He was up at 7:50. Downstairs he first insisted on Minecraft, but I said I wanted to read funny poems first. I started making up my own and he helped me come up with:
Spaghetti in my pants
That’s how I tart my day
Spaghetti in my pants
I like my pants that way
Spaghetti in my pants
It really is quite squishy
Spaghetti in my pants
My mom thinks that is fishy
Spaghetti in my pants
You might think that sounds bad
But with spaghetti in my pants
I know I won’t feel sad
I read a few poems in A Pizza the Size of the Sun, then we did Minecraft. It was the new 1.14 update, which now has bees. So we did some more TNT fun, then started playing with the bees. August really liked making and taking care of the bees. He made an impromptu little poem that went “I’m happy to regurgitate everything I hear and everything you say
I’m happy to regurgitate every day”
We were supposed to have just enough time to finish, eat breakfast, then go to the bank before going to Shani’s. When it seemed like his iPad time was going long, as he ate his oatmeal, I realized that I had had to turn of the screen time limits on his iPad last night to update the phone I’m using and I’d forgot to turn it back on. And he had in fact had extra time this morning. He reluctantly stopped playing right away, and we got going.
The parking lot in town was crazy, as was all of downtown. We parked in our usual backup spot and went to the bank, paying Gabi and getting cash for Shani.
At her house he saw the new stretchy swing and checked it out. He noted its smell. Shani said she had talked to Gabi more at length, although she only said he said he was doing well. He ran to see the schedule. First was the swing. Trying to get into the swing was a challenge. He loved spinning and swinging in it.
He requested the sensory overload video he had watched with her a few weeks ago. She then got him to crawl through the hole swing, which was pretty stressful for him, but he made it. Seems like something that would have been easier for him if he’d seen someone do it first.
We watched the video on my phone. She thought it was interesting that he’s requested it in the swing. She seemed to think that the video was difficult for him to watch, and that watching it in the swing was helping him process it. I think she was overstretching, as he has never been bothered by watching any video. He simply remembered the video because this was where he watched it before.
They then went and did some drawing. He held a pencil “wrong” a couple times and she took note. He drew a house and grass.
He sang “Always” for her in the swing. He was really loud for her too and she was trying to get him to be quieter. She was giving him numbers with her fingers to indicate his volume on a scale of ten. She got preachy about needing to be able to regulate his volume around other people.
She was trying to challenge him on the swing. He was getting a little grumpy with her, and also told her she had a lot of rules. He said he did challenge himself, and when she asked for an example he said: “homeschool is a challenge…reading”
Listening to Story Pirates, we headed to the bigger Max, north of Even Yehuda. We stopped to get gas. I had to log into Dropbox on the phone to get my old passport number. August sang tunes and stood by the pump pretty patiently, although later when I told Carly he said he hadn’t felt patient.
Max was a disappointment. They have more stuff there, including clothes, but there were no lights in their Christmas decorations. They were also seemingly out of wrapping paper (there was one beat up tube of pink paper left). They did, however, have rolls of what appeared to be shimmery stuff, so we got a couple rolls, along with a roll of thick fancy ribbon. He chose the blue and white one with trees on it, rejecting the one with stockings on it because “Santa isn’t real.” He got a small can of Schweppe’s strawberry. As he started drinking it back in the car he had a short Brother game when we got in the car. Brother was having fizzy water for the first time and it burned his throat.
We listened to Story Pirates and when we got home we kept listening to Story Pirates inside (the time loop episode again). We kept listening while I cooked salmon and we wrapped the present for Carly. He had a bowl of canned corn while he waited. He ate all of that, then devoured his salmon. We then listened to the crossover episode again, and he asked if we could listen to more Circle Round. He listened to “Nilsa and the Troll”.
It was really interesting to see how focused he was on the stories. When we were wrapping the present, starting with green and blue construction paper, he wasn’t saying anything and I thought he didn’t like how we were wrapping it. I asked, and he perked up, saying, “I love it!” He was quiet because he was listening intently. He added plenty of tape to the present. But the wrapping paper stuff turned out to be…just clear plastic. Such a waste. I can’t believe they’re selling just rolls of plastic. Aargh.
He heard Circle Round mention a coloring book. I said we could download their sheets and print them. He said we could just color them on the iPad. I set it up so he could color the picture from Nilsa in Procreate. He loved it and I counted that as alone time while I exercised.
We then did 30 minutes of Minecraft and bees. He was getting frustrated when he had to turn it off, so I successfully turned that into wrestling onto the couch. He was a bit hyper after that and with the microphone thing I had found in a drawer (I had also found the bouncy balls and he’d played with those and wrapped one in the mixed up play dough as well).
He kept coloring and coloring as I did some clean up. He said things like, “Circle Round was right, this is cool.” “I could do this coloring page for hours!” He also said that it was a lot better to color on there than on paper and talked about how much he could get done by the time Carly was home.
We worked on BR as he colored. He came up with words like brim and brew. It was interesting though that he thought “My hat brew away” was correct. When I said “blew away” he thought I was talking about the color. Even after this explanation, a few minutes later he argued he was correct. He was excited by both learning how to zoom in and how to use the color picker to choose a color he had used before” “It’s so easy now!’ He had earlier said he wouldn’t do the trolls fingers or more of the girl, but then when he learned to zoom he could, and he could use the same color as before.
His eyes were tired and he was rubbing them and he agreed it was time for a break. We finished BR and then I was the gym teacher making him exercise. He did jumping jacks, getting them completely correct for the first time, I think, then I was having him jump on the couch. I was doing bad jumps on the couch and having him show me and explain how to do it.
We did 30 more minutes of Minecraft. For educational videos he watched Kurzgesatz videos on “What is a Thing?” and “What is Life?” and “How Bacteria Rule Your Life” . It was hard for him to stop after that, but I started to read Ivy + Bean Break the Fossil Record and he got interested. That lasted until there was a mention of someone walking more than 800 miles on his hands, and August asked if that was real. I looked it up, and only found that there is a world record for walking 3.2 miles or so at one time. We didn’t go back to the book, as he was hungry. He had already had a little bit of Cheerios, then some strawberries. I heated some nutty noodles for him.
Carly got home. I was doing dishes. August came over to me and said, “Mama’s home.” I asked if he had said hi, and he said he hadn’t. So I told him to go say hi. While August ate I played a Brother game with him, where Brother had put way too many rainbow-related items in the atomizer (Bar had just said “the things in the rainbow sock”).
We had placed Carly’s present up with the others, and I had asked him if he was going to point it out to Carly, or whether we should wait and see how long it took for her to notice it. He chose the latter. But now, she wasn’t noticing it, so August was pretty clever. He went and asked her questions about the present behind it and she finally saw it.
He updated the countdown to 14. He then showed her the coloring, and told her about the podcast. Did more coloring on the couch. He then did color mixing while Carly did some painting. She then went upstairs for a shower and he did a little more coloring, and asked for a Circle Round story. We listened to “The Banker’s Riddles”.
I was spending money: Carly wanted an electric toothbrush, and on Amazon I ordered two strings of Christmas lights, painting canvases for Carly, a couple plug adapters, and a book on Poop by Nicola Davies for August. The book got added because we were a whole 4 cents short of free shipping.
He had more pate and carrots and we took them upstairs. We then did a Brother game where he is no longer allowed to use the atomizer, and instead was working with the animals. The robots predicted he would cause damage and get hurt, and they were right.
August washed himself in the shower for a long time. Did a great job, and asked me to wash his face for him. He asked me to turn it even colder when he was rinsing himself and said, “I think for Mama this would already be freezing.” “Mama would hate it, but I love it.” He then played in the sink. We were listening to the Music of Circle Round, as I bought the album on iTunes. Each song/story features a different instrument. He described instruments he made. One with rubber bands, one with lots of machinery. He told Carly about one with bamboo sticks to hit drums.
I took a shower and she read Junie B. Jones. As I took him to bed he told me about building a wall all the way around the world at the equator, with huge gates in it. No idea where that idea came from. He carried all of the couch pillows in on his beds and stacked them on. He immediately put petroleum jelly on his hands; he’s really gotten good at that. We read some Perlutsky poems and unorthodox was a word of the day. We listened to a Circle Round story called “Fiona and the Fairies”.
He had had crackers and pate and carrots before coming up, then brought seconds with him when he came upstairs. But now, right as I thought he was falling asleep, at 10 he insisted he was hungry. We got him a very small bowl of Cheerios. We listened to music of Circle Round, and he was asleep by 10:30.
Changing keys and octaves 1:
Changing keys and octaves 2:
Stretchy swing 1:
Stretchy swing 2:
Sorting coins activity:
Coloring a Circle Round picture:
Jumping jacks:
