Author: Ryan/Dada

I woke him up at 8:10. He took a few minutes and then said, “Dada, I discovered an asteroid and it is 3.5 quadrillion miles away…And it’s only as big as a city.”

We played Minecraft in our original creative world. For reference, he found a forest he liked at 25, 128, -903 and our house is at 80, 64, -13.

After we finished, he talked on and on about a plan to cut down really big trees in Minecraft and use the wood to make wooden pick axes to trade to villagers: “I’m a merchant.” He turned into being Myna, who then was making peaceful potions to turn everything peaceful. He said, “What? I decided I’m a pacifist!” She was making a house with the skeletons (using bone blocks, a mine with the creepers, etc. “I threw this infinite pacifist potion…”

He then played piano. He hasn’t really made progress on the piece she gave him, as in the third measure there are two notes that he says sound bad. Could be the tuning of the piano, but it sounds okay to me, and is a simple 4 to 5 in the C scale. Over to graphing, there he made some really cool graphs.

Our appointment with Gabi was at 11. It was hard to get him to stop graphing: “I just love math. And I want to grow up to be a mathematician. So I can make my own formulas.” “Seriously, how do they even do that? I don’t even know how to use theta except for making a spiral.” “I love making graphs.”

At Gabi’s we found both the parking lot and street entirely full for the first time. Had to continue down the main(ish) street to the next block, and park a block down a different side street. At Gabi’s August took out the armies stuff. We played with them almost the entire time. It was me and August versus Gabi. We mainly set things up and joked about it, then August would knock everything down. Gabi seemed like he was trying to probe a little more with his questions today (why the war was happening, how August thought the soldiers would feel, etc.) so it seemed to make a little more sense to me, but on the other hand when our characters have wars in our imagining games they are always within Minecraft, and the point is always leading to silliness. I did add some comic relief as we got the set of animals involved, and a confused tiger was eating everything, and when August got the doll furniture involved I was stacking it as high as possible. Near the end August was putting some of the soldiers in his mouth, and when I asked him to stop he hid behind the chair instead. We managed to coax him out and we each cleaned up one container of stuff. We spent the last few minutes throwing and kicking a Nerf ball around.

The plan had been to go from there to some place for lunch, then shopping at the art store and Max. I have an idea for a nice clipboard sort of thing to put on the piano to hold his music papers (as they slump down on their own). But on the drive down Shmuel called, asking me to unlock the gate. I said we would be back in an hour and he said that was fine. So we know drove back to the house. We were listening to music in the car today. At the house August did some graphing and I went and told Shmuel I had opened the gate. A part of the junk that’s been in the yard for months is the frame for a tent, which they had now erected. I thought it was to keep rain off the stuff.

When we pulled up, David and his wife were coming out of their house. David ran over to me, I thought he was going to talk about Shmuel being back. But instead he started asking my thoughts about China and the Coronavirus. It also turned out David thought we were from England. He thinks August has a British accent. I mentioned something about Shmuel, and his wife said, “Who’s Shmuel?” They know him as Sammy.

August did some graphing, then piano, where we worked on major and minor scales and chords. He then had a Brother game where Brother drank a ton of water in the dessert, but then needed to pee but was holding out for a bathroom.

We headed up to VIPizza for lunch. There, August went ahead and actually requested two slices from the start, one cheese and one corn. I got one of the calzone things (I still can’t remember the name of them, although I thought I had it down again today). He ate the whole pieces. When he needed a bathroom it was locked. Instead of walking all over town like we did with Eve, I asked, and it turns out they are keeping it locked now and you just have to borrow a key. We got back to our pizza and read more of What If?

When we were done we walked back to the car. Headed to Max now, but Shmuel called. Again. Asking us to unlock the gate. I was confused, thinking they needed in to the electrical box. So we drove home. Again. It turned out he wanted me to talk to Eran, the guy who is probably going to rent downstairs. Funnily, I recognized Eran when I saw him. Not the Eran we had bought the piano from, but we had just seen Eran up at VIPizza, buying pizza before us. Anyway, Eran does some sort of tech work, and was concerned about the internet connection. I gave him our wi-fi password (a gesture of goodwill Carly and I had agreed would be good to make up for ceiling noises) and discussed getting a fiber line and sharing it, if they are available yet. Shmuel invited us to see the tent down below. August and I went down. Apparently it isn’t a temporary structure, but supposed to be a feature. Sigh. He tried to sell me on taking the fading, dusty easy chair again.

August and I then, finally, headed to the art store and Max. We walked around the art store first. First time since it was reorganized. Saw some interesting things, but nothing we had to buy. They had easels the size I wanted for the clipboard. But the nice wood ones were oval and the rectangular ones were lavender. Aargh. We then walked up to Max. No luck there. We found a little set of cubes though with multiplication problems on them. I pondered getting it, and August said we should, arguing, “You want me to learn math, right?” I was then looking at their headphone options (August needs new ones). He almost got run over by two strollers in a row coming around a corner and asked, exasperated, “Why do babies keep going through‽” There was immediately a third, which was hilarious. Decided against headphones, then headed home.

We started by doing more binary numbers. We watched a short video that reviewed what we did last night:https://youtu.be/LpuPe81bc2w

I then drew my own template in Paper so we could make bigger numbers. Then we got crazier and did decimals. We did the decimals as both fractions and converting to base ten, and August agreed that the fractions actually were simpler. We then started to make the next step from just binary numbers to binary code. We watched a Ted-Ed video on how binary code works:https://youtu.be/wgbV6DLVezo

We talked about that as we went. Oscillate was a word of the day. Didn’t have time to follow up on it today, but August totally picked up on how letters are represented (it discussed UTF-8), as he talked about it later. Instead, we followed up with the start of an animated Ted-Ed series called “Think Like a Coder”:https://youtu.be/KFVdHDMcepw

August loved that.

Carly got home. August said hi to her, then was doing his first alone time. He didn’t like us getting frustrated by Shmuel’s tent, which takes up our view from the kitchen now. He defended the tent, saying how much he likes it, and pointing out he got a red spikey ball from it (he found it when we went down and Shmuel said he could have it). He played piano for alone time, then we started his iPad time by watching “What does 5 Million Look Like in Minecraft?” from Mumbo Jumbo. That really got August’s interest, and he started talking and talking about, and ended up talking about how many withers he would have to kill to get 3 quintillion crystals, and how he would make a world made entirely of beacons. He then spent some time showing and explaining binary numbers to Carly. He clearly understands the concept now. Probably 15 minutes of that before he realized we still had 20 minutes left to play Minecraft.

He said he was going to do multitasking: “Multitasking: doing binary AND playing Minecraft.” He said he could use terra-cotta bricks as paper, and talked about how he could write all the numbers in bricks, and showed Carly, using the multiplication blocks, how he could make round zeroes by using “kitty corner” blocks. We played for 20 minutes (he didn’t multitask), then he watched two Bright Side videos.

We had some dinner (soy chicken, sweet potatoes, and cauliflower), then he got really interested in helping with a work discussion we were having, about how to get books into the middle school classrooms (buy more or just use library books). After dinner he went into a long discourse on using guns to launch things, like space rockets. He then did his second alone time and they played Minecraft and I finally made the bits and bytes poster. He wants me to add his own to the list: “Inkabyte”, which is 1 with a googol of zeroes after it bytes.

He did some graphing calculator while Carly took a shower. He was then still hungry so ate an apple I sliced for him. He told Carly about asymptotes. He told me he wants to know how to graph on paper so it is like a kidding trick, getting more graphing time. Something for tomorrow.

We got him upstairs and he had a treat while Carly washed his hair. They then read the Comic Science: Plagues book again. I did a few minutes of work, then put him to bed. We read the chapter in What If? about what would happen if the Earth started to get bigger. August immediately jumped to “The Moon would probably accelerate…” and eventually crash. Which is exactly where the chapter ends up.

We listened to the newest Stories Podcast “King Midas and the Satyr’s Song”. August liked it but was a little disappointed it wasn’t the original King Midas story, that I’ve told him. I told him we could look for that one tomorrow. We listened to a couple of Andy’s meditations off of his album for children (I had bought it last night), then put on some Benge. August recognized it, and fell asleep by 10:30.

Playing in VIPizza:

Humming a sound from the synth:

Teaching Carly binary numbers:

I woke him up a little before 8. Downstairs we played Minecraft in our Survival Trival world. We then watched a few educational videos I had saved for him: “Legacy of the Spitzer Telescope” from SciShow, “Meet the Sight Words – She” from Preschool Prep, and “The Fastest Growing plant in the World” (which is about bamboo). He then told me, “I want to be a dirt researcher when I grow up.” Which is because of the documentary from last night. Also kind of funny because the parents in the Brother and Sister game are dirt researchers, and a running joke is that their jobs are boring. August didn’t want me telling Carly about that though.

I made him oatmeal for breakfast. We then checked on his salt on plants experiments (I don’t remember writing about it, but last night he had had the idea to put salt water on a plant. They chose the weed that he and I had taken from across the street and planted, and was doing quite well) and read about why salt is bad for plants: https://sciencing.com/happens-put-saltwater-plants-6587256.html The plant yesterday had started to look quite wilty after only a few hours, and it now looked even worse.

He got whiney when one of us wouldn’t play Katamino (the blocks we borrowed from Shani) with him. Eventually he asked me nicely and we played for a long time. He then did alone time and they played Minecraft. We talked about binary, Morse code. We then did some funny brother and sister games, but I can’t remember what they were.

They drove to down to get a couple things at the grocery store and to get a pastry at the bakery, which was apparently really good, but I didn’t get details. They also went to the bank, and Carly called me. She asked me to research credit card options for us (ours are expiring anyway, and we’ve talked about switching), so that was the rest of my time.

They got back and Carly got him some eggplant. He did eat much, although he had liked it pretty well yesterday (even though Carly didn’t). He did alone time, then the two of them did Minecraft. That took us just close to 12:30. We got ready and drove to Gabi’s. On the way he talked about creating some sort of machine. He said, “I’m doing something to see if we’re real.” That is, he said he’d test to see if we were in a simulation by creating something that would lag the computer we were in. He then asked for the escape velocity of our galaxy. According to Google it is 550km/s.

At Gabi’s I got him set up with his iPad and he watched things. Heard some laughing, and he was watching Llama Llama when we were done. Nothing much to report, although I got to hear the fuller story of how they negotiated last week for a cookie once every three weeks. He wasn’t upset when they did it, but he sort of hid behind Gabi’s chair while he and Carly talked about it. And last week they had played Monopoly. August didn’t want to compete, so it was Gabi versus Carly. August then basically took over playing for Carly and was making decisions and everything, although he mentioned a couple times that he wasn’t actually playing. When they finished, and Gabi had lost, Gabi asked him how he thought that made Gabi feel, and August said “Stupid”, which was quite revealing.

On the walk back to the car Carly pointed out it was a leap year, and we talked about February 29 birthdays. August was kind of confused at first.

At home he was on the graphing calculator and we discussed the tilde. A word of the day, though we failed to figure out how to use it in a regression on the graph, although there is one already set up, and we talked about what they are for, discussing “Regression parameter” in Desmos. I then realized it was a Palindrome Day: https://apple.news/A4AHfE3YKRru-vvtXV5yWmw I wrote it out for August and we discussed it.

I then went up and did some work, and Carly was cleaning the car. I think he spent a minute on the couch alone before finally going out with Carly. He had to pick up a cashew for her that she found in the car. He came up to ask me about the status of his alone times, and told me he can now play “Ode to Joy” in six keys. When I came down at 4:30 he was watching the Kurzgesagt video about a Dyson sphere. I think he had finished his alone time and was watching educational videos first, as she was still finishing in the kitchen.

I went to the dentist for a cleaning, which was quick and easy. No issues. Which is good, as it has been four years. Back at home Carly told me he had really learned the word acronym from the Comic Science: Plagues book. He was finishing a video, then showed me “Ode to Joy” in multiple keys, his looks and motions. We ate Carly’s soy chicken and sweet potato for dinner. He asked about allergies and they watched a video about peanut allergies. That just made him want to eat straight peanut butter, and he ate a couple spoonfuls.

We read some What If? and sublinate was a word of the day. He then did a lot of graphing. I found the Desmos user manual, which was great and we got equations from, then I found cheap/free textbooks that might come in handy at some point. Some on Apple Books, and also the OpenStax app. He played piano, and Carly was talking to Cassie, then they used FaceTime. Vivian was talking about Toca World, and Cassie told August, “Thanks for getting my kids addicted to it.” August sensed what she was saying and declared, “Sarcasm!” The funny thing is that August almost never played Toca World—maybe just once or twice, although he had made good use of Toca World and Toca Builders in his pre-Minecraft era.

He showed them the piano, and Vivian or Cassie said something about “the piano.” He replied, “You mean broken piano?” To which Colin replied, “You’re funny August.” August then had the phone, and Colin wanted him to go upstairs. They were then playing hide and seek: Vivian was taking August with her as they hid from Colin or tried to find him. August would play too, turning off his mic when they were hiding from Colin, and also climbing under the blanket, in Carly’s closet, and in his room as if he were hiding too.

We said goodbye at 9. Carly gave him a bath. They did more math, and at the end were talking about how he wants to learn binary code, starting tomorrow. He was so into binary though that we used Paper on the iPad and started right now. I used the ‘month’ paper background as a template and taught him how it worked, then we did several numbers, taking turns, and also going both directions (from a base two to base ten and vice versa). It was pretty amazing how quickly he got it. Before we were done he wanted to do one in Base 8, and we used a calculator to figure out that 777777=262143 in base 10.

For our story we listened to Stories Podcast version of the Yiddish folk tale we’ve heard on Circle Round, where the house is so crowded and loud and the advice is to bring all the animals in. In this version the main character is a woman, and it is called “Smaller than Ever”. We then listened to the first Andy Hobson meditation, and he was asleep by 10:20.

Ode to Joy in different keys:

Manipulating graphs:

Another song:

Hide and seek with Vivian and Colin:

He was up just before 8. I had just gotten up. I went back up and he lay on top of the covers of my bed for a few minutes, then went down and said “Boo!” to Carly. They almost immediately started doing math, reviewing and improving on his understanding of area and circumference of a circle. My contribution was to introduce absolute value when he was talking about finding the circumference of a circle with a negative radius.

I made scrambled eggs for breakfast as they played Minecraft. We ate, then he played piano. A little work on the piece, but mainly he worked on a couple of his own melodies. Carly headed to the store. He had done alone time and we then did Minecraft, blowing up TNT. He watched two Bright Side videos: one about water purification, and one that was facts about airplanes.

He was then playing piano and Carly got home. He did his alone time, playing piano, and then they played Minecraft together. He ate yogurt and watched Life Noggin videos. One on cloning, then videos on “What if we brought extinct species back to life?” And “What if every cat suddenly died?”

I was making charts on the iPad, starting with one to teach him musical modes. That had Roman numerals on it, and he loved the idea of learning Roman numerals, so I made another chart for that, and we spent a lot of time learning Roman numerals. He got the system down pretty well. Carly made him (and me, when he didn’t like the ones with avocado) sushi. August was looking under the couch and said, “It’s like an infinite supply of treasures.” When he couldn’t find a flashlight with good batteries he asked, “Do we have ANY flashlights that have batteries that aren’t running out?”

I got him out in the yard. Carly asked if we noticed the new plant. We hadn’t. She finally told me which one it was. August had some way that he wanted to spy on Carly, but I convinced him to go up to the park and recycling with me first. We walked up and I did recycling. We went to the playground and told a big story together about seeds taking over the world. August had scooped together a big pile of seeds and dropped them with his hands, and as we walked home he finished telling his story, but was starting to rub his eyes and on the couch he hid his head under the blanket. I encouraged him to wash his hands and face, and he went and did it.

He did some graphing while Carly finished up what she was working on in the kitchen. He had been wanting Carly to go out to garden, part of his plan to spy on her, and finally she was able to and they both went out. They were outside for a good amount of time, and walked up to the park to pick some fresh rosemary. When they came back he came in and went to the bathroom and was talking about mosquitoes and how he didn’t want them to go extinct: “but I still like them…and I like the Ebola virus: part of nature.”

He declared “I want to make my own formulas.” Not sure what he meant specifically by that. We read more What If? and updraft was a word of the day. Carly was making food, and as she was finishing that I went for a run. As I left, I got him set up with a documentary on Curiosity Stream. It was about the world under the surface of the dirt. Carly made popcorn.

I got back and took a shower, then started writing down formulas as they did more math, in particular figuring out the equation for the length of a line.

We went upstairs. On the graphing calculator he had figured out how using the ‘Random’ function would make different shades of a color, and I taught him the word gradient. We also figured out how to use the ‘datasets’ command. Carly gave him a bath. In bed, we listened to “The Mouse Tower” on Stories Podcast, then listened to a meditation. He was then asleep around 10:30.

Song of the day on piano:

His fast song on piano:

Cool animated graph:

Salt on a plant experiment:

During the night I realized that August’s light was in. I got up and realized he had turned sideways on his bed and hit the switch by his bed with his foot. Then, about 7:40 he called me up. He had knocked the lamp off with his foot. While I got that out of the way he crawled under the blanket, head first. I closed the blinds on one of the windows and covered his legs with a blanket and eft the room. He fell back to sleep until 8:10. This time, he was right side up on the bed, but had the blanket over his head. He cuddled like that for a few minutes.

I had just placed an Amazon order, with things for homeschool, like a book on drawing, microscope slide supplies, and the game Tiddly Winks. I need to do an order of stuff to make musical instruments too. As I explained all the things we were doing today he was rather amazed, and commented on how we were doing all of that in 7 hours. He then said, “I know how digital zoom works.” Like a cloth and you stretch it apart to see the threads better, and that’s the pixels.”

We went downstairs and played Minecraft in our original creative world. He ate oatmeal and watched Bright Side educational videos. Brinicles was a word of the day.

He played a lot of piano, in particular practicing and playing with the metronome, then we got going to Tel Aviv. We started with music on the way, then switched to Story Pirates. We made it to the place where we got the piano and Eran gave us the broken piece (even smaller a chunk of it than I thought, but it is something). We had just parked in the building parking lot and I called him and he came down.

So August and I hopped back in the car and drove down to southern downtown Tel Aviv. The parking lot I planned to use was full, but I found one a couple blocks to the north. We walked south and found the Men Tenten Ramen Bar, which Jonathan had told me about last night. It was now just after 12 (when they opened) and August was starved. We got a bowl of ramen with chicken. August really liked it, and ate the half of an egg in it, and while he thought it was odd that he was eating bamboo ate almost all of that as well. We read some of What If? and they gave him a free coloring book and pack of markers, which we didn’t use. We then ordered the black sesame ice cream. He liked it. He talked about it not being the best, but that it was interesting. We talked about the whole thing being a food/cultural experience and how he would now remember those (ramen, bamboo, and black sesame ice cream) flavors.

On the walk south from the car he had been stopping and looking at some of the jewelry stores. There was one that had interesting machines in the front. I had thought they were more than just jewelry-related machines. On the way back we stopped and looked in it. No oscilloscopes, but still interesting. We saw little anvils and other tools that he liked looking at, and realized that the microscopes and other things up front were for jewelers and we discussed them.

We then walked into the art market. He wandered a couple blocks, looking at things. I’m getting the sense that people are a little touchier at their art markets here, as he was told not to touch (something rather unconcerning, at that) at least once and when I had been here with my parents there was a woman that took exception to me taking a photo including her booth even though my mom was buying from her at the moment.

Anyway, we turned around and headed back south, and stopped to watch the marimba player, then a piano player. We gave each of them 5 shekels. On the way back to the car there was an older woman playing accordion. Also good, but a couple blocks from where she could actually make some money. I’m guessing there’s some sort of permit needed for playing in the market area. We also gave her 5 shekels, although it was a busy, uncomfortable sidewalk so we didn’t stay long to watch.

We made it back to the car and listened to more stories on our way north. We parked and walked into the school a little before 3. We dropped the last bag of books to donate off at the library, then went and met Carly. The next bit of excitement having a math session with Anna, the middle school math teacher. However, when we went down there were still students in there at 3. So we waited outside for a few minutes. A couple of Carly’s students were out on the grass with the guinea pigs and let August pet one of them. Then, August spotted the math mural. He got really excited over it, and kept repeating things like, “I love mathematical formulas!” as he read off things on it and kissed it and asked questions about it. He spent a good 10 or 15 minutes on it.

There was still one student still taking a test, so we sat at a bench and read a couple of the chapters in What If? Bandwidth was another word of the day, as was sneakernet. Anna came out and started talking math with him, then the student was done and we went inside and they got to it, with his graphing calculator app out. Integral and summation were new words as she explained the symbols he asked about.

That was really good, but time was short, as she needed to go watch her daughter play hockey in the Sports Marathon. We walked over with her, asking about how Desmos uses factorial (!) in its graphs along the way. She was puzzled by the behavior as well.

Over at the gym August and I saw Taya outside and said hi to her and family. Inside we went in and saw ping pong being played and discussed the foosball table. He remembers Thatcher being really good at the beach house. He watched hockey through the glass window, looking down on the gym, for several minutes until Carly showed up. There was a concessions table, and I thought they were going to have popcorn, but oddly they were putting things away, so August had a bar from my backpack.

I was thinking that Carly had to supervise now and so we were going to go down and watch. But it turned out her supervision wasn’t until 6, so she was ready to go home. So we got going.

At home he did alone time, then Minecraft. I made fresh roasted cauliflower, schnitzel, and the last of the sweet potato patties for dinner. We ate, then he played music and did graphing. Carly headed to school.

He did his second alone time, then we played Minecraft. We then started with the Earmaster app, which Minke had suggested. He did really well with the intervals. The rhythm matching was harder for him, but their system was a bit frustrating as well (it only plays the rhythm once, then you immediately have to copy it—no listening to it multiple times, then starting a count in when you are ready).

We moved to the blocks from Shani and he was giving me challenges, like to make a bridge, or to make a square on the ground. For that one I talked about the footprint of a building, which was a new concept to him.

He hadn’t eaten his cauliflower, so I said I had a proposition for him. After explaining the word to him he agreed to eat all of his cauliflower, which he did in short order, and we then had chocolate milk. I figured out how to pop the key covers off the piano keys, so we were doing that as Carly got home. He was identifying which keys would get stuck, and I was taking them off. By the end of it there were about a dozen missing. Looks uglier, but one important step in making it play better.

Carly got home, then gave him a bath. They were doing circle math (like circumference and area) in the bathroom. I did the dishes. In his bedroom we Skyped with my parents, telling them about his piano lesson and the piano. August was trying to hit the limit for how long typed messages could be (he remembered Vivian hitting the limit) and we managed it. He was trying to make lag or crash it. Luckily, neither of those did it. He went to the bathroom and as we got ready to go to bed he told me, “Criminals shouldn’t have to go to jail. They should just have to give back the he stuff they stole.” And, “I watched a video about how it’s hard to re-enter society.” I had seen him watching that (a Bright Side, I think) earlier.

We listened to a meditation, put on music, and he was asleep at 10:45.

Playing with the metronome:

More metronome practice:

Trying sesame ice cream:

Watching marimba:

Watching piano:

Big pixels:https://youtu.be/AfXQcDusqCQ

Guinea pig:

Loving the math mural:

Time with a math teacher:

Silly with the blocks:

He was up at 7:45. We climbed in the couch bed and took twenty minutes. We then headed down and started on Minecraft. He was trying to break it with bees and TNT. We had some breakfast I then did some cleaning (August did the toilet) and got ready for Lauren and Gilad to get here. He did some graphing on the calculator, wanting to figure out some of the calculus stuff. He changed an equation I had downloaded for him, telling me, “I made some tweaks.”

They got here just after 10. They got to work playing with the Legos and magnet blocks. They basically just stayed down there, playing together and separately the whole time. August built a structure out of the magnet blocks and when Gilad’s thing wanted to stay in it August agreed, adding “You’ll have to pay the rent though.” It then turned into a hotel for the cars. August also got tape and taped together markers and other things into a musical instrument.

They left a little before 12. I made us lunch of schnitzel and roasted cauliflower. The piano guy arrived, but despite knowing a fair amount about it before getting here spent a total of two minutes looking at it before saying it wasn’t worth our money to work on it. He also talked about how over dampers are bad and they should be moved. He said he didn’t know if it could be tuned, but didn’t seem to even look at the soundboard, and didn’t try anything. His advice was to get rid of it. I asked how, and he said give it away. Which made me wonder who would take a piano that was supposedly not worth working on. Fool someone into taking it? Or was it actually savable? I was pretty down about it when he left, but then I started to realize that most of the things, like the broken hammers and badly-glued on keycaps were quite fixable. August and I looked at it, and I fixed one hammer with wood glue. I took out the other two, and figured I could get one of Shappell’s students to fabricate parts for them, or maybe Dad could make wood pieces. The real question is tuning it. None of my tools would turn the pegs, so I need to order a cheap set on Amazon.

August asked, “What’s intricate mean?” So a word of the day. I got the bike trailer out of the car and cleaned a bit, but didn’t get to vacuuming. August and I then headed to school to get Eve. We picked her up and said hi to Heather. We headed towards the exit, and I suggested the nature reserve. We walked over there and wandered around the campus. The two of them talked the whole time, and he said, “Ultraviolet is a better color…because butterflies use it to find flowers.” They spent about 15 minutes playing with the big outdoor scales by the high school.

We then headed home, where they played with the magnet blocks and August showed her some graphs. They played out in the Zinnie house, then back inside made a sort of machine that I was supposed to lie on for my doctor visit. I did that, then Heather came and picked her up.

After she left, I then headed over to Jems at the mall for Guys Night. I talked to Tom Marshall about York University, where his daughter might go to college. It is probably that or Durham. And I talked to John Teters about biking trails, and he also told me about how if I log in to Desmos as an adult/teacher there are all sorts of activities. Finally, I talked to Mike Shappell about the piano. I was just thinking that he might have a student that could fabricate parts, but then he told me that he had spent two years restoring a Steinway grand piano.

I had a goose panini and one IPA. Last time we had eaten there I had had the Sloppy Jems, and probably two beers and ended up with a stomach ache. Much better choice this time. Didn’t really have a chance to talk to Jeff.

I got home at 7:45. Substantially earlier than, for example, when we saw The Irishman. They had been painting and he was now doing graphs. Carly went to take a shower. We did a Brother game where he meets a girl who ate a tree and made a no-veggie machine. He brought up absolute zero, which he has done a couple times recently, and said, “I don’t think absolute zero exists…it’s like asymptote-ish” But then he believes in an absolute infinity…the temperature right before a black hole: “I call that absolute infinite”

Carly took him up for a bath, and then he caught a spider in the bedroom, which we then released by dropping it out the bedroom window on to the roof. He then requested the lavender tissues and I brought them and the wet wipes up. He would end up using both, and I would make them talk to him. We read about the sun from a news article: https://apple.news/AkQwCtPKNQ9ivczphbq1XAQ I then read the What If? chapter about speed bumps We listened to the Stories Podcast story “Dog Holiday”. He said, “If I had a podcast I’d call it Quantum Computers.” And he mimicked the host, repeating, “Welcome to stories podcast. I’m your host Amanda Weldon.” We listened to “Beijing Harmony” off of an album with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra and he was finally asleep at 10:45.

Playing with Gilad:

Looking in the grass with Eve:

Playing in the Zinnie house:

Practicing his piece from piano lesson:

Funny face:

Grumpy grime song:

Broken robot August:

I woke him up at 8. We went downstairs and he decided to watch educational (Life Noggin) videos and one from a new channel instead of Minecraft. A nice change. He played some piano and asked about perfect fifths. He had oatmeal and we got ready to go.

We were going at our usual just-on-time 9:10 to make it to Shani, but found his shoes full of water. Dried them quickly and got going. We had to wait a couple minutes for her anyway, so a minute late was just fine.

First they did a puzzle activity in the swing. He was kind of whiney about it. Did a couple, then needed his nose wiped. He was overly dramatic about it, and after I did it climbed up the ladder thing to hide. She got him to the table to write. He went along, but was still cranky, bumping the table with his knees, then when she asked him to stop he sat with his feet kind of up in the chair. Finally he settled in though and went along with learning how to draw an 8 in the proper fashion.

He got that pretty well, then showed her his 9s. She gave him a little story to remind him how to start at the top (like August was at the top of an apartment building, started to go down, then remembered he’d forgotten his water bottle).

He had five minutes for a picture. Agreed to wipe his hands with a scented wet wipe because he liked the smell. Did an abstract picture.

Then the new game, with moles. He didn’t like it and called it boring. In part because I don’t think he understood the strategy involved, and in part because he was tired of doing things at the table. But he told her he really liked the blocks that they had started with, and we ended up borrowing them instead.

We talked about buying wipes/scented tissues on the way home and decided to do it on the way to piano. He asked, “Why is there a flu season?” He then asked why seasons overlapped, like flu season and winter. We ended up discussing cause and effect and correlation was a word of the day.

At home we played with the blocks we borrowed, mainly building things, and he asked, “What is a chain reaction?” I made us a quesadilla. We listened to the album of recordings of 4’33” that I had found last night. August thought it was pretty amusing, and I recorded us listening to it as our own sort of version of it.

He ate some of the sweet potato things, but then said he preferred the schnitzel. He did alone time, then we played Minecraft. Had some crackers and peanut butter and played the piano. We started to get ready to go, and he spent some time sounding out major and augmented chords on the piano. We talked about why Ms. is an abbreviation, and abbreviation was a word of the day.

We drove up to town and went to the pharmacy, where we foudn the wet wipes for noses and a six-pack of lavender-scented tissues. He was happy with both of those. We then drove to Dalit’s house and found it, starting his lesson at 1. It went really well, and it was fun to see her so excited about what he could do and his understanding of music theory. She was most impressed with how he could take one of his own songs and they easily move it to another key. She taught us a couple terms, including enharmonic and parallel key.

We drove to school and I carried a bag of books to donate into the library. We saw Cassie in the cafeteria and he told her about his piano lesson. He got a muffin and I got a cappuccino. As we ate I showed him a video of someone playing piano, I think to show him hand position (one of the things she had mentioned, as he’s used to hammering on the toy piano). He was really impressed, and said, “I’m going to be a musician when I grow up!” We also watched the video for the Travis song, “Why does it always rain on me?” after I had mentioned the song a bit earlier.

We then headed to the library, where we read more of What If? Plausible was another word of the day. We then headed to the preschool playground. We saw the chickens, all grown up now, and played on the swings. He had a Brother game where Bar changes the parents’ brains so they always say yes to things.

We left at 4:15 and walked to the gym, finding Carly where she was supervising students. They looked at the trophy, then he and I went back to the library to wait for her. He ate corn crackers at the table outside. He asked how far away you can hear sound. We referred to https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/128144/how-far-can-one-hear-sound He did some math graphs, then we headed home with Carly after 5.

At home he did more graphing calculator. He asked, “What’s it mean to be a daredevil?” We had the noodle dish for dinner and watched the Mumbo Jumbo video where he tries to crash it with bees and TNT. I told August about it when he proposed doing basically the same thing on his own while we were at school. He then did alone time and then in Minecraft he worked on slowing it down with bees and TNT. For his educational video he watched the Kurzgesagt “Dissatisfaction” video. On the graphing calculator he said, “Here’s the one I’m most intrigued by,” referring to ‘uniformdistance.’

We got him upstairs and Carly gave him a bath. When I took over he had a series of questions, like “What’s dopamine?” and “What’s self esteem?” And he said, “I want to get an app that’s all about calculus…” We read the What If? chapter about neutrinos. We got the lights off and listened to the Stories Podcast story “Wexie’s Seascape”. We listened to “The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind” from Klezmer Dreams as he fell asleep. He had to sit up to tell me that his favorite tree is the maple tree. Mainly, it seemed, because of the syrup. He was asleep by 10:15.

Antibody magnets:

Waa was waa and shapes:

Waka waka…:

His developing tune:

In his first piano lesson:

Laughing at the playground:

Grown chickens:

Twisting on the swing:

He woke up about 7:30. I crawled in the couch bed with him and he fell back to sleep. Started waking him up at 8 but it was more like 8:15 before he started to get up, and after 8:30 by the tune we went downstairs.

In Minecraft we spawned random animals, like parrots, and August leashed then up. Pretty funny. “All that matters is nature, dada.”

I made a strawberry smoothie for breakfast. There were lots of Brother and Sister games with Myna going crazy on Minecraft, especially with the wars and servals and parrots. They found out that Brother had accidentally given her a robot brain using one of Bar’s machines, but that had just been yesterday and wasn’t the reason. So she changed her DNA.

August played the piano. He gave me some time to tie up the two broken pieces in it, so now all the notes work except the three broken ones. And it might just be my ears adjusting, but the piano actually sounds better today, except for a few notes that are way off, and I didn’t mind him playing it so much. He also did graphing, especially when he was letting me work on it.

He had some crackers and pate, then played with the magnet blocks, then played more piano. He had the last of the smoothie and we discussed the organization of the periodic table. He then compared an airplane stalling to him using kidding tricks to postpone a bath. It slows down, but then when it starts falling it is like when he runs out of kidding tricks and he has to take his bath.

Hard to get him going, as usual, but we got driving around 12:15. We had the bike and trailer on the car, and headed to the mouth of the Alexander River. Story Pirates on the way. We parked, and walked upstream, under the bridges, to check out the trail. Along the way we watched and egret and took photos of graffiti and looked at puddles of different colors. We got to the trail. Rather a narrow dirt trail for us with the trailer. He was doing a great job walking though, but then when I talked about walking more he turned around, afraid of rain.

We went back the other way, past the car, and towards the mouth. He played with dried, cracked mud, and we saw a falcon of some sort hunting. I saw it dive twice. The second time it didn’t fly back up. We kept going and got to the water. We now saw a big crane. We sat on the edge of an old boardwalk area (there are a couple of other old abandoned buildings; I wonder what used to be here) and ate lunch of the little sandwiches I made, bag of seaweed snack, and an apple. August asked, “I have a question: are we real? Seriously…” He also asked, “Can you look it up?” I asked him how we could prove it one way or another. That turned into a Brother game where Bar was telling him he wasn’t real, but just a computer simulation. We had fun with the absurdity of all of that.

We got walking back at 1:45. Along the way he was asking me equations, and wanting me to solve them, in my head, using Mama’s techniques. I told him I could solve equations like (x+10)10-5^10+3*2=5 (a real one he gave me) in my head.

By the car he was looking at some wet mud, which was fine. I was getting my camera out take a video, but was just a bit too late to catch him try walking in it. He quickly lost a shoe, resulting in two very muddy shoes and a muddy foot. I carried our stuff to the car and came back for him. Sat him on the passenger seat with his feet out the car. We used the bag from the beach toys, most of his water bottle, 4 wet wipes, and a handful of tissues to wash us both up. It took a good twenty minutes. August handled it all very well, not getting upset at all, and saying a few times how he learned his lesson about not walking in mud. He joked he’d never even look at mud again. The car definitely needs a vacuuming now, especially before Eve sees it.

We the drove a couple minutes north to find the sea turtle rescue place. I mistakenly thought a sign about maintenance vehicles or the such meant I couldn’t go in one gate, and kept searching for the way in. When it was clear (despite Google’s assertion) that there wasn’t another entrance, I figured out that was how we got in.

We parked and got walking. Kind of an odd, interesting port area to look around. We found the turtle place. You can’t actually go in without a guide, and you need to book that in advance, but we could look through the fence and through the doorway and see the turtles. There were also some hydroponic garden things nearby that we discussed, although nothing growing in them. We read on a sign about the plight of sea turtles and why they need help, then walked around to the main entrance of the place and read more about how they are endangered. We sat on a bench looking out at the water and he asked what happened to an animal when it went extinct. Extinction was definitely the word of the day. He thought/wanted the animal species to come back somehow. We talked about efforts to bring back some species, but how that isn’t really likely, and the reasons for saving species. We also talked about human impact, and the extinction of the large mammalian species, and how they didn’t have time to evolve to live with humans. He thought I was joking about giant sloths, so we read about them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_sloth?wprov=sfti1

We stopped at the bathroom on the way back to the car. He said, “You know those two letters at the start or end of words? Here’s one: ST, Sticker…and stitch, steel, stem…” That was the first time he’s done that on his own.

We got home after 3:30. He went and played piano for alone time. I washed off his shoes and vacuumed the rest of the filters in the house (but not the car yet). He called up to me, saying, “I think my fingers have gotten stronger. I’ve gotten used to…” playing the piano.

We then played Minecraft, and Carly got home. I went for a run, then showered. He was playing piano when I got back and I could quietly hear him from outside. He had 10 coins earned on his watch, and he could use 5 for 30 minutes of iPad time. He used all of his coins for an hour of iPad. He played with Carly in yet another new world. He hadn’t actually done two sets of alone time/iPad today, so it was actually only 30 extra minutes on the day. However, letting him have so much in the evening was probably a bad idea. He stopped after the hour and agreed to eat dinner. He choked on the noodles again, probably the strips of scallion, but didn’t spit up this time, like a day or two ago, and continued on with his meal.

He’d wanted an educational video, but agreed to save it until after dinner. This is where the meltdown happened, as he then insisted on watching another: “I have to, I have to…” His first big meltdown in several days.

Carly went up for a shower. Eventually he apologized and we talked enough and I read What If? We are over half done now. We read the one about the power that Yoda can produce with the Force. I wanted August to understand the reference, so we first watched the “There is no try, just do” scene where Yoda lifts the X-Wing before reading it. He had crackers and peanut butter as we ate, then we went upstairs for a bath. They did more math in the bathroom, learning more stuff on the graphing calculator.

In bed I read more What If?. We listened to “The Giant’s Causeway” on Stories Podcast, then used the bathroom before trying out different meditations. We listened to one on the Daily Meditation Podcast, but didn’t like that much, then listened to one of the Michelle Robertson-Jones Eeny, Meeny, Miney, & Mo mediations on Apple Music. We’ve done a couple before. He’s okay with those, but not particularly fond. He then asked for the “Meditation Headquarters” ones. I figured out he meant the Andy Hobson ones on Insight Timer. We started the series again, August laughing and having me repeat the part where he accidentally starts describing football instead of meditation, and he fell asleep listening to it at 10:20. I was then excited to find almost all of Hobson’s materials are already on Apple Music. So we won’t have to pay 60+ dollars/year to listen to all of it.

Silly time:

Improving on the piano:

Echoing under the bridge:

Sea turtles 1:

August leading animals around in Minecraft:

He was up just before 7:30. He was ready to go downstairs. I read all of Days with Frog and Toad. We played Minecraft, playing in the snow village he had found. He then played piano, calling out chords. He told me, “I want to learn more chords.” We started by watching the video on sevenths on Odd Quartet, then watched the one on countinghttps://youtu.be/dK7Wg4PYZdk I was surprised when he said he didn’t like that one because he said it was confusing.

He had a Brother game where he got bit by an alligator when Brother was being to confident and it led to a big hospital bill. This became a theme for the day. At one point I suggested that Brother was actually foolish, as he didn’t learn from his mistakes, but August insisted he was being brave. A scorpion was next.

He found the tape measure and measured things. He asked if anyone ever had feet a foot long. We looked up longest feet and height. https://footwearnews.com/feature/worlds-largest-feet-record-holder-1202752717/amp/ We tried to Skype with my parents in the morning, but they didn’t answer.

He went on the graphing calculator and we listened to Fun Kids Science Weekly podcast with Lucy Hawking. I’ve been planning to try to play more podcasts when he’s around. He watched a Bright Side video about getting rid of cockroaches as I made oatmeal. He ate, and had seconds, then had one with Brother drinking expired milk.

We got going. We first went up to the post office where we had some letters/cards to drop off. We then walked across to the hardware store and bought a new set of Tupperware. Then it was on to Tel Aviv. We finished season 1 of the Story Pirates and listened to several of the archive stories after that.

We parked in a lot a block south of where the piano was. He rode his bike to the park and we played in the playground for about 15 minutes. On the way he talked about a huge supercomputer as tall as the Eiffel Tower. He climbed around a bit, then we continued the Brother and Sister road trip to the Grand Canyon story (basically, they had road trips that ended up taking a lot longer because of people getting sick, etc.) Before we left the playground he saw some words painted on the ground. He wanted me to translate it. I took a photo for later. It looked like a quotation. It was a new concept to him that we discussed on the way.

We got to the apartment building and locked up his bike, then met the owner, Eran, of the piano as he came out the door. We went up and saw it and August started playing around on it. Clearly out of tune, and at first it looked like more keys weren’t working than we had been told. But the piano looked nice, and things were moving quickly. August wandered around the place, starting to use all of their possessions and drums. Eran popped over to a neighbor’s, and as soon as he left the mover and his assistant showed up. They looked it over, then told me they might be able to take it today, if they could make room in the truck they had with them. Eran came back and I paid him the 300 shekels.

August and I went down and played outside. He played around on the rocks and with things, and we got out the iPad and he did graphing. He grumbled a few times about things moving so slowly. They made the room in the truck, hauled the piano down the stairs, and loaded it in. He said he’d look at the schedule and either deliver it later today, or sometime tomorrow. August and I got in the car and he called and said he could deliver it right now.

So we got going, listening to Story Pirates, and stopped in Even Yehuda, ran up to the bank, then drove home. He called just as we were a few seconds away, saying he was there. I told him we would be there in 5 seconds. August objected, saying it was more like 20. We pulled up as they were starting to get the piano out of the truck. I opened everything and moved the table, and a few minutes later the piano was in position where the dining room table had been.

I had let August go ahead and start playing Minecraft. While this was going on, as he was playing Minecraft, he told me, “I’m pretty sure I’m bored.” They got the piano unwrapped and I paid them and they were on their way.

I played Minecraft with him a bit, then he watched several Life Noggin videos. He started playing around on the piano. He wants it fixed as soon as possible, and he felt it was much harder to push the keys than on his toy piano. I told him his fingers would get stronger and he wouldn’t notice that anymore.

We did a Brother and Sister game where the grandparents bring a cat and he was laughing a lot. There was more where Sister was “cranky wanky” because Myna had too many cats. We then had a late lunch of schnitzel and sweet potato patties. I vacuumed the filters from the downstairs air conditioning unit.

Carly got home and he did graphing with her and she showed him the cosine thing she had found. He had his chocolate milk I’d agreed to earlier, then was playing chords on the piano. I had told him to just not learn his pitches from the piano yet, and so he joked that he was working on his perfect pitch with it. He had some salad that Carly made him, but not much, then made a fort of pillows so I couldn’t see him.

He finished alone time and played Minecraft with Carly. They were talking about something and he admitted, “Yes, that’s a really good argument.” Carly was then complaining about his cramped, sloppy stairs in their mine. He said he just cared about stairs that worked. I pointed out that straight, properly built stairs are faster and more efficient. He replied, “That’s a good argument actually, but not enough to convince me.”

I researched the piano and learned more about the German company that built it, and figured out, based on the inscription on it, that it had been in England. And the piano was built in 1909. This really worried Carly, as she started to look up why you’re not supposed to buy an old piano. I was more of the opinion that it was clearly old in the first place, and I’d rather buy a piano that we knew needed work instead of buying one that was a bit newer and much more expensive, only to find it needed a lot of work as well.

August and I read What If? Stationary was a word of the day. He found the tape measure and was measuring everything. He told me, “I’m learning stuff about our house.” He then played with the magnet blocks. We Skyped with my parents, showing them the piano, and finding that Dad’s knee has been recovering well. And he’s bought more parts for the Jag, after making money working on the other Jag.

I carried August upstairs when he did want to go, but wasn’t fighting it. Carly gave him a bath. I heard her teaching him to solve for x and balancing an equation. We should do Dragonbox Algebra again. August then forgot they’d done his bath: “Just got wrapped up in math…good math.”

In bed we listened to the two parts of “Acorn Milk and the Blue Goblins” on Stories Podcast, a new podcast I found, as we’re running out of Circle Round stories. He liked it. We’d tried other podcasts, but he didn’t like the voices or lack of music. We listened to the album from Víkingur Ólafsson of Bach piano music, which seemed appropriate, and he was asleep by 10:25.

Picking out chords:

His crazy calculator:

First notes on our piano!:

A piano in our house:

Dropping the cardboard tubes:

He was up at 7:35. I went up to him. Downstairs he wanted Minecraft right away and played with Carly. They were trying to soak up ocean water with sponges. August had spawned tons of turtles in the ocean and as he swam around in it he sang “It is turtle ocean today…my fair lady.”

On the piano I taught him concordance and dissonance and which intervals make it. From there I spent much of my day on piano-related research, communicating about when we could see it and when it could be picked up, etc.

August did math on the graphing calculator, and Carly drove up to town to get a few groceries up there. On her way back she got a call from a guy with the water company. She let him in the gate, and he then said someone would be out later to fix it. We didn’t expect them to respond so quickly. Really makes us think that Shmuel never called them in the first place.

August hadn’t eaten anything yet, and he finally let me make him oatmeal for breakfast. He was then trying to test Carly’s ability to identify notes. We did a lot of talking, the three of us, about octaves and pitches and the such. He was then doing some singing, and climbed up and sat on the bookshelves while I made us grilled cheese and turkey and avocado sandwiches for lunch. August asked for something random for Siri to play, and Siri played a rap song that immediately started swearing. Seems like that’s her go-to genre for when he asks for something random and she mishears him. I paused it and had him ask for other things. He listened to a Chinese pop song, then a song called “Alien Girl”. I joked it could be about his character Bar, but the song itself wasn’t that good.

One of my socks was wearing out and the toe was starting to poke out. August said, “ That looks like the end of a skinny hot dog.” He kept joking about how much he liked it. We ate our sandwiches, although he ended up taking it apart, scraping off the cheese, and mainly eating the bread and meat. We watched a video about science and meditation (ASAPScience) and music (Ted-Ed).

They left at 12:30 and went to Gabi’s. He and Carly agreed he could have one of the cookies there every three weeks. He had one today. I went upstairs and did some work, then switched to finding a piano mover when we found out they needed the piano moved by Wednesday. I contacted 7 or 8 places, ended up with two good leads by the end of the day. Also at some point the water company had come back and fixed the leak. Easy peasy.

After Gabi’s they went to the beach for a long time. They probably went for pizza too, but didn’t bring back extras today. August was finding interesting rocks and shells, and made a game of interrupting Carly meditating. They FaceTimed with me for a couple minutes to show me shells.

They were home after 5. He sat on the book shelves for alone time. He randomly asked, “What’s a hippocampus?” I would give him an answer, then Carly would look it up with him too later. We played Minecraft. He said, “Let’s chit chat in the mansion.” When we were done he ate an artichoke with Carly. They watched Ted-Ed videos about the placebo effect and about the hippocampus, the the new Kurzgesagt on milk. He was then back on the calculator, asking me things like, “Is 6 to the hundredth power six googols?” (Not quite.) He was finding the upper limit of how much it can calculate.

I made the scallop and soy noodle dish, adding broccoli and tofu to the simple recipe. It turned out really well and we ate. I then went for a run and she gave him a bath and washed his hair. I took a shower. When I came out he was looking at photos on her phone. He said, “I like looking at the past.” And, “I’m Mr. Addicty Pants.”

He compared the phone screen to coordinate graphs, and I said he was right, in that that is how the pixels and shapes are drawn. He thought that was pretty cool. And cool that he’d been right. He wanted to play the watch game on his iPad. On his own he typed in ‘wach’ trying to spell it in the search. Very cool that he even tried, and told me about it. I showed him how to add the ’t’, but the app is actually called ‘Vivofit’. We tried to play it, but for some reason it has stopped giving him the tap game when he makes the moves. Luckily, he wasn’t too concerned. He then gave me a tour of his recent graphs.

He had mentioned wanting to listen to the Circle Round stories in order, so we went to the website and found the list. The first was “It could always get worse” with Jason Alexander. It’s one of the funny ones and he laughed a lot. We then discussed why the wise old woman’s advice had worked.

He went to the bathroom, then told me he had made a program to use Minecraft blocks to make things like the tile on the ground. We played with a tissue. I’ve had some luck with getting him to let me wipe his nose, and getting him to wipe his snot on a tissue, since I made the tissue into monsters that like to eat snot and beg for his snot. He then asked a couple of questions: “What’s the lymphatic system?” “What’s transfusion mean?” Then told me, “I do cardiovascular…lymphatic system transfusions… It’s really expensive though; at least 2000 dollars. 10000 dollars for a cornea…”

We listened to a meditation. I then put on music, but he was asleep right away by 10:30.

Zinnie cam: his bedroom:

Explaining his amazing graphs:

Showing an asymptote:

He got up a little before 7:50. I was still reading in bed and he came and crawled in and stole my pillow. After ten minutes or so we went down and he cuddled with Carly. We then told him about how we are looking to buy a piano, as the woman wrote back and said we could come by today. He liked the idea, and we talked about where we could place it in the house.

All the talk of music made him want to play, and he hooked up the keyboard and played until 8:45 before he decided he wanted to play Minecraft. He was mainly experimenting with sound, and questioning why they included a sound in their collection. He’s definitely listening closely and using some sort of criteria to judge what makes good sounds. They aren’t just the clearest sounds, as he creates lots of very distorted sounds as well.

He moved to math and started to try to figure out how to use sin and cos. He was asking me how to spell them, and I told him, and he was actually typing in c-o-s, etc. Which actually works, but then I said there should be buttons for those things and we found them. He was very excited by this as it opened up a whole new world of buttons for him to play with. He found a wave pattern where the waves get closer and closer together and told me that it was asymptotic. He was then showing me how an equation crossed the x-axis. “What’s it called?” X-intercept. Working with the new buttons he said, “It’s actually nice I can do trigonometry now. Without seeing error messages all the time.”

I left at 11:45 to go to the big Tiv Taam. It was a big errands trip. I stopped by the bank in town to get cash (the woman had told us we could see the piano this weekend), then went to Tiv Taam, which took quite a while, then got gas, then stopped and bought six containers of strawberries on the way home.

While I was gone they went for a walk (I assume he was actually walking) over to Vatikim and played at the park over there. They also picked a small orange somewhere along the way. I think they had also done some math and other things. When I got home at 2:15 he was watching a video (Life Noggin or Kurzgesagt, probably) and then did some graphing calculator. We all tried the fresh loaf of bread I got and a new cheese, and he had some pate. He commented on how I got a lot of new things.

He asked me, “How do equal and opposite reactions work?” Not sure where that had come up, but I think I’ve mentioned it a couple times. I did another demonstration, and later he would use the phrase himself. He asked me about buying an oscilloscope. I emailed Mike if he had ideas, and I was looking for them on Amazon. He saw, or I mentioned, them being 200 dollars. He said, “If I was a parent of course I’d do it.”

He was playing with chords, and made an augmented chord. He wanted me to make a sign for augmented chord creation to, to go with my other three. I would end up drawing it later. We talked about chord inversions as he kept playing around with them, then he figured out a better way to tell chord types on his toy piano since, with it open, you can instantly see how many keys are not being played between the ones you are pressing and was then playing through chords and naming them all right as he did it.

We played with the alien for a while. When Carly tried to get him to go out on another walk he said, “I already got vitamin D3.” And he told me how since there about a million habitable worlds that we have 999,999 more to colonize and possibly become the first stage 3 civilization.

Eventually they did go out for a walk, over to the mall to get a “something something”. They went to the cafe there and he got a macaroon and they read a book. They left just before 4 and were back after 5, then skyped with her parents. They talked about their travel plans for coming here, and the countries they are going to after they leave us. It is getting close. He played a lot of music for them and showed the calculator.

He watched the Kurzgesagt Moon Base video again. It is one of his favorites. He played with the search field of my phone, after he had asked me to do a math problem. He included a letter and it thought he wanted to do a currency conversion to the South African currency. So currency was a word of the day. We then read from What If? about quarantining everyone to eradicate the common cold. Quarantine and Distribute were words from that. He ate some dinner, but just the pizza roll things, then we watched the Curiosity Stream documentary called The Story of Energy: Order and Disorder. Looked really good, but he didn’t like the voice of the narrator, saying it wasn’t the right voice. I think it was a British man, so not exactly an odd accent for him. I’m not sure why. So we switched to a series about the future with Michio Kaku and he was fine with that. He learned about Ray Kurzweil and the idea of the singularity.

She gave him a bath and I went for a walk. On the piano he taught her what an octave is. We talked about going to bed and he said, “My brain’s too busy thinking about math.” He hadn’t really had a full dinner, so now had rice and cauliflower. We reminded him to say thank you when she brought it to him. He did, then said, “And could you say thank you for teaching you an octave?”

We went upstairs and brushed his teeth and said good night. He talked about and described how math describes everyday life things. As an example he had a roll of tape and was rolling it on the bathroom counter and bouncing it off of things and said the lines could be described with math. We talked about that being physics. In his room he was pushing off of the wall and saying, “Look: equal and opposite reaction.”

We listened to “The Emperor’s Challenge” on Circle Round, then did an Insight Meditation on calming your mind (the last in the short series for kids we’ve been doing). He asked, “What’s it do to your brain? Meditation.” Told him we could look for a video tomorrow. Didn’t exactly manage to calm his mind completely, as right near the end of the meditation he interrupted to ask, “Dada. Dada! What’s a burial mound?” We listened to Beethoven’s String Quarter No. 14, which I had just heard mentioned in Musicophilia while on my walk. He was asleep right away around 10:35.

Crazy graph:

Chord progression on toy piano:

His way to tell chords apart:

Major major minor diminished major:

Laughing at the alien: