He was up just before 7:30. He was ready to go downstairs. I read all of Days with Frog and Toad. We played Minecraft, playing in the snow village he had found. He then played piano, calling out chords. He told me, “I want to learn more chords.” We started by watching the video on sevenths on Odd Quartet, then watched the one on countinghttps://youtu.be/dK7Wg4PYZdk I was surprised when he said he didn’t like that one because he said it was confusing.
He had a Brother game where he got bit by an alligator when Brother was being to confident and it led to a big hospital bill. This became a theme for the day. At one point I suggested that Brother was actually foolish, as he didn’t learn from his mistakes, but August insisted he was being brave. A scorpion was next.
He found the tape measure and measured things. He asked if anyone ever had feet a foot long. We looked up longest feet and height. https://footwearnews.com/feature/worlds-largest-feet-record-holder-1202752717/amp/ We tried to Skype with my parents in the morning, but they didn’t answer.
He went on the graphing calculator and we listened to Fun Kids Science Weekly podcast with Lucy Hawking. I’ve been planning to try to play more podcasts when he’s around. He watched a Bright Side video about getting rid of cockroaches as I made oatmeal. He ate, and had seconds, then had one with Brother drinking expired milk.
We got going. We first went up to the post office where we had some letters/cards to drop off. We then walked across to the hardware store and bought a new set of Tupperware. Then it was on to Tel Aviv. We finished season 1 of the Story Pirates and listened to several of the archive stories after that.
We parked in a lot a block south of where the piano was. He rode his bike to the park and we played in the playground for about 15 minutes. On the way he talked about a huge supercomputer as tall as the Eiffel Tower. He climbed around a bit, then we continued the Brother and Sister road trip to the Grand Canyon story (basically, they had road trips that ended up taking a lot longer because of people getting sick, etc.) Before we left the playground he saw some words painted on the ground. He wanted me to translate it. I took a photo for later. It looked like a quotation. It was a new concept to him that we discussed on the way.
We got to the apartment building and locked up his bike, then met the owner, Eran, of the piano as he came out the door. We went up and saw it and August started playing around on it. Clearly out of tune, and at first it looked like more keys weren’t working than we had been told. But the piano looked nice, and things were moving quickly. August wandered around the place, starting to use all of their possessions and drums. Eran popped over to a neighbor’s, and as soon as he left the mover and his assistant showed up. They looked it over, then told me they might be able to take it today, if they could make room in the truck they had with them. Eran came back and I paid him the 300 shekels.
August and I went down and played outside. He played around on the rocks and with things, and we got out the iPad and he did graphing. He grumbled a few times about things moving so slowly. They made the room in the truck, hauled the piano down the stairs, and loaded it in. He said he’d look at the schedule and either deliver it later today, or sometime tomorrow. August and I got in the car and he called and said he could deliver it right now.
So we got going, listening to Story Pirates, and stopped in Even Yehuda, ran up to the bank, then drove home. He called just as we were a few seconds away, saying he was there. I told him we would be there in 5 seconds. August objected, saying it was more like 20. We pulled up as they were starting to get the piano out of the truck. I opened everything and moved the table, and a few minutes later the piano was in position where the dining room table had been.
I had let August go ahead and start playing Minecraft. While this was going on, as he was playing Minecraft, he told me, “I’m pretty sure I’m bored.” They got the piano unwrapped and I paid them and they were on their way.
I played Minecraft with him a bit, then he watched several Life Noggin videos. He started playing around on the piano. He wants it fixed as soon as possible, and he felt it was much harder to push the keys than on his toy piano. I told him his fingers would get stronger and he wouldn’t notice that anymore.
We did a Brother and Sister game where the grandparents bring a cat and he was laughing a lot. There was more where Sister was “cranky wanky” because Myna had too many cats. We then had a late lunch of schnitzel and sweet potato patties. I vacuumed the filters from the downstairs air conditioning unit.
Carly got home and he did graphing with her and she showed him the cosine thing she had found. He had his chocolate milk I’d agreed to earlier, then was playing chords on the piano. I had told him to just not learn his pitches from the piano yet, and so he joked that he was working on his perfect pitch with it. He had some salad that Carly made him, but not much, then made a fort of pillows so I couldn’t see him.
He finished alone time and played Minecraft with Carly. They were talking about something and he admitted, “Yes, that’s a really good argument.” Carly was then complaining about his cramped, sloppy stairs in their mine. He said he just cared about stairs that worked. I pointed out that straight, properly built stairs are faster and more efficient. He replied, “That’s a good argument actually, but not enough to convince me.”
I researched the piano and learned more about the German company that built it, and figured out, based on the inscription on it, that it had been in England. And the piano was built in 1909. This really worried Carly, as she started to look up why you’re not supposed to buy an old piano. I was more of the opinion that it was clearly old in the first place, and I’d rather buy a piano that we knew needed work instead of buying one that was a bit newer and much more expensive, only to find it needed a lot of work as well.
August and I read What If? Stationary was a word of the day. He found the tape measure and was measuring everything. He told me, “I’m learning stuff about our house.” He then played with the magnet blocks. We Skyped with my parents, showing them the piano, and finding that Dad’s knee has been recovering well. And he’s bought more parts for the Jag, after making money working on the other Jag.
I carried August upstairs when he did want to go, but wasn’t fighting it. Carly gave him a bath. I heard her teaching him to solve for x and balancing an equation. We should do Dragonbox Algebra again. August then forgot they’d done his bath: “Just got wrapped up in math…good math.”
In bed we listened to the two parts of “Acorn Milk and the Blue Goblins” on Stories Podcast, a new podcast I found, as we’re running out of Circle Round stories. He liked it. We’d tried other podcasts, but he didn’t like the voices or lack of music. We listened to the album from Víkingur Ólafsson of Bach piano music, which seemed appropriate, and he was asleep by 10:25.
Picking out chords:
His crazy calculator:
First notes on our piano!:
A piano in our house:
Dropping the cardboard tubes:
