Wednesday, November 6: Ms. Shani and the library

He had a restless night. He fell off the tall bed onto the low bed when I left the room to put my iPad away after finishing my ballot last night. Then he was up a few times during the night. A couple were near the morning. At 6 he started to climb down, then fell back to sleep with his feet down pressed against me and his head up on the top bed. I managed to get him all back up on the bed and under the covers.

He was then up right at 7. We played Minecraft, then he cleaned the downstairs toilet. He had cereal and milk for breakfast. He then got dressed. His tie dye shirt presented a problem as he couldn’t find the front, so I taught him how to look at the collar. He talked about how he was rich because his store sold so many things, and spent minutes listing things his store sells. Basically like Amazon but even more. He kept adding, “And don’t forget…”

We went outside and he spent a long time watering the plants. As he did so he asked, “Did you know I made a horror story and it all starts with aliens trying to destroy the solar system?” I used the word premise, when we usually talk about scenario, and he asked what it meant. He then asked “Where does a plant store water?” Vacuole was another word of the day and we read about why a plant droops.

Back inside he had a cookie and asked, “Do you know I make helicopter-shaped cake?” We got ready to go and drove into town. Parked in the dirt lot and went to the ATM at the bank. He told me about protecting a castle or something with a nuclear waste moat: “So put on your snorkeling suit!” He then talked about playing Minecraft in a jungle biome: “I have an army of oceots.”

Another good session with Ms. Shani. She had him stacking cups on the swing. She had him only using his arms to move around, focusing on upper body strength. Then, she put honey on the top of his mouth and had him practice the L sound. He loved this, and took to it right away. They did that for a while, then played a cooperative game where they stopped a fire from burning down a house. He was hesitant about it at first, but played the game. They went back to the table to look at their schedule, but instead of moving on do drawing, which was the last thing on it, he said something like, “Let’s focus on the important thing…the L sound.” He also said he liked doing it because “I like how it feels.” So he did more L work. Finally, as we left, Shani said something about the “good progress” and he said “No good progress. Great!”

We drove home from their. Lots of tree trimming going on, and I had to weave down different streets to get to our house. They were trimming the trees right across from us to the south. Luckily, these looked nice. But they have decimated the trees up towards town, taking off many years of growth and taking them back to looking like sticks.

At home he asked, “What’s umpass statement?” I didn’t know what he was talking about until he sang some words from “We are Young”. He had meant Empire State. We did L practice. I gave him a small bowl of honey. He used the spoon and did put the honey in himself. It was a good excuse for him to eat a bunch of honey. We made up a tongue twister for him: Little Llama Lillian licked lemon lollipops. We then did his Minecraft time, and he was telling a random story as he played: “Several hundred years ago there was a stone…we fed it bone…everybody got hungry…all the babies died.”

He had chicken soup for lunch, then had seconds. We were doing a brother game during this. He ended up working for a butcher after he left the animals out for three weeks while he was on vacation and the animals stole a ton of food from the butcher. Brother was then working for Bar, who had all sorts of choices of rooms for where he could work. He did his alone time, playing piano for much of it, and then played 30 minutes of Minecraft. We then read a couple My Little Pony issues outside and had crackers and the goose pate. Inside we finished an issue and August agreed to put a band-aid on his wrist where it is dry from rubbing his nose. He read a Rivet level 2 story to me. Then we watched an episode of My Little Pony.

We then drove to school. We first went to the band room and he delivered a bag of cookies to Jonathan and thanked him for letting him play the instruments. Jonathan gave him a big hug and said he’d arrange to do it again sometime. August was very happy about that. We then headed to the gym, as exercising there had been his plan. However, he spotted that I didn’t have closed-toe shoes on. I, however, had remembered and had our shoes and socks in the backpack. But then August decided he wanted to go to the library instead anyway.

There, he did more Minecraft block discussion with Amanda, then back in the kids area he did some art on the computer. I had found several books to try out while he did art, and we now sat and read a few. We read Penguinaut! and A Bear Sat on My Porch Today. He liked both, but only the latter well enough to check out to reread. I asked what he’d like to learn about, and he said the ocean. We found two books that he liked on the ocean, and also checked out Tree Mail, a graphic novel, and a Berenstain Bears chapter book called The Great Ant Attack. He also spent a few minutes making a sculpture on the rocking chair, and also rocked on it for a few minutes.

We got going and planned to head to the playground to do a Brother game. On the way he called out hi to Candy and Reia, then to Taya when he saw her. He changed his mind before getting to the playground as it was too windy. Out in the car, I was about to call Carly when she knocked on the window. She walked home and we drove.

He did his L practice with honey, then was watching a Minecraft video for his evening time. I headed up to do some work. He had quite a meltdown when his time was up after also doing an educational video. When I came down at 7 he was playing with his hair bands in the kitchen, making musical notes with them as he had them attached to the cabinet handles. Carly was on the phone with another teacher. He switched to rubber bands and kept playing until after 7:30. He figured out all sorts of things about the acoustics of rubber band notes. In fact, acoustic was a word of the day.

He had cereal and milk, then we did a Brother game with him working in the lab atomizing again. He had been pretending to be sick to get out of work.

I got him upstairs to take a bath. I had been trying out different music and he danced naked to the first couple songs of the 1985 post-punk release Back in the D.H.S.S. from Half Man Half Biscuit.

He then played in the sink, after getting a ball of hair from Carly’s brush. I washed him, and he told me “I once had a crazy dream…it was amazing.” It was half Minecraft and half real. “I think it is like your brain wants you to have fun in your sleep…because it’s so much time you’re wasting.”

I said good night to them around 8:30 and went for a run.

Putting on his shirt by himself: