He woke up once during the night, 4:30 or so, and called me in. He asked me to turn the heater on. I told him it was already on, but put the blanket back on him instead. He said, “That’s good” and fell back asleep.
I had a headache in the morning and took some Advil and fell back to sleep until after 8. I woke August up at 8:15 and brought him down. I went back upstairs to get stuff, so Carly found him swathed in his fuzzy blanket on the couch. They eventually played Minecraft. He wouldn’t do survival with her anymore. They did creative, and Carly couldn’t figure out what kind of block she had used before. And when you break a block in creative mode it just disappears. She asked him if he could help, but he initially said no, but then went into serious problem-solving mode. He changed her to an operator in the game, allowing her to change her personal game mode to ‘Survival’. Then, he gave her a pick ax so she could break the block and find out what it is, then she could change back to ’Survival’.
He then told her, “This is a lesson you learned: Always trust your friend.” Carly said something about asking him for help instead of me, and I said something about not having to help her anymore. He replied, “Oh, dada. You’re so corny.”
They played, and Carly went upstairs to get ready. After a while August asked, “Why do you have to leave out cookies and milk when Santa isn’t real? The milk will get old and the cookies will get stale.” I led him to figure out the parents eating the cookies part and he told us we could never do that. I suggested he wouldn’t be all that concerned about a couple cookies in the morning when he would have a bunch of presents to open, but he wasn’t convinced.
He had a piece of french toast and some strawberries (I think) for breakfast. We did a couple of Brother games: one where Bar put him in a school for learning how to be a bully. Brother didn’t like that, nor did I. Then one where they were in the jungle at Greena’s for Christmas and Brother was upset they couldn’t bake cookies for Santa Claus. Bar eventually played a trick on him, pretending that Santa came and was upset that there weren’t cookies so he didn’t leave presents.
Heather arrived with Eve and Zoe about 9:45. Zoe was feeling tired and ended up resting on the couch and doing art by herself for a while. August had been composing music in Notion when the got there. I said he could finish the song he was on. He took it outside and sat on a chair by the slide while Eve played with a balloon and the hose, then we got started on a fort. I got the sheets and clothes pins. Carly got August off the iPad and he helped Eve set up the sticks. He tried to convince us to let him use the hair cutting scissors to cut the string, but Carly talked to him about it, and besides Eve took over cutting the string and could use the yellow ones. When she cut a string she would say “Order up!” August found that funny because it sounded like “Order in the court.”
I went inside and Carly worked outside. I helped Zoe find word magnets as she was making sentences on the fridge, then she went outside with the other two. August was singing music out there, a bit to the chagrin of Eve, but he eventually calmed down. He came in and spent a good ten minutes drawing a picture of a house to use as decoration in the fort. He recognized the jazz version of “Little Drummer Boy” when it came on.
August was getting hungry, so they each had a yogurt. Eve had the idea of going to the park, so I walked them up there. I took a couple of the paper airplanes, but I ended up being the only one to fly them after August tried one a few times. They played on the pirate ship and went on the spinning things. August said, “I’ve had enough of this panicking game!” He didn’t like being the brother, and Zoe had had enough of being the mom. So that was the end of it. I had had a few minutes of swinging in the round swing and reading while they’d been on the ship.
They went over on the exercise equipment and we all exercised. Zoe and Eve dropped down from the chin up bar a couple times. Heather was supposed to bring back pizza around 12:30. We finally headed back at 12:45, having not heard from them yet.
When we got back we found that Heather and Carly were taking a couple cheese pizzas out of the oven. VIPizza had been closed, so she had gotten frozen pizzas from the grocery store. And our timing was perfect. Eve sat on the chair and told August, “You need to tape me!” He “replied, Yeah! That’s like my middle name!” We ate pizza first. Eve and Zoe had a little routine where Zoe would introduce Eve, the famous recorder player, with the microphone thing, then Eve would play. August then got presenting duties as she was then a famous singer (after we didn’t want any more recorder playing at the table). He would say, “Presenting the famous singer, Eve June!” August requested milk, and Carly got milk for them all. One of the girls started blowing bubbles in her milk. Heather got them to stop, but August wanted to do it. Carly took them to the special milk bubble blowing area (the Zinnie house) and they all had a blast in there. We also ate almost all of the huge strawberries that they had brought from the strawberry stand.
They all ended up back inside. There was some taping up of Eve. We adults talked outside. Heather told me about the documentary Turtle Odyssey. We also tentatively planned to do this again on Monday. Before they left, Eve was baking potatoes (pieces of paper) for August. He kept saying he wanted more, as he really liked potatoes. We did some clean up, and they left at 2:35. A great play date.
After they left he asked Carly to paint with him. When she agreed he exclaimed, “That was a kidding SUCCESS!” As they walked outside he asked, “Mama, could you tell me the story of the guy that had a bullet in his abdomen?” He was referring to President Garfield.
They painted outside at the table. August did videos and mixed colors. I realized there are two new Josh Ritter songs we haven’t heard and we listened to them on repeat. Through the day we’d been listening to. Family Christmas mix I’d made of some of our favorite Christmas songs, the Sesame Street Christmas, the Bruce Cockburn album, and a couple songs from Frozen. When he got hungry he agreed to a bowl of broccoli and leftover cheese pizza from yesterday and today.
He came in and did his alone time. He drew, and sang a “I’m a silly little fish…” song. He sang about how he had a shell that couldn’t be broken, then about eating something and it going through his digestive system and getting broken down. He then got eaten by something that got through the shell through a hole drilled by a human. He then sang about going to heaven when he finished filling in the blue dot.
I went for a run, then took a shower. When I came down he was composing music. When he was done with that he had a Brother game where Bar blew up India because she didn’t like the country. I wasn’t a fan of the story and taught him the word xenophobia. Carly headed out for a walk, and I made dinner. Pasta, with cilantro tofu, parmesan, and olive oil. He told me about his machine that shoots pollution into space. He told me about other inventions. I put on the video of Billie Eilish performing for Apple. He watched that for a while, then requested a video of “Always” being performed live. I first found the video for the Erasure song “A Little Respect” on Apple Music, then we turned to YouTube where we found the video for “Always”, then Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence.” We paused at one point to do a Brother game with him not knowing the notes to “Go” when they were performing it for a concert. It was a bad dream.
Carly got back at 6:45 as we were rewatching a 1994 performance of “Always” by Erasure on Top of the Pops. We were talking about how the smoke machine worked. He initially said he did that by having a room full of smoke and turning the gravity on and off. He took her to the couch and told her about his scream machine. “I make songs for complex songs and how do I do it? I’ll tell you…” He talked about how he gets tons of sounds to use. I told him about sound engineers and foley artists. Another word of the day.
He then had a Brother game where he meets a girl recording sounds in the park. She was initially recording everything, like the sound of Brother screaming, to use in movies. Brother was initially fascinated but didn’t like her making a mouse scream by poking it with a pin. They then collected avalanche songs on Mt. Everest. She was going to use the sounds for a meditation soundscape (another word of the day).
We had a bit of a pillow fight over in the play area. I said something, and he said “That just got me into math.” He ran to get his scientific calculator and we did story problems. Carly took over for a while when I couldn’t come up with problems. He was then really into the graphing calculator and wanted to figure out how to do things with it that I had no ideas about. We eventually got upstairs and I gave him a bath. Carly got him ready for bed. He was still doing things on the graphing calculator. I talked about learning more about math and graphing by using a Khan Academy or Brilliant course. In bed, we started a principles of mathematics course together in Brilliant. I was really explaining carrying in addition/multiplication problems, and drawing in Paper to demonstrate. He started off really confused, but seemed to be getting it well by the end. We worked through the first two kinds of problems.
We then listened to a Circle Round story with lights off. It was “The Happiest Person in the World”. At the end of the episodes they always have some big question and small activity for kids to think about. This one was basically “What makes you happy?” I asked August, and without hesitation he said, “Mama and Dada.” We put on the Circle Round soundtrack and he was asleep at 10:45.
Investigating and shaking his presents:
Working on the fort with Eve:
Potions time:
Paper airplanes 1:
Paper airplanes 2:
A flight:
Spinning and climbing:
Singing narration of his drawing:
