He was up at 7:10. He sat on the bed and watched Max and Ruby and I fed him piece after piece of toast with peanut butter and honey. We then had a long Skype call with my parents. First upstairs on the sofa bed, then moving downstairs. Upstairs he played with the pink clay, which worked well except when he put it on his head like a kippah and then I realized he’d need his hair washed. Downstairs he tried himself up with string. They asked if he had played piano recent and he said no, so he would now and he want and played an improv with them. When we were done Carly had just taken the black chair out in the yard and I tried to keep him in for a bit. But he went out, telling me “You can read The 52-Story Treehouse by yourself.”
I made slime with August for the first time. Carly wanted to be able to take breaks and also work on the yard. So that was fun. As we did that we saw Jack and Celeste stop. Celeste delivered their key to Holly so she could walk the dog and Jack looked at a bird. We said hi.
August then made up a wonderful song about how he likes to eat contact solution. Not much to say about that.
I went and took a shower. Back downstairs he was asking me about school and had insightful questions about it getting harder: “Why if you read a book that’s too hard you don’t like it?” “Is that why school gets harder and harder?” “Why?” I gave him an example of a math problem that would be too hard for him. He immediately wanted to know “What’s prime mean?” “What’s division mean?” So we got the blueberries out and were doing division. After a few minutes he was doing some basic division problems with them.
I told him that with preschool we haven’t been doing much music recently and we should go up and change the strings on the mandolin, changing all 8 of them. We did that and listened to Simon & Garfunkel. He was making bridges with the old strings and then heard “Bridge over Troubled Water” and said “Hey! I’m making a bridge!”
To trim the strings I sent him downstairs to get the pliers with the wire cutters. I reminded him how he had had the idea to use them when we were fixing the cabinet door with toothpicks. He was excited to be reminded of his good idea and went down and told Carly and she was able to find the pliers. He then cut up several toothpicks. I then took him upstairs and he helped me cut the strings. He then helped me tune, and was himself a machine running a tuner.
He went downstairs and told Carly what he was, then they played with Duplos. They made a volcano and it had things inside of it. They were then playing with the foamy blue clay. He was hungry so had more oatmeal. I was sitting on the couch playing with the mandolin. He pretended I wasn’t there: “Mama, where’s dada? I think we should call dada on his phone.” “Dada, are you in Jordan?” Then: “Mama, my name is Selma.” “When I split into Selma there is also cake mix” “chocolate cake…with blueberries!” He remembered what kind of cake she had for her birthday that one day we visited the preschool.
He and I then read Go, Dog, Go, then we got ready and left at 2:25. I drove us to school. We went to Carly’s room and she printed out some things. He played in the classroom for a couple minutes. We then drove home and dropped Carly off and the two of us continued on to the grocery store. We drove to the little Tiv Taam. He explained how he got sound through the speakers and how all of his parts are invisible – his monsters blasters, etc.
Things went well at Tiv Taam until we were about done. He had been stacking all the groceries behind him in the cart, but then had the idea of squishing them with his whole body, then when he wouldn’t stop I had to forcefully hold him up to stop squishing them. He didn’t like that, and I had to pull him out of the cart. We ended up with a squished loaf of bread and three split bananas. Could have been worse. As we were talking and I was explaining he needed to apologize, he said “Oh dada” When I asked why he had said that he said “Mama told me to say oh dada to everything.” Carly got in trouble for that one.
We put the groceries in the car and went to the outdoor playground, at 4:05, which was very busy. But he claimed otherwise: “It’s not busy, silly.” He then claimed to only count 5 other kids. He stood around for a minute deciding what to do, then asked if I had any of the nut treats. When I said no he let out a yell of frustration and grabbed my legs and head-butted me, unfortunately right in the crotch. We left and headed to the car.
We got home at 4:20, and with Carly he continued to have a meltdown. He kept saying “Can you do something nice for me?” We got him calmed down and made dinner. Carly made dinner, and I had gotten some new veggie burgers and found hamburger buns at the store so I made one of those. Good food, and a lot of it, made August feel much better. He said “The sauce makes it perfect”. And he ate several bites of the burger patty and some of my mushrooms.
When he was done eating he went to the top of his slide and sat there and swung his stick around. He was warning us to “Be careful!” He asked “Where did I hear ‘impulse’?” I had used it to explain to him recently how following through on his impulses after we say no to something is what’s been getting him in trouble. He set his stick on the bars and said “That’s a pretty slippery material, ey?” He then sang a “I like impulses” song. He then moved on to the Thumbkin song, singing “Where is pointer? Where is pointer?…” He slid down the slide with his stick and got his shorts wet: He had sprayed off his slide earlier to clean it.
We went inside and he was hungry so ate several mushrooms. He was then swinging around one of those old splat balls and it burst open over his kitchen. He was still hungry and I got him spaghetti and put it on the table. I asked “Did you see your spaghetti?” He replied “No! U was having too much fun doing other stuff.”
They then skyped with Chuck and Cherie. He then asked me “Why is the Earth tilted?” So we looked that up and talked about early planets bumping into each other. Then there was a skype call with Vivian.
I took him up for a bath. He was impatient to get in, so we stopped it really shallow. He measured it this way: “It’s like a couple toilet papers deep.”
Afterwards he was still hungry and asked for peanut butter and crackers. When I got it for him he asked where the toast was. I said he had asked for crackers. He said “Toast too, please.” He just got crackers.
On the couch he was singing “Head, shouldera, knees, and toes.” He then asked “Dada, what’s a reinforced celery door?” Which is from The 52-Story Treehouse. And led to a discussion of ‘reinforced’.
A couple times today he started copying Carly, everything she says, which frankly is really funny. She was complaining about my book club and said “I hate this book club.” He was copying her and had fun repeating that one.
I took him up and he did a good job flossing his own teeth. we brushed them, then Carly came up and I left them at 8:30 and he was soon asleep.
Clay on his head:
Slime with me:
Comfy:
Rain:
