I woke him up at 9. He asked what time it was and said “Huh. Okay” and rolled over for a minute. As we went downstairs he asked, “Why is it easier to balance heavy things?” We read The Hardy Boys. Words of the day were in it for his health and sleuthing. After a while he asked to go play piano. And more and more. When I got a message saying that Gilad was ready to play Minecraft I let August play for a couple more minutes before telling him.
He played Minecraft with Gilad. Didn’t last long. I heard them saying good bye and saying that maybe they could play tomorrow. I think Gilad had to let a sibling use the computer or something of the sort. He went out to Carly for a minute, then I got him back inside by saying I’d play Minecraft with him for the rest of his usual Gilad time. We worked on our survival world.
We had Oatmeal, then it was time for me Zoom meeting with Omar, Marc, and Lydia for Sabeel work stuff. I sat outside and had my meeting. August watched more Mumbo Jumbo videos, watching through episode 8. He also convinced me to give him a lollipop for wearing his headphones, as that’s the deal Carly gave him last time. I had no time to negotiate, as he didn’t even need to wear his headphones this time.
That all went well. The only interruption was when he told me there was a spider on the wall. After my meeting, about 50 minutes, I came in and watched the end of episode 8 with him. He played a lot more piano as I made lunch. We did some discussing and looking up of scales. He told me some of his favorite scales are C super locrian, C whole, and A minor. He played his toy piano song. I recorded it to transcribe it as “Toy Piano Anthem”.
We ate lunch of grilled smoked tuna sandwiches and chocolate milk outside. That didn’t last long as he had to go inside and he talked a lot about Minecraft as he went to the bathroom. We discussed going on a bike ride and he agreed, but we then got distracted by calculating the square root of 5. Carly came down and he got hyper copying her. I got him outside for a bike ride. We first we discussed how good his weeds are doing, and why weeds often do better than the plants people are trying to go because they are better suited for the location.
We rode for about 15 minutes. Didn’t go far, as I was getting the gears and brakes working again for part of it. We came back and played our agreed-upon 30 minutes of Minecraft, in Survival Trival. We went upstairs and worked on Earpaggio together. I’m getting better at, and August is surprisingly good at, recognizing the intervals, etc. I wish my band teachers had taught some of this theory way back in the day, but they never did. We then played a game that had Brother meeting Val in the park. Val was blind at first, but we backed up and Val was deaf instead. August wanted to learn sign language, so we learned some ASL so Brother could sign and Val could sign back. August learned ‘Hello’ and ‘What’s up?’ And worked on ‘See you later’ but he got frustrated with the hand movements.
We went downstairs and did some Minecraft math. We worked on the 9 multiplication tables using diamonds into diamond blocks. He ended up with 72 diamonds (8 blocks) and we then practiced subtraction by spending those diamonds in the shopping district on things like elytra and stacks of different things, which were priced differently.
He asked, “What’s of the essence mean?” We then took some time to figure out Minecraft Realms, using an expansion and getting a world set up and making sure it works so that it would be ready for Vivian and Colin. He played a little piano, then listened to a “DermiT Drabb” story on Stories Podcast until 6 I went for a walk after they were all logged into the realm.
I went for a walk, then came back and worked. Vivian logged off of his world and played in her own as she was bothered by his TNT explosions. They were amicable about it, but I think it is funny that neither of them has really figured out that the worlds are infinite, and they can simply spread out within the world. Vivian will tell him not to explode TNT near her, but he won’t go far enough away, or vice versa they’ll be exploding TNT together and when Vivian wants to do something else she tries to get him to stop, as opposed to simply moving further away in the world. But at least it worked.
When their time was up Carly and August called Chuck and Cherie. He played piano for them a lot, sort of answering their questions, and also experimenting with a lot of dissonance. Carly got him food and they went outside and were talking with at least Cherie for a long time. Cherie wants him to hear “Bugle Boy of Company C”, although I didn’t catch why. I added it to our library. August asked her, “What was the technology like when Opa was born?” And August and Cherie had some good fun making fun of Opa’s age: “There was no technology.” “Was he a caveman?”
He struggled with how they could have airplanes without computers, and asked “How did they make airplanes without modern technology?” History of technology might be a field we can explore more. When they were done he was quite silly inside and throwing the red ball around a bit. Cherie introduced the concept of a spanking to him, as something that some parents do, so he was joking around trying to spank us, or wanting a spanking.
I got him upstairs for a Brother game, wrestling with a kid with asthma, who fainted. August had itchy eyes from allergies. We discussed our schedule for the evening, and came to a good agreement: once he had his bath and brushed his teeth he would get to choose from stories podcasts, me reading, or Brother and Sister games until 10:20. At 10:20 it was nonfiction time, which I chose, and at 10:30 we had lights out and would listen to music until he was asleep. We had a little more Brother game, where he had Bar have a change of heart and suddenly like the ugly goose, and set up an ugly goose sanctuary.
Carly gave him a bath. He finished his peanut butter and crackers and listened to “The Silent War for the Open Door” We discussed names and asked, “Can I have a girl name? Because it will be funny…and confuse people.” He wants to be called Zinnia. We brushed our teeth and did nonfiction time, reading more of the book on consciousness. The section we read reminded me of his debate with Cherie on where memories exist, and he declared he’s a materialist. We listened to Rival Consoles and got lights out. He asked, “How do you become a dictator?” I discussed that, and loyal was a word of the day. A kink in our bedtime agreement was that we hadn’t specified when he had to stop eating Cheerios (although we had agreed on one container). So he wanted those now, and kept eating and eat). He finally finished them close to 11, after which he lay down for a minute and declared “I can’t sleep.” Progress though, as he was then asleep by 11:05.
Morning piano:
His jazz song:
Song of the day – fast triplets:
Toy Piano Anthem (his old song from before piano lessons):
Copying mama:
Today’s going upstairs song and dance:
Playing for Oma and Opa:
