We got the timing down perfectly today. I woke him up just after 7. I had to tempt him awake with suggesting Pink Panther. He said “yeah”, then I let him watch two stories downstairs. When we turned it off to get ready to go he said “So you’re gonna leave for hours now.” He then asked “Are you still going to check on me?” I asked how many times I should check on him and he said “Just once”. And told me “So you have three and a half hours of work time, okay?”
He went to the bathroom and as we got going he made an O out of the straw things. He asked “Who wants an O in their name?” I pointed out I didn’t have an O in any of my names, and he said “Ryano!”
I dropped him off a little before 8. He was going to go check out the water table with Andrea and let me get going. Easy peasy. Carly said she saw him from afar as she brought down her Korean students to PKB to help with the Korean boy and that August seemed to be doing fine.
I checked in with him at 10. He was having fun inside. He made sure I was coming back in two hours, then said, “Okay. Leave now.” When I picked him up at 11:55 he was looking at a book with Marion and a couple other students. He had a rock that they were going to use for something. Later he told me, “We did a little scavenger hunt… Just for a rock. A rock that was special to you.” She said that he hadn’t eaten a single thing for snack. He was fine with them sharing the bread we made for snack though, and most of it was gone. He was jokingly telling her that it had peanut butter in it, but she said she believed me. It had also been difficult to get him to drink water.
We sat at a table and he ate much of his snack (the bread, primarily) then walked out with Candy and her mom. Both of the kids were slow as they kept wanting to play with things. August and I walked up to the park on the way to the dance studio, as we had peanut butter sandwiches in our lunch.
We negotiated bars in lunches on our way to the park. He wanted full snack bars for snack. We ended at part of a bar being part of his lunch.
At the park we went up to the tube, where I think he’s done space experiments before. As we sat in the tube (he fit better than I did, as I had to be sideways with my legs sticking out) he said, “This is what I do in preschool sometimes. I get in a special tube.” And he said, “I like every seaweed snack…can’t make me stop liking it.” And quoted Ramona Quimby, Age 8: “Dear Superfoot. Get well or I will eat your eraser.” He asked, “What’s ‘abandoned’ mean?” So that was our word of the day. He was wearing my watch and looked at the activity app. He chastised me: “You sitted around for two hours.”
Finally, he invented the backpack store game. It was a backpack store where backpacks cost nonillions of dollars. Customers would come in and not have enough money. He told me once “You need to collect some more gold. Just go to the beach…I have the perfect map…”
We got out and went over to the climbing and trampoline area for a bit. He remembered I had said he could play a little Green Planet on my iPad. So we played 5 minutes sitting on the trampoline. He needed to go to the bathroom and said it ws urgent, so he went in the dirt and bushes at the edge of the park. Finally, he played with some dials on the play structure, making potions. One of the potions, he said, turned a kid into a little swing thing he then sat and swung on: “One of these things…with eyes on it…so I could rock on somebody…made out of skin.”
With that we headed back to school, getting there at 1:45. We went to the library and he ate some more of the bread and got water. He was continuing his fear of monsters by saying “Oh no! Monster coming!” when he walked by the doors and they opened.
We went to the meeting with his teachers at 2. Talked to them about his tooth, rest time, and possibility of me volunteering. August started with us, then Carly took him to play around the room. They didn’t have a lot of answers about my questions about reading groups and specials and whatnot. Kind of surprising, since it all starts next week.
We said goodbye to Carly and walked home, getting here at 2:45. I asaked if he wanted exercise, food, or rest time. He chose exercise, so we did that, then read some Ramona. Then did rest time. I let him watch a Pink Panther after that, then he played Quick Math Jr. and other learning apps.
He ate some hummus and pita and part of a carrot with Carly, then they worked on some of their painting of the corner unit and his box rocket, then went upstairs to wrestle when he wasn’t really engaged in that. I made a pasta dish, with basil and sun-dried tomatoes and olives and olive oil. The pesto and feta on the side for August and Carly. He ate a little of it, but declared he was skipping the tomatoes and olives.
Carly gave him a bath, then we read in Skybrary: Carlos Gets Upset, Emma Left Right, Carlos Listens Up, Yoko Yak. He ate a few more noodles. I took him upstairs and got him ready for bed. I read “The Dream Makers” to him from the book I checked out in the library. He wanted more reading, but was clearly tired. I sang some songs and he was asleep at 8:55.
