He slept between us for a third (at least) night in a row. He slept all the way through the last couple nights. Tonight he did wake up sometime around 5, but it was because he was really stuffy. Carly got him back to sleep. A little before I got up I heard him loudly laugh and say in his sleep “…mashed potatoes and rocket ships in it.”
He woke up at at 6:50. Brought him down and he was fine. But then he started to get upset when his vitamins weren’t the right shape (the chocolate one came out) and I thought it might be a tough day. He calmed down went over and sat on the stool by the plant that is now taller than him. He was then asking interesting questions: “How old do you get to be?” “Are humans lucky to see so many colors?” “What travels the speed of sound?”
He watched a little Llama Llama and ate banana bread and Cheerios. But the second I started putting his clothes on he got upset about me leaving him at preschool. “Pick me up after lunch!” was his first request of the day. He wanted me to promise to pick him up early. I told him we should talk to Anna first.
We had started getting ready early, but it took longer, so I decided to take the car instead so we could get there before the bus kids for once. Still didn’t manage that as we walked in right at 8. Negotiations began right away. Anna was more involved in trying to get him to stay today. I first sat down with him and played with the cube blocks with Blanka. She was asking him to play with her and she wanted to show him how she made a house thing. He got involved in that and I stayed for several minutes, but he wouldn’t hear of me leaving.
We spent three big stints sitting out on the benches. After the first Anna tried to get him doing something with her. He liked the idea of glazing his tea cup and other things. But when he was sitting with her and glazing his tea cup he still came running after me. We sat outside, moving over to the elemetary school bench for awhile. There was a plant falling over in tire planter and asked me to “Stable that plant.” He wouldn’t explain anything about why he didn’t want me to leave. But finally he came up with a counter plan. He would let me go if I promised to just stay at the library and I would come back after snack to check in – at 10am. We went in and he started to tell Anna the plan, but then he just wouldn’t let me go again. He was holding tight to my fingers or legs. I finally got him to stop with that.
I then got him involved in cleaning up all the blocks before morning meeting. He wanted to do robot cleanup and so we did that, and Emmitt said he was a claw truck doing the clean up. I still couldn’t leave at the start of the meeting though. He refused to hold hands or stay with Anna anytime I tried that. Finally, we went back out to the bench by the door again. Finally, I got him to more directly state what he was afraid of: “You might go home.” He has asked me to not go to mama’s classroom (where I was on Friday when he went to the library) and home (where I went on Wednesday to get swim stuff), but this was the first that he’s directly said that that was what was bothering him. I promised him I wouldn’t and that I’d stay in the library. He said I don’t believe you.”
Soon after that I gave up and we headed home. We stopped at the bench by the guard station and he ate his banana bread, then we tried to leave. They asked if I had a leaving pass. They’ve never asked for that before. Went to the elementary school office and got one.
We walked home, leaving the car for Carly as it was supposed to get over 100 today. We were home 10:30 or so. We made some tropical punch water drink, then he was pretending to be a lobster. He wanted me to be Coyote Peterson, experimenting to see under what conditions the lobster would pinch, and then how hard. Straight out of the episode we had watched. I was letting him pinch and made the mistake of letting him pinch my right hand on the little finger side – where I had broken it. Not horrible, but seemed much more sore than it should be. He was then a snail. Then wanted another animal idea.
We discussed me going to school and teaching/helping out. He really liked the idea and instantly picked up on how three teachers would be better than two because of more attention: “And if another teacher like Karen was in there it would be four. And that would be EVEN BETTER!”
We watched Brave Wilderness for more ideas. Skunk was next. When Coyote Peterson talked about stinking for days, August said “I know how to make something that will make it go away in one day. You mix baking powder, baking soda, flubong, alcohol, wood chips, block of iPads…” After a few minutes he said “We watched-ed enough for me to get a new idea.” Now he was a skunk; “Bother me and you’ll get a FULL DOSE!”
He went to the bathroom and sang “today is Friday, Friday vacuum cleaner, all the hungry children come and eat it up…” He then told me “Bad words is funny!” We read some more of the Magic Treehouse. We ate lunch and he watched Llama Llama. He looked on Amazon with me and we found a nice iPad case to get for his iPad this summer (although he doesn’t know we’ll probably get a new iPad as well). He had some difficulties and time outs of sorts as he kept saying ‘stupid’ to bother me, and at one point brought the tree things in from outside.
Watched some more Llama Llama and ate Peanut butter and crackers. He talked about his concerns about preschool: “No one takes care of me” “Give me not much love.” “They don’t let me lick spatulas.” “Attention” We played the smoocharoo and headbutt games. We then started playing Musyc. He needed to go to the bathroom and told me “Dada, delete the shapes. I don’t want to miss your music.” He then sang a pretty good song: “Go to the bathroom twice a day, go to the bathroom twice a week…” He used all of his time words: month, year, hour, minute, second. Back with Musyc he said “That’s energetic!”
Had more crackers and peanut butter and talked about how he doesn’t playing with some of the boys: “Emmitt, Leonard, Junyeok…They laugh at everything…and they say poopy.” He talked about how they are funny but he doesn’t like their kind of funny. He was saying stupid again, so I took him upstairs for a consequence. We then played on the bed and he burrowed in the pillows. It was his shell at first and he was a snail. I was a birdie: “Hey little birdie who only eats fish.” Carly was home at 3:10. He told her we had come up for a consequence. We played more snail, then went downstairs.
We discussed what had happened at school today with Carly. He said he wasn’t a student, just a kid. He said he’s not a student until year two of preschool. Pointing at Carly’s clothes he told her “Your small, not-very-strong bladder is there.”
I went up for a rest. When I came down he was eating Cheerios and mango. They went outside and were working and playing with the hose. I did dishes. He spilled some dirt on the fake grass. He came in all wet and I took him up to get changed. He told me he deserves a timeout. We sat on the couch upstairs and he said he wanted two chances to apologize to mama. He went downstairs. The first one was a yelled “Sorry!” But after another minute he said a nice full sentence to her.
He ate spaghetti (left over from Carly’s lunch) for dinner, then watched a Brave Wilderness about sea cucumbers. He was getting wild so Carly went upstairs. We played the virus and bacteria game, infecting each other and being immune systems, etc. He asked me “How did I learn enshumgedorflug? Because my brain gets smarter and smarter?” He then wanted to play Human Body on his iPad.
Carly came down and spotted a praying mantis out on the outside of one of our kitchen windows. She went out to get a better look. It was windy today (and up to 42 or 43 celcius). Suddenly she heard the birds squawking in the tree. Then she heard crashi
ng. A branch, about a meter long, fell out of the tree, along with about 10 of the spikey green fruit things – which we’ve never actually seen on the ground. They fell right next to her.
August and I came out and stood at a safe distance and looked at one of them. Back inside he sat on the couch and said “Criss cross apple sauce, fishies in the pond”. Ilana, the librarian says that.
Carly took him up for his bath. Back downstairs he had an energy ball. He was then practicing saying “Oh my gosh!” phrases: “Oh my gosh! I thought our house didn’t exist…we didn’t have a glass table to set my water bottle on.”
Had some banana and carrot bread, then we finished the Magic Treehouse book. He made up a word, “Earsight”. I took him up to bed and got him brushed and dressed. I sang to him but he wanted Carly to fall asleep. I’d heard enough of the whiney-ness today so didn’t object too much. I got Carly, and he was asleep about 9:20.