Wednesday, October 3: start of the dada and Zinnie adventure and Carly on a WWW trip

Carly woke him up around 7, then took chocolate milk up to him. They came down free 7:20. Carly got going. As she was leaving I told him to say “Goodbye” and “Love you”, which he did. But then when I whispered “Enjoy your trip” he looked like he was going to say it, but then said “Ugh” instead.

He and I got walking at 7:50. He was a plant scanner, telling me “I can scan 90000 health problem…bugs…I send a chemical message. They send it back and I read it….” He also talked about eyes: “What your eyes use…the rods and cones…” And he asked “Do you know how long it will take a snail to calculate 92 trillion calculations in ones and zeros? 92 years!”

At school he asked Andrea about the schedule. I offered him an apple, which he declined, but Judson asked if he could have one, and I said yes. They were having another early meeting, so I was able to say goodbye and leave. Also, on the way to school I had asked if he could be walked up to dance class by his teacher. He said he could give it a try.

So I walked home at 8:15, then back at 3. I sat at a picnic table and studied Hebrew. Talked to Noah, Taya’s dad. Cassie was supposed to go on a trip as well, but was sick and couldn’t do it. Dance went several minutes after 4. When he came out he was actually a little early, as apparently he had headed downstairs before Amelia said they could.

He took his snack/lunch bags down to the PKB bench as someone was sitting on the PKA bench. I congratulated him for a full day – it was 8 hours without a check-in from me or Carly. That’s a first. He ate quite a bit and recorded a video telling Carly about his day. He had gone to art class in the morning and made a pinch pot. He also had creative movement. Andrea later told me that he went up to dance just fine. Oh, and they’d done freeze dancing, where they freeze when the music goes off. So I sang a song and he danced.

He used the camera and the lens to take photos of “interesting rocks”. We made our way up to the table across from the elementary office again and played there. He sat on the table, explaining how he was a robot, etc. He took photos of me, and time lapse and slo-mo videos of me picking up the backpack. He then did a timelapse as we walked out of the school to find the car in the parking lot. We forgot about his bike. He talked about how it was “inches and inches and inches and inches” to the car and got that on video.

We drove up to town and parked right in front of VIPizza. I had been thinking we’d take a pizza home, but he wanted to eat slices there. He really missed this place and eating our slices for lunch. We got three slices and a breadstick thing. He said, “They make the greatest pizza I’ve ever had. It is yummy.” When the owner came over to deliver the breadstick I had August repeat what he’d said. The guy gave him a high five. We used the bathroom at the pizza place for the first time – you have to walk around the back of the building to find it.

When we were done I packed up the extra pizza and we decided to go play at the park by the library. The single swing was open so gust started by playing on that, jumping on it and swinging on his stomach. We were in the middle of one of his games, and it was to the point where we were planning his birthday and he was putting up decorations. We wandered over to a bench, then across to the merry-go-round. We played another pretending game, which involved him having a magic school bus to take students on an adventure through a tree. He had special iPads for each of the students that allowed them to record what they saw: “And remember to take your special iPads with you!”

We were back to his birthday game as we left at 6:20. We would have stayed longer but I convinced him to get going. Along the way he told me that he loved me, then said something else. I asked about it, and he said he was being nice to me. He then made up a song, which again I thought was a song that he had learned but he said he made up. It went “I want to be nice to you, but I don’t know how to.”

At home he watched Pink Panther and ate pent butter crackers. Just after 7, as I was letting him finish up a Pink Panther story, Carly Skyped. He talked to her for a bit, but interrupting Pink Panther wasn’t the best time. He got to see her crazy students though. He then had chocolate milk and we read Izzy Impala’s Imaginary Illnesses in Skybrary. He went to the bathroom and got one of his chocolate treats, then we went up to his bath. He sat down in it and played around. I suddenly realized he wasn’t wearing my watch, which he’d had since the playground. I asked if he knew where it was and he immediately said, “I think I left it at the playground.” I looked at photos though and realized he had had it in the car. He then remembered that he’d taken it off on the rug downstairs.

He kept repeating “observation deck,” which is from The 13-Story Treehouse, and reciting lines from Plants Vs Zombies, and “Greetings, Agent Pink…Do you know how hard it is…” from the Pink Panther.

We brushed his teeth and went to bed and read a portion of Plants Versus Zombies that he requested (when they are back in the time of dinosaurs). He spilled his Cheerios, of course.

Turned off the overhead light at 9. Did one round of the preschool game in which he was a robot, then he sang a “I love YouTube” song. Turned off the lamp and sang Driftin, Yellow Submarine, I Dont Want to Live on the Moon, Yoshimi Battles the Robots, and Fake Plastic Trees. He was lying across the top to the bed along the headboard, his head close to me. Suddenly he asked “Can you make chocolate houses? Like that big? How about with machines?” He then said something about wanting to eat a chocolate house, then rolled all the way over to the edge, vertical now, and fell right asleep against the wall and pillows. It was 9:45.

Talking about his day: