Carly and I were in a video call with her friend Paul, who now lives in Chicago, when August woke up, exactly at 9, as he told me. I carried him downstairs and put him in front of the camera and August hid behind me. Paul hasn’t seen him since he was a year or two old, I think. He and I then played some goose, and looked up more about the game, finding out it was the first commercially-produced game, in Italy, from several hundred years ago.
Gilad was then ready for Minecraft. I helped August log in, and Gilad’s brother was playing as well and had made a flying machine that August rode with them. Later, when August and I were doing redstone he would talk about wanting to play with Gilad’s brother again. I went out to where Carly was talking to Paul and we talked some more. Caleb has finished his post-doc in Chicago.
Meanwhile, August did a lot of redstone. “I call it the boxing machine.” And he made up a wonderful word: “I symmetricated it.” When Carly was done talking to Paul, and August was done with Gilad, I went to town to pick up a package of cables that had arrived. This time, it was at hardware store. 3 years in Israel and all of our packages have either gone to the post office or the school. Now they’re showing up at convenience stores and hardware stores.
When I got home they were doing redstone together. After they were done, August went out with me to see the birthday balloons, which had been attached in a clump to the fence across the street, floating around in the street. He talked a lot about redstone: “I like doing redstone. Seeing the end of it is satisfying. The sound of the pistons is also satisfying.” We did a little Green Planet, and set it up to AFK. For one asteroid he said, “That’s a doozy.” Surveillance was a word of the day, based on the settings. Carly then got him outside, briefly, to look at all the cones that had fallen.
He had asked about organ transplants the other night, and back inside we watched a couple videos about it. They didn’t really hit the spot though, as they were about why it is done, and the process of getting on the list, etc. and not about why it works. We ended up playing the no lungs shot game, but that ended when he was getting a bit rough and dropped a chess piece on my head.
We played some piano together, then went back to wrestling. He was then being the dad and I was a kid. He had me act out getting upset, then him holding me down on the couch to calm down, etc. He was then the baby brother and crying, etc.
At some point Carly and August went for a walk. They walked around the Holly block and ended up in the bench area over towards Vatikim St. He found a bunch of new ant colonies and Carly agreed to let him leave a wrapper with chocolate on it for the ants, as long as they went back in the evening to pick it up.
He got his phone to choose a story for alone time and asked, “What does HALT spell?” He sang along to the Dog King song and listened to a story. He was saying, “Sweet peaches!” a few times today, which is from Tristan Strong. He had a mango and half a hot dog for lunch.
For Minecraft time he did redstone with me. I got excited as I finished up a round machine that would be a sort of perpetual motion machine, but then realized, as I finished it, that August had just set up a machine that kept going and going. He admitted his was more accidental, but still.
It was hard for him to stop this time. He’s really thinking about it and starting to learn circuits, so it’s a little hard to insist he needs to get off. We got him off the iPad though and he sort of played a little chess with Carly. But then he was just grumpy, and ended up making a kidding fort under the table. He used a blanket, some pillows, some of Carly’s canvases, etc. and I got his pink fan for him. He sat in there and listened to stories. First one, then “The Giant’s Causeway”. Then “The Tell-Tale Wrapper”.
We talked about running, and he said he wanted to do two laps after spending five stars for Minecraft. So we did that. I figured out how to reliably make flying machines, both going up and horizontally, and he did more redstone.
We then got out and ran our two laps. We paused for a break on our second lap, on a bench up at the park, then finished up: .53km. He was excited about that, and told Carly.
We sat outside and I read What If? while he ate. The book mentions the star-nosed mole as being ugly and August wanted to see a photo, saying, “If it’s from nature I still love it.”
He then played Minecraft with Vivian and Colin, and I went for a run. When I got back and out of a shower he was playing chess with Carly. They were playing from random positions. We went for an evening walk. He started dancing to the music across the street. That’s right, our neighbors across the street like to blast music loudly out the speakers attached to the outside of the house. They’ve also had several birthday parties there recently. It seems like they might be hosting them. We walked over towards the bench area towards Vatikim, to retrieve the wrapper, and he showed me where he had left a piece of chocolate for ants and other colonies he had found. On the way back he counted cats and we found a really nice young dog that wanted to play at the house with a really big yard. There used to be a big barky dog there. He counted the dog as well, since it was nice.
Back at home he played the Goose game with Carly while I ate, then we went upstairs and Skyped with my parents. He played a lot of cribbage with Mom. They really have it down, and he’s getting better and better with the math, I think. The downside is that I think he’s started to change the rules/cheat a lot. We had talked to Dad first, and they told us that Cindy is doing well after getting her teeth pulled. And as we were sitting there on the bed talking to Mom, August suddenly jumped up and disappeared, then was yelling down to Carly, saying he smelled popcorn. It was really cute. So he had apple with peanut butter and honey and a bowl of popcorn as they played.
They hung up at 10:10, then I had him take his bath. He was quoting the full “Jane Smith” letter from the Wayside School book, even though we only read it twice. After his bath he was then practicing yoga poses with Carly.
We went in to his bed and he listened to “The Celebrated Jumping Frog”. We brushed our teeth, and he was acting laggy, moving and talking jerkily. In bed, he was pretending to be cold or something, and we were pretending he was a hare. I was trying to ask what kind of music he wanted to listen to, but wouldn’t answer me, and I said, “But tell me what kind of music a hare likes to listen to or I’ll choose.” He replied, “Hare-y music” and was very proud of himself. He was then talking about how “I’ll be saved by my friend Adit.” Don’t know where he got that name from.
Back in bed he was doing a funny monologue that included what he called a cricket voice. Did a recording of both that and him being laggy. As we got the lights out and listened to a Cvlture album, he quote some story, “I’m going to confront…right then and there…What good is it going to do?” and was then quite for a couple minutes, before saying, “I’m excited for redstone…my new favorite subject in Minecraft.” He was then asleep around 11:50.
Redstone machines 1:
Redstone machines 2:
Song of the day:
Perpetual motion machines:
A silly dance:
Watching ants eat chocolate 1:
Watching ants eat chocolate 2:
Swarming ants:
