He was up at 7:05. I came up and he quietly said “Turn off the air conditioner.” We went downstairs and he lay on the couch for a few minutes. He realized he had wet clothes, although they were pretty dry now. He said he hadn’t had an accident: “I think it was from when I was the plants.” He watched some Ollie and Moon before we left. At school I was able to leave him about 8:45. We had done the dance from schedule to benches outside to looking to see what was available. At one point August said “Tell Ms. Anna to come out.” But she was dealing with multiple kids a she was helping them make mugs in the pottery area. We got a chair for him next to her, but then when I tried to leave he slid on the floor and made it hard for me to pick him up: “I’m heavy!” She held on to him as I left and he told me “You can’t do it!” But he quieted down as soon as I was gone.
I stayed in the library and he ran in a little before 10:30 saying “Come with us!” She read a story called Bubble Trouble for story time, then August chose another school-themed book to checkout: If You Take a Mouse to School. Then Ilana blew bubbles for them out on the lawn and they had a blast runnng all over the lawn popping bubbles.
I walked with him back to school. The other kids sat on the floor and started looking at their books. I took August’s book out but he dismissively said “Why did you take it out? I don’t want to look at it myself!” He let me take it back out a minute later though and actually read it.
I then had my first stint of volunteering, working with August and Emmitt to make a page about how to not spill your tea. It went well, although the conversation part stretched their attention spans. But that was partly because I hadn’t anticipated being in the same room with all the other kids, and how many would come over to us and be distracting. Then, Emmitt started running over to the rug and back. August would of course follow. We did some of our talking over on the rug. They came up with good ideas for how to not spill, and we took some photos of them holding teacups with the handles turned to the side. I then showed them drawing on the iPad with the Pencil. Just introduced it for now, and the two of them and Nicholas played around for a few minutes. I then left them to be babies, I think it was, with Selma and headed back to the library.
I went back to pick him up at 1. We went to the library, and he played in the stuffed animals. He wanted me to a bird “Please? With sugar on top?” I had us move outside as he wasn’t treating it like a library, more like his own play area. We went out to one of the benches on the path across the lawn. He told me “These are the times I went to the bathroom at preschool: before snack, in the middle of lunch with Hanako.”
He was then in elementary school and told me “Doing science experiments is the most exciting thing you can do in elementary school classes.” “Like mixing chemicals.” He said it was more exciting than book reading or writing. He did a few experiments, using random ingredients that I would pretend to give him. First he made electrical slime, that would shock you if you touched it, then “I’m going to make a fertilizer that makes plants grow at the speed of sound!” He had a suit that he wore the entire time that would protect him from the chemicals and the electricity.
At about 2:15 I took him over to his yoga class. we were a little early, so we sat and read the mouse book. Yaya showed up a couple minutes later, well before the class. He had apparently gone ahead on his own. When the previous class left Ms. Stacy invited them in. He was reluctant to go in, but when it came to Anna closing the door he went in. When they came out he and Selma came and talked to me. She told me that they did ABC poses. August added “And we did lion breaths.” Selma the said to August “That was fun, August.”
We walked back to PKB and had a snack on the bench outside the classroom. There is a plastic yellow chair next to the bench that is wet almost every single day. No obvious source of the water, so August has been speculating about it. My best guess is a sprinkler pops up and gets it. He’s said maybe a leaking roof or pipe. Anyway, he went in and asked Ms. Anna.
We then went up to the classroom for Hebrew class. Myriam clearly wasn’t there. He walked around the room, loudly asking “Ms. Miyriam? Where are you!?” When she came up he and the two girls (Maya and Ledu) hid under the tables. He let me sit out in the hall, doing some work. I went in when they got booklets. She was teaching them body parts and possessives today, as in ‘My nose’. She said that earlier he had been the first to understand and find ‘black’ in the classroom. She said he could draw a self-portrait on the cover, and had him go and study his face in the mirror. He listed what he saw and said cheeks, and chin and eyebrows and hair and nostrils…nose was actually the last thing he said. Maya asked what ‘nostrils’ were and Myriam had August explain to her: “Two holes that you use to breathe.” He then drew his self-portraits, giving it lots and lots of hair as he likes his hair. It turned out really well.
After class we went downstairs and he used the bathroom in PKB. Then walked to Carly’s classroom and he sang Down by the Bay and did a monster science experiment the way. In her classroom he ate a little of her leftover pasta from lunch, then she put him in the green screen she had set up for the video her students are making. They went downstairs to play with the hula hoops for a few minutes, but got distracted by Mandy who let them play with some science things – one was something that you held and a red liquid went up a tube.
August and I then headed to activity class and Carly headed home. Class went fine except for near the end when he fell of a cushion thing and said he wanted to go home. Made it to the end though. When he was picking up the half-sphere berry looking things, he held one near each side of his head and managed to give himself a good tickle with them. That was pretty funny.
We hadn’t taken the car, so we had the whole way to walk home. Stopped at the park near there though and played for about 30 minutes. He was being grumpy when kids wanted to go through the tube that he uses as his space station. With his science experiments he first made a baby, then made a cushion for a couch.
Finally headed home about 6:20. He was saying he hates dogs, and I explained that was probably overdoing it, and we discussed the spectrum of words from love to hate. He then put it in his own words and did a pretty clear job of reciting a spectrum of words. He was still being pretty negative and I told him he could choose to be happier. He said he couldn’t, that that wasn’t possible, and I told him if he kept talking like that I was going to sic Oma on him.
We were home at 6:50. He had picked a lovely little white flower on the way, and as we went in the yard he said “Wilting flower, you can make it!” But then he picked up a tree thing in the yard, and a few seconds later realized he had lost the flower. He must have dropped it down through the cracks. He was so frustrated by that: “But we picked the best flower ever.” He wanted to pick a flower from the yard, but I wouldn’t let him do it. Carly said he could though. He told one of us “I will just spit on you.” Back inside Carly wanted to give him a raspberry on his tummy, which he doesn’t like anymore, but he agreed to let her do one more ppppt on his tummy for the rest of his life.
She took him up for a bath. He told Carly what hypothermia was. Played in the bath for a long time. We got him ready for bed and I left them at 8:40. He wasn’t falling asleep though so I was up before 9. We read If You Take a Mouse to School and Where is My Emalee Green? I left them again about 9:15. He was asleep before 9:40.