He called me in at 7:25 but then lay in bed until 7:40. He then got up and went in with Carly for a little while. He cuddled and joked with her, then came down to me. He snuck on Minecraft and played on his own for awhile while I made coffee. He then listened to Supersonic Piano until I was ready to play Minecraft. But before that happened he went and played piano. It was really cool, as he started with a melody he made, doubled it in the bass and treble, then further changed it over several minutes. He gave it a bass line and sustain, then a bit later he changed the tune into diminished. He then practiced typing, quizzing me on his number code, where Q equals 1, W equals 2 etc. He was really learning his top row now. And he was figuring out how to spell words like out. Then he changed his code to something that was really confusing and stopped making sense. He showed it to Carly. “You’re totally not catching on.” “I’m going to make another code: a code in a code.” I don’t think either of us got it.
Instead, we went upstairs for a Brother and Sister game. They both met a billionaire who had built a huge house in a clearing in the park. He asked what tarnished meant, so a word of the day. It was from “The Three Legged Pot” where they talk about “tarnished coins.” I talked about a person’s character being tarnished, and he asked what character meant in that context. We finished with a game of my hand being the ugly goose. He still gets very giggly and scared of things like that, which is very cute.
I remembered pie, so we went downstairs and I started cutting up all the apples for pie. They played Minecraft then he was doing a lot of piano. Carly painted, and he made a “plate cooling machine…I don’t care how it looks, just if it cools plates.” His eye was looking better today. His right eye was a bit red and puffy yesterday. It would come and go through the day.
He asked for the metronome and was playing to it in 3/4 when I left for a run. He asked me to put an 8/8 rhythm in it first, and when I had some difficulty counting whether it was 7 or 8 beats August said, “Oh, you can’t count? You probably have a disease… you have Alzheimer’s… you need to go to the doctor.”
I went for my run. When I got back he was still on the piano. I took a shower, then he was watching a Life Noggin video. One of the questions was about collapsed lungs. The robot host used the word morbid so August asked what that meant. Another word of the day.
I made us lunch. We had schnitzel and broccoli and rice. Carly made a strawberry smoothie. I practiced piano. He had a Brother game, involving a person from way in the future who is from a type 30 civilization (they control multiple multiverses). I had Brother think he said “fugitive” instead of “future” and August asked what fugitive meant.
I finished making the pie, doing some abstract art for the top, and got it in the oven. August edited his and Carly’s spaceship movie. Carly was painting. Randomly, August told me, “Dada, the whole point of having kids is that they take care of you when you’re old.” Which I think was from another folk tale.
He went outside with Carly for a minute then came in and watched me type. He was asking Siri to play random things, and got it to play “Yeah” by Usher. He heard the hook on it and ran to the piano and started playing it. Back outside we did more of the Brother game with the type 40 civilization and we kicked and played catch.
Carly sat on the swing and used the broom as a tool to move the swing. August got on and tried it with her, and she asked, “Brilliant, right?” He replied, “Yeah, and satisfying.” When we went back inside he spotted a little more of the blank gunk leaking from the fridge.
We read more of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. When he needed to go to the bathroom he cleaned the toilet: “I scrubbed it white as a chicken’s feathers…no, I’m going to make it as white and a cloud. Because chicken feathers can be a little dirty.” We then played Pictionary. He did things like ‘unit circle’ and when Carly joined me I did ‘Circle Round’. It took them a humorously long time to get the ‘round’ part.
August and I watched the latest Iskall video and I made us some sandwich bites: fresh bread, turkey, mayonnaise, and cheese August really liked those. We finished them outside and he listened to Story Pirates while I read Thou Shalt Not Kill, an old Israeli young adult novel I had found somewhere.
August had his Vivian and Colin time and I went up to work. Getting very close to the end of (hopefully last) rewrite of several of the second edition of the book; essays that weren’t really touched on the first rewrite. August eventually came up to remind me of pie.
We went down and ate pie. Carly complimented me on it, but August just commented on how the crust had burned a little on the edge (which was true). Carly explained you were supposed to compliment the chef. He wasn’t convinced until she gave him the practical argument that I’d be more likely to make pie in the future: “I love it!”
Before we went up to bed he discovered a slug on the front porch. At first he talked about putting salt on it. We read https://www.slughelp.com/how-to-kill-slugs-humane-mistakes-and-alternatives/ and he changed his mind. He was studying it with a flashlight and was really impressed by it: “Cool…awesome…” He just kept talking and talking about it, and figured out it would crawl away from the light: “It’s like I’m learning how to drive but with a miniature slug.” “Are you ready to see me drive a slug?” “I thought I killed a slug by exhaustion.” He got it a leaf as an experiment, to see what it does to it over night. “Sorry, leaf. You’re probably going to be eaten…slugs is so ambitious.” It had crawled on the leaf by the time we went up.
Carly washed his hair and he had a lollipop. I think he talked about the slug the whole time. We went into his room and played a little Brother game. We had already covered Minecraft in the far future, now the person from the future was letting the parents play the interstellar dirt research game of the future. He saved his lollipop for tomorrow. We went in and brushed our teeth and finally weighed him: 20.9kg.
In bed we did more with the dirt game and talked about technology in the future, including a coating to keep your teeth safe so you don’t have to brush your teeth any more. On Stories Podcast we listened to “The Lucky Drum” and “One of Us”.
He asked, “Why is there the peace symbol?” Can’t remember where he’d first seen that a few years ago. We talked about it a little, and I mentioned the Vietnam War. He wants to learn more about it. Opposed was a word of the day.
We listened to the Peace Out about stars, then listened to the Books’ Lost and Safe. He told me, after just a minute, that he couldn’t fall asleep, but fell asleep just a couple minutes after that, at 10:45.
Improv evolution 1:
Improv evolution 3:
Improv evolution 2:
Plate cooling machine:
Trying to act upset:
His Spanish:
Swing machine:
Studying Sluggy:
