At some point during the night I found his light on. Pretty positive Carly hadn’t left it on. And he was on top of his covers. I think he had woken up and turned in on, then went back to sleep. At another point he was really laughing in his sleep.
He woke up at 7:40 and came and cuddled on my pillow. We got up, and downstairs he went outside to Carly. I heard him saying “There’s a kind of plant I’d like…” Venus fly trap. He told her not to put her tongue in it, then he came in and we watched the tongue video. We then Skyped with my parents. They told us about the tumbleweeds that stopped traffic over on SR20 (https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/01/us/tumbleweeds-block-washington-highway-trnd/index.html) in Washington, and Dad has his knee surgery at the hospital in Chelan at 5:30 in the morning. Didn’t get a lot of details about Christmas, but there were 11 people there and it sounds like they had a nice dinner.
August and I then played Minecraft. When he stopped well Carly was going to give him a couple chocolate chips. But a chocolate coin had fallen out of the cupboard and he found it. Carly let him have that instead, and said something about being lazy. He said, “I took advantage of her laziness.”
We had breakfast, then did microscope time. Carly suggested paper currency and got him a bill. He took several photos. He was then going to go outside with Carly, and wasn’t deterred by the rain. But then he was playing with the camera on the phone and when I got him his raincoat I draped it over him as he sat on the chair. He made some discoveries about the camera that way, and that led to a lot of camera time, and a discussion of field of view and testing of the motion blue mode.
He wanted to test that more, but when I finally got the tripod set up, he got off on a tangent about organ transplants, which led to Bar making a cornea in Minecraft and him explaining some sort of picture capture machine, then a more general game of Bar selling stuff in Sister’s general store.
Carly had cut up veggies and pita and we took those and hummus with us to Lauren and Gilad’s house. We stopped on the way out of town and Carly ran across to the strawberry stand. Alas, no strawberries yet because of the rain.
We got to their house a little past 11. They used the microscope (which we had brought) and played with the magnet blocks, then August played his new songs for them on the piano. He really loves their piano, but Gilad’s dad was working, so I had to get August to stop. He didn’t agree to that, and we ended up out in the hall for a few minutes and almost headed home. He calmed down though and stayed. We went in and had some food, then they mainly went back to the magnet blocks. August was making structures and Gilad was filling them with cars, then they were knocking them down. August was getting really excited and swinging his arm in circles. He rode a push bike scooter thing around and exclaimed, “I love this! I’ve never seen a baby toy so good!” Gilad also had a couple little video game things: one of Ms. Pac Man (I told Carly there used to be a Ms. Pac Man machine inside the Safeway in Chelan) and one of Wreck It Ralph (well, a Chinese knockoff—also, I hadn’t realized the movie was based on an old video game, but I vaguely remembered at least seeing the video game once I saw Gilad’s).
August liked them, although he didn’t play them much—until we were about to go, at which point he couldn’t put them down.
We left after 1:30. In the car he was a bit grumpy, and wanted the AC on when we had the heater on. Finally came to a compromise where he had his window open a little and Carly had the heat on for her. He used cups and other things to direct the air in towards him. I read about Prelutsky after August remembered the server poem. Found out that he lives in the Seattle area. August came up with a new verse of “Wheels on the bus”: “The children on the bus say let’s, let’s play.”
We read more Last Kids on Earth and then stopped at the strawberry stand on the way back into town. Carly bought 6 containers of strawberries. At home he dug into wanting to negotiate iPad time. I pointed out he wasn’t compromising, just demanding, and that both sides need to get something in a compromise. He said, “oooooh!” He also said, “Great! I haven’t used an argument in months!”
In the end he got a 1 minute reduction in his required 15 minutes by telling me a parenting strategy that he though would be good. He read a Titanic book on Skybrary (having it do a lot of the reading) most of the time. We then played Minecraft and Carly went for a walk. He then read 3 rivet books to me and then we played Brother and Sister games involving Minecraft. He gave me another parenting trick, then was talking about how he’d won about the chocolate coin because of Carly’s laziness: “Mama should get new parenting tricks.”
For his second alone time he did a piece of art. He was then playing Minecraft, making new seeds. When he was done he remembered that we had the dough out thawing for a pastry, so he went and made his pastry. While it baked he did Hooked on Phonics and Rivet with Carly. She then read the Why Do My Eyes Itch? book from the library.
When he went to the bathroom he told me about how he’d done a burst photo for 50,000 years. We figured out how many specific photos that would be, if it took ten photos a second: 50000365246060*10=15,768,000,000,000 photos
I had been making the halloumi tacos for dinner, with black beans and avocado. Those turned out really well. He played with the calculator, and tried to keep negotiating for more iPad, but then was playing musical instruments. He was humming “Just a Little Love” by Erasure.
They finished Junie B. Jones and Some Sneaky Peeky Spying, then he had some oatmeal. Carly took him upstairs for a bath. He had to stop one more time to play a little piano before we went up. Upstairs he proceeded to argue about everything, like which order to do things, but we made it through. He was really tired. We listened to the Circle Round about a starfruit tree. Afterwards we ended up discussing the difference between nuggets, ore, and ingot. When he went to the bathroom he got off and then said it still felt like he had to go to the bathroom. He sat and peed some more. Seemed a bit frustrated, but he says nothing is uncomfortable; just annoying. He was asleep just after 10.
Magnet blocks:
Magnet blocks 2:
Humming and wind gauge:
Singing along to Ninja Focus:
Singing along to Ninja Focus 2:
