He woke up at 6:40, stuffy. I switched it to the fan and got him back to sleep. He then slept until 8:25. I went up and accompanied him back downstairs and he went straight to the piano and played parts of “Run” and improvised. We played Minecractft, then he watched two Life Noggin videos, one on not washing your face, and one for not taking showering. We had pancakes for breakfast, and August had a riddle: “1 times 22 is 4.” The answer is that it is 2^2. He had a new tune on the piano, then showed me songs on Supersonics Piano. Carly came in and he taught her the first two measures of “Run”. He and I then worked on it and he learned all of “Run” and practiced the hole thing 3 times.
We watched GoodTimeswithScar’s latest video, then the Seattle Public Schools videos that they started to release to support students at home. We started with the PE videos, which were good but kind of odd because they cut off in the middle of exercises. He joined the PE classes with me a little. We watched some math and from that I used the iPad to show him Dots and Boxes but he was more interested in graphing and was doing more crazy stuff.
We ate our lunch (grilled tuna sandwiches) outside, then we went in to do some coding in Swift Playgrounds. He had fun putting the entire program within a function and kept saying, “ I’m making the function be the code.” decomposition was a word of the day. He practiced “Run” some more. We looked at the songs and their levels on Supersonics Piano and we looked at pieces and analyzed them a bit.
I got him out on a short walk, rather reluctantly. He was afraid of it raining. We walked around to the back walkway up to the park. Wandered around a bit up there, and tried to get him to take the Holly block, or back down the main street, but he said it was too warm in the sun, so we returned to the park (we talked about how the playgrounds were roped off, but the tapes had been broken) and came back down the walkway. We had stopped to admire the corn flowers on the way up, and then he hadn’t liked the (rather small) cloud of gnats closer to the park.
We sat outside on the chairs and got to discussing graphing. He asked something about how graphs work, and then suddenly had the epiphany that graphs are actually for solving problems, and kept saying things like: “So the sine of X is every single sine problem…woah.” “That is crazy!” “I’ve never thinked of graphs like that.” “I mainly used them for art…”
We then did a short video call with Gabi. We took the call outside on August’s iPad, then August quickly was taking him in to show him the piano and his piano playing: “Well, I have something to show you.” We then took Gabi upstairs to August’s room and showed him the poster that I’d put up, and told Gabi about how August things some of them are actually positive feelings.
After hanging up he did alone time, playing piano and listened to “Getting My Wings”. That was over 30 minutes long, so counted for all his alone time. Cowritten was a word of the day.
He used his full Minecraft hour, and I pretty much finished the tower I was making in our creative world, while he worked on the tunnel system. We then went outside on the swing, and Carly came out with us. He saw a mosquito sucking her blood.
Back inside we did a little Brilliant, August choosing the Artificial Neural Networks course. He surprised me by answering one of the questions correctly, and explained it was because I had taught him some of this before (which I remember vaguely). We then watched the newest Grian video. He did more piano playing, then had potatoes and onions that Carly had made, and that were really good. I also cooked up the spicy tofu that she’d gotten accidentally, and it was at least really good for me.
He then had cousin time, and I went upstairs to work. I didn’t have long up there though, as August had a big meltdown. We had started to use chocolate to help encourage/bribe him to not touch his face and pick his nose so much. Was working better than anything else had, so far, but apparently he started just demanding chocolate chips and started hitting Carly when she wouldn’t get them for him. I came down. He used his curling up on the couch and covering his head with a blanket strategy, and also chose to go outside on his own, which were both good choices. But he also kept getting upset, and when he came in and saw me there he tried throwing the stool at me. I took him up and talked to him on the bed. Back downstairs things were better, but then he was running and jumping on the couch, but went too hard and bonked his head on the wall.
After that Carly got him apples and peanut butter. He then listened to “The King and the Cobbler” on Circle Round.
Got him upstairs and Carly gave him a bath and washed his hair. He got a lollipop for that, but then was taking forever to finish it, even after they read some Junie B. Jones. He was still being punky about things, but when I got him in the bedroom he chomped the rest like Carly had asked. We discussed the feelings posters again. We then got his teeth brushed. As he lay down he told me, “When I grow up I want to be a king have servants…A cool thing about being a king: they don’t have to move a muscle.” He then explained that every noun should be capitalized, as humans had “named” all the things. And that the polygon command in Desmos has to have at least 3 points, because 2 points is just a line. He was then pretending to be the ‘master’ and Brother was supposed to be his slave/servant, and he came up with an “Evil Brother” song based on our “Evil Boss” song.
We listened to “The Unwelcome Guest” on Circle Round, then “Tomatoes, Bees, and Me” on Peace Out. We listened to Brian Eno’s Lux and he was asleep around 11.
The end of a tune:
“Run” all the way through:
“People like harmony” song:
Chatting on our walk:
Showing Gabi his piano playing:
Showing piano to Andrea and family:
