6:50. Quiet. I made a nest for him on the couch. When he woke up we read three Kipper stories, then he wanted a big rabbit burrow. We made that and played for awhile, taking turns being germs and taking care or him when he was a baby lizard, then he was hungry so I got him some apple bread, which he ate at the table while he watched the Storybots episode about rain. We then worked on Hebrew and he drifted to Hangeul. Don’t know what to do about that.
Outside to check on the tomatoes and do some watering. Back inside he played the Chordana app, then switched to Musyc and we had fun with that, making all sorts of soundscapes. He went to the bathroom, and declared that he wanted to watch a video about how gum is made. So we went and found a video on YouTube, and he watched a few on candies and cookies while I exercised. He narrated the videos, telling me every fact that he heard: “24 hours, dada…200 degrees Celsius, dada…” We moved upstairs and it continued as I took a shower. He was sitting on his bed, and I’d hear him run across the landing, then he’d yell “through the extruded, dada”. He would wait for me to respond, then he would run back, hear something, and come back and tell me.
After my shower we played in the toy room landing, first with the Smurfs. He was being Gargamel. He had the idea of Gargamel turning Smuefette back into clay. I turned on Storybots music on the iPad and at first he wanted to watch, but then he listened as we played, and hummed along at times. We then switched to the wooden blocks (first time playing with them since Korea) and made a house. He set a piece on top of one of the walls and said “It’s a fire alarm in case there’s a fire.” We recently got smoke detectors. He knocked down our house saying “I told you a truck would destroy our house…I told you water would flood our house.” When I said “No you didn’t!” he replied “Yes I did!”
With the letter blocks he was thinking of words for each letter, and said “P for poets.” We then watched the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Ninth. He didn’t want to watch Frozen or Symphony #5. Had to be the Ninth. I asked if he wanted a smoothie and he said yes. I went down to make it, and when the blender was on he yelled down “Dada! You’re keeping me from watching symphony 9!”
Drank the smoothie upstairs and then came down and played Gro Recycling while I got him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. We went outside and I used the saw to cut one of the shelves for the library. We talked about the difference between a hand saw and a chainsaw and its parts. He thought for a minute and exclaimed “But dada! You don’t eat wood! But they’re called teeth!” It was a slow process, so he went and got the iPad and played TodoMath, calling out to me for help with math problems. He then switched to the My Body app and had me practice holding my breath. I did a minute and 7 seconds. He wouldn’t try it though.
We left for a walk by 2. We walked over to the school. On the way he stopped at the little park to pull some weeds. Then, closer to the school, he wanted to get off the bike so he could do the germ dance and attack me.
At the library we found the microscope in the ‘Maker Space’. There were about 6 compounds to look at (silicon, NaCl, etc.). I rather expected a bit more, but we had fun with it. We went to the little kids area and looked for books. He got sucked over to the computers where two kids were watching one of those awful, awful videos where and adult plays with toys. Got August away from that and we sat and read a few chapters of the first Magic Tree House book. Looking around, he saw a picture on something: “Those are Halloween pumpkins!” We checked out the Magic Tree House, Lucy by Randy Cecil, The Enormous Crocodile by Roald Dahl, and the August issue of Ranger Rick magazine. I was excited to see that they have Ranger Rick magazine, because I thought I had searched and found that it had stopped publication. While we waited for Carly to come we read The Magic School Bus Inside a Hurricane as we sat on the big stuffed animals.
Carly came by at 4:10. We stopped to get drink at the drinking fountain with stairs, then headed home, getting here at 4:40. We all went out watering and and Carly and I had pita and tea outside. Inside they did math with blueberries aand on paper (doing some pre-algebra with ‘X’), then were doing a mosaic on paper. August used the markers themselves to do some joke math: “Lowercase t times uppercase T equal broken case T.”
We watched some Beethoven’s Ninth, then August was being fussy about dinner. But I got some couscous and mashed sweet potatoes for him and we ate dinner at the table. He joked “Corncous…that’s couscous made out of corn.” I said he should have some milk, and a minute later Carly set down a cup of milk for him. I joked that when I said something should happen t magically happened. I then said I should get a massage. Carly told me I was losing my powers, but August got up and pushed behind me on the chair and massaged my back with his hand and head.
He continued to watch Pirates of the Caribbean and Star Wars pieces after Beethoven’s Ninth was over. Carly then noticed someone at our gate. It was the guy that lives downstairs. August didn’t give him a warm welcome, yelling “Go away!” Carly took August in and I talked to him. He was complaining about hearing August “always” running around. Told him we don’t wear shoes inside and he’s three and I tried to ask what times it bothered him/he was home, but he didn’t really help me out. Ah, all the inconvenience of apartment living as well. I was rather annoyed from the beginning to find that there was a downstairs apartment, as we were never told this when shopping for houses.
Carly read him part of The Enormous Crocodile and then he spent a long time pretending to read it in his languages. Then she gave August a bath and washed his hair. He didn’t complain too much until the rinsing. They read Mr. Brown’s Fantastic Hat and he was asleep by 8.
Watering:
Smoke detectors:
Watching me saw:
Among the animals:
