He had a rough night. He called to me 5 or 6 times. And I lay down next to him at least twice and fell asleep before getting back up.
I went up to wake him at 8:35. He cuddled up with me for a few minutes. I finally got him more awake and he just communicated with “uh-huh”. Carly came in and he followed her into the office and cuddled with her. They chatted for a few minutes, then headed downstairs.
They rebuilt the bird nest and played in it, then Carly got the Mohammed book and kept reading. When she talked about Mecca and people getting trampled, he told her about the running of the bulls and how few people have been killed in it. And when she talked about circling seven times and he asked why seven, he told her about the story of the tree and the seven realms, and how if the animals from the seven realms got together the realms would collapse. “here’s why I don’t believe in praying: they’ve prayed millions of times and God hasn’t done anything for them…God hasn’t dropped down and done something.” They had a really good discussion about religions, and talked about learning about other religions, and debated whether prayer is real/works and he said he’ll never pray.
We played Minecraft where he had been making a forest for Vivian yesterday. I was a woodcutter, and he made trees for me to cut down and build my house among. After Minecraft I made banana pancakes. Carly and August played more nest, then were talking about seeds while he started eating. I think he corrected himself on another R word, and she made a list of his R words: ripe, bored, dirt, and rot. There was more discussion of religion and persecuted and minority were words of the day.
When he was finally done eating he declared, “I’m as full as a kettle drum full of silver powder from the backs of banana leaves.” That’s a reference to one of the stories he’s listened. He asked about how water goes up a tree, and I reminded him how physics draws the water up through the evaporation process. He said, “I love physics.”
He did his page of writing. Carly acted shocked, as if she didn’t think he could do it. I joked that that was what we did every day; I gave him really hard things so that he could fail. He got in on the joke and said, “And then I cry.” The last thing he did was write ‘Althauser’, and they practiced spelling it. Carly said that the ‘h’ is silent, and we debated
He finished his page, and they talked about doing more writing, and writing stories or nonfiction, and what a sentence is. He wanted to trace his blood stream with the pen, after doing, or looking at, Carly’s arm: “It turns out kids don’t have as much blood streams? Why?” And he said, “Oh, this happens pretty often” when the cake beads that he rewards himself with during writing time spilled. Also said: “I think it’s fun to trace stuff; I’m going into a tracing phase.” “I do my grip automatically now, it isn’t shaky anymore.”
Carly got out the stencils and they did some drawing, after he was wanting to write all over everything like a two-year old. He was thinking about shopping carts and how they fit together: “You know those shopping cart things? I’m doing the physics of why they line up…stack…”
He and I then did the bird game in the nest on the floor. He was skeptical that I could play it correctly, so I was a bad bird father, letting the chicks jump out before they were ready, etc. Carly went for a little walk, and we played the game where he confuses a migrating bird with a magnet. We talked about magnets and magnetic fields and compasses and compared them to gravitational fields.
We went outside when he told me, “Do you want to see my favorite toy of all time?” He meant the pump/squirting thing. As he pumped up the pressure he said, “It yearns to get out…” We talked about the physics of it and engineering and also how ponds work, after he wondered why the water doesn’t just soak out of the bottom of them.
He had to go in for the bathroom. Bad timing as Carly was vacuuming and had to stop. He didn’t want to go back outside to let her do the rest, but then he decided to do it himself. He did the grey rug and the dining table area. He declared it was really fun.
He then sang a song: “I know how to sing the opposite of Let It Go…Let it in, let your problems consume you, don’t tell it to nobody…” Then he kept making up more:
“Let your problems consume you
And let you feel Shame
…feel Blame
…feel left out
…feel that your parents don’t like you
…pout”
I tried to read Henry and Beezus, but he wanted to convert words into binary, so I opened the converter on his iPad. Carly made zucchini, and I heated the last soft-boiled egg for him. He was wearing me out with questions, and when he asked how airplanes work I started to pull up YouTube to find a video. He saw a new Brave Wilderness where Coyote gets stung by a Cicada Killer, and I started letting him watch that. I then headed upstairs to work.
I think he kept watching Brave Wilderness videos, and then Sophia and her dad, Aron, showed up and they played in the yard. I went out after a bit to meet him. He showed me how some of the flowers looked like leaves, and had white centers that sort of looked like the white bugs:
“The flowers, like leaves
White bugs you believe”
They left a few minutes later and I headed back upstairs, then came back down at 5:40. They were outside. August asked, “Do you want to play hummus against hummus” He meant pumice, and was hitting two pieces together to make dust. He randomly asked, “What’s persecute mean?” He played with the blue pump, and joked, “This is totally the pump of truth. Don’t you agree?”
Vivian called just before 6 and I went for a run. I took a shower, and coaxed him off at 7:30 with ice cream. It turned out Carly was going to use the ice cream as an incentive for putting away the pillows and blankets, but after ice cream he did a good job of helping with that. I mentioned trimming my hair to Carly, and August got really excited and said he wants to do it. When Carly told him it was a job for adults, he got sore and thought we didn’t trust him. He got some of wooden blocks and set them up in a rather abstract shape and told us “That’s my proof” that he could handle it. He wouldn’t explain it any more than that, then destroyed it before heading upstairs.
He had his bath, then I brought up crackers and read chapter 4 of Henry and Beezus. He listened to “Arachne the Weaver”, where stuff it, sorrows, and sick em were words of the day. He pretended to be snakes and asked for photos of the most dangerous snakes. We read about the taipan (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taipan), black mamba, and king cobra.
We went out and brusher our teeth, and he did a lot of hair brushing. Back in the room he was walking around on the bed, and I told him to be careful at one point. “Careful? What do you mean careful? I like hitting my head and getting a concussion.” He thought his new water bottle tasted like the straw. I refilled it and his old one and he used his old one. We listened to “The Birds and the Trees”, then listened to the new Benge album, Thirteen Systems. He was asleep around 10:45.
Pumping:
Let it in song: