He got up just after 6:30. When I came down he was finishing up his oatmeal and then watching the Berenstain Bears. He was talking to Carly. He asked what a word meant and she explained. Would have been a good word of the day but none of us could remember what it was a few minutes later. They discussed the wood project. He said”I don’t like hard things. I only like easy things.” He was smothering her and she moved to the black chair. He wouldn’t stop, and she went upstairs. Got him to go up and apologize after awhile.
He remembered the caterpillar, which he had put in the bedroom on the counter. He picked it up and was going to go take it outside and let it go. But then he thought it was dead and set it down. Apparently he had talked to Carly about being afraid of it dying. It wasn’t dead though and started moving so I showed him. August then took it outside and got it mustard greens after I dumped the old plants and the poop out of it. Inside we watched the caterpillar start chowing down on the leaf. Got a good closeup video of it.
We then skyped with my parents. He showed them the caterpillar and told them all about it. Paul was in the screen at first and August went and hid from him.
Carly talked about taking August to the cafe in Netanya, and August said he wanted to take the caterpillar with him. He and I built with Legos, and made a structure to hold up the caterpillar enclosure. I asked if he had named the caterpillar and he named it ‘Aviva’, another name from Wild Kratts. Meanwhile, Carly had been productive, figuring out how to pay for our car security system (the free year had run out) and ordering the emotions set thing.
They left at 9:45. They went to our usual cafe and had a mango and banana smoothie that was really good, and a salmon bagel sandwich. August ate all the salmon and Carly had the veggies. They also read a lot of Captain Underpants. August rode on the little carousel at the top of the big steps in Netanya. We’ve seen it before but he hasn’t ridden that one. They then went down and played on the beach. They had good luck with weather, as they had sun while it seemed pretty cloudy and windy here.
They got back at 2:10. They had found a big microwave on the side of the road, between, August told me, an orange recycling bin and a car. I carried it in from the car and we cleaned the grease off of it and started taking it apart. As we were talking about it we talked about the parts that would be in it, and how it worked. August didn’t understand why I said it makes microwaves. August, confused, said, “What? Microwaves are big! They can’t fly though the air!” So ‘microwave’ became a word of the day.
We got stuck a couple times. For one, it had some of the star-shaped screws on it, but our star-shaped bits just wouldn’t work on them. So August got frustrated, but both times he told me he was at a 4 or a 5 and we were able to calm down. We stopped for an early dinner, although it was more like my late lunch. We had nutty noodles. We got back to the microwave and I pried the bottom open. He told me, “You’re the master of song. I’m gonna make a book about you…becuase you pried it open. Hmm, maybe about how you’re smart.” The second time he got upset was when he poked his finger with a wire. It got red and started to bleed a little. We were able to get him a bandaid and he calmed down.
Carly was getting messages on her phone so we took it up to her in the office. Downstairs he wanted me to play checkers with myself, so I did that. He then got broccoli leaves for Aviva the caterpillar. We sat on the couch and read, finishing Hilo, book 5.
I took him up for his bath. He had started to call us “Head burglars” after they got back. That is, people who steal heads. No idea where that idea came from. He was talking about it again, and explaining it sounded disturbing. He tried to make it okay, saying, “Only bad people like people in wars, pirates…” He also joked, “I’d like an alien to attack me, then I could scrape, punch, hit, spit…”
We went downstairs and I let him lick some of the ring pop that he got at Taya’s birthday and has been wanting to try. We sat on the couch and read through the chart and he suggested a few changes. He insisted that it have areas between the numbers in the rubric. I said he could simply describe himself between numbers. Sounded very much like Carly’s discussions about rubrics with Jeff at school. Carly came down as we were talking, and August cast a “Sound shield!” when he didn’t want Carly to hear us. She reminded us of what had happened on the beach: he had gotten upset when he got his pants wet in the water. They were able to change them and calm down.
We ate popcorn and watched episode 5 of Hilda. He commented on a section looking like a time lapse and I explained what a ‘montage’ is and made it another word of the day.
Afterwards, I suggested he might be ready to see a movie in a movie theater this summer with Vivian or Thatcher. He discussed the sizes of movie theaters versus the theater he knows at school, then explained he had built a hug movie theater that stretched across the ocean. It had billions of screens and it sounded like you actually had to take a plane to go to them.
He was still hungry so I cut up an apple and he had a couple slices. He talked about the teacher in Hilda being short, and he said, “My teacher at robot school was this tiny!” “Like, they were afraid of the kids. It was embarrassing. Down right embarrassing…DUMB right embarrassing, my teacher called it.” ‘Down right embarrassing’ is a phrase from the Berenstain Bears episode he watched earlier.
We took him up and got him ready for bed. I left him and Carly at 8:20.
Caterpillar eating a leaf:
Telling Gramma and grampa about the caterpillar:
Rhythm on the microwave:
Casting a spell:
Funny noises for his song:
Feeding the caterpillar:
