He called me in after I was awake, about 7:10. He fell back to sleep, and a bit after 8:30 I tried to get him up. He was still really sleepy though, so slept until 8:50. Downstairs we read The Last Kids on Earth. Afterwards he asked, “What’s legit mean?” A word of the day. We played Minecraft, being marine biologists, then I made french toast for breakfast. I had some made from small pieces of bread, so I gave those to him today so he could work on cutting them himself. He agreed, but was mainly able to stab the whole things with a fork and eat them.
He went outside, and said, “It’s beautiful outside!” That lasted until he saw crane flies. He listened to Supersonic Piano and practiced, and made up a song of the day. He then taught Carly hexadecimal while I went for a run, then took a shower. He was then listening to multiple Circle Rounds and playing piano. He was listening to one when I got back, then “The King and the Cobbler” and “The Elephant’s Tub” after that. Carly was outside, and when I came down I made lunch. August quoted one of the stories several times today: “When a door closes, open a window.” We had leftover pizza, broccoli, some of the rice and tofu dish, and chocolate soymilk. Carly then made popcorn. August ran over and said out to her, “Thanks for making popcorn, mama!”
They played Minecraft and I watched the play One Man, Two Guvnors on YouTube, as the National Theatre is showing a play each week. He had a difficult time stopping and was grumpy. Carly and I went outside and sat in the chairs and read, and he stayed inside, and played piano. Carly went in and got them grapefruit, then he moved to composing. He came out to tell us he has 163 H compositions: “I really know where H is on the keyboard…I’ve had a lot of practice.” He names each composition “H” and it numbers them. He asked, “What’s humble mean?” Probably from Circle Round.
Carly then asked him a list of questions, that one of her friends had asked her kids:
• August said that broccoli is his favorite food because it helped him win in Apples to Apples because it was “Rich in vitamins.”
• For best friend he said, “everything…they’re a part of the Cosmos…god isn’t…everything under the laws of physics.”
• “What makes me happy? Basically everything on earth.” But not war.
• One thing that makes him happy: “Like right now.”
• Favorite places to go “Bar…coffee shop.” We didn’t know why he was saying we took him to bars, but he clarified it was a place we get drinks. I later realized he meant ReBar, the smoothie place.
• What he would like to be when he grow’s up: “A sparrow”
• Who loves you the most? “The pretend sun god.”
• What does Dada do? “He works all day.”
• What he’s afraid of: “Endermen”. And he admitted to crane flies
• Where does money come from? “The US Mint”
• Where he lives: “Habrosh 1. Even Yehuda.”
• Where he’s from: “Korea.”
• Favorite number: “14 and 4” Then any number made all out of 4s, because 4 is special.
He was hungry so I got him peanut butter crackers. He sat outside with me and ate them and asked, “What’s in vain mean?” Then had a game where Brother was fighting the waves from destroying his sandcastles, all in vain. We needed a new nonfiction book to read, and I gave him several choices and he chose the adult book How Emotions Are Made. We read the intro (skipping the mentions of school shootings). It mentioned Sesame Street and that got us talking about what we remember from the show, and he talked about Oscar the Grouch and talked about a whole Oscar the Grouch paradox, because people putting trash in his can makes him happy, but he doesn’t like being happy: “I didn’t notice before because I didn’t know as much about paradoxes.” We then watched the “ABC-DEF-GHI” song. Inside he told Carly about the song, then we read more.
He spilled water on his pants so we went up and changed him into lighter pants. He wouldn’t do shorts. We read the rest of the intro, and discussed the thesis, and he said he agreed with it because people are so different. We then had a whole story with Sister playing tag in Minecraft. He asked, “What’s a carob tree?” and said it was from Circle Round. I showed him photos. He knew that it could live through droughts.
We went downstairs to the piano. He had a tune in 6/8. I composed it for him, then he kept playing with it. He said, “I’m decomposing…” when he deleted something. Carly was reading in a chair and he went over and read a line from her book. She got excited and asked him to do more. He went back to the piano and composing. I taught him how to copy and paste in Notion and he kept doing that, making a song that used 6mb of data. He was then Carly’s piano teacher and was teaching her how to play with proper hand movements, and used the whole bird in the hand thing that he got from Dalit: “It’s more efficient…your birdie flew away.”
They talked to Colin, then did math with Vivian, learning about fractions and percentages. They then played Minecraft. I was working on our taxes at the dining room table. He had a really hard time getting off, and Vivian logged off as it was time for her to stop as well. He had a meltdown as they were on her world and it cut him off. He hit Carly, and then when I reminded him how he had done so well yesterday he came and knocked my phone out of my hand. Luckily, it just fell on the table. I took him upstairs, which had actually worked really well a couple weeks ago, but this time it took him a few minutes. I think the long and short of it is that Minecraft with Vivian needs to end earlier in the day.
He calmed down back downstairs and apologized. He asked her “What’s humble mean? What’s extraordinary mean?” Carly took him up for a bath at 8:20 and washed and cut his hair. He watched Kurzgesagt videos while she did that. I brushed his teeth for him today. He was hiding while I brushed my own teeth, not wanting to do his. But he realized I could still see him through the mirror, so it became an a-ha moment about angles and mirrors: “If I can see you, you can see me.” In bed we listened to “The Pied Piper” and “The Ant and the Grasshopper” on the Stories Podcast. Then the next Peace Out. We listened to the whole Philip Glass Piano Études album and he fell asleep near the end of it just before 11.
Morning improv:
Teaching mama hexadecimal:
A piano piece:
It’s so repetitive:
Playing piano with Carly:
The eerie song and the Ryan and Colin song:
