I heard him wake up at least once during the night, but he slept pretty well. He got up at 7:10. They started reading The Mouse and the Motoecycle and when I came down I read more of it to him. He then watched Wild Kratts. He went up to find Carly, and I made scrambled eggs for breakfast. He had a timeout as he hit her about how she was cutting the coke can they were using to make a castle.
We ate breakfast. He didn’t eat much, wanting toast and jam. He went to cuddle with her when we were done and said, “I want to cuddle until your brain hurt.” They had decided on a stopping word for if he wants us to stop something. He thought about it and decided on “Esophagus”. So he would ask us to copy him, then say random things, but when he said “esophagus” we were to stop. This was a game throughout the day.
We took apart the webcam and fed the butterfly. I did dishes, then he was doing a decent job of playing by himself. I went up to take a shower. They were reading Pippi Longstocking as I left. When I came down he was doing alone time. He finished drawing a picture and gave it to her, then they both had an Oreo.
He and I then headed out for a Dada-Zinnie adventure. We got in the car and drove up to a random park area to the northeast, in Kadima. We were listening to The Field on the way up, and I took a slightly longer route to come up the east side of Kadima to see what was over there. When I parked I looked back and found him almost asleep.
We got out and got on the bike. He tried to catch a spider on the side of the car before going, but no luck. We walked up to the playground, but he just wanted to find insects. So we walked out the park to the east and to an empty lot I’d driven past. We looked among the flowers and started to have some success: I caught a little bee-like thing, then he added a ladybug and two kinds of beetles.
We walked back up into the park, stopping to look at more of the ants that we’d seen on the way down. I tried to get him to play there, suggesting imagining games, but it had gotten windier and cloudier, and even with his sweatshirt he wanted to head to the car.
So we did that, and I tried to decided on a place to get food. Being Saturday there wasn’t much open. I called Carly to see if she’d like to join us for pizza at Shabtai or for us to bring her pizza. She chose the latter.
We drove across to Shabtai. Busy when we got there, so we had to park down the hill. Then, I decided to order a large pizza to go. We ordered a half cheese, half with artichoke and mushrooms and goat cheese. They told us 20 minutes. We went outside to decide how to wait, and it was feeling warmer, with a little sun coming out. So we decided to sit at a table outside, and he ordered a peach iced tea and I got a cappuccino. We read Nick and Tesla for a few minutes. When the pizza came they had made a mistake and made it all with the toppings. No worries, as they had already started a small cheese pizza.
He waited patiently, picking cheese off the big pizza, and using his rainbow straw on his peach tea when it came. His pizza came. We both ate two slices. I noticed big clouds rolling in, so we got going. We went inside and waited while they took payment and then went to box up the pizza. We heard thunder as we waited.
We got going, and as soon as we were out of the shop it started raining. we had about half a block to walk. It steadily got heavier and heavier and I stopped to get the umbrella. It blew inside out. We kept going, me keeping it over him. Tried to fix it once, but it blew back. Then it turned to rain. We cut diagonally across the road and it started to hail. I was keeping calm and encouraging him to move faster. He was clenched up, taking short, quick steps. He said, “I’m moving as fast as I can!” We got to the car, and I set the pizza on the ground and fumbled to unlock the car and get him in. The pizza boxes were pretty wet, but the pizza was safe.
He shivered a bit, but I turned on the heater and he said he was okay. We got home at 3:40.
He took off his pants to change them. He noticed his truck underwear on. He complained about it, saying, “It’s the most truckiest underwear I’ve ever seen.”
He went up to Carly, joking that we hadn’t brought any pizza for her. She came down, and he wanted to use his floor cleaner. He wanted to just spray it around, and not wipe. He said it was magic and “It just soaks up the dirt, and evaporates.”
He spent some time playing with music apps on his iPad, starting with the synth, then moving to the Seuss Band app, and ended up having me play it to unlock the other songs.
I tried to address his dry lip/nose by cutting a bandaid to put on it, as the skin was peeling. He just took it off though. So we declared we were putting cream on it every hour, and started using Siri to remind us. He was okay with that. I said the next project was his hair: I’ve been trying to put hair clips in it, but he always takes them out quickly.
He’s been talking about wanting his hair to go down to the ground, but his stance changed when Carly offered him treats. So, 3 or 4 different treats later he had a lovely new, short haircut. We couldn’t decide whether he looked younger, like 3-year old August, or like an older kid. At first she was just going to do his bangs, and early on, when she started to move to the side, he complained “Mama! I told you not to cut over here!” Extra treats solved that.
We read Nick and Tesla. ‘Singed’ was a word of the day. He then took Carly’s leftover lettuce in the salad spinner and added all sorts of other things to it, like coffee grounds, and eventually we took it out to the compost, just as it started to rain again. Back inside he said, “We were just in time. We had a good window.”
We listened to the new Steve Earle. Earlier the new UNKLE. We played with the Legos. He took apart the spaceship and wanted us to make the land vehicle. We started on it, and he’s really improving on turning the pieces in three dimensions and putting together the plans, but then he ended up making his own ship and was really excited about designing it on his own.
He was then having us ask for things from his lab. Carly wanted a greenhouse, while I asked for a drone that could carry a person and a projector that could project a movie anywhere I want. He told Carly her greenhouse was 200 bucks, while mine were much cheaper, as he was better at those, and hers was bigger.
We read a couple new books that I bought for him on iBooks: Everything You Need for a Treehouse and Forever or a Day. He had a lot to say about both, but particularly the latter since it had to do with time and its passage and speed.
Carly took him up for a bath. He saw himself in the mirror and said, “I look preeety different.” He danced and was silly for several minutes. “I’m cute!”
I went up and put him to sleep. We did an outside our body/inside our body visualization, which didn’t really calm him down, as he noticed so much and had so much to say. He said he can feel his heart beating harder when he gets upset at school. He tossed around a lot, and was finally asleep at 9:45.
A picture for mama:
Looking for bugs:
Synth time:
Haircut:
Slicing oranges:
Seeing himself in the mirror:
