He got up after our usual get-ready-for-school alarm went off at 7:20. I got up but was still upstairs and heard him telling Carly how he stores stuff underground so that we can actually have more stuff than the preschool. It isn’t his lab though, as that is even deeper, in magma. He didn’t eat much oatmeal, but wanted a treat that we’d talked about yesterday. He watched a Halloween Berenstain Bears episode, then ate some apple. He told us about his compost machine. He said it could take rotten food, and that “it neutralizes it”. He seemed to conflate it with adding nutrients, but also seemed to know that that meant getting rid of the odor.
He’s been saying “Huh” a lot recently. A little concerned it is a hearing issue, but he’s also been doing it as a joke to annoy us, so hard to tell. We played with legos and added to the lego tower. He was adding guns, and explaining what they all did. More of what he learned from Simone at school. He said of the tower,”There’s two awkward levels.
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I let him destroy it, then he finished the rest of his half of the apple. He chose a cookie and ate it while we watched part of the Formula E race. He lost interest in that after a few minutes, and went in the kitchen, where Carly was cleaning out the fridge. He wanted to make a soup, and got a big pot. He used a lot of the getting-old-but-not-moldy ingredients: almond butter we didn’t like, curry paste that was too old, etc. It was quite a mixture.
He boiled it, and Carly headed to the store. We watched a little more racing, and ‘rookie’ became a word of the day. When he wanted to go do something and I was still watching he told me, “Remember, screen time. We can’t look at screens for the entire day…dada, I’m making a point.” He wanted to play with the Duplos. I said we needed to clean up the Legos first and we started with a robo-clean up. He had wanted to do the Duplo zip line again, but he changed his mind and wanted to watch me build a tower instead. He told me, “I’m kind of made for supervisor.” He found a random piece of paper and said, “I’m gonna read what the old village used to say…if anything’s hard you need the supervisor. The supervisor’s August.”
We discussed Korea memories. He said he had pictures in his head of not going to school and taking naps in the backpack, and the back of my head and singing songs. I kept adding to my tower and at one point he said, “Wow. Really lovely.” He told me that even though he’s a robot, his brain is still developing. It has ten parts, but will have billions more. When my tower got taller and taller (I was trying to get it to the ceiling) he made a safe room under the table and chairs using pillows and watched from there. I made it, and he was excited to show Carly when she got home.
He tried the new hummus with her, then made an earl grey chocolate tea for me using the french press. He talked about the pieces of tea that wouldn’t float up anymore and asked for that word again. He meant ‘waterlogged’. We’ve used that word a few times, but I don’t know if it’s made it as a word of the day.
He buried Carly in pillows on the couch and I went up to take a shower. When I came down they were looking at checkers, but he wanted her to play by herself as it was a winning game. He got a timeout for repeatedly grabbing her and touching her shirt, which he really likes the feel of (a sensory thing).
I took him out for a walk at 12:05. He was singing lines from “Hey Man”. Our goal was to find more things to take apart. We walked around the Holly block, but no luck. So we continued on up to the Snakes and Ladders Park. He went on the play structure, then the spinny thing. He asked what it was actually called, and the best I came up with was what he had said: ‘spinny thing’. He ate the corn crackers, then we played the luggage game on the jeep. He had us do a quick game of snakes and ladders, then he played on the motorcycle and I got some great photos of him.
We got walking at 1:20 and headed north to get tofu, which Carly had forgotten earlier. We went over to one more recycling area. Nothing to take apart, but there was a squeegee he wanted to take home. I convinced him it was broken. Then I spotted a caterpillar. We had the bug case, and we put it in that along with a weed I pulled.
We walked up to the grocery store on the corner. Along the way he saw something that at first he thought was interesting, but turned out to be boring. I taught him ‘deceiving’ and that was another word of the day. We got the tofu and a roll of crackers, and he went and got a strawberry yogurt. Again, the same kind he remembers from when we moved in. He said it was healthier than the chocolate pudding, but still really sugary.
We headed home at 1:45. We saw dark smoke off to the east. He said it was “a really fast Coca-Cola factory” making a lot of pollution.
He carried and watched the caterpillar the entire way home and talked about it. At home he showed it to Carly and told her everything about it, like how we’d seen its feet. She had been making nutty noodles, and we ate some and watched a little more of the race. He went outside when Carly said it was time to tear out the next papaya plant that is dying. She tried to help him saw it, but was too nervous, so I took over.
He came back in after awhile and we watched the end of the race, then read a couple chapters of Hilo #5. He wanted something to take apart, and I couldn’t think of anything we had. He pretended to give me something and said, “Fake oxygen in you to make you think harder.” He found a paperclip and bent it and put it in the drill. Carly watched a video about woodworking with kids, and I went up to do some work. At one point I heard him come in the house and yell to me, “Dada, mama’s taking a long time to saw this piece of wood. Ha.” I heard him from upstairs. He didn’t wait for a response and went back outside.
After awhile they came back in and he came upstairs and told me they were going to the hardware store, and I wasn’t supposed to look outside because I couldn’t see what they’re working on until they’re done. I helped them get ready to go, and he took the caterpillar. He said, “We’re showing the caterpillar around the town.” He had talked about showing it our house when we were walking home. He then hummed “Better Not Wake the Baby” to it
They went to the hardware store and were back at 4:50 and kept working. I know they got a saw, a clamp, and some screws. At about 5:30, as I was heading down to see how it was going, they came inside. He had gotten upset when a screw kept getting stuck and couldn’t calm down. I went in the bedroom and did as he had said, just blocking the door so he couldn’t get out or really hurt me, and stayed calm. It worked and the whole thing, including processing, took no more than 10 minutes.
He had more nutty noodles, then upstairs he found me sorting through some papers. There were some empty file folder sorts of things and he claimed one and put it down with his stuff in the closet. We then wrestled and did the time machine game on the bed. He asked me to tell a story, and specifically requested the preschool and the dragon egg story. Except he changed the ending: instead of the dragons destroying the school, he initially said it should be the class pet. But then he changed his mind, and the dragon rather unintentionally destroyed the school, and the teacher rescued it and took it home as a pet. When the dragon destroyed everything it included “even the disco ball.” He then wrote a further ending to the story: “Then she realized she doesn’t know how to take care of dragons, so she takes it to someone who writes stories about dragons, and they say ‘I don’t really know about dragons’ so she takes it home and studies it. And she realizes it looks weird.” Then she let it go to live on its own.
For bath time he went to the bathroom, then wanted to fade color out of his shirt by putting it in hot water. He said Carly had let him do this with towels. I told him that must have been brand new towels, but he wanted to try it with his shirt anyway. So he did that. He then had his small washcloth and we did a funny faces game, holding it in front of my face, then having a different funny face. I washed him (he’s handling baths so much better now) and then he talked about making a chemical and having us drink it and it would make us do anything he said. He wouldn’t have to say please or thank you, and he could say it in a grumpy tone and we’d still do it. He thought that was pretty funny.
In the bedroom he put on his pajamas and found a fuzz on his leg. He said an elf put it there: “Elves play tricks on their owners sometimes.” He explained that owners can ban them if they want, if the tricks are too mean. He was getting “ban” and “abandon” a bit confused, which just made it cuter.
We went down and all watched episode 6 of Hilda and ate popcorn that we buttered ourselves and then half a cookie again. He chose episode 6, skipping 5, because 6 looked really spooky and he said he liked spooky things. When the episode was over he got upset about not watching another one. I took him upstairs and he calmed down quickly. He said he’s more ticklish when he starts getting upset: “Well, I am more ticklish when I start spinning…now I’m normal ticklish.”
We played on the bed, doing the anesthesia and scaring me game that he and Eve had developed. He went to the bathroom and I killed a mosquito. He checked in with Carly, asking, “Mama, did you ask your students where they get their sticky rice from?” He had really liked the sticky rice in the sushi, and she mentioned she had students who eat sticky rice a lot and that she’d ask them. She hasn’t actually been back to school yet though. I left them at 8:15. Didn’t take too long for him to fall asleep.
Adding guns to our tower:
Admiring the tower from his safe room:
Shwoing mama the tower:
Touching Mama’s feet:
Sawing the papaya plant:
