He called me in around 6. I lay down in the lower bed and fell asleep there until I woke up. Then, he called me up at 8:25. When I went in he rolled right over and fell back to sleep. I started waking him up at 9:05 but he was really sleeping. He was up at 9:35. He was quiet for a few minutes, then I read the Hardy Boys. Coma was a word of the day. The old tower at the mansion is old and abandoned and August was surprised, expecting mansions to always be in good condition. We talked about waxing and waning fortunes and family sizes and additional construction and technology and how they might lead to parts of a mansion being abandoned. He compared it to an ant nest: “It’s just like an ant nest…there’s thousands…”
We did our mouthwash, then downstairs he went to the piano: “That’s why I like G minor so much; it gives it an emphasis feeling.” We watched the Bdubs Hermitcraft video, because we knew it had to do with the mayoral campaign. We had banana bread for breakfast, then played Minecraft, in our survival world, and he watched some Ants Canada before going outside for a Brother and Sister game involving Brother getting in the fire ants, wasps, and electric eels. I picked up the tree things, and he watered his plants, including the new weed.
We sat in the swing and read the Hardy Boys, learning the word cahoots, then went inside to play chess with Carly. I made lunch of the cheese pastries, hot dogs, and fresh broccoli. They worked on the video for Eve. Carly wanted to do a better intro to it, but he was not open to looking at the camera and talking to Eve. Or maybe just not open to being directed. He did, however, like filming little interludes where he annoyed Carly with noisemakers or spraying her with his water bottle.
He asked me “What’s at the point of death mean?” He hadn’t really eaten his broccoli, but agreed to eat it before having his next snack, saying “I’ll probably get hungry upstairs.” We went up for wrestling time. He was having laughing fits when he would freeze me, then get out of my way, then I would act confused when he had disappeared. He was saying “I’m dying of laughter!” For a Brother game I had Ms. Safe call Brother “interesting” and August said, “He’s peculiar, not interesting.”
We went downstairs to see the finished video for Eve. Carly was then going to take him to the nursery, but he changed his mind about going. He wanted her to go by herself so he could do his alone time, but asked her to get him some flowers. She left, and he asked me about what blind people see. We read
https://chicagolighthouse.org/sandys-view/what-blind-people-see/. For along time he listened to “The Fox and Crow”, “The Cat Who Caught the Moon”, and “Raven Steals the Light”. He ate some broccoli and then the last cheese pastry thing. While waiting for Carly we watched some educational videos, starting with a series of short NASA videos about discoveries by Hubble (likehttps://youtu.be/yPMadwaSls0
), then a video about sight reading that he watched attentively (https://youtu.be/QNr7I1ZUNYs), and finally a Ted-Ed video about whether math is discovered or invented.
Carly got home and August went out to see the plants. He called me out, saying, “This is the flower mama brought me!…I thought those were fake…Thank you!” He was really excited about the flowers, and thanked her several times. She started playing Minecraft with him (he’d been waiting to play with her) and I went up to work. They were then outside, and Carly was transplanting and planting plants. I came down to watch the docking of the capsule with the International Space Station. I went back upstairs, and he kept watching the coverage. Carly then went for a walk, and August stayed in the yard by himself, but used my phone to talk to Carly as she walked. He directed her to walk around the Holly block at one point.
I came down when he was playing Minecraft with Vivian. I asked him where my phone was and he replied, “Hmm. How peculiar.” I found it, outside, then went for a run. I came back and they were still playing, then they talked to Cherie and he kept playing little bits of piano for her. Carly had made him a tuna sandwich and broccoli for him for dinner.
He has had this idea of the three of us playing chess together, with me on his side for some reason. I had the idea that I could help him, but each move I suggested would either be a really good move or a really bad move and he’d have to tell the difference. It worked pretty well, with him losing some pieces when I gave bad suggestions, and he didn’t make Carly take back the moves. In fact, they played to an almost-draw, but then Carly lost her rook in the endgame, and he ended up winning. He couldn’t figure out the rook and king endgame though, so it was a good opportunity to teach him that.
He really wanted to keep playing, but finally agreed to look for chess videos with me on YouTube so Carly could get ready for work. We found an animated intro to chess from Kids Academy and watched all of that:https://youtu.be/CtLfUSaVhUM
. Then a video with a coach (also from Kids Academy) (https://youtu.be/eIIkjtd61Zk) about opening strategy. August really paid attention, and when he went upstairs he told Carly all about how he was going to control the middle, and change some of his first moves to develop his pieces better.
Carly gave him a bath and they played a game of chess. In bed he ate his crackers and listened to “The Gingerbread Man” and “Noah’s Ark” and “Sleepy Hollow” on Stories Podcast. He learned the phrase “such as yourself”. We brushed our teeth, then he started the game Would You Rather, by asking me about medical conditions, like if I would rather be blind or deaf. We kept going with the game, going beyond medical conditions. He was really thinking about it, and really getting the dilemma aspect of them. When one of his options included not playing Minecraft for a year he said, “That’s a horrible thing to think about!” At one point he asked me if I’d rather have just him or just mama, but even as he asked it realized that I couldn’t answer it, and told me I didn’t have to, then said we should leave family members out of them. I thought that showed a real level of awareness there.
We listened to the new album from yesterday, and he was asleep around 11:35.
Song of the day:
Working in 8/8:
Trying to direct his acting:
Music for Eve:
Annoying mama 1:
Annoying mama 2:
Annoying mama 3:
