Carly woke him up before she left. They spent some time on the couch before she left. I made us pancakes for breakfast, then he wanted to use the utility knife he knows I have up on a shelf upstairs. I taught him about using it and he carefully cut a triangle out of cardboard, then the knife went away. We got ready for school. He had plans for other things he wanted to do, and complained I always tell him we can do things after school.
Smooth walk to school. At some point, out of the blue, he told me, “Dada, even when I’m in 1st grade I’ll still hate Mind Yeti.” I reminded him he’d only listened to about 10 seconds of Mind Yeti before passing judgment. Thought we had left earlier, but we were just beating the bus kids in as they walked in the school. August hurried in front of them to get to class first. He was a bit hyper when he went in and to Ms. Andrea. I was able to remind him about ice cream and being able to read the new Hilo book (#5, which just came out yesterday) if he had a good day.
I rode home and worked, then rode back to pick him up. He came out and told me he had two hitting incidents. The first was with Ms. Marion when she took from someone, either him or Judson, one of those snap bracelets, which August said belonged to Sophia but that she had left when she moved. Kind of muddled, but didn’t sound awful. He then said that during Playball Reia had hit him, and he hit her back. She didn’t cry though, and Dion didn’t get either of them in trouble, so it didn’t sound too bad. Also, he had gotten hand stamps from Dion for doing good, so he was happy about that. He had intentionally smeared them on the back of his hands, but had also gotten it over his face, on his chin and under his nose. At first I thought something was wrong. When I talked to Andrea she said it had been a really good day for him, with just a couple of times they had to calm him down. As he and I were talking on the bench he asked me, “Can we talk about the good things now?” He had been sitting on my lap, facing me and tying my headphones together.
In the classroom he really fixated on a grapefruit again and wanted to take it and started to get upset when Andrea and I both said it needed to stay there. These are the same grapefruits he got into a confrontation with Eve and Lydia about last Tuesday. Andrea told me they had worked on their ponchos today, and she had noticed that he had a lot of symmetry to his.
August told me he knew about the fire today, and told me it was an electrical fire. I asked how he knew that, and he said the voice from the wall had said it. Carly later said there had been a lot of announcements today over the intercom. There had been an electrical fire in a chemistry classroom in the high school. It was put out, but there was some substantial damage. High schoolers were sent home early, but the rest of the school wasn’t. He went on to tell me about his fire control systems in his lab: “It has coison in it.” “It’s to keep away pirates or put out electricity fires.”
Since he’d had a pretty good, but not perfect day, I told him we could read the new Hilo book but not get ice cream, but he could have a small treat at home. He was talking about burning things, and it became a discussion of what you can and can’t burn, and ‘arson’ was a word of the day, followed by ‘vandalism’. Near the park he got off the bike to look at an ad on the ground. It was for a gutter installation service, and he was excited about it being on the ground, and said, “That was useful!” We are now supposed to call that number if we need new gutters. He left it on the ground though so that other people could find it.
He was riding on his own, and went fast so I had to run. He said he was making me exercise, and I said he was pacing me. He said ‘pacing’ was the “Word of the day!”
We were home at 4:10. He got out a string cheese by himself and I taught him how to open it. He had had one in his lunch, but a teacher had opened it for him. Oh, and in his box today I found a piece of paper with rubber stamps on it, and the words ‘DADA Love’. I always write ‘Love, Dada’ at the bottom of the Lunch Robot cartoons. But he said that he hadn’t made this.
He had some toast and chose the Kinder Egg for his treat. The toy was a little transforming robot/spaceship. We read the Superman book, then Hilo 5. It is really good (and he did a lot of laughing), but shorter than the others, and has a huge cliffhanger ending…and the next volume doesn’t come out until next January. Cruel, really. I did not tell August that part. He hadn’t been happy to find out that it would be a year until the next Shivers book.
Carly had gotten home at 5. He was hyper with her, then she went upstairs and we finished the book. He told me about using something to make texture in clay and said that he had done it “One time to make a house with Ms. Marion.” Carly came down and we had dinner. I gave him a timeout when he was saying ‘butt’ and wouldn’t stop.
We went down and played with the magnet blocks, making houses in different ways and putting small things in the rooms. He brought up the term ‘pain in the neck’ and said it was a word of the day when I explained what it meant. He said he was being a pain in the neck to Judson but wouldn’t explain what he meant by that.
When he went to the bathroom he wanted Carly to watch behind him. He talked about liking Vicky more, but said, “I still want to paint her bones…I wouldn’t take her muscles. She could still be alive…I could use bags of blood to keep her body running.”
She took him up for his bath. He didn’t do well and hit her, so we said we couldn’t re-read Hilo today. She had him do a paper, drawing what happened, and then writing words on it together, like they do at school, then they played on the bed.
I took over while she took a shower. He was drawing faces on the back of his paper. I asked if one had big teeth, but he said, “Thats just an old grandpa” so it has a beard (with two points). He said he wanted to read Elephant and Piggie books. I looked, and they aren’t available digitally. He was frustrated I couldn’t get them right away, but I said we could get them at the library.
Carly took over and I said good night to them about a quarter to 9.
Testing out the bicycle helmet:
Riding his bike and talking about riding an airplane:
Drawing faces 1:
Drawing faces 2:
Jumping from the bed:
