He woke up about 6, stuffy. I took a blanket and went in and fell asleep on the lower bed. He must have fallen back to sleep pretty quickly as well. I then woke him up at 8:05. He was surprised to find out it was still the weekend. Downstairs Carly read a little Astrophysics. She and I talked about podcasts, which got me finding even more. August started graphing, and Carly also did some programming thing with him.
In Minecraft we worked on our terraforming in the flat world. For breakfast he actually requested one of my tuna sandwiches, so I made him one and gave chocolate milk as well. He ate that outside.
When he came back in we looked at the pond scum from yesterday under the microscope. Saw several different little things swimming around. We also worked on different scales on the piano. I then made a strawberry smoothie. More microscope time, then they left at 12:30.
They went to Gabi’s. Don’t really know what they did. Then went to Tiv Taam to do some shopping. August said he did graphing while she shopped. They went to VIPizza and got a slice, and also went to the bakery for something. Probably ate it in the park. He wouldn’t tell me anything though, saying it was all secret.
They were home at 4. He was graphing when I came down. Carly was cooking. For alone time he offered to give me a massage. He did that for a bit, then played piano. He asked Siri to turn on sleepy music, wanting me to fall asleep. He did a little more graphing, then we played on the flat world.
Carly didn’t know what to do about the bacon, so I made August some packaged split pea soup, adding corn and pasta to it. Turned out okay. August kept graphing and came and showed me some of his graphs. Whatever playlist August had managed to get Siri to play was still going and we listened to Aphex Twins. I figured out how to ask, and he had gotten the “Meditation Station” according to Siri.
He had a second bowl of soup. I read him a few science articles I had saved to read to him from Apple News. One about a massive planet found around another star, one about the naming of Gonggong, and one about the JAXA probe to land on Phobos. We then watched a few YouTube videos I had saved: This one about kinetic sculptures was really cool:https://youtu.be/ROP45rjvOHg
and we watched others about the movement of Neptune’s moons, February skywatching tips, a NASA Avideo about what the Spitzer mission has done, and SciShow’s “The Tree of Life is Messed Up” (https://youtu.be/TJKAPiEndCI). That was all pretty new to him and taxonomy was a word of the day (and he had also asked about the word dwarf).
He had a Baby Sister game where she was in the ISS being de orbited, then he did some graphing and was showing me his process of how he can copy another set of equations, flipping back and forth between the original and then his new set. I said he had a lot of dedication. Dedication was another word of the day.
He was still hungry. Whiney at first, then I got him crackers and peanut butter. I went upstairs. They spent some time doing math, then she brought him up and gave him a bath. He came in to me at 9:10
I read https://apple.news/A0ZrF6MC-R_GPaGe3pKKdlg about the discovery of molecular oxygen in another galaxy. Pretty amazing, both for what it means and how they did it. I got him Cheerios.
We listened to “Skylark” and “The Song of Knockgrafton” on Stories Podcast, then “Dolphin” on Bedtime Explorers. He was doing a lot of talking about Minecraft and other things: He said he printed Wikipedia and called it “Basically a giant cube of knowledge.” We listened to piano music and he was asleep around 10:30.
I had my book group meeting during the night, which went well. No Chris as he is in Mexico for a family vacation around their anniversary.
Carly got August up at about 8:05. She got him to walk by me nice and quiet, although I was actually awake to hear. Downstairs they read Astrophysics, then played Minecraft. I came down as they were playing. August watched a couple educational videos, then a Joseph’s Machines, then Carly read a bit more of the book to him. He interrupted to start graphing though. He had two functions that both made circles and showed me, and I pointed out that they were the some because one simplified to r=1. He actually liked that, saying, “So basically I made an overcomplexity of the equation of r=1.” He tried to get Carly to agree to a graphing competition, and offered, “Fine, so I’ll go into Lonely Lands or whatever world you want for the next week.” Since he’s always wanting to go in different Minecraft worlds and she wants to stay in one.
They kept doing more and more math. Carly on Khan Academy and practicing with the quadratic equation. Eventually I declared his graph the winner, as it had a bunch of symmetrical lines and circles and curves all meeting around the 1,1 type of coordinates. Back on the couch he said to her, “Symmetry man, symmetry.”
Outside we did a chapter in Waves and Light. interference, superposition, phase, phase différence
Inside we did the first chapter of the course Calculus in a Nutshell, at his request. Derivative was the first big concept. He had me stop and define tangent better for him at one point, but otherwise we were just discussing what is in the course. At the end he said, “Nice. I didn’t know I’d understand tangent so much.”
He had a quesadilla that he picked the cheese out of. Then did alone time on the piano. Paused to show me a rattlely key. Then randomly told me, “Just so you know there’s Ursa Minor too…there’s Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.” Maybe from the Astrophysics book? In Minecraft we worked on our forest and complex, starting to make a wall around it. Carly went for a walk or run.
He played with a calculator and we were discussing cubed numbers and names of big numbers. He used my formula for a hollow cube. Carly got back. When she came downstairs they did piano. He asked what two notes together were (again—he had asked Dalit, but she just said “Not a chord”). I looked it up and it is a dyad. He played minor scales for her. I made us smoked tuna sandwiches using the smoked canned tuna and the sun dried tomato bed. August loved it and kept saying “Yum!” He asked about something being an “oversimplification”. We discussed the difference between oversimplification and simplification.
When Carly got him dressed he said, “What are you doing? I don’t like stylish.” We all went for a walk, and walked over to the little mall. We went to Tiv Taam and got important things like crackers and wine. On the way back we were talking about something and I asked if he knew the difference between horizontal and vertical. He said of course, and explained that Oma had taught him those words when they were playing the tablet game. We were also discussing infinity and the speed of light, and why nothing can go as fast as light. We stopped to look at the scum in a big puddle, and I had one of the sample things for the microscope in the backpack so I got a sample. August then stopped to watch some ants.
We got home a bit after 4. They stayed outside and did some reading, then Facetimed with Cherie and Chuck. I then went for a run. He did alone time and they did Minecraft in Lonely Lands. I took a shower, then got him off the iPad. We did reading time, watching the Preschool Prep videos for three sounds and brainstorming words for our cards. He built a structure for a foot rest, then he read one book to me on Rivet. We were about done with that when Carly came down, on FaceTime with Cassie and kids. August and Carly mainly talked to Colin.
I got him a dinner of the tuna, some pickles, and rice. He and I had a good discussion about why it is good to be weird. He did a lot of more really cool graphs today. One looked like a flower. Got him upstairs and he was hiding in the blanket. I heard him ask Carly to unleash all of her parenting tricks at once.
He told us both, “A strangelet us a tiny piece of strange matter.” From Astrophysics, I think.
Carly gave him a bath as I folded laundry. When he came in to the bedroom we discussed the election as I had been listening to the news about Bloomberg. He finished reading the Christmas party story on Rivet to me. He then asked, “Where’s President Garfield?” And continued, “In Heaven?…In heaven playing Minecraft…” I loved the image of past presidents sitting around playing Minecraft together.
He read more Rivet books, breaking through several level 1 books on his own. On the Stories Podcast we listened to “The Pumpkin Seeds”. One Bedtime Explorers, “Monkey” I think, then I put on an album of Philip Glass piano music. He asked me, “Can you make Siri add music?” Apparently he and Carly have had issues with that. He kept talking, discussing minor scales, and asking things like, “What’s 13 factorial?” and “90 plus 90 is 180, right?” and “19 plus 19 is 28…no, no…9 plus 9 is 18, carry the one…” He was even trying to do a head stand at one point. He was finally asleep at 10:35.
He woke me up once during the night and his blanket was off. When I got up he had crawled down on the lower bed and was cuddling a pillow. I got him straightened up and with the blanket on him. At 7:40 he woke up coughing. He came out to the couch bed. By the time I came up he had crawled completely under the brown blanket. I got under all the covers next to him and he eventually poked his head out of the brown blanket and sort of restlessly fell back to sleep a bit after asking for a tissue and doing some lamenting. About 8:05 he got up for good. Some more nose blowing and he went in the big bedroom for a moment before we headed down.
Downstairs we finished reading the 30th anniversary edition of Where the Sidewalk Ends, then played Minecraft. He stopped a bit early. He watched a video while I made French toast, then we ate breakfast. He then did some graphing until Gilad called to play Minecraft. They played in the “Way of the Bee” world, on Gilad’s computer for the first time. When they were following what the bee scientist was telling them to do pacify was a word of the day.
He started his own Way of the Bee world and burned things for a few minutes. I got him dressed, then I made him a quesadilla. I ended up as the pirate captain for some reason. He did more graphing and was saying things like, “The pseudorandom lines are actually waves.” “I’m doing a breakthrough with theta…” “Rate of change is the best thing ever…”
We got headed to town around noon. A busy shopping time before things closed. We went to the hardware store and I found shorter screws for our hooks. I only had eight so they gave them to me for free. We went to the small grocery store by VIPizza. Found everything on our list there except for kale. August wanted a snack and wanted a pudding thing. I realized I didn’t have a fork or spoon. He was almost upset, but then I reminded him of the little pastry things up front. He got a cookie and a thing with powdered sugar.
We walked across to the park. I had put him in his long shorts and we were quite comfortable in the park. Had my sweatshirt on but would have been okay without. We sat on the bench in the sun while he ate. Think I did some reading. We then walked to the fruit and veggie stand. Surprisingly, no kale. August was quite whiney about going to a third place, Stop City!, for kale, but made it and I let him get a pudding thing for this weekend (a wanted an iced coffee thing). We got our kale and headed home.
At home we sat on the couch and he had been talking about wanting to make a huge cube in Minecraft and was using a calculator to calculate how many blocks it would take at different sizes. That was easy enough, but then we talked about making hollow boxes and it got more difficult. I wrote on Paper and we talked about it, then decided to actually try it in Minecraft, so I was building boxes of different size and using different colors of concrete to show him how they related to equation I had figured out. That worked quite well.
We got out of Minecraft and brainstormed a whole new point system so he can get stars for things beside just doing chores, but with a limit to the number per day. The idea is to slightly incentivize some harder forms of learning (such as actually working through Khan Academy as opposed to just experimenting with graphing). That went well.
He did alone time while I hung up the hooks. The screws were still too long. Sadly, they hadn’t had 35mm screws in stock. So I got the middle three of five in okay, but the ones on the end I just couldn’t get in deep enough, then the drill bit broke on the right one. I think it will be okay, but not as rock solid as I would like.
I made us a strawberry smoothie as he started Minecraft, then I played with him. Carly was home before 4:30, just in time to partake of some smoothie. He told her, “did you know that the further you get from an atom the less likely you’ll find an electron orbiting it…even a mile!…it’s an asymptote…never gets to zero…” Which sounds accurate, but I’m not sure where he learned it. In Minecraft he produced a third ‘cloud’ piece after doing a huge explosion. Which gave credence to my theory that they are glitches of TNT that gets ‘stuck’ mid explosion. I wasn’t sure though, as the resulting cubes are bigger than usual.
For his second time he played more piano and rolled around on the couch. Back in Minecraft we are planting a whole forest and making streams and animals around our house in the flat world. He then watched Joseph’s Machines: Exercise, Pass the Salt, and the Page Turner. I read more of How To. He and Carly then did a ton of math. Think she read some Astrophysics too.
I was going to go on a run, but then realized I hadn’t put the clothes in the dryer earlier. Carly went and took a shower instead. August was having his characters doing a lot of competition games (math, Minecraft), against different random people of different ages. Not sure if he was supposed to be Myna or Bar. He ate his sweet potatoes, then had more noodles and butter.
We Skyped with my parents. He showed them a lot of his graphing and piano playing. As he was graphing one of them asked, “What would you do without parents like you have?” He immediately replied, “Go off the grid.”
Carly took him up and gave him a bath. We said good night at 9:20. We went in and listened to “The Singing Witch” and “The Plum Pit Thief” on Stories Podcast, then the “Panther” episode of Bedtime Explorers. We listened to Brian Eno’s The Drop and he was asleep at 10:20.
He was up, coughing, at 7:05. He wanted to go down stairs. Too early. As he was very whiney and dramatic when I first tried to read poems, then wanted him to use a tissue instead of wiping his nose with his hand. After he stopped being whiney on the couch he played Minecraft. I joined after a while. He fought slimes in survival for the first time: “I never realized it was so easy!” Then was singing a “I dare you to fight me” chant.
He had oatmeal for breakfast. He then had a game with Sister and Myna and Calculator having competitions. Sister lost them all. I then looked up the gusli, which was featured in a Circle Round story: https://www.wbur.org/circleround/2020/02/11/the-rooster-in-the-sky-rachel-matthews-frozen
We then played with the guitar, and he was asking how to really play it. He was sitting on the couch, playing guitar, when I asked, “What do you want for lunch?” He immediately responded, “That I become a professional music player and know how to play guitar.”
I made and packed lunch and he played. Set up the keyboard too and played that. At first he claimed he didn’t want to go (he wanted me to keep playing Brother and Sister games, or something). He hid under the blanket and I went upstairs to brush my teeth. When I came down he jumped out and attacked me: “Trick attack! Trojan horse!”
We drove to Sara’s house in Herzliya. Got there about 10:20. Listening to music today. As we got out we were discussing the infinite possibilities of equations when variables are involved.
A quicker entry into the house, and Lauren and Gilad were already there. They were all sitting at the table, having a snack. August hung around the living room while everyone else was eating. Eventually the kids headed upstairs and I had to go as well. Eliza (her sister was at gan) and Gilad mainly played with the Star Wars figures and dolls. A little odd to see, although August was happy that he recognized R2D2. He found them playing with dolls even odder than I did. He climbed on the bar thing, and was pretty entertained watching them.
We went downstairs when they were hungry, and also to make a fort around the table. They didn’t use the fort a whole lot though, which August was a little disappointed about, I think. He was climbing on the chair when the cat came walking in. August was very dramatic about it, and I was reminding him he isn’t afraid of cats. He’s afraid of their dander though, thus the reaction. When Sara dealt with the cat, getting it to stay out of the room, he found more enjoyment in it, saying, “This is funny. I can watch someone doing responsibility with a cat.” He responded equally dramatically when Eliza was acting like a dog. Although a little understandable after she also annoyed Gilad by sniffing him, and poked him with a toothpick.
She was outside by herself for a while, then August and Gilad and the rest of us went out as well. August at first said he didn’t want to ride bikes or anything, but they have a total of 4 scooters and he started trying one. I put one of their helmets on him and he was off. He rode all four of the scooters around and was getting pretty comfortable with them. Meanwhile, Gilad was being funny and fitting himself into the tiny little kid cars (like I used to push August around in in the play areas in Seoul). August started running a store, pretending to sell all of the bicycles and cars to us. I was someone that kept buying bikes and crashing them.
I think Eliza was the one with the idea of going to the park. Gilad and August agreed and we packed up and got going. It was a couple blocks. August told us, “Did you know that the sun is 99.9 percent of the mass of the solar system? All the planets and other stuff is the other tenth of a percent…” I asked where he knew that from, and he said, “documentary…I can’t believe you fell for that!” Not that the fact was true, but that it was actually from the Astrophysics for Kids in a Hurry book.
At the playground August had his third worrying moment, as there was a crew there and one of them was using a weed eater. It took a while to convince him that the guy was at the other side of the playground and wouldn’t come close. August climbed on the play structure, and eventually he and Eliza ended up on the big circle swing and Gilad was pushing them and they were all talking.
August took a break, hungry again, and came and had some pistachios. He had eaten a good amount of the peanut butter sandwich and most of the dolmas I had brought, and a good amount of the Bamba they had out on the table, excitedly commenting about how it wasn’t filling and he could eat as much as he wants.
Eventually we walked back to the house. Had about an hour left before Sara needed to go pick up Micah. August had at one point objected to kids watching Star Wars, saying it is too scary for them. I told him it was relative though, as Omar had been shocked that I was teaching August Greek mythology. Back at the house Gilad and Eliza went up to play with the dolls again. August told me, “You know R2D2 is more scary than they think it is.”
He had me go up and I sat down on the stairs while he mainly watched them play. He was bored at one point and came and had me read some How To. Back downstairs again, the last time he actually went upstairs on his own, without insisting on me going with him. A big step, but it didn’t last long, as then it was time to clean up.
We left a little before 1. As we were getting in the car he was asking me scenarios: “How many Gs would you experience…?” He fell asleep as we got close to Even Yehuda. I stopped at the strawberry stand and he was awake enough to sleepily ask me to leave the door open when I went to get strawberries. I then drove up to town and parked in one of the lots. I let him sleep for a few more minutes, then we went in to Stop City! to get honey, as we were out. August had also been going on and on about having more Bamba at their house, so I had told him he could get some when we went to the store. Inside though he decided on a bag of the caramel popcorn, remembering when we had that a few months ago.
We then drove to school. We went to the cafeteria and he had a chocolate muffin and I had a cappuccino (he had agreed to have just a few pieces of popcorn and save the rest for another day). August said, “Isn’t it crazy in the United States a hundred thousand people are learning something each second?” He ate more of the dolma, and opened the bag of cashews from Ikea and ate them all. He had a Sister game where Bar now likes cats and Sister bans her from the server. When she allows her on Bar makes a giant cat statue and uses redstone to make it meow. He called it “Ms. Stuffins” after the Phineas Rage videos.
I talked about how we were almost done reading Where the Sidewalk Ends at home. He joked, “Great. We can finally find out where the sidewalk ends.”
We then walked over, close to 4, to Carly’s classroom and said hi. We then went to the library. I had thought to look at books and maybe do Khan Academy or something, but he just wanted to do graphing, then take some photos. He did ask, “What’s an equilibrium?” So a word of the day.
We left at 4:35 and discussed “functions of x” on the way to the car. At home he did alone time while jumping on the couch, onto a pile of pillows. We then played Minecraft and Carly got home. He watched two videos, then Piano playing for alone time. I went for a run and they played Minecraft. He then watched Kurzgesagt videos on fusion and the end of universe. He ate apple and peanut butter. He was being a bit grumpy and I said something about “Until you get your groove on.” “What’s that mean?” He asked about the smallest things seen and we read about kinds of microscopes: https://www.nanooze.org/worlds-most-powerful-microcope/
I took a shower and he ate rice, then noodles and butter. They were reading Astrophysics. Carly took a shower and we read an article that Cherie had just sent: https://interlude.hk/the-incredible-human-hands/?fbclid=IwAR3dbgHuJuhwCnd1MLin7b-z0ssP8jfpxd1JWfvI6b38c2mxzwKcBEccPuQ from Cherie We then did multiplying fractions on Khan Academy before heading upstairs.
Carly gave him a bath. We left a Skype message for my parents when they didn’t answer. We said good night, and listened to “Multiplying Mischief” and “The Princess’s Excellent Birthday Party” on Stories Podcast. We then listened to “Island” on Bedtime Explorers and both fell asleep to that. I woke up a bit later when it had gone on to another episode. He was asleep around 10:30.
He woke up at 5:40. I went in. He said, “Just so stuffy.” He kept trying to get back to sleep, and I tried to sleep in the small bed. Not too successfully. Finally he got up and we went down at 6:35. I lay on the couch. Carly got us a second blanket. He lay on the couch too for quite some time, then started watching Phineas Rage videos when he was bored. He got a good amount of watching, and a little a Minecraft time, in before I finally got up around 8. We had oatmeal for breakfast and then he started playing piano. Mainly coming up with stuff, but also practicing “Bluebird”.
We played Minecraft, making a moat and observation room on our flat world house. He said he discovered a disease called “infamous of the genitalia”. I think it might be from “inflammation of the genitalia”, which is probably a symptom of one of the diseases he’s learned about.
He then watched “The Immune System Explained I” from Kurzgesagt. And then part 2. He played more piano and I glued the chipped corner piece of the board that goes where your feet are. Not really visible, but I figured it would be nice to fix it a bit before putting the board back on.
He then had Brother and Sister games where Synth (the character was interacting with Ms. Safe and the class. He then hid in the blanket and turned the AC on low while I made lunch. We ate a tuna melt and chocolate milk for lunch. Then he had crackers and peanut butter.
We drove to piano as he talked about a Minecraft Sister and Myna game. It was rainy, so not a play in the park sort of day. We parked right close to Dalit’s house and went in.
He had memorized the “Bluebird” piece, then sight read “First Serenade”. He noticed the clock making a ticking sound and used it as a metronome. He did a pretty good job with it, but it oddly turned into a 4/4 piece once he started playing with the metronome. She tried to correct him, but only showed him once by playing it on a lower octave. So I wasn’t impressed by that. When they were done, she was actually most concerned that he was mixing up the left and right hand. Which to be honest I’m not sure how he was doing that. Maybe he was reaching down with his right thumb to hit some notes.
She let him play around a bit until he said he was ready for a new piece. He took a couple minutes and then said he was read for a new piece. This piece had an F sharp in it and they talked about the different names of it and of the rests. They worked through that, then she asked if they had 45 minutes today. I said sure, and they worked through a second piece. It actually ended up being a little over 50 minutes. August did mention a couple times near the end that it felt really long (at one point he said it had been 5 hours) but he was still having fun. At the end we then scheduled next week, deciding to try a switch to Thursday, as she wanted earlier on Wednesday, but 1 is okay on Thursdays.
We then drove down to IKEA. We went and had ice cream first, then walked through the store. He was following the arrow and the feet on the ground. Our primary goals were a frame for the music poster and a cover for the light in his room. But he didn’t want a paper one, so I said not today (Carly had wanted a cheaper one, and I didn’t feel like carrying a big box, as I didn’t have a bag for our smaller stuff either). And the frames weren’t the right size. But we did come across seat cushions so we got green ones for the table. And I got a small set of drill bits and a snack bag of cashews at the end. As we stood in the long line at the end there was a problem with their speakers and it was making what we called “rhythmic static.”
We then drove to Ace Hardware. The goal there was a rotary tool and tips and maybe some wood so I could start working on the replacement pieces for the piano hammers. Alas, they only had the tips for the rotary tools. So nothing there. Although we did buy one clamp, since we don’t have any. I thought my glue job wasn’t holding on the board, but when we got home it was actually okay, so didn’t even need that, although it will be useful in the future.
On the way out to the car it was raining quite a bit. August handled it okay and I had the umbrella, but I picked him up to carrying him over the big puddle that was the parking lot. He fell asleep on the way home, and it was raining pretty hard when we got here so I let him sleep for a few minutes, about 20 in total, then I took him in.
We played Minecraft, then watched a “History of Humans in Minecraft video.” We started part 2. BCE was a word of the day. Carly called, and I asked if she wanted a ride. She did, so we paused and headed out to pick her up. Of course, it stopped on the way there, and Carly decided to walk a bit and got about a block before we picked her up.
At home I started to put up the new set of hooks for a coatrack that someone had given her at work. I managed to get the middle screw drilled in deep enough, but just could not get any of the other 4 holes that deep. Don’t know what I’m hitting in the wall. So we’ll have to go get shorter screws as these are really long.
They did math, doing some Khan Academy and graphing, then read more of Astrophysics for Kids in a Hurry. He was being silly and under the blanket. When Carly didn’t want him climbing on her he said, “I’ll just wander around the couch aimlessly.”
She went up for a shower and I read How To. He was then a poisonous spider biting astronauts, etc. Then in Rivet he read two or three books to me. Has clearly made progress in his reading although we haven’t practiced much, as he was reading most words and quite fluidly. He ate more dinner, then had sweet potato and zucchini.
Carly got him upstairs with candy and washed his har and read to him. I took him in to bed and we listened to two Circle Rounds: “The Lute Player” and “The Rooster in the Sky” again. He was pretty hyper. We did a meditation, then listened to Brian Eno’s “Ali Click”. He was asleep at 10:35.
One more day of Carly home on the short vacation. He was up at 7 as I was hurrying to get going. Only eight hours of sleep. When he went down Carly was listening to something on executive functioning and he listened along. In Minecraft she was trying to play in survival while he was in creative. He was trying to give her stuff to make it easier, and gave her a bunch of sand, saying, “It would make a darn lot of glass.”
I got driving to Jerusalem. The drive was about what I expected. Our meeting went fine, although Marc had warned me Omar was in a contrarian attitude, and he was. He had finally some of the material I had finished more than 6 months ago. Mostly went fine, although difficult to remember sources/etc. when so removed from the writing. Also, he was very contrarian/contradictory on the material on nonviolence. But he’s been doing some of the same with Marc and the antisemitism document.
While I was gone they did a lot of graphing and played some Candyland (evidence was still on the floor). They’d gone for a walk and played at the park on Vatikim. They did a painting together: he designed a geometric design on the graphing calculator, then painted the background and Carly painted in the design. Carly made chicken cacciatore. They did math outside, and August sort of figured out how to play the opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth on piano.
Carly got him to talk about (she had to bribe him with something) his feelings when faced with a winning game, and he talked about feeling it in his heart, chest, and brain. And they watched videos about regressions and functions, and have been learning about parabolas.
I was home just after 5. When I walked in the house August said, “Hey Mr. Poopy Pants. I know how to use the tilda!” We had some dinner, then he played piano for me. I read some of Where the Sidewalk Ends and then more How To. Ginseng and aircraft carrier were words of the day. He was then hiding from Carly under the blanket. At one point he told her “I’m Rezzock”, using a nice throat sound. Rezzock is a bad guy from the Last Kids on Earth books. Carly got him to clean up Candyland using reverse psychology.
We got him upstairs and he did his now-usual hiding in the couch bed under the carpety blanket. She gave him a bath and there was a lot of screeching. In bed I read more How To. Deorbit was another word of the day. August asked, “What if I had a printer that could print a billion dollars a second: how would that affect the world?…would that affect the world economy?” That’s based on a question from the What If? book.
August asked about the Bermuda Triangle, asking, “Is there anything mysterious in that triangle….? Anything humanity ending? Anything worth studying?”
We listened to Brian Eno’s Shutov Assembly after he requested something electronic. He was still being a bit silly and said, “Luxy wire…a funny way of saying haywire.” One second he was talking about the Bermuda Triangle, etc. then he rolled over and shortly thereafter started snoring quietly. It was 9:40.
Just before 6:30 he woke up. When I went in he said something like, “Why did you get up so early?” He then fell back to sleep with his head towards the other end of the bed. I then woke him up at 8:05. He played Minecraft with Carly in Lonely Lands. He found a new spot he likes at 1785, 88, -610.
I got him oatmeal, then we got going as we had Shani at 9:15. He was explaining “That’s how I organize my Dewey decimal system.”
He was getting a cookie on the way, but decided he was going to savor it to make Shani jealous of the cookie, but then we agreed to surprise her with cookies. He didn’t eat his cookie at all until we got to Shani’s. I then had him giver her the bag of four cookies we brought. He went through the list, asking if anyone in her family was allergic to chocolate or gluten or milk. They had a great session. They started over at the table, doing a picture thing where you decorate it with these small sticker things, exercising the fingers. He had fun with that. Then she got him to try the stretchy swing again. Third or fourth time’s a charm, as he was able to stand in it and do some bouncing. He was very excited about accomplishing that. They went back to the table and did writing, and he did a lot of As, Bs, Cs, and Ds. It was funny because his best of each letter ended up being in the same column in the middle of the page. Finally, he played with putty, getting the beads out of it.
We headed home. He started playing music on the synthesizer and I went up to work. She cut his nails and hair. Lots of bribing involved with candy and a show, I think. I came down for lunch. He had me do a video of him showing his lagging equations. I asked him, “How do you keep coming up with these things?” “Experience. Or XP.”
Carly took August out. They went to Ilanot, the tree place and walked around there. August remembered it as the place where you can scan the QR codes on the tree signs. He did a lot of walking, although at one point he said there was a lack of seating. Carly looked around and counted nine benches. It was very green there, which reminded me that I had once talked to him about going to see it every few months to see how the trees change.
They got home at 3:30. He turned the water on full blast to show her how you can make a rainbow (which he’d done with Eve). Inside I picked him up and we were listening to the “Fascist groove thing” song. August said, “I’d rather play a Brother and Sister game” which is a joke on the line in the song: “Brothers, sisters, we don’t need no fascist groove thing…” He was then on the black chair and and had his shoes/feet dancing to the music.
He did a lot of music, then graphing. I was watching the Formula E race. He watched a bit as well, and disqualified was a word of the day. For alone time he played piano and then made some crazy music with the metronome. Carly had gone to the store. When she got back he showed her. We played Minecraft and he was messing around with the video options and opacity was another word of the day.
The two of them did a lot of Khan Academy together, learning about equation sets involving roasting coffee and their weights/prices and parabolas. Vertex was a word of the day. He then showed me a bat-looking equation he made. I asked how he came up with that, and he said, “What? I was just inspired by parabolas.” Such a great line.
We had a spaghetti dinner, then I went for a run. She read Astrophysics while he was doing graphing. After my shower we did more of the Brilliant Waves and Light class. He wants to keep going. We had a cookie and milk. About something he said, “You need my good friend, water. H2O.” We discussed chemical formulas and compounds and the little and big numbers before/after the elements and what they mean.
We went upstairs and he was dramatic on the couch but eventually went in for his bath. He was doing silly riddles after his bath. In the bedroom he asked the deep question, “Why do the equations…work?” and I talked about the philosophy of math and whether math is inherent in the world or whether it is a human construct to describe the world around us.
We listened to the Stories Podcast’s “A Bone to Pick”, then to a Bedtime Explorers episode before putting on some piano music. He just couldn’t get to sleep, saying something to the effect a couple times, and finally, finally drifted to sleep around 11, curled up with his bottom in the air.
He woke me up once during the night, just before 6, to put his blanket back on. I then woke him up at 8:05. He was out of his covers again, sideways on the bed. He went downstairs and said good morning to Carly. After a minute he went for his iPad. I read some poems from Where the Sidewalk Ends, then he was graphing on his iPad. Carly got him cereal and he was off the iPad while they had breakfast, and she was watching a Khan Academy video and they were learning about slope. August told her, “Mama, here’s what happens to y as x approaches infinity in y=x/x y equals 1. It’s easy, because anything divided by itself is always 1.”
Carly was playing piano and they talked about it, then he wanted to show her a dissonant sound on his synth and got it out and spent time creating really dissonant sounds. He kept playing music until about 9:20. “Wait, I forgot about Minecraft! That’s crazy! Crazy!…I got so caught up in it…”
They played Minecraft, then we got him ready and Carly took him on a short trip to the store up in town and they stopped at a park to play. They were back at 12. He played with the synth and was recording things based on the chromatic scale. He was then composing, in Notion, for Carly and made a couple of things for her to then play on the piano. In debating something about that he told her, “There’s no compromise here.”
I then took him to Gabi’s. August started in on the war, as usual. It isn’t really much of a game, as he just had his animals kill Gabi’s pieces as soon as they moved. So first I tried introducing pick up sticks. Gabi taught August how to play that, so it worked for a few minutes. Then back to war. I was then stacking the animals, making pyramids. Eventually August got into it, and made a sculpture out of all of the animals. Math was discussed, and Gabi said he had a couple of math-based games. August was interested, so we spent the rest of the time learning Sleeping Queens. August liked it, although he didn’t play himself, instead watching what cards Gabi and I had. It is a fun game, although all about the kings and jacks fighting over how many of the sleeping queens they can capture, so there’s that.
On the way to the car we discussed equations and constants, a word of the day. We then drove to Ra’anana Park. He did a ton of walking today. We walked around to the music area to see the progress they’ve made. We were discussing math and how the lower levels are easy for him and he wants upper level math. We sat in a corner area near the music area and he made some funny faces and I sent photos to Carly. He then typed her messages, and sent her a crazy video as well.
We kept walking. As I stood up his water bottle fell out and the lid cracked. Still usable, but the one from Cherie and Chuck is coming just in time. He did some climbing on some fence things and we took some making-mama-nervous photos. We found a new bench, which has solar panels on top and phone charging stations. He liked that.
He joked about the big egg hatching and ran in circles around it. We kept walking over to the big playground area. Never actually played in it, but he climbed higher than he ever has on the rope thing, then we sat at a bench and had a snack. In the round center area there was a large group with students/adults with special needs riding around on big three-wheeled bikes. August had a lot of questions about them that we discussed. He climbed in a swing and ate a bar while he watched them riding.
We then played on the exercise equipment. There, there were a few guys practicing gymnastics on the two bars. Quite impressive, as they were doing flips over and under the bars. Eventually we went over to a bench and sat and did more Brilliant, learning the equation for the energy of a wave. We left at 4, and he had a series of stories where he was a student talking to the different math teachers at different levels, like Ms. Safe, then her twin sister Ms. Danger, who was 1st grade, and then an advanced math teacher, that actually wasn’t advanced. We stopped at the bathroom, then headed home.
At home he got to composing on the iPad, then was doing music with Carly, composing practice pieces for her. He had spaghetti, then paused the piano stuff to have more. He was then composing at the piano. He discovered the notation/commands for the sustain pedal and trill, a word of the day.
Carly read the Astrophysics book, then he was graphing, and came up with more cool stuff. We watched a video on how to compose a song. He kept graphing but also was paying attention, at least part of the time. Consonant sounds was another word of the day. He did more composing, then playing of piano for alone time.
I went for a run. They watched a few minutes of Contact and played Minecraft. I took a shower, and when I came down he was watching a Kurzgesagt video. He was very dramatic about going upstairs. Finally got him laughing after he told me not to “say it” and then I kept accidentally saying “it.” Got him in to take a bath at 8:50.
Carly gave him a bath, then I finished reading the digging chapter of How To. We went in the bedroom and listened to the Stories Podcast “Disney World” story. Monorail and celebrity were words of the day. After a while he realized it wasn’t a folk tale so we found something else, “The Belly of the Beast”. In Bedtime Explorers we listened to “Magic Island”. He was asleep around 10:30.
He got me up a couple times. I think he was having bad dreams. The second time was around 5:30. When I went in he commented on it being too dark, and then that he couldn’t hear the fan. So I turned that on for him. He was quite stuffy and was taking quite a while to go back to sleep. So I went back to my bed and had to stay up until I was sure he was asleep again to turn the heat back on so he didn’t freeze.
He was then up at 7:40. He went straight to the bathroom, then we went downstairs. He played Minecraft with Carly, then watched a Life Noggin video called “What if You Were Never Loved?” I then showed him Thought Cafe’s “How to Find an Exoplanet?” and Fuse School’s “Multiplying and Dividing Fractions”. He got on the scientific calculator and was finding the exponents of numbers (like 9 to the 22nd power), then typing it in backwards, taking the 22nd root of that answer. Carly got him to go outside for the fresh and rosy fingered dawn and eat his oatmeal out there.
I went out too, and we all enjoyed the amazing weather. I sat in the lounge chair and studied languages and Carly got August the green chair that we’ve never really use and he sat in it and did graphing, after he had done some while on the steps to the slide. He was doing graphing competitions with Carly to see who could make better graphs.
Back inside, eventually, he started to get into the statistics functions and I was teaching him about variance and mean and the like. We’ll have to get more into statistics. It was hard to tear him from the iPad and he did a lot of whining about not wanting to go to the beach or cafe, so we joked about how they were going to a broccoli or tomato cafe. Carly let me go upstairs to start working. I heard him play some piano, then they left about 11:30.
They went to their usual cafe. Walked around the square area, then along the boardwalk. They were going to take the elevator down to the beach but it was closed so they didn’t go down. They were back about 2:40. They went outside, then August was playing Apple Music on her phone to wear it out. He saw that the battery was at 64% and was excited because that’s how many things you can stack in Minecraft: “That’s a convenient number.” And he knew it was 8 times 8. He then did some awesome dancing to a Belle and Sebastian song. “52…I’m trying to exhaust her battery.” He recognized “Pumped Up Kicks”: “I love this song!”
He wanted more iPad, but I convinced him to start a course on Brilliant with me on Waves and Light. I got a blanket out and we lay on the grass and worked through the first section. We paused to do some graphing when he realized that the example picture they gave of a sine wave was actually incorrect. Their picture was labeled y=sin(x), but he realized the picture was too steep. We experimented with it and he figured out it should actually read y=sin(x)5.
We started work on the second section of the course. Lots of new words as candidates for word of the day, like periodic. Enough of that for one session, then I read some more of Last Kids on Earth. Carly walked to the store. The sun was going down and it was cooling down so we moved inside. We read a little more of the book, and dexterous was a new word.
He was hungry so had a slice of pizza and then a yogurt. He was playing piano and said, “It’s an epidemic. My music is an epidemic.”
Carly was home, and he started doing alone time and I went for a run. They played Minecraft, and when I got back they were talking to Cherie. I took a shower and was then chatting with Peter about his last day of school and upcoming treatments. Downstairs he was using the graphing calculator and trying to figure out the statistical functions. I taught him about standard deviation. Carly got him a second dinner of oatmeal and apple and peanut butter. Carly and I were discussing tahini (she had learned, from Israelis, that it is good with spaghetti) and antioxidants and I asked August what scientists think about antioxidants. He said they hadn’t found proof, and then added, “They have oscillated…”
We brought up how he had talked to Carly as she was falling asleep last night. Apparently he had been saying things like “It’s 9:00 and my kidding trick is working.” He agreed: “That’s totes what I said…” Carly and I were apparently being funny. He called us funny a couple times. As he was eating he said he needed to go to the bathroom, but then after he had gotten up he just went back to his seat. Carly and I joked about what happened to his pee and were using ‘totes’ as well. He said, “You two are totes funny.” And he spit out spaghetti twice because he was laughing.
Carly suggested they watch a documentary. They wanted different kinds though. I suggested Anthropocene: The Human Epoch, which I’ve been meaning to watch with him. He got excited by that one so we watched it. As we were watching factories and smelters he kept saying things like, “In Minecraft it’s way easier…” And one time he rather randomly said, in a grumpy old man voice, “Back in the old days you had to do this by hand. It took a month.” It was similar to what a man had said at a marble quarry earlier in the film. The craziest moment for me of the film was the huge machines in an open-pit coal mine in Germany and how it is actually ripping up towns.
Carly went up for a shower. August and I talked about having popcorn. I first offered him milk and a cookie. He couldn’t believe we were having a cookie and popcorn: “You’re outrageous…crazy!” We had cookies and milk first, and when he was done with his milk I got the popcorn. In the film we learned the term technofossils. Not related to the video he asked, “What’s a Hiroshima Bomb?” So I talked about the bombs dropped on Japan.
We went upstairs and Carly was in bed. August climbed into bed with her. I went and lay down in the couch bed, and August came out a few seconds later and was surprised to find me in bed too. He said, “Tonight is weird.”
Carly got up and gave him a bath. I heard him ask, “What’s 16 squared?” When Carly took a second, saying ,“Umm” he said, “256…I memorized it…it’s part of the binary scale.”
We listened to “The Rooster in the Sky” on Circle Round, then the “Velociraptor” episode of Bedtime Explorers. We listened to the Henri Bok album Worlds of Bass Clarinet and he was finally asleep at 10:45.
He was up about 7:30. I came up and we got in the couch bed. We headed down about 7:50. August started in to graphing instead of Minecraft. At first he was fine with that, but when i clarified he wouldn’t get his full morning dose of Minecraft if he kept graphing he realized the error of his way and switched to Minecraft. He ate oatmeal, and was able to stop before his time was up.
We got going and to Shani’s at 9. They started with the stretchy swing. He tried it more and got to standing in it a couple times. She was able to coax him back several times. He was wearing his elements shirt and she asked what element he would be: “If I was an element I d explode or I wouldn’t do anything, like iron, or I’d be a gas and float away.”
When they were done with that he showed her the circle equation on the graphing calculator, then went to the table to write numbers. She thanked him for complimenting her on her handwriting last time. He didn’t really like being complimented, then found it funny that she was complimenting him for complimenting her. He worked on 6s, and he commented on how it looked like a b and they worked on the difference. August showed her the pumpkin made from a lowercase d and b, from when i was helping him read the difference. We talked about starting to teach him lowercase letters, or whether she should start with upper case. August showed her the game sprouts and we talked about it.
Shani talked about wanting him to always be more intentional/clean when putting things on paper (he was rather loose in his sprout drawing). I rolled my eyes on the inside, and he complained a bit about how it would take longer. Think it will be like ‘proper’ piano playing – knowing he has to do it in lesson, and practicing at home, but knowing he doesn’t have to always do it. He went along with it though, then they did a connect-the-dots drawing together, using careful lines.
We talked about piano lessons, and I told her how Dalit and August are generally communicating well, but having a bit of difficulty between her Hebrew accent and his not pronouncing R. He got tired of the connect the dots and went and ran in circles while holding the swing. “Swinging is productive!”
She got him to do a few capitol As. Her husband was playing piano upstairs and he asked if he was playing ffff or ppp etc. While trying to focus on his writing he was distracted by the music and said, “I’m hypnotized by the music!” They then finished with a board sort of thing where he hammered thumbtacks in to hold shapes on to a board. August talked about how it was a dangerous game for babies.
We headed home and August got on Minecraft. Gilad was available soon after and they played for a little over an hour. August was noticing more ghost block issues, where he would explode TNT and a bunch of it would appear to not explode, but it actually had and he could walk through it. Randomly, while they were playing, he asked me, “What’s skeptical mean?” I don’t think Gilad had said it. So a word of the day. They finished at 11:20.
We were going to then head to the mall, but we were hungry so both had a piece of pizza, then he had a yogurt. He asked me, “How do you measure how powerful a bomb is?” So we learned about megatons and TNT equivalency. He then went on a long walkabout regarding a huge explosion to rip apart the galaxy. Bar and Baby Sister did it, then rewound time. He played piano, and said, “Do you smell b natural minor?” Didn’t know what to make of that. Not sure if he got a word wrong, or it was supposed to be funny in the course of the Brother and Sister game, but he wouldn’t talk any more about it. He was playing a line and asked if it sounded familiar to me, I said yes but couldn’t place. He said it sounded like part of the Llama Llama song and then I totally heard it.
We got walking at 12:15. As we got to the bridge he asked why we were walking, but didn’t complain. We were doing Brother and Sister games, and Baby Sister’s new hero is Calculator, after she learned Calculator could do something just by thinking it. When Bar was upset over her changing loyalties he had the best laugh ever.
Windy over the bridge and I carried him a bit. Really busy at the mall, as expected. We made it to Tiv Taam and got ingredients for chocolate chip cookies and a couple other things. While there he asked what finders keepers means and I explained, but then said it wasn’t so cut and dried, which was another new phrase for him. We then went to the Druze stand and he was excited about dolmas. We got two containers of those, and I got two of the sandwiches for the three of us for dinner later.
We walked outside and I stopped to get two containers of strawberries. We went in the playground and sat in one of the house things and ate dolmas.
We then walked home. He was asking me math questions, usually ones I could figure out, but not always. He said “Say paperulater when you can’t figure it out in your head.” For needing to do it on paper/a caculator later.
Back at home he did alone time as I got ingredients ready. We played Minecraft, then made chocolate chip cookies. When the song “I.B.L.U.D.” came on he liked it, but then said, “They’re leaving out notes.” It’s a song made of a lot of percussion, thing guitar, and kind of tuneless singing, so I think I know what he meant. He then got the synth app and showed me some sounds that he thought were the same way. They were sounds with a lot of fuzz to them, without distinct, clear notes.
Carly got home and he said “Happy Valentine’s Day!” We all had a cookie and milk, then he did a lot of graphing. He and carly played piano and I introduced him to the Notes sight reading app that I had found and he did a good job with that for a few minutes.
I went for a run and they had dinner. He had spaghetti and dolmas. I got back, and discussed digital library systems with Carly, as they’re trying to figure out audio books at school, and I taught August how to use the ‘polygon’ command in Desmos. I went up for a shower, and Carly managed to get him off screens. He agreed to a half hour. They graphed an equation on paper. “Oh! There could be tons of possibilities!” In graphs I taught him how to use tables to solve a series of equations (making, for example, a series of lines for y=bx+5 for different values of b)
Carly went up for a shower and I got him off the iPad again. We built with the new legos. I built a rover thing with claws. He ate more spaghetti, then was whiney about going upstairs, but managed.
Carly gave him a bath and I did dishes and was doing other things downstairs. She was reading Clementine to him, then at 9:10 he called down: “I putted her to sleep!” He came down, all proud, saying he never thought he’d put an adult to sleep, and that “I sang “You Are My Sunshine”.” “My kidding trick worked, like times a nonillion…savoring then.” That is, he had been postponing brushing his teeth by eating the Smarties that she had given him (she got them from students) really slowly.
Now that he was done with his kidding trick and ready to head to bed he ate them more quickly. We went in his room and read the How To chapter on digging a hole. Laborer, authenticity, and executed were words of the day. We learned all about the history of buried pirate treasure.
We listened to a Bedtime Explorer meditation, then asked what kind of music he wanted to listen to. He requested bass clarinet music, so I found an album called Ballads for Bass Clarinet. It turned out to be a nice jazz album. He liked it and was asleep by 10:25.
