I woke him up at 7. We got going and to school a little before 8
He is having a sightly harder day today. When I dropped him off we had agreed on two and a half hours until I returned. I had also mentioned going home and coming back with the car later and he seemed okay with that. I got him to agree to two hours and forty. But then he wasn’t doing anything and was hanging around me. We kept talking and he asked for it to be 2 hours again. I agreed to 2 and then he let me go.
I walked home, then rode my bike back to check on him. He was sitting next to kids who were playing with kitchen stuff, but not playing himself. He handed me a button he had found and wanted me to put it in his treasures.
But then he asked to go home. He said several times “I’m really not learning anything” and that we should go home. I got him playing with some letter magnets and he sorted most of them into upper and lower case. We went and looked at the kids playing with clay. I talked about getting him doing something and he said “It’s okay if I don’t do anything.” I got him tracing letters on the magnetic board thing and he was okay with me leaving. He made sure I told Marion when I would return, then I could leave. I had been there about 15 minutes.
Rode the bike home and then returned with the car and swim stuff, in case we stayed that long. I picked him up right before 12. He gave Andrea a leg hug and they said they’d both gotten a lot of hugs and kisses today. We hung around for a minute, then were the last ones leaving, except for Reia. The teachers asked if she was going with me – they knew we were going to play with her. I said she could come sit with us over at the tables. So she went over with me and August and they both ate there snacks. August hadn’t eaten anything and she had most of her sandwich left. August shared his seaweed with her. He ate his mixed fruit and sweet potato bread.
Reia’s mom showed up bout 12:15. She showed me the books for the English reading/writing curriculum that she wants Reia and August to do together. Workbook stuff that I won’t have August doing.
They were then eager to go over to the preschool playground. Nicholas and Sophia were also there. August played on the swing and we made soup. Sophia had me twist her on the swing. August had never done that before here, then had me do it to him a minute later. He and Reia started playing together when they worked together to swing Reia’s mom on the tire swing. Then, they were getting on top of the car and fixing it together. August could now also get down from the car on his own.
They went to the bathroom, then August suggested the big playground. We headed over there and found that there is a couch next to it now. I joked that it was for the adults to be lazy on. August started playing and told me “Dada, sit on the couch and be lazy.” After a couple minutes he got on the spinning thing and could spin himself, another first. He said, “You can’t see me.” Like Sophia last year when playing hide and seek.
August and Reia then pretended to be invisible as they played on the play structure, claiming I couldn’t see them. Played along with that for awhile. We then did play hide and seek. First, the two of them were trying to find me. I hid about 5 times. Then Haoyi hid a couple times.
We were getting hot and August wanted to go to the library. He and I got Magic Tree House #23, about a tornado on the prairie, and sat in the back corner on bean bags. Haoyi had been surprised a bit earlier when she found out that we read chapter books to August, saying Reia wouldn’t last a page without pictures. August demonstrated his focus as we read the entire book. The first time we’ve read a full one in one sitting, although we’ve come close before. In the book, Jack has to pull with all his ‘might’, so that became the word of the day. He also later asked “What does ‘lend’ mean?” That is also from the book.
Reia came and went with us as we read. She played with a stool, putting it on the bean bags and annoying August a bit. She had brought over a book on Koalas and I read part of it and we looked through it for a few minutes. They lost interest in that and I showed August a book about Bedouins for a couple minutes and talked about Jordan.
They had to go meet Reia’s dad. He was showing up after picking up or dropping of the car at a shop. It was a new car on Friday and 20 minutes after taking it off the lot, as he drove to work, he was rear ended. August got book #24 and took it to Liz to check out. We left at 2:35.
He wanted to leave swimming to tomorrow and just wanted to head home. Went to the bathroom first, and we talked about playing with Reia. I said something about playing on the playground. He said “No. When it’s playground time I’ll just sit there and do nothing for TWELVE hours and do nothing…No, FORTY THREE hours!” He was excited that he had played with Reia, however: “I finally played with Reia!…but at school I won’t play with anyone.” I tried to get him to explain why and he said “I don’t want to. If I don’t want to I don’t want to play with anyone.”
In the car I asked August if he had any music requests. He said “I can just make music with my window. It has two notes.” And showed me some window music. As I started to drive he said, “This is AWAY from home, silly.” I told him I was happy that he had developed a good geographic sense from all of our exploring, but I had to drive around the roundabout before I was heading the right direction. Then, as we got to our house he was looking out and said, “Let’s park right there, in the shady spot.”
We were home at 3:00. I gave him about 25 minutes of his choice time, during which he watched Pink Panther while I made pizza, then we played the game on my phone. We exercised. August was wearing my watch when Carly called. He said “Mama’s calling.” He then had his first full phone conversation that he answered, talked though, and hung up. And it was on a watch. “Hello…Who is this?…Hi Mama!…at home…Okay…See you soon!” And hung up.
We then did rest time. Not great, but not bad. For my choice on iPad time I said we could do language or math. So we did some Hebrew in Drops, then some Quick Math Jr. Carly was home just before 5. He asked her if she’d found him any treasure, then asked, “Do you remember the instructions? Just keep your eyes open and look down at the ground.” He wanted to do an experiment and he and I looked at a couple of books for a minute, but really he just wanted to make slime. He went out with Carly and they did two batches.
I worked on Carly’s computer and did dishes. She then made noodles and tofu and mushrooms for him. He had his twenty minutes of iPad time and used it to play Dragonbox Big Numbers. He ate seconds. They read Madeline and I went out for a bike ride, as running has been hurting my knees.
When I came back they were out of the bath and reading in the bedroom. She had read a couple of the stories from the Nightlight book I had checked out. He didn’t like the stories, but it has really good pictures and they were looking at one that showed animals sleeping or hibernating underground. They were talking about it, and he was talking about putting a light down there to wake them up. He then asked her “How do you measure brightness?” He was actually getting upset when Carly said she didn’t know, as if he didn’t believe her. I walked in at that moment and when he asked me I said “lumens”. I then looked it up, and we ended up discussing the difference between ‘lumens’ and ‘lux’.
As I went to take a shower Carly asked if he wanted to read Ramona Quimby, Age 8 again. He said, “Yeah, so I remember it more.”
I went to take a shower.
I thought he would last so I could talk to him about tomorrow and I’d put him to sleep. But as I was in the shower Carly opened the door and had me yell a good night. He was asleep a few minutes later, about 8:30.
Fixing the car:
Tunnel;
On the slide:
