Tuesday, September 4: preschool and library time

He was really laughing about something at one point in his sleep. My guess is Pink Panther. Or “U Really Got a Hold on Me”. He woke up at 5:55 and asked for Carly. I got up and she went in and he went back to sleep. He woke back up just before 6:30 when I finished my shower. He went downstairs and found Carly outside. As she got ready for work, he and I finished reading Magic Tree House #26, Good Morning, Gorillas. He asked what ‘shrubs’ were so we looked up the differences between shrubs and bushes and made it the word of the day. He then watched The Pink Panther and I got his lunch and snack ready. It was the hungriest he’s been in the morning. He ate his vitamins and Cheerios, then asked for more food. I got him a few slices of apples and he ate those and asked for more Cheerios. Ate those, then the second half of a Zone Perfect bar (the other half was in his lunch).

As we got ready to go he walked around the grass and said, “So it’s a pretty easy schedule. I can handle four hours without you. Then it’s lunch. Then 20 minutes without you. Then library time!” It took a few minutes at school before I could go, but I was leaving about 8. I watched from the top of the stairs. He didn’t join in on anything, but he also seemed to be doing okay. He was standing around the table of plants when other people were looking at them.

I headed home, then came back at 12:30. They were already out. He was sitting across from Lydia. He told me I had forgotten my hat and he’d brought it out for me. He had his lunch, but hadn’t opened it. Got it open and he started eating and I thought I could try to take off. But he told me, “Here’s your choices: You can stay until the end of lunch or you can leave and I’ll stop eating.” I stayed, and he ate a lot: his mandarin oranges, his bar, some raviolis, some hard-boiled egg, and a few apple slices. I stayed for a few more minutes and asked him if he’d been an anthropologist. He said yes, and told me, “Some people were playing with water and putting it into buckets.” But he said, “They were too busy” for him to join in. I asked if he’d noticed anything else and he said, “There wasn’t really anything that was too important.”

I was able to leave as Karen got them to line up. He reminded me to come back for library time. I was back at 2. Marion was by herself for rest time. Three kids were asleep and the rest of them were in the atelier playing with the wood pieces. I went in and helped out. Library was apparently at 2:20. August didn’t know what to build, so I showed him how logs can be used to move an object, like a moving road. Marion told me he wouldn’t wipe his nose without her helping him. Sounds about right.

We got the kids ready to go and the two of us walked them to the library. No second teacher and no other parent. So she gave me a list of the five kids who were being picked up. She’d take the bus kids to the busses and I’d take the five back to the classroom. And in the library Ilana was gone. Her mother is visiting and I met her yesterday. Apparently she is sick. So Liz did Library time. She said told the class that she had two daughters. When she mentioned Lillian August said “I know Lillian! She is in Mama’s class. Well, last year.” She actually has her this year as well. Liz read a story about a kid taking all sorts of animals to the library. She had puppets or stuffed animals for all of the animals. She then asked them what would happen if other animals, like bears or unicorns were brought to the library. August said the owl might peck holes in the wood shelves.

For checkout time he got If You Take a Mouse to School, which we’d read last year. I walked the 5 back to class. It was now just before 3 and two were picked up immediately. August and the other two sat on the rug and I read them Everyone Can Learn to Ride a Bike. The other two were picked up but we finished the book.

We went out and he ate a second lunch on bench. He finished his ravioli and ate the Cheerios. Rejected the apple as pesto had seeped to that side. He ate more today than I’ve seen him eat in a day for a long time. He talked about plants: “You know the palm with the pouch? It looks better with the protection…you can see it by the pool.” We talked about going over there and seeing, but Carly would be ready to go home before we did that. We got the bicycle book out of the classroom and read it on the bench. He stood inside watching Marion’s younger daughter playing computer games.

We walked around and he had me read the names of the kids in PKB. He said, “I love the word Louise.”It made him remember Max and Ruby and ask to read it later. We looked around, trying to decided which plants were bushes and which were shrubs. He was then anthropologist Zinnie. He told me to write down: “People play games a lot.” Carly found us and we headed home.

We got here at 4:20. He told us he likes picking slime and snot off his hands. He then sang happy birthday in Hebrew. It had been Anna’s birthday, he thought. He watched Max and Ruby and was laughing a lot: “I love it.” He played the anatomy app and told Carly, “I’d like to introduce you to this.” I noted his use of ‘introduction’ and how that had been a word of the day. He said, “Introduction box” and explained, “Where you store your minds of introduction. Like how good something is.” He has used the term ‘introduction box’ before, and it still didn’t make sense. I asked “Are you speaking English?” He replied, “Yes. Are you teasing me?”

He and Carly played Dragonbox Big Numbers and he said he really liked how fast she got the apples. She then left for the middle school curriculum night. We did more anatomy app, then we made tea out of the lemony plant we had picked the other day. We put ice in his and he drank it. We played a couple games from the Sesame Street app. One had us doing high fives with our eyes closed. When we got it down I realized that he was cheating and had opened his eyes. For the second game we got socks and underwear and threw them into circles made out of the straws, skeeball style.

We ate the teriyaki noodles for dinner. He then watched some BrainPop Jr. videos and I did the dishes. We listened to the Beatles’ White Album. He had some pie, then really got into taking photos with my phone. He decided he was taking photos of people littering. he had me act like I was dropping my plastic on the ground, then told me “It doesn’t break down…” And lectured me on garbage. Then, ‘Now I’m taking photos on kids playing good and kids playing bad.” And he had me play with his kitchen and make a mess so he could take a photo and tell me what I had done wrong. He went around the room taking photos of everything, saying it was all garbage.

We checked on Dragonbox Big Numbers for a few minutes to see his last building being built, then went up to his bath. He asked, “Dada, can I take photos of lots of things? Like if I see a tree that’s half dead we could remember to give it water.” “Like I can tell my teachers stuff with the photos.”

And then in the bath he said, “Remember those cars and trucks I sended out to kill animals?” He’s referring to when Jeff had picked us up at the airport and August made up robot cars that he sent out that were killing animals. Really random then and more random now. It is all on video, so no need to explain.

We changed the bedsheet, then read Picasso’s Trousers. He wanted a story from me, and I told him the old Puffin Rock story I made up. He didn’t remember it at all. It is about Baba trying to swim and getting caught in the waves. He had trouble getting to sleep with Carly being gone. He rolled around a lot and kept asking me questions. I sang a few songs. Finally, he started to get upset a second time and asked, “Could you look on your phone to see where mama is?” I said no, but told him I could ask mama to wake him up when she went to bed so he would know she was there. He said, “Okay” and rolled over. He fell asleep at 9:20 just as I heard Carly coming in the house.

The rolling thing: