He was up at 6:15. Carly had gotten him back to sleep a couple times in the late morning, but he still got up early. He got to watch an extra Wild Kratts as a result. He told me: “When you see me with your eyes you think I’m not that big, but with this microscope, yes.”
Afterwards, I went to get the wood glue out and he said “Do you want to play that glue, toothpick, and screw game?” He meant fix the hinges on the cupboard. We did that, breaking up toothpicks and glueing them in the screw holes. He had the idea of using the cutter on the pliers instead of the hammer to break them off (that’s how the guy on the video did it, but when I tried the toothpick just went flying). He had fun breaking toothpicks. We then left that to dry.
Went and built with Duplos. He wanted to figure things out himself: “Don’t tell me what to do.” “You can do some. I just want to figure it out. By myself.”
I then made him a walking path, starting with arrows on the ground, like he liked in activity class. The path kept expanding as he would ask for “More!” It ended up stretching from the red chair in the corner, across to the couch, then to the black chair. It utilized chairs, the stool, the stuffed animals, Duplos, etc. He was then ‘sick’ on the couch, gave himself a bandage cast like mine.
We then went and finished fixing the hinges. Door now works. He was then a sick whale, then a kitten, and I took care of them. I took a shower and he watched the crocodile episode of Wild Kratts, which he’s seen before. I asked what the best power was of the crocodile and he said “Be so protective…Could you be protective of me?”
He had his bath and I washed his hair. He was grumpy about that, and we went downstairs and sat in the chair together for a few minutes. He then hid under the blanket on the couch, then was playing with the doctor stuff on his own for a few minutes, blanket still over his head. I started to make baked salmon with za’atar and lemon. While I did that he had naked time and played with a pot and steamed carrots, adding water. He then got a popsicle thing and played with the water with it and the measuring cup.
We ate lunch outside: the salmon, broccoli and cheese, and our iced raspberry tea. He asked “What’s another word that’s cool? What’s another word I don’t know?” “Why do you buy different bowls over time?” He was wondering why we have different bowls than he does.
He had also been surprised when the salmon was easy for him to cut and eat. I had used the word ‘delicate’ and that would be the word of the day.
He made a big nest out of pillows on the couch, then drew an abstract picture on the chalkboard, before we left for school a little after 1.
We went to the book swap and took a good amount of time looking around. He was patient about it. He chose a couple of early reader books on his own, and helped me choose some others. I was excited to find a book called Paddle-the-Sea, which I remember one of my teachers in early elementary reading to the class. I’ve thought of it from time-to-time, and even tried searching for it, but hadn’t found it. But there it was.
There was a toddler there and she and August sort of played together. August was acting like her: crawling, and then at one point mirroring her by putting his hands in his mouth. He crawled under a table and she wanted to follow. They spent a few minutes silently following each other around.
We ended up with 17 books and went back to make it an even 20. Out in the lobby he really liked the art on the wall – abstract cityscapes. He showed me all his favorites, including one with windows and the ones that were the most abstract. He then spent time touching all the little pottery object things attached to wall outside.
We stopped at the bake sale and got two cupcakes. Sat on a bench and ate those. He loved it, and ate a couple bites of mine as well. We went to the library, which was busy because of parent conferences. He headed to the Lego area and played with a dragon hand puppet, picking up Legos.
We went to the bathroom, then sat and played some chess. Matt Kerns came by and said happy birthday to him and asked about his birthday. August said that we made cake, then went on to tell Matt about the cupcake we just ate and that he ate some of mine.
We went back to the lego area and he made a cool vehicle thing that had a weird piece attached to a lego person’s head. It was fragile and August said “It’s really delicate.” Delicate was definitely his word of the day.
Getting ready to go to his class, he took my hat and put it on. He then played around in the lobby, using his mechanical arm to grab more cupcakes and books from across the school. He was also plugged into an outlet in the book swap room (he had needed to charge his battery there earlier).
We went to the preschool and went in to realize that there was no Hebrew class due to parent conferences. As we walked he told me “I now know every living thing has a DNA code.”
So we played at the playground. He made soup. I was surprised by one of his ingredients: “frosting…I learned that from my cooker school. I learned that from my Baker school. It teaches you to care and share…my school.” He went on the swing and now has the basics of pumping down. He went for a few minutes. We played on the slides and he slid into me. He went and played with the instrument, then found a wooden moon piece off of something and played with that. Carly called, and August started repeating everything I said, using the same tone.
He talked about having brain freeze: “Did you know I have brain freeze so I wasn’t thinking straight.” Finally, he was ripping apart the blueberry-like berries to get out the seeds when Carly showed up. They went on the regular swing together and talked about how he used to do that in the carrier when he was little. They then went on the disk swing together.
He fixed the car before we left and declared that it ran “Very smoothly and it works very well.”
Carly headed home and we walked up to his class. Class goes incredibly smoothly now. Highlight today were when Sigal rolled him up as a hotdog. He also talked about how he likes to look at himself in the mirror. At the end, when she throws a star to them and they pretend to eat it, he ran over to me and offered me a bite.
We stopped at the exercise equipment on our way back. We joked why there was one bite out of one of the apple pieces. He said “But it was most likely me.” It was.
We got to the car before 6. I said “I love you a ton of marsupials.” He said “I would say…miniaturizers and heat amplifiers.” Miniaturizers and heat amplifiers were his inventions (from Wild Kratts, I think) that he had been talking about all day. At one point he asked me which one I preferred and said “miniaturizer”. He then kept trying to convince me that heat amplifier was also cool.
We got home and he read a Magic Schoolbus book with Carly. Ate broccoli and cheese for dinner, then they read Gravity is a Mystery, another one of our new books. Carly said “Gravity…Now that word sounds funny.” To which August said “Yeah! And ‘keychains’!”
They played school together and she had him write ‘gravity’ on the chalkboard. I carried him up and Carly got him ready for bed. She killed a couple mosquitoes and August said “If there’s another one a clue will be if I wake up with itchy spots.” I left them just before 8
