We moved the clocks forward an hour last night. Carly got him to sleep earlier than usual, but his biological clock had different ideas. He was up a little after 6. He asked where Carly was. He seemed confused that it was still dark. He went downstairs, and when I came down 20 minutes later he was asleep on Carly’s lap. He kept sleeping and Carly pulled out the bed and put a blanket over him and headed to work. He laughed in his sleep and tossed around under the blanket a lot. I re-covered his feet a couple times.
I let him sleep When it came to waking him up I couldn’t. I started around 7:30. One time he just kept pushing me away. Another time he had his eyes open and sat up for awhile, but went back to sleep. I started a Berenstain Bears episode and after a few minutes I pulled him upright, and he finally started to wake up as he cuddled against me and watched.
He moved to the table to eat, but didn’t say anything to me until I was getting him dressed and ready to go, and that was a simple “No” when I asked if he wanted to take something. We used the umbrella to get us out to the car. I think his first sentence came in the car when he asked if stoves or ovens get hotter. At some point he said he liked sleeping in because it meant he got to take the car. That may have been as we were heading to the car.
We didn’t get to his classroom until close to 8:30. He asked why there were only bikes and cars by the school (no busses) and why it was so dark as we walked through campus. The hour change was definitely affecting him, although the darkness was also because of the clouds.
They were finishing up meeting when I dropped him off. He got fascinated with the iPad stand that was out and was playing with that when I left, although he told Andrea he was going to go to the weaving area.
I went to try to deliver the hummus to GAIA, but the food was already gone. I asked Eileen, the MS secretary, and she called but the guy who delivers it had already left campus. I put it in the staff lounge fridge and worked in the library until the Parent Education Program at 10.
As I left to go to that, I realized I had August’s water bottle. I walked down to deliver it, and found him outside at the corner of the preschool, picking up a chair and taking it inside. The whole class was in the atelier. I said hi, and he simply said, “What are you doing here?” I said I was dropping off his water bottle, and he carried on back inside with the chair.
The Parent Education Program was good, with a local therapist running a session on ‘Emotional First Aid’ about somatic response to stress/trauma. I also learned a new Hebrew phrase (“Yebsader” – it will be okay) and pondered the different ways to pronounce ‘Address’ (ah-DRESS versus ADD-dress).
I had about twenty minutes after the session before needing to pick up August, so I went and walked around the big field twice while listening to an audiobook. I then headed to the preschool.
Everything started out okay. As I walked up the class was busy inside. August was swinging on the door. He had two red dots, so not great, and they both involved Marion. They were starting to do clean up, so I asked him to pick up rubber bands I saw on the floor. He went and threw those away, and Marion wasn’t happy about that, as they were good rubber bands, so I helped him pick them out. I talked to him outside for a minute as I packed our stuff, and asked if he’d apologized to Marion for hitting her. When he said he didn’t know, I went and asked her. She proceeded to tell me all about his behavior, right in front of the other children, with them listening. Simone kept trying to get my attention as well, and when Marion was done he showed me the paper he had been waving between us. It was, in fact, his own chart of August’s behavior today, with red dots on it. It was as Simone started to explain what the dots were for that August first tried to cut the paper, then threw the scissors at Simone. They hit him in the cheek (a small scratch, but no blood, thankfully) He was frustrated and upset that we were talking about his behavior, and even more so when Simone started doing it.
Marion was comforting Simone, and August then hit him. I addressed August, and had him apologize, and took him outside to think and finish getting our stuff. I went back in and gave Simone a hug and told him I was sorry. I wanted to go back in and talk to Vicky and Marion, but they disappeared, and I didn’t want to leave August out front on his own for too long. Basically, I assumed this would result in some sort of suspension, but I also don’t want him returning to school anytime soon. The teachers shouldn’t be unloading about a child’s behavior in front of the other kids like that, and they shouldn’t be letting the other children tattle on and make their own behavior charts for the other children. While Marion was unloading on me, the kids behind her, who were doing stop motion animation, were basically in a yelling match. Basically, their open options Montessori-style classroom is often too loud and chaotic, and August is spending all that time (as the PEP session I had just attended reinforced) in survival mode, with his limbic response always engaged.
So we headed to the car and drove home. We discussed hurting Simone. He had found a dead crane fly outside and brought it in to look at with the microscope. We had just started looking at it when Carly’s computer shut off. We read and finished the A to Z Mystery book, with ‘trespassing’ being a word of the day.
We played catch with the rainbow squishy ball he had found on a sidewalk a few days ago, then we went outside and ripped up some newspaper to put in the compost. He said, “I think Eve would like to see we have a composter.” One lone bee came buzzing around and he speculated, “Maybe it’s an abandoned bee. Maybe the queen kicked it out cuz it did something bad.”
Inside, he wanted to use his floor cleaner (a mixture from upstairs). He put it in the spray bottle to use and sprayed some on the kitchen floor and wiped it. He had a couple crackers with cheese while we baked the potato pastry things and made scrambled eggs. He ate two full scrambled eggs with cheese, then was pretty full by the time the potato things were out. He ate some of that though.
He started talking about tiny things, and we ended up discussing Planck length again. He would later tell Carly about it. He has mentioned the photo of an amusement park ride up on the wall from Carly’s friend Peter before, and he asked about it now, and its blurriness. We discussed speeds and cameras. He got his tape measure and we experimented with it. He was trying to get it to touch the ceiling, but it was bending over. I was able to do it, as long as it curved the right way. We then measured how long it could horizontal before it would bend in each orientation.
He commented, “It’s crazy how humans can do this kind of thing (build tools) but other animals can’t. We’re smarter than sharks…humans have the greatest range for how far they go from home…” We have discussed the tool-making ability of humans at least once before.
He played with the boards on the steps outside as we got ready to go for a walk, making them flip up by standing on one end and experimenting with putting boards on other boards. He swinged on the swing for awhile, then we got walking by 3:30.
We only made it across the street at first. We had a good discussion of what could live under the cactus that had fallen over, and when it had happened. He caught a couple insects along the way. By the garbage area he found a part of a circuit board, and was convinced it wasn’t one that we had broken. As he pushed into the bushes he said, “I’m out in nature.” He talked about how study nature was science, then started singing a “Science, science, want to sing it again” Ironically, he wouldn’t sing it again for a video.
He turned over a rock and found a worm. He talked about taking it to school to show Simone. He talked more about taking things to school, and about school in general, than I think he ever has. I started to take a video, but it started squirming around, then he dropped it. It was no worm, but a snake. He dumped out the other insects, then wanted me to catch it. I was able to do so. He was excited to show Carly, so now we actually went for a walk, and I managed to have us meet up with her as she came out of the little path at 4:15.
He excitedly showed her the snake, adding to it climbing up on the rock to combine two scary things at once. He was talking about whether he’d seen a snake before, and remembered the snake from when we were geocaching. He showed Carly a snail and explained it was an “In-between” snail. That is, between the big ones and small ones.
At home, Carly showed him the bag of things she had been given for him to take apart. So we sat on the kitchen floor and started doing that. First we took apart a portable light. That worked really well, once I figured out the trick of using a pair of pliers to get more torque on the small screwdriver. There was then a little cylinder-shaped portable speaker and we took that apart. He kept talking about taking the parts to school.
He and Carly then made a fort when he wanted to do imagining games with her. He decided he wanted it big enough for us all to fit in, and Carly got a sheet. He did most of the building of the actual fort, and said, “I learned about making forts like this from dada.” We were all in it for awhile, pretending to sleep, then he was on my back in it.
Then a rough spot. We had had him tape the lid down on the container with the snake. Now he went and took the tape off, and was taking the lid off as well. When I put it up on the fridge for five minutes, he ended up throwing his shoes at Carly and she took him up for a timeout.
Meanwhile, I found the snake in the guidebook thing we have. It is a Eurasian worm snake. When he came back downstairs we went outside and put dirt in a hummus container and transferred the snake to it, as it was starting to rain.
We realized he hadn’t had dinner yet, and he ate some of Carly’s leftovers from school lunch.
I took him upstairs. Before a bath he taped up an apple with paper towel and toilet paper. He told me, then repeated to Carly, that this was his plan for his Halloween costume: to cover himself with toilet paper.
As he did that I noticed that there was a live space walk going on at the ISS, so we watched a little of that. I then gave him a bath. He then taught me the bathroom dance, which I’ve heard him do with Carly. Basically it involves putting your knees together and dancing around like you need to go to the bathroom.
In the bedroom he told me that on his planet there aren’t any rules. I asked what happened when people did bad things. At first he said he’d only seen that happen a few times in billions of years. But then he explained there was a light side and a dark side to his planet. On the light side people were nice, but on the dark side they were doing bad things to each other. I wondered where he had come up with this light/dark thing and he told me it was from Aardvark and the Ant when the go to the moon and Aardvark goes to the dark side.
He then told me he had done some of the chasing game today. He started because Eve he done it: “So I was chasing too. Kind of fun, actually.”
He was hungry so we went downstairs and made some toast and I read Nick and Tesla to him at the table. He told Carly about his plan for a toilet paper costume for Halloween. We got him ready for bed, and I left them at 8:50.
He was feeling sick sometime after 10 and whimpering. Carly called me up. He was complaining about his stomach, and also his throat and ears. I gave him one Tums and a little children’s Tylenol and we had him try to go to the bathroom. They went back to bed. He tossed a lot, but finally got back to sleep.
Paper for the compost: https://youtu.be/rOdzZ4B6UNk
Studying the cactus: https://youtu.be/npapVb5QJZg
Looking in the dirt: https://youtu.be/6EPr7cU9rQE
Worm snake 1: https://youtu.be/Yr_PWiw4wm8
Worm snake 2: https://youtu.be/YrYK26o8Acg
Playing the banjo song: https://youtu.be/bWk9Texjrks
