Category: Daily

We were quick this morning: I tried getting him up starting at 7:15 but he didn’t get up until 7:30. We went downstairs and he looked at his iPad for just a minute before needing to use the bathroom. We got ready to go and were walking by 7:48. As we got walking he asked about the tire he had found yesterday. It was a tire that had come off a garbage can. We had returned it across the street to where we saw a garbage can missing its wheel, and we spotted it where we’d left it.

On the walk to school he said he had the radio on so I sang songs most of the way to school: A Ah Apple, ZYX, counting by 2s, etc. As we walked into the school I was asking him about who he might want to play with. He told me “I don’t need any friends.” We got to his class just after 8:05. They were still outside.

I walked home and worked on editing the Sabeel book and did some cleaning. I walked back to the school for library time. I stopped to fill my water bottle and I spotted a guy walking out of the school and he waved at me. It took me a moment to figure out who it was: the younger guy that works at VIPizza. He may have just been delivering pizzas, but he was inside the campus and I would think they’d only be allowed to the gate. So I’ll have to ask him next time we go there.

Went and helped the class get ready for library time at 2:10 and we walked up. Ilana read them two Maurice Sendak books: Where the Wild Things Are and Pierre. He sat on the other side of the rug from me today. For checkout time he chose Preschool to the Rescue again. He had checked it out once last year.

Back at the classroom he showed me is art he had made today. He said it was a forest, but changed his mind and said it was just nature stuff. they had used leaves and needles and sticks and glued them on paper. He also showed me the pirate person he had made on Friday, in the pirate ship. And he told me about maker space: “I did maker space. I made-ed a really hard circuit. It lit up a light. I had the idea to turn off the lights to see it.”

Out on the bench I remembered how he’d wanted to talk to his teachers about breaking the iPad stand. We went in and asked, and neither of them knew about the incident he was concerned about. He showed them the iPad stand he was worried about and Andrea assured him there was a part on it that comes off easy but that it was back on and not broken. Later, Carly and I asked him how he felt about it now and he felt much better.

Andrea told me he had done something with the overhead projector today and played a tangrams app in Maker Space. On the bench August told me you had actual pieces when you did it and we figured out this was what he had done: https://www.playosmo.com/en/tangram/

I got us going so we could head home to finish our furniture building, but he wanted to sit and play games, so we sat by the guardhouse. We were playing a preschool game where he had a science lab under the slide. He took the preschool class into an eyeball. He then needed to use the bathroom and we went to the one in the library. In the bathroom he found out we were walking home and he instantly got really upset and started yelling.

As we slowly walked through the school, him not much calmer, we saw both Rebecca and Sherry and talked to them. He wasn’t willing to walk home yet and was convinced that Carly would walk home and get the car and come and get him. We went to her classroom and talked to her, then sat on the beanbags and read Hilo 3 to chapter 8.

We all walked home, and got here at 5. On the couch he directed Carly to sit to one side of him and me the other: “I like sitting in the middle next to both of you.” He had some dinner, then Carly was trying to get him to sit with her to read his library book. Suddenly, he said, “I almost forgot! The chair!” I asked, “You want to do that now?” “Totally!”

We went up and he helped me finish the chair. As I ironed the covers and put them on the cushions he played a game where he was a cat that ended up as a classroom pet. He slept on the cushions. When the chair and shelves were all set up, temporarily in the Zinnie room, he wanted to use his iPad in the chair. He used the Maps apps and was finding interesting places. He explained that “There’s a reason I’m marking places…” It was so that we could go to these places in the future. He found amusement parks, including one up near Vancouver, B.C. that I said might actually be possible sometime.

I got his bath ready and Carly gave him a bath. She was asking him questions about playing with kids and he gave thumbs sideways to playing with Bar or Omri. Said he would play with Eve or Hector if he played with anyone at school. He told us “I don’t really want friends…I have a friend in my a tummy…a robot…Uncle Trout…I have barbecuing to do!” Those are references to Hilo and the robot uncle he builds.

I read Preschool to the Rescue, then he ate apples and Cheerios and played with the sounds you can make with the Eric Carle book we have of animal stories. We were making rhythms. Carly came back to go to sleep with him. I told him I would sleep on the bed if there was room. “But I took around a lot! I could be there, or there, or in the middle…” I left them at 8:35. But he wasn’t falling asleep, so I went up after 9 and sang to him for awhile, then lay with him until Carly came back and I left gain at 9:35. I got a text message a few minutes later saying the word of the day was ‘unconditional’, likely referring to love, which was good as I’d totally forgotten about a word of the day. think he was asleep a bit after that.

Having the preschool class visit an eyeball:

Rolling to Mama’s classroom time lapse:

Answering questions with the classroom signs:

Putting together the chair:

Morning Cousin It hair

Library time across from me

Book to check out

Pirate he made Friday

Forest art

Explaining the game

Playing his iPad in the new chair

Playing in the sink

I started trying to wake him up at 7:15. He finally woke up at 7:30. A big night of eleven hours of sleep. The first thing he said to me was “What’s after rest time?” I was able to tell him it was yoga, which he hasn’t had in weeks and weeks. He watched one Pink Panther and we were on our way. We got to his classroom right at 8:10, but they were already in a meeting, planning Bibo’s birthday party. So apparently 8:05 is the new start time? Haven’t gotten a memo on that. He was a little hesitant, not knowing the schedule, but Andrea got up for something and came and got him and he went back to the circle with her.

I walked home and was there for awhile, then went to busy, busy Ikea. Got the chair that we had decided on, a set of bookshelves, a new 13 inch pan, and some smaller things, like a pack of paper for August. It was quite busy and I had to park almost at the end of the lot. Along line to checkout, so I had time to study Hebrew.

At home I hauled all the boxes into the living room, then did a first read through of the Sabeel book, which came back from the printer. Looks really good, but quite a few errors from the printer to correct. Also, they used the 10 minute sketch I had made just to illustrate an idea for the book cover as the actual book cover. If Omar had told me he liked the idea I would have spent some actual time on it.

Walked back to school and got him just before 3. He was playing with a big set of magnet blocks and showed me how they work. And he told me he has a camera in his stomach that does stop motion and can take billions of photos. He then took me into the atelier and wanted me to build something with him using the shape blocks, which were on the table. We built a symmetrical shape together, then he went and got a mirror so he could make it double again. He showed me a paper packet thing in the atelier and told me it was for the reading class, but couldn’t tell me more. He said they hadn’t had reading class yet, and they hadn’t talked about it. They should be starting those up soon though.

We went out on the bench and he ate. I had brought superglue and I superglued his timer, which had broken on Friday. He says he doesn’t need it for rest time now, so we’ll probably take it home tomorrow when it is dry. He told me knock knock jokes he had made up, like “Knock knock. Who’s there. Bird. Bird who? Peck, peck, peck, peck!” He had me break apart one of the round corn crackers into 12 pieces and we did math with that. And he told me about yoga. He said they did balloon breathing, sun salutation, and what sounded like sunama. He sang a sun salutation song he had learned in class.

We headed home before 4 after I told him we had Ikea furniture to put together. At home he used the broken strap around the big chair box to drag it over to the rug, where we were placing all the boxes. I took the box with the shelves upstairs, but were opening the chair part downstairs. I could only find the big scissors, and let him use them to cut the other strap around the big box. I was then putting the scissors away and just going to pull off the tape when he came over to me and sort of whispered “Hey dada, I liked that one time you let me use the really big scissors.” So with my help and supervision I let him cut all the tape on the big box to get it open.

But then he wanted to have fun just cutting the plastic. When I said no to that he got frustrated and said I wasn’t letting him come up with ideas. I argued that we had a lot to do and that would slow us down. he switched his argument and now said he wanted to come up with ideas to help out. And he did. He used the screwdriver set to figure out he could poke holes in the plastic on the door units for the bookshelves to get them open. He managed to fully open both boxes and was very excited that he figured it out on his own.

We then headed upstairs and he helped put together the shelves unit. Like our other units, except white this time, with two wood-pattered doors to put on two of the square shelves. He told me he was Izzy, my helper (after Izzy in the Hilo books). He also talked at one point about how his teachers wouldn’t believe that he helped put furniture together.

We finished the shelves and one of the doors, although there wasn’t much he could do to help with the doors. So we switched to the chair, putting the metal pieces on the bottom. He was playing with the metal pieces, pretending they were shooting things out of them, etc. but then he was hitting things with them and I was asking him to stop (in particular Carly’s Q, 14, etc. paintings). Carly came in and when he kept hitting things with it she took it away. He had a meltdown after this.

After a couple minutes he was calling for me to come into the bedroom. I think he was concerned I was going to finish it all on my own, so I told him we could pause and finish tomorrow. That seemed to help and he calmed down and apologized for screaming in her ear.

He and I went downstairs and Carly took a shower. He watched The Magic School Bus episode about different kinds of animal eyes. I got soup ready for him. It was a little after 7 when he was done with the episode and then ate his soup. Carly asked him about his day and if he had fun. He answered,”Affirmative” (which is from a robot in a Julius Jr. episode) but wouldn’t tell her much more. A minute later Carly asked him, “Did you grow today?” He replied, “Uh-huh…Why do you ask me that so much?”

It was time for his bath but he wanted me to play the preschool game with him. I told him he could it with Carly while he took his bath and pointed out he hadn’t played much with her today. So he asked Carly to play with him tomorrow when it wasn’t bath time. Earlier she said he had told Carly to say “I love you” less: “You can say it sometimes, but not quite so much.”

Still on the couch, he told us “I’m the worst person in my class.” And he again related the story of knocking over an iPad. He had also told Carly about this before falling asleep on Friday. We talked to him about it and a couple minutes later it seemed he had changed his mind: “I’m the teacher’s favorite student in the class.”

Carly took him up to his bath and brushed his teeth. They came downstairs for a minute to get chocolate milk, then I took him up to bed after he said goodnight to Carly. He talked about “The subatomic sea. That’s the saltiest sea…” In Skybrary we read a book called Perimeter, Area, and Volume: A Monster Book of Dimensions and Izzy Impala’s Imaginary Illnesses. I turned on the lamp and we played a few minutes of the preschool game. He used the bathroom and I had lights off at 8:50. I think 8:30 is the goal going forward. He started talking about being the worst student again and wanted me to call his teachers right then to ask them if he was the worst student. When I talked to Carly afterwards it turned out he had said the same to her on Friday. So I will try to talk to one of his teachers tomorrow—he’s definitely worry about this. He then asked me “Can you sing me something?” I sang Thin Blue Flame, Cohen’s Hallelujah, and a couple other things and he was asleep by 9:20.

Using the mirror to make symmetry:

Sun salutation song:

Figuring out how to open the Ikea packages all on his own:

More sun salutation song:

Time lapse of me working on the shelves:

Waking up

Working on our shape

Pulling

Using the big scissors

Trying out the chair

Helping

He was up before 6:30. Way too early. I came down at 7 and he was watching Pink Panther. The internet stopped working, and he took screenshots in Sky Guide for awhile before reluctantly watching Sarah and Duck. They mentioned pictures in the Sarah and Duck, and August wanted to take photos so asked for my phone. He tried taking a slo-mo video of me drinking coffee.

Carly made french toast and we each ate a slice. He used his iPad to measure things and asked that I switch it to metric. He then said, “I know a word of the day: perimeter.” He had heard it, but said he didn’t know what it meant. So discussed that a bit. He got my iPad and was then making music in Tabletop using a sequencer.

Carly headed to Tira to meet with two teachers there about their Get to Know You days planning (each of the three schools will be hosting days this year).

He wanted the Tabletop music app on his iPad, so I installed that and a couple of other music apps. He really liked an app called Medly and spent quite awhile making a song. He said, “I’m in charge of MY music.” He was happy about his song until he heard the samples. “I’m so dumb with this app.” But then I encouraged him and he added another track and asked, “Since I added a new instrument, can I work on my song more?” He kept working on it, and was excited about his song again.

We then played the preschool game, then he was doing rolls on the couch and did one right off the couch, landing sitting on the floor. He was startled, but said it didn’t hurt. We moved up to the bed and continued the preschool game with the students visiting on his planet. He was showing them ‘tricks’ on the bed and started by saying “Kids, lesson one.” We thought the kids should have names, and we named a few: Leo, Stacey, Dan, Zoe, Rudy. He morphed into a bird and had me make a nest of pillows for him on the bed. He was actually getting tired and seemed to rest a bit. He was telling me things about birds, and made up how high they could fly. I asked if he wanted to know the real answer and he said no. I looked it up anyway: 37000 feet. He found the old phone (the one that is sort of his) plugged in and recorded himself doing some singing.

Then, over in the office he saw the 5 Little Monkeys popsicle sticks from Hebrew class last year. He agreed we didn’t need them, but thought the sticks would be good for something so was taking the tape off them. We then played another preschool game with him coming through the ceiling.

Carly got home at 10:25. He had chocolate milk and and played with Sky Guide. Carly was looking up stuff about Hubble. He observed “I don’t think that videos that teach you stuff isn’t as good as apps that teach you stuff.”

We then got going. We were going to the pool first, then to Ikea to do chair shopping. At school we first sat at the couches to have a snack. He took some photos and videos. And he wanted me to take portrait photos of him. We got in the pool about 12:30 and played for an hour. I took his floaties off and for awhile he was just holding onto my hands, and starting to kick to tread water. Progress is happening.

We left the pool area at 1:35. In the car he sung the tune of a song he said he learned at school, “Run along, Jimmy John Jonesie…” He then sang along to the song that was on the radio.

We headed Ikea and looked at chairs. Hard to decide, but we all agreed on a green chair. Unfortunately, the big box was just a little too big to fit in the car without folding down both of the seats. So I’ll have to return sometime without August. Carly got a few plants though. We stopped and got a food: a falafel sandwich for me, a hotdog for them to share, and two ice creams. At some point in the store August was telling me things and said, “You know I have a computer? I suck up all the knowings…then I shoot them out.”.

We headed home at 3:15. In the car he listened to his own song in Medly. He said, “Wow, that is so amazing.” At home he was acting tired again. I got him peanut butter crackers and we sat on the couch and read Hilo 4, finishing it. He was then acting out a robot invasion, etc. We went upstairs to play on the bed and we told a couple August and Teegan stories together: The Cloud Planet and The Pizza Door. We headed downstairs at 5:50. Carly suggested that watering the plants should be his chore. He said, “Cleaning the toilets is my chore.” He also agreed to water plants.

So he went and washed the toilet. Then had soup for dinner. I took him up for his bath and he was singing away, basing his song on “I don’t want to live on the moon.” We used the hair dryer on him, and he told me “Do you know that to those beams of fire that the sun makes (solar flares) the Earth would be tiny? Microscopic!”

Carly put him to sleep and I went for a run. He was asleep by 8:30.

Working on his song:

Working on his song 2:

Tune he learned at school:

Singing along to the song:

Down the stairs at Ikea:

Bird in a nest

Photo he took of me

Portrait of him

Finding treasures in the parking lot

Photo he took of Carly trying out a chair

Helping buy the plants

Plants and hot dog

He came down at 7:20, went right for his shoes, and went outside with Carly. I heard them talking about putting up some sort of sign, and Carly looked up sunrise and sunset times. They came in and sat on the couch. August explained that he would sit in the middle and I’d sit on one side of him and mama would sit on the other side. “You’re a bum bum…that’s a way of saying you’re really nice.” Carly explained what ‘bum’ meant and he sang ‘Word of the day!” He asked her, “Will you like me when I’m seventeen?” He was still stuffy, but refused to blow his nose.

Carly went outside and he watched Llama Llama. She had made chocolate milk for him. I got vitamins and Cheerios. He stopped watching and had his milk and food, then was asking me what a tornado looked like. We watched videos of tornados and hurricanes, with me turning down the volume when people started swearing. He had me be someone taking a field trip up into the clouds when it got really windy. He then watched the latest Marble Machine X construction video (#53, I think), and then he was the Marble Machine, with me playing him.

He went outside with Carly. They discovered a big mushroom by the stump behind the Zinnie House and August came in and got me to show me. He also got the hammer to try to hammer it out. I went out and watched, but it proved to be a tough little mushroom and he gave up on destroying it. I made scrambled eggs with olives. He didn’t eat much, and heard me mention that they were a little watery. He said that was why he didn’t like them. Carly cooked them more and he ate a bit more of them.

We then read a few chapters of Hilo 3. I then went up and took a shower. He was watching The Pink Panther when I came back down. Carly made a mango smoothie. He got whiney about how long it was taking and she stopped until he was nice to her again. We read more of Hilo, through chapter 6, then went upstairs and played the pretending game on the bed. We continued the thread from yesterday, with the kids visiting him again. He did tricks on the bed and we did some slo-mo and time lapse videos of that.

He asked what the smallest distance was, and we talked about micrometers/microns and made that a word of the day. He used the bathroom, then went downstairs for a bathroom treat. He watched Kids Health videos with Carly. At one point he excited said, “I seed that!” It was the lung sacs, which he’d seen in the anatomy app. He was then quoting the Nerve through the weekend.

Carly told me that when they were outside she had asked him what roots are for. He said, “I know you know what roots are for.” And then, “I know you know I know what roots are for.” They then did challenges with his kitchen stuff, finding things that looked most like organs. I switched to Hebrew colors, which led to us watching the Hebrew colors song. August saw Carly move computers away from where he was drinking his smoothie and he started quoting the Nerve: “You don’t have to be so fussy about it.”

I got ready for August and I to go for a walk. But first he got us playing with the doctor kits. He used the light to study my throat and ears. Actually played with those for quite awhile. He went and washed his hands, and noticed that you could really see the lines on his hands wen he was scrubbing them with the white soap.

He and I then got walking at 3. We first went up and did recycling, then got as far as our neighborhood park. There, he went on the spiderweb swing and took photos from it. He then lounged on it and ate some snack. He took a couple of photos with the macro lens and also pretended to fly. Then we went over to the ship structure and were playing a pirate ship game. Carly called, and he talked to her about the grocery shopping, relaying answers from me. After the call he said, “Let’s get back to our pirate ship game.”

At one point he told me “I’m the worst student” in the class. I asked him to explain and he said he breaks things without knowing. The only story he was able to tell was that he apparently knocked over n iPad on a stand and it came off the stand. Wasn’t even clear if anything had been broken. I also know his timer got broken. I explained it was just an accident and okay, and eventually we went back to the game.

I exchanged a couple messages with my friend Peter. August didn’t like this, and told me “I know you like to talk to your friend Peter, but please give me a little more attention.” We were playing the preschool game by now, and he had the students visiting his planet. He said his planet only had a hundred people and no plants or animals, and that “You’re very unlikely to die on this planet.” The game went on and on. The students visited him on multiple occasions, bouncing around once, doing science on another, etc.

We finally took a break from that and sat on a bench to have more snack. I got out Hilo 3 and we finished reading it. August was then acting out being a destructive robot, but a nice one: “I just destroyed every jail on the planet in two seconds. I don’t want jails on the planet.” And he destroyed everything on Earth but put it back. Same with all the fossils. He took some more photos and spent some time walking in circles around the base of a post. We started to head home and I convinced him to at least walk around the Holly block since we hadn’t gone very far.

We were home at 5:25. He gave her the hanger and was really proud of it. Carly used it to hang up his hat in the entryway. She was making soup but it wasn’t ready yet. He had some pasta, but didn’t eat much again.

He was taking lots of screenshots of lots of objects he found in Sky Walk, starting with the Messier 100 galaxy. When Cherie and Chuck called in FaceTime he showed them what he was doing. Later in the call he would show them, a couple times, the dancing that he does in dance class/studio.

I got his bath ready, then I went for a run. Carly took him upstairs and he spent a long time on the toilet, during which they played some of the classroom game. He then spent a lot of time cleaning the toilet. She gave him a bath, and they were rinsing when I got home.

I took him in the bedroom and he was playing around in there. He peed a little in his pajamas when I went down to get my iPad and insisted I change him. He went to the bathroom and I changed him. We then read a few chapters of Hilo 4, which I had bought. He was laughing a lot. He was hungry, so ate most of an apple and some Cheerios as we read.

After that I started to brush his teeth. He was thirsty so went into the bathroom and was using the top of the thermometer case as a little cup. He discovered that if he filled the bottom of the case with water and put the lid on that water wouldn’t flow out of the two holes on the bottom. He was very excited about this and showed us: “It’s scientific!” Of course, he got his shirt wet doing this, so we had to change his shirt. Then, he discovered we hadn’t wiped him after he went to the bathroom. This necessitated another pants change. We finally finished brushing his teeth and turned on just the lamp. We played one round of the preschool game, where he fell though the roof, then he wanted socks. I turned off the light and he complained “I can’t see my favorite piece of art.” That’s the mandala from Cherie. Did some singing, then we lay in silence. I was falling asleep as well, and he was asleep somewhere between 10:15 to 10:30.

Hammering the mushroom 1:

Hammering the mushroom 2:

Slo-mo trick 1:

Time lapse tricks:

Slo-mo tricks 2:

Snack in the swing:

Dancing for oma and opa:

Singing a loud song:

Mushroom

Tied up

His view of me pushing him

Admiring his hair

Around the post

His wire hanger treasure

Checking the timer

Tried waking him at 7:10, then let him sleep. At 7:30 I tried again and he sat up, then lay back down at the end of the bed. I was going to give him ten more minutes, but at 7:35 he got up and headed downstairs to the couch. He started watching a Magic School Bus episode in which a bird makes a mess in their classroom and then they investigate to figure out what kind of bird it is. He didn’t finish before we had to get going.

We took the car as we had hummus to deliver, were running late, and needed the car to take Carly and her stuff home in the afternoon anyway. On the way to the car August saw the red brake on the front wheel of another car and said he needed to take a photo of it. But then of course we found out there was no food pickup as all of the Gaia Jr. Club were on their Week Without Walls trips. We got to the preschool a little after 7:10. They were getting ready for a nature walk, which August was not happy about and got upset about. His main complaints were that it was too long and too hot. He must have had one nature walk that was uncomfortable for him, as he had liked them in the beginning. Anyway, Eve came over to try to hold his hand, but he only wanted to hold mine. Hector came over as well. I ended up walking him up to the field with the class. He continued to protest but was calming down—until he found out they were going to the field before going to the butterfly garden. He really didn’t like this idea and told Andrea “You need to cancel this now!” He complained they had just done this yesterday. Apparently they had brought soccer balls up and kicked them around. When we got to the field I handed his hand to Andrea and she was telling him he could sit with her. He wasn’t happy, but he wasn’t really upset either and I took off and walked home after putting the hummus in the staff fridge.

At 11 I walked back to school for an 11:30 meeting with Andrea and Marion, which went quite well—certainty better than the last one. I showed up with cappuccinos, which went over well. Marion started by showing me a bird skull they had found on their nature walk. A mystery like the Magic School Bus episode. And Andrea showed me a person that he had made out of cardboard and glue and googlie eyes. It was totally his idea and was a major step in doing stuff on his own at school. Andrea said he also animated it with JibJab or something and would send it to me.

They now want to focus on getting him to play with the other kids more. They talked about how Eve and Hector in particular have reached out to him—literally—but he’s avoided holding hands with them. One time Eve fell down and was hurt, and they went and sat her across from August while she was recovering. He turned his seat around so he didn’t see her. But generally he is doing well. Always coming to group time on his own, raising his hand and waiting turns and providing good ideas. He’s been going to the bathroom occasionally, and washing his hands when they ask him to.

Marion also said that they asked all the kids today what their favorite foods are and he said, “All the candies in the world!” She then talked about how the ‘treats’ are always the first thing he goes for in his lunch and suggested we involve him more in putting together his own lunches. I thought it was a bit of an unfair stretch to link his love of candy with the going for the healthy breads/protein bars in his lunch, but it was a good idea anyway.

The other thing they suggested was talking to him each day about one kid in his class that he’d like to play something with—it could be a specific project at school, or something he brings from home. Set a reminded to myself to do that each morning on our walk to school. Oh, and Andrea said he really likes the Lunch Robot notes in his lunch.

I then told them about Dr. Aviv and that went over well as Dr. Aviv assessed Marion’s own daughter, so she knows her very well. She commented on how it is odd to work with someone in a different role, now being on the teacher side with Dr. Aviv.

I fled the preschool at 12 when it sounded like the class was getting ready to come back down from music class. I went and typed and studied in the library. And I went to the business office and got a copy of our bills from this last year.

When I went to pick him up he was playing with the shape blocks on the floor by himself. I watched him for a minute before he realized I was there. When he saw me he told me “I’m finding shapes that fit in with other shapes.” He then asked if I’d help him. We added to it a bit and he told me “It’s the germ sucker. It makes people not sick. The squares suck up the germs.”

We were still in there when Carly called and joined us. He showed her the germ sucker then we cleaned up. He went out on the bench with Carly and started eating. At one point he told us “I hate noises! My ears are designed to hear quiet noises. To me the noise that kid is making is 92 million times louder than a rocket engine!”

He took a lot of photos around the preschool and up the stairs and through the gates as we left. Carly went to get the hummus from the fridge and a few things from her classroom and met us at the gate. August saw her keychain dangling from her hand as she talked to someone and took a photo of that, and also of the flowers on the woman’s shirt. In the car he had me take a photo of the dashboard—a photo he’s talked about taking a few times.

At home he watched Julius Jr. and then ate crackers and hummus with Carly as I threw together a pasta dish with cream sauce and mushrooms, olives, and sun-dried tomatoes. He didn’t eat much of it. He went to the bathroom and lost his after-bathroom treat when he put a big wad of toilet paper in the toilet after Carly told him not to. He had some chocolate milk a bit later though.

They went outside and I went out to help when they were trying to get more sticks from the storage area. They were putting in sticks to hold up the growing plants. I went upstairs for something, and a few minutes later August came in wanting to play with me. He told me he was going to cut pieces of paper for me and I would draw on them. When I needed more he would cut more pieces. So we did that, with me drawing little pictures of trees, a robot, Green Monster, etc. He told me “I like how hard you’re working on that.” And sometimes we would disagree on what I had drawn. He told me “It’s okay to disagree.” It sounded like things that he would hear at preschool, but he claimed they weren’t. He was also taking my finished pictures and cutting blank paper off like the teachers do so that other kids can use that paper. He then drew some pictures as well. He then took a photo of our art and a lot of other photos around the living room.

Carly and I were on the couch talking, and he came and sat between us, then had fun recording our conversations. He then recorded songs in the voice recorder, and sang “I’m really fun to play with” and “I love you – This is the greatest song in the world.” He used the bathroom and got a treat this time. We played one round of the plant growing game up on the couch, then I took him up for his bath. Carly rested on the couch—she’s pretty sore after all the hiking on her trip.

He and played an elaborate version of the robot boy in class story, where did the helping out with the plants, then we celebrated his birthday. He said that he’s from another world and to him mushrooms are cake, but he let the other kids have a regular cake. He got presents, and one of them was a mysterious button that allowed him to teleport back to his world. He left one for the class though so they could come and visit him on his world. I commented on how it sounded like the start of a series. He asked what ‘homesick’ means. I think it was from both Llama Llama (he watched an episode in which they have a sleepover and talk about being homesick) and the discussions Carly and I had about her trip and kids getting homesick. So ‘homesick’ was the word of the day.

In the bedroom Carly took over and read him the first half of Hilde Cracks the Case: Hero Dog. I then took over and read the second half. We then played day 2 of his game: the kids visited him on his planet. He said that everything pink, purple, lavender, peach, and silver and that those are his favorite colors in real life. Carly came back in and I left them at 8:50. He was asleep a bit after that. The first time in a week that I didn’t put him to sleep.

Working on his shapes blocks:

Making music by the bench:

Hitting themselves:

Drawing pictures:

Recording our discussions:

“I am really fun to play with” song:

“I love you – This is the greatest song in the world” song:

Still needing to sleep

Eyes open for a second, then back to sleep

Sticks for the plants

Cutting paper for me

My drawings

His drawing

Head stand

In dance studio–posted on StoryPark

Architecture class studio–from Storypark

More architecture studio

He sat up at 5:55. Then lay back down with his head at the end of the bed. I got up after a few minutes and went in the bathroom. He got up and came and got me. He huddled on my pillow and I lay next to him. This happened a couple times. Eventually I got up to take a shower and told him he could stay there and I’d leave the doors open. While I took a shower he moved to the couch in the play area and was there when I got out.

He went to the bathroom, putting me on the arm as he walked by, then we headed downstairs. He watched Julius Jr. and had his vitamins, some pizza, and slices of apple for breakfast. Then some Cheerios.

We drove as we’d forgotten the bike at school yesterday as he was doing his time lapse on the way to the car. We got to class and they were already starting a meeting before 8:10. Didn’t figure out why the early start. There were a couple of sad kids. He asked about the schedule. He was happy when I told him it was 4 choices day and he joined the meeting without knowing the full morning schedule.

As I walked outside Omri saw me and stopped me and asked if she could come over to August’s house sometime after next Wednesday. I talked to August about this later and he liked the idea.

I came back at 3, or a little before, and when I went inside he was working with Andrea on something on the floor. It turned out he had really gotten into these shape blocks and was making symmetrical figures. This one was a bat. He told me he had also made one that was two kids stuck together. He then took me outside to show me the big cardboard box that they, him included, had been painting brown to turn into a pirate ship. He told me they hadn’t done studio time (their name for the 4 choices time) today as they had forgotten, being busy with other activities. He didn’t seem upset about missing out on dance class again. Although he wasn’t sure what he’d been doing at the time, as he said the pirate ship was earlier in the day.

We took his snack and lunch and sat on the PKA bench. As he ate, Nicholas rode by on a push scooter thing. August said he had ridden it once upstairs, like through the elementary school hall, it sounded like. He assured me he wasn’t making it up, saying, “The teachers planned-ed that.”

Taya walked by, on the way home, and looked at August and said, “Hi, Mr. August!” August didn’t know why she called him ‘Mr. August.’ I realized that she may have been referring to me as ‘Mr. August’, but she seemed to be looking at him at the time.

We did some of his imagining games, including the one where he helps plants grow by shooting lasers out of his hands at them. He also had a glass crushing machine that crushes glass into glass fibers. He told me “Glass fibers is what they use to make light go through concrete.” Which I totally would have thought he was making up, but is actually true, or at least I think it is: He had watched a video this morning after Julius Jr. on how concrete is made and they were talking about a translucent concrete.

We left at 3:35. As we walked he said, “You sure work hard on that lunch robot comic.” In the car he told me he controlled everything with a computer inside him: me, the planets, the car, his teachers. He had started by saying everything was inside him, so I thought he meant everything was a big simulation inside him, but then it turned out he was just controlling everything.

We got home and he watched some Llama Llama. I got him going to the mall, reluctantly, after 4:30. On the way over he used my phone to take hundreds of photos. I didn’t realize he was constantly pushing the button and it took quite awhile to delete most of the photos later.

We first went to Rebar to get a smoothie. He was being quite grumpy about the wait in line, then the wait for the smoothie. We got the ReJoy, which is banana and chocolate. He was quite happy when we got it. We got a small, which was perfect for him to have what he wanted and then I had a little. In the mall we first went to the pharmacy to look for his vitamins, which are running out. They only had them in a dual pack with vitamin C as well. We went and looked at the health food store, but no luck. We went to Kravitz, the office store, and he helped me choose an eraser and I also got some markers and notebooks for making Lunch Robot and also for my Hebrew and Arabic practice. Then back to the pharmacy where we went ahead and got those vitamins and nail clippers for the backpack.

He then wanted to play in the play area. He was concerned it was too busy, but no one was playing with the squirrel. He went and got that and was going to be the attack squirrel again, but instead started to rock it while singing and counting and then on 10, or 20, he would flip over backwards. Did that several times and had me take a video of him doing it. We then played the imagining games. He was mainly a cat that I was finding in a park.

We left at 6:45 and he was surprised to find that it was dark outside. He had a translator machine and he told me that the birds over the outside playground (there were a lot of them in the trees) were saying “People, people, have fun.” And he told me “It’s the perfect time to translate crickets: Yeah yeah time to play!” Randomly, he asked me “Why’s Ms. Andrea ask so many questions?” He also noted the squinting optical illusion, where if you squint at the street lights it makes lines.

We were home at 7. We stopped at the corner of the house when he pointed out a planet. We got out the star app and identified it as Jupiter and talked about how Venus was just below the horizon. Mikaela parked and said hi to us and probably wondered why we were on the corner pointing at her. We also saw Mars and Vega, up above us.

Inside he watched one Max and Ruby and declared ‘troop’ the word of the day. Carly called and we briefly talked. They were having some excitement of some sort and she didn’t know if she’d be able to skype later. I made nachos and we had those for dinner. We were listening to the Clash and he asked me to add “I Fought the Law” to his playlist. That makes me proud. We went up for his bath and he asked what the longest distance measurement is. I told him about AUs and light years and we added those as words of the day.

After his bath we read Lucy Goes to Witch School and brushed his teeth. Carly called on Skype and we talked to her for a few minutes. He was clearly ready for sleep. We then read the Frog and Toad story “A List.” We did one round of the game. He was a cat that a teacher found on his table at home (he’d come in through the window). The teacher then took the cat to school as a class pet. Sang a couple songs (Yoshimi, It Never Was the Same, Fake Plastic Trees) and he was asleep just after 9:10. A little later than I was shooting for.

Video for mama:

The bat:

The pirate ship:

Spikiest cactus in the world song:

Flipping the squirrel:

Slo-mo dance move:

Smiling for mama

Working with Andrea

Bat

Pirate ship

Smoothie

Looking at erasers

Rocking

Flipping

Carly woke him up around 7, then took chocolate milk up to him. They came down free 7:20. Carly got going. As she was leaving I told him to say “Goodbye” and “Love you”, which he did. But then when I whispered “Enjoy your trip” he looked like he was going to say it, but then said “Ugh” instead.

He and I got walking at 7:50. He was a plant scanner, telling me “I can scan 90000 health problem…bugs…I send a chemical message. They send it back and I read it….” He also talked about eyes: “What your eyes use…the rods and cones…” And he asked “Do you know how long it will take a snail to calculate 92 trillion calculations in ones and zeros? 92 years!”

At school he asked Andrea about the schedule. I offered him an apple, which he declined, but Judson asked if he could have one, and I said yes. They were having another early meeting, so I was able to say goodbye and leave. Also, on the way to school I had asked if he could be walked up to dance class by his teacher. He said he could give it a try.

So I walked home at 8:15, then back at 3. I sat at a picnic table and studied Hebrew. Talked to Noah, Taya’s dad. Cassie was supposed to go on a trip as well, but was sick and couldn’t do it. Dance went several minutes after 4. When he came out he was actually a little early, as apparently he had headed downstairs before Amelia said they could.

He took his snack/lunch bags down to the PKB bench as someone was sitting on the PKA bench. I congratulated him for a full day – it was 8 hours without a check-in from me or Carly. That’s a first. He ate quite a bit and recorded a video telling Carly about his day. He had gone to art class in the morning and made a pinch pot. He also had creative movement. Andrea later told me that he went up to dance just fine. Oh, and they’d done freeze dancing, where they freeze when the music goes off. So I sang a song and he danced.

He used the camera and the lens to take photos of “interesting rocks”. We made our way up to the table across from the elementary office again and played there. He sat on the table, explaining how he was a robot, etc. He took photos of me, and time lapse and slo-mo videos of me picking up the backpack. He then did a timelapse as we walked out of the school to find the car in the parking lot. We forgot about his bike. He talked about how it was “inches and inches and inches and inches” to the car and got that on video.

We drove up to town and parked right in front of VIPizza. I had been thinking we’d take a pizza home, but he wanted to eat slices there. He really missed this place and eating our slices for lunch. We got three slices and a breadstick thing. He said, “They make the greatest pizza I’ve ever had. It is yummy.” When the owner came over to deliver the breadstick I had August repeat what he’d said. The guy gave him a high five. We used the bathroom at the pizza place for the first time – you have to walk around the back of the building to find it.

When we were done I packed up the extra pizza and we decided to go play at the park by the library. The single swing was open so gust started by playing on that, jumping on it and swinging on his stomach. We were in the middle of one of his games, and it was to the point where we were planning his birthday and he was putting up decorations. We wandered over to a bench, then across to the merry-go-round. We played another pretending game, which involved him having a magic school bus to take students on an adventure through a tree. He had special iPads for each of the students that allowed them to record what they saw: “And remember to take your special iPads with you!”

We were back to his birthday game as we left at 6:20. We would have stayed longer but I convinced him to get going. Along the way he told me that he loved me, then said something else. I asked about it, and he said he was being nice to me. He then made up a song, which again I thought was a song that he had learned but he said he made up. It went “I want to be nice to you, but I don’t know how to.”

At home he watched Pink Panther and ate pent butter crackers. Just after 7, as I was letting him finish up a Pink Panther story, Carly Skyped. He talked to her for a bit, but interrupting Pink Panther wasn’t the best time. He got to see her crazy students though. He then had chocolate milk and we read Izzy Impala’s Imaginary Illnesses in Skybrary. He went to the bathroom and got one of his chocolate treats, then we went up to his bath. He sat down in it and played around. I suddenly realized he wasn’t wearing my watch, which he’d had since the playground. I asked if he knew where it was and he immediately said, “I think I left it at the playground.” I looked at photos though and realized he had had it in the car. He then remembered that he’d taken it off on the rug downstairs.

He kept repeating “observation deck,” which is from The 13-Story Treehouse, and reciting lines from Plants Vs Zombies, and “Greetings, Agent Pink…Do you know how hard it is…” from the Pink Panther.

We brushed his teeth and went to bed and read a portion of Plants Versus Zombies that he requested (when they are back in the time of dinosaurs). He spilled his Cheerios, of course.

Turned off the overhead light at 9. Did one round of the preschool game in which he was a robot, then he sang a “I love YouTube” song. Turned off the lamp and sang Driftin, Yellow Submarine, I Dont Want to Live on the Moon, Yoshimi Battles the Robots, and Fake Plastic Trees. He was lying across the top to the bed along the headboard, his head close to me. Suddenly he asked “Can you make chocolate houses? Like that big? How about with machines?” He then said something about wanting to eat a chocolate house, then rolled all the way over to the edge, vertical now, and fell right asleep against the wall and pillows. It was 9:45.

Talking about his day:

Freeze dance:

Time lapse of me picking up the backpack:

Slo-mo of picking up the backpack:

Walking out to the parking lot time lapse:

Inches and inches to the car:

Funny feet in the car:

On the swing:

Convincing him to sing his I want to be nice to you song:

Snack time

Explaining a scenario

A portrait of me – his first use of portrait mode

The best pizza ever

Swing

Running circles

A treasure

Chocolate milk

Sitting down

This has become his corner of the bed

He came down at 7:08. I picked him up, and after a minute the very first thing he said was “I told you you wouldn’t remember” to have Carly wake him up. She had poked her head in to say she loved him, but didn’t want to wake him up when he hadn’t had a lot of sleep. He was fine though.

He watched Pink Panther, then we got going. We took the car to school as we needed to hurry to the nurse first. Got to school at 8:10 and I was walking out before 8:20. August didn’t want to go to the nurse because he was afraid of missing dance class. The nurse was nice though and he was ticklish. Then we got to his class right as they were about to go in for circle time to make their choices. He hadn’t had all his questions answered about the schedule, but I said goodbye and he went in with them.

I walked home, and when I went to return for library time the back tire of my bike was flat. I inflated it, but by the time I had unlocked the bike it was flat again. Had to hurry so I started running to school. Got there just as they were getting the kids ready to go to the library.

He told me he had done architecture instead of dance this morning. We went to the library. Ilana told the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff using felt animals and a felt board. There were some kids slowing things down by trying to climb up towards Ilana and play with the felt pieces and August told me the waiting was the part that he didn’t like. She then read Los Tres Cabritos, which is based on the story, and August thought that was funny. For checkout time he chose A Bed Full of Cats by Holly Keller.

We walked back to class, then went out and ate on the bench. Every day we walk to school we take his adventure water bottle, then I leave it in the back of his bike. I intend to put it in my backpack when I get back to school in the afternoon, but always forget. Today, as we got out of the car, he asked if I was going to remember it. I was leaving it in the car, along with the other books we were returning to the library (Magic Tree House #31, Space Exploration, Word Collector), so I did remember to grab it when I hurried back to library time.

Now, as we sat on the bench and ate, when he asked for water I took it out of the backpack and he said, “You reee-membered!” We played the 4 year old guy the window game. Parents were on a rocket to the moon this time. He had eaten a good portion of the chicken and rice and beans that I’d give him for lunch—the first time he’s touched his main lunch, I think. He proceeded to eat more of it, and most everything else, and still wanted a snack. I suggested we could go to the cafeteria.

We started to make our way over there. He stopped at the outdoor area and played with the ball track thing for a minute, then we went up to the drinking fountain and filled the water bottles. We then sat the table across from the elementary school office for a few minutes. Played more of the preschool game, then he got up on the table and started dancing. I had him get down, and he did more dancing on the ground. He suggested I do a slo-mo of him, so we did that.

We then walked to the cafeteria. Along the way he kept saying, “Oh! I haven’t seen that atom before!” Something he’s done before. At the cafeteria he chose a little chocolate cinnamon roll sort of thing and I got a cappuccino. As we ordered, he held onto the counter and was dancing, holding one of his legs up. Only got the last moment of that on video though. He ate his treat, then was taking photos. Carly called and he answered the phone.

She came over and found us. She asked how dance class was. He said it was good. I told him to tell her the truth. He repeated the answer a couple times, then I asked if he’d had dance today and he remembered he hadn’t. He discussed the architecture time a bit more: “One kid, me in particular, was putting signs on the things kids built…(like) no breaking.”

He wanted to play more of the preschool game with the parents going to the moon (we had gotten up to planning his birthday party). We headed to the library so I could check out the next to Magic Tree House books and Hilo 3. He and Carly played out in the entry way.

We went to the car and started driving. Carly realized she’d forgotten the leftovers from her school lunch. August really wanted them so we went back and she ran in to get them. We then drove up to the grocery store in town and she ran in to get a cucumber and mushrooms. August watched a Sarah and Duck. He had wanted me to play the preschool game with him, but changed his mind.

At home he watched Julius Jr. and rejected her leftovers once he actually could try it. He was acting tired and gave me a thumbs up when I asked if he was. I made nachos for dinner, and he was upset when I put a little sour cream on the edge of his plate to try. Carly had to get him a different plate.

He went to the bathroom and invented machines: the anglemator and shapinator, which change angles and shapes of things. He got a treat free the bathroom from the Adit candy. I said you “Can’t go wrong” with chocolate wafers. He ate it and said, “Yep, can’t go wrong.” He played some Endless Reader with Carly. They decided ‘purchase’ was the word of the day. He played the newborn game and then was playing his science lab game with her and had her teaching math in her classroom. She reminded him she doesn’t teach math and he was surprised (and maybe a little disappointed) by that.

She took him up and gave him a bath. I then went up and read A Bed Full of Cats to him, twice. Carly took a shower and came back and read Picasso’s Trousers. I said goodnight to him. He told her more about school. He made the signs because the teacher told him to because he wasn’t building things and just standing around instead. For ‘don’t knock this down’ he tore a piece of paper and put an X on it. He drew picture to show that another was a playground. And the reason he chose architecture was that he couldn’t go to dance. The teachers didn’t see him when he had his hand up. He was okay with missing dance, but upset that they don’t pay attention to him. Carly talked about ratios of adults and kids and he did some thinking about math. He also said, “But I don’t play with the other kids.” And also told her he isn’t learning anything.

He didn’t go to sleep, and Carly called me up. She went to sleep on the lower bed. August came in the bathroom with me while I got ready, then we went in on the bed. I sang three songs: “We All Sing with the Same Voice,” “I Don’t Want to Live on the Moon,” and “Fake Plastic Trees” and he was asleep at 9:05.

Dancing by the elementary school:

Slo-mo dance:

End of cafeteria dancing:

Me drinking coffee:

Walking to class from the nurse

Watching the story

Choosing time

His choice

Me drinking coffee

He came down at 8:20. That was a nice big night of sleep. Close to 11 hours. They cuddled on the couch, then he had chocolate milk. August said, “Did you know the tallest you can grow is to 45 yers old? After 45 yrs old you don’t grow taller anymore. You just learn to do stuff more.” Carly found out he’s pretty good at staring contests. Carly asked how I was feeling, which is better, but August wanted me to take my temperature again. I did that, then he wrote my symptoms down on the chalkboard.

I took a shower and he watched Llama Llama and ate french toast. Carly headed to Adit’s house to go the synagogue with her and see her sukkah (hut). August did some exercising with me, then watched an episode of Julius Jr. When the time ran out on his iPad for the day he spent a few minutes making lots and lots of alarms in World Clock and checked his alarm clock.

We went outside and played around for a bit. August asked me to find an Easter egg that Carly had hidden for him yesterday but he hadn’t been able to find. I couldn’t find it either. Back inside he got his rope and had fun tying my foot to the chair. I asked why and he said “I’m tying you up so you’ll get distracted and I can play iPad.” And he told me “I need to learn how to make a knot.” I showed him how to loop the rope back through the loops he was making and he was starting to figure it out.

Carly got home at 11:30 and he excitedly showed her how he’d tied me up. She had brought back some plants from Adit’s garden to make tea for us, and a box full of candy that was from the synagogue. She said they dance around with them. August said, “I don’t know why they dance around with it, but I’ll try it anyway.”

August and I spent a lot of time doing stop motion videos. He was telling me he was in charge and I taught him the word ‘director’ and explained it. He said, “like in a concert,” thinking about ‘conductor’. We made two videos: The Dancing Flower and The Alien and the Snake.

Carly started making nachos. She asked if he ever had an imaginary friend. He asked what she meant. He then suggested she could be his imaginary friend. He said they could pretend she doesn’t exist. She thought that was some good divergent thinking. That was a term we’d talked about as we were doing stop motion videos, as I was suggesting that we have two objects moving at once. And August said he liked having people in his stop motion videos. He said the teacher had said they could only have one thing move at a time and couldn’t have people in them. Carly taught him the term ‘divergent thinking’.

August was pretending to be a baby but Carly said he didn’t really understand how little babies do. That they kind of just move around. I reminded her that she used to say that he looked like an alien moving around when he was a baby. She didn’t remember that at all. He was then pretending to be a baby that popped in the window of the preschool. This was a recurring thing today, although by the end he was always a 4-year old coming through the window.

We ate nachos, then he and I read more of Hilo 2. Then the pretending game where he was a four year old that was abandoned at the preschool. We worked in asking him his address, etc. He’s starting to get his address, full name, etc. down. We haven’t worked on that sort of stuff with him before. Carly was sitting outside, working, and said she felt a raindrop. He ran and got a cup to go catch water. He was a bit disappointed.

We played more imagining preschool games. He then used the macro lens. He fell and dropped the phone and it broke the case a bit. The lens was still fine, but it can’t be used on one of the lenses now. Still fine on the other one, and the phone is fine. He was pretty upset he broke it though. He then helped Carly make a card for Adit: “Kind of like a machine, but more powerful actually. Way more powerful than a wrecking ball…92 nonillion tons…it can destroy a planet.” And he drew a lot of computer code on it. He was then on Messenger on Carly’s computer and typing messages back and forth with me. He was doing a good job reading my messages, then I would give him options to answer a question and he would copy my spelling to type an answer back. He then managed to add Stephanie to a message. Carly was surprised when he did that and said he couldn’t use her messenger anymore. He went and hid on the couch and said, “I’m the worst person ever…I just think it’s actually true.” I assured him he wasn’t.

He watched Max and Ruby and ate peanut butter and crackers and apple, then he played with his jump rope. He had used the space ship to pick up a lot of the blocks from our stop motion set, but now used the jump rope like a whip to make a mess of the rest of them. He said, “My jump roping is fascinating.” And a minute later, “Mama, you’re a great mama.” He was then singing “scum and a tuna fish sandwich.” That’s from a Magic School Bus episode that he’s watched a few times.

He went to the bathroom and when he was getting dressed afterwards he said to Carly, “Little help here.” He got a treat from the candy bag, then was saying “Like Chunky says, “More flavors, gooder treats.’” He said Chunky was a friend that lived in the house across from us. And he asked, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have a treat tree?” He then walked around the yard singing “I love chubby unicorns!”

He and I went out for a walk before 5. It was nice and cloudy and. Bit cooler. We walked to the southwest and he wanted to stop at that little unnamed park. The one that he would zap monsters at last year. He went on the swings for awhile (couple teenagers sitting on the merry-go-round, so that wasn’t an option today) and blasted some monsters. Then we played around the park, on the swings and with the swinging log thing, and played a lot of rounds of “You’re doing science class and a four year old pops through the window.” He was a left behind child and celebrated his birthday with the class. In most of the versions of the story his parents had been on a tour of the school, then left him there when they got on a plane to return home to their home in Europe. He would then hang out with the class and teach them something about science.

After 15 or 20 minutes we continued on our walk. We went down to the trail, as it was cool enough and shady enough. We walked west and I talked about coming back via the dirt road. When we got to the main road though he wanted to do an even longer route, all the way north to the corner of the school and back along our usual route from the school. It was a good 40 minutes, at least, of walking, during which we continued to play the game. It turned out he was actually a robot, not a kid, and then he started helping out at school, using his lasers to help the plants grow (a little Plants Versus Zombies Reference), using a huge vacuum cleaner to clean up, etc.

After turning left at the school, he found a couple of metal pieces that were part of some tool with a loop of wire on it. Looks familiar, but I can’t quite place what it is. Anyway, he said “It can make you hear really tiny sounds like ants sneezing.” You could also look through it. We saw a few more cats and were up to #118.

We got home, and he and I read rest of Hilo 2. Carly made mango smoothie and tea. He ate carrot after he asked Carly to cut it into coins and finally earned popcorn. I ate some of the carrot a bit later and apologized to him – it wasn’t a good carrot at all but had looked fine. She took him and popcorn up for his bath. When they were done, I came up and read the rest of the painting chapter to him in Beezus and Ramona and started the next. He knocked over the popcorn bowl jumping around and had to help me clean up.

Carly brushed his teeth at 8:50. Didn’t realize he would probably be up later and had suggested she could put him to sleep. I didn’t see that happening any time soon as he had slept so long and so late and was still bouncing off the walls. He actually did most of the teeth brushing.

Carly headed to bed and I came up and read all of Plants Versus Zombie Timepocalypse to him. We did one round of the preschool game, then turned the lamp off at 10:05. He got upset though as Carly was supposed to put him to sleep today. I said that had been the idea way back before he was staying up late, and that mama had said good night to him before we read the book. He told me that “I’m still recovering” and that he would sleep in in the morning and not see her in the morning and that she either had to put him to sleep, or we had to wake her up to tell her to wake him up in the morning. He also told me “I like mama a little better” and “I’m a little bored of you.” Totally calmed down thought when I told him I’d tell him an August and Teegan story. I told one of how they ran into each other on a hike in Washington during the summer and they use their magic nut keys to make a door in a tree and they meet a new character from the other side, a squirrel this time.

He was ready for sleep, but at 10:30 turned to me and asked, “Dada, why can’t you hear really soft sounds?” I talked about how there had to be an upper and lower limit of our sensitivity and that if we were more sensitive to really quiet sounds that louder sounds would be worse for us. He thought for a minute, then said there were little hairs for every frequency, so we just didn’t have hairs for those levels. It was confusing frequency with intensity, but given that he immediately rolled back over and was asleep before 10:35 I thought it was pretty interesting thinking.

Tying me up:

The dancing flower:

Back and forth with the blocks:

Crazy time lapse:

I love chubby unicorns song:

Swinging the swinging thing:

The alien and the snake:

Writing my symptoms

Playing with his rope

Tying me up

Candy from Adit

Card for Adit

His treasure

Our route

Popcorn in bed

He slept solidly through the night. I remember him laughing at one point. The only time he rolled over against me was at 6:15. He let out a little cry, then rolled over and pressed himself against my back. He woke up at 6:45 and asked to go to the bathroom. I took him, then we went downstairs where he wanted to nurse but we distracted him with one of the ThinkThin caramel bars instead. I went back upstairs and slept and rested until 8. I had a fever of 37.4.

Back downstairs August developed a sort of detective/spy game where I would leave a mess on the rug and he’d figure out who did it by taking videos/photos of me doing it. Think it was inspired by Cam Jansen. Carly made french toast and we all ate outside. He didn’t eat much of his. I asked if he was hungry and he replied, “No. Cuz it’s the middle of the morning. I’m not hungry in the middle of the morning much.” Back inside he asked how vitamins are made, so we watched a video. He got chocolate milk instead of nursing. He dripped a couple drops on himself and took his pants off.

He started taking macro photos of his iPad, did time lapse of his astronomy app, a slo-mo of Carly, took several other photos, and played with the manual controls in Moment.

I went and took a shower, then he and Carly were playing with Scratch Jr. Carly headed to the store, and he and I did some pretending games, then read Hilo. We finished the first volume and started the second. He then played with music apps, primarily Tabletop. Carly was home at 11:30. He had been saying how he likes our couch and he wants to spend the rest of his life on it. He was then trying to understand what life was like before air conditioners. Did more music, and took more photos.

He ate some pad thai, then Carly made him proper chocolate milk using chocolate syrup she had bought at the store. While he drank it he laughed about something and I said it sounded like a mad scientist laugh. He said it wasn’t, and demonstrated his mad scientist laugh. At one point I picked him up and asked how long I’d be able to do this. He said maybe a year, as he didn’t think he’d want to be picked up in kindergarten.

I went up for another nap. While I was upstairs they did a stop motion video of a drawing they did. the stop motion also included piling objects on the picture, and later August added music to it. When I was going to come back down Carly made me stay upstairs for awhile. August was supposed to be playing by himself. He was just hanging out on the couch, sort of talking to himself. When I came down we played the science lab game.

We were going for a walk, and August insisted on more chocolate milk before we left. He had just had most of an apple and a couple servings of cereal. He didn’t like our options, and instead insisted that we “Please end this now!” by agreeing to his plan. We ended up sitting on the swing. He told me that I was in charge and could give him chocolate milk. I said Carly and I were 50/50. Or 51/49. He said I was the 51.

He agreed to go on a walk just before 5. We walked up dropped off the cardboard recycling, then walked up Kibuts Galuyot. A few days August had talked about how we weren’t seeing as many cats this year and I had said it was because we weren’t walking streets like Kibuts Galuyot as much this year. We saw 10 cats on this walk, bringing the total to 114. Carly had brought a sort of peanut butter sandwich snack bar for him on the walk. He had eaten all of it except the last couple bites, which is his usual. Then said he was done and handed it to me and had some water. It was getting peanut butter on my fingers so I ate it. This time, however, he asked for it back after a minute. He almost insisted we head back when I told him I had eaten it.

We got back at 5:30. He had his long-awaited chocolate milk, then we did some cleaning up. We read some Sisters. Carly got him food, which he swiftly rejected, t lest for the time. He checked his stopwatch and it is up to 1400 hours. He sneezed 3 times and I asked how long I’d be able to count his sneezes. He said I could count hair sneezes as long as I want. He played some Endless Reader and decided ‘zest’ was the word of the day. He did another stop motion of Carly. They then added the music to their video. I was upstairs for something, and he said “My bad.” He said he learned it from a high schooler – likely Gaby and/or her friends. Don’t know what other high schoolers he could be thinking of, unless perhaps he meant Shary’s kids. He also used the term ‘Literally.’ Correctly, I think.

He ate more of his dinner. He was then using the no-more nursing thing to his advantage, asking, “I really want to nurse but what can I have instead?” I started his bath. He had more chocolate milk, but was then whiney about not enough chocolate. Upstairs he watched some of the F1 race on my computer. He said something about really loving the cars. When I went to the bathroom he grabbed a pen and wrote on some of the Hebrew flash cards. I gave him a bath. I took a photo of his bottom to document the spots for the nurse. He talked about how he can’t take a photo of his own bottom and wanted to take a photo of mine instead. I refused. He made a lot of bubbles and was lying on his stomach in the bath. He then started piling bubbles on his head, making a hat of suds. I had to rinse his hair, and when he got out we used the hair dryer. He was trying to use his wet hair as an excuse to have Carly cut his hair so he could then get a lollipop.

He chose a bunch of books from the shelves for bedtime reading and covered a pillow with them. Carly went up and brushed his teeth. He came downstairs to eat a carrot and watch a little more of the race. They went back upstairs and they read The Sneetches. He read parts of The Zax. Carly took him to wash his hands, then she left us a little fatter 9. We played one round of the science lab game. I then turned off the lamp. He stole my pillow, and when I went to move him he accidentally kneed me in the chin really, really hard. I still felt it as I went to sleep. I sang a little and he was asleep at 9:30.

Meteor time lapse:

Strange vocals:

His laughs:

Stopwatch slo-mo:

Drawing time lapse:

Suds hat:

Breakfast outside:

Grainy August:

Smile:

Kittens we saw on our

Stopwatch:

Spots:

Suds hat: