Carly woke him up about 6:30. I made him oatmeal and Carly headed to work. He asked me to read, and we read Shivers 1 for 20 minutes or so until we got ready to go. We got walking at 7:36, which was good. August told me he likes to be late as it means he has less school. On the way to school I sang our whole “Ants Go Marching” song and “It’s OK”. And started to memorize the They Might Be Giants elements song.
Dropping him off went just fine, and I rode my bike home. I drove back in the afternoon as it was supposed to rain this afternoon. And it would. When I walked in he was helping clean up. When he saw me he came up and immediately told me he wanted to go to another country and never come back to Israel. And he wants to go today.
He was in a good mood though, and we headed to library time. Marion and Andrea said the kids had been crazy today—they had had Judson’s birthday, for one—but they were actually okay during library time and I was the only adult there besides Ilana. She read the book A Million Cats. She talked about how it was published in, I think it was, 1938. In it, a man brings back trillions of cats to his wife. I whispered to August asking what Mama would do if he brought home that many cats. He replied, “She would kill me.” For checkout time he chose All by Myself! by Aliki. On our way out, he told Ilana he was moving. I told her about his plan, and she said I had a lot of work to do this evening. I told her I was going to end up with moving dreams.
Back down at the classroom Andrea said that he’d had a great day, although he’d been a little sad about me leaving in the morning. She said they moving idea comes from them talking a lot about Sophia moving at the end of the week. There was a lot of talk about it today, and they did video messages for her. For August’s message to her, he told her that he would teleport her back to Israel. I told them how he has said he wouldn’t eat snack or lunch at first, but would eventually. They said he’d had cake, and I was reminded of his “all the treats in the world” line from earlier in the year.
We then went and saw Cassie and Taya. She had suggested he play with Taya in her classroom. Gabriel was also coming, so I figured the three of them could play together. August wanted to play with them, and they all decided on the classroom, as opposed to the playground. Once there, August wanted to play the brother and sister but Cassie and I were trying to get them to play on their own so we could each work. She and I first talked about the after school classes for several minutes. She had goldfish crackers for each of them, and August kept asking, 5 or 6 times at least, if his bag was his. He played a little with the office supplies for Taya, then Taya and Gabriel were watching something on Cassie’s phone and he watched a bit, but wasn’t very interested. He end up asking me to write random words on small post-it notes. I did that, and he would try to read them, then hang them up in a row on the wall.
All went well until we were getting ready to go. He wanted to leave the post-it nots on the wall, and I said that was fine. Taya said he couldn’t and started pulling them down. As I tried to stop her, August pushed her away a bit. She then came back and kicked him. She then managed to grab one of the post-it notes and was trying to crumple it up. I also had a hand on it and wouldn’t let her, and pried it out of her hand. She ended up throwing a fit on the floor. I told August we could take the post-it notes with us, and I took them down. August didn’t like this at all and got upset with me and refused to clean up, and kept trying to leave.
It was really windy, and on the walk over it had kept blowing his hat off. If the door was opened it would rip the big heavy metal and glass door open. So I was trying to stop him and also pack up our stuff. By the time we got to Carly’s classroom he was in pretty-full meltdown mode, telling me he hates me about 20 times and trying to hit me.
Carly got back and we headed to the car. It started to rain as we were walking. Carly had an umbrella, and I ran to get his bike and run to the car. I thought it was okay when I left, but suddenly it turned into a downpour with hail and wind. I was soaked by the time I got to the car, as were my Tom’s shoes. I had hoped Carly had stopped before leaving the school and I could drive back and get them As I was about to call, she opened the door. The wind had bent their umbrella. August wasn’t happy.
We made it home, and managed to get changed and do apologies. Carly did take him up for a timeout though when he said he wouldn’t say sorry to Taya and would hurt her instead. Back downstairs, they read All by Myself, I Been There, and The Hike (or whatever that book is called). He was then playing with the wire—the one we had trimmed to show him how it has two actual wires in it and we had used it with the electricity kit. He wanted to wires trimmed off now so it was back to the way he found it (albeit a bit shorter).
He had oatmeal for dinner, then I heated up his lunch and got his strawberries from lunch. However, unlike yesterday he didn’t eat any of it today. In fact, he didn’t have anything else before bed. Didn’t eat much today. He found birthday candles though, and wanted to push them in something. So he tried his pizza and broccoli. When that didn’t work, he put on in the styrofoam. He then wanted pineapple and mango to put on sticks and made a display of them on the Styrofoam thing. He ate the mango ones (so there was that) and I ate the pineapple ones. We lit and blew out the candle several times. He had fun spitting on it to put it out.
On the couch he said, “Because she’s full of butt-kicking awesomeness.” It’s a line he picked up from either Amulet or Shivers.
“It’s boring here now. I need to move.” “I just really want to go to another country and go to another house.” He then started to talk about his plan to move. We would go tonight, and we were going to move to Mexico and never come back.
Carly took him up and he played in the sink, then gave him a bath. I took over and was on the bed with him. He was really talking, and kept talking about his plan to move. Several times I pointed out how we couldn’t actually move, but he seemed to ignore me. He was going to sleep for 4 minutes, then we were going to wake him up and pack up our stuff and go to the airport. He was then jumping on the bed and said it hurt his brain: “I think I need to put shock absorbers into my positronic brain. Like woodpeckers.” And he told me, “I have more parts in my body than humans do.” He told me about only taking small bottles of liquids on planes. I asked where he learned that, and he said he had a picture of me teaching him that.
He wanted Carly to watch the video of his moving plan, so I took that down to her. He then went down to talk to her about it. As she and I were sitting on the couch, he took a photo of us with his tire pressure camera, then put it to his nose and said he was uploaded it and teleporting it through the internet to Oma and Opa. In talking about where he wanted to move, he asked us if Mexico had hurricanes or tornados, and said it needed to be the part that didn’t get them, “Cuz I’m afraid of tornadoes.”
I took him up to bed. He doesn’t like that the heater isn’t working as hard anymore, as he says he likes the high fan noise to put him to sleep. He suggested, “I think we need to clog the filter so it makes that noise.” He also told me that sometimes he wakes up and realizes he was playing in his dreams. He couldn’t give me details. We had lights completely out at 8:15. Did some singing, and thought he was about asleep. But at 8:34 he sat up and basically woke me up, asking, “Has it been 4 minutes yet?” He was ready to move. I told him we couldn’t actually go to another country that fast. He said he knew it would take more than 4 minutes—we were just getting ready now. No matter how I said it though, he kept focusing on that: it would take hours to get there, but we could get started in 4 minutes.
I tried to get him back down, but eventually he had to go downstairs and cuddled with Carly. He sort of talked a little about how he is sad that Sophia is leaving. Eventually, we took him back upstairs, and I left them by 8:55.
Escaping the wind:
Candles holders:
Dancing to the Korean song:
His plan to move to Mexico:
