Paul’s birthday today. I ordered a couple books for him from Amazon, which said it they would come with free one-day shipping, so we’ll see if that actually happens.
August got up at 9:07 and came down himself, calling “Dada” as he walked down the stairs. He went straight and turned on the fan and bathroom light. I asked if he wanted to go say good morning to Mama, but he asked me to do it for him, and he climbed in the black chair. I joked to her about that, and he said he was too lazy and called “Hi” out the door. But then when I went to talk to her for a minute he came out, carrying a rook, and cuddled with her.
A few minutes later he came back in, declaring it was Friday and he was ready to play with Gilad. He’s been excited about showing his redstone machines. August played for a few minutes on his own until Gilad was ready, then they played together. Spent about half their time in the redstone world, looking at August’s inventions, then they went in a survival world, the village world he’d made for Vivian, and they traveled hundreds of blocks finding temples and abandoned portals and the such. While they played I went out and took videos of our summer flowers and made a little “Summer” video, like the one I did three months ago.
After they got off he played some Dragonbox Numbers while I got breakfast, then he switched to Math Tango. Lasted longer than I had planned, as Carly asked me to go out on the sidewalk and tame the vine, then I made a big multiplication chart for him. I joked he was going to know his multiplication before I was done with it. He really liked it though, and was using it to help him in Math Tango. He’s getting better with his times tables though, and, for example, had 8 times 4 down pretty well by the time we were done. He went outside with her at some point and found a nice feather, which he came in and added to his collection.
Carly did a fruit and veggie order in the morning, and after the delivery came she made spaghetti. August grated the cheese, with me helping hold the grater. I gave him some mozzarella to taste and he said, “Mozzarella is my favorite cheese.” Carly cooked mushrooms for the spaghetti, and August had said he’d be willing to try them again. He hasn’t liked them for months and months. He ate one, then said, “Mushrooms is one of my favorite foods.” And, “Back to liking eating mushrooms…for months I thought it was gross.” And he talked about how he loves grating cheese.
We was then sitting on the couch doing something, and was scat singing. Scat singing was a word of the day after I explained what it was. A few minutes later he said, “Scat singing could be shared around the world cuz there’s no language.” He listened to “The Mouse Tower” for alone time. We played in the new survival Minecraft world and and listened to both parts of “Acorn Milk and the Blue Goblins”. When we got off he listened to “Dog King”. He sang along to the song.
Someone knocked on the door. It was a guy looking for Tali. I pointed him around to the side, thinking he was looking for the new guy. I didn’t recognize the name though, and looked it up: “Tali” is the person that people have been showing up, looking for, since we moved in. Haven’t had anyone by in months and months though. He kept listening, to “Prometheus Steals the Fire” and “The Blind Men and the Elephant”. He then got out the xylophone and played that for a while, then the piano.
I then got him out on a run. We did a lap and a half. We stopped at the bench by the park and he had Myna building a giant octopus in the sky. We then kept running. Today he spotted a stuffed angel thing hanging in a tree.
Back home he finished reading Alfred the Albatross. I then went up to work, and he played Minecraft with Vivian and Colin. I came back and took a shower, then he was playing Math Tango. Jeff and Colin showed us their bug collection, which is now mounted on a nice board with a frame. Carly started to read The Berenstain Bears Get in a Fight but Colin had to go to something. Carly and August ended up reading it, then she took him up for his bath. I went up and folded laundry and he played around.
In bed he listened to “The Enchanted Paintbrush”. August was talking about Vivian and asked, “Why did Vivian not like me pretending the arrows meant the car went up?” He remembered how, when we were driving around PA last summer, he would see the one-way arrows, which are literally pointed towards the sky but mean forward, and joke that we had to go up now, and it annoyed Vivian who kept explaining that’s not what they mean.
We brushed our teeth, then cuddled in bed and played a bit. He asked, “What’s it mean to be out cold?” A word of the day. He wanted to keep listening to stories instead of music. Don’t know if it helped him get to sleep any faster, as it took a long time, but I think there was less complaining that he was bored and that he couldn’t get to sleep. He listened to “The Goat in the Garden”, “Share and Ahare Alike”, and then “Thunder and Lightning”. As that started, he told me the whole story, explaining, “And the thunder is his mom scolding him.” I think he finished that story, and the next came on, but he was asleep right around midnight.
The garden – summer:
Multiplication table:
Scar singing:
Xylophone 1:
Xylophone 2:
An ending:
Working on the pre-algebra:
Working on a harder problem:
