He got up at 8:05. He went to the bathroom upstairs, then downstairs he wanted to learn rhythm on the piano. At first I thought he meant counting, so we started on that, but he meant playing with the metronome so we switched to that. Played for quite awhile. We played Minecraft, then I made french toast and he had a Sister and Dad and composer for Boston Symphony game. We ate our french toast outside and continued the game. He said, “I’m a jazzophologist…I study jazz.” We were sitting outside when the sirens went off. We talked about it, and he was a little skeptical of the whole sirens thing.
He scared Carly when she came through the doorway. She honestly yelled and was scared. He said, “I scared your pantsies off…You jumped a meter in the air. It’s like you’re a kangaroo.” He himself was scared in by a bee. Talking about jazz, I looked for jazz concert videos and we watched a jazz band on KEXP for 8 minutes or so, then watched the newest GoodTimeswithScar video. He then had a game with Myna and logging on to a server run by a very braggy person. We did the story once, then asked for a repeat.
For alone time he listened to “Loki and the Golden Hair” on Circle Round. He asked what lingering meant, so a word of the day. We played Minecraft, then went upstairs to the bedroom for a Ms. Safe rehearsal game and some wrestling. We came back downstairs for lunch (pizza and crackers with meat and cheese and pistachios). He saw a yellow butterfly through the window. He then wanted more stories and listened to “The Telltale Wrapper” and “The Thanksgiving Pie-Off” and “The Little Red Hen” and “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”. We discussed how their version is different than Carly’s. In her version the boy is eaten.
He asked about bee stings and what they feel like and wanted me to compare them to other things. I mentioned nettles, and he came up with a game where Brother fell into a bear trap made out of nettles. The dad was then slow to get calamine lotion, getting distracted by things like the dirt shop.
We got ready for a walk, but then set up Zoom on the laptop first so it would be ready to use with Gabi later. As we went out for a walk August was asking why witches burn in the sun and trolls turn into stone; I made up physics about the sun burning out phosphorous, etc. We looked at his ant spot. I was trying to spot butterflies as well, but no luck. I got him to walk a bit further, but he complained that he found ants but “But they’re not booming with population.” We walked back to the bench by the corn flower and a little dog really scared August on the way. Actually, the dog was just walking with its owner, but August yelled and gave it a very wide berth.
We sat and he had his chocolate bar. We ended up discussing back when he was in the backpack and what he remembered from it. We also discussed my books, and other things about Korea. He asked what “Mandatory evacuation” means, from the hurricane book.
We went up and did math with the multiplication blocks. While doing that he found two of the tiny banana shaker bead pieces and put them in a container made of the magnet pieces. We tried to watch a couple videos about body language, but didn’t find a great one. Carly came down and August ran to her and said, “Bye, Dada!” We then helped her come up with interview questions for helping to interview for the principal position. August was really into that.
We went up and got him ready to meet with Gabi. It worked well on the computer. Gabi had problems though. He had some sort of video or similar thing to show him, but it wasn’t working for Gabi. They tried troubleshooting it for a few minutes, then just switched to playing games. They played the tank tame, then for the last few minutes I went in and helped with a Pictionary sort of game.
As we headed downstairs August suggested he use honey to work on pronouncing his R. Totally his idea and not something we’ve talked about. We got some honey and the Articulation app and sat outside and worked on R. We worked on it together for quite a while. The biggest helps were talking about the vibrations in his throat, then focusing on how the lips don’t pucker like for W. He was getting pretty good with R by the end.
Shmuel came by. He was outside, and I went to talk to him. August came over and asked me to stand a little further back: “You know, social distancing.” I had sent Shmuel the movie, and he complimented August on the music.
I brought out the coconut rice and broccoli for dinner, and more asparagus this time as August said he really liked it. I noted a spot of syrup I had dripped on the ground earlier, and August tried to clean it up on his own.
Carly talked about her day and how she had had a talk with her students about whether money buys happiness. August chimed in and was totally on the side of money not buying happiness. He was very well spoken about it, and said, “You have to be humble to be happy.” He, and/or Carly, brought up a couple of the folk tales, and I brought up The Boxcar Children. August talked about how money doesn’t make you successful; if you are poor and get bread and milk that could be successful.
He wanted to hear “The Tell-tale Heart”, as I had told him that “Tell-Tale Wrapper” had been based on it. We discussed it a bit more, but I said it would be a few years before we read it. We went inside for Minecraft with Vivian. After a while she got upset about something being on fire; August was pretty sure that it was something that Colin did, but he got upset thinking she was mad at him. Just too stressful so he stopped. We played together in our world instead.
He then wanted to listen to stories and listened to Stories Podcast: “The Grasshopper and the Ant” and “The Three Little Pigs” threshhold Was a word of the day. I went for a run. A lot of people out there, most without masks. They were watching a documentary about terraforming mars when I got back. En route was another new word. I took a shower and when I came down they were finishing bag number 2 of popcorn.
We got him upstairs and August asked me, “What’s agonizing mean?” I described it, and he suggested like choosing between cupcakes or ice cream. But then he had a practical solution: “I’d choose the one with more sugar.”
Carly washed him. In bed I read two stories to him from a book of fairy tales called _
Brave Red, Smart Frog. I read “The Three Noodles” (entirely new to me) and “Hansel and Gretel”—the first time he’s really heard that story. There were a lot of words he asked the meanings for: console, grief, premise, feeble, sparse. He also asked, “What’s forgiveness mean?” as we went to brush our teeth. We did that, and he did a great job but was scared out of the bathroom by a big fly, which we trapped in there. So he didn’t do mouthwash today.
Carly surprised him by coming out of the bedroom, as we thought she was asleep. Back in bed we listened to “Persephone’s Winter” on Stories Podcast: pantheon and fickle were new. He then had the idea for a new girl in the Brother and Sister games, a girl who said everything really, really fast. We did that for a minute, but it was frankly a bit annoying. I read him a Mary Oliver poem “The World I Live In” and we listened to a Peace Out on Loving Kindness. Put on a Max Cooper album and he was asleep before 11.
During the sirens:
Tiny ant:
Pronouncing R:
