He woke up just after 6: “Nurse-y?” Carly took him down. I came down and he was lying on the couch, but got impatient for Carly as she made her quesadilla. She came and read The Animal Santa (one of our library books this week) and Go Away Big Green Monster! and part of Wild About Books. He wanted a quesadilla of his own so Carly started it and I finished it. He ate half of his half quesadilla.
He watched marble machine videos “You need to type apples and stuff in your typing.” He typed on the iPad a bit. He climbed in the upside down stool on the chair and said it was comfy. Then he wanted to do the metronome thing on my phone, which led to wanting to play mandolin, so I went and got that. He went to his music box and carried back the recorder, alien drum, and kalimba. We had music time.
He was still hungry, so I got him some strawberries and Cheerios and he watched Sarah and Duck. He did a strawberries/Cheerios eating pattern. I exercised. He stacked some pillows and said “Dada, I’m building a blue meter. It tells you how blue you are.” He also said he had a lab and it said “Danger. Keep out.” I think a Treehouse reference. He had me set him on the machine to test his blueness a few ties, then it turned into the Flynne game. He used the recorder as a magic wand and told me “I turned you into a mouse!”
We skyped with my parents, then he wanted to send messages to me, so we typed back and forth on Skype between his iPad and mine. We talked about going to play at the school this afternoon. He said “But I don’t think Bar will be there.” I said there could be other kids though and he said “I’ll like them, too.”
We went upstairs and he watched Sarah and Duck and I took a shower. He then wanted to play with the Kaleidoscope cards and insisted we play with the in the big bedroom. That’s where he and Carly had played with them.
Yesterday I had discovered a small scrape on the back of his thigh. He didn’t notice it until I said something. Before his bath today he said “Don’t wash that scrape. Only five seconds, you know.” He was over enthusiastic about letting the water out of his bath the second I put him in and he was upset when I stopped him. I quickly washed his hair and we made it through.
He told me “On Mondays and Fridays you don’t listen to Hebrew when you exercise. That’s your challenge.” I usually listen to a Hebrew app, but he wants me to use an exercise app instead. “That’s your challenge” is what I told him the teacher meant yesterday when she said he’d stay with her all through the class next week.
We had carrots and veganaise and he drank some milk while I made some of the sweet potato balls for lunch. Which he wouldn’t touch. He asked what lemon water was (from Sarah and Duck). I told him and he asked if he would like it. I told Hume “We’ll have to try it.” He replied “The question is, do we have lemons?”
He keeps asking me to do more Piano Maestro, which requires paying for it. He won’t do it himself, but I figured he’s so interested that I might as well pay for a membership and he can watch me playing and learning and maybe he’ll get involved. So we, or rather I, played Piano Maestro for a good hour plus. He was very encouraging for much of it: “You got it!” “You’re doing good, dada.” “Accidents happen.” He was then having fun making mistakes while I played. We switched to the kid version (Dust Buster – included in the membership) and played a little, and he played just a bit. Not much, but a good start.
We were then getting ready to do recycling and go to the school. He reminded me “Bar help-ed me on at the playground. We were cooking things. You remember that dada?” And he was ready to go: “I mean are you ready? Have you gotted our snacks and stuff?” So he helped me clean up (pillows everywhere, etc.) and we got ready to go. Outside, he said a feather and said “Is that one of our dog feathers? You know, to scare away dogs.” Which is actually a pretty good joke. Yesterday he had found the rocks in the same spot that were from the back of the orange bike – the rocks I keep in there to scare away dogs (which, luckily, we’ve had no problems with for the last couple months).
We left at 2:25 and went up to recycling. I had told August we could do the ice cream truck if it came (since it has been an ongoing question the last couple weeks whether it would come). But he’s had a lot of treats this week, and when we decided to head to the school to see if there were kids to play with I figured we’d miss the ice cream truck, which comes close to 3. Well, as we were at the cages doing recycling I started to hear it somewhere. I wasn’t sure I had money with me and didn’t want to have to hunt for the ice cream truck. So I sang along with a song he was singing and he didn’t hear it.
We finished up recycling and headed through the park. He saw a cool tricycle and said we should get him a bike like that, so I took a photo of it and briefly talked to the mom. A girl got on the bike, and August said something about it being Bar. He said “Every girl I see is called Bar.”
We kept heading to school and were just at the big roundabout intersection and turning towards school when he heard it. At first he wasn’t sure what it was and was asking what the noise was. Then, he stopped us, and looking back he identified the ice cream truck turning down a street. Took a few minutes to convince him that we might not be able to find it, and that it would make us late for playing at the school. He still wanted to play at the school, so he agreed to keep going.
We got to school a couple minutes after the bell rang. We headed first to the library. I said it would close soon, so he said he’d wait on the bike and I could return our three books (Berenstain Bears Too Much Birthday, The Animals’ Santa, and You Wouldn’t want to be a Medieval Knight!) and get a Magic Treehouse book. I went in and told Liz that August was sending me in to do his errands. I grabbed Magic Treehouse #15 and #16 and surprised August by getting The 26-Story Treehouse – which was the first one we ever read. When I checked them out and took the books out to August he did end up yelling hello to Liz and talked to her for a second.
We then went to the big playground, as there weren’t any kids on the preschool. On the way down in the elevator he lay down on the floor, which he always does in elevators. At the playground he started by climbing up on the web sort of thing and saying he was making mama nervous. He played by himself for awhile, but then there was a girl about his age who he started to play around and follow. She was a bit on the quiet side too, and eventually I heard August say “Hello” to her a couple times but didn’t hear if she said anything.
He came over to me and had a snack at one point and we read some of The 26-Story Treehouse. Then he was back, playing with the kids as they ran around. A boy asked him if he wanted to play with them. At one point they (6 or so of them) were standing around the spinning thing, taking turns. August did it once and excitedly told me about it. They ran out to the field once and he sort of stopped to ask if he could go and I told him he could.
Carly showed up and hid behind me as he played with them all on the big play structure. He climbed up the twisty slide after the girl (I think her name may be Sophia) did it – something he’s never done before. In fact, there there were a couple of other things (climbing up and swinging from bars) that he’d never done before until he was following the kids today and copying what they were doing.
They all ran way out into the field and ran around a bit. The girl said a couple things to August but we couldn’t hear what they were. They all ran back, and August ran right around Carly to keep running. Then everyone was going so August said “Let’s get going.”
On the walk home when Carly tried to ask what he did
today he just kept saying “I don’t know”. A few minutes after telling her about missing the ice cream truck he used some persuasive technique on her: “Can I have hot chocolate since we didn’t get the ice cream truck?” He was also talking about his powers: his straw power (he shoots out straws to suck things up) and something else, but he said his most powerful is his ice cream truck power, which fills the world with ice cream trucks.
At home he and I had nutty noodles He ate with me while Carly took care of plants. They then shared the bubble gum ice cream bar we had bought for her a few weeks back from the ice cream truck. He was then being grumpy after that, and I said “You’re being…what’s the word?” He filled in the answer “Grumpy?” He was looking for his water and found it in the backpack: “It’s not a mystery now!” We read a few chapters of 26-Story Treehouse. He and Carly went upstairs and played with the kaleidscope cars and I heard him singing.
They came down and played with the Legos and Duplos
He got frustrated. Carly had him repeat “That’s too bad. I guess I’ll try again.”
Carly went to take a shower. He and I read The Cat in the Hat and The Cat in the Hat Comes Back. He then went upstairs with Carly. For his dreams he said “Bad dreams…magic rugs” No idea where the magic rugs idea came from. I left them at 8:10.
Kaleidoscope cards:
