He called me in at 5:30. He was up enough to be sitting and say something to me. I asked him how he was doing. He said something but I didn’t catch it. I asked what he said and he just repeated the end: “and waked up.” I let him go back to sleep. He then crawled in with me at 7:30. Didn’t fall back to sleep this time, and we got up a few minutes later. He cuddled with Carly down on the couch. They were joking about the branches he had grown inside her (part of the placenta) and prune ended up being a word of the day after we joked about having to prune his branches when he was born.
They went outside for the “fresh and rosy-fingered morning” then I read him Prelusky poems. He played Minecraft with Carly and sang a funny song: “The only answer is…” When he was done I made us cereal and then we did a Brother game: he was supposed to be playing “Go” (in Minke’s room, he said) but wanted calm music instead. It turned into free jazz when playing with Bar. He remembered clicking on a track last night that he wanted to listen to. It was Mint Royale’s “Time”.
Carly was going to take him to Shani’s at 9:30. Suddenly he demanded a cookie, and almost didn’t go to Shani’s. I almost took him, but then he agreed to go with Carly. He didn’t do great there; he didn’t talk about the cookie, but he couldn’t let it go. He spent much of the time just doing stuff on his own, and not really listening to Shani, although Carly said he got better at the end. They then went to that park that Shani had told us about (August now associates it with seeing her). I think that went fine, but he got really whiney about the cookie when they got home. He did a good job of taking a break outside and spinning the top on the table. But then the big dog from across the street came strolling through the yard. I chased it out. But the damage was done. August had a big meltdown inside.
When that was done I read him poems. Carly finished making the hummus sandwich she was making for him. He ate that and they read the first Captain Underpants book. His idea. She headed to the mall. While she was gone I got out the calming strategies posters and cards. He took videos as we did so. He is all fine with that, but then still rather resistant to making/revising/practicing the plan for himself. We were setting up the new calm space when she got back. It was next to the black chair. I made his personal poster of his calming strategies, which includes spinning the top and “thinking about my inventions and discoveries.” I got him to practice going there once, pretending to be Baby Sister, but it needs more practice when he is calm or just a little frustrated in order for him to get used to it.
He then did satellite work in the graphing calculator. We figured out how it cycles the colors of the equations it plots. He had me write down his recipe for quiche dough donuts. I pointed out he needed to change his countdown to one and told him it is Christmas Eve. Eve was a word of the day. He found a chain in his graphs. He had another pita sandwich and I read Prelutsky. More new words: nearly and pestiferous. It somehow also moved to a discussion of bodily fluids, and amniotic fluid was another word of the day.
We were all heading up into town to get a few groceries. Carly stated walking first, as we were going to ride my bike. It took me a few minutes to get the bike ready and we did some sort of Brother game. He then insisted on updating his countdown before we left, to 1. We got going, only to realize after a couple blocks that he didn’t have his helmet, so we went back for that. We rode into town and found Carly at the park outside the library.
I stayed in the park while they went over to the bakery and got sweet and savory pastries. We came back and ate those in the park. Carly called something “chewy” and he incredulously said, “Okay, so let me get this straight: it’s chewy? It’s chewy.” Carly headed to the grocery store and he and I played in the park. I pushed him on the swing, then we went over to the merry-go-round. There were two bigger boys next to us, and after a few minutes they asked for my help. They had a bright green beetle and asked if I knew what it was. We looked at it with them and some searching and were pretty sure it was one of these scarab beetles: http://www.nature-of-oz.com/cetoniinae.htm
We headed home soon after that. We actually beat Carly home. We did a Brother game for a few minutes until Carly got home. He then chose some containers out of recycling to use for bug catching. Carly was trying to decide whether she should make lentil or tomato soup first and asked August: “Lentil…I was just thinking about how much I hate tomatoes.”
We went out across the street and caught a couple ants. He let those out though when he spotted an Israeli ladybug and we caught that and took it home. We were rhyming ‘-ot’ words while we were out there.
Back inside he listened to the Circle Round story “Curious Boots,” then played Minecraft. Before we started he had another question for us to answer sometime: How was Minecraft made? Despite our discussions and prep work and reminders near the end, the end went badly and he got upset. He ate some dinner, but threw his broccoli when I said we weren’t going to watch Charlie Brown now.
He recovered by making a fort over in the corner by the red chairs. He said, “I love my kidding fort.” And we looked at his photos from the day of the Artisan Fair, which I finally posted. An impressive day of work. I went for a walk. It was warm and windy. The storm is coming. When I came back I found he had made a storage fort in the kitchen that he told Carly he’d take down in the morning. They were reading Baby Aliens Got My Teacher! by Pamela Butchart. I made him oatmeal.
We did a Brother game with Sister and Myna. They were having another Minecraft war. He accidentally hit my funny bone, which was funny because I just taught him that word and told him it had been a long time since I’d done that. We then did reflexes on his knees. He was hungry so had toast and strawberries. He was then playing on his toy piano, and explaining, “This chord has some dissonance.” Of one chord he said, “I also used this for a horror movie and a haunted house when the main character stepped in.” Another was “…the scary ghost that was playing the organ.”
I got him upstairs and washed his hair, really well, and scrubbing his scalp a lot. He went along with it well. Carly then took over and put him to bed, and I think he was asleep somewhat earlier, by 10.
The answer is lipety doo song:
Funny eyes:
His video of the time in posters:
Discussing zoom lenses and the cards and stuff:
Yankee Doodle on the slide:
Zinnie cam: buttering toast:
Dissonant chords and movie sounds:
