It has now been 50 days since school was first cancelled.
Before going to sleep I heard him moving around and then making some noise. I went in to find him sliding off the top bed with his head down on the lower. I lifted him back up on his bed. He sat up for a second then let me lay him down. He then slept until after 7:30. We finished volume 2 of The Boxcar Children, then he played lots of cool improvs on piano. He wanted to go upstairs and was doing a funny march on the way up. He had more Brother and the archeologists games. We were trying to remember the word iridescent.
We played for a while, then went downstairs for Minecraft and apple and peanut butter. I then heated pancakes but he didn’t really eat them after he was done with Minecraft. We went back upstairs for a Sister and Myna competition when Carly came in. He was joking about Carly being me and me being her, after joking that she was a man. Came back down again and he ate the pancakes and we watched the next day of Ted-Ed Earth School “Lifecycle of a T-Shirt” annually, quantity, and metric ton were our first words of the day. He took a break to play variations of “Hacked”
We transcribed a couple of his short songs and he had a line he wanted me to send to Dalit via video. At one point he was reading the Greek letter signs on the refrigerator that I had made. I did some practicing and when the sirens went off for Memorial Day at 11 we went outside to listen back inside we kept doing piano, and he was the archeologist again, telling Sister about what he had found, and how he used scanners to look for rare elements or human DNA in order to determine where he should dig. He got really into that and was walking around me in circles explaining how he worked.
We went back to the t-shirt video and he asked about escalating and garment. We next watched the newest Grian video and discussed encroaching conclusion vault and prosperous. We then watched Iskall, and jackpot was a new word.
We had some fish sticks for lunch, then got back to the piano. I started making Greek letter signs for the next five letters. He went to the bathroom and took a long time in there, talking about Minecraft projects the whole time, and I finished the signs. He then had a game with the teachers. Ms. Mean, Ms. Funny, Ms. Less-Funny. He liked my line, changing the line from Shivers, “As funny as a cactus in a balloon shop.”
We went down to do some math, starting division in Khan Academy. He flew through the first 3rd grade division quiz, but then on the next lesson he barely wanted to engage. It was like pulling teeth to get him to finish it. We finally concluded that, and had just come to a compromise about doing a Ms. Serious game downstairs, as I don’t like going up to the bedroom, but then Carly came downstairs so I gave in and we went upstairs. We played for a few minutes, but even though he wanted Ms. Serious to teach her class he still wasn’t interested in doing math problems, so we went back downstairs where he listened to “The Pumpkin Seeds” on Stories Podcast for alone time and ate his fish sticks.
In Minecraft we went adventuring in our survival world. He got upset when he got himself trapped below the ice and thought he was dying. I managed to save him though. We made maps and adventured east, looking for a mesa, which we haven’t seen in our survival world.
We then went out for the ball game. When I asked “Why?” about something he said, “Oh, you’re a curious kid.” We played the ball kicking game, then went inside did some Sister game as we got ready for Gabi. But then Gabi cancelled, saying he was having problems with his internet connection. We rescheduled for Thursday at 10. August was really disappointed, but we coped by having vanilla ice cream and watching Iskall and ate pistachios.
He then had some tomato soup and we watched more of the Alt-J concert. He asked, “What’s tends mean? Like ‘I tended my sheep?’ Or ‘I tended the house?’” He played piano, and I switched to Twelfth Night. He did some Supersonic Piano at some point, and went back to the piano, where he was doing a long improv, which I should have recorded, as at the end he told me it was using bits of like every song he knows, and listened a bunch, like “London Bridge” and all of the Supersonic Piano pieces he knows bits of. I got his iPad and opened GarageBand and got the drums going, and he was playing along to it. I then got my iPad and was playing in GarageBand and then the synth. He hasn’t played with it for quite awhile, and when I reminded him of it he ended up taking over and played with that until Vivian called just after 6.
They played Minecraft, and Carly was still upstairs doing the principal candidate interviews. I went for a walk and took a shower. Cassie was talking with Colin’s teacher, so we let them play long, but it went on for a long time, and August wasn’t getting off until they did. It was close to 8:30 by the time we got them all off. Too late to do all of the story time afterwards, and Vivian hasn’t really wanted to do it recently anyway, but August couldn’t handle that and had a big meltdown.
I took over, and eventually got him to go up in his room. He turned on the air conditioner to 17, I got him Cheerios (and then seconds) and he listened to “Rumpelstiltskin” for the first time on Stories Podcast. He opened the door to ask me what abolish meant. It was Independence Day eve, with parties going on at houses near us, then some sort of little parade went by with people in the back of a truck, blasting music. Carly got him a fruit plate when he was still hungry and he listened to the Mark Twain frog story while he ate it.
We discussed options for the school going back to campus, but are hoping it won’t happen. He and I brushed our teeth, etc., then I read “Three Wishes”. We listened to the Peace Out on unicorns, then I put on a Yann Tiessen album and had lights out at 10:25. He was asleep by 10:50.
Piano work time:
Working on piano pieces 1:
Working on piano pieces 2:
Working on piano pieces 3:
Memorial Day sirens:
Playing with drums:
Showing us a funny dance:
