Category: Daily

He called me in at 5:20. As I got him back to sleep he said, “You said let’s read a book.” He was then up about 8:50. He went to the bathroom, then reminded me about mouthwash. We did that then headed downstairs. We read some Hardy Boys, then played in the lucky blocks world. He ate banana bread for breakfast. He went and played at the piano. I really noticed that he’s suddenly developing melodies. I think I said something about it, then several minutes later he finished playing and asked, “You like my sense of melody?”

We watched a Kids Academy video about the most famous chess game (the opera game), then we watched the newest Grian video. We went outside and he was Myna talking about her shops and stuff while I picked up the tree things. Back inside we played chess. He won, but thanks to me pointing out a bad move I’d made.

He kept playing chess while I made lunch: tuna melts, cauliflower, and chocolate milk. He asked if chess is ever lucky and we talked about what that meant, and that led to a long talk about chess variations, and designing our own (placing our pieces on, or having a third person make random setups and then playing from them). As we played I used the word neutralize and that was a word of the day.

We ate lunch outside and in the yard I asked if we could put his push bike in the storage area. He was totally fine with that, and he suggested we also put the push bike in there, since he never really liked it. I took a video and photos of him on the bike before we put it away. He noted the decorations still attached to it, and we reminisced about the now-missing channel changer that used to be on the handle bars. He had the idea of saving the bell off of it though as he really likes it. He noted that the bell was out of tune, less than a half step apart on the notes.

Inside, Carly had the big stroller out for someone from the school to borrow, so August looked at that as well and we talked about it. He found a couple of tiny Cheerio-looking things still in the seat. He thought they were shrunken Cheerios, but they were actually something else. We decided to save them as a science experiment and I put them in a plastic bag.

We went inside and he played some piano, then we started watching a David Bennett video about how few songs only use minor chords. Carly got home by 1:30 and they played chess. After she had to go up we went upstairs and did lots of wrestling. He also watched a couple Ants Canada videos at some point. Back downstairs he listened to “Jack and the Beanstalk” for alone time.

I caught a fly thing that he had thought was a bee in the bug catcher and he was happy about that. We did his Minecraft time, playing in the lucky block world again. Carly came down and I went for a run, while they went outside. I got back and took a quick shower then went to work at 6, going through a run-through for the online session that is happening tomorrow. He had received a video reply from Eve. I got to watch it with him (his second time) when I came down. At the end of her video she says “I annoy my mom too.” He thought that was pretty funny. He also said, “Her voice sounds like a character.” Out of a story, that is.

He was still playing Minecraft. He and Carly had played together. He hadn’t played with Vivian and Colin as they couldn’t connect to any world and he just wanted to give up. Carly was now meeting with Mandy, outside, and I started washing dishes. He poured lava all over the spawn point of this temporary world they had made, and Carly’s account was still logged on so just dying over and over. He asked, “So you like my Cochamente Death Generator Ultimate?”

We went outside and sat in the bench and read some more Hardy Boys, close to the end, and visor was another new word. He told me, “I know how to curl my tongue into a tunnel to get warm air up to my nose.”Carly came down with Cherie on the phone and they talked. August was swinging me on the swing by hanging on the bottom of it.

I finished dishes and then went upstairs and did some more work. They did his bath and washed his hair. She checkmated him, rather unintentionally, using her knight. He and I discussed knight checkmates, and then he practiced a single rook endgame against the computer, managing to checkmate.

He listened to one Stories Podcast story and ate his crackers, then the rest of the Max Goodname story, then some funny poems as we brushed our teeth. He started talking about castling strategy and mating scenarios. He’s really thought about it, especially king versus queen side castling and the problems with castling long.

We got in bed and listened to Beethoven’s Symphony 5 and then 7. A couple times he tried to talk to me about Minecraft, and he was asleep by 11:30.

Song of the day – working on melody:

One more ride on the old bike:

Buzzy insect:

Video from Eve:

His teenager song:

Swinging me on the swing:

He called me in around 6. I lay down in the lower bed and fell asleep there until I woke up. Then, he called me up at 8:25. When I went in he rolled right over and fell back to sleep. I started waking him up at 9:05 but he was really sleeping. He was up at 9:35. He was quiet for a few minutes, then I read the Hardy Boys. Coma was a word of the day. The old tower at the mansion is old and abandoned and August was surprised, expecting mansions to always be in good condition. We talked about waxing and waning fortunes and family sizes and additional construction and technology and how they might lead to parts of a mansion being abandoned. He compared it to an ant nest: “It’s just like an ant nest…there’s thousands…”

We did our mouthwash, then downstairs he went to the piano: “That’s why I like G minor so much; it gives it an emphasis feeling.” We watched the Bdubs Hermitcraft video, because we knew it had to do with the mayoral campaign. We had banana bread for breakfast, then played Minecraft, in our survival world, and he watched some Ants Canada before going outside for a Brother and Sister game involving Brother getting in the fire ants, wasps, and electric eels. I picked up the tree things, and he watered his plants, including the new weed.

We sat in the swing and read the Hardy Boys, learning the word cahoots, then went inside to play chess with Carly. I made lunch of the cheese pastries, hot dogs, and fresh broccoli. They worked on the video for Eve. Carly wanted to do a better intro to it, but he was not open to looking at the camera and talking to Eve. Or maybe just not open to being directed. He did, however, like filming little interludes where he annoyed Carly with noisemakers or spraying her with his water bottle.

He asked me “What’s at the point of death mean?” He hadn’t really eaten his broccoli, but agreed to eat it before having his next snack, saying “I’ll probably get hungry upstairs.” We went up for wrestling time. He was having laughing fits when he would freeze me, then get out of my way, then I would act confused when he had disappeared. He was saying “I’m dying of laughter!” For a Brother game I had Ms. Safe call Brother “interesting” and August said, “He’s peculiar, not interesting.”

We went downstairs to see the finished video for Eve. Carly was then going to take him to the nursery, but he changed his mind about going. He wanted her to go by herself so he could do his alone time, but asked her to get him some flowers. She left, and he asked me about what blind people see. We read

https://chicagolighthouse.org/sandys-view/what-blind-people-see/. For along time he listened to “The Fox and Crow”, “The Cat Who Caught the Moon”, and “Raven Steals the Light”. He ate some broccoli and then the last cheese pastry thing. While waiting for Carly we watched some educational videos, starting with a series of short NASA videos about discoveries by Hubble (likehttps://youtu.be/yPMadwaSls0

), then a video about sight reading that he watched attentively (https://youtu.be/QNr7I1ZUNYs), and finally a Ted-Ed video about whether math is discovered or invented.

Carly got home and August went out to see the plants. He called me out, saying, “This is the flower mama brought me!…I thought those were fake…Thank you!” He was really excited about the flowers, and thanked her several times. She started playing Minecraft with him (he’d been waiting to play with her) and I went up to work. They were then outside, and Carly was transplanting and planting plants. I came down to watch the docking of the capsule with the International Space Station. I went back upstairs, and he kept watching the coverage. Carly then went for a walk, and August stayed in the yard by himself, but used my phone to talk to Carly as she walked. He directed her to walk around the Holly block at one point.

I came down when he was playing Minecraft with Vivian. I asked him where my phone was and he replied, “Hmm. How peculiar.” I found it, outside, then went for a run. I came back and they were still playing, then they talked to Cherie and he kept playing little bits of piano for her. Carly had made him a tuna sandwich and broccoli for him for dinner.

He has had this idea of the three of us playing chess together, with me on his side for some reason. I had the idea that I could help him, but each move I suggested would either be a really good move or a really bad move and he’d have to tell the difference. It worked pretty well, with him losing some pieces when I gave bad suggestions, and he didn’t make Carly take back the moves. In fact, they played to an almost-draw, but then Carly lost her rook in the endgame, and he ended up winning. He couldn’t figure out the rook and king endgame though, so it was a good opportunity to teach him that.

He really wanted to keep playing, but finally agreed to look for chess videos with me on YouTube so Carly could get ready for work. We found an animated intro to chess from Kids Academy and watched all of that:https://youtu.be/CtLfUSaVhUM

. Then a video with a coach (also from Kids Academy) (https://youtu.be/eIIkjtd61Zk) about opening strategy. August really paid attention, and when he went upstairs he told Carly all about how he was going to control the middle, and change some of his first moves to develop his pieces better.

Carly gave him a bath and they played a game of chess. In bed he ate his crackers and listened to “The Gingerbread Man” and “Noah’s Ark” and “Sleepy Hollow” on Stories Podcast. He learned the phrase “such as yourself”. We brushed our teeth, then he started the game Would You Rather, by asking me about medical conditions, like if I would rather be blind or deaf. We kept going with the game, going beyond medical conditions. He was really thinking about it, and really getting the dilemma aspect of them. When one of his options included not playing Minecraft for a year he said, “That’s a horrible thing to think about!” At one point he asked me if I’d rather have just him or just mama, but even as he asked it realized that I couldn’t answer it, and told me I didn’t have to, then said we should leave family members out of them. I thought that showed a real level of awareness there.

We listened to the new album from yesterday, and he was asleep around 11:35.

Song of the day:

Working in 8/8:

Trying to direct his acting:

Music for Eve:

Annoying mama 1:

Annoying mama 2:

Annoying mama 3:

So the spike in COVID-19 cases the last few days is linked to schools, and the Health Ministry is recommending re-closing middle and high schools. A decision will be made tonight.

I went and woke him up at 9. Took a few minutes, then he wanted to go play chess with Carly. We went and did our teeth first, then he went down and found her outside. After she finished an email they played chess on the iPad. At one point I heard him say, “Ooh, you got yourself into a pickle.” He played chess with me a little, then we played Minecraft. After that he watched Ants Canada videos and ate oatmeal. Cannibalism was a word of the day, and he asked me, “Did you know sapphire tarantulas are parthenogenic?”

Carly had the idea that he could play more Minecraft if, every three minutes he wrote down his coordinates to practice his writing. He did that for a couple rounds. We were all discussing making a geocache and what to put it in, and I said something about the best container would be the small containers we use most often. August then said something along the lines of “Frequently instead of most often…synonym…” And of ‘synonym’ he said, “That’s like so good of a word…the funnest grammatic word in the world…”

He then played in Carly’s bag scraps she was cutting up for the compost. He did some more Minecraft writing, doing some words now, then played Carly chess again. Carly made hot dogs for lunch; they ate theirs with sauerkraut. Then more chess. I got him outside and we played around. He watered his plants. Weedy 3 is looking better, after being droopy since being planted. We played games where I kicked the ball over the slide, trying to hit him. He got exercise by climbing up and down on the ladder. He said I got a billion points for tiring him out, and he lay on the swing. He listened to the new Stories Podcast story “Monkey Mayhem” for alone time. New words were_bush baby_ and galagos. I think he kept listening to one or two stories after that.

We went inside and he watched GoodTimeswithScar. He really wanted Carly to watch it with him and she watched from her chair. He played some piano, then we played Minecraft together, in lucky block for a few minutes, then in our survival world.

He and Carly did an ant walk, feeding them cut up grapes. Back at the house August is starting to reject some of my music (like Carly), telling me, “Could you stop the rock? I don’t like rock as much as other music.” They went back out to get a weed they had found that was the same kind as the one that had been pulled. They came back and Carly planted it in a pot. I gave August my camera and he took a video of her planting it and did a bit of a tour of the yard. I was making banana bread, and August came and helped me finish it. He was talking about making it really fluffy banana bread. Along the way he asked, “What’s doubt?” And “What’s true to his word?”

He was getting hyper, and sang a sort of “War and government” song, but then we went upstairs for some wrestling time. We were up for a half hour, then came down and checked on the banana bread, then headed back up. He said, “Now let’s resume that Brother and Sister game…” Part of the game involved Nosisi getting hurt by anvils from Ms. Danger’s class.

We came down to get the bread out and had some. He then did reading and story time with Carly. First they read a few books about friends moving away (that Ilana had found in the library) and August was reading some of the words, then the book about Ada Byron Lovelace. Scandalous and paralyzed were words of the day. He was still hungry, so I washed his water bottle and heated up cauliflower for him. I then went for a run.

He played Minecraft with the cousins, then when Carly talked about how he was almost to first grade he agreed to read one book a day to her. He was reading to her, from Epic, I think. And he’s starting to have a real reading voice now. From listening to us, of course, but I think the podcasts have helped as well. He then did some really cool piano playing.

His bottom was kind of itchy, and he said it was another mosquito bite. That was fine by bed time. The wart on his nose seems to be causing more discomfort, and Carly has gotten him washing his hands really regularly. He said he had an idea for a Brother and Sister game, inspired by the banana bread. I mentioned fixing the broken piano key, a B flat, tomorrow, and he said, “I regret saying I don’t use it a lot because I use it a lot for G minor.”

Upstairs we watched NASA/Space X coverage and ate banana bread and crackers and tuna. His game/story was pretty good. Brother found a girl in the park and she offered him banana bread. It was really good, then he went home and all the food he ate tasted like mud and other gross things. He went back to the park to find out that it was Millie, and that the banana bread had been magic. The antidote was “It’s vegetables; your nemesis…I did it in favor of parents, to make you eat your vegetables.” We repeated the story with Sister.

Carly then gave him a bath. He asked about seeing Eve again and was upset about the answer. He went in his room and turned the AC on really cold. Carly comforted him a bit. I got crackers and peanut butter, and his iPad so he could watch the launch coverage, as he didn’t want me in the room. He changed his mind with a few minutes left, and we all watched the launch together. That was really cool, and he loved that it was live. He was still hungry and Carly brought him oatmeal, which he ate as he watched the rest of the coverage.

We brushed our teeth. After two minutes was up and I had moved on to floss and mouthwash he was still brushing. I asked what he was doing, and after a few seconds he said, “Toothbrush Music! How does it make all those wonderful noises?” In the room we put on a new album I had found called Drei by Swod. He liked it, and we listened to a couple of the songs, then the whole album from the beginning. He pretended to be paralyzed, and told me, “I got measles and it left me paralyzed and blind.” I think he learned about measles with Carly. He brought up something random before falling asleep but I don’t remember what it was. He was asleep about 11:40.

Purple berries:

Minecraft writing:

Song of the day:

Planting Weedy 4 and a tour of the garden:

Zinnie cam: making banana bread:

Fluffy banana bread:

War and government song:

Drumming in 8/8 and 10/8:

Watching the Space X launch:

In the morning Carly and I discussed our frustrations with Shmuel and I sent him a message telling him not to help with our gardening without permission. He would later apologize to August. August didn’t want to hear the message, but I think it helped.

August yelled down to me at 8:48. I had closed the door completely this morning, with his permission, as he had told me it was bright sometimes. But I think he was a little surprised to find it closed. He got up, and wandered into the big bedroom and lounged in Carly’s spot. I got in and we read some Hardy Boys. We went downstairs and he played piano. He was doing further variations of his song. And he was practicing crossing his right hand back and forth over his left.

He went out and said good morning to Carly and cuddled with her. She didn’t have to go into school today, but was working on final grades and comments. Back inside he didn’t know how to divide his time between two Minecraft worlds. I offered him a suggestion, and he said, “Huh. I don’t know what to say.” I asked, “When does that ever happen?” And he replied, “All the time. Seriously.” We played in the lucky block world. We forgot it was Friday, and after just a few minutes I got a message that Gilad was available to play. Gilad wanted to play in the Greek Mythology world, so they did that. When August went into the nether and came back it got stuck on the ‘Building Terrain’ message and August said he was going to make a song about it and sang a “Building Terrain” song. They switched to Epic Jungle. Gilad mentioned his birthday tomorrow so I wished him a happy birthday.

When they were done August had oatmeal, then read to me on Rivet. No! and And Also, which are both good, then the Christmas Elves one. We then watched Iskall. He went outside with Carly, and they talked about/practiced the math lesson that she’ll be teaching on Monday. They then played chess, outside I think.

He came inside and Carly asked if I wanted the last of the coffee and he replied “sure” at the same time as me. We did some chess and he played more piano, then listened to “Little Red Riding Hood” for alone time and had crackers with tuna. He likes the smushed cracker in his mouth.

We had a lunch outside of cheese pastry things, hot dogs, and broccoli. He finished listening to “The Useless Little Dog” and then listened to a story about a crying princess, then “What I Want to Be”. Then one about a ship wreck. Then “The Tortoise and the Hare.” We went inside to Carly and he showed me the shape and distance feature on Google Maps. I realized it is also on Google Earth and he played with that on his iPad. I showed him the distance to Vivian and Colin’s house and to my parents’ house. I pointed out the different buildings, and he said he really liked the garage: “We did a ton of Brother and Sister games there…it was cute. And we slept in there.” When Carly was sick.

We did his thirty minutes of Minecraft. I’m getting bored of lucky blocks. We then went and played go fish, but didn’t make it through a full game. Instead, he wanted to go upstairs and play games on the bed. There were new students, like Nosisi (named after the girl in the No! book, and not as a pun) who was blind, and Pain, who got injured really easily.

We went downstairs and he earned a star by practicing some writing. Then went back upstairs to wrestle on the bed. He went outside with Carly, and I went for a run. He played Minecraft with the cousins, then played chess with Carly with the actual board and pieces. Cherie called, and they played chess on ChessKid. Carly made potatoes and cauliflower and he ate a lot of those. Cherie called back, with Claremay, and August played piano for her, then went back to watching Ants Canada. Krypronite was a word of the day. He stopped and told us, “Just so you know, fire ants are also called (scientific name).”

He went to the bathroom and sang/chanted a funny/annoying “Come to me” song, which he continued out in the living room as he played in the chair. Carly took him up for a bath, and they surprised a lizard, which went behind the big mirror. August decided he didn’t mind it.

She washed his hair, and he had his lollipop afterwards. When she was trying to get him dressed he said, “ForGET underwear.” Carly said it was her fake birthday tomorrow and August remembered the giant Cadbury egg we had once bought for her, but then he couldn’t handle giving to her. He giggled and told her about it, but he had forgotten that we did eventually give it to her and they had eaten it. Soon after Carly had mentioned it, a reminder on my phone went off reminding me it was her fake birthday tomorrow. August incredulously asked, “Seriously‽ You have a reminder set up for that?” We talked about her previous fake birthdays and what we’d done in Korea (McDonald’s and cheap toys, the loss of Camel).

In bed he finished his lollipop and had crackers and peanut butter. He listened to “The Goose Who Laid a Golden Egg” “The Elves and the Shoemaker” and “Margaret, Henry, and the Room of Hay” (a new version of “Rumpelstiltskin”). When he finished his lollipop he told me “I’m dropping these things down there…every week I put one down…RIP…” Meaning behind the bed. Sigh. He actually said “IRL” first, instead of “RIP” so I taught him IRL

We went and brushed our teeth, and he was pounding out interesting rhythms for me on the counter. We discussed half birthdays and fake birthdays and his Camel. He couldn’t believe he had called a leopard a camel, and I said it may have been a joke, as he’s always been making those. He was then laughing a lot, and I called him “Mr. Laffypants”, which just made him laugh more.

Back in bed he was hyper and did kicking exercises, kicking the pillow up above him.We put on the new Owen Pallett album. It took quite a while, but he did okay and I think fell asleep around 11:40.

Practicing hand switching:

Song of the day:

Writing practice 1:

Writing practice 2 – and being silly:

Playing for Great Grandma Claremay:

“Come to me” song:

Leg exercise:

He called me in once during the night. He had fallen asleep totally on top of his blanket so hadn’t had any covers. I took the opportunity now to pull them out and cover him. When I woke up though he was out of them again and sort of falling out of the bed. When I went up to wake him at 8:30 he was entirely back under the cover. Not only that, he had grabbed one of my pillows and was using it as his pillow. I started waking him, but he was really sleeping. A few rings he rolled over and went back to sleep. He was finally awake a little before ten, but continued to lie in bed for a long time, quiet. At one point he was silently playing piano in the air as he lay on his back.

I started to read some Hardy Boys. He asked about to call on and social versus professional calls. We went out to brush our teeth and he asked “What’s an aegis?” He means the breastplate of Zeus and Athene. We went downstairs and he had a Brother and Bar game where she turns the world into Antarctica. Silliness followed. He played piano, playing one of his songs, and asked, “Do you like the (part)? I used a D instead of a C…there’s more grace to it…gives it acceleration…”

Eventually we played Minecraft, then he had oatmeal for breakfast. He had more Sister and Myna games with OTT land. We played piano together, then played chess. Started against each other, then worked together against the computer, which worked well.

I made crackers with tuna and we had rice with peas and we ate outside. We read some more Hardy Boys, and he asked, “Why would a criminal be dangerous?” I used the word rational and August asked what that meant and said “But rash means quick.” I had to explain that ‘rational’ wasn’t related to ‘rash’. Other words he asked about were exonerate and deduce. He also had me skipping to the end, to where they catch the criminal, but then we went on to something else. And speaking of rash, he has a rash spot on his knee. Looks like it might be some sort of bite.

We went inside and he listened to “I’m Bored” for alone time, then “Goblin Picnic” while he played Minecraft. Followed by “Why the Leaves Change Color” and “The Wonders of Snake Oil”. Carly got home, and brought decks of cards, which he’s been wanting to play. We went and sorted them out to make a couple decks, then played go fish.

We went out for an ant walk, and he spit out chunks of his chocolate bar for them, saying he was doing trophallaxis for them.He said, “Probably a (ant) philosopher thought the spit was a good medicine…” We went back for our water bottles, and were going to go on another walk. He got his shoes back on and went outside, but then checked on his weeds, and realized that his tall straight weed was missing. I realized that Shmuel must have pulled it when he was here yesterday. August didn’t take this very well and said he wasn’t going for a walk. He went in and curled up on a chair, crying. He calmed down a little, and I told him I’d go look for the weed—maybe it wasn’t too damaged to plant again. But I found it on the pile of tree things, broken in several pieces. I found another, very similar weed, out on the sidewalk and pulled it and planted it in one of the many pots we now have and told August it was Weedie 3. He liked it, but insisted we replant it where the original had been. We didn’t get that far today, and maybe he’ll change his mind and like it in a pot.

So instead of a walk, to cheer up we watched the newest Grian video. August asked what commodity means after Grian said that leather is a commodity. August was hungry, so he had an early dinner of Mac and cheese, the last of it (he’s decided he likes the burnt edge pieces the best, but there isn’t much of that left) and broccoli. We then played the ball game, but made it sillier, giving ourselves crazy amounts of points (billions) for things and calling out new rules. We got points for catching the ball, so August figured out he could throw it away from me and I wouldn’t catch it. I gave him a stare when he did this, and he would break out laughing hysterically, and tell me “Stop making that face!” As we made rules back and forth he made some rule that got around one of mine and I said he had outwitted me. That was another word of the day.

Carly came down about 5:30. She had wine, and August told her, “I hate the smell of wine.” And went on, saying “I hate drinking coffee. I don’t know why you like it.” He told Carly about the ants and spitting food for them: “That big ant colony went bonker balls.” He also told her about Shmuel pulling the weed. They then played chess outside and I went for a run.

He played Minecraft with Vivian and Colin. He made something for Carly: “It’s covered in C’s, for Cochamente. It’s a build just for you…I’m doing teacher appreciation day, since I missed teacher appreciation day.” He finished with Minecraft and played chess instead. Carly told him she’s teaching a math lesson on Monday. He went and sort of hugged her and said, “I love you so much. You finally did math.” She told him what the problem will be and he said, “Cool. Coronavirus math.”

I was working and he played piano. He had looked at “Good King Wenceslas” earlier and sight read it. He used five of his stars to get 30 more minutes of Minecraft and did one of his lucky block world. He had had an early dinner, then Carly made cauliflower and French fries. He now had second and thirds on those. We watched a video from Cherie of a piano player in a mall playing “Bohemian Rhapsody”:https://youtu.be/1mNMe28rNuc

. He wanted to watch brain surgery. We watched a short one he’d seen before, thenhttps://youtu.be/isYY2jvd8PU

. As we went upstairs he asked things like “What would it feel like if you were killed by a sword?” “…an ant drowning in the Mediterranean?” “…swallowed by a shark?” I didn’t really have answers to those.

Carly gave him a bath, then he was dancing around naked. In the bedroom he sang, “I’m a teenager, do what I say / or I’ll be funky punky yay!” Carly put lotion on his arms and he didn’t like it, and didn’t even want to touch her: “I’m scared of my own mamas arms…but only for tonight.”

Out of the bedroom he asked, “What’s a pip?” “What’s Park Place?” In his room he listened to “A Contest of the Gods” on Stories Podcast and had his crackers, then “The Moringa Grove” and “Bats, Beasts, and Birds” (but didn’t finish it). We brushed our teeth, then he listened to “The President’s New Suit”. He told me he liked staying up in the bedroom this morning and reading there. We listened to his playlist, then Benge’s Quantised Tones. He took a long time fall asleep again. He seemed to be doing fine at first, but then was doing his breathing thing again when slightly stuffy. Also, after being quiet for a long time he woke me up again and told me “Next time you talk to Shmuel tell him that I hate him” and a couple other things about how he wasn’t happy about the weed. He was asleep around 11:40, I think. I tried just falling asleep in his room again. Worked pretty well, but just not a very comfortable bed.

Song of the day:

Sorting cards:

Spadey spade spade song:

Trophallaxis for the ants:

Laughing 1:

Laughing 2:

Eyebrows and mirror silliness:

I woke him up at 8:30. He sat up and asked “What’s limbo?” We discussed the different meanings and and watched videos about it (https://youtu.be/vyHSJj_DluI and the songhttps://youtu.be/gq7pxUgjLz0).

He asked about bullfighting and we watched the Rick Steves video again:https://youtu.be/Qmp4DjtWcuw August asked what decapitated for his faith means.

He went to the bathroom and I brushed my teeth and he used mouthwash and we went downstairs to the piano where he immediately played a song of the day. On the couch I read a chapter of Have a Hot Time, Hades! We then played Minecraft, having fun in a lucky block world getting floated up by shuckers. He ate oatmeal and was then Myna, walking around the house and talking about her OTT builds in Minecraft.

At 11 he had his meeting with Gabi. Gabi asked about the emotions on the chart, and August chose to ask him about embarrassed. August said he understood the feeling, but wouldn’t verify whether he had felt that way. They then moved on to tanks. Gabi noticed that he was playing to win today.

We went downstairs and August played some piano. Shmuel came by with a guy named Uri, who is starting to rent the basement, as of today. It’s been nice not having someone down there, but Shmuel later said that Uri would be cleaning up the yard down there, which is a mess, so hopefully that will be an improvement. August snuck over to the bathroom door to see Shmuel and Uri and gave a shy hi—he was also just making sure to do his social distancing.

We went for an ant walk, feeding them little bites of the oatmeal left over from his breakfast. We lured out a few colonies with it. August said, “They come and go and spray the pheromones.” We went back and played chess, and Shmuel came and tied up the tree for us, to the fence. He also talked to me about how he and Ada are supposedly solving the issue of the money he owes us for the other unit using water, etc.

I made tuna on crackers for lunch, along with the coconut rice with peas, and also chocolate milk for lunch and we went outside and ate at the table. August, thinking more about embarrassed, said, “Probably somewhere in the world someone has fallen on the ground and is embarrassed.” Shmuel came with a big box of pots. Always reluctant when he brings stuff, so I made it clear we’d return any that we didn’t want.

August was chased in by a fly. We watched GoodTimeswithScar as we finished reading. Had to use my phone hotspot as our internet went out for about an hour. Carly got home and went up to work. We did piano time together. August played in the E mode of C, then other E scales. We discussed pentatonic and rock “What’s rock music?” He kept playing piano and let me go out to cut the piece of wood I needed to try to fix the piano key. He earned his alone time, but first wanted to play a game upstairs. He had the idea for a Sister game where she learns that she’s in a simulation inside a simulation. That got pretty confusing as they all argued about things. As a part of it we ended up learning about chaos theory, watching a couple videos:https://youtu.be/s5mruabpGkU

from the Open University and “Is the butterfly effect real?” From Seeker:https://youtu.be/Hp8wGQW-Y48

We went down and played Minecraft, then Carly came down and they played chess. I went for a run, then finished the piano piece. Unfortunately, the same thing happened, with the piece splitting when I screwed it on, so I’ll have to try again, and improve my design. Carly took recycling up, and August played Minecraft with Vivian and Colin. He had had broccoli and Mac and cheese.

Cherie called, and they played chess, figuring out ChessKid. They first played in slow chess mode, but then figured out the fast chess mode, which worked better for playing simultaneously. At some point he lost interest in playing more, so they said goodbye so Cherie could talk to Colin, who was calling her. He played chess on his own as I finished up some work. Cherie called back for a proper goodbye, as the first one was abrupt. I had the coverage of the SpaceX Dragon launch, and August and I watched them as the astronauts were strapped in and we talked about the interior and the touch screens.

I got him up for a bath. He talked a lot about the Nether update and how Carly will like it, then was quizzing her about Minecraft. In bed he listened to “I’m Bored” yet again and ate his crackers. He asked, “What’s a comedian?” Another word of the day. He told me, “You’re a comedian.” He then listened to the following story/poem, “The Bargain”. We brushed our teeth and said good night and had lights out at by 10:50. We listened to some Howie B, Turn Up the Dark, then Miles Davis’s Sketches of Spain, before going to the Benge FORMS 2 album. He woke me up a few times, and did his usual “I can’t sleep” the moment that lights were out and he had stopped talking. He was finally asleep at 11:35, and I found out that the SpaceX launch had been postponed because of weather.

Morning piano:

Luring out the ants:

Ant with a stick:

Figuring out scales in E:

Drumming and singing:

Chess with Oma:

He got right up at 9 when I opened his door. He used mouthwash this morning, then we headed downstairs. We finished reading Beasts of Olympus: Hound of Hades, then he played piano. He was doubling the melody, but using fifths, an octave higher. We played Minecraft in a lucky block world, then had our French toast for breakfast outside. We started reading Have a Hot Time, Hades!, which is pretty funny.

We went back inside to go play upstairs on the bed, then he played a lot more beautiful piano and we played chess, and he played by himself. We went for an ant walk, talking bits of his leftover French toast. We gave pieces to a total of five different ant nests. One of his nest, the first one he really paid attention to, is interesting because we didn’t see any ants out, but after just a minute there were several ants on the bread. We spent most of the time with the nest by the tree though, and he talked a lot about how their tunnels were among its roots, and they have a line of ants going up the tree: “There’s a connection between the tree and the ants…it gives them food up in its branches…they’re packing their social stomachs…”

We went home and watched the latest Grian video. Carly got home near the end and played chess with him as she listened to the meeting about how the way we pay rent is changing next year. I made lunch: coconut rice, peas, and schnitzel. Carly had to head up and get back to work, and he played chess by himself as I finished.

We ate outside and listened to a couple Wow in the World episodes: VIP was a word of the day. I brought out pie, and after he asked about slavery in the Roman Empire we watched “The Horrible of an Average Roman Empire Slave” (https://youtu.be/jsmWI1TnfDA) on my phone. He then wanted to go upstairs for a Brother and Sister sort of game. He told me, “I’ve got inspiration and I’m using it.” He did another “Going Upstairs” dance and we headed up and took turns pretending to be the slave and the master.

We went downstairs and did some music time. We watched a couple of videos about intervals from Two Minute Music Theory (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4foeFlkiAk and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5txFkdX4_c&t=162s) and another ASAPScience video about an audio illusion (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDiXQl7grPQ), then did Earpeggio and I was practicing piano.

August had fun ripping up the old lamp cover that was bound for the garbage, then when Carly came down they played some quick chess before we went up for his time with Gabi. Gabi couldn’t get Zoom working on his laptop though, so we rescheduled for tomorrow at 11. They played more chess and he played more by himself again and I made a full list of notes on the piano that have something wrong with them—about fifteen that buzz or get stuck or the such. I tagged them all with stickers so I knew which ones needed attention.

August and I went for another ant walk to check on the bread. We found that the ants had slowed down or lost interest as the bread dried and hardened, but that the nest of big ants had been able to pull theirs into the entrance to their nest.

Back at home Carly cut his hair and he watched Mumbo Jumbo episode 12 and had a lollipop. I was working on the piano. I tightened everything up and straightened a couple bent pieces. One step back though, as one of the pieces I had made split at the screw and I need to make a new one again. Put the action back in, and August played. More than half of the issues are taken care of. We’re getting down to pretty minor issues.

Cassie called, and Vivian was still really upset about August making beacons near her house the other day. We all had a talk about it, with Carly, and they figured it out and got to playing. I finished a little more on the piano, then went for a run.

I got back and took a shower. August played a bit long, then they hung up. Carly headed to the bank, and August finally ate his corn. He made faces and shapes in it as he ate it off the cob with his missing teeth, then asked me to cut it off so it would be easier with his missing teeth. Carly got home right as I started reading the Hades book.

He of course wanted chess, and they played. He was getting a bit whiney, and I don’t think he ever went out to water plants with her, like he’d agreed to. She got him upstairs and I gave him a bath. They played another game of chess while I got his crackers ready. In his room he asked, “What’s rejoiced mean?” He said it was from an Ants Canada video. Another word of the day.

We did some Sister and Myna game, then I read Have a Hot Time, Hades! We listened to “The Buried Moon” on Stories Podcast, then brushed our teeth. He asked if someone steals if they have to pay it back. We discussed that, then said good night. In the bedroom we read about Athene and Arachne. New words were depose and serpent. He had us do the “Mozart” high five from a Simply Piano commercial, then had a short Sister game meeting a girl who can weave anything.

As soon as the lights were off, by 10:50, the questions started: “What would it be like for an ant to drown?” Then a bunch of others. Like why hanging would kill Arachne and the difference between murder and someone dying and several less morbid ones. We listened to Johann Johannson’s Orphee, then he was stuffy and doing a lot of nose rubbing and his thing where he seems to hold his breath, breathe, hold his breath. I got him to breath calmly, breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth as he likes, and that seemed to help. He didn’t even seem that stuffy, but it was bothering him. The album finished, and we then listened to Englaborn & Variations and he finally fell asleep a bit before 11:40.

Doubling up an octave and a fifth:

Song of the day:

French toast for the ants:

Figuring things out in chess:

Going upstairs dance:

Ripping fun:

Piano harp:

Haircut time:

He had a tough bit where he woke up around 6 and called me in and said he couldn’t get back to sleep. I lay down in the lower bed. I think it took him about a half hour to go to sleep. At one point I closed the windows even tighter as I thought it might be too bright. Carly had said that yesterday he sat up in the morning and she got the message it was too bright when he put the pillow over his head.

I started waking him by 9, but he was truly asleep. Given his rough morning I let him sleep and woke him at 9:30. He sat up and said, “You can’t really do mining in the lucky block world. It’s death mining.”

He went to the bathroom, then downstairs to the piano and started playing. I suggested he play a song for Dalit, featuring his quieter side, as it’s been a month since we last sent her a video. He played a song and I sent it, and she responded, saying she just started piano lessons again yesterday. I’d talk to Carly about it later, and August later said “I NEED to see Ms. Dalit in person” when we talked about it before bed. So, we’ll see about getting that started up.

Eventually he wanted to play Minecraft, and we played in the lucky block world. He would end up never doing his alone time and extra thirty minutes today. When we were done he went back to piano and I finished making French toast and we ate outside. He gushed about how beautiful it was outside as we went out.

We went back inside and watched Israel. He asked, “What’s confession?” Other words he asked about were sidetracked and renovate. We then watched a couple videos about cerebral palsy, especially the one from Osmosis. Trauma was a new word. The video said that cerebral palsy isn’t progressive, and August piped in, “But FOP is progressive.”

We went upstairs and did a good amount of wrestling, then there was a new student, named Port, with cerebral palsy. The set of stories ended with a basilisk that was making statues out of students.

We went downstairs and did music time, watching “Microtonality in Western Music” from David Bennett (https://youtu.be/q1XOnIk2ai8). So microtonality was a new word, as was blue notes. He was inspired and played more piano. A new thing he started yesterday and developed today is passing the melody he is playing back and forth from the right hand to the left hand.

Carly got home around 1:30, and he instantly wanted to play her chess. She had to go back to work, but played him once, then I took over and played him. I was able to get him to checkmate me. We ate the last of the pasta for lunch, sitting outside in the chairs. We had a discussion about property rights and what if land borders move, which started with him asking what happens if you own a lot and there is a landslide and someone else’s property ends up on your lot. I then told him he should ask Opa. He compared it to how he asked mama teaching questions. I told him he could ask me too, and I pretended to answer his questions, but referring to him in the third person. “Oh, my student pretended not to hear me…My student is so lazy, he didn’t wake up until 9:30 today…” He found that pretty hilarious, and we’d repeat it for Carly before bed.

We then ate pie outside, and almost finished the Hades book we’re reading. August was inspired though, and had a new magic girl character for the Brother and Sister games: Arachne. Brother brought her home and she decorated the Family house, including a tapestry of Bar wearing a funny hat. August kept walking around the house as he narrated. He then got me upstairs to keep playing. Sister and Arachne then played a practical joke on Brother, filling his ears with silk to make him think he’s deaf. August had his hands talking to my feet, using a cute little voice, and they did a feet and hand dance together. I then remembered the song “It’s Okay” and sang it, and he started to dance around on the bed. We also listened to the listened to Radiohead song with microtones, “How to Disappear Completely”. I put on Steve Reich’s “It’s Gonna Rain” and August asked me if it was Reich’s “Piano Phase”, as he noticed the similarities. We finished our time upstairs with different animals (our hands and feet) and body parts meeting, and August being a person that was slow falling.

We headed downstairs, but first he eavesdropped on Carly and heard her say, “Oh my gosh, there’s so much.” Downstairs he told me, “I’d rather quarantine ourselves than not do summer.” His comment last night about being okay with having to quarantine made more sense: he was thinking about how we might not go to the U.S. this summer. We played chess and agreed to a draw. Carly came down and had some of her dark chocolate bar, which was a gift. August didn’t want any, saying he had dark chocolate before and that it was “flavorless.” He wanted to play chess with her. They went outside first, and talked about not going to the United States after he asked how long until summer. She said we probably weren’t going, but would have fun other ways. He handled it okay, but I think he’s sad about it.

They started playing, and I went for a run. I got back before they had started Minecraft. He had had Mac and cheese and broccoli for dinner. Vivian didn’t want to play with them because August had been putting beacons on her house yesterday. She had told him not to, and he had stopped. Not clear why she didn’t want him to, or why it was a big issue, as she had cleaned it up in literally two minutes. So Carly and August played together in Colin’s world. But then Colin didn’t want August destroying anything in his world (it was the Washington D.C. world). At least Vivian and Cassie were able to convince Colin to let them change August and Carly to operator, so they could build stuff. August got bored of just building though, and went into his own world and wanted Carly to switch to his world. So I played with him. Vivian didn’t play with either of them. August switched back to Colin’s world, and Carly and I were finally able to both log off, although it took me a while as Colin wanted me to keep playing.

Carly and August played chess, then Cherie called and we were figuring out ChessKid. Didn’t quite get it all figured out so they could play, but progress made, and Cherie should be able to play with him on Wednesday. August really wanted to play with her right now, but we convinced him to play with me when I used my silly mama voice and pretended to play like her, making silly moves. I moved my queen out and only moved it until August was able to trap it. He had fun checkmating me with three queens, I think it was. He played the computer several times on his own, then I got him upstairs and Carly gave him a bath.

August joked that “Dada’s being punky” so I threw his clothes on him and tried to teach him that people tend to act how you expect him to act, so he should say nice things to me so I act nice. In bed he listened to the new Stories Podcast story about “Wanda Walgood, Wandering Witch” and ate his crackers and peanut butter. We brushed our teeth and talked more about why Eve has to stay at home. He asked if he ever had playdates with just Zoe, but then agreed with me that Eve would be crushed if Zoe was able to play with him but she couldn’t. Carly and I both said we might be able to play with Gilad in the park again soon.

He went in to say good night to Carly and was asking her about her work, and how students could do art about COVID. Carly said something about vocabulary and he asked what that meant. We went in to bed, after doing the me pretending to answer teaching questions about my student, and he did a “punky student” dance. We had lights out by 11. We listened to “Piano Phase”. I said it was time to go to sleep and he said, “I like your voice when we’re going to sleep: ‘Alright little boy’…It’s like a sleepy fairy.” He then asked, “Are there girl fairies?” And added “People probably think girls are more graceful…” we talked a little more about that. We listened to part 1 of “It’s Gonna Rain” and then “Four Organs/1970” again and he was asleep around 11:35.

The spooky song:

Passing the melody back and forth:

Song of the day:

Hand and feet dance:

More piano:

Punky student dance:

I went and woke him up, in the big bed, at 9:15. Downstairs I suggested he go say good morning to Carly, who was out working in the wind in the yard. He went out for a few minutes. They came back in and got their iPads and played Minecraft outside. When she found an abandoned mineshaft he said, “Good for you, mama. I love you.”

He had oatmeal for breakfast, and asked me, “How was your book group meeting?” I then asked how it went going to sleep with Mama: “Weird…I think I stayed up until 11:28.” After breakfast we watched some videos I had lined up: We finished the Crash Course video on human evolution, then we watched a Vox video on how all maps lie (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIID5FDi2JQ&t=1s), and played with the Truesize.com website.

We went upstairs to do some wrestling, and Ms. Safe class games. There were odd animals involved, like a gorilla with a pointy beak and “a mile long basilisk.” There were a lot of new students, including a new student in a wheelchair named Blank. After a long time upstairs we went downstairs to the piano. I missed recording a really cool song him played, then he played another amazing one as I was making some lunch. He told me, “I play the best songs when you’re not video recording…To mock you!” I think it was the really haunting song he played several times today, but I didn’t manage to record.

We went outside for lunch. As we went out he said, “My song was basically the opposite of this.” Indicating outside. After eating for a couple minutes he asked “Will you guard my food from flies while I play music?” He ran in, played a bit, then came back out. We had oats and hot dogs (cut up). I read the first three chapters of Beasts of Olympus: Hound of Hades. New words included solar plexus, griffin, immortal, charges, boasting, and entrails.

He ate it all, and we then had small pieces of pie as we kept reading. He was then still hungry so Carly got him mac and cheese and he listened to “I’m Bored” outside for alone time. He played Minecraft with Carly, then they played chess. I rested for a bit. When I came down he told me about the chess match and about how Carly was ahead and he let her get her hopes up before he “curved” it back to him and won.

We all went out for an ant walk. We fed the ants a few pieces of apples. Got him to walk a tiny bit further, but not over to the bridge, as I had initially suggested, and I found two mini chocolates dropped on the ground. We broke those up and fed them to the ants as well. They seemed to really be excited about those.

At home we read more of Beast of Olympus, then watched a few more videos from the queue: “A Day in the Life of a Roman Soldier” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5e7cl19Ha0), “A Glimpse of Teenage Life in Ancient Rome” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juWYhMoDTN0), and “Can You Trust Your East? (Audio Illusions)”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzo45hWXRWU

. He really liked the Shepard Tone Illusion and then walked around, having Myna going OTT with auditory illusions. I’m not entirely sure what it all entailed, but at one point he said, “It’s basically a camera-less particle accelerator.”

We went and played a couple of Gravity Maze levels, and while we did so we watched part of an Iskall livestream on Twitch. He played chess with Carly again and I went for a run. I got back and he finished playing Minecraft with Vivian. Kind of odd, because she apparently couldn’t hear us, although we could hear her. I had his dinner ready and we were going to read, but as soon as I hung up the call with Vivian Cherie called. As he ate he asked her, “Do you believe in god?” They debated that, and I fed him the line “That’s just redefining terms until they’re meaningless!” She asked “Do you believe in love?” He said he doesn’t, and he had some interesting wording, which I don’t think I got accurate, but was something like, “I believe people get along…they don’t fit with one person…” I realized what he was talking about was soul mates: One of the videos we’ve watched is on the mathematical impossibility of finding your soul mate, if there was just one person out there for you.

He played piano for her, then wanted to show her a Brother and Sister game. He ran circles around the bed and sang the song, but then we went back downstairs. They played chess together with Carly. When they were done I emailed Cherie and Carly information on ChessKid.com, and we’ll be able to use that in multiple ways, including playing together while in a Zoom call, once Cherie gets a new computer (she’s stuck on her phone now, as the wi-fi stopped working on her computer).

August hadn’t eaten a ton of dinner, although he’d at least had all the green beans. Carly had placed a fruit and veggies order today, which came during my run, about 15 minutes after she placed it, and they now ate the half of a watermelon, almost all of it. He enjoyed using the ice cream scoop to scoop it out, and also drank the juice with a straw. While standing there he spotted tiny ants on the wall and had fun counting them. More seemed to appear every time he looked at the spot, and he called it his superpower. We put a couple drops of the ant poison on the wall.

I got him up and gave him a bath. Carly had prep to do for tomorrow. He asked, “What’s a dilemma?” Once he was in pajamas we went down and checked on the ants. Back upstairs we did the Sister game with her finding out about the simulation. He ate his crackers and peanut butter and listened to “Bunny’s Big Leap” and “I’m Bored”. Carly pointed out it is the seventh or eighth time he’s listened to that story, and when it was over I asked why he liked it so much. He replied, “Probably because it’s my nature to be bored.”

We brushed our teeth and said good night to Carly again. He wanted nonfiction time, so I read to him about Zeus and Hera from Bernard Evslin’s Greek Mythology. We got the lights off, and he asked, “What’s diagnose mean?” We listened to a Steve Reich organ piece (“Four Organs/1970”), and he asked about the difference between hyperbole and sarcasm. The organ piece was over and I put on “Piano Phase (1967)” and he said he really likes that one (we’ve listened to it several times). He woke me up to tell me that if we had to quarantine for two weeks that we’d be just fine. I was only able to agree and tell him to go to sleep. He was asleep by 11:35.

“That’s gotta do”:

Surface tension and waves:

https://youtu.be/EG_vrHbzmKIWaves slo-mo:

“Attack of the nest”:

Starting a game:

Scooping watermelon:

Ants in the kitchen:

Melodica before bed:

I woke him up at 9. He got up pretty quickly, and told me, “I had another Minecraft dream.” It was of us being in the mesa, and also not being able to find the lucky block world. We went downstairs, and Carly finished reading one of the Clementine books to him. While she looked for the other Clementine book he said, “Junie B. Jones and Clementine are quite alike.” She asked, “What similarities have you noticed?” To which he said, “Well, they’re basically the same.” They then started the other book.

When he wanted Minecraft we played in the lucky block world. My parents called tp say happy birthday, and we Skyped with them. August paused Minecraft to play piano for them, and Carly took them upstairs for a few minutes to talk about going back to school. After Minecraft August played chess with Carly and I made oatmeal. His tooth then came out, leaving him with two missing front teeth.

He played piano for me for my birthday, and did a lot of playing this morning, with lots of new tunes coming out of nowhere. At some point he wrote an email to Carly, apologizing for hitting her last night. He spotted Gravity Maze and we got it out and he did a couple levels of that. I then read some Hardy Boys, and scholarship was a word of the day. He wanted to do a Sister game, and we discussed how old she is, not coming to a conclusion. We did the game where she finds out she’s in a simulation. We had a long, long discussion/debate about whether the lives in a simulation were the same as the lives in the real world. As he walked around in circles and we talked he would go back and forth to the piano and play for a few seconds.

For alone time he listened to “I’m Bored”. We then did Minecraft and the Lucky Block world. He explained why he’s really liking the Lucky Block world now: “It’s like there’s this rush of excitement…” We went outside and looked at plants. He talked about plants changing and how he’s gotten to watch his weeds change over weeks. Today he noticed that the berries on his weed were turning purple. And he told me he understood my explanation about Vivian and Colin and Minecraft time and about how they are still having their morning and have additional time, whereas he is finishing up his day.

Inside we watched Mumbo Jumbo and Carly made the pie. August had pasta for lunch. Carly had gotten out books to return to the library, and I was looking for a book I remembered checking out, but we haven’t read. I checked the car and when I came back he said, “She’s actually making the pie!” He made things out of the leftover dough. I went upstairs, and when I came down he had had the idea of practicing when he is upset. We all did that for a while.

Talking about his teeth he said, “They’re like a gateway to my mouth…” And he voluntarily was talking about when he is upset: “I don’t know why I say go away, actually, because I don’t want you to go away.”

August had asked sometime ago if cavemen lived in trees. So, for learning time we started with a National Geographic video about Neanderthals, then followed the bread crumbs and interests. We watched a video about a village in China that is in a cave, then a couple about modern cave houses. Finally, we watched the Crash Course Big History episode on “Human Evolution”:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPggkvB9_dc

_Collective learning _ was a word of the day.

Colin called, and wanted me and August to go upstairs, then downstairs. Upstairs I found the book I’d been looking for in the closet. August took Colin outside, saying, “It’s beautiful out here!” “Want to see my weeds? There’s berries and they’re turning purple!” Back inside he played a lot to piano for them. They hung up, and he and I went upstairs and did a lot of wrestling. The super strength wrestling became the backstory for a new student in a wheelchair.

We went downstairs for dinner. Carly had made macaroni and cheese and green beans. He played some chess, setting up endgames with lots of queens. Vivian called at 6. They played in Vivian’s world. “Vviviam, Vivian. What’s up with your skin? It’s amazing.” I worked, then went for a run. I came down just in time, at 7:30, for Thatcher’s birthday. Carly later told me that August had said, right before, “I don’t like parties. I just won’t interact; that’s not nice and it’s not mean.” August and I ate pie as we watched the party.

After that I did some Magnus Trainer with August. He wanted Carly to do it. We talked about him sleeping in the big bed tonight, and he called the change “Stressful.” We played chess, and I taught him about en passant in Magnus Trainer, then we practiced it on the board, before he spent time finding checkmates again. He talked about how he starts each game with D4 “it’s good for controlling the middle…I use it to get my queen in the picture.” And he’s excited because when he has the computer playing at its highest level that it makes the same opening move, meaning it is a grandmaster-level move.

I got him upstairs and he did a lot of talking on the toilet: “We made a rule where you have to accept please.” “Dada, explain it to her.” I then figured out that he meant “sorry”. A few weeks ago, when he was upset, he kept saying “sorry”. After he calmed down and we talked about it, he said we should still acknowledge when he says sorry, even if he ends up hitting us again. This made sense, as yesterday, when he was upset and we were holding him, he kept saying, “Please, please! That’s the rule! You have to accept please!” And I didn’t know what he was referring to.

We did a little Myna game, where she was using video cameras and computer programs to learn from masters. I told him that’s how it actually works, minus the spy cameras. I then taught him opening, middle game, and end game.

We read some Hardy Boys, then did a Brother and Sister game where they were still a boring, and found a fire ant colony. Brother wished they could meet someone that could make everything better when he got hurt, and a bit later he met Bar “Hi, I can make everything better.” Then there was an angry squirrel that he befriended, but was always angry, so he let Tigey eat it when he found Tigey a couple years later, but Bar made more angry squirrels.

I took him in to Carly at 10:30. I put on the Philip Glass piano album on his phone. As I left I heard him ask “Can you tell me a story of when you were a kid?” She said he also asked what medical conditions students have, telling her “I’m really interested in medical conditions.” She sent me an email saying he wants to learn about cerebral palsy tomorrow. She experienced the poking and asking of additional questions after she was falling asleep, and him saying a few times that he couldn’t get to sleep.

My book group meeting went really well, with a lot of discussion about the book Flights. There were no side conversations on our usual topics of work, coronavirus, or TV shows. Pretty amazing, actually.

My birthday music:

Flowers on the plant in the wind:

Talking to Colin in the yard:

Playing for the camera:

Describing Minecraft for Eve:

Explaining lucky block world:

Showing an epic jungle:

Explaining Minecraft:

A longer explanation of Minecraft:

Thatcher’s party: