He was laughing like crazy at 5:50. Heard him say a few things, but didn’t catch it. I woke him up at 9:30. He stretched for a long time. He was wearing his shirt backwards again today. Yesterday he had had I in the right direction, after having it backwards for three days before that. Seems rather intentional. Or at least he doesn’t care.
I read some Boxcar Children, then he got up and we did our teeth. Downstairs he played some piano and I got us scones for breakfast. He ate and I read more of the Boxcar Children. We discussed phrases like led aside, let alone versus let (her) alone, and call her (meaning to yell to someone as opposed to a phone).
We then went to Minecraft. He initially agreed to survival, but then remembered his exploding city. After Minecraft we went up for a bunch of wrestling. He also started a game of Would You Rather. He asked if I would rather he had been born blind or deaf. That was a really interesting one, as I would have chosen deaf, but knowing how important music is to him now that seems like it would have been a terrible choice. I asked if he’d rather just be able to play piano or a synthesizer for the rest of his life and he chose the synthesizer. Interesting, as he doesn’t play it too often now. I’m wondering if a full weighted keyboard is in his future if he stays serious with it.
When we’re wrestling he doesn’t actually like to get grabbed or held, so it is mainly pushing and pretend to get hurt. He talked about what was “in the limits” and what wasn’t, and it mainly seems like he really doesn’t like feeling trapped, especially not his arms/hands. That explains a lot, from his responses to hugs, to being held when he’s upset. I said it was kind of surprising, since he had grown up in the backpack, but then I added that in the backpack his hands and legs were free. And he then remembered though how much he hated the rain cover. I was surprised and excited that he remembered that, but then asked if he remembered anything else about it, as it would be kind of sad if the only thing he remembered was the worst part of it. He then said he remembered drinking from the backpack, using the nozzle. He also said he liked the orange color of the rain cover, we discussed it more, and he realized the orange color he liked was the orange of my own rain jacket, the hood of which would be right in his face.
We then did some upstairs learning, watching a video about concussions (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvjK-4NXRsM) and then one about comas (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXN2-5h2id4). Through all of that we discussed terms like anxiety, depression, diagnose, culprit, dementia, and stimuli. And learned about the_Glasgow Scale_. He said that we then had to apply what we learned, so he acted out being someone that hit their head, then got a concussion and was in a coma.
We were upstairs for a long time, and came down after 1 to find Carly home already. Carly had brought a big chessboard home, so they played together on that. We went upstairs to get his phone for alone time, but it would be quite a while before that happened. He saw Carly carrying her backpack and coffee and other things upstairs and asked her, “Why are you gearing up like that?” I made tuna sandwiches for lunch, and he played some wonderful piano. We ate outside in the chairs, and he analyzed chess on the iPad. Back instead we watched Crash Course Computer Science #1 and learned again about Babbage and Lovelace.
He played more piano, then I agreed to play Candy Land. We did a couple quick games of that, then played two rounds of Mastermind, first with him guessing, then me. That went quite well. He was a little confused at the end though, asking what color you would use for “right spot, wrong color”—which is an impossibility. He was confused, then a couple minutes later basically said “Oooh, I got it.” Then he was confused again, before saying, “Wait…it clicked again.”
He played piano and said he found a five note scale: “It uses the same notes as b minor but only five notes and they’re in a different order.” Colin called early, and August did the sleeping and playing thing again. He wanted the marbles, so we finally opened the bag of them and he played with them on the bed and showed Colin. While still talking to Colin he came out and randomly told us, “Every year our couch is like a jackpot. Sometimes there’s even money.” Colin wanted to see water bubbles, so they went to the sink, and asked if the marble would float. August looked out through the porch area as he talked to Cassie and Colin: “I can see seven different kinds of trees out of that view.”
They hung up, then he did alone time, listening to “The Leaky Pot” and then we played Minecraft as he continued to listen to the last part of “Soft: The First Dog” and then “The Croc from Doonadoo”. He was blowing things up in Minecraft. I got up to start getting him dinner or something, and he ended up getting off a few minutes before Vivian then called for their evening time. I went for a run.
Even involved a lot of chess, and Carly was getting burned out on it. He had spaghetti and raw tofu with cilantro for dinner. And watermelon. After that was all over he wanted to wrestle upstairs again. He had a funny “going upstairs” voice and was laughing at his own voice.
We did a lot of wrestling upstairs, and hallucinate was a new word after something in a story about a shot that made someone see Barney everywhere. He was laughing hysterically at one point and told me to stop being so funny. I was just looking at him.
Carly gave him a bath, and he was telling her all about Minecraft stuff. I got his crackers and we went to his room. He listened to “Big Beautiful Wall” and asked about the word murmur. Then a story about the origins of Valentine’s day, then a couple shorter things as we brushed our teeth and he finished up with part two of “The Seal Skin Girl”.
Back in bed he saw an email from Cassie, asking if he prefers poop, chess, or Minecraft. He replied with the “Hmm” emoji, followed by the word “Minecraft”, which he typed with my help. He sent that, then said they should have include piano to make it even a harder choice. He then sent an email that was all emojis. Finally had lights out at 11:05. We listened to the whole Sowiesoso album from Cluster, then started it a second time. He woke me up a few times. He asked “What’s sufficient?” We discussed that and insufficient. At 11:40 or so he woke me up to ask, “What’s dementia?” He was grumpy when I said we’d learn about it tomorrow. At 11:50 he woke me to say he couldn’t sleep. And a few minutes later he was starting to get upset and saying “I’m never gonna get to sleep:” I changed the playlist to his playlist of his sleepy songs: the songs I used to sing to him all the time, but was definitely too tired to sing to him right now. That seemed to help a bit, and he was asleep, finally, at 12:10 to “Idaho”.
Morning piano:
Chess on a big board:
Song of the day:
Laughing at my face:https://youtu.be/Rc1Z3s2DUCE
