Carly woke him up and brought him down about 6:40. He was holding his foot, but didn’t complain about it hurting. He watched The Pink Panther and ate oatmeal. He asked for seconds on oatmeal. I made a half-bowl and he ate all of that. As we got ready to go he asked me, “Do you think Simone’s mom is nicer than you?” He didn’t come right out and say as much. But when I asked why he asked he said because she had given him so many treats yesterday. I pointed out that some of those were because he hurt his foot.
We got walking at 7:37. Along the way he looked down one of the short side streets that we’ve never gone down and said, “The next time we go on a dada Zinnie drive I’ll try to remember that. We haven’t done dada Zinnie drives for awhile.”
He got off the bike and I noticed he limped a bit on the way to class, but he didn’t say anything. I had put a short sleeve shirt on him today as it was getting to the mid-70s. He at first took off his sweatshirt, but wanted it back on. When I picked him up later he would still have it on, and say he didn’t want it off. I said goodbye and he said, “I don’t need you to wait on the bench.”
I went home and worked. Mainly got all of our old Squarespace blog moved over to the new WordPress site. Some rough edges, but mostly done. That took too much of the morning, then I moved to Sabeel work. Starting to get up to speed on InDesign so that Marc and I can collaborate on the manuscript.
Rode back to school. Had finished listening to The Tomb of Atuan (Le Guin) this morning and now started on Second Foundation (Asimov).
Simone’s mom went into the classroom at 2:50. I followed. August excitedly ran over to me, but I think that was because he wanted his snack before STEM class and I wouldn’t give it to him before the bus kids left. He was a little frustrated by that, but I slipped back outside, and then I actually had to go back in to remind him of it a few minutes later. He had one red sticker today, having hit Simone in the head when Simone wouldn’t let him see the bug he had caught. August told me it took him a long time to calm down.
He also told me that Simone had given him and other students some of the lemon cake. I think that might have been part of the reason for the email from Marion reminding parents that treats have to be for everyone in the class. On August’s sheets for the day they’ve started briefly describing what he gets the stickers for, and I know that he brought flowers to the teachers at some point, and helped them with getting scissors at another.
He ate his snack, then had STEM class. The read The Very Busy Spider and were then learning to weave spiderwebs. He was attaching his to one of the shelving units, and apparently got a bit frustrated at one point, but got through it. At the end of class he ran out to tell me it was cleanup time. I went back in with him, and he did some ‘robo-cleanup’ on his own. During class I talked to Anita and invited Simone to his birthday party. They should be able to come. Before we left, I asked August if he had apologized for hitting Simone. He said he didn’t think so, and walked over and apologized.
We got walking at 4:10. I brought up the incident at school, asking why it took a long time to calm down. He put his head down on the bike and said, “I don’t want to talk about it. And I don’t have an explanation.” He was looking at different kinds of trucks and told me how he has delivery trucks for his lab.
As we got closer to home, he brought up how Simone’s family has a record player. He was not a fan, and explained to me how you have to change them, and can’t just ask it to play music, and they take up space, and cost a lot of money. He told me, “Whatever you do, do NOT buy a record player.” I was listening to him talk about the record player and had slowed down. He asked, “Why is the bike moving so slowly?” Finally, we saw a woman walking on the street pushing a suitcase. He asked, “Remember that suitcase with jagged wheels on it?” It was an ad on YouTube for Bluesmart. He reminded me how it could go over different surfaces and it had a charger in it and said we should buy it.
At home we got our ice cream, using ginger snap cookies that Carly had in the cupboard from something at school on top, and watched an episode of Hilda (“The Storm”). Carly got home. We spent some time playing with the circuits, then he started talking about needing to squish green monsters if we saw them because green monsters are bad. I asked about our Green Monsters, and he dismissively said, “Aagh. He’s just made out of like, cloth. These are real. And alive.” He went on and on and about the monsters.
He talked about how he was poisonous to eat: “I’m pure coison…What’s ‘pure’?” So ‘pure’ was a word of the day. He also found the furniture pad stickers. He keeps wanting to stick them on things, but I haven’t let him. Today I let him have one. He told me, “When I’m 17 I’ll buy some.” He was on a roll, and started talking about needing to ship sticky rice to his planet to feed all the robots. “90 million…billion…quadrillion…” He remembered his big numbers that far, then skipped to ‘octillion’, so I reminded him of the ones in-between. The silliness led to me pretending to eat him and getting poisoned on the couch.
Carly came down. She was talking to her parents. August talked to them a little. In the kitchen August kissed the bag of sticky rice and said he loved it, “But I don’t love the sticky rice as much as you.” Carly had mentioned that Simone likes Michael Jackson music videos, so August and I watched some music videos, like Daft Punk’s “Technologic” and Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”, while she made sushi. He was very excited by that, and ate a lot of it. And he liked the orange soy paper that she also got.
I took him up and washed his hair. We then played on the bed: he was jumping on me a lot and played the game where he steals my hidden food. He was insistent on reading some Shivers, so I read a few pages of the second book, before leaving them a little after 8:30.
Music on the bike:
Cutting shapes:
Spinny thing slo-mo:
Green monsters:
Running to mama:
Drying his hair:
