He cuddled a lot with me last night. As soon as I got into bed he had his feet shoved into my side. I realized his pajama pants were pulled up to his knees. I pulled them down and straightened him out, and he huddled close to me the rest of the night. Carly got him up before she went to work. He had oatmeal and watched something, and we got walking. He hadn’t wanted to get going early enough so that we could play in the library, but when we got to school he was upset that we couldn’t go to the library. And he said he didn’t want to deliver the hummus, even though he’d talked about wanting to get the sticker.
So after a grumpy minute at the top of the stairs we went down to his class. Andrea was back. She has been sick. He wasn’t really in a talking mood, but went and joined them at the meeting.
I rode home, worked, and rode back before 12. I caught up to the class as they were walking down the stairs. They had just gone to the K-2 assembly. August had 2 red dots, but he said they were pretty minor ones. He had a lot of green ones, and Andrea added a couple more for how well he did at the assembly. She confirmed that the red dots were pretty minor, in that they kind of tried to not engage with him, and he calmed down quickly. The second incident had him trying to destroy something, and Marion told him to leave the area so he could calm down.
He showed me an art thing he’d made, involving sort of doing paper mache with tissue paper onto wood. He said it is called ‘modge pudge”, which isn’t a term I’ve heard before.
We had planned on going to the library to play with the Library Tech Week toys. But he changed his mind and said he wanted to go collect caterpillars in the nature reserve. And I had thought we could get lunch in the cafeteria, but he said no to that as well, wanting to go straight to the nature reserve.
But first, as we went up the stairs, we saw Judson’s mom and his 2nd grade sister, Ayla. We’ve talked to her a little before, but I don’t remember where. But she knew who August was, and immediately started to tell us that August is annoying Jurdon by being a robot. She said she wanted to have a talk with August, and asked if she could do that now. So at the top of the stairs I kneeled down so August and I were both at her level. She explained that she thinks that August is trying to be Judson’s friend but doesn’t know how to. She said it was like her friend Evan in the United States who was doing annoying things to get her attention at first. She was amazingly well-spoken for a second grader, and I agreed with her, and told her that August was still learning about how to be friends with people. She was wearing a bird hat and told me that she had been in the play.
We headed over to the nature reserve and found a lot of caterpillars. While we were there he randomly said, “The worst pizza I’ve ever had was in Markenborks. 90 million light years away, but only a million light years away from my planet…becuase it tasted like poop…from a human.” We then headed to Carly’s classroom and he said hi to her and showed her the caterpillars.
She had to head to her meeting. We were going to head home, but by the middle school office August ran into Candy and two other kids I don’t know. They started looking at caterpillars together. August dumped out all of his caterpillars when he found another bug for me to catch. I did that, but then all of them started gong around for 10 minutes or so catching more caterpillars.
We headed home about 1:15. He dumped the caterpillars out along the way. He told me at one point, “That kind of ant I’m chasing is called a trophis any.”
Our lunch plans kept changing. August suggested going for pizza. The first plan was to walk home and get in the car and drive up to see if VIPizza is open, and if not go to Pizza Hut in the mall. But then he decided we should just go straight to the mall. But then he remembered that someone had given Carly a light fixture for him to take apart. I had it in the bag and he wanted to take it apart first.
So at home we took that apart. Kind of the perfect size of project, as he could do it mostly by himself. I was hungry, and was snacking. He chastised me, “Dada, don’t waste time snacking on cinnamon and coconut chips when you have this whole thing to take apart.”
He ate the last of Carly’s sushi for lunch and we had water drink. We then had a ginger snap and watched an episode of Hilda. This was a consolation reward, as the full reward was supposed to be a handful of ginger snaps and a long movie (he had requested a long one).
He was still hungry so had oatmeal, then more. He wanted a new iPad app, and I had actually meant to add a moth mystery app I’d read about today. He wasn’t interested in that, so we ended downloading a DJing app instead. So ‘DJ’ was a word of the day. We then got the new version of Brian Enzo’s Bloom app and played with that. It has 10 different scenes, and I talked about how they looked different to “reflect” the music. He asked what that meant, so another word of the day.
Carly stayed at work until around 5. So I started on making dinner before she was home. August grumbled a bit about me not playing with him, but he did okay. He went to the bathroom and started giggling. He had the toilet lid fall down on the back of him, and it was tickling his neck. I got him involved by having him use the food processor to slice the mushrooms and grate the cheese. We made pasta with a cream sauce and asparagus and mushrooms.
Carly got home, and August made a spicy soup. He had fun making it, then I was upstairs when I heard him getting upset. He had put a lot of cloves in it, and when it was cooking he really didn’t like the smell. So I had him come upstairs to escape the smell and we wrestled on the bed. He’s really getting stronger, and I talked to him about how he’s at the point where he has to think about not being too rough.
We went downstairs and Carly went up to take a shower. He had totally rearranged the kitchen rug and the dining room chairs, tipping a couple over, when I was cooking earlier. He was now doing tricks, climbing over the middle of a chair that was on its back and hanging, parallel bars style, from the legs. He told me to watch, but this time he fell backwards while climbing up. Didn’t hit too hard though.
I took him upstairs and he made a potion, then I washed him and got him ready for bed. Carly was ready for bed and put him to sleep. I left them at 8:15. I still heard a lot of laughing a bit after 8:30.
Caterpillars cannot fail me now:
Catching caterpillars with Candy:
Crawly caterpillars:
Tune he wanted to record:
New Bloom app:
DJing and singing:
