He woke up a little before 9. Carly was upstairs and met him. She came down and got the Perseus book and went back up and read to him. They came down at 9:30. He checked the internet speed, and I asked how it was. He replied, “I check the internet speed actually every day.” We played Minecraft, first in his new flat world. I think he had also played in it with Vivian last night. He then downloaded some new sky block world and played with that. Carly came in and got him off the iPad as I made him oatmeal. She played War with him, and was having him practice math, adding up cards, when they played some form of cribbage.
He played chess on the iPad, then they did a little yoga with Carly. She was then resting on the floor, and he was starting to climb on her, etc. so I got him to back off a bit and showed him how to balance a couple chess pieces on her, then took a photo. He thought hat was pretty funny.
I then convinced him to come outside with me, saying I was going to see how many times I could bounce a ball off his head in a minute. I did a bit of that, which he thought was funny. He also watered his plant and we looked at the growing papayas. He then walked around discussing algorithms. He was Bar and had robot arms playing video game and doing science experiments. Then mining uranium and doing a maze: “If blocked, then turn right…” Then he was describing an algorithm for an automatic metal detector: “If sense metal, beep, if not, move. If blocked, turn…” This was all language straight out of Swift Playgrounds and coding, and eventually he said, “Now I want to do programming…”
We did programming upstairs, on the bed, as that’s his chosen place for it nowadays. We started by looking up the solution to the one we’d been doing last time. We had made a mistake for incrementing the gemCounter variable. I was able to explain to him what we’d done wrong, and we went on to finish two more puzzles, learning more about while loops and comparisons, and using variables and constants. We kept forgetting to include the gemCounter increase, so when I asked what we were missing, the first time, he figured it out and said, “GemCounter equals gemCounter plus one.” After every one we completed he had to go get Carly and bring her in to show her.
We then went downstairs and he watched a non-Hermitcraft video from BDubs where he rebuilds the first big build he ever did in Minecraft 9 years ago, a Home Depot, and improves it. I made lunch of pinto beans with teriyaki sauce, crackers with meat and cheese, and grapes. We watched a couple of videos of Penn and Teller on Jimmy Fallon to introduce him to sleight of hand, then I read a couple Sideways School stories. Carly was then painting and August helped mix a little paint.
We went upstairs for something, perhaps more wrestling, and he talked about wanting to trick her. I suggested switching beds sometime: right before he fell asleep sometime he could go in and fall asleep next to Carly, and I could sleep in his bed, and she’d be surprised to find him next to her in the morning.
Carly made popcorn, and they had that and he did his alone time and I went upstairs to work. As I went I heard him say something, then Carly asked, “What did you say?” He replied, “I didn’t say it.” He was messing with her. He listened to a story, then they played Minecraft, then he read Messy Bessey’s Family Reunion. I came down as they were finishing that, and he was learning things like ee is the E sound, e is eh, and ch.
He drew ‘typing and spelling’, and we worked on that. I would say words, and he would type them. We did a lot of words reinforcing the reading sounds he’d just learned. He was on the blanket, and developed an inching pattern, that he found really amusing, where he would type a letter, then scoot on the ground, towards Carly. I then had him typing sentences, and was feeding him the first couple sentences of a book called Fly Guy that Carly had brought home.
Vivian called, and Carly talked to her about her reading and some history and politics stuff. I brought the typing thing to a close, as the scooting thing was kind of annoying, but then he did more on the couch.
We then went out on a bike ride. On the bright side it is nice that he’s agreeing to them, but they aren’t getting better, and if anything have gotten worse. We rode down to where the glass was/is on the ground, then back on the old roadway. When his chain came off he got really panicked while I tried to fix it, then when I paused, after we started going again, to restart my ride tracking on the watch, he was yelling at me to keep going. There was no way he wanted to stop at a park or anything so we went straight home.
We did our reading on the swing though, more Sideways School Gets a Little Stranger and he had his chocolate bar again, followed by three Pez, as he had drawn ‘treat’ from the basket before we left. He saw a bee, so we moved inside and did more reading, then he and Vivian started Minecraft right at 6. He was talking to Cassie for for a few minutes, and when she had to go he asked, “What’s it mean to shovel some mulch?” A good phrase of the day.
I went for a run, seeing a big gathering of Women Wage Peace on the overpass. I didn’t have my mask with me though so I didn’t want to stop and talk to them. Carly went on a walk, and I made salmon using a new recipe, topping the salmon with mayonnaise, then bread crumps cooked with coconut oil.
He played chess with Cherie upstairs, and I brought up the salmon, corn, and green beans for his dinner. He then had crackers and peanut butter. When they were done playing they were talking about parenting tricks, or reading, and they ended up joking about reading parenting books. August loved this idea, and said, “I love reading” He went and got Hippos Go Beserk and read all of it, then went and I helped him find the one actual paper parenting book we have as a joke. He read another Boynton book. We said goodbye at 10:05, and I read Barnyard Dance to him. He read Skip to My Lou backwards, then the I Love You book.
Carly gave him a bath and I did dishes. I brought up two more crackers, as he’d already had a few. When he and Carly went in his bedroom he was annoyed that Carly didn’t know how to enter his room quickly. When I came in and quickly closed the door August said, “That’s how you do it.”
In bed he listened to “Magical Mischief” on the Stories Podcast. August was quoting, “Hey you mangy feline, it’s time for your peaceful paws to hang it up, we’ve got a big guy in charge now…” From “The Lion Queen” And saying, “based on a Greek myth…by me, your host Kelsey Lee.”
We brushed our teeth, then listened to a Benge album together. He was asleep around midnight. I fell asleep with him, and got up for my book group meeting at 1.
Bugging mama:
Doing some coding:
Chocolate time again:
Humming while playing:
Song of the day:
Chess with Oma:
Reading 1:
Reading 2:
