He got up at 6:30. They nursed, then he asked “Where’s my bassoon?” He then played music with it, including his latest mystery song. He asked for crackers with peanut butter, but was upset when I said they had to stay on the coffee table. “You can call someone who can clean a couch.”
Finally, right before Carly left he was somewhat okay with sitting on the couch and keeping the bowl of crackers on the coffee table, with the table pulled close to him. But then he looked at them and said “They all look gross to me…Yeah, cuz they’re slobbery with peanut butter.” He looked at them suspiciously for awhile, then asked if I was making him eat the crackers. I said no, he was the one that had requested crackers. He finally chose one, after touching them a few times. He started by slowly licking it, as if he was unsure what it was. Finally, he just got around to actually eating the crackers.
He asked why zoos are closed sometime (e.g. at night) and I talked about peace for the animals. He said “But what if they hear a rocket blasting into the sky and it wakes them up?” I acknowledged that could be a problem, but not a likely one.
Some interesting conversations: “You know, how did people wipe away snot in the past?” “If they wiped it on their sleeves that’s kinda gross.” He made a Duplo sculpture and sang a “Caring for the leaf” song, then asked “Dada, how did people get to the Earth if there were no people to make other babies?” So a nice discussion of evolution. We got out the keyboard and played Dust Buster and Piano Maestro. He watched Animusic videos and I exercised.
I made a smoothie of all our leftover fruits: last of the strawberries, last of the blackberries, and last of the mangos. He played on the couch while I did that. Drank some smoothie, then he played the mystery song on piano. Randomly, he asked “Why’s bunk beds dangerous? You know, cuz they’re up high?” And “Why do some tape measures go up to a certain distance, then go higher than that?”
We went upstairs and I took a shower and he played GarageBand on his iPad. Recording samples and playing. After my shower he wanted to play TodoMath with me. He was doing the missions and on the barn activity he was acting like Cam Jenson: “Click. In my picture I see-d one pig about to go in there.” He was having difficulty with the matrix activities at first, but then was getting better and sort of chanted “I’m getting good with matrix.” He was then pretending to be a lamb and asked if lambs like baths. I said yes. But then he was getting upset in the bath when I washed him. I asked what was wrong and he said “I’m a special lamb.” That doesn’t like baths. He was pretending.
Downstairs he was talking about pencil sharpeners “Dada, what would a pencil sharpener do if you put your finger in it and turned it?” “Why don’t crayons need a pencil sharpener?” He ate crackers and peanut butter after having more carrots. We were then sitting on the red chairs. First separately, then he was on my lap, talking about electricity. We were talking about what would happen if someone touched electricity, and of course the possibility of it killing you came up. He asked “What does it feel like before you die?” He was then playing with Duplos again, making sculptures and sang a “Static electricity” song.
We left at 12:40, him on the bike. He was pedaling a lot on his own and making music as we went. He talked about how a baby couldn’t ride a bike because it would fall off and I said that’s why they need strollers with buckles. He asked “Is there airbags in case the baby falls out?” I told him he should invent that. We had a fine trip to Tiv Taam, then came home at 1:45. I commented on how warm it was and how I liked that for winter. He said he wanted a cold winter. I told him he was probably stuck with a warm-ish winter until he was 18. But he said he wanted me to move with him because he might get lost in Greenland. Then, as he rode on his own, he said “It’s funny how I can push myself now. I could ride away to Greenland. I could ride away to the ocean. I could ride away to the shore. I could ride away to the Mediterranean Sea.”
We were home at 2. He found the clay he had thrown out the door the other day and threw it away in the garbage can: “I’m tall enough!” Inside he said “It’s good I didn’t come out of my mama early…I was lucky.” He was asking for cracker and I said we could make sandwiches instead. He said “Oh no! I miss-ed my chance!” We ate peanut butter sandwiches. He was asking if I put too much honey in it, enough to make him sick. I said I had, but that I cast a spell so he wouldn’t get sick. I showed him the motion of my spell. He said my spell was tricky, so he might get sick anyway.
Randomly, he said “Dada, I can’t really get along with people…I think they’re mean.”
We got ready to go and drove to the school. Carly was then taking the car to go to a doctor’s appointment and we were walking to his class, using his orange bike. In the library we returned 2 Cam Jenson books. We checked out two more, Lost Tooth and Double Beach Mystery. We read Lost Tooth, then wandered over to the seating area when he spotted the chess sets. We set up a chess set and talked about it, then he spotted the big box of blocks on a table further down. We went over there and also found sets of those round ball bearing-type magnets. August had a blast playing with those: “series of magic pipes…but the magic force is getting old…So I put it to the series of magic pipes museum…they make new things.”
Ilana came over and told us there was a special week next week – Library tech or something – and the idea was to make videos like https://youtu.be/QQ9gs-5lRKc There is a board set at an angle on the ground next to the table. So then August and I were making paths for the balls to roll down. I found a book of 50 Israeli short stories and checked that out while he was playing. I finally got the little sets of marbles separated and pulled him away from the magnets and marbles and we headed to his class, but first went and recycled some cans we had brought with us.
He was the only person at class, and for several minutes he and Sigal did yoga positions using some cards she had of kids doing animal yoga poses, like a frog. He was really enjoying that, so that when Abigail and Daria showed up with their dad August actually got upset. He does like his individual attention time. But he ended up doing quite well in class. All the parents were in there, and I may have actually done the least redirecting, etc. of the parents. They started by pretending they were walking on the moon. And walking on their heels and toes. Also working on jumping off the mats with two feet (something he was also doing, while holding the arms, of the red chairs before we left home), hopping on two feet, standing on one foot, etc. And they did more of the yoga cards: he was a bear, tree, mountain, slide, and others.
His biggest difficulty in class might be waiting for her to set up the course at the end of class. Waiting is hard. Good practice for him. I basically had to hold him. But then he had fun with that, and as we left class he said “That was so fun!” He went and used the bathroom before we left (his idea).
We got outside and I had received a message from Carly saying she was on her way. August at first said he didn’t want to be picked up and wanted to walk home. But then he wanted to stop at the playground. He told me it was too dark for AR view to work in Drops. He got to play about 10 minutes before Carly showed up. His reaction when I said I saw her: “Oh no. No, wait. I’m not even finished yet.” We talked about class and I said “They did yoga poses in class” August finished the sentence with “and I was very good.” Carly told him she was going to teach him about humility.
Carly stayed and played with him for another 20 minutes or so and we left at 6:10. In the c
ar he asked her “What kids were in your class?” “How was class today?”
At home he had some noodles, then got angsty over his treat – he wanted hot chocolate but it was too close to bedtime. Finally he settled for candy cane. He happily sucked on it and hummed his mystery song. When he was done he said “I’m like magnets, but stickier.” Because things stuck to him. Carly had him say ‘simile’.
He was pretty quickly to bed after that. Hit his head on the edge of the bed a bit and was then ready to sleep. I left them right around 7.