He was up before 6:30. He was with Carly for awhile, and was singing a little jazzy song about me for awhile. He had Cheerios and watched Wild Kratts. As we were getting ready for school he suddenly asked for oatmeal. I made a small bowl for him using the last of the oatmeal and we hurried out after that, walking at 7:44. On the way to school he told me bout a bunch of inventions, including one that was bolted to the wall, talking about how it was attached, before he revised it and it was on the roof. I think it had a lot of voice commands. Then he had a rocket that would slow down traffic (he had asked why traffic was slow by the Israeli school) by either getting in the way, or being a distraction. It didn’t have a button to slow it down, although he said it had a brake, but the brakes were reverse rockets.
A couple of time he forgot it was a half day. He asked again what was after rest time as we went down the stairs. When I reminded him he said something like, “Oh, a short, easy day…I can work in my lab at school the whole time.”
I went to the library for a few minutes, then met with Stephanie and Johnell about writing group (or really the first meeting) in the staff lounge, after getting a cappuccino. Johnell and I then got a table in the library and sat there until we picked our kids up at the end of the day. I was able to work on typing and Sabeel work and also listen/watch a bit of Cat’s sessions.
I went and picked him up. It was him, Eve, and Judson today after school. Andrea took them into the back room. August and Eve put on safety goggles as they played with playdough. August figured out that electricity doesn’t go through playdough as he tried to add it to a circuit that Judson was playing with.
We got going, and I gave August one of the cereal bars on the way. He said he liked it more than the other bars. As we exited the school he was explaining to me how he could eat concrete and other things. He spotted a small bolt stuck in a bush and stopped to get that.
We headed north into town. He talked about how he made a car that could shock people, but he assured me it had warning signs on it, and he described signs we’ve seen for danger, including the one of a guy getting shocked in the monitor we were taking apart. Of himself he said, “I should put a sign on it that says warning this robot doesn’t just have spit. It also has snake venom.” He also described a fleet of metal-detecting robots he uses to find gold. Kind of like his fleet of mail delivery dogs.
He told me he knows how to start and zip his sweatshirt. He’s done it at school, he says. And he walked a good amount of the way into town. Sadly, VIPizza was closed. August was grumpy about it, but was very excited when I suggested going to the new restaurant/cafe in the mall. We headed there and found a table inside. He chose a peach smoothie to drink and wondered if he’d ever had a peach one before, and I got a cappuccino. There were several Asian dishes listed, but as I asked if one and then the next was spicy she informed me they all were. So, we got the sweet potato raviolis.
He came over and sat in my lap and we read Monsters Beware! He liked the peach smoothie but wasn’t too excited about it, although by the end he finished it. He really liked the glass it came in, which looked like a pineapple. He curled up in my lap and actually told me he was sleepy. When the food came he just ate a bite of it. He didn’t complain at all, but he didn’t really like or want it. So I ate half, and would take the other half home to Carly, who had them for dinner.
We read more, then eventually decided to get going. He wanted oatmeal at home, but didn’t want to stop at the store to buy any. Finally, he relented. We were going to go downstairs. He remembered the bulk foods store and asked to go there. He said he remembered that they had oatmeal, and he asked if we could get the nuts that Carly wouldn’t like. I said it was funny that he suggested that, because I had joked to Carly that we would do that when she was gone next week. But when I told August we could wait until she was gone, he told me “If you can do it now you shouldn’t wait…my teachers told me that…Or maybe you told me that…” In the face of a lesson on procrastination I realized he had me.
So we went down there and he had fun doing the scooping. We got a container full of oatmeal, and a paper bag of cashews. He also spotted large peanuts in shells, and we got some of those. He saw coconuts as well, and when he told Carly about the store later he said he was going to get one the next time we go.
We got walking and stopped to try the peanuts. They were kind of a disappointment. August liked cracking them on his bike, but the skin doesn’t easily come of these. Even when we laboriously scraped it off (which was kind of fun) he decided he didn’t like the taste. I gave in and let him try the cashews instead of saving them for when Carly was gone. A good decision, however, as he really liked them. He ate several on the way home.
We were home at 2:40. We opened the Christmas card from my parents, which came today. It is a 3-D card and he liked that. We read Breathe. He was in awe that the author had written something to him in the front. In the book, he read “yoga studio” with no problem. We then finished Monsters Beware! and he ate a lot of cashews.
He wanted to have the new oatmeal, so he had a bowl. It seemed to make a creamier oatmeal than our usual Quaker Oats. He used the two-sided sticky stuff and hung things on the wall. He stuck his music box, one of the glass eyes, and the passport photo of himself on the wall to the right of the kitchen door.
Carly got home at 3:55. He went outside with her and hammered open some peanuts for her and me. She wasn’t too fond of these peanuts either. He watched some Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, then had a Swedish pancake that Carly made. I made a second, but it fell apart. He ate it anyway.
The two of them read Breathe. He was then in on the toilet, talking about his lab. He wouldn’t tell me the passcode to his lab. I kept trying to ask him different ways and he wouldn’t let it slip. He did, however, give me the code to his “robotic gym.” I went up and folded laundry. They played school and did art, making a really cool picture that started as separate machines and melded into one, then tracing his hand and decorating them.
He and I read The Legend of Zita and ‘stray’ became another word of the day, followed by ‘vacuum’ when he asked about what was in space. He had some difficulty accepting a what a vacuum is, but we talked about it for several minutes, using several different examples to talk about density, and I think it was starting to make sense to him.
I took him upstairs and he mixed a new chemical in the new container that came with my toothbrush head today. In the office, he started dancing, watching himself in the mirror on the wardrobe. He told Carly to dance like him: “You need to do every move that I do.”
He said goodnight to her. In on the bed he joked, “What’s around you in space? Tiny microscopic mes. Tiny microscopic Zinnie’s.” He told me he has a sore throat and had some water. We finished The Legend of Zita and read Tar Beach, another one of the books I got from the free shelf at the library. It is about living in the city (New York, or the such) on a really hot day. A nice find.
I had lights out at 9. After being quiet for several minutes he said, “Dada, when we go to another country; like Greece, we need to go to a hotel where they have refrigerators that get colder and warmer.” I don’t know why, as he was quiet again and then fell asleep just father 9:10.
Napkin writing:
Scooping peanuts:
Can I have another cashew?:
Art with mama:
Talking about their art:
