He was up at 6:53. Upset that mama was gone, so he sat on the curvy part of the stairs for some alone time and calmed down. Came down and we talked about the shells and how and what clams eat. Mammals on my iPad. I made a selection of toasts for breakfast and he watched the first episode of Care Bears. As he finished he turned to me and said “Dada! The blue Care Bear stole the honey, then Beastly stole the honey from the blue Care Bear.” At first he was excited by the chunky peanut butter, but he has not decided he doesn’t like the chunks, so I had to eat the chunks off the toast. Luckily, the jar is almost empty. He was, however, excited by the fruit chunks in the strawberry yogurt.
He decided “I want to see how you make yogurt and cream. Did you hear me dada?…cream that goes on your bottom and penis…and then cream for cooking. And next time I watch how things are made I want to see CLOTHES.” We watched a video about yogurt, then one about chains. He then said “I might build a clothes machine in the kitchen.” Penis was bothering him a bit this morning, but not for long.
About 8:50 we went out for a little walk. He wanted to put recycling in the cages and had remembered that he saw Carly put something in our recycling bag. And I had thoughts about the table that was across the street, and painting it for his Zinnie house or for the play area upstairs. The table turned out to be cheaper and bigger than I remembered, then we walked up and recycled the two plastic containers. On the walk back he was walking and saw some foam and said “Foam! What’s all the foam I see in this country from‽” At home he wanted to take the cans to the school to recycle and I said we could in the afternoon. “When we see the moon?” He’s noticed that the moon is visible in the sky in the late afternoon now.
He made his clothes machine, then was lying on the pillows and bothered a bit by the itchiness. We put grapes outside for raisins. We chose the first half-cloudy day since we’ve been here for it. He watched Puffin Rock and ate grapes and Cheerios. I went and took a shower. August wanted to do more recycling and said “I want to go recycling shopping!” Checked on the grapes and seemed like one was missing; maybe a bird got it. We discussed goals for the day and he said he wanted the teacher game and reading books and recycling at the school. He wiped chalk in his hair and I told him not to unless he wanted it to be a hair washing day. He celebrated it not being a hair washing day by singing a “Not a hair washing day” song and hopping laps around the living room. He then made a music machine out of pillows in the kitchen, which he destroyed and then hopped on the pieces of to make them make noise.
We then made a machine in our usual spot. This one was a noodle machine: “I’m the noodles and you’re printing them…here’s purple noodles and green noodles and blue noodles. Could you print the right color on them dada?” Played that for quite awhile. We turned the ceiling fan on, and tried the different speeds. It rattles a bit when fast and we talked about foreground versus background sounds again. I spotted a bird out our window, not getting a grape, and we watched a pair of them in one of our trees.
Then he developed another big game. We were planting trees, then veggies and other fruits. Then he was May, the rabbit from Puffin Rock, sleeping in a burrow and eating all of the plants before I could harvest them. “Turnips and radishes‽ May loves those!” I put up an electric fence and he dug under it, but only wanted regular fences after that.
We made pizza for lunch and he ate most of one of our long slices. He went to the bathroom, and then back out in the kitchen he walked in front of the kitchen door: “When I walk back and forth that opens to make warm air for you. Cuz you like warm things.” We played with his shells from yesterday and he said one of them ate plastic. I said it got sick and he was surprised: “But, clams eat garbage‽” We had previously talked about how clams clean the water and now talked about organic garbage versus inorganic. He kept being May: “May LOVES pizza!…May just wants shirt and underwear.” He spotted ants in the kitchen and talked about a cleaner he had to kill them: “Type of cleaner…they can’t live on earth at all.”
He’s really been into the Tinybop apps, so I got the Everything Machine, Monster, and Creative Garden ones and we tried out the first two. We played around with sound things in Everything Machine, then made a really cool monster on his iPad. The app crashed and we lost his first monster. He kept asking “What vanished completely mean?” We switched to my iPad and the app worked much better on it and he made a second monster.
He wanted the little feather we saw fall from one of the birds earlier so I went and found it. Back inside, by the door, he said “Oh dear! There’s a bunch of ants there!” We battled ants, then did the noodle machine one more time.
He went to the bathroom, and while sitting on the toilet he was pressing on his eyes and we talked about the colors and shapes. I said something about being careful about pushing on his eyes because it could hurt, and he asked if it could damage his eyes. Got into a discussion of blindness, and of guide dogs. At first he thought I was talking about a toy dog, not a real dog. So after he got off the toilet we watched a couple videos about guide dogs. I then couldn’t remember why we had started talking about guide dogs in the first place. I asked him, and he said “I’m keeping it in my head so you can’t talk about it…I’m keeping it in my brain so you can’t remember it.” Luckily, I remembered on my own.
We got going to the school around 2. We stopped at Jack’s house for a few minutes to talk to him about helping us with the little library. August got to throw the dog toy for the dog a couple times.
We then continued on to school and got to the library at 2:30 or so. He played with the animals, making a nest, then I suggested we go get a couple books to read in the nest. We got a couple of Corduroy books (A Pocket for Corduroy and Corduroy at the Library) and a new book called That’s NOT a Hippopotamus. We went back to the nest of animals and read the Library book. A woman came over and said something about looking perfect and took our photo together. But then he mainly pretended to be Baba’s snail, from Puffin Rock, used the sea turtle as his shell. He wanted me to say “Baba sad” when he dug underground, then would say “Found you, baba!” The bell rang, and they announced the library would close at 3:15. So we went back and found two other books, as we had turned in 5. We also got Bill Peet’s Cyrus the Unsinkable Sea Serpent and Berenstain Bears Go to Camp.
We headed to the pool, stopping to recycle the aluminum cans. We then stopped to eat some raisins, and that’s where Carly found us. We were lazy, and almost didn’t go swimming, but I said we should. We changed and went in the pool. We mainly played in the deeper end, and August near the end really got serious about swimming, and swam almost the entire length of the pool, a very serious look on his face, and got out at the steps. We changed and left by 4:40.
On the way home he said “I want a cat in our yard. I want to buy dirt so the cats can bury their poop.” I asked if he could tell Carly what animal he was being at the library and he kept a secret again. He wouldn’t tell her and said “I like to keep questions in my brain.” He then invented a cat machine and was a cat machine for much of the walk home, spraying out cats that went all the way to our yard. He told Carly “You can absolutely get allergic.” He used the word ‘absolutely’ a couple more times, then later I got him to tell me where he learned that word: from Carly. She does say it sometimes, and sometimes tells him “Abso-fruitly”. He then invented a cat vacuum cleaner, which sucked up the cats and their fu
r. He then said the cats then just lived in the vacuum cleaner and played with toys, at which point he made up a toy machine that attached to the cat vacuum cleaner and sprayed toys into it, but “They soon wear out and break down.”
We got home at 5:10. He went in and said “I’m gonna hide somewhere to keep things in my brain.” Our raisins were still grapes, so we put them in the oven. We ate dinner and played more of the May game. He played Mammals, then we read some Hilo and had Cheerios with milk. We then read That’s NOT a Hippopotamus and part of Cyrus the Unsinkable Sea Serpent. Carly took him up for his shower, then I brushed his teeth. They tried for sleep before 8. They came down and he and I read Berenstain Bears Go to Camp. When I explained camp to him and staying with friends he asked “How you make friends?” And something about about the book got him asking about animals dying, then he asked “Are you gonna die?” When I talked about it being a long time for now he then said “I want to stop talking about it.”
He got tired and went upstairs for bed. Went to the bathroom and I heard him talking about his cat machine again. They went in and he was asleep about 8:35.
Touching the growing sap:
Getting printed on the conveyor belt:
Funny look:
His first monster:
Reading in the nest:
Playing fetch:
