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They were up about 7:30. They went outside and read Captain Underpants. He came in and we played Polytopia. He ate strawberries and cereal for breakfast and I took a shower. We discussed his coins and buying stocks and why you can do that. ‘Stocks’ was a word of the day.

We got going at 9:20. He’s now identifying classic Beetles and Mini Coopers. We dropped off the garbage and then headed into town. He was very excited to find a one cent coin. We found a small, old yellow car parked up on the pedestrian path with its hood open and looked at it for a couple minutes. He called it a “Cute cute cute car.” We walked up by the Acropolis Museum to catch our hop-on/hop-off tour bus. On the way he saw big tires on a bus and sang a song about how a 747 has “even bigger tires.” We had bought tickets for the Red Buses company. When we got to the spot we couldn’t find a sign for that company in particular. The driver in the red bus that did come along told us it was for a blue bus. August and I sat on the sidewalk and read some Nick and Tesla. A blue bus came along and the driver told us to get on and the tickets would be scanned at the next stop.

We got to the entrance of the Acropolis, only to find out that it was still the wrong company. She said it was actually the yellow buses. It was a nice spot, with paths up the Filopappou Hill. August climbed in a tree, then we tried to go walking. It was literally one minutes up to the Prison of Socrates (not really the prison, but it is called that, and very old). He complained, and even after Carly found a really cool bug he wanted to turn right back around. No rain at all today, but I think that was part of his concern.

So we ended up back down at the bottom and he played around well for the 5 or 10 minutes until a yellow bus came. He kept saying, “That’s crazy talk!” (From Captain Underpants?) We got on, and started riding. No one scanned our ticket, so in the end we never knew if we found the right bus company. we rode about 20 minutes and talked about getting lunch and going to the children’s museum again. This bus kept going straight though, to the National Library instead of turning right towards the Bernaki Museum area.

In the end it didn’t matter, as when we got off and started to walk to find food August had a meltdown. He started running away from us, which was scary. We took him to an open area by the library go get him to calm down. Took quite awhile. We decided to call it a day, but we still needed to get food. I led us to a place called Sfuzzi. August got an egg sandwich, I got the Spanish Pie (spanakopita), and Carly had a salad. We both got small cappuccinos. August did well in the restaurant. The flower on the table had started to lose its petals, so that gave him something to play with. He initially sat on my lap, hesitant to sit on the chairs, but decided they weren’t too padded and sat on one to eat.

We took the subway home. He now recognizes one of the stations when they say it and was repeating “Syntagma, Syntagma, Syntagma.” I took a photo and he was scratching his face and it looks like he is flipping me off.

We got back at 1. Carly went to rest and he and I made project 163 in the circuits kit. He is doing a great job of reading the ‘schematics’ (another word of the day) and really doesn’t need our help anymore, or very little. When we went to have food I gave him a cracker. Last time there were crumbs everywhere. So I told him I’d give him points if he managed to get all the crumbs on the plate. He liked that, and was also earning points for eating strawberries. After awhile he had 21560 points. He told me, “I use the points to buy things…for my baby, and my baby likes wearing stuff.” He got points for eating another strawberry (to 26560), being nice to mama for a minute (31260) and then got 9200 for sitting with me and discussing ‘family principles’ with me (an idea from one of the homeschooling books). He ate cereal and strawberries (42380), got honesty points when he realized he had missed a strawberry, more for drinking extra milk, and ended up with 46760 points.

We read more Nick and Tesla. We were reading on the floor and had the pillows and cushions down. He decided to now do an imagining game, and we did the blue mook game again. As the blue mook I taught him how to use the iPad and count. He played some TodoMath.

He went to the bathroom and asked if there was anything I wanted him to make in his lab. I asked for a statue, to which he replied, “I’m going to make it of what people think God looks like.” He continued to talk on the toilet: “My mama back on my planet is having another baby right now…they have one every year…it comes out slowly from the bottom…it just wants tons of jewelry, so I’m buying it in Greece…she says the jewelry he wants most is jewelry with eyeballs on it…we don’t have jewelry on my planet but I can buy it.” Still making things, I asked for a perfect pair of shoes. Then for Carly he made a speaker that would read her mind and play quiet music.

He played with his circuits some more. We tried replying to Vivian on Wizard School but the internet was so slow it wouldn’t load her messages at first. A couple minute later we got it working and sent videos and messages. He wanted me to send him stuff so I started doing it on my phone.

We played more Polytopia and I burnt some toast when I forgot about it in the pan. Carly came out and cooked broccoli. He ate broccoli and cheese, then toast. He did some more hitting over something (he wanted all the toast at once, I think it was). Clear that it comes out when he is stressed, and the trip has been stressful for him. Luckily, we had a calm rest of the day and he did quite well. Since he ate his broccoli he asked, “Can I have more points for my baby?” He kept eating more and had 54610 points. He played with a couple clothes pins and clipped them onto his sock, along with a receipt, and wanted them on while we went for a walk

We left at 6:10. We ‘broke’ the elevator on our way so had to walk down the stairs. As we walked August told us how “Babies have all this unworking circuitry.” We walked to the park where he had all the anxiety about the (nonexistent) rain the other day. Beautiful blue skies now, but it had rained a little while we had been home. He was fine until we got to the park, then seemed to be having some flashbacks. When I assured him we’d be back among buildings on the other side of the park he was okay.

We walked down the steps to the street, looked at a Mini Cooper dealership, and walked to the northwest corner of the cemetery. There was a geocache there. We spent 5 minutes or so looking for it, and August found it attached to a metal pole. We also found a cool metal lid of some sort with holes in it as a treasure.

On our walk back we saw another hood open on a car and stopped to talk about it. We walked back to big grocery store. We went in to find a few things, like pasta and sauce. Carly had a stomach ache, so we hurried. August was doing a great job waiting, and at checkout reminded me he wanted to show me that the store next door had changed, he thought.

He took me outside and showed me that it was a pet store—he had remembered the little shop where he bought gum as being right next to the grocery store. It was one more door up though, and we went in there. We realized that Carly had his coins. I offered to trade him for the 20 cents I had in my pocket, but he wanted to wait for his own coins: “I’m more comfortable with that.” When Carly got it, he bought the candy that the guy had recommended. It was a taffy sort of thing, and also had a tattoo in it. August ate the candy, which then proceeded to last a long time, and had me put the fish tattoo on his hand.

We were back before 8. We finished our Polytopia game (which we had played on the hard level, expecting to lose, but had ended up winning). He had earned back some watching time and wanted to watch the movie NextGen. I was excited that Bikini Kill’s “Rebel Girl” started the movie.

He did a great job stopping in the middle when I told him he had seven minutes left. He stopped after just two, as it was a boring part. I told him he had found a good breaking point. I gave him a digestive, then we went in and I gave him a bath at 9. We got him ready for bed, and I left them sometime after 9:30.

Even bigger tires song:

You should really arrest us song:

Finding the geocache:

Buying a candy on his own:

He got up just before 7:30 after I’d entered the room. He watched on Max and Ruby and then we got ready to go. Got to the school right at 8:10. As we did, August asked me how many milliseconds were in a second. I told him a thousand. He said, “So a minute is 60,000.” We dropped off the hummus, then headed to class. He had me pick him up and then joked that “dada” was across the commons, even though I was carrying him. It turned into a “Where’s a dada?” song. We reviewed the schedule with Andrea, then I was able to leave at 8:20.

When I picked him up I learned that he and Eve had done stop motion animation earlier using the table with the wood pieces on it, then they had done more with Yaya down on the floor. Eve wanted to show me and got the tripod and asked Andrea for the iPad. I got to see both their videos. In one they had used a string to show the lizard jumping or flying. He had also eaten focaccia today and for lunch had the cake and the cereal bar from his lunch. They had had a tea party and celebrated Miriam’s birthday.

He ate on the bench, then eventually we headed to the pool. But on the way he asked if you could make a photo lighter or darker. We started talking about how cameras work and ‘aperture’ became a word of the day. We stopped at the couches near the pool and used the Moment camera app to explore shutter speed and ISO and white balance. White balance was a fun one and we took a lot of blue photos that turned out pretty cool. Marion walked by with one of her daughters, Jill, and another girl and asked if we were going to the pool.

He was excited to see Marion at the pool so we went and got changed and got to the pool at 4:15. He found Marion sitting on the side and gave her a hug and told her he thought she’d be in the pool. She told him that by the end of the day she was exhausted from teaching and she was just supervising. She defined ‘supervision’ for him and that became a second word of the day.

Once in the water, Liz said hi to us. She was swimming laps in the lane next to us. He at first asked “Who are you‽” when she was in her goggles. As she started swimming he commented on how wet she was and said, “She doesn’t look like a librarian now.” Later, when she had gotten out of the pool and leaving and she said bye he called to her, “I love you!”

We also saw Ilana at the pool. He asked about getting water in your ears and whether it could get to your brain. We discussed ear wax a lot, and he asked if your brain could be hurt. Later I found out that he and Carly had watched a video of a brain tumor surgery. We talked about physical damage and I told him about the guy who got a metal rod through his head and we talked about the different effects that could happen when specific areas of the brain are damaged. We also talked about how the brain communicates with chemicals and discussed depression, etc.

We got out of the pool at 5. As we were by the grass a woman said hi to him. It kind of looked like Rebecca, and August asked her if she was the one that squeezes him as a s’more. It wasn’t. It was the woman that helped with Carly’s get to know you day, and she does look kind of like Rebecca.

We headed towards the bathroom and he asked about how the bladder can not work. He was then talking about his science lab by the preschool. It was at the water table where he had watched Dion’s class from. He developed a story about how he was making explosions in it and it was interrupting kids trying to sleep at rest time.

We were home by 5:30. He watched Llama Llama, then we put noodles in the soup for his dinner. He used the Voice Memo app on my phone and recorded a song about how he loves the number 10. He was then playing in his science labs behind the pillows and then showing Carly the “videos” (acting it out) of his science. We read some of Magic Tree House #30 and then I gave him a bath and washed his hair.

He really wanted to cut his hair and get a lollipop and kept asking Carly about it. She said he was persistent about it, and explained persistent. He was repeating, “Persistent about lollipop.” He settled for cake and doing lollipop and hair cutting tomorrow. He then took photos with the macro lens, then went upstairs to brush his teeth with Carly. I was putting him to sleep. We first looked at Flickr photos while on the Zinnie bed. He then went and said good night to Carly. We sang some songs on the Zinnie bed, then switched to the big bed. Took awhile longer, and he was finally asleep at 10:15.

Dada is right here song: