Carly got him up close to 6:30. He came down and had Cheerios. Out of nowhere he said “Do you know laughkernels? When we cook them they laugh…and when we eat them they musha gusha – but in a musha gusha voice.” Carly said goodbye to her parents and headed to work. We then left right at 7.
Took pretty much exactly an hour, driving down 4. He got to ride in his booster seat and did really well, doing a lot of looking out the window. He pointed out construction cranes at one point – I think he was remembering reading about them last night. He and Cherie did Sugar Baby. Whenever we talked about something (Derek, Hank, Chuck’s beard) he would ask what we were talking about. They sang the rest of their songs, and he asked about the Zipline Cars again. It was a sticker/logo he had seen (and I think read on his own) on the van that picked us up at the Candles Hotel after Petra.
We dropped of Chuck and Cherie. He stayed in his seat and got good kisses from them as goodbyes. I jumped out to give them hugs, then jumped quickly back in before he could get upset. Cherie had left a biscuit cookie for him to have on the way home, and told him about the nut treats left at home.
Before we got driving he asked about how we could see light if it was so fast. And then, in a robot voice, “reminder coming, reminder coming. Please find those sugary treatsint he house. Oma saved some sugary treats.” And “I show you how I put a reminder into your brain. I attach a pipe to your pipe then the reminder goes from my brain to your brain.” And “when I turn my rockets on in traffic I don’t bump into anything. It’s because of this counter weight.”
On the drive home he was asking questions about high wires. He described a trick on a high wire. I know we’ve watched a video on high wire acts before, but asked where this was coming from. He remembered: Cam Jansen and the Circus Mystery. Been quite awhile since we read that, and only once or twice. He then asked what ‘duplicate’ means. We discussed the word. Not sure where he got it. Then he made a machine that makes a person quiet. If they’re supposed to be quiet but aren’t you just point it at them and then you don’t hear them. “Dada, I gotted ear wax out of my ear to study what color it is. It’s orange.” “Dada, how does your body make earwax?”
We were home at 9:10. We went in and he went to the bathroom. He speculated on why mama could be home (maybe if the power went out at school). We found the treats and he told me “I like the ones without pistachios.” Put a few in a bag and went for a walk. We walked around the Holly block, then towards the mall, but continued on the path all the way to the road bridge over the highway. We got there just in time, before the sirens for Holocaust Remembrance Day went off. We watched everyone come to a stop and get out and stand for a minute. I recorded the first half of it, then picked August up for the rest of it.
We were home at 10:20. One of the black cats was under the swing, and spent much of the day under there. Inside, he acted out being the cat under a swing and being nervous when people came home. We watched a few videos on things he’s been asking about: first part of one of the Marble Machine update videos, then one on why light goes through glass, then one on why boys have nipples but not “nursing”.
I took a shower and he watched The Magic Schoolbus. During his bath he asked about setting fire to ships with shields (going back to that Archimedes display at Madatech – although we didn’t even see it this time at the science center). He continues to be skeptical about my explanations for why it doesn’t actually work (based on Mythbusters), We also ended up discussing armor. He played with bubbles and started to sing the Sesame Street “Rubber Ducky” song on his own.
I had seen Shmuel down in the downstairs yard before we had gone upstairs. He now called and asked if he could come in the yard. I ran down to let him in the yard, then ran back up to get August out of his bath. Got him dressed and we went and said hi to Shmuel. I went in to make coffee for us. August stayed out and got right to work pulling weeds with Shmuel and telling him things about our yard. Shmuel taught him that he could pull the green sprouts off the trees or they’ll become branches, and pointed out something that isn’t a weed, but a flower. And August pointed the cone things out to Shmuel way up in the trees. We sat and had coffee and August ate the leftover teriyaki noodles for lunch.
Shmuel left, and we went in and August did a pillow pile and we hid things. August had me play the recorder and he moved the xylophone stick in it to change the sound. He then discovered that the xylophone stick fits through the blueberry blocks. He asked about balance beams again, so we watched a YouTube video of a balance beam routine. He really liked it so we watched a couple more. Then a high wire video. We also watched videos on slingshots and catapults. The catapult videos led to a video from the Amazing Race of a woman having a watermelon come back at her and break on her head. He took the blueberries off the xylophone stick and told me they were meat he was serving to me – kebabs.
I invented the “Hugaroo”, which is like a ‘kissaroo’, but just a big hug. He asked “Does it have a pouch, like a kangaroo?” He then wanted to cuddle in my pouch like a kangaroo.
We got going to go to school and he made up a song that included “Monkey slipped and fell down…monkey swinging in the tree…” In the car I asked him to sing it again and he came up with a quite different version. We were driving at 2:20. He asked “What’s ‘errand’ mean?” He then told me it was from the Seuss story about the pants with nobody inside them.
We got to the school and went to the preschool playground for awhile. He worked on the car. He wanted tools, and I gave him things from the backpack, like a carabiner and his brush. He got on the teeter totter and said it was a machine that makes hammers: “it shoots out hammers… That’s enough hammers for one day.” He asked me “Isn’t it funny that Opa’s name is actually Chuck?” We saw Tessa for a minute and talked about having them over again sometime. Finally, he went to the other end of the playground and made blackberry pie. He asked me “Can you do an errand for me?” He often does that after learning a word, using it in his own talking.
We went into the preschool and upstairs to his class. He insisted I be in the classroom again, although right inside the door was okay. Class was about The Very Hungry Catepillar. I went over when he did the coloring part to help out.
As we left he looked at the block area and asked me “How can a teacher teach someone to build if they already know how to build?” I said they could help teach you new ways to build. He said “Yeah!” As we left, Mariam said “See you Monday, buddy!” August said “She called me buddy!”
We played in the music area. He wanted wooden things to hit the instruments with, so we were finding sticks and blocks when Carly showed up. She helped him find more things. He would then say “Let’s add that to our collection dimension.” Found several things. He ate some sandwich, and pulled the crust off and gave it to me. Carly was surprised that he doesn’t eat his crusts, but he never has. She said peeling it off was a good method, and he said “I reminded mama that when she makes sandwiches she can peel the crust off.”
Carly took the car to go to the mall to go to Tiv Taam and to get a pizza from Pizza Hut. August and I took his bike and walked up to his activity class. On the way he asked about whether we can know everything and why imaginary things don’t exist. I said I really liked how he thinks about things like this, and we came up with three possibilities regarding imaginary things. I said that maybe when you make something up for the first time (and he thought up a cat with no mouth
or fur or tail) you are making it exist; second was the idea that we could think of an infinite number of things, but even though the world contains billions of things it doesn’t contain an infinite number of things, so it was a good lesson in infinity, and finally I suggested that just because he doesn’t know of a cat with no mouth, fur, and tail that doesn’t mean that just such a cat doesn’t exist somewhere else in the universe.
At class he went and hid behind the pillows at first. Adele was the only other other kid there to start with and Sigal said she had asked about August at the last class (the one we missed because we were in Jordan). It was just the two of them as they started and played with the bear shapes they could climb through. Sigal then had them set up a bunch of cones and much of the rest of class involved carrying rings back and forth to put on the cones. The two other boys showed up (Ee-tie and La-veed, phonetically). He was getting tired, and Sigal commented on it. She set up the final course and August went the wrong way on something and told me “I was getting confused.” Near the end he was climbing through the bear things and fell over. He lay there for a few seconds, pretending to sleep, until Sigal picked it up off of him. He got up and went back to playing. At the end of class he was then looking in the mirror and it turned out he had a bit of a bruise on his forehead. Later, he told me and Carly that he had been pretending he had a brain bruise and had shut off – that is, that he had had a concussion. I had taught him about concussions earlier.
We went out and found Carly in the car. He asked her “Are you gonna drive this puppy?” He was very happy to find out that Carly had already gotten a pizza and taken it home. When I had told him we’d have pizza at home he thought we had to go and order it and wait for it and then wait even longer until we got home.
We went home and ate pizza outside. He told Carly what Shmuel had taught him about picking the green things and the weed that was actually a flower. Carly got him milk and he blew bubbles in it. He gave Carly a “hug kiss” and then told Carly “Lets take care of the plants.” “I learned something about these flowers.” A bit later he wanted to do kaleidoscope cards on the swing with her.
He came inside a bit later with a blue plastic piece that he’d found out in the yard. He wanted to put it in his new treasure boxes: “The first time I have my own treasure collection where there’s a treasure I can put in there…yeah for treasure!” Put his other treasures in the boxes as well: his Korean coins, bracelets, Q robot, etc.
Upstairs we made the beds. He likes when Carly does a thunderstorm with the sheet. Carly asked to cut his hair and he said “One time when dada cutted my hair he snipped off some skin. Right, dada?” She even offered him chocolate and he refused.
I was going to try to put him to bed, as he liked the idea of falling asleep on the big bed. Carly said goodnight and left. He requested the “Nonsense song”, which is Shearwater’s “Animal Life’ (one of the songs of sung to him hundreds of times when putting him to sleep, but just recently started singing again. He then got excited and told me “that’s where I heard ‘balance beam’!” And he asked “What’s ‘anodyne’ mean?” (Another word in the song) He asked me “With Oma not here how can I musha gusha?” And he asked what ‘agree’ means. I explained and we ended up practicing “we disagree” sentences. He asked me “What’s the name of that person that can loosen their arm and take the bracelet off?” He said I had told him, and the closest thing I came up with was ‘prosthetics’ and he said that was it. That was an interesting way for him to remember that.
He said he had changed his mind and wanted mama, but I suggested I just sing a few songs first. I sang Rock Me Mama, Animal Life, and Take Me to Church. He was asleep by 8:15, tucked into the big bed. Pleasantly surprised he fell asleep without any sort of fuss.