He woke up at 6:45. He waited for me to get dressed and we went downstairs. The first thing he really said was, “If I finded a superglue bottle on the ground and it was full of superglue, could I squirt it all out outside?” He played around with tape and stuff as I got oatmeal ready. He watched a Wild Kratts about crocodiles and alligators and then got ready. It was a pretty smooth morning. He got a little upset when it was time to go, but he didn’t talk about not wanting to go. He just wanted me to read.
We were walking at 7:40. On the way to school we were singing our “Alligator” song. He started making up verses, including ones about a robotic drill and one about a motor. A little reluctance at the classroom, but he went and sat next to Ms. Rena all on his own. He knew we are going to get ice cream if he has a good day. And maybe get a present for Taya, if we could make it to Toys R Us by 4. He is convinced she needs a stuffed animal for her present.
I went to the library and sat and worked and listened in on the elementary parent coffee, which was about the elementary math curriculum. Preschool parents hadn’t been invited, so I figured it wasn’t very focused on preschool. At 10 I then went to the Parent Education Program meeting in the multi-purpose room. The speaker was Dr. Deborah Gilboa, and she was speaking on “Raising Resilient Kids”. It was good, but lasted over 2 hours. I walked home and worked for an hour and a half, then drove to school.
When I got there Lydia was outside, crying. I was afraid it had something to do with August, but apparently she was just missing her mom. When August ran out he was in a good mood. He told me he had a good day, but after rest time, on the playground, boy from PKB (Chen, I think) had taken his rock and he had hit Chen. We went inside. Marion had gone to the bus, but Rena was there. She said there had also been a time in the morning where he hadn’t been happy with her when she made him clean up blocks, and that he had threatened to hit Reia.
I told him we weren’t getting ice cream. He didn’t handle that too badly. We got going, and drove to Toys R Us. He fell asleep for the last 5 or 10 minutes. I carried him into the store, and he woke up and spotted a tub of stuffed animals. He looked through it and found a llama. That was it. Taya’s toy. He wanted something for himself, but I said no. But near the registers we found those snap bracelets, with the sequins that flip over. Only 2 dollars each. He got a blue one for Taya, and a pink one for himself. On our way out I stopped to get some wrapping paper from the wrapping station. He wasn’t sure we were supposed to take it without paying, and basically made me ask the security guard by the door. I did, and then he was okay with it.
He stayed awake on the way back. We stopped at the school and took a grocery bag in and went to the orange trees.I had run into Zoe and met her husband in the library earlier, and then saw her again as we entered the school. August and I were filling up the bag with oranges. Plenty to choose from. She had picked up her 1st grade son Lincoln from piano lessons at the school, and they came to get oranges too. On the walk back, August and I looked at the tractors and mowers, then he found a round filter of some sort that he said looked like a honeycomb. We stopped and checked Carly’s box and got a couple small packages, and then at the guard station we got the iHerb box.
We were home around 5. He opened the iherb package with his scissors. He took the plastic cushion things from the box and was popping them, all on his own. He then used tape to hang the strand up from the kitchen door to a cabinet, and called it a “Christmas decoration”. He was limping and said his right foot was bothering him.
We ate the last of the curry and rice for dinner, then we made a batch of popcorn, put butter on it, and watched a short documentary called The Search for Life in Space. He watched it, but claimed he wasn’t too impressed. We skyped with Carly, as he was looking tired and she was heading out to dinner with the group soon. It wasn’t a long skype, as he was grumpy.
He was hungry and wanted oatmeal. He wanted to chop mango, but we are out. He decided to try with pineapple, so he chopped that. He decided he didn’t like it too much with the pineapple, and I agreed, but he ate most of it. We finished reading The Return of Zita the Spacegirl. He got his circuit board from the monitor and found a couple screws on it we hadn’t taken out. I tried, but they were too tight, and he was a bit upset I couldn’t take them out.
We headed up for a bath and I mentioned not having a word of the day. He came up with ‘established’ and we discussed what it means. He had a rather screamy bath, and I think it was today that when I told him to stop screaming he told me, “You know I get upset when I take a bath!”
In the bedroom he asked me about my name as a kid and didn’t believe it was the same: “Did you grow up having the name Ryan?…No!…Cuz that’s an adult name! Like mama…” He played on the bed, and at one point hugged me and said, “Did you know something? I love you so, so, so, so much.”
He was speaking randomly through his wood sculpture/musical instrument, and said things like, “According to vacuoles and things being cancelled because of the United States of America and going to another planet.” And, “You know, if you ever find a roast human on the ground, the secret ingredient to make it sugary is salt.”
Brushed his teeth and got him to bed. He requested a visualization, and we did a visualization on visualizing ‘nothing’. He talked about colors he could see and fell asleep by 9:15.
New verses of the alligator song:
Snap bracelet 1:
Snap bracelet 2:
Popping packaging:
Cutting pineapple:
Playing with his sculpture:
Opening the Final Straws:
