It rained a little after Carly left for work. None of the forecasts were showing a chance of rain. August was up at 7:50. I went up and he handed me my headphones, saying he had found them on the bed. Downstairs I read the In a Dark, Dark Room book. He asked what a cemetery was and we discussed that and it was a word of the day. He then had a Brother game: “Brother should be crying because the blue beaked, blue footed woodpecker died…it got sick.” They had a nice funeral for it.
We played Minecraft (more hollowing out) and had oatmeal. We had difficulty decided which way his shorts were supposed to go on, as they have some odd pockets. August argued one way, saying “The two pockets usually go on your bum bums.” He remembered the videos of a guy explaining how to play Minecraft. He meant Phineas Rage, so he watched the first video of his season two as I got ready.
We had a 9:30 appointment with Shani, the occupational therapist. She had gone on maternity leave right after August started with her. Got there in good time. He was really excited about the swing thing. They first sat at the table and made a plan for their activities. He drew pictures of the activities they were going to do. I don’t trust her nearly as much as I do the other OT that I met, as she seems to jump to conclusions on scant evidence (when he wanted to get off the swing after five minutes, she talked about how he got tired fast and needed to work on upper body strength—but then he wanted to be on it the entire rest of the time we were there), but what she does with him is still good, and he had a blast, and she is much more convenient that driving down to Ra’anana.
After some time on the swing they went and played with putty (to work on his pencil grip; another thing she seems way overconcerned about). He then got to choose from the cupboard and chose the cone and rings to use with the swing, and spent the rest of the time flying around on the swing.
We headed home and finished the finished Phineas Rage video and watched #2. He did alone time listening to music. I made our daily calendar and exercised. We watched episode 3 instead of playing for the time he earned. Unobstructed was a word of the day from that. He had some banana bread, then fish sticks.
We read the Rainbow Dash and Wonderbolt issue of Friends Forever. We watched two Kurzgesagt videos: “Is Organic better?” Followed by a video on “Beauty”. Organic was word of the day, and he also asked, “What’s guilty mean?”
For music time he practiced with Simply Piano, then spent a good amount of time just making up his own tunes. He was then coming up with lines for me to copy on the mandolin.
As we got ready to go pick up Eve he asked, “Why does your poop have germs?” if the food doesn’t. A question that would have to wait for later. August saw Lydia and Ori as we walked into the school. He remembered Lydia, but didn’t remember Ori’s name. We picked up Eve, and Heather showed up with a brownie (there was a bake sale table upstairs) for each of them. They ate those at the table outside the kindergarten. August really liked the candy corn on top. Eve showed us her room, and we went out the back door.
We saw Andrea over in the preschool and they went in to say hi. August told her about the atmosphere and bird poop so she could teach her students. August really liked the airport her kids had been making out of blocks, and Andrea showed them a photo of Taya working on it. August talked about his ideas for how to use the blocks, then we got going. Near the entrance we saw the whole Omri and siblings gang.
At the house I got banana bread for them, and Eve started watering the plants. She doesn’t really understand having the hose on anything but high pressure (part of what led to the soaking of August last time) and August was being protective of Carly’s plants, yelling at her not to spray the flowers, and not to spray other plants. He was also keeping a safe distance across the yard. We finally got her to keep it at a reasonable pressure, and he did some digging in the mud.
They then started working on their fort/tent plan for outside. They had all sorts of ideas for using bamboo sticks, so I started taking apart the extra bamboo fencing. While I did that Eve snuck in and made another lemon and brown sugar drink that August said was better than the first. She also made just brown sugar and water, but August didn’t like that one.
Eve was trying to hammer nails into one of the pieces of bamboo, then we all worked together on tying up bamboo sticks to the slide and making an actual frame for a tent. That worked really well. Eve mainly sat at the top of the slide and cut pieces of string for us.
Heather showed up at 4:45. She asked if we had extr bamboo sticks, as she needed a couple for holding up a banner for the band concert. I got out the big rolls of bamboo fencing that Shmuel has thrown in the junk area and used August’s tools to cut off sticks. Eve left at 4:55. They didn’t get far as Heather realized she had left her keys in the yard. When she came back, she asked if August had anything to teach her. He immediately said “You should thank the atmosphere” and explained how it protects from solar radiation.
We were outside for a few minutes longer, and I had music playing on the speaker. He was really listening to words, and asked me about meanings of lyrics in “Girl at the End of the World” and a Twilight Sad song. Carly got home, then August and I went on a short bike ride until his evening time.
We played Minecraft, doing more hollowing out, and using TNT to do so. He ate some dinner and then had chocolate milk. He did a lot of reading with Carly. When she stopped he was upset and talked about “Your stupid parenting trick of saying it was boring.”
We Skyped with my parents to tell Mom happy birthday. Dee and Grant were also there. August was pretty hyper. He told them about contests he ran for people. One involved a maze made out of diamond. This was after telling them about the upcoming Halloween Spooktacular and I had mentioned the maze. When I said he could go up to Carly and I would keep talking to them for a while he whispered to me about wanting to do a Brother game first. I told him we could do that after his bath. He then had the bath time meltdown and Carly came down to help get him up. I said goodbye on Skype.
Bath actually went well, and Carly got him all ready. She introduced flossing to him, and he did a few teeth on his own. I went in to put him to sleep. He was repeating “Ugly varmint,” which I think is something Apple Jack says at some point. I had been working on August’s Christmas list, so when he asked for a story I told him about the games we would play, like puzzles and Yahtzee, etc. I fell asleep with him, as he took quite a while to fall asleep, tossing and turning. When I woke back up at 10:30 or so, he had fallen asleep with the pillow on top of his head, like he had crawled underneath it. I went down and finished the list.
On the swing thing:
His experiment on beauty:
Practicing piano:
Making the fort with Eve:
Swinging the hose:
Swinging the hose slo-mo:
Sweeping in the yard song:
