Monday, December 3: preschool and a Hanukkah present

I baked a loaf of bread in the morning. It turned out the best one yet—roundest and most risen. He was up at 6:30. Between finishing the bread and getting ready and it being a Monday we got out a bit late. He wanted me to take a full container of sourdough bread but I didn’t have time to slice that much. I just put two extra pieces in with his snack for him to share with Marion and Andrea When I dropped him off I told him about it but didn’t know if he’d remember.

Drop off went quite easy and I walked home. When I picked him up it was just him and Eve left. It was coding week, and they were playing with the bee bot robots in the maker space. They played with those for a few minutes. Andrea told me that during a class discussion the word ‘malfunction’ came up and they asked August to define the term.

Carly had told me that Liz had a Hanukkah present for August and we needed to go up to the library at 3:15. We headed up there, but ran into Ms. Rena, the yoga teacher, on the way. She asked him to tell me what they’d done in class today. He said, “Well, nothing new.” He remembered most of the things: flower breathing, sun salutation, jumping, something I don’t remember, and namaste. He then told her that she shouldn’t have earrings because earrings hurt you. She talked about how it just felt like getting a shot. And he told her that he never wants to have earrings.

We got walking again and he told me that “You should meet Ms. Rena more.” He said he would turn me into a student.

We got to the library just in time. Both Liz and Lillian were there, and Lillian gave him a small bag. We also talked to Lillian about how much we loved the play. We went out and sat on the bench and opened the bag. There was a dreidel, a lovely note from Liz, a bag of chocolate coins, and some dreidel and menorah shapes with paint you could scrape off, along with stickers to put on them.

August spent a lot of time scratching off the paint part to reveal the shininess underneath. He also was talking about Hanako, and I realized it was because Hanukkah sounds liked Hanako. He kept calling it a “Hanako present” after I explained the difference. He said that the sound of the scratching was a carpety noise.

He then started a tiger cub game and we developed a full story that we acted out. I was in a jungle and a tiger cub came up to me and started cuddling. I was afraid that the mama tiger was going to attack me, but when it never came I concluded that the mother had been attacked by hunters. I took the cub to a nature preserve. He was happy there, but then it turned out that the mother had evaded the hunters, then went looking for her cub. She tracked him down and was able to jump over the fence into the preserve. She then dug a hole under the fence and they were both able to escape and go back to their cave.

We went into the library to use the bathroom, then August found a Book of World Records on the free shelf. We went out and found the page about the smallest mammal and he was then a bat. Carly showed up, and he played with his dreidel and was then telling us all about the letters (making stuff up, but Liz had told us why one letter is different from in the U.S.).

We left after 4:20. He was pretty crazy on the walk home, which was a sign of things to come. He was using the dreidel as a laser, making laser noises as he blasted everything. Then he told another one of his superhero stories where there the hero is “never heard from again.” We were home before 5.

This morning, as Carly went to leave, the key wouldn’t come out of the door. I had figured out to make it happen, but the lock was acting weird and I now tried to spray it with WD-40. August was needing 100% attention. He got the broom handle thing and was riding it like a horse, then wanted me to ride it behind him, calling it a “pony tail ride.” He was then chanting “Pony tail ride is the best.” He wanted to be the tiny bat again and we got the records book out. He was asking words, and reading random words when I asked him to. He kept wanting me to play with him.

Carly played tigers with him, and suggested they play school. He said, “Tigers don’t go to school. They learn from the mama.” He watched part of an episode of Max and Ruby, then had pasta with salmon, then seconds. He was then amping up the crazy. At one point I told him he was getting out of control and needed to work on calming down. He was a robot and responded with,’Turning off out of control mode.” He then took the switch for that mode off of him so it couldn’t accidentally get turned on again. But a couple minutes later he was jumping all over Carly and she said he was smothering her. He said, “Turning off smothering mode.” But a couple minutes later he was jumping on her and hit her in the face. She headed upstairs for a minute and he huddled in the corner of the couch, knowing he hurt her, and was sort of whispering/chanting “Turning off”

I was cooking more broccoli and mushrooms to make more cream sauce and he came and helped me use the hand blended to slice the mushrooms.

Carly came back down and bought the first Harry Potter book and tried reading it with him. He lasted a few pages, but it wasn’t grabbing him. A bit over his head still. He finished the rest of Max and Ruby, then we read more of Shivers. Words of the day were ‘shiver’ and ‘ecosystem’. We watched a couple of SciShow Kids videos, trying to figure out why you get shivers, but they only mentioned the cold-induced kind.

We got close to the end, but then he had an idea, and we were acting out the meat grinder story from the book, and a pirate ship that sinks into a volcano at the bottom of the ocean (not from the book). I had made the sauce, but Carly made the noodles. August was now eating noodles, pretending they were worms, and having me act out being the worms getting eaten.

Eating oodles which were worms. I was acting out the worms. I took him up for his bath. He played in the sink a bit, and said, “Flipping the entire industry on its head!” I explained what it means and he said it could be a word of the day. I called it the phrase of the day. I think it is from the ad for Shvr headphones that he’s been seeing recently.

We then went in on the bed. We talked about school, and I asked if all the kids know that he’s a scientist, like Eve does. He said, “Yep. I’m a scientist. And all the kids at school know I’m a robot…that can do anything.” He was then talking about Andrea a lot. He told another said super hero story and told me, “You’re supposed to clap every single time.” He had me tell them a bit earlier too. I had a hero that wasn’t very smart and didn’t take anything with him. He liked that one. I said we could do a whole book about superheroes that fail. Each story could have a moral. He liked that.

Earlier, I had asked what his favorite part of the day was and he said having their snack in the nature reserve. They had then collected snail shells and had been cleaning them out back in the classroom. We did our gentle head butting/pushing thing. He said it was ticklish on his forehead. Earlier, with someone, he had said that even thinking about tickling is ticklish: “it’s ticklish in my head!”

I took his full photo, and we got to talking about what it was for, and we watched the full video, at 4fps, of him from birth to now. In discussing something I mentioned the idea of best friends, and he said, “No! I will never be someone else’s best friend. Dada and mama are my best friends.”

Carly was coming up to go to sleep with him, but was taking a bit long. He was ready to sleep, and I lay with him and did a river visualization with him, imagining flying over the river. Actually, at first the visualization went over everything, but he requested the river go on forever, so we went back to a river. He was almost asleep when Carly came in.

When she came in she took him to the bathroom, as he had gotten up at 2am to use the bathroom last night. She told him she’d love him forever. He asked, “Even when you’re dead?” When she said yes he replied, “No you can’t. When your brain is dead it doesn’t work and you don’t have feeling.” And then he told her “The afterlife isn’t real!” And, “Soon, bacteria will eat you up and you won’t be seen.” Memories and thoughts, “those are lost.” I do not know where he got all of that, as we haven’t talked about this sort of stuff.

I got to see their tie dye shirts, which are now drying. They turned out quite well, particularly August’s. I left them just before 9.

Actually, in thinking about his ideas about death, I do know I’ve discussed it with him. But not for a long, long time. I only remember it when the issue first came up—way back in Korea. I told him death is like the opposite of being born. There was time before he existed, and there will be time after he exists. Maybe he’s held onto it since then, then added what he knows about bodies decaying, etc.

The preschool robots: