6:10. He called “Dada” with the door still closed. Carly went in and got him back to sleep.
I went to wake him up at 7:20. It took a couple minutes and when he opened his eyes he gave me a startled look. He had kind of cuddled up next to me and knew someone was there, but I think he thought it was you. He asked something like “Why isn’t Mana up here?” He was a little upset to find you were at work. He asked for a treat and I offered him Logan bread, water drink, oatmeal, etc. I said peanut butter and honey toast and he rejected that. But then he got a big smile on his face and giggled and said “Cinnamon and sugar toast.”
So I agreed it was a cinnamon and sugar sort of morning and we went downstairs. As I made it I joked about putting other things on it instead, like paprika. I asked if he wanted cilantro and he gave me the biggest exasperated “Ugk”. So funny and teenagery. I then joked that I put snail slime on instead of butter as we were out of butter. He said that would be gross and I told him everyone knows that snail slime is a good butter substitute. “No. I’ve tasted snail slime 200 times and it’s always tastes bad to me.” Me: “Wait, of it tastes bad to you wouldn’t you stop after two or three times?” Him: “No, I’m a special person. And I was trying different kinds.”
For a his second piece of toast I played it straight, stating only the actual ingredients. He said “Make jokes!” He was on a roll this morning. As we were getting ready to go he said “Stop brushing your teeth; we have other things to do.” As we went out the door and I checked to make sure we had everything he said “We have everything we need? We have the most important thing of all, me? Were pretty lucky that we have me.”
We left at 8:12. He got a lemon mint and told it “Come out of the mint, oh flavor!” On the walk he told me he knows another universe exists, and he proved it to me by taking me there. He said I could tell it was a different universe because everything was pink, except for the humans and aliens, which were peach. And he told me “I know how to moisten noses.”
At the school he went and explored the roundabout in the parking lot. He found a broken snail shell: “I think it was destroyed by a war. A snail war. I’ve heard of snail wars sometimes. In snail wars a couple snails get killed. I’ve heard of snail wars in books.”
In the classroom we looked at the schedule, and there was a blank spot in the morning. He had to know what it was, so went and asked Anna. She said the schedule had been chosen by kids for today, so they’d discuss it in morning meeting. He was okay with that. And he was okay with me leaving as he stood by the clay table. Candy had just come in with her mom, upset, and as I walked out I found out why as I almost slipped in the throw up all over the floor just inside the door.
I went home and worked, then walked back to get him at 12:50. Got him, as there was a video story of Frog and Toad playing, but he didn’t want to watch it. Outside, Hector’s and Yaya’s moms were putting together presents for the teachers. It involved putting fingerprints of the kids on three pictures of trees (for the two teachers and Myriam, I assume). Two fingerprints on each, so six total. When it was done, August said he really liked that.
We went up to the library and sat in the red chairs and had a snack. He said “It’s our last day in Korea.” I asked if he meant the day we left, and he said no, the day before that – full day. Telling me about his day he said “I played with Reia with the little Legos. Leonard and Emmitt destroyed it…I said to Reia ‘Let’s do more nos….No, no, no, no, no…” He talked about them not being friends for awhile after that. A woman came out of the library and he said “Hey, Ms. Michelle.” Turns out it was Ms. Paris. Not sure what her job is, but she knows August by name. He ate more egg and apple. And I had to shut down the “tusic” thing as he kept saying the word.
We walked back to the preschool before 1:30. The bell had rung and there were big kids everywhere. I heard him saying hi to students as we walked down the stairs, and he told me “I was saying ‘hey big students!’”
We went in for the tea party. We were sitting with Emmitt and his big sister, Teegan, who Carly has in two classes (she’s in 6th grade). And it turned out that their mom, Ms. Stacy, could make it. So it was the five of us. We had a lot of fun. There were cookies and bread with honey and apple crumble, all made by the students. Emmitt poured the tea. August said it was too full for him, but he could practice when it was emptier. Emmitt barely sat there, so it was mainly August talking to Ms. Stacey and Teegan. He sang Down by the Bay for them, making up funny verses, and asked Teegan (when I reminded him she was mama’s student) how her reading was, and she told us about the book City of Embers. And he told Teegan all about flubong.
All the kids were then heading out to the playground. I went out and gave him a couple challenges: find three interesting noises by hitting things and then find three low noises. He ended up in the kitchen area finding most of the noises, then was making stew in the kitchen. Omri came along and asked August if he wanted a carrot. They went over and were looking through the carrot patch. Cute, until I realized she was just pulling out all the carrots, looking for a big one for August. I rinses two little ones off and he ate them.
Back at the playground, he watched as Emmitt, Leonard, Nicholas, and another boy or two chased Teegan around. He seemed confused at first, but then joined in the chasing. It seemed to click for him why the chasing games were fun, although I think he’s a long way away from wanting to just play with the boys like they normally do, especially if he might get chased himself. When he had a chance he told Teegan about his super lasers. She said “Super powers? Oh no!” August kept asking me “Why’d she say ‘super powers? Oh no!’”
When there was a pause in the chasing August a couple times asked me things like “When it’s the end of the day and we can do anything can you be Teegan and I can defeat you?”
August was casting all sorts of spells on her, like “Impossible to melt icebergs!” The other boys were all being different things (bears, vampires, monsters, etc.) as they attacked her. At one point they were all casting spells on her and she was actually acting out being all the things they changed her into: “Abracadabra! A marshmallow!…Earwax!”
Teegan kept it up for a good half hour, and I told her mom when she came back to pick them up that she should grab an extra cookie for her. She said “Probably slip her a few shekels, too!”
After they left, August asked again “Can you be Teegan and I’ll be the boys chasing you?” He needed to use the bathroom so we went in and did that, and I congratulated Anna and Marion on the tea party. He played on top of the car and we played rhythms on it, then after the bathroom we went to the Dion playground and did more rhythms and played with some other things, like spinning wooden balls in a colander.
We headed up to the library to sneak and find Carly, who was scanning things. Going up the stairs he spotted ants carrying a much bigger dead ant up the wall. We watched them, then found Carly in the library. One of the children’s books her students had made wasn’t scanning correctly, so I helped with that, and she walked around the empty library with August. He then sat at a computer and pretended to be Lillian playing a big kids game. He had me sit next to him and I was a student named Jack.
We went outside and Carly went to pack up. August grabbed the back of our usual bench, and it fell over on him, hitting his knees. Looked much scarier than it was. He told me “Next year I’ll change my name.” Like Lillian. He then found one of these hard little seeds he keeps finding everywhere and star
ted a song/chant that he was very, very proud of: “I found a nut, but I think it’s a butt.” Carly arrived, and we went to Ayal’s classroom to see where the falcon nest is. You can’t see in the nest, and we didn’t see any falcons coming or going, so we headed out.
On the walk home he said “I’m a narwhal. Can’t catch me! Super shy!” Which he reminded me is from that Narwhal and the Jellyfish book from February. He did watch a video about Narwhals a few weeks ago though. He also asked “Why is a spiderweb super strong, but to us it’s really weak?” So we talked about relative mass as we got home at 4:50.
He ate a hard boiled egg and watched Ollie and Moon. He then got the dowel from the paper roll and knighted me, then Carly reluctantly let him knight her as well. He ate some mushrooms, then oatmeal and mango. Then we had a berry brain and ice cream. I ate a little of it, but let him have most of it. He enjoyed that, and said “I shouldn’t have had that taffy.” He meant yesterday, when he chose the taffy candy in the office over a blueberry brain.
We finished the Magic Treehouse book, #18. In it they are on the Great Plains and meet Native Americans before the arrival of the settlers. August asked why that was important, and after I explained he was saying “White people are stupid. I hate white people.” We read a little Over and the Seawigs. He was then talking about preschool and the possibility of me not being at the library, but at home, especially next year. He turned it into a game, where I pretended to be at home but then drove to preschool really fast if he was sick, etc.
Took him up for his bath, then we got him ready for bed. I left them at 8:40. He wasn’t going to sleep, so I took over at 9. Finally, at 9:30 he wanted Carly back. She came in and he went to sleep right away.