I started waking him up at 9:30. He was actually stretching when I came in. But then he kept closing his eyes and rolling over. I took advantage of the time to trim some of his fingernails. When I got him up a few minutes later I read several chapters of Wayside School and the Cloud of Doom. As we got up to go do our teeth he asked, “How do spies put on people?” I put ‘spies’ on the list of things to learn about.
Downstairs he started in a lucky block world, but then changed to the first world he played in with Carly when he heard Gilad would be ready in a couple minutes. It was the world where he had his first Minecraft dream. He and Gilad played in that world and switched to another. He and Gilad played for about a half hour, so then August and I played in a lucky block world for a while.
I remembered that the Potwins were flying to Albania today, and asked August if he wanted to send them a video. He wouldn’t say a message at first, then did a thumbs up when I asked if he wanted to. Carly suggested he needed to be silly to make Eve laugh, and so he did, saying the message, but also dancing around.
He played chess with Carly, then chess with me. He had a mini game, where I was handicapped a few points, and I was able to force a draw. Carly headed out on errands: to school for a couple things, to the bank, and to the post office. He asked to look up synonyms, and I taught him about a thesaurus and also antonyms and we looked up a couple words and learned cockamamy as a synonym for silly. We did a lot of the squeezing and shots game.
Carly got home, and opened an envelope from Colin. He had painted a picture for her. August said he had known about it from Zoom/FaceTime and kept the secret. They then ripped paper and played chess, and watched a clip of Swiss Family Robinson after August was looking at tree houses on Google as inspiration for Minecraft. They also did some math on the chalkboard at some point.
For alone time he listened to “Pollyanna Pumpkinseeds”, which was short, then I convinced him to look through the visual dictionary for words to finish his time. I was making the potato pie. Didn’t seem like it would take that long, but it kept going and going. Took way too long. Carly and I ended up liking it, but August wasn’t a big fan. Three times the work of a quiche and he didn’t like it, so not likely doing that again.
They played Minecraft, then went outside and planted the vine she’d bought yesterday. He drew Hermitcraft and watched a recap episode (week 3 or 4, I think), She read Joey Pigza Swallows the Key and he used five stars to play Green Planet. He talked to me about why he likes gardening and said, “I just like feeing the earthy soil.” We read more Wayside School and stamina was a word of the day.
I then got him out on a run. We ran our circle, backwards this time, and then to make it just a bit longer we ran a little further, to the corn flower area. We were going to sit and read there, but the benches were dirty so we decided to go home and do it. We sat outside and he ate his bar and we finished Wayside School and the Cloud of Doom.
We went inside and had the dinner. August was disappointed that there was nothing at all sweet about it—even the quiche usually has a slightly sweet crust. But we got him to eat a few bites before Minecraft time, and he ate it while playing Minecraft. Carly said he made his yummy noises. I went for a run. When I got back I found them building a parkour course. That was a great project for them to work on together.
I took a shower, then he moved upstairs to play chess with Cherie. He asked for food and I reheated his dinner and also gave him grapes. He ate all of that, then I got him crackers and peanut butter (4) and then seconds (3). Still hungry, I got him an apple and peanut butter. He slowed on that but ate a few slices. Carly had been entertaining Colin for a while. She then smashed another cockroach downstairs. After she gave August a bath they called Colin. August stacked stuff on her as she sat on the couch upstairs, then they went down and showed Colin the dead cockroach.
We cleanup up the mess from the stacking together, then in bed he asked why Formula is called Formula. We talked about what that meant, and the different levels and series of racing. He finished his apple as he listened to “The Lion and the Mouse” and “Arthur and the Ugly Duckling”. We went to the bathroom and he took a long time on the toilet. We discussed parkour, and he sang a song that went “Lookie lookie at my bookie” (from Keralis in Minecraft). We brushed our teeth, then he asked, “What’s a cowboy?” I discussed that, then he said, “There’s only room for one cowboy in this land.” It was a line from Rendog that he’d heard in the Hermitcraft Recap video.
In bed we listened to the Toro y Moi Causers of This (Instrumentals) album. He was, I thought, finally asleep at 12:15, but when I got up to plug in the phone he said, “Dada?” I put on the Carl Nielsen: Symphonies 1 and 2 album and waited a couple more minutes but he was asleep.
Last night he asked why some of his teeth are taller. He pointed out his bottom right teeth, his baby teeth. Maybe because the adult teeth are pushing up? Hadn’t noticed it though.
Video for Eve:
Leading us on our run:
Their parkour course:
