It was a very rough day in some ways, but made good progress in others.
Carly got him up before she headed to work. When she left I distracted him by reading We Are in a Book! He then watched an episode of Berenstain Bears. As we got ready to go he told me about his battery charging machine. You put one in the middle that is empty and two on outside and they charge the one in the middle.
As we were hurrying out the door to make sure we got to class before the bus kids, the meter reader came to the gate. A quick process, but it gave August another thing to be interested in. Talking about power usage, referring to his labs all around the world, he said, “So when I leave my laboratory in a place I always turn the power off so I don’t waste electricity.”
We got to class and filled out one of the sticker charts that Carly had printed out. The chosen treat for today was ice cream. The other kids came in and I said goodbye. Smooth so far.
I went and worked in the library for awhile, then went over to the PTA meeting. The normally dull PTA meetings got a bit interesting, as Anna complained that none of the parents affected by the cafeteria company (last year’s company is threatening to sue a bunch of parents who claim they don’t owe money) showed up for the meeting today. That led to a big discussion of how to make the meetings more relevant. For one, the principals now attend and give reports, but they basically just explain what he’s been sent out via email. Which is step forward from last yer, when they didn’t even want to address the PTA. Anyway, I ended up talking to Mark, Anna, and Herschel until 11.
At 12:20 I went down and waited for them to come out at lunch. I went in when I heard crying. Andrea had just accidentally closed his fingers in the door. They told me that he had, generally, had a really good day. They had had fun over in the nature area by the middle school (Carly later said she had seen him) and had spent a lot of time in the maker space and had made an animation of his bug (although I don’t know what the bug is).
However, near the end of the day he had had an issue with Simone. That incident had resulted in two red stickers, which meant he couldn’t get ice cream. When he heard this he really got upset, and as I took over with him he said mean things about Andrea, and then to me. Marion and Andrea had told me they had found that the green stickers weren’t sticking, and they needed to get new ones. I later learned from August that the whole Simone incident happened because Simone took one of his green stickers. Also, there was no crying.
Anyway, it was very close to being a very different day: if the stickers had stuck, or I’d picked him up at 12 like they first said and not 12:30 as Marion revised it to in the morning, if I’d gone in a minute earlier and he hadn’t gotten his fingers pinched. As it was, it went from being a very good day to a rather rough rest of the day very quickly.
We drove home and he had a slice of peanut butter toast and a full half an apple. When I peeled it he asked me why I had done that. Trying to be a bit more strict about home time but also being productive, I said that he first needed to make a card/picture for Andrea and Simone before I would play anything else with him. It took him awhile to want to do this, but eventually he drew a picture of Andrea wearing a space suit, and a picture of him and Simone finding treasures together. I would then write his words explaining what the picture was, and the words he said for his apology.
The picture for Simone was a process: he first said that he and Simone were finding treasures together in a dungeon. Which was fine. The prompt from me was to draw a picture of him and Simone having fun together. But he drew the picture of himself with a sad face. So I had him do a second draft. This one was good, but then as he explained it he drew bars over them, and they were trapped in the dungeon. He was getting into story mode, and losing the thread of the apology. So he drew a third draft. This time, he gave them funny looking bodies, which was okay. Then as we were getting the words, he explained that a door slammed and he drew bars again.
The fourth time was the charm, although even that took some doing. He drew them again, but gave them funny eyes and swirly mouths and said they were “stunned”. At first he said it was because they had found so much treasure, which was fine, but then he was in story mode and insisted they were stunned because the door had slammed, trapping them. I finally talked him back around to the purpose and he agreed they were stunned because they had found so much treasure.
We were doing better, but the next step was wrapping the big chocolate egg for Carly for Valentine’s. He couldn’t handle not getting a surprise himself, and we went for a timeout upstairs. I initially stayed out of the bedroom, but after a couple minutes I asked if he wanted my help calming down. He said something like, “No calm thing!…Yes please.” I held him on my chest and did the rocking back and forth at calming (not crazy) speed. He was then just crazy for a few minutes, rolling around and quoting Hilo randomly. That turned into a game of stacking all of the pillows on him.
I started laundry, then we headed downstairs and he ate more apple, which earned him another slice of toast. I was on the couch, and he started pressing sideways against my legs so they would act like a spring and push him back to the side. He wanted that more and more, although I was afraid he’d trip and go flying across the floor.
He got on the couch and opened the Hilda book we’ve been reading, and spent a few minutes just paging through it by himself, humming as he did so. He found the bookmark, then looked for another minute before asking me to read it. We read the rest of it, then he started a brother and sister at school game. An alien comes down (a robot) and warns them about something. But then he discarded that and we ended up shopping with our parents and sneaking candy into the cart for our secret underground cave. We wore suits that hid us, and hid in the cave eating the candy. All out of his mind. Eventually I suggested we sneak out together, and we went out for our real walk over to the mall at 3:40.
It was really windy. He pointed to the flower that Carly and I had talked about last time and said, “The plant your like only grows in Israel and only in winter…” And told me a bunch more about it. He told me we should get the flowers before they are gone. On the dirt path part to the parking lot he asked why plants don’t grow there and ‘compacted’ became the word of the day.
Shopping is difficult for August now, as he wants everything. First we went to the pharmacy and got contact solution. He was tempted by beverages and snacks. Then we went to Kravitz for stickers and found those and another notebook for me for Lunch Robot. He wanted other stickers, then scissors (remembering that Carly said we needed three more pairs so we could always find them), and a few other things. Got out with just what we came for.
We went and sampled things at the health food store. Along the way he also wanted something from the jewelry stand (it is nice, and the woman makes it right there) and longed for the candied things at the stand outside Tiv Taam.
He was doing well though, and I gave him a green sticker for doing so well. Tiv Taam was a bit too much though. We went for things like milk and fruit. I told him he could suggest healthy things and we could discuss them. We did end up with a carton of coconut milk, the cheese crackers, and a kiwi to try. He was asking for a lot, and the last straw was a plastic juicer thing that you push into an orange or lemon. He got upset about a no on that, and I almost gave him a red sticker for that, but he was able to calm down and not get one.
On the walk back we discussed the big electrical poles and wires. He wonders why they are different shapes and sizes. We were home at 5. Carly took him upstairs to wrestle. He did a good job talking to her. Can’t remember what she said he said though. Back downstairs he confused her with the totally random sentences, “Uh, can you give me a day off today? I have a frog butt problem.” The words ‘frog butt’ are from Hilo, but the rest is random.
He had a timeout with her over something he said, then he came down and ate soup. He claimed it wasn’t soup becuase it was too think. When Carly asked him what he would call it he said, “Sludge.” He did the rocking thing with me on the floor, this time on silly speed. We read some of King of the Sky, one of the books I checked out, then he ate the rest of the soup and then had a cup of the coconut milk, which was much better than what was in the coconut. Still not straight-from-the-coconut-in-Indonesia good, but much better.
He didn’t like when Carly said it was bath time, and she got him to practice saying “I don’t like that” over and over. She gave him a bath, then got him to help with putting pillows away a bit. Thet read Pippi Longstocking and he had Cheerios. And he had apple slices with peel on it. He didn’t say as much, but I think maybe he’s had apples with peel on them at the shared snack at school.
I came up at 7:30 and she left us ten minutes later. I brushed his teeth. He volunteered, “Why do they make literacy group too easy just teaching letters all the time?” “The card rhyming thing I told you about was too easy.” I asked him what the best part of the day at school was, and he said, “My friend.” When I asked which one he said, “I can’t tell you.” He then said he was the only one that could see the friend. Not exactly an imaginary friend though: he was referencing the elves in Hilda that only she can see. We talked about school some more, and he said, optimistically, “Maybe I could choose not to hit.”
For a visualization he asked for a piece of dry skin. So we visualized being a little piece of dried skin that is on someone’s forehead and has a view of the world like Hilda riding a giant. It is then covered by a hat, then falls off, is on the floor, is vacuumed up, and ends up turning to dirt in a landfill. Had lights off at 7:55 and I sang a couple songs and he was out by 8:05.
Squished with the pillows:
Looking at a book:
Being Brother and Sister and hiding:
Frog butt song:
