I woke him up at 9. He said something like “Manaman” and rolled over. Downstairs we read a chapter of Shivers. We played Minecraft in our creative world and went to a forest mansion thousands of blocks away and he exploded it with TNT. This all happened after I couldn’t get into the world that he wanted me in on his world.
We played a Brother and FBI game. This time, Brother saw someone burying and then taking money from the woods, and connected it to the corrupt mayor, who was embezzling through a construction company. August said this was happening before Brother had met anyone else in the park, so it became the first Brother and Sister story, with their lives ordinary up to that point. The mayor goes to jail, and the parents lose their cushy jobs with the city, which leads them to starting to work in the jungle part time. It is then the next, non-corrupt mayor, that forces them to leave town and move to the jungle for good because of the cats and other animals.
These continued upstairs, and he ate his second bowl of oatmeal up there. When we were done we watched the latest Grian video, up on the bed. Superb was a word of the day. We watched a Morning Notes from Seattle Symphony, then he wanted to learn about a new medical condition on Osmosis. Cystinosis was the first thing we found, so we watched that, then the Osmosis epilepsy video. Inhibit was a new word. We did more games, with with Elena in each of the classes, going from Ms. Safe to Ms. Danger, and ending in Ms. Mean’s class. We watched a video from National Geographic about otter fisherman, then went downstairs where he played piano.
He wanted the metronome, and I also set up drums in GarageBand. He played along to both, often at the same time. Carly was down for lunch, and August convinced her to play Minecraft with him. She did about 15 minutes. They were playing in her world, harvesting ice. I took over on her iPad when she had to go teach, and we played with a boat on the ice. He logged us both off at the end, but got a little upset. We got through that and he listened to Supersonic Piano. I made grilled turkey sandwiches and veggies and chocolate milk and we went out and had a picnic lunch on our Pororo picnic mat (I remembered first using it at Children’s Grand Park in Seoul…one of those purchases that has worked out well).
Back inside he wanted his “Edge-uh” video, and watched the Ants Canada video where he gets the new fire ant colony. Perpetuate and fastidious were new words. He then watched a second one about how they handle rain. He wanted to see how ants responded to water and I suggested we take a water bottle over to the ant area and find out. He spotted Carly’s painting as we got ready and said, “I like Mama’s painting. It should be called ‘One Lonely Yellow Leaf’.”
We went over to the ant area and he pour water out. They definitely started to run around, and he thought he saw some climbing the pole to get away. We came back to the house to refill, and took two bottles back. He had discovered a second one of tiny ants. When we got back we found the wet spot covered with ants. We speculated they were drinking the water after the danger had passed. We poured more water, making it more like rain, and studied them, then came home.
Outside we read Shivers, where he asked about temper tantrum and fit. He watered his plants. We read more, and learned curd, appalled, and landlubber. He wanted to earn enough stars to get a new app today. He had one, so needed 7 more. He got to work. We practiced writing, writing music words, for a star, then cleaned the toilets: “As shiny as a clam shell…clean as a cloud…shiny as silver.” He went out and watered all the plants.
We were then doing piano for one. He first just played and played, and totally surprised me by walking both hands up and down octaves at the same time. In his last lesson Dalit had taught him how to do it with each hand, but not at the same time, saying that would be frustrating (because the patterns are different). Shew as going to work on both hands together with him at their next lesson. Well, he’s never worked on it, that I’ve heard, at home. He’s heard me do it though, and I’ve spent a lot of time to figure it out and am doing pretty well. So he started doing, just fine, just like that.
To earn his start he agreed to learn the last two phrases of “Fairy Flight”, with the melody on the left hand, that he’s never learned. We did that, and Carly made sweet potato and potato French fries.
For his next start he washed dishes, and told Carly, “I like doing chores. I like the challenge…It’s satisfying.” I went for a walk, again over Bnei Dror, and making a loop on southern streets this time. When I got back they were playing Minecraft. When he was done playing with Vivian and Colin he went outside with Carly to pick up tree things, for star number 7. He needed to earn one more, so read stories from Epic to Carly. At one point, in reflecting on all the chores he was doing, he said, “I’m doing everything around here.”
He wanted a Toca Boca app, so he looked at the list of them and chose Toca Mystery House. He played that for 15 minutes, and was happy with his purchase. We got him upstairs along with a bunch of food: apples and peanut butter, seaweed snack and cucumber.
He was asking me all about North Korea. We then Skyped with my parents for a few minutes. Carly then took him in for a bath and I kept talking to them. He came back and we talked to them more. He then played piano for them before we said goodbye. He did an amazing jazz piece to start with that I wish I’d gotten on video. He said he could play it again tomorrow.
We listened to “The Magpie with Salt on Her Tail” while he finished the apples, then we brush our teeth. He asked “What’s eureka?” And also asked about via. We said goodnight at 10:30. In bed he asked Siri “What are you doing?” She replied, “I’m pondering enternity. It’s taking forever.” We did the Brother and Elena game (where they become friends) instead of Peace Out. He asked, “What’s deindle mean?” We listened to Rival Consoles and he was asleep at 11:15.
Music with metronomes:
More metronome music:
End of his new pattern:
Another quick pattern:
Watering the ants 1:
Watering the ants 2:
Watering the ants 3:
Writing practice:
Runs with both hands at once:
Evening playing:

