Carly got him up after 6:30. I finished listening to Always Look on the Bright Side by Eric Idle as I got his oatmeal ready. He ate his chocolate vitamin this morning after climbing the last couple tasted bad. He and I made a back landing gear to the Lego spaceship so it wouldn’t tip backwards. Carly headed to work, and he had oatmeal and watched Julius Jr.
As we got going we discussed something, and I used the word ‘overall’ and he asked what that meant. Then, on the walk to school he was talking about cutting open dead animals to learn what was inside them. So ‘dissect’ was another word of the day. It was a nice quick and quiet walk, as there was no school at the Israeli school so there was no traffic on the sidewalk, and a lot less cars.
We got to school and down to his class. He was playing with Eve in the calm space when I left. I headed home, worked, and rode back at 12.
He had had a good day. They had sent photos of him playing with Eve in the kitchen, hugging her, and being pushed by her on the swing. He had a great literacy time again, getting involved right from the beginning (Vicky said it usually takes him 5 or 10 minutes before he really gets focused). For tracing letters he decided to use two pencils, one in each hand, for doing the practice shapes, then switched back to one for the actual letters.
He had one meltdown, and it happened when he got a cut from one of the ribbons. Marion said she saw the whole thing, from the cut, to him trying to hold it in and hiding the cut finger in his sleeve, through all the emotions. She explained it to me at length when I picked him up. She said she had learned a lot from helping him through it.
We headed home, and as we walked there were lots and lots of butterflies, all headed north. We paused in Vatikim and just watched the hundreds of butterflies flying towards us. We paused again at the empty lot of yellow flowers. In both places I tried holding out a hummus container to catch one. August was pessimistic and told me, “It’s no use.”
We got home home and he watched some Hilda and I did some work on the PTA website and social media sites, basically finishing it all up.
We went out for another walk at 3. We went up and did recycling. Someone had left a bunch of stuff by the garbage area. There was a nice big bowl that he wanted, then he asked if we could take the green “serving plate” as well. He must have learned ‘serving plate’ at school. We went back to the house to drop those off, and also get his black headphones so he could play with them on the bike.
As we got walking, I spotted a butterfly on the ground and caught it. It looked sick. We walked down to the path area, and August cut flowers for a bouquet. We picked from about six different kinds of plants. We’ve been planning to do this for a few days, but today also happened to be Palestinian Mother’s Day, so I had him tell Carly “Happy Mother’s Day!” later.
We got home at 4:05 and put the flowers in water. We then cut a hole in the butterfly container big enough so that he could reach a finger in and touch it. Not big enough though, because as I was on the phone with Carly he got it stuck and started screaming. I managed to get it out, and we cut it a bit bigger. He said, “I like having a pet butterfly.” When I said something was a “Good observation” he replied “What’s ‘observation’?” Another word of the day.
Carly got home and he showed her the flowers and the butterfly. On his own he had gone out and gotten lemon plant to make himself tea. Now, as I made salmon pasta for dinner I asked him to grate parmesan. He said, “I’ll be drinking my tea by then.”
But when Carly asked him to help her harvest the broccoli to save it from the caterpillars and he went and helped her.
I finished dinner and he drank his tea. He made a mixture on the floor of the kitchen, then he did a couple of timed alone times, playing with the Duplos. I did dishes and listened to my audiobook.
Carly gave him a bath. I took over and he got all the keys in the house to do the pretending game where he steals my belly button snacks. We read The 104 Story Treehouse, reading the silly “Up and Up and Up” chapter. Carly then read while I took a shower. I read the “Down and Down” chapter, then read the email about the painted lady butterfly migration.
He was really stuffy. We did a butterfly visualization, being the butterfly doing the whole migration, but he took quite awhile to fall asleep as he was so stuffy. He wouldn’t blow his nose with me, although Carly said he’d done it earlier. He was finally asleep around 8:50.
Butterfly migration:
Studying a butterfly:
Cutting flowers:
Touching the butterfly:
Playing alone and humming:
The key game:
