Monday, September 3: picture day

At 6:45 I heard him coughing and sniffing a lot so I went in and found him awake, still lying on the bed. He stayed on the bed, but facing the wall, blowing his nose and waiting for his sinuses to drain until he lay down and rolled over to me. He lay across the bed with his head on my leg. He slowly rolled and scooted up until his head was on my chest. Finally, at 7:13 I asked if he wanted me to bring the iPad up so he could watch a Pink Panther downstairs. He said, “Downstairs.” We went down and he said, “Vitamins.” He watched two Pink Panthers, “Pink Pest Control” and “The Scarlet Pinkernel”. He laughed, and talked about how there was a dog on a motorcycle, and asked why they were chasing him. I said we could watch it together later.

He said something like, “So, you’ll drop me off, then come for lunch, and I will see you at the bench at the end of the day.” Turned out to not be as easy as that though.

On the walk to school he asked, “What did people do when they didn’t discover cars?” I talked about using horses, then he added, “Maybe they used trains.”

At school we sat on the ground and read “Slowly, slowly, slowly,” said the Sloth by Eric Carle. He sat on my lap and liked the book. There were a lot of new words on the last page and on the two pages listing all the animals at the end and August said they could be the words of the day. I took photos of those pages so we could talk about them later at home.

He had difficulty letting me go after that though. He had me ask what they were doing and Marion talked about taking care of their plants and looking at the persimmons they had picked up in the orchard, which she had cut up. We watered his plant together, as he wouldn’t do it by himself. No Andrea, with Karen there instead. He had me ask Marion what they were doing today. We then sat on the stairs and were anthropologists for a few minutes. I thought I was going to be able to leave at one point, but he couldn’t let me go yet. He wasn’t upset, just didn’t want me to go. And was stuffy. And lying on the concrete steps at one point while we were being anthropologists.

He wanted to know when they were going inside and made me as Marion. She needs to work on her bluntness, as she started talking about how it was going to be “In a long, long, time.” August got upset about this, thinking it would be hours. But a couple minutes later she asked if he wanted to go in with her to help get clipboards. He reluctantly said “Okay” and I was able to leave at 8:30. Adult-directed and he was fine.

He was in a good mood for lunch. He poked his head out a little early and saw me, then pointed out a cat. We were up to number 50 by the end of the day. I had to tell him to go back inside until he had permission to come out. He brought his water bottle and lunch out with him. I don’t know if it was our talk on Friday bout how he needed to bring those out himself, or the fact that Karen was the one bringing them out for lunch this time. He sat and ate a good amount

Sounds like they are short-staffed and only Marion would be with them for rest time. So I told him to follow the rules of rest time. He made me put his lunch away for him, but then stayed sitting at the table as I said bye and left at 12:45. He was playing with his water bottle, sliding it back and forth on the table.

Oh, and he told me that his photo was in the room where the book swap had been. I had asked how it went and he said, “Remember when we did that book share?…the book swap? That’s where I got my picture taken.” There was a big flash when they took his photo, but it went well.

I picked him up, and when he came out he was carry his lunch box, snack bag, his water bottle, and my bike helmet. We sat on my bench and he ate. He was singing the Pink Panther song. Anna heard him and came over and told him the Pink Panther “dead ant” joke: What did the Pink Panther say when he stepped on an ant? Dead ant, dead ant…

I mentioned we didn’t have plans for the rest of the day and he said, “Oh, I can make plans for you…Pez…iPad…we could spend sometime in the library…then home.”He talked about the iPad and told me, “There’s a new activity in World School: nouns and stuff.” He looked at the anatomy app and showed me the skin: “That’s the sweat.”

He had a pretty runny nose, but it sounded like things went well and he was in a good mood. He told me he just lay on the floor for rest time: “It’s still really boring, but I like it.”

He moved on to Metamophabet. For the ‘kaleidoscope’ he told me, “This is the magic kaleidescope. It shows you germs and viruses and parasites and fungi.” We went to the library and he had me play chess against myself. At the end he actually moved the queen into checkmate and was really excited. We walked back to the book section and talked about reading a book, but Carly showed up before we had time to do so.

On the walk home we topped at a set of recycling bins and collected bottle caps. Got about 15. As we got closer to home he joked “Did you know Ms. Anna had 93 kids and she named them all Ms. Marion?” He then recited parts of Too Many Daves, which neither of us has read with him for a couple weeks, and sang a song about 23 sons.

We were home at 5:15. “I want you to get my iPad immediately. Good use of ‘immediately’” He complimented himself with his word usage. He then practiced being an anthropologist with Carly. He was practicing both observing and then participating. Carly would play, and he would walk up and ask, “So what’s this all about?”

He then played with the straw things. Made a snake instrument out of them that went all across the room. He ate teriyaki noodles for dinner, but left most of the veggies. He claimed, “Why do I have to eat more vegetables? Ms. Andrea lets me just eat rice and noodles and bread.” He sang a little song. No idea on the influence: “Across the greasy road, across the greasy road, onto the motorcycle road.” It continued on to being a story about a turtle. He then sang a hand jive sort of song that he had learned, maybe from Ms. Andrea, and asked me to take a video of it. He said, “Coposetic Doo Doo bomb.” I mentioned I hadn’t heard him say that recently. He said, “Omri doesn’t laugh when I say it.” He has also mentioned other kids not laughing/saying anything when he sings funny songs or Pink Panther. He was then repeating, “The harder something is, the bigger you dream.” He didn’t know where that came from.

He ate more veggies, then had pie and ice cream and ate outside while Carly took a shower. She came back down, and we watched a few Sesame Street songs together. In “We l sing with the same song” he thought one of the girls on a swing looks like Eve. We also watched “Elmo’s song”, “What’s the name of that song?” “U Really Got a Hold on Me”, and “I Lost My Cookie at the disco”.

Carly took him up for his bath. I was going to put him to sleep, but he was tired and so she just did it. He was asleep about 7:50.

Checkmate: