He was active during the night. He kept turning sideways and rolling towards the end of the bed. The first time he was using my feet as a pillow and I felt him about to roll off the end of the bed and I sat up to grab him. I don’t know how I sensed it was about to happen a second time.
He was up at 6:50. He raced downstairs to Carly. She talked about being independent, and he made an art project on his own. When I came down at 7:30 he was watching a Wild Kratts about salmon. When he was done he cuddled with Carly. She then tried to get him to do the independent thing again. He said he’d do a chemical at the sink, but he needed one of us to sit upstairs. Carly reminded him he’d been up there on his own for several minutes yesterday when he was taking to Vivian and Colin. He said that was different because it was entertainment. When she said this was entertainment too, he replied, “No, only talking entertains me.”
So I went up. The playing in the sink thing lasted a few minutes, but he regularly needed my help. He then wanted to wash old clothes with his chemical in the washing machine. He decided in the purple bucket would be okay, but downstairs he got distracted by the heater and seeing if we could throw things in the path of it and it would blow them.
Back on the couch he asked Carly to be mama and baby butter chunks. Then, mosquitoes. Then, “Can we be mama and baby wasps? So we could sting multiple times without getting dead?”
They then went outside. August was playing with my bicycle pump and wanted to blow up the tires, so I helped him do that a little. Carly also wanted to get another planter to go on the fence. August wants to fill up the big plastic planter that Shmuel left for us. I suggested it could be August’s own planting space, and he and I discussed where it could go. I went back inside and they stayed out. He had some experiment where he was pumping air into the bag. He was blowing them up like balloons. The first worked quite well. I went out to help with the peanut bag, but we couldn’t stop it from leaking too much.
His next activity was using the piece of rebar he found yesterday and the hammer to break apart our big rocks. Carly told him he had to wear goggles, then I helped and held the rebar. We had some success in breaking off chunks big enough that Carly would use them in the plants beds. I was back inside a few minutes later when he came in and cut paper and asked me to write ‘Warning. Electric Fence.’ He hung signs up on the inside and outside of our fence.
He then used the parts from the watering system to make some sort of watering system outside. When I went out he was making a drainage system that would go into one of the plastic pipes coming out of the concrete.
He asked me to make him oatmeal with mango. We made it together, but he didn’t want it microwaved at all. I had overdone the mango in thawing it, so that added a little heat, but not much. He ate the whole bowl. I was listening to the “Fractal Zoom” CD single on repeat. Actually 8 or 9 tracks.
He played a few minutes of Angry Birds and I went upstairs to brush my teeth and get ready for the day. Carly cut up strawberries and he was eating them, but claimed that some of the pieces had the hard middle in them and wanted those parts cut out. He claimed it was the ‘pit’ of the strawberry. Carly argued that strawberries don’t have pits, but he disagreed. He told us, “Parents doesn’t know everything!” When he had enough strawberries he ate some of his frozen stuff. He spent a few minutes arguing with Siri, trying to get Siri to “play every song in your database.”
Carly got us in major cleaning mode. I spent some time cleaning upstairs. When I came down he was starting another oven experiment, making ‘cookies’ of flour, baking soda, and chocolate chips. He wanted to add water to them and asked me to get the eye dropper. He was then trying to get water on them and told me, “Its harder than putting a baby to sleep.”
We then read some of of the first Shivers book. He then watched The Magic School Bus, the tree communication episode. He was upset when I wouldn’t give him more time. Carly took him, then I took over.
Back downstairs we took his cookies out of the oven (they’d been turned off earlier) and he tried them out. He said, “It’s kind of a good and kind of a bad snack.”
I worked on the bread dough, and he had rice and curry for dinner, then I made him oatmeal, which he ate outside. They washed the car and he made his drainage system.
They came back in and Carly talked about going to the nursery. She said they needed a pot. But not the other kind of pot. He picked up on the joke and asked,
“Pot? What’s the other kind of pot?” Carly just said it was a drug. He then told us he has all sorts of drugs in his laboratory.
He wanted to set up composting and wanted to put all the compost from the freezer in the bucket. Carly explained that we couldn’t just start it that way, but she emailed someone at school about getting a recycle bin. They went and did recycling and got materials (leaves, etc.) for his soil he’s trying to make.
Carly did quiche and he and I did art. We did a big picture together. He got the drill and put crayons in it for his “scratch pad”. We drew with that, and he drew where the machine kept chemicals and where it kept drugs. Carly and August painted with the drill while I did the crust of the quiche. Carly loved the drill painting and didn’t notice when August told her he was wiping the paint from his hands on the floor. They also they made popcorn.
We read more of Shivers. He kept repeating the “Son of a flotsam” line, so ‘flotsam’ became the word of the day. We ate quiche for dinner, and he had a little more of his cookies before Carly said that was enough—not because he was eating cookies, but because of all the baking soda it was kind of grossing us out.
On the couch we started reading The Musical Monsters of Turkey Hollow, then he used tape to hang up our art above the couch. I gave him his bath and washed his hair. He was asking questions about boxing (not sure how this has come up as a topic, but in one of the books we’ve read recently it referenced that one of the characters used to be a boxer) and we watched aa couple minutes of Muhammad Ali in the ring. He always shivers, but shuns warm water, the heater, etc. Today he actually told me he was cold, which is progress. Went okay though and we got his hair dried and got him ready for bed.
In bed he told me, “I hate princesses…I only like nice girls that AREN’T princesses.” We then read more of The Musical Monsters of Turkey Hollow. He said “Humph” again about something. He had said it several times today. Got it from one of the books. I left the two of them at 8:45. I went for a walk and finished listening to The Written World, then listened to more of Foundation.
Pumping up the bag:
Hammering the rocks:
Tasting his cookies:
A drainage system:
Crayon drill:
Crayon drill 2 – drugs and chemicals:
Flotsam song:
