I woke him up at 8:15 and carried him downstairs. He shoved a couple pillows out of the way and lay down, covering himself with the grey blanket. He lay there a long time. I eventually started reading Ivy and Bean Break the Fossil Record from the beginning. He resisted it at first, but got into it. We read about half. He played a little piano, then wanted Minecraft.
We played Minecraft, then he played on his piano and discovered the C Phrygian scale and called it the “scale of the day!” He did more music, then looked at Night Sky on his iPad. In reading about stars he asked what Kelvin meant so that was a word of the day. He had a Brother game while playing it where Bar convinced Brother’s parents to buy the app for him, for about 7 dollars, but then every little feature, like to learn about planets, etc. cost additional money, sometimes crazy amounts. That was pretty funny.
He played with the magnet blocks and was very excited about a hen that he made out of them. They then got going to Mr. Gabi’s. The playing went fine (he was going to show her the army stuff, but I’m not sure what they actually did), but afterwards he wanted one of those little Lotus cookies from the kitchen. I’d let him have one on Tuesday, but she didn’t know that. She said he could ask Mr. Gabi, but his door was closed, and August had a meltdown instead.
So when they got back he was still upset and went in his fort and was taping together weapons. One was a cool looking arrow (short, so it looked more like a sailboat) and another sort of looked like and airplane. He sort of apologized to Carly, then a bit later wanted to do music on his iPad. I asked if he had apologized to Carly, and we ended up talking to him more about entitlement, etc. and I was talking him through ways that the situation could have gone differently.
Eventually, we set up the iPad and synth and he agreed to come outside with me for a while and play out there—after I got tea. We did that, and outside he wanted to do a Brother game. He was Synth, and he provided the soundtrack as Brother told stories: “The Day I Became the Last Kid on Earth”, “The Real Traffic Jam Story”, and “Stung By the Beehive”. We went back inside to keep doing more music.
For alone time he did magnet blocks, then we played Minecraft. We’ve started in yet another world recently, which I went along with, as the beginning in survival is actually kind of fun, but we also did some more Greek Mythology. Carly was doing a lot of cooking, and he had lentil soup, beet salad, and mac and cheese for dinner. We followed up on Minecraft by watching a couple of videos about Trojan War (one, Ted-Ed, I think, about the historical truth of it and another a kid’s cartoon version of the story) and then an Indian cartoon “The Honest Woodcutter”.
I drove into town to get a couple things we needed at the grocery store, and he did more alone time and played Minecraft with Carly. When I got back he was on the toilet and very talkative. He put his pants back on inside out. Earlier, Carly had asked him about cutting his hair shorter. He told her he doesn’t want to cut it shorter because he doesn’t want to be like other people. He then went and said, “Oh, crazy parents.”
We’re getting into a good evening routine, with Carly giving him a bath and me putting him to sleep. We listened to Circle Round’s “Why the Ocean is Salty” and “The Woman Who Lived in a Vinegar Bottle” and then to a couple of children’s meditations from an album on iTunes. I then put on Benge and he was asleep by 10:00.
Playing his scale for Mama:
His rubber band instruments:
