly could talk to them. August had more couscous and played GarageBand for a while. He then had a series of Sister stories before Brother was born. She was 5 and had mice as pets but didn’t really like them and wanted a cat or dog. Her parents, who had just finished grad school, and were about to have Brother, were looking for jobs and didn’t have money for a pet. Eventually, they got job offers, but it involved moving to the research station in the Amazon for much of the year. Brother was born, and a month later they moved to the research station. Sister still wanted a cat, and met Greena, who helped her convince her parents to get a cat so they could do research on how the presence of a cat in an area affected the bird population and thus the soil in the area.
We read My Little Pony #26 (I think, with Discord and Fluttershy). I then went for a run, and Carly gave him a bath. When I got back they had the globe out and they were learning about Joesphine and Jan Michael, the kids that we support. He was really interested in learning about Josephine’s life and Zambia. He made connection to vaccines and more people must die. “She doesn’t get to play Phineas Rage!?” She likes science like him and painting, as well. They were talking about Jan as I went up to take a shower. When I came down he was drawing a picture for them.
He had a tough time going upstairs, but I finally got him up. I brushed his teeth and we listened to the Circle Round story “The Barber’s Secret”. Prompted by the story, we talked about doing nice things for people. Like doing the art for Jan, sending Glecy a video, and making a song for Minke. I reminded him he had mentioned making cookies for people at school, and we decided to do that this week. He had a question to research tomorrow: “How do kaleidoscopes work?” I had put his kaleidoscope upstairs in his room and he was looking through it. We did a short Brother game, then listened to Beethoven’s First and he fell asleep by 10:35 again.
Another drumming setup:
Funny:https://youtu.be/McZqBUbWGJ8
Some piano:
Explaining the waffle:
