He was up at 5:55. He did some math in Excel on her computer, doubling his sums in a nice layout, and was watching Peg + Cat when she left, and decided to use all his episodes in the morning. He was then a baby elephant and wanted me to make him a nest. After that we were squirrels and made a bigger nest. We would winter, then he would say we were diggers destroying the nest: “First we do it gently, then harder. Can we do it together?”
He requested GarageBand and played that while I got ready for making banana bread. He then had me playing Itsy Bitsy and Yankee Doodle. We made banana bread, and he was pretty impatient to lick the spatula. We went and did some Hebrew alphabet on paper and exercised together. He played Dragonbox Little Numbers while I took a shower. We ate some banana bread, and I made him a grilled tuna sandwich while I had quiche for lunch. He ate a bunch of the extra tuna out of the bowl while I made the sandwich, then a good amount of the sandwich. He then had more banana bread as a baby squirrel, saying it was his breakfast. A good amount of food, considering he’d also already had a couple bowls of Cheerios and most of an apple.
I commented on a pillow being in the kitchen and asked how it got there. He said he slid it in there, and showed me how he rode on it. I asked “Hey pillow! Where are you going?” He replied “The pillow just wanted to go for a walk…it’s just going for a walk.” The pillow was then a bus: “Not just a magic bus: a super magic bus.” “Can you lift it up? I’m going to th South Pole!”
He played in his squirrel nest on his own, asking about multiplication problems. Had a strip of paper or something that he was playing with sort of like a cat. I did dishes, then we did more Hebrew; he was singing funny Hebrew songs. He then had me practice sleeping as he was playing with the stopwatch and timer.
We started to go to the cages at 12:35 to do recycling. He said”I’m a squirrel. We’re gonna ride our squirrel bike.” But then he got distracted by the toy piano and asked me to play “Sentimental Wars”. He then started taking the keys out and he did some piano improv after he liked something I was playing. We took all the keys and metal parts out and put it back together.
We went and did recycling. He wanted to do plastic and glass first. He asked if there was any glass and I said I wasn’t sure. He asked to check, and did so by knocking the bottom of the bag on the ground to see if it made a glass noise. He took over most of recycling and did it really fast, like in fast forward, while he hummed. He said he had rockets on his back to get the plastic up to the various heights. At first he had 7, but then he kept adding more and more rockets. By the time we were home he had 1000 rockets – enough to take him to Neptune.
Back at home we read a little of The BFG and decided on books to take back. He was fine taking The Enormous Crocodile back. He said “That one’s a little sad.” We headed out, and out on the street there was a small dog wandering around. He said “I’m going to slap the doggie on the bottom.” I have no idea where that idea came from. We left at 2:05.
We sang different songs on our way up to school: Sentimental Wars, Electricity, etc. At the school he used the bathroom by the library and I picked up a couple books from the free book shelf. We went down the elevator and went to check on the hedgehog. The hedgehog has a big enclosure with all sorts of things to hide in, so don’t think we’ll ever see it unless someone gets it out. He wasn’t that interested anyway.
We went back to the library and he played in the stuffed animals. I was looking at a selection of memoirs they had out and read the beginning of The Glass Castle, which starts with a 3-year old getting burnt while cooking hotdogs. August then wanted me to read it, and when I said it was an adult book with no pictures he was just more insistent. So I read him the opening part, realizing it was actually a good cautionary tale, and it talked about the ice and skin grafts. We then started to head back to the kids section, but he stopped part way and went on a bean bag chair. I said the books there were more for mama’s students and he said he wanted to pretend to be a student. The first book he pulled out was Robot Visions by Isaac Asimov. I read him parts of that – his first Asimov. He pulled a couple other books and cuddled on his back in the chair next to me, running his finger over the lines and pretending to read. I was able to read the entire title story of Robot Visions. At one point we tried to go back to use the microscopes, but the bulbs were burnt out in both, so we went back and did more reading. When he grabbed another book he said “No pictures but I love it.”
Eventually we did go and look at books to check out. They had both 39 and 52-Story Treehouse and August really wanted to get both. We also got Magic Treehouse #3. We checked those out and sat on the stuffed animals and started reading 52-Story Treehouse.
Before we went in the library to begin with he had asked me what ‘Hello’ in Hebrew was. 30 in Hebrew sounds similar, so he was getting them straight. He was then saying “shalom” to people as we went to see the hedgehog, and to Liz at the desk. He said it to her again when we checked out books and she’d asked if he’d just been to a Hebrew class. So when Carly came and was talking to him, he said something about his class, and said “You know, my Hebrew class.”
We headed up to his dance class, which he seemed prepared for and happy about. At class he was saying “shalom” some more, and before class started he was dancing to the music playing in the studio. And we talked about the clock and where the hands would be. All went smoothly until class started. I got him to head in for the “Boring part” but he came right back out. Then, while I was holding him he said he wanted to go on the couches. But the couches were being used by adults, and when I said he wouldn’t be able to use them he got really sad: “Never‽” Carly held him for a bit out in the stairwell and when she tried to bring him back in the waiting room he screamed. We switched back and I held him for awhile. I managed to get him back in the waiting room, but he wasn’t even interested in looking through the curtain with me. He was just ready to go home.
So we headed home, getting here by 5:30. They nursed, but he was being squirmy and grabby so they stopped. He was upset while she got food. They eventually nursed and he calmed down and he and I read 52-Story Treehouse to the middle of chapter 6. Carly got him food. He wanted to look at the steps on my phone. It was over 10,000 and he asked if we could get to 20,000. He said “We can get there by riding in my pillowcase time machine.”
Carly gave him a shower, then he was making music on the bed. We both watched him for awhile. Took a video of him making music, then he watched himself. We brushed his teeth and read Biscuit Wants to Play and Biscuit Plays Ball while Carly took a shower. He was then asleep around 7:15.
The 1000 rockets on his back thing continued throughout the day and he mentioned it several times.
Photos:
Playing in the burrow:
Blast off:
The wind:
Choosing some Isaac Asimov:
