Friday, November 30: Half day, babysitters, and me to Jerusalem

August had perhaps his fullest day of interacting with other people, outside of family, ever.

He came down just before 6:45 and cuddled on Carly’s lap. They played the vet game and he was animals who had lost their parents (this comes from the Emmo game, as he was the baby emmo after the mama was eaten). ‘Orphan’ became a word of the day. He watched one Berenstain Bears about the changing of the seasons. He went to the bathroom, then changed the temperature on Carly using his powers. In a robot voice he said, “Shooting out ice leaves…each one exactly 40mg.” Eve had written random letters on the chalkboard and Carly noticed. August said, “amnecacogs…that’s one of my words!” He had some chocolate milk before we left, and told me how he can use his powers to make things warmer or colder and he also had “thickanator…thinanator.” They could make things like soup or milk thicker or thinner.

We drove to school and I parked outside the gate to let them out. It was close to 8:40. We discussed the schedule one more time: Carly dropping him off, half day, lunch with her, an hour with Gabby and Jill, then me. I drove to Sabeel to meet with Marc and Omar. Meeting went well, and we clarified a lot of the year 2 process and timeline. I left there right at noon, and got to the school right after 1. Friday traffic is wonderful.

When Carly picked him up, he was gluing things into big letters that made ‘MAKER’ with Eve to decorate the letters. They had had something on skewers for their snack today and one of the things they were gluing in was the skewers. That was his idea. Carly asked if he wanted to do this sort of thing at home and he said no. But he suggested cutting his hair and gluing that. Before they left the classroom he went and got a strip of paper, drew a pattern on it, and hung it on one of the strings from the ceiling.

They went to the cafeteria for lunch. The cafeteria was out of the pizzas they were supposed to have. He had a cheesy bread thing instead. Carly needed to go to her classroom to get her lunch, so Cassie sat with him while she did that. Then, he talked to Mikaela, mainly about the art he sent to her. Said he couldn’t tell her because it was abstract. She said, “That’s my favorite kind of art.” He told her he would sometimes tell her and sometimes not. He also saw the preschool teachers eating lunch and wanted to go over to them. Carly said he could just go say hi, and that’s what he did.

She then took him to Gabby and Jill at 12:30. I got to campus at 1, and was near the entrance when Dana, a math teacher, came in carrying her 2-year old son. She asked where they were, as she was switching off with the babysitters when August was done. I went down with her to the playground but they weren’t there, then they weren’t in Carly’s classroom. We headed over to the cafeteria, and found them on the other side of the fence, outside the high school, looking at plants and stuff. His first reaction was that I was early. “It was supposed to be an hour!” When I explained that they needed to watch the other kid, August said I should watch the baby and he would stay with the girls. The boy (Yoder?) wasn’t doing well with separating (reminded me what August was like) and we left Gabby with August and Jill and I went with her back to Carly’s classroom where we tried to tempt him with Puffin Rock on the iPad. He went into full cling-to-mommy mode. She didn’t know what to do, as she was supposed to be at a meeting. I said we could handle a sad child, but it was her call. Eventually, she couldn’t do it and Jill and I went back to Gabby and August.

We found them in the Nature Reserve, looking at a tortoise. Gabby spent about 20 minutes teaching us about the tortoises (they were tagged, and are about 5 of them, which they call all of ‘Frank’), and papyrus, and an endangered type of date tree. About 1:50 we headed back with them over to the middle school and said goodbye.

As we were walking, August said “Hey, Gabby. What does the tortoise do when no one is taking care of it?” He thought it might be lonely. And, actually, it was cute as he kept calling them Grace, but Grace was gone on the camel trek.

After we got our stuff we took some time deciding what to do. August had wanted a Dada Zinnie adventure, but he wanted to get a treat, and we couldn’t decide on a place, since most things were closed or about to close. In the end we went to our bench to have some of our snack. He spotted the big jug for donating money for diapers and wanted to put in the 10 shekel piece he was carrying (part of the money for snacks that Carly had left but they hadn’t used). I let him donate that, then when he wanted more I found two 10 agora coins for him to add.

He then started a game where he was an orphaned emmo. We the read more of our re-read of Amulet. A little before 3 we went into the library to check out volume 2 for the weekend. Liz showed us the dreidel collection they had out, and came and spent about 15 minutes on the floor with us playing with them. August asked her to spin the dreidel on his back, which is funny as he is so ticklish. I also got to use the word ‘contradictory’ with him, as he simultaneously asked us to spin as many as we could, but was then chomping them up as soon as we spun them.

He requested we buy him a dreidel: “One with candy in it.” He had been paying attention when Liz mentioned all the different kinds of dreidels they sell here (she also explained why the letters are different on dreidels here as opposed to in the U.S.). We also talked to her about the musical, and that Ivan book that both her and her daughter Eve (not the one in his class) had recommended to us. As we walked out the library, August was saying “Have a good weekend, door.” And to other objects.

Back on the bench we played a preschool game, during which he decided, as robot Zinnie, that there should be glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling of the preschool so they have something to look at during rest time. It reminded me that we’ve had a couple other ideas for things they should do at school: take in pond water, other things for the microscope and draw/color mandalas.

The teachers finished their meetings and Dudley walked by and asked August if he wanted some chocolate. A minute later he went in the library and came back out with two small Twix and a chocolate ball for him. Carly came out, and August played with the big cylinders that are new and meant for recycling. Carly went to go pack up. We went back to the memos/silkworm game, with a class having both as class pets and keeping the worms in a terrarium, which was a word of the day.

Carly came back and we left. At the guard station he stopped at the window and chanted “uba shaka lala” to the guard, then gave him a high five.

At home he watched Berenstain Bears. I put the za’atar pizza, left over from my meeting, in the oven. He ate a couple slices, but then got a bite with too much za’atar. He said he’s never going to eat za’atar pizza again, and only have it on popcorn. In Berenstain Bears there was a commercial for a coloring app—featuring drawing mandalas. We downloaded it, and read some Shivers while it did. He then played with it until we reached the end of the free trial. It then appeared to be a rip off ($6 a week), so I found another app that was just for mandalas.

He played a couple of music apps, mainly doing the synthesizer, and had me copy the waveform/rhythm. Then he had me take a slo-mo of the waveform. He said, “We’re the Slow Mo Guys.” He then made more mandalas in the second app.

I took him up for his bath and he did a lot of playing in the sink. Carly came up and actually washed him. After his bath he played with the ball of string, then we went upstairs. I let him do a few more mandalas up on the bed. He told me, “I’m exercising my brain.” We read more of Amulet, but didn’t finish the first volume. He was still hungry and we decided on peanut butter toast. I got up and plugged in his iPad. He then asked, “Have you finished making my toast yet?” I literally had not left the room yet.

We went down and got his toast, then read some of Shivers and ate his toast. Brushed his teeth, he said goodnight to Carly, and we played an emmos game. He was asleep at 8:50.

Carly and I talked about how he doesn’t talk bout preschool, and how he compartmentalizes what he will do there and here (like the art things he will do there, but not here, and vice versa). I said his rules on preschool are ‘What happens at preschool stays at preschool.’ And ‘The first rule about preschool is you don’t talk about preschool.’

And at one point he had complained about pinnochio/the bowl and about how we got the better gift. He then recited everything I had told him about pinnochio. Like, one time, many weeks ago.

Wanting to stay with the girls: