I started waking him up about 9:15. He was up by 9:30. About the first thing he said was that wanted me to pretend to be someone having a failing business: “You be a business failure…” We did that, then went and took care of our teeth. Shmuel called for no particular reason. He was talking about the meters and how often we should square up. I have no idea how this is supposed to work, and need to get Ada involved.
Downstairs he played some amazing piano, and he said that the scale he was using wasn’t a minor scale, but was similar. He showed me, saying, “It’s a cousin to a minor scale…” Which was a great analogy that he came up with on his own. He had a sneaking song that I made up words to (“Sneaking, sneaking up the stairs / You won’t know until I’m there”) and then he had a jazz song where he sang “chess, chess, chess, chess” to it. We did a video and sent it to Shmuel, as he’s been asking for another video.
We read some of the Hades book, where he learned the phrase “dire consequences”. He then moved to Minecraft. When he told me what he was going to do, he then said, “okay, son” in his Dad voice and told me that’s what I was supposed to say, when I didn’t respond. Watched an Ants Canada video after that, and fortify was a word of the day. I made French toast for breakfast.
We ate, then went upstairs to wrestle. Wrestling with August has always been more of an imaginative activity, with pretending to be strong and hurt and a lot of throwing of pillows. But today he was pretending to be a baby rhino, and then an elephant. He suddenly got a lot more forceful, as he was pushing against me as the animals. So good for his exercise. I was a series of animal babysitters, which kept getting killed or scared off. It went beyond animals, as he was things like a baby black hole, baby planet, etc. We also did more amnesia camp.
We went downstairs. He listened to a Stories Podcast about the Maccabees and Hanukkah for alone time, then one after that. For the Hanukkah one it first sounded like nonfiction to him, but when they got to the miracle part he said, “Oh, it IS a folk tale. That didn’t really happen.” He listened to a second short one, then he had a new game in a new flat world: making challenges for each other. Kind of little levels, like we’ve been having Brother do in the Brother and Sister game. He did a couple for me, that were things like figuring out how to get in a chest that was surrounded by fire, then using the contents to get to the top of a platform, then I did one for him that involved getting inside an obsidian mountain I made, which was packed with zombies, then finding a chest that had stone (for making a furnace) and other things in it. He then had to figure out how to get out, as it had been a one-way door.
Carly came home, and had a package from Cherie and Chuck. We ate a lunch of the noodle dish outside, then Carly came down and he opened the package. It had three math-related t-shirts and a tin of alligator poop mints. They went inside and played chess, then when Carly had to go back to work he and learned how to play Crazy 8s. We had time to play one hand, which he won, then we went upstairs and he had his session with Gabi. They mainly played the tank game. I talked to August later about possibly going back to Gabi’s office soon, and August wasn’t sure, because he likes playing the tank game so much. They play together now against the computer. I wasn’t sure why he likes the game so much, and he reminded me it’s because “I really like war and government.”
He went downstairs and spent 5 stars to play Minecraft with Carly. I started to do some work. He had kind of a hard time getting off. He then told me that he had a pet wither. He had managed to trap it somehow, and said he could go in and feed it things like cows, but that it couldn’t get out. At 5:30 I went back up to work for the online session of work, which then lasted until 7.
He had cucumber and crackers and meat and French fries that Carly made for dinner. When I came down he had had some toast and butter because he had a sore stomach. He had another piece of it with me. His stomach got better, I think, as he didn’t mention it again that evening. There had been some drama with Vivian and Colin, where August wanted to go to a new world because the one they were on was lagging, and when they said no he put water and lava on something. I never fully understood the drama, even when August talked to me at length about it later, as it didn’t sound like it would be that difficult to fix.
He and I played three more hands of Crazy 8s. I won two, then he won one. Cassie and Colin called and Carly and August talked to them. Vivian wouldn’t talk. Colin and August talked about what had happened in Minecraft. When I went for a run August and Colin were being silly, playing “Army Man” together. Carly gave him a bath, then I took a shower. They were doing math problems in the bedroom. Carly’s toothbrush turns on on its own sometimes, and August said maybe it turns on at night. I said it hadn’t woken me up at all, and he said, “It will never wake me up. I’m a master of sleeping.”
In bed, as he ate his crackers, he listened to a story about a monkey being tricked and, the story of Christmas, and a story about a boy and a sprite, “If I could Change My Skin” The host talked about Patreon and he asked what threshold means. Another word of the day. We discussed the lockdown as we brushed teeth, and why it had been so strict in the country where the Ants Canada videos are filmed (which isn’t, actually, Canada). Permitted was another new word.
Back in bed he brought up the Minecraft issue and we discussed that. He then started Would you rather? He first asked if I would rather have just arms or legs. He chose getting his own food during the day over putting himself to sleep, and sleeping with open windows to sleeping with the light on. He asked about bush babies, an animal from one of the stories. I showed him photos and he said, “Bush baby eyes is amazing.” We also discussed servals, and how he used to like the servals in Seoul. We listened to a Cluster album, and he took a long time to fall asleep. He got up to go to the bathroom again, after having gone when we brushed our teeth. He knew I was getting frustrated when he kept asking me questions and I wanted him to stop talking, and sometime around midnight he said, “One thing about Minecraft…you don’t have to react…” He told me something, and I sort of grunted in agreement. He said, “I think you’re saying ‘Oh, cool.’” He was finally, asleep sometime around 12:15.
Song of the day:
Math Shirts from Oma and Opa:
Chess with mama:
Army man with Colin:
