Skateboarding

On Saturday and Sunday, Austin spent a couple hours each day, practicing skateboarding with Iain. It's clear that they both had pretty good workouts, evidenced by their flushed faces. Austin really enjoys his time with Iain.

Lego Mindstorms

Lego Mindstorms arrived this week! This was a very exciting time in our household. Austin and Aidan excitedly opened the package, and within less than an hour, Austin had a working vehicle. He was anxious to start programming.

Skye tried to load the software onto a couple computers, but it wasn't working on either Mac. Eventually, Skye worked out the problem and got it set up for Austin.

Austin spent about 5 hours per day, Wednesday and Thursday, building and re-building, programming an "alligator" to walk, chomp and sing. He was very enthusiastic about showing his creation with the intro, "Have you ever met a singing alligator?"

Normalizing muscles

Today, Austin's occupational therapist, Jane, told me that over the summer, it appears that Austin's muscles have normalized. He is more confident and wants to teach her things.

He also has better endurance for the physical exercises they do together.

Jane will be giving us some exercises to keep in mind while we are on our trip. She referred to Stick Kids. I think there is also some software she may be recommending to us.

Oops!! Wrong Target!

Austin and I stopped at Superstore on our way home from occupational therapy, to buy some food for lunch.

When we left the store, I was pushing the cart and Austin skipped ahead to the parking lot. I remember thinking to myself, "Thank goodness I don't have to worry about him running into traffic. If Aaron had done that, I'd have to abandon the cart and chase after him."

As I came around the corner of the building, Austin jumped out at me, calling, "Boo!" but there was another customer (a man in his early twenties) walking into Austin's path. Austin certainly surprised that guy, but he was a good sport about it, saying that he needed to wake up ;)

By the time we got to the car, I had fallen into a fit of giggles. Austin said, jokingly, "Oh sorry. The trap was already locked and loaded. Hey! Wrong target! Stop the missile!!" Austin figured that I must have laughed for about 6 solid minutes on the drive home.

Painting with the Boys (by Skye)

We needed to paint our basement suite to get it ready for renters. Skye, Austin and Aidan stayed home to paint, while Carla & Aaron went to a 40th wedding anniversary party in Tsawwassen.

Time estimation:

Austin and Aidan were given two different walls to sand and paint.

Austin divided his wall up into the sections that he could reach while
standing still (a practical choice). He noticed that this made approx.
6 sections of the wall. When he did this he noticed that he had
completed 3 of the 6 sections and said that he was 1/2 done that task.
He then estimated that he had 15 more minutes to go as it had taken
him 5 minutes to complete the last section.

Corrosion:

We were working with TSP to clean the walls before painting. I had
cautioned the boys to wear protective gloves when they were washing
with the TSP solution because it is corrosive. Austin asked what
corrosive meant, so we dove into this page to learn more about it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causticity

This introduced Austin to concepts of acids and bases. We talked about
some of the acids and bases we have around the house:

Acid:
citric acid in fruits

Base:
Soaps (dish, hand and TSP)

We touched on the fact that both of these will "burn" your skin and
some can generate heat. This introduced the word exothermic which
Austin correctly parsed to mean "outside heat" which I clarified was a
process that gave off heat (like burning wood). We then talked about
the opposite of exothermic which is endothermic. An example of an
endothermic process is evaporation (which is why our bodies perspire
to cool us down).

These are topics we'll certainly explore more in the future but it was
a good intro for now.

Time: painting exercise was about 30 minutes of discussion and 2.5
hours of activity

Time: discussion of acids, bases, and thermodynamics was about 30 minutes long

Communicating in Matoran

Last night, Aidan practiced his spelling words. While Aidan and I were going through his words together, Austin asked if I would make him a spelling test. He wanted me to select words from his Bionicle book. So, we ended up doing two spelling tests, and two bonus words. He did very well.

Then, Austin wanted to know how many letters from the Matoran alphabet I could remember. Austin set up a page with circles for the Matoran letters, and asked me to fill in the circles for the letter codes I knew. I started with A and C, then I remembered B and R and D. Austin suggested X, because it's basically an X in a circle, then he walked me through the rest of the alphabet, telling me about his memorizing tricks. We have a picture of the alphabet (Austin cut it out of the page). The letters are not in "alphabetical" order, because of the process we took to record them. He's quite a good teacher. I'm pretty sure I have the whole alphabet memorized now.

Then, Austin asked me to write a note to him, in Matoran. I wrote, "I want to go to sleep." Then, Austin asked me to write "Bionicle" in Matoran. Then, Austin set up a couple anagrams for me to solve. He wrote, "INHDKII," which, unscrambled, reads "Nidhiki." I had first spelled it, "Nihdiki," but Austin told me it's not like another Bionicle name that has the "H" prior to a "D." I don't remember the name he told me.

The next anagram was KAKOPA, and I unscrambled it to "Kopaka." Then, he wrote, "HYDRNXAO," and I unscrambled it to "Hydraxon."

Then, it was my turn to make an anagram. I wrote, "SMTRYYE," and after asking a few questions, such as, "Is the first letter an S? M?" and "Is the third last letter a Y?, E?" Austin solved the anagram as the word, "mystery."

Then, I really needed to go to sleep, so Austin continued without me. He wrote, "The Vahi is one of the legndary (sic) masks. Good night mom."

Then, before he tucked himself into bed, he wrote out a two-sided letter, all in Matoran code. This morning, I read it when I woke up. This is what I read:

"Hi mom. Can I have a glas (sic) of milk. This is what I wanted to teach you. To be able to write your oun (sic) sentenses (sic) and I've wrote (sic) this page so you can memorize your Matoran. I hope you've remeber (sic) your Matoran or you'll have a real hard time reading this page that I've given you.

So this is my Matoran. I've memorized all the Matoran alphabet. You want to see the alphabet ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ. And that's the Matoran alphabet. Some times (sic) I'll accidentaly (sic) write English letters, but for the majority it's Matoran. I'm surprised (sic) that I have a Bionicle from evry (sic) time in Bionicle history.

It's realy (sic) nice here in Deep Cove. It's too bad that we half (sic) to leave this place, but the Caribeean (sic) might not be so bad. Well I'm getting ____ (sic) so bye.

Teridax

Austin doesn't have a Makuta Teridax Bionicle. He would have really liked to have one, especially when we were visiting his cousin, Jonah's, place and discovered that he was willing to give his old Bionicles away. But Auntie Vicky runs a daycare, and the Bionicles are being enjoyed by the kids at daycare.

Austin was initially disappointed, but soon suggested that he build Teridax for the daycare kids. He would need access to a computer, so he could find the instructions and rebuild Teridax (199 pieces). Teridax was in pieces in a Lego bucket, so it took some considerable sifting to find each part. After about an hour, Austin had built Teridax, and he was well pleased with his accomplishment. He proceeded to tell Vicky about the value of the older Bionicles, and what Teridax might sell for, on eBay.

A couple days later, Austin showed me his version of Teridax. He had built him, using other Bionicle parts. Austin's Teridax is bigger than the original. Austin likes his version better, in some ways. He felt the original Teridax's legs were too short, and he was frustrated that there were no knee or ankle joints.

Here are some photos of Austin's version of Teridax, with some size comparisons to Antroz, Kongu, Gali and Hahli.