Category: Uncategorized

He woke me up at 6:20: “Dada, come.” I got up on the bed with him, pulled the cover over him, and he fell asleep. Carly woke him up about 7:50. He popped right up. He went to the bathroom and while he washed his hands asked the germs, “What do you choose? Being washed down the drain to the sewer system or being eaten by white blood cells? WHAT DO YOU CHOOSE!?”

Down on the couch they talked about the oceans book and he said that’s where he learned the song. He then explained the water cycle to her. They then went out to enjoy the fresh air. They came back in and he talked about how he “multitasked…triple tasked…” when he put on his shoes and walked around because the door was closed (it also got him closer and got him exercise).

They were gone for 20 minutes or so and were back at 8:30. He told me, “Instead of reading, we went for a walk that is even better…we even collected newspapers from the blue garbage…” He then wanted to play Minecraft with me, but decided to watch a Phineas Rage video instead, saying I could have more work time. He watched the video about ocean monuments, then about fighting the wither. He stopped his time before it was out and started a Brother game about Brother trying to get enough courage to fight the wither.

He was hungry and requested the lentils, etc. I got him a plate of that. Carly asked him to paint. She worked on her painting and August first painted a representation of how solids and gasses move, with the solid being a jagged back and forth line and the gas being a curvy line. He then did one where he just experimented with making different textures between the brushes, paint, and water. He then started painting his hand, which was cool, but he was over the carpet. He got grumpy when we asked him to move and went and washed off his hand, but was calling us dummies. He came back and cuddled with her and they talked about it.

They went outside. He was playing on the teeter totter for at lest part of the time. Carly talked about putting one of Shmuel’s plants, which he has in a cardboard box, in the long white pot that we have. Not sure if she actually got to that though. She also wanted to go to the nursery and wanted to take August. Inside, he contemplated his options for a long time and couldn’t decide. He also really wanted to do his alone time and iPad.

I got him dressed. He talked about the new system for alone time and iPad time being really confusing, so he and I drew a chart on the whiteboard which I think helped him. Eventually, we suggested doing the nursery later. He was relieved to not have to choose.

For 15 minutes of alone time he sort of copied the math I’d been doing on the whiteboard and did math by himself. He called me over a few times to remind him how to draw certain numbers. But his handwriting is very neat now.

We did 30 minutes of Minecraft. He asked me, “Could you be snarky to mama?” Later, I tried to show him how to use the fireworks while flying, but made a mistake and fell. He deadpanned, “You fall in the water…I’m being snarky.” It turns out Carly had taught him the word earlier in the day. I tamed a cat in Minecraft. He asked, “What’s obedient mean?”

When he was done he skipped doing an educational video and wanted a Brother and Sister family reunion story. This time, the bathrooms worked, but then everyone got sick after the ugly goose swam in the punch. Then another story where the parents and older kids returned from Lego City only to find the younger kids had been left without a babysitter and had locked themselves in the bathroom with all the cookies and desserts. They stayed in there for days until the food ran out. August had some cinnamon cereal and milk, then we did a replay of Brother playing Minecraft on hard.

We got going to Gabi’s. On the way down we went back and found where we’d left off with Story Pirates. It was near the end of season 1. So we listened from there. The story involved the singing sirens, and August recognized sirens from My Little Pony. While Carly and I met with Gabi August watched more of season 2 of Llama Llama.

From there we went to the nearby art store, where we had once went with my parents to help Carly get canvases for her Get to Know You Day at school. They chose some paint colors together. As we drove out, Carly said something about how the parking lot was bad, and I said nothing could be worse than the dirt lot up in EvenYehuda when it is crowded (with a single spot for both entering and exiting). A minute later August brought up what I just said and said it could be worse: “What if a nuclear bomb…”

At home, Carly convinced him to do art outside by saying he could have popcorn while they do it, and it was just a Sunday thing. He was very excited by that. They made popcorn. He had some and said, “That kernel was as good as United States popcorn…pink salt.” He was referring to Bear Foods. They were painting for a long time. I heard him volunteer that he gets upset at the end of his evening iPad time because he knows it is the last time he can play for the day.

He came in eventually to do his alone time. Carly made him a smoothie and carrot coins. He watched videos, and we let him finish the video he was on instead of doing an educational video. I went for a run. When I came down from a shower they were reading a Comic Science: Robots and Drones book. It talked about Greek science, and Carly asked me to show him photos of the museum in Athens.

I took over, and he told me about his simple machines, including a machine that won’t let you put your tea on it. And he told me that in Minecraft: “Dada, did you know I always have books and quills so I can plan and write journals?” He wanted to paint, and painted a window and a tree outside of it. He did some dancing to a song, and I got him upstairs for a bath.

He spent a long time on the toilet before, singing. When he got off he said he had been doing “Kidding tricks” (as opposed to parenting tricks). Kidding tricks are ways to postpone things, so he was sitting on the toilet for a long time, and also singing. He said another good kidding trick was to talk about something the parent liked, like science or music.

Out on the couch I suggested I sleep out there, and I’d be right outside the open door to his room (basically, another step to getting him to sleep on his own). I explained that the trundle bed isn’t comfortable. His first reaction was, “You’re criticizing my bed?” He said he’d think about it, and maybe I could do it next time.

He spent a long time brushing his own hair and said his bangs were bothering him and asked Carly to cut them. She did that, then we said good night.

In his bedroom I introduced the Ninja Focus app. He was right into it, unlike back in the spring when I had introduced a similar app and he had dismissed it. We listened to “What is meditation?” and he instantly got in a comfortable position and closed his eyes and did the breathing. We listened to a short one, then to “Mind Library.” In it, it has you think about a good memory. I asked him what his good memory was, and he said it was walking around the playground at school and watching the other kids.

We read two Mr. Men stories, then listened to “Venus” from The Planets and he fell right to sleep by 10.

Talking about his painting:

Painting his hand:

His S tongue twister:

His simple machine:

Knee reflex:

He got up at 3am to use the bathroom. Right back to bed after that. He woke up at 7. Right away he asked me what it was he had wanted to do last night but couldn’t. Downstairs we remembered it was doing more of the recycled art with Carly.

He watched one of the last Phineas Rage Minecraft videos. He then got Carly to do her recycling art and she turned her bottle thing into a flower. I remembered how he had wanted to put fruit in the water bottle thing (he calls it “the refresher”) and cut up some pineapple. They went out and watered plants. He was talking about root systems and what he learned on Magic School Bus.

Back inside he had a Brother game where he is covered in snot. When I then didn’t want to do another Brother game, in Minecraft, he suddenly hit me in the back. He apologized, then was making things out of plastic. He made his first gun, then a wind machine to use as a fan. We then finished reading What Do We Know About Earth’s Oceans? We talked about human migration and the big flood in the Americas. gyre was a word of the day as we learned about ocean currents. He sang the “evaporation…” song we had made up when we read the first half of the book.

They worked on the flower cum palm tree. He added roots. He kept working on it and sang a “We have to fix the vacuoles” song. We watched Ted Ed videos. First about cell membranes (I had seen it on Facebook), then about Loki, Talos, and Hercules. He had a theory that Atlas is running around the sun and that’s what makes the year.

He was really wanting mama time and kept asking when she could play with him. She was making food. She worked with him more. The rice, green beans, and broccoli were done so he ate outside. They were looking stuff up and discussing things like diabetes. He had some of the lentil dish when it was done.

They left around noon to go to the beach. Soon after they left it got really cloudy and I thought I heard one clap of thunder. A few minutes later I got a message from Carly saying it was raining at the beach. They sat in the car for five minutes, waiting for it to pass, then got driving. They went north to Poleg Beach. It had stopped raining by then and they were able to play. They tried to make a system to catch the waves like last time but it didn’t work so well. August told me, “The waves were unpredictable.” But they played for a good amount of time, then went to the big Tiv Taam for a few things.

They were back at 3:45 and were outside for a while. They watered Shmuel’s plants. When I came down he was doing along time with the dictionary. He had some food, then they debated which world they should play in Minecraft. They played, so I went back up to work. I then heard him watching educational video, so kept working, then Carly was skyping with her parents when I came back down.

August was hungry, so I cut up some pineapple and he had a cherry yogurt. Still hungry, and it turned out he hadn’t actually eaten his earlier dinner. I heated it up and he ate a good amount of that.

We started reading a new book called Timmy Failure, about a kid who has a detective agency. We then did movie time. I made a bag of popcorn and we watched episode 1 of season two of Llama Llama, then a My Little Pony episode about an Apple family reunion.

Afterwards he wanted music time, saying we hadn’t done it for a while. It was bath/bed time though and I got him upstairs. In the shower he was asking impossible questions, like what would happen if he put an infinitely strong plug over a hose with infinite pressure. There were several like that. They all turned into black holes, basically. As the scenarios got bigger it did things like tearing apart space-time. It turned into a chaos/discord scenario with ice cream floating through the air, etc. He was then telling me all about physics on his planet, which made no sense to our understanding of physics.

He was humming tunes and I conducted him. He got grumpy about no music time again. I put my fingers out like keys and he was playing notes on them and I was making the notes. I brushed his teeth and thought I spotted some redness around his top right canine tooth. It may have just been some food. I brushed it again, then he hid his head. He said it did bother him. Carly was there and we were asking him more about it but assuring him it was okay. We’ll check on it.

He discussed Carly’s contacts with her, then we were rolling our eyes around. I left them at 9. I think they were reading a book after that. I went for a run.

Evaporation condensation song:

Fix the vacuoles song:

Reading the dictionary again:

Spinning:

He was up just after 7:30. Very sleepy looking as he came downstairs and cuddled on the couch, not saying anything. Finally, the very first thing he said was, “You owe me two chocolate chips.” I told him I knew he would say that. He then said he needed to use the bathroom. He told me, “I’ll tell you a simile…the end of a cold is like descending on an airplane, because descending is down.” “I kind of thought of it because your ears pop when you are going down, and that’s like a stuffy nose.”

He then gave me one of his decisions: “Which one will you choose. It is very hard to choose, because they are both death: getting smashed by an asteroid, or getting sliced in half by a sword.”

We played Minecraft and ate banana bread. We then watched the ASAPScience Periodic Table song and How to Learn Faster. And then a Bright Side video called “Why C students are more successful than A students”

He had a Brother game with him going to Greena. He took books to her, She invented hoola hoops in the jungle. He was then a cute mouse that ended up having a disease. He made a rubber band chain and we stretched it across the house. I made a strawberry and mango smoothie for a late breakfast and he had Brother playing Minecraft. He did 15 minutes of alone time and I exercised, then we did 30 minutes of Minecraft. He asked, “What’s depths mean?” A word of the day.

He had a little pizza for lunch before we left, but didn’t eat much of it. He was then singing the title line of “Enjoy the Silence,” which we were listening to the remixes of. As we finally got ready to go, he asked, “How does a baby fit all of the things they need to live inside them? They’re so small… and their internal organs?”

I had suggested going to a climbing wall place, but he asked, “What was the other thing I wanted to do?” Zip line and trampolines were what he’s talked about. He didn’t think he’d like the climbing place for long, and I reminded him there was a small zip line at the park down on the Yarkon River (Hayarkon Park). So we decided to take my bike down there.

We listened to Story Pirates both ways, working our way backwards to the beginning of season 3, then listening to the end of Season 2, which we haven’t heard. We’ll now go back and start at the beginning of season 2. We got riding at 12:20. We rode for a little and made our way to the playground.

We stopped to do the zip line. He was right on it. He at first didn’t know what I meant when I said he would just hang from the bottom of it last year, so I showed him the photos. He said he was being dumb or stupid not actually sitting on it last year. Another example of how he’s become much less scared of things. Similarly, clouds were pretty thick when we started riding and he didn’t worry about it raining.

He did the zip line a good dozen or twenty times. I was taking photos of him and he almost hit me once. He told me to scoot farther away, arguing “You know you should do different perspectives.” We stopped for a snack and he told me how “I have a while website where people can buy Zipline transportation.”

He then had a Brother game where they go to Zipline World. The parents paid a bunch of money for it but it turned out Brother didn’t want to go on, just watch other people. Then, Dad got tickets to LEGO World. But he only took baby brother as the others weren’t interested. Bar ended up taking Baby Sister, who hadn’t wanted to go the first time because Lego World wasn’t dangerous enough for her. Bar helped make it more dangerous. When the parents find out they get really upset that Bar is taking her to dangerous things.

We got riding again at 1. We worked our way through the park, then rode upstream on the north side of the river. We went a bit more than a mile that way, not quite making it up to the water park. August spotted interesting mushrooms on the way, then identified birch trees, or at least something similar. He recognized them from Minecraft, of ll places.

We turned around, then I spotted a little outdoor cafe place in the park and suggested we stop. I was thinking juice, he was thinking ice cream, so we got both. We got an Oreo ice cream sandwich and a fresh orange juice. We sat in the corner and ate. We shared both. At first he said the juice wasn’t sweet, but I said that was because he was eating the ice cream. When he was done with that he got into the juice and really liked it.

We got riding again. On the way back I spotted a big sign with a picture of a dog on it. It was right near where I thought I had seen a wild dog/fox/something a previous time we were here geocaching. Later, at home, I translated it and found out there are jackals there, so that was what I had seen, and not just a dog on the loose.

I managed to wind around the park just enough (we took a dirt path back to the east a little further downstream, to where we had started our walk down the river with Chuck and Cherie) and we were just at 4 miles when we got bck to the car.

We listened to the Story Pirates on the way back. They talked to one of the authors, who was 5, and she talked a lot like August, using similes, for example how singing was like a net in her head to catch ideas before they get away.

We were home at 2:50. We sat in the car listening to the end of the Mr. Banana Face Guy song. As we went in we were discussing pizza places and I said it was hard to beat VIPizza. He replied, “Except Korea noodle pizza…What? Why wouldn’t I remember?”

He got a random song from Siri when asking for “Pay Your Dues”. As usual, it was a random rap song with explicit lyrics, and the title had nothing to do with what August had said. He liked it though and added it to his playlist.

He got on Minecraft and Gilad called a few minutes later and they played together in their original world. They mainly added on to the roller coaster, and Gilad showed him how to make the track go up and down and use powered rails. August played with him for over an hour. When August’s time was up he got upset, even though I was willing to give him a couple more minutes to finish up with Gilad. He hung up Skype, then closed Minecraft right away, without saying goodbye. August came over to one of the red chairs (I had been sitting in the other one) to do his clamming, which was generally pretty good, but then he insisted that I move somewhere else in the house to give him his space. We were talking about how he couldn’t just chase me around the house, wanting his space, when Carly got home.

After a bit he was better. She was holding him upside down by his feet, then he had pizza and carrots for dinner. We did a bit of a Brother game. Carly had been outside and now came in. She read the Myna book to him.

He did tape and reusing art. He had started with tape again yesterday, andn we now talked about how he was entering a new taping phase. He sang about what he was doing and how things were his middle name. He pointed out that the My Little Pony episodes always have a friendship problem in them, but the comic issues do not and asked why that is. Carly pointed out that he was making a text-to-text connection.

He then painted with her. She was painting a picture of Lady Bird Johnson. He was wanting her precious white paint, which we were almost out of. I did dishes and got an email out to my book group. I realized we are reading our 95th book as a group. August told her about overpopulation saying, “Because overpopulation IS HAPPENING.” He then showed her the Kurzgesagt video on it and I went for a run. Carly made something out of recycled materials to, but August wasn’t impressed by it. When I got back and had taken a shower I made a turtle with him. He made a mushroom, and we had the turtle sitting on it. He liked that better, and was trying to convince Carly to make hers better.

I got him upstairs and washed him. Afterwards, he was standing and staring off, I think playing with his spit. Carly asked what he was doing and he said, “Just pretending I’m a plant. The roots are sucking up water…there’s an infections…water from the stream…my own game with spit.”

They said good night and I got him in bed. We finished reading the “Reflections” series in My Little Pony. He was then repeating, “I just can’t help but wonder: is it an alien?” Which is a line from a Kurzgesagt video. He asked “whats honorable mean?” He was then asking about black holes, for example, could a black hole crush a neutron star (as he remembered a neutron star has an incredibly strong crust)? We listened to Bach’s solo violin works, and he was asleep at 9:50. Later, as I was going to sleep, he sat up in bed, still asleep, for a couple minutes, then lay back down. I’ve seen him do that before.

Zip line 1:

Zip line 2:

Tracking his walking distance:

Singing his art process:

Singing his art process 2:

Finishing his creation:

Explaining his creations:

A busy day. When we’d invited Lauren and Gilad over I hadn’t realized that today would be a half-day at WBAIS due to parent conferences. So we ended up going straight from them to picking up Eve and Zoe at school.

He woke up a little before 6:30 and came out new called “Dada!” I went up and got him back to sleep, although he was back up again at 6:45. Not a long night of sleep. A few minutes on the couch, then used the bathroom. The first thing he told me about was a spider he discovered called a rock spider. Its bite can put you in a coma for three years.

We finished reading Earthling! I had enjoyed the whole thing. It took some coaxing and flipping ahead to get August to want to finish it, as it was a bit stressful for him, wondering if the main character would make it home to his dad. Anyway, I was also pleasantly surprised to see how it pulled together somethings at the end from early on that I’d forgotten about.

He needed to blow his nose, but told me he only likes doing that with Carly. I finally got him blowing his nose with me. I think because I inadvertently gave him more chocolate than she does. He watched the newest Phineas Rage island survival Minecraft episode and ate cereal. We then continued the Brother game where he is a blacksmith in Minecraft.

We then read more of the My Little Pony “Reflections” story. He asked about both cliche and dignity and I explained them. We got the house a little more in order and he got dressed.

Lauren and Gilad showed up closer to 10. They first played with Legos. August was really happy with the random structures they were making together. I then suggested they do a science experiment together. I helped them through the tin hedgehog experiment. That went really well, as they could both do one. We watched a video about tin, and I explained what was going on a bit more. They then played with the MEL Chemistry app on the iPad, making atoms together. They also watched a video in it that really got August’s attention, as he would reference it a few times through the day, including when he told Heather facts.

August also asked for banana bread, so I brought that out for everyone and Lauren and I discussed gluten free flours. I had also cut up the rest of the strawberries for a snack.

August gave Gilad a quick tour of upstairs and we ended up outside, where we all played catch with the smiley face ball. That was fun, and August was throwing the ball harder. They left at 11:50 and August and I headed to school.

As we walked in we heard a couple of women call a preschooler Augie. I confirmed that was his name, although not if it was short for August. We picked up Eve, then ran into Heather getting Zoe. The kids were ready to head out, so we went straight to the car.

We drove up into town and parked in the paved lot, getting the only spot. We walked to VIPizze. Had just opened. When we’ve been in on half-days at the school before it has been busy (we saw Hector and others there once, I think). But we were the only people that ate inside the entire time we were there. We did, however, see the Kern girls walk by, and the kids all said hi to them and waved a lot.

We got a large pizza, half cheese and half corn. The kids each ate a slice. August only actually ate ⅔ of a slice. He had just eaten strawberries and banana bread through. Zoe sort of snuck a second drink pack so they each got two. August took his to go though as he didn’t want that either. August saving “Yankee Doodle” for them. Several times Zoe taught us a “Mrs. Yankee Doodle” song. August liked that, and kept coming up with new words for it (you say things like ‘E for Eve”) and really has his first letters down. August had noted that their shelf up high with random toys and dolls on it had a lot less items on it. We joked about them being stolen, and I had them speculate on ways that they could have been stolen. They came up with some good ideas, and August had a couple involving magic that were pretty funny.

Eve had been giving out cool unicorn stickers (one ended up on the steering wheel and August got one he wanted to later put on his head with tape). Before we left she gave two to the guy who works there. We took the second half of the pizza with us.

August wanted to run around the park (he was full of energy) so we headed over there. August went on the swing right away and wanted to be pushed. Not normal behavior for him recently. They then played on the structure, then moved over to the merry-go-round until Eve needed a bathroom.

We all walked to the bathroom behind the health food store, but it was locked. So we walked back to the pizza place. From there it was back across the street again to the fruit and veggie market. We got two packs of strawberries and a pineapple. Then we walked to the car, only to realize I had set down the pizza somewhere. Luckily, I was pretty sure it was at the pizza place when Eve went to the bathroom. We walked back and got it.

Finally, there was a woman who had beached her car over the curb: the front right tire was in the sand of a tree planter, and the axle or something was on the curb. The tires were just spinning. I tried to help her, but I don’t think her English was really strong. She said someone else could help her. We went and got in the car. There was another guy looking at her car when we drove out of the lot.

We were home at 1:30. A topic of conversation at the pizza place had been magic spells and potions. Zoe apparently has been looking in the library for magic spells. August had listed all of the spells he knows from Minecraft, and threw in things like a time travel spell. So at the house they made potions and discussed magic spells. We opened the bottle of rose taste/scent and they used that. They played outside, and I cut up strawberries. They tried tying the bikes together but the string kept breaking. I found some twine but I don’t think they got around to trying it.

I made them all chocolate milk. They sat around the table, drinking it. August finished his quickly and told me, “Just so you know, I don’t savor chocolate milk.”

Finally, two big activities inside. First, they were doctors. I became one of their patients and spent much of the time just lying on the floor, which was nice. August and Eve really got into discussing the symptoms and then drawing on the whiteboard and paper their diagrams and charts explaining what was happening. In fact, when Zoe was their patient they spent so much time over at the whiteboard drawing and talking that Zoe gave up and got up and went back to playing with play dough. Play dough was the other major thing, and they took the four containers (which I’d forgotten we’d had) and had fun mixing them all together.

The only bit of tension came when Eve had a bunch of the play dough and August wanted it. I could tell there was something he had planned, and he kept asking her for it. He handled it well though, and after they left he went in and used all of the playdough to make a bowl with a ball in it.

Heather showed up to pick them up at 3:45. August remembered to teach her some facts: that graphite is in layers in a pencil and that atoms in a liquid are not bonded.

We then played Minecraft. Carly got home after 5. He was watching the Brave Wilderness snapping turtle episode and liked the commercial for Snowfeet. I heated up some corn for him and he had seconds. The grilled cheese was then ready. There was just a little of his spaghetti sauce left, so I put it in the sandwich. He said he wouldn’t like it, but he eventually agreed to try it and really liked it. A point for me.

We played some Brother and Greena game (him going out to the jungle. I developed this recurring joke where he keeps having to run back to his house for things, which is 6 hours round trip. He does it all the time, and August started having Greena say, “What’s up with Brother?”). Carly then ready some of the Minecraft Myna book to him.

They went outside, and he showed him how he can throw now. He then came in and had me come out and we played catch for 10 or 15 minutes on the patio in the dark. As we played catch he talked about how confidence is so important and brought up the episode of Brainchild about it. We were catching the ball successfully several times in a row.

Back inside he had banana bread and she read more. He talked about how good the bread is. He talked about his favorite biomes in Minecraft: ocean monument, mesa, savannah, jungle. They kept reading. He drank the last of the banana milk at last call.

We were listening to “Let It Go” at his request and he said, “They should turn Let It Go into a show.” I was then his patient again and he taped my hand to the coffee table. He let me free it and we went upstairs. Carly washed him. He wanted to be weighed. He is now 18.6kg.

I brushed his teeth. He blew his nose, but without a tissue, so it went all over me. Carly found this amusing. We then blew it with the tissue. He agreed to have his chocolate chips in the morning. I told him it would probably be the first thing he asked me for in the morning.

I left them at 8:45. I heard her talking about logical fallacies. I went for a run.

Legos with Gilad:

Singing for Eve and Zoe:

Catch with Gilad:

On the swing again:

On the play structure:

Merry go round 1:

Merry go round 2:

Rubber band chain:

Drawing a medical chart:

He was up at 7:15. Downstairs I wrapped him in the little blanket for a minute, then he wanted to play Minecraft. Made him agree to reading Earthlings after that. We then discussed what to do and he said fighting for 15 minutes (only I’m on survival), then building for 30. I grunted reluctant approval, and he said, “What? It’s better than the other way around.” We did that, but eventually he got hungry, so had cereal and spent the rest of his time watching a Minecraft video. When that was over he watched the Bright Side video on How Fluoroscopy (X-Rays) Works. When that was over he told me about his heat x-rays.

We had some time before we needed to leave for his time with Shani, so we started working on the R sound. He’d been wanting to do this because it involves using a lollipop to push his tongue around. We watched a little more about it and used the lollipop. R isn’t a big hurry, as kids don’t usually master it until they are 6, but it is similar to the L in that it is about the tongue not moving fully to where it is supposed to go, so it was good to talk about. I drew pictures for him to explain as well.

We drove up to Shani’s. He ran in excited to get started. Told her all about how he can do the L without honey, and also how the honey makes his throat itch, so he likes adding peanut butter. And he told her about practicing R.

They did the schedule. She had two activities on the schedule. He chose drawing and choice time. For choice time he drew an infinity symbol. He asked her, “What’s task mean?” A word of the day.

They started with L practice. Initial L is now easy for him, but medial ones are difficult. He got through much of a sheet of them, and we took the rest for later. Ruler was a particularly hard word.

They then moved to the swing. He did building puzzle card things with blocks. Next was his choice, and he chose to do the rings on a cone while he lay on the swing.

Finally, they did drawing with color changing markers like we have at home. They were drawing shapes and filling them in. She was reminding him that the markers are tired and need to rest.

We headed home. He unexpectedly got upset when he demanded his iPad time early. But he eventually agreed to do 15 minutes of alone time. He then had spaghetti for lunch. In talking about our plans for what we would do in Minecraft he said, “Just like Ms. Shani said, sometimes we do what she wants to do and sometimes we do what I want to do.”

As we got back on the couch to play for 30 minutes he told me, “Don’t you dare say cushion. Say pillow or else.” His tone was joking, so not sure if it really bothered him as a word. We did 30 minutes of Minecraft, exploring in the Nether. We’ve realized that I can be in survival and he can stay in creative.

We had some tuna on crackers, then did Brother and Sister games: They had another family reunion. Tons of bathrooms now, but when they got back the bathroom building was blocked by downed power lines. Grampa ended up electrocuted. The family all leaves again, but then a court order makes them try again next year, with similar results. The country ended up destroyed somehow, so while Bar worked to put it all back together the family was living in Turkey. He played Minecraft with Myna, who was in Greece, and he was learning redstone. Then he accidentally killed a couple of Myna’s friends when he was supposed to be making friends and was banned from the server.

He did his second 15 minutes of alone time. I encouraged him to do something this time, and he got out the visual dictionary. On his own he found the L section and was reading out words, lots more than just those that had pictures, and practicing his L sounds at the same time. He read a lot more words, and near the end said, “Pronunciation is key.” Which is actually a quote from Starswirl the Bearded when he gets a magic spell wrong in My Little Pony.

He told me he had had a real dream that was both Minecraft and real life. It had involved a really tiny house with a woman in it. When we moved back to the iPad for his second 30 minutes (no evening time now) he joked, “I demand more time…I just want to be like a king…I demand more magnesium…” We now journeyed back to the surface and made our way back to our house. We have been playing in our original creative world.

He watched a Joseph’s Machines video and part of a dominoes video as I got stuff ready. He then told me, at length, about a crazy machine he made for lifting up a piece of toast. It included, along with dozens of other pieces, forty-some babies put to sleep with anesthesia and 17.99 pounds of flour. It was started by a lime that knocked over a Domino.

We made banana bread. I was trying out gluten-free flours for Lauren and Gilad. We used half teff flour and half chickpea flour. In the end I wasn’t too fond of the chickpea flour in it, but August raved about how good the bread is. He also had fun licking the bowl, etc. as we went.

He was then asking questions about Rarity in My Little Pony, like whether she was so obsessed with fashion that she would steal something. I was then literally about to suggest we watch an episode when he said the same thing.

We watched an episode about Spike pet sitting all of their pets. Then we did an experiment from the MEL Chemistry Tin set. It involved running electricity though a solution with tin ions in it. Dendrite and electrolysis were new words.

The bread was done and he really liked it. He then played around with the macro lenses for the camer on my phone. He watched the Brave Wilderness executioner wasp episode. He told me that a sound in it was like his powerful powerplant starting up.

Carly got home as we were getting ready to go out for a bike ride. We stuck to the bridge and paths as it was dark. He really wanted to ride up to town though, and wants to buy lights for the bike. I told him he could go walk around town with Carly when she drove up in a bit to go to the bank and pharmacy. We rode for a mile, stopping to look at a big ant.

At home he had spaghetti. Then tried Peanut M&Ms for the first time and liked them. He gave Carly the last one. We told her about the experiment, and he said that the dendrites were “Like tons of cities bring connected by power lines.”

They left at 6:10. They went to the pharmacy and ATM, then to the fruit stand where they got strawberries and broccoli. Strawberries were a big surprise. August also noticed that they had moved the pineapples, to up high in the middle. They’d walked to the park but the library was closed.

When they got back she read some of the Myna Minecraft book while I finished some work, then he was playing music on GarageBand when I came down. He had me record tunes he was playing. We then did a silly brother games where he was Tigey and laughing a lot. Carly got him cereal. He was rhyming, and managed to rhyme Apollo with borrow.

I was going to go out for a walk (trying to be gentle on my throat to get rid of the cough) and he asked if the Apollo astronauts are still alive: “Are they alive…are they grampies?” I looked it up. Armstrong is the only one that has died. He then said, “I illustrated a book…The Man on the Moon:

The man jumps

The man digs

The man leaped

The man works

The man falls into a pit of lava and dies.”

I went for a short walk. When I got back he came up and hung out in the bathroom while I took a shower. I put the sheet on the bed, and he told me about his planned updates for Minecraft, including the “Myths and legends edition…” He said good night to Carly, and I read him A Bear Sat in My Porch Today. We noticed a lot of details in the pictures that we had missed the first time. He as grumpy that my iPad was updating and we couldn’t read from it. For my story I told him about how in Camp Fire we had taken a goat around town as a fundraiser. It was late. We listened to Camille Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals and he fell asleep quickly, by 10.

Also, a day or two ago he said we should start counting cats again. We got up to #4 on our bike ride today.

Working on R:

Browsing and reading the dictionary:

Tin dendrite experiment:

His tune 1:

His tune 2:

His tune 3:

August woke up twice during the night, enough to pull my arm for me to come up on the upper bed with him before he went back to sleep. Tons of rocket alerts rolled in on my phone after Carly left. I looked at Twitter and found out that Israel had carried out some assassinations. The closest alerts were for Holon, just south of Tel Aviv.

He slept until a little after 7. We read some of Earthling! then played Minecraft. He watched the Kurzgesagt video about making a moon base, then walked around telling me about his own moon base and new power sources. We discussed our plans for the day. He asked about some Minecraft knockoff sort of games he had seen on the App Store when we were looking for a 3d drawing app the other day. I was telling him how they had ads and cost money and were just copies of Minecraft. He replied, “I always think of things in a positive way…well, most of the time.”

He then had a Brother game where he was playing Minecraft. Sister saw him playing and what Myna was building. It turned out that Sister was a Minecraft building champion, but she was jealous of Myna’s building.

He went to the bathroom and brought up a video he had seen some time ago about life in the universe: “Remember the great filter from Kurzgesagt? I think it is already behind us…” It was the asteroid that hit Earth. “Maybe two…” The second will be in the future when we make aliens angry for the first time. If we survive we will have gotten past that filter. We hadn’t really talked about that video at the time, and I think he’s only seen it once.

We replayed the Brother being jealous of Baby Sister game (where Sister sews up the shirt, but Brother eventually loves Baby Sister) and it went on and on. I got him outside at 10:15. We played catch with the happy face ball he’d found. He sang a short song about God being a boy playing Minecraft and moving his finger on the screen to make wind.

We got on his orange bike. Our goal was to go find dry leaves for the compost. August immediately noticed that the white plastic ring that used to be on the right handlebar was missing. It was the song/channel changer that he would turn to get me to sing a different song. It probably came off when Eve was riding it, or pushing him around on the bike last week.

We didn’t have to go far, as someone had dumped a bunch of leaves in the junk area right across from us. He helped fill an Ikea bag full of them.We went back and he put some in the compost. We went inside and I made a pineapple, mango, and banana smoothie. He then did 15 minutes of alone time, then 15 minutes of Minecraft and repeated that. For lunch he had pizza and I had quiche. He wanted a Brother game where Brother was all dry and itchy: “It would be Minotaur funny, it would be earthquake-tastic.”

We finally got going to school. Because of the rockets, they had decided to close down school at 3. So I wanted to get the packages that Carly had in her classroom before that. One was the MEL Chemistry starter set, which finally came. The other was a book that Cherie had ordered.

We got there, and August ran down the hill to Carly’s classroom a couple times. On the way back out he was rhyming words and I used grief to rhyme with him. He didn’t know what it meant, so that was a word of the day. He also picked a leaf on the way out, and compared it to a solar panel. Actually, he clarified to me that, “It IS a solar panel.”

We then drove down to the big Tiv Taam and went grocery shopping. He picked out a peanut-y treat from the bins. We got out of the lot a minute short of an hour. As we got home he asked, “What’s indicator mean?” Not sure where that came from. As an example I said that the birds flying south were an indicator that winter was coming. He started practicing the word right away, with examples like “the sound on the street is an indicator that a car is coming.” Carly came out at that moment, and he used the word with her.

Inside he watched a Brave Wilderness episode where he is bitten by a centipede. We then did a Brother game where he was bitten by things.

Carly made spaghetti and we had it for dinner. She blended August’s sauce and he really liked it. We also did a lot of music time, with him making melodies on the piano and us playing them together, me playing down an octave.

We then opened the MEL Chemistry starter kit and played around with that. We used my phone in the VR goggles, and then installed the app on my iPad. August actually liked that better as it is easier to use. He found the part where you put together neutrons and protons to make nuclei, then add electrons to make an element. He was really into that, and we talked a lot about the numbers and what they meant, and what the different elements are used for.

We then skyped with my parents for a long time. It has been quite a while. He did really well with them. He did all of his piano playing and sang Yankee Doodle while singing it. He also did the milk and food coloring experiment for them again. He also made a potion over by the kitchen sink. One that he declared he wanted to show to Eve, so I saved it in the fridge.

Carly took him up and washed him. He came down and kept talking to them. We hung up at 9:15. He then got into playing with the rubber bands, putting them on the kitchen cabinets. It was definitely time to get to bed but he didn’t want to go up. Carly got him to agree to two more minutes. He took more of that. As he walked up, he said, “Sorry I said 2 minutes. I didn’t really think ahead.” I left them soon after that.

His moon base:

A funny dance:

Playing catch:

Running down the ramp to the classroom:

Playing Yankee Doodle:

Singing and playing Yankee Doodle:

His tune 1:

Playing it together:

He woke up at 6 and Carly put him back to sleep in th big bed. He was back up at 6:45. I carried him down and set him on the “nest” of pillows he had made on the couch last night before heading upstairs and he cuddled there for several minutes. He also climbed up on the arm of the couch and tried to stretch out there.

We took Carly to work. He was a little grumbly about it, and said it was cold in the car. Back at home we stayed outside for a few minutes. He stood on the teeter totter and talked about how this would be a good place for criminals, as the neighborhood was empty. He also talked about how criminals should work together.

We went inside and cut up the pineapple. It was pretty good. He ate pineapple and watched Phineas Rage videos for his morning time. When he was done with that we watched a Brave Wilderness about the lionfish as he ate M&Ms from his Halloween treats. We also watched where he treated the wound. August paused it a couple times to talk about medicines that he has discovered. He also said, talking about Coyote Peterson, “I like how he says wound.”

Discussed our schedule, then he had a Brother game where he visits Greena and learns how she has figured out how to make magnifying glasses, a machine to crack coconuts, and how to grow wheat. She then starts making her home out of stone. We were listening to a band called Galaxie 500. It was a long Brother gane. His family was visiting Greena and the all had to pee but she doesn’t have a bathroom in her house or treehouse. Several variations of this, with them being in different places. And when they run out into the jungle they ran into tripwires she had set up.

We then watched educational videos. A couple Kurzgesagt videos, on Neutron Stars and a Space Elevator, then he wanted to know why plants need oxygen. We watched a couple of videos on photosynthesis, including a SciShow video and a Crash Course Kids one on why plants need dirt.

He then spotted a Bright Side video called “8 Lessons Not to Teach Your Kids” and really wanted to watch that. So we did. We did a lot of talking about that one. A lot of self awareness (and critique of our parenting) from him. During that, he told me how he liked the yoga class at school. He mentioned the closing their eyes part, and I think they would listen to something. Later, he talked about how there was some rosemary scented thing that she had as well.

He was then hungry, and had the last of the oatmeal squares cereal. He told me that because of the video he was thinking of other people and thinking that he should leave the last of the cereal for me or Mama. So nice of him. I let him have the cereal.

He told me that he had learned that if you attack zombies that more will come: “It’s like your immune system. Simile!” We then did a second MEL Chemistry experiment, adding food coloring to milk, then adding soap to learn how soap works.

He then wanted to show me the cavity part of the Human Body app and ended up playing around with it for a bit longer. He hasn’t used that in quite a while.

For his alone time he chose to practice the L sound, using honey and peanut butter, of course. He did that, then told me, “I want to tell you something about when you warn me about the end of my iPad time: it just stressed me more.” For the rest of the time he spent some time listening to the Vaselines and then practiced singing Yankee Doodle.

We did Minecraft, then got going. He was pretty impatient with putting the rack on the car and bike. I kept assuring him it would be faster in the future.

We drove up to where he rode along the Alexander River the other day. We got the bike together and rode across the little bridge and turned onto the trail. He noted that the ride was smoother on this bike. We did two miles, which brought us to the bridge and gate where August and I had started our walk back when he was in the backpack, and where, when we were done, we had to slip though the now-locked gate when we were done. On the way out August had us stop once to investigate a mark painted on a rock. Also, as we were riding he asked what a sidekick was, so we discussed that. And he was humming “Let It Go” a lot, and said he had made one of the electronic remixes of it.

We turned around and stopped at a picnic table in the park area right west of there. We sat at a picnic table and each had a packaged cookie, then cracked open sunflower seeds. We did brother games there. We did a third candy store one. This one was a new candy store, out at the mall this time. They had bags of mystery Skittles, but the Skittles all turned out to be earwax flavor. Then we did a new telling of the Brother and Sister on a deserted island story. Although this time there was a girl on the island who had been there for years. She had even made guest rooms, although all of her previous “guests” had died.

He then went down the hill and played with a tree swing for a few minutes, mainly throwing it around. We got riding again at 4:20. It was starting to get pretty dark by the time we got back to the car. August needed to use the bathroom, so peed over by a fence. He said, “Eh, well, it’s the culture.”

We listened to Story Pirates on the way back. There was a full moon, or very close. As we got close to the house we heard a huge flock of birds up in the trees they haven’t (yet) butchered. So loud we heard them with the windows up. August speculated, “Maybe it’s a bird sleepover.”

We were home at 5:20. He played 15 minutes of Minecraft with Carly, then I did 15. He watched a Brave Wildeness for his educational video. He curled up on couch when not happy. Had asked as we came in the house if I thought he’d get upset.

He had soup, half of a grilled cheese and turkey that I made after initially saying he didn’t think he’d like it), and a pickle for dinner. We then read the first half of the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic “Reflections” series (issues 17 and 18) after he requested that storyline.

Then a Brother game where he was basically Tigey jumping on me. I was tipping him backwards with my hand and that became a game. He read a Rivet book or two to Carly, then was singing “Let It Go” and “Yankee Doodle”.

He did his “Goo goo or gaa gaa?” game with Carly, but added a third choice: “Goo goo or gaa gaa or panda?…Panda is extreme pain without dying for no reason.”

Carly got him upstairs and washed him. There were a few things that he negotiated through and talked about. And he had told Carly about the video, telling her, “You know, taking things away isn’t an effective parenting strategy.” I had been going to go for a run and Carly was going to put him to sleep, but he wanted me to put him to sleep. Since he was really tired, but doing a great job of talking about things I agreed to do it. As we headed to the Zinnie room I complimented him on doing a good job talking about things. Without looking back he said, “It’s nothing.”

He got a little hyper for a a while though, and started counting syllables of everything he could think of. He noted that parallelogram is five syllables, but it has four sides. We kept coming up with names of four-sided shapes and realized that none of them is four syllables (quadrilateral, square, rectangle, kite, trapezoid, rhombus, diamond, arrow, etc.)

We listened to Dvorak’s Fourth symphony and he told me when I could move down to the lower bed again. He was asleep around 9:40.

Greena’s complex machine:

Soap experiment:

Adding the drop of soap:

Discussing the soap experiment:

Swing by the river 1:

Anyway, brother and sister game:

Counting syllables:

He was up at 6:50. He watched Minecraft and stickman videos, then we read some of Earthling. He then wanted to do a Brother game but didn’t have an idea. He rejected my Story Dice idea. He finally came up with a Minecraft sort of idea. We played out different scenarios of Brother finally playing survival hard on his own. Each time he spawned in a really difficult biome, and each time there was a cat that befriended him. It turned out Bar had hacked Minecraft on his iPad.

We looked for a 3d drawing app, and settled on uMake for now. He ate oatmeal, and I finally found the Apple Pencil in the couch. We worked with uMake for quite a while, learning how to use it. He misplaced the Apple Pencil at one point, and it turned out to be under him. He said, “My butt’s always hiding stuff.”

He then did alone time, playing with his percussion stuff. Carly had planned to take him to school with her so he could play there for a while, but she wasn’t feeling well. She canceled her dentist appointment for later, and we switched things up with Mr. Gabi again so I would just take August today. She still had to run to school, but did that alone.

We played Minecraft for 30 minutes. Then watched Coyote Peterson get bitten by leeches and an alligator. We then did a Brother game where he was bit by bullet ants. Carly made chicken soup and August ate some, and seconds, for lunch. He told me how he had recorded an ant getting its brain taken over by a bacteria using a microscope. We then did Brother and the ugly goose games. Then other annoying animals. He had seconds on soup, then the last cookie. We got ready to go. As we did he asked, “I have an amazing question: why does stomach acid not leak out of your body if it’s supposed to dissolve everything?”

We got going, and listened to Story Pirates on the way to Gabi’s. He went right in with Gabi, although he had told me before that I had to go in with him. About halfway through he came out and asked me to come in. They were playing baseball, of sorts, with August hitting a ball with the sword. Gabi said that August had called hitting it “beginner’s luck”, but as they kept going they were talking about it being an actual skill, and August wanted to show me. He hit it a couple more times, then told me to leave. August later told me they spent the rest of the time playing with the army stuff.

We had talked about going to the Herzliya pizza place, then to the beach, but he now changed his mind and wanted to go to Ra’anana Park instead. So we drove there, parking in the free lot. When we first got in the park he joked, “So where’s Gilad?” He rode his bike across to the park, across the lake, and over to the music playground area. We found a bench in the shade and watched a season 2 episode of My Little Pony that we had missed (about Rarity in Canterlot). He was laughing a lot. After that we did Brother games, two stories we’ve done before: the second candy store story and the orange stand story.

He played with the musical instrument toys a bit. He noticed that they’ve fixed the harp strings, but hadn’t included anything to hit it with. And the thing that you run around in circles and it would play music is now broken. I found a piece of metal on the ground and he used it to play the harp and other things.

We talked about still going for pizza, and he said it needed to be good. So I suggested we just go to VIPizza and then we could take pizza home. He agreed to that. I called Carly to ask her preference on toppings. August took the phone and explained to her that he had chosen Ra’anana Park over the beach because it is prettier, with the trees and plants, whereas the beach just has sand.

We left a couple minutes later, after he had said, “My brain grows…As fast as your ideas flow” and he had picked a dead branch off a bush: “It will make the rosemary’s life a little easier.

He rode his bike back, and we stopped at the bathroom. I talked about taking a “sharp turn” on the ramp and he asked what that meant. So we talked about slight versus sharp turns.

In the parking lot he wanted to intentionally get his bike stuck like he had the other day so the back tire just spun in place. We figured it out, and he kept playing and playing. We pent a good 10 to 15 minutes just spinning the back tire of his bike. A few times he said things like, “This is SO fun.”

Then, when we got in the car (I had to encourage him to go so we could get pizza) he saw a V of birds. Then a second. We sat for several minutes more, watching flocks of birds fly overhead. More than 10 by the time we left. He said, “Maybe there’s some sort of complex bird migrations…I have to do some study of that in my lab.” And he called out, “Enjoy your migration, birds!”

We drove up to VIPizza, listening to more Story Pirates (we’re catching up on season 3, working backwards). At VIPizza we ordered a large pizza. He chose corn on his half. He also got an orange soda, that he was able to drink about a third of. We had talked about taking the pizza to the park, but we ended up eating there. We did some Brother games while we waited, although he kept wanting me to act out noisy ones.

We ate, then he talked about just wanting to walk around downtown. First though we went over to the fruit and veggie market, after putting the pizza in the car. We got carrots and huge pomegranates, which Carly had wanted, and August requested a pineapple and we got bananas and a couple mangos.

Put those in the car, then he wanted to keep walking: “Its amazing…It’s so lovely out. I can’t resist to go!” We walked to the park by the library, and it was busy, but he asked about the library. It was open, so we went in. We went in and found Horrible Harry and the Dragon War on the shelves and read the whole thing in the comfy area. As we walked back through the park he said, “Our shadows are amazing…I’m a kid giant.”

We got home at 6. There was something about “500 aliens taking over earth.” We played Minecraft, then he watched the Brave Wilderness on bloodworms. I went for a run.

When I got back they were skyping with Andrea and Thatcher and Kayla. Carly came to get my help with the 3d app and told August to entertain them. He said, “I don’t know how to entertain kids…except for Colin. I just say poop and pee and he laughs a lot.” He then had to turn the iPad to fix the video and told them, “There is a glitch…you’re going to get nauseous.” Got the 3d drawing app working, and he was showing them how it worked.

I went up and took a shower. When I came down he had more pizza. Got him upstairs for a bath, but he took a long time trying to remember the tune to Yankee Doodle. He was humming it, and had created a different tune for “and called it macaroni” and wanted to get it correct. When he got that down I was finally able to wash him. He was then practicing funny faces in the mirror outside the bathroom.

He said goodnight to Carly. In the bedroom he told me about his “DNA bank” where he stores DNA from people to use later. He kept quoting “Drop the child or lose the leaves” from Earthling and sang “Yankee Doodle please stop crying, Yankee Doodle died of dehydration.” He wanted me right up with him on the upper bed tonight and he fell asleep with his forehead against mine, listening to Beethoven’s Fifth. He was asleep by 9:45.

At some point I said he could be a composer or conductor or something in the future. He said no, he was going to be an archeologist.

3d drawing app:

Baseball with Mr Gabi:

Laughing at My Little Pony in the park:

Uphills will be the downhills song on the way back:

Beaching the bike:

Singing Yankee Doodle:

Practicing funny face:

Pee poop song and drumming:

The DNA bank machine:

Carly and I were both up during the night. He was up by 7. She was already up, so I stayed in bed until around 8. When I went down he was eating oatmeal outside. He then had some pomegranate seeds before having one of the last cookies. We did a Brother game in Minecraft where he borrowed diamond pick axes from Myna’s chest while she was gone, but then he died, losing them and all the diamonds he had mined. He then had to make it up to her. The game kept going through through time travel, Bar and and a EMP, the story police, and eventually devolved into the void. Then there was a repeating Brother, bullies, and Bar story where he kept getting bullied and Bar would punish the new bullies.

We read two chapters of Berenstain Bears book. Then another Brother game that I stopped it when it was just about someone getting hurt. He got upset and hit me. I went upstairs to work, and he came up to apologize a bit later.

Back downstairs we did music time. arpeggio was the word of the day. He was playing Ode to Joy with proper fingers, and learned more of Yankee Doodle, and started learning bits of Sentimental Wars. He as then drawing out notes on paper, making compositions for me. Well, for Brother to play. He was using his own system, then I got him to switch to real staff. He was a bit reluctant to do so. But he was starting to make his own system pretty convoluted to explain things, and while I like the creativity involved, it would also be easier to use the real system, and he would learn more.

He then switched to Pages and explained his system from the other day where numbers stood for things: “You can explain heaviness with numbers…zero is no mass.”

We then watched Brave Wilderness. He watched the bullet ant episode, and agitated was a word of the day. He then watched the harvester ant. There’s an ad that he keeps seeing that allows you to morph photos of people into animals and he wants to get it.

They did a Brother and Minecraft game while we had lunch and I ate outside. He came out, and found a little one sprouting like one of our bushes: “Okay. That makes my day.” He rode his bike up the street to the park and I did recycling. He came with me, deciding not to just ride around the park, and played in the dirt by recycling. He said, “My head’s in space. What’s the point?” “I’m trying to be funny.” While I did recycling he picked up leaves and asked, “Are this leave’s vacuoles full?”

Back at home Carly started reading to him. I went upstairs to work for a while. I came back down and worked next to him as he had earned his 30 minutes. He then watched the Coyote Peterson porcupine episode and ate cereal as he watched Coyote get stabbed by a porcupine.

He had a Brother game where he played on Myna’s server. He was a blacksmith in their town. Myna explained the system whereby redstone circuits were used to bring Brother the raw materials he needed. He talked about how the system was simple to use but complex underneath. I pointed out how that was a really interesting observation.

We went outside to go on a bike ride. But while we were heading out we saw a crow drop a nut on the street. It didn’t break open, so we watched it try to break the nut on the street with its beak. It then flew up on top of a post and we watched it trying to break it there. It eventually flew off, still holding the nut. We went riding at 4:20. We rode 2.1 miles, going a little further in places (like past the strawberries and across the little pedestrian bridge on the other side of the big pedestrian bridge) than he has been comfortable doing before.

At the end we rode down the path behind our house. As we got to the street he had me stop. He had spotted a yellow smiley face ball under a car. We got it and claimed it as ours.

At home we read the rest of the Berenstain Bears book. He was then being a bit grumpy. He had carrots with lemon for dinner, then was looking t the periodic table on my phone. Carly read him a Myna Minecraft book. For some reason she said “Nice try.” He told her, “Don’t say that. I hate it.” And he compared it to cubby.

I went for a run. When I got back he was finishing a Brave Wilderness video. He had more carrot, then a cookie. Carly gave him a bath. He told us, “Since I have a time machine, my job is to go to the past…I use weapons in appropriate ways.” He eventually was talking about how he “turns people off.” Like, he doesn’t kill them in the past, but just turns them off as a setting for the world (like flipping the ‘peaceful’ switch in Minecraft). I said we wouldn’t be here now in the present if he turned people off in the past. He said it wouldn’t change the present: “Imagine you have a piece of paper with writing on this side and this side. If you rip it in in half this half is still there…”

He asked, “How does your brain keep you balanced?” Something to look up later. He also asked How can his eyes act like microscope: “I looked up close even when I was far away.” He talked about doing it while we were on our bike ride, looking up at birds on wires and being able to see them as if they were up close. This is an ability he has mentioned several times in the past. It seems to be part of his ability to imagine something in his head. He agreed, and said, It’s all about memory…my old friend, memory.”

We listened to Beethoven’s 7th Symphony. He was shaking his egg shaker along to it. He actually asked me to move to the lower bed after a few minutes of having me up with him. He kept shaking his shaker, and finally went quiet. He fell asleep about 9:30, right at the end of the symphony, it seemed. His egg shaker was right next to him on the bed.

Music time 3:

Playing Ode to Joy with all his fingers:

Explaining his composition:

Being funny by recycling:

He was up just before 7. He went straight to the bathroom once I got upstairs. Downstairs I read four chapters of The Berenstain Bears and the Great Ant Attack, the first such chapter book we’ve tried. He wanted iPad time, and spent a few minutes with GarageBand as that was still up from yesterday.

We played Minecraft. He then wanted a Halloween candy, so he had apple slices, then M&Ms. Then a series of Brother games: buying orange an lollipop and hating it and vowing never to shop there, buying M and Ms from the new candy store across the street and finding out they were peanut (the man was rude and refused an exchange and Bar blows them both up), buying orange from fruit stand but it turns out to be moldy inside; the fruit stand wouldn’t replace it.

He then switched to being Bar and talked about her scientific research, finding new galaxies. She takes Baby Sister to look for aliens. On her own. Baby Sister ended up working in Bar’s lab.

We went upstairs, and he reminded me that Zoe had said there were an earwig in his bathroom drawer yesterday. He wanted me to catch it. She had also told him the myth about how earwigs go in your ears and lay eggs. I had to look up articles to convince him that wasn’t true. It turns out it was just a silverfish, anyway. We caught it in his bug catcher, and that evening I let it go outside.

He also asked, “Is coffee good for trees?” Zoe was also telling him that one. There is more truth to that one, as we also looked that up.

We then put the MEL Chemistry app on my phone and did our first experiment from one of the sets. It was using a blue dye in water, then adding chemicals to change the pH of it and it would change color. The app is great, and August was able to put the drops in the water. There was a second one we could do, but that took a good chunk of time and he was done for now.

He switched to story mode and had Bar having Brother do science experiments in her lab. He then had cereal and milk and watched a Bright Side video about things to not put down your kitchen drain. Then, since we had had questions about the pH scale, I found us a couple of videos about that. Basically, the take away was that it acids shed hydrogen ions while bases absorb them.

Then a Brother and Myna Minecraft game. He was grumpy when I stopped, but it had just been so much Brother and Bar this morning. We got an email from Jonathan Minke thanking August for the cookies and inviting him back some time, as he has other instruments for him to try. August was very happy about this.

We got going into town. He was humming songs along the way. We did some shopping at Stop City! Nothing too exciting, but we found crackers we liked, after the stores being out the last couple of times, and I got a Chimey beer for my book group meeting tonight. We then went to the bulk foods store and got a big bag of cashews and a small bag of sunflower seeds. We sat out on one of the benches and ate sunflower seeds for several minutes. He was kind of annoyed with them, but liked them well enough if I did the cracking with my fingers. I tried cracking them in my mouth, but the shells disintegrated much more easily than the ones in the States.

One of the things we had bought was a small jar of honey. So when we got home he did some L sound work. Sadly, he didn’t like that honey (it wasn’t so sweet) and we switched to the regular honey. That was going well until he was pulling out and pushing back in the end of the table as he did it and he pinched his finger.

He curled up on the couch, then we watched a My Little Pony episode. After which I was trying to get the bike rack together so we could take my bike on the car and go for an adventure. However, he hadn’t been excited by that plan at all today, and now he was being really impatient about the rack. I got it set up, but decided to postpone actually using it. He agreed to a ride around the neighborhood instead. As we went outside he told me about how he sells science experiments at his everything store.

We rode around, a total of 1.67 miles. At home we watched some educational videos, then he did alone time, playing and listening to music. We then did an hour of Minecraft. The idea is to squish his evening time into earlier in the day, then just not do iPad in the evening when he is tired and more likely to have a meltdown. Difficult though when he hasn’t wanted time earlier in the day.

It worked though. We played the hour, and Carly got home during it. Her Get to Know You Day had gone well, but it became clear as the evening went on that her body had finally given into the cold. He watched a Brave Wilderness, where he is bitten by the bullet ant, and then was done, just fine, with iPad for the evening.

He was more excited about quiche this time, having a second slice. Then a Brother game where he was hurt by a tiger, then by his animals back in his house. We then read the Rainbow Dash and Spitfire Friends Forever issue. Then he had another Brother game – him and sister in jungle for the first time. Then more Brother game. He had one with Brother finding an alipony in the jungle. It was quite out there and I wasn’t really following it.

We finished that up, and I said we could find something to do. He said, “Finding something to do is my favorite thing.” Which it definitely is not. He told me about how he had earned two world records at once: he made a model of the Statue of Liberty out of pistacio shells and it was also judged the funniest world record ever.

He asked me, “Is this a real person? Ven-ee-on-cari.” He said it was someone I had talked about and the person had to do with music or maybe it was a famous actor.

We then did lots of music playing time. He was learning the first three lines of Yankee Doodle from me, and he was playing Ode to Joy with all his fingers, not just one. I was learning “Sentimental Wars” after he quizzed Carly to see if she recognized it.

He ate some cereal and had pomegranate. When he asked me to fill his water bottle he wanted ice cubes and mint in it. He went out on his own to pick some mint and called back to us, “Come! It’s lovely out here!”

We got him upstairs by 8. He told Carly about being a teacher: “I teach…and on the weekend I plan…take notes.” He suggested she should plan on the weekend as well. He made a mixture in the sink that he wanted to remember the recipe of: green soap, contact solution, and a little water.

We got him ready, and I left them after 8:30. I went for a run, then slept in the other room as I had my book group meeting that night. Carly was getting quite sick now. August woke up to use the bathroom around 12:30 or 1. I got up and had my meeting at 1:30. Carly had stayed awake and was still up.

The meeting went fine. Breysse wasn’t there as he had to attend a funeral in Centralia. The group did a good job of discussing Severance given that it wasn’t that great of a book.

Chemistry experiment 1:

Chemistry experiment 2:

Clickity clack an ant on your back:

Honey and pronunciation practice:

Music time 1:

Music time 2: