He went until 2 at school today, and likely could have made it to the end, no problem.
When I went to bed last night he was on the bed with Carly. But he was sideways, right by my pillow. So I took my pillow and slept on the lower bed for the first time.
He was up just before 7. Closed the door behind him. He was quite stuffy as he woke up on the couch. We thought maybe it was the cold, but he cleared up during the day. He watched a Max and Ruby and ate some oatmeal and mango at the table. We got going at 7:50 and had a nice walk to school. Rain was coming, and you could see the big clouds approaching. When we parked the bike I said we had made it. August sprinted under cover to make sure.
When we went into the preschool he complained there were too many kids. We could shoot for getting there a few minutes earlier before the bus kids arrive. He needed something to do before I left, and we found the new activity over on the light table: insects encased in plastic with magnifying glasses to look at them with. Nicholas, however, was protecting them, saying only he and Emmitt could use them. Marion came over and Nicholas got upset. August got a scorpion and was studying it when I left. He let me walk out for the first time without him being with a teacher.
I went and worked in the library. Will probably start heading home, at least some days, when he is going full time.
I went and picked him up at 2. When I went in they were sitting around the pottery tables, watching a video storybook on a laptop (projector not working?). Derin saw me and told August. He smiled, then kept sitting at the table. I gathered my stuff, and Marion came and told me that Anna would be gone tomorrow. Then Anna came and told me myself, then she went and told August. August got up and came and told me, adding the detail that she had a doctor’s appointment.
August was ready to go – all we were skipping today was Playball – and we walked out the side door. He showed me where the dead baby bird was on a chair, covered by a cairn of small rocks and stuff. He said the flies were eating it. We walked up to the library and were going to start reading when I realized I had left his bag of stuff at the preschool and we also needed to get the bag of swim gear from his bike. All was well (although he accused me of “always” forgetting things, but couldn’t come up with an example besides the bag) until we left the school and were walking to the bike. He started twirling in front of me. I had to stop, then kept walking. Somehow he twirled around me and stepped on my heels from behind and fell. I picked him up and carried him and pushed the bike over to the bench in front of the school entrance. He said “You knocked me over!” His knees were a little red, but not deep enough for there to be any blood. It was still very, very traumatic. He kept saying “Dada, don’t look!” When I said it would go away soon he said ‘No, it goed away! Dada, make it go away!” And kept repeating the second sentence. We sat on the bench for about half an hour. He eventually was hitting his knees and said it was to make the color go away. He calmed down, then just rested his head on my lap. Started talking a little before 2:40. Started making things things up. Still upset though. He told me “Put me in a bag.” And he decided he didn’t want to swim. Probably because he was afraid of the water on his knees, although he wouldn’t say it. Clearly I should have just picked him up after school.
He cheered up as we walked home and he told me he had a song we hadn’t sung for a long time. It turned out to be ‘never’. It was a song he had learned in class today. He remembered the tune, and sang “Friday is fish…all the hungry children come and eat it up.” We paused to record it so we would have something to go on in case he forgot more.
We kept walking and he stopped me when he spotted a cylinder and a black rectangle on top of a house. It was a water tank and solar panel and we talked about those. He wanted me to compliment his spotting.
He then wanted to stop at our park. We started by playing spider store. Although he also told me “If you dig anywhere in the Earth, you will find a big puddle of flubong.” I was the shopkeeper and he was buying things and I would add up the total cost. He bought sugar-coated flies, pillows, etc. He bought Pepsi: “I’ll tell you why I need Pepsi. I have a little problem…I’m sniffly.” He was then removing spiderwebs from my ‘store’ using a stick and I told him he’d get a discount. He also got “Chocolate chip, pineapple, strawberry ice cream.” He also had a machine that “changed its mouth feel.” Can’t remember what it was changing the feeling of though.
We paused and sat on the alligator bench to have a snack. He asked “Isn’t it not fair that animals only see a few colors and we can see ten million?” Ate a little couscous and then granola. Lots of discussion of iHerb and shipping costs and weight. Then a lot of playing the pee and poop game, where I would forget to go to the bathroom before going to sleep, then have an accident, then wake up in the morning, go play, then go back and make the same mistake.
We saw Holly and her dog Doby. She asked if he wanted to say hi to Doby, but he ran to the top of the structure to be safe. He did eventually agree to count Doby, as he doesn’t bark. After they left there was a girl about his age. she made a funny noise at him. Apparently this is a real thing. They ended up playing together on the teeter totter thing for a couple minutes. August then came and played more with me.
He was excited when Carly came into view. “Mama! Mama! Mama! Mama!” She asked what we were doing. He said “We’re playing bladder…and rectum.”
Carly asked him what the best part of the day was. He said “Preschool”. Then, when she asked what part, he said “everything.” He told her about looking at the insects with a magnifying glass and drawing what he saw. They made a connection to the spider I caught and he studied. “They teach-ed me about worms but it was a diffent day.” He was talking about the slug. About rest time he said “just walked around, being loud. Waking people up with hammers and chainsaws and stuff.” Pretty sure that one wasn’t true.
At home he went outside with Carly. I made mushrooms and risotto. He must have done something with his long stick, as he got upset when she put it up on the planters where he can’t reach: “Give me my stick back!”
He had rice and lemon chicken and broccoli for dinner. He spilled some rice, and even though there was plenty left he got upset and wanted new rice, just like what happened with the yoghurt. Carly was nice enough to take it away and come back with ‘new’ rice. He then ate it all, and even more veggies with it.
He asked how big the largest power plant was. Carly clearly didn’t hear the question, as she thought I was crazy when I started reading out stats on power plants a minute later. August said “Is it pretty cool that sometimes we’re a power plant for like a hand mixer?”
He stepped in the rice mess, then didn’t want to stay out of it when Carly asked him. I got him upstairs by showing hm the little charm he had gotten from the church in Jerusalem. We went up and put it in his small treasure box. He remembered the small sticker jewel thing he had found at the play area of the mall and I showed him where I had put that as well. He got out his bouncy ball and said “Let’s experiment in my lab.” The bathroom, that is. He bounced it around, and behind and through his bathtub. He sang more of the song from school and we found it on YouTube. It is the “Today is Monday” song from the book by Eric Carle. When we had first visited the classroom they had told me they had read the book and were having snacks each day that week to match the book.
He started playing with the scrub brush and knocked everything on the counter over with it. He was upset when
I took it away and he headed downstairs. Carly read Sally’s Room. August had said he had been looking for his blanket during rest time, so maybe that’s what he wanted instead of a sheet, so we got out the brown blanket Andrea made and he cuddled in it while she read.
He then cuddled in my lap and we talked about things. He didn’t want to wash his knees and we talked about the reasons you wouldn’t go in the pool if you were actually bleeding. This ended with him spraying blood out of this hands with his magic, all over the kitchen and everything else.
We went upstairs to his bath. More blood on everything. I joked there were sharks in his bath and then he was spraying sharks out of his hands. We played more bladder game, then bubble town. We were downstairs at 7:50. He was hungry so had some of the risotto and mushrooms and then crackers and peanut butter.
He blew his nose again and said “It’s fun for me to blow my nose.” He’s been asking me to blow up a balloon until it pops as an experiment. So I did one. Really loud, and made my ears ring.
We went up and got him ready for bed. I left them at 8:45 and he was soon asleep.
