He was up at 7. He crawled into bed with me for fifteen minutes or so. When he got up to go downstairs I suggested he say something nice to Carly when he went down, instead of shouting “Boo!” He went down and said a nice “Good morning” to her. He spent some time doing math, then they played Minecraft, then read Clementine’s Letter. He played pianos, and I was having him work on his hands a little. He was playing his song that uses a minor key and looking up scales.
He and I then played about ten rounds of Apples to Apples. One of the things we debated was the difference between quick and fast. For arguing why camping was “Favored” he said, “You go with your grandparents and everything.”
He went and looked at the elements poster and said something about it, then said “My eyes are bothering me.” He’d been rubbing them a fair amount this morning. I think most likely allergy-related, with the strong wind outside kicking things up, but the air quality apps don’t give any sign of pollution. They do seem to have been bothering him more often lately, so I talked to him about going to an eye doctor if they keep bothering him. And I gave him a basic eye test, having him read small letters from a distance. He did fine and he said it didn’t bother him.
We read more of What If? and are close to being finished. Cavitates, vacuum, and isolated were words of the day. Carly made us sushi for lunch. As he ate it, with crab, he said, “Past uncle Derek wouldn’t like this.” But it turned out he was thinking more of Jeff. He then asked, “What would happen to uncle Jeff if I trapped him in a jail cell made of meat?…Mutton.”
He did alone time playing the piano, then played Minecraft with me. It is definitely the glitchy world: It is his flat world, and when we logged yesterday there was a square hole in it, through to the void. Then as I was walking I heard an explosion and saw a white block come down. It appeared to be a piece of cloud, larger than a regular block, and we could stand in it. It was still there today, and August spent some time blowing it around with TNT but it wouldn’t be destroyed. Oh, and at night it was still bright, but didn’t light anything up. Then, near the end of our time August teleported to some coordinate out at 10,000,000 blocks. The game then was barely letting him move, and when he spawned some mobs, like witches, they would simply sink through the floor into the void, while other mobs were just fine.
For his educational video he watched the “All the Bombs” Kurzgesagt video, then was talking about how he wants to do negative exponents. We got dressed for a walk, and he told me how he used the Dewey decimal system for art supplies and paint colors.
We all went out for a walk. It was the longest walk he’s ever done, at least here in Even Yehuda, without needing to be picked up. We walked west a block or so, then up north, and to the little triangle park area where someone feeds the cats and there are fruit trees. Carly and I picked some lemons, and he wasn’t happy about that, as he didn’t want us to hurt the fruit trees. He was climbing on a couple of trees, and scared from one tree to another when a dog came along. As we got walking again it was getting cloudier, and August insisted on the most direct route back. Carly tried to take two slightly longer routes and he was having none of it. Then, as we cross the playground he was spooked by our neighbor dog (across the street) which was running free, and I had to carry him the last block home. But he hadn’t complained about having to do any of the walking himself. Pretty sure we’ve left strollers and push bikes behind for good.
At home we were out in the yard for a few minutes. Inside I introduced him to a new YouTube channel I had found, PBS Space Time, and we watched “Will the Universe Expand Forever?” (https://youtu.be/xZTb6sfHEX8) and then “What Happens at the Edge of the Universe?” Parsec was a word of the day.
He started playing piano, and I showed him a video from Pianote called “4 Things a Beginner Piano Player Should Practice”. He played piano for a while, then had Cheerios and milk, followed by peanut butter and crackers. He kept wanting the Brother and Sister peeing stories, which are growing really, really tiring and repetitive, making me do them less and less. We read more of What If? and finished it. Out first full adult nonfiction book, I think.
He played piano for alone time, working on really fast triplet patterns and melodies, then we played Minecraft. For his educational video we watched a VSauce one called “A Problem You’ll Never Solve”, which is about a box-choosing sort of game and the paradox that comes into choosing how to play it. August was pretty captivated by it, and as we played a Brother game he said, “This is called the Fermi paradox.” Carly went for a run, and he ate sweet potato and rice, then had chocolate milk.
He asked, “How does a particle accelerator work?” We watched TED-Ed video (https://youtu.be/G6mmIzRz_f8). He then described making one and explained how it worked. He, as Bar, showed Sister how binary gets father apart between numbers using piano keyboard. He didn’t count exactly the gaps, but had the general idea ( 2 to 4 to 8 etc.)
I finished drawing my music sheets in Paper so I can quickly draw notes of different lengths and pitches for him to practice on the piano. They then started reading the kid version of Neil deGrasse Tyson book _Astrophysics for People in a hurry. He was then making a pillow bridge between the chairs and saying “VSauce!” just because he liked how it sounded.
In the bathroom he found patterns in the months poster (those ending in Y, ER, etc.). He asked me, “How do you spell hi?” He has mistakenly spelled it ‘ih’ a few times, and still doesn’t believe my explanation for how it is spelled.
We got to school a little before 7 for the high school student-run MAD Project art performance. It is a fundraiser for a nonprofit that helps victims of sexual assault. Which led to August being rather confused at the beginning when the CEO spoke.
But first there was a silent auction. August liked looking at the stuff, but he didn’t want us to bid on anything, afraid, it seemed, that we could either lose to someone else, or we would pay way too much. He enjoyed getting a cupcake in an ice cream cone though. As it got crowded and they still weren’t opening the doors Carly went outside and read. August and I wondered around and he spent some time doing photography.
They let us in the auditorium at 7:25. We stayed for most of it. The first piano piece was really good, as were several of the singing pieces. And he liked the dance/gymnastics piece. In the middle though there were a few quieter songs that were nice, but making him sleepy (like Don MacLean’s “Vincent”) so before the second fashion show piece I asked if he wanted to get going, and he did. It was 8:25.
As we walked out he said, “I have a formula for how many chairs…” are in the auditorium, and he went on to explain how you would multiply how many rows there are by how many chairs are in each row.
At home I got him upstairs and doing graphing calculator on the couch bed. He has rounding down quite well. He asked about summation. When Carly took him in to his bath he was sawing things like. “summation notation! I love it!” And, “I just love my math! It’s a math miracle!”
When she brought him in to his room he was first kissing everything upstairs good night, then in bed said, “and last but not least: the crystal.”
We stated reading the next Randell Munroe book How To. The first chapter is on jumping, and as we read it we realized he didn’t know what high jump, pole vault, and ski jumping looked like, so we watched videos of each. He asked what eon meant, from a Kurzgesagt video, and we looked it up. Another word of the day. For a story we listened to Circle Round’s “The Begger and the Baker’s Daughter”. Then a meditation track, followed by a Beethoven sting quartet. He fell right to sleep though (finally) at 10:40.
Humming and copying math:
Knocking the cloud around with TNT:
Talking on our walk:
Climbing the tree and seeing a dog:
Short piano piece:
One of the high school performances:
