He woke up about 7:30. I crawled in the couch bed with him and he fell back to sleep. Started waking him up at 8 but it was more like 8:15 before he started to get up, and after 8:30 by the tune we went downstairs.
In Minecraft we spawned random animals, like parrots, and August leashed then up. Pretty funny. “All that matters is nature, dada.”
I made a strawberry smoothie for breakfast. There were lots of Brother and Sister games with Myna going crazy on Minecraft, especially with the wars and servals and parrots. They found out that Brother had accidentally given her a robot brain using one of Bar’s machines, but that had just been yesterday and wasn’t the reason. So she changed her DNA.
August played the piano. He gave me some time to tie up the two broken pieces in it, so now all the notes work except the three broken ones. And it might just be my ears adjusting, but the piano actually sounds better today, except for a few notes that are way off, and I didn’t mind him playing it so much. He also did graphing, especially when he was letting me work on it.
He had some crackers and pate, then played with the magnet blocks, then played more piano. He had the last of the smoothie and we discussed the organization of the periodic table. He then compared an airplane stalling to him using kidding tricks to postpone a bath. It slows down, but then when it starts falling it is like when he runs out of kidding tricks and he has to take his bath.
Hard to get him going, as usual, but we got driving around 12:15. We had the bike and trailer on the car, and headed to the mouth of the Alexander River. Story Pirates on the way. We parked, and walked upstream, under the bridges, to check out the trail. Along the way we watched and egret and took photos of graffiti and looked at puddles of different colors. We got to the trail. Rather a narrow dirt trail for us with the trailer. He was doing a great job walking though, but then when I talked about walking more he turned around, afraid of rain.
We went back the other way, past the car, and towards the mouth. He played with dried, cracked mud, and we saw a falcon of some sort hunting. I saw it dive twice. The second time it didn’t fly back up. We kept going and got to the water. We now saw a big crane. We sat on the edge of an old boardwalk area (there are a couple of other old abandoned buildings; I wonder what used to be here) and ate lunch of the little sandwiches I made, bag of seaweed snack, and an apple. August asked, “I have a question: are we real? Seriously…” He also asked, “Can you look it up?” I asked him how we could prove it one way or another. That turned into a Brother game where Bar was telling him he wasn’t real, but just a computer simulation. We had fun with the absurdity of all of that.
We got walking back at 1:45. Along the way he was asking me equations, and wanting me to solve them, in my head, using Mama’s techniques. I told him I could solve equations like (x+10)10-5^10+3*2=5 (a real one he gave me) in my head.
By the car he was looking at some wet mud, which was fine. I was getting my camera out take a video, but was just a bit too late to catch him try walking in it. He quickly lost a shoe, resulting in two very muddy shoes and a muddy foot. I carried our stuff to the car and came back for him. Sat him on the passenger seat with his feet out the car. We used the bag from the beach toys, most of his water bottle, 4 wet wipes, and a handful of tissues to wash us both up. It took a good twenty minutes. August handled it all very well, not getting upset at all, and saying a few times how he learned his lesson about not walking in mud. He joked he’d never even look at mud again. The car definitely needs a vacuuming now, especially before Eve sees it.
We the drove a couple minutes north to find the sea turtle rescue place. I mistakenly thought a sign about maintenance vehicles or the such meant I couldn’t go in one gate, and kept searching for the way in. When it was clear (despite Google’s assertion) that there wasn’t another entrance, I figured out that was how we got in.
We parked and got walking. Kind of an odd, interesting port area to look around. We found the turtle place. You can’t actually go in without a guide, and you need to book that in advance, but we could look through the fence and through the doorway and see the turtles. There were also some hydroponic garden things nearby that we discussed, although nothing growing in them. We read on a sign about the plight of sea turtles and why they need help, then walked around to the main entrance of the place and read more about how they are endangered. We sat on a bench looking out at the water and he asked what happened to an animal when it went extinct. Extinction was definitely the word of the day. He thought/wanted the animal species to come back somehow. We talked about efforts to bring back some species, but how that isn’t really likely, and the reasons for saving species. We also talked about human impact, and the extinction of the large mammalian species, and how they didn’t have time to evolve to live with humans. He thought I was joking about giant sloths, so we read about them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_sloth?wprov=sfti1
We stopped at the bathroom on the way back to the car. He said, “You know those two letters at the start or end of words? Here’s one: ST, Sticker…and stitch, steel, stem…” That was the first time he’s done that on his own.
We got home after 3:30. He went and played piano for alone time. I washed off his shoes and vacuumed the rest of the filters in the house (but not the car yet). He called up to me, saying, “I think my fingers have gotten stronger. I’ve gotten used to…” playing the piano.
We then played Minecraft, and Carly got home. I went for a run, then showered. He was playing piano when I got back and I could quietly hear him from outside. He had 10 coins earned on his watch, and he could use 5 for 30 minutes of iPad time. He used all of his coins for an hour of iPad. He played with Carly in yet another new world. He hadn’t actually done two sets of alone time/iPad today, so it was actually only 30 extra minutes on the day. However, letting him have so much in the evening was probably a bad idea. He stopped after the hour and agreed to eat dinner. He choked on the noodles again, probably the strips of scallion, but didn’t spit up this time, like a day or two ago, and continued on with his meal.
He’d wanted an educational video, but agreed to save it until after dinner. This is where the meltdown happened, as he then insisted on watching another: “I have to, I have to…” His first big meltdown in several days.
Carly went up for a shower. Eventually he apologized and we talked enough and I read What If? We are over half done now. We read the one about the power that Yoda can produce with the Force. I wanted August to understand the reference, so we first watched the “There is no try, just do” scene where Yoda lifts the X-Wing before reading it. He had crackers and peanut butter as we ate, then we went upstairs for a bath. They did more math in the bathroom, learning more stuff on the graphing calculator.
In bed I read more What If?. We listened to “The Giant’s Causeway” on Stories Podcast, then used the bathroom before trying out different meditations. We listened to one on the Daily Meditation Podcast, but didn’t like that much, then listened to one of the Michelle Robertson-Jones Eeny, Meeny, Miney, & Mo mediations on Apple Music. We’ve done a couple before. He’s okay with those, but not particularly fond. He then asked for the “Meditation Headquarters” ones. I figured out he meant the Andy Hobson ones on Insight Timer. We started the series again, August laughing and having me repeat the part where he accidentally starts describing football instead of meditation, and he fell asleep listening to it at 10:20. I was then excited to find almost all of Hobson’s materials are already on Apple Music. So we won’t have to pay 60+ dollars/year to listen to all of it.
Silly time:
Improving on the piano:
Echoing under the bridge:
Sea turtles 1:
August leading animals around in Minecraft:
