Category: Daily

He was up a little after 6. He and Carly headed downstairs at 6:25. When I came down a bit later he was playing the synth. Carly went out to water plants and he went with her. He started banging the swing with the bolt thing. Probably waking up the neighborhood, but they probably thought it was the construction site across the street getting going. When Carly stopped him I heard him say he does it “when there are volcanoes” and I think he said he was warning ships. Must have been undersea volcanoes.

He wanted to take photos and borrowed my camera. He took a few really great shots. He got the macro lens to take some shots, went back outside, then came and sat next to me and did a video of himself singing the Pink Panther song using his potty words, then scrolled through, looking at past photos.

I got his vitamins for him and a full apple. He ate most of the apple. He watched Brain Pop Jr. videos and I made eggs and pancakes. After breakfast he was playing with the anatomy app: “I’m taking the body parts from this person then giving them to my machine and my machine makes parts for the machine.” Then, “It makes things that don’t turn into dirt turn into dirt.” “I’m really taking apart people’s brains.” “Now I’m going to turn the body parts into metal parts…crank, crank, crank…” “I invented a machine that turns snot into MONEY!”

I went up and took a shower. When I came down he was doing the pictograph activity in TodoMath. Carly headed to the store. August asked me, “Can you help me dissect somebody’s body? ‘Dissect’ means ‘take apart’.” So that became or word of the day. He made another machine “Its called the bangersmasher. When anything is broken, you turn the crank and it starts fixing it.” We did some exercise, then added to the mosaic a little and he added to his dream picture.

Carly came back and he took photos again. Lots and lots of photos. He started outside and took a lot of funny selfies while on on the swing. Then inside he took closeups of all sorts of things. And a lot more selfies, particularly of his hair.

I went upstairs to do some work. They did the balloon pump science experiment, getting it to work a little, then wrestled and made a new batch of slime. They experiment with different amounts of the ingredients. This batch turned out very dry once it dried and much different than their others. They missed the ice cream truck a couple times and she told him he could have ice cream later, which I think he did at some point. He also got really upset about getting some crazy math problem wrong as they were reading the Math Curse book.

I came down at 3 as he was watching pink Panther, having lost most of his clothing due to the projects and getting them wet. I got him some crackers and hummus. I organized book shelves and made a book basket for the bedroom. He played on on his own on the couch downstairs and we were both upstairs for several minutes. He went to the bathroom and noticed the toilet was dirty and wanted to clean it. So I squirted the Duck cleaner (he really likes the name on it) and he did the scrubbing.

He took his watch Nd set a timer for when we might get to Israel Cassie’s house for the party. We started listening to #27 on the Rolling Stone list, U2’s The Joshua Tree.

Carly drove to Tel Aviv. They live just a block of the river and port area where we’ve been several times. We parked at 5:30 and went in. Except for a couple of Noah’s, her husband, family members we were the first to arrive. Taya was excited to play with him but then was sitting in her loft watching her Kindle. August had really wanted to bring his iPad to play the synth for everyone. So he climbed up to the loft bed as well and was playing the synth. He was then out on the main floor playing it as people started to arrive.

Cassie got magnet blocks out and he played with those, then the Kerns and Chris, HS social studies teacher, arrived. He was up on a stool and let Jill, the youngest daughter, lift him down. They ended up in Taya’s room playing again and I talked to Matt and Chris about music. I’d also talked to Noah earlier about the preschool. Didn’t know how I’d answer if he asked about what work I was doing, but it didn’t come up. At one point August walked over to me and told me that his anthropology note was “Mandy’s holding two drinks.” I found out later that Carly had sent him to me to say it.

We ate dinner and August was too excited sitting with Taya and the Kerns girls to et much. He sat on the edge of the patio and was making noise with his feet and they were teasing him saying that he was waking people up and they were coming to complain. August seemed a little scared by it but kept doing it. He also chewed on his chair or something and explained,”that’s cuz I have an extra tooth that’s itchy and I go to th dentist.”

Cassie was taking the kids with her to walk the dog. August wanted me to go with so I did. Gaby tried having them play red light, green light, but mainly he just ran. Cassie was asking him about preschool and I asked if he ever saw Omri, who is in the other class. He said, “Only if I’m very lucky.”

Back inside he had some brownie for dessert, and more apple and honey. He spotted kitchen scale in a cupboard that was open and he got excited: “A weigher!” And at some point he went up to Noah’s brother and asked, “How many M and Ms could you fit in the entire universe?”

We got going after Cassie had loaded us up with a container of food and dessert and an iced latte from her machine. We saw three cats on the walk back to the car. We had lost count, but decided on 67, which seemed about right. So now it was 70. We left at 8:30.

On the ride home he played the synth: “This is the goodest app on my iPad to play at night… Because it keeps me up.” He checked the stopwatch on his iPad. Up to 899 hours. I said he was close to 1000 hours. He totally did the math himself when he said, “Only 101 hours.” And he told me, “So you knew how many M and Ms it would take to lift up a pizza truck? 20 billion.” Earlier it was to cover the Earth. I found out from Carly that the M and M thing was from the Math Curse book, and was the math problem he got upset about.

He fell sleep at 9, right before Even Yehuda. I carried him up to bed, no problems.

Potty words song:

Adding to his dream picture and spying on pirates:

Crazy boy:

Making music in Taya’s loft:

Making noise on the patio:

Running on our walk:

Worrying about the battery:

Synth music on the way home:

Exercise

Cleaning the toilet

Meeting the dog

In the loft

Music for Taya

Jill helping him down

Scale

Tired boy ready to go

I woke up at 7. He was cuddled against me, so I let him sleep as I figured he’d wake up when I got up. He had used me as a pillow and done a lot of cuddling with me during the night. He was up about 7:20. He had me carry him downstairs. He and Carly then read the Unexpected Love Story of Alfred Fiddleduckling and The Book of Mistakes. He played TodoMath, then the Insects app.

Carly made a mango smoothie. We drank that, then August wanted to watch how gumballs are made. He watched that on the iPad. I took a shower. They did a chili powder experiment and boiled that and he was watching other how it’s made videos.

We Skyped with my parents. We were discussing fairs and they mentioned scones. August said we had had scones in Pennsylvania and that Tia Cassie had made them, but he didn’t like the baked strawberries in them.

August really wanter to do an experiment with an apple, burning it somehow, but after Skype he got involved with searching for random places on Google Maps after I looked up Nada Lake, where Paul had just gone hiking. For all sorts of places he kept saying things like “Its so beautiful there…I can see things up so close…”

We went to make our zucchini corn bread. I handed August the zucchini Carly had gotten at the store and he noticed it rattled inside. He asked me to write it down as an anthropology note: “zucchini has pit. It was shaky.” Turned out it wasn’t a zucchini at all, but a kind of avocado. We decided to substitute carrot instead and make carrot cornbread. He helped for awhile. When he was hungry he stood at the counter and ate a bunch of cold broccoli and tofu. He asked for the dinner he hadn’t eaten last night. I thought he meant the soup so I heated some for him. When he saw it he laughed and said he meant the other stuff – the rice with tofu and broccoli. He ate that, then helped a little more with bread.

He and Carly then started doing a wrecking ball science experiment off of mysteryscience.com, which Stephanie had told us about. They had a lot of fun with that. At one point he started acting out doing a science experiment in school, telling Carly “Teacher, I think I would need to set up a science experiment.” He explained a wrecking ball and said it could be used to knock down houses to stop a fire. He was remembering the Magic Tree House book and the San Francisco fire. He then explained, “A country made a wall…But the people changed their mind and knocked down the wall.” That was from the video they had watched and referred to East Germany. From their experiments and videos the words of the day were ‘occupy’ (as in use a building), demonstrate (as in show how something is used).

He then took photos with my camera. When the cornbread was done Carly had also cooked corn so he had both of those. We then got ready to go. We discussed decibels after he asked for the bolt thing (He had Carly store it up in the lamp thing) to hit the swing with. He guessed the car engine was 60db. We left at 2, headed to the pool.

At school, Carly headed to her classroom to drop off the work she’d graded. August and I walked to the pool. We saw Omri and her parents and talked to them for a few minutes. We got to the pool and Carly arrived. We all played in the pool. Mandy and two of the girls showed up and August and I went to the deep end so he could say “Nuby” to them.

We were home by 4. I went up and worked as he watched The Pink Panther. When I came down for tea they had the number line out and he showed me how to build a two story school, using the chalkboard, after we cleaned the eraser outside. They then went for a photography walk. He came up to show me his photos when they got back. He also told me that thousands of years ago a guy was nailed to a wall. It is a mention of Jesus in a Skybrary video about Jerusalem that he’s watched a few times.

Back downstairs and outside with Carly. She had hidden easter eggs for him at one point as well. They came back up at 7 to start his bath. He had said thumbs down about school tomorrow and that he was afraid or worried. But when she asked him about what he said, “Nevermind, it’s good” to avoid talking about

When I was done I came down to take him up for his bath. He told me, “All this work you’re doing, it’s like nonsense to me…I understand ‘We’re in a park’ but I don’t understand hundreds or thousands of words.” Which I thought was a pretty impressive explanation. I talked about how he does understand thousands of words at a time when we read the chapter books, and that he could understand what I was working on if we read it in bits.

He played in the bath a good amount of time then August and I went back downstairs and he had some more smoothie. And we started reading Magic Tree House #28 again. He wanted to tell a story through dance, so he danced on the couch. Said it was a nonsense story.

I went for a run. When I came back they were reading in bed. Left them 8:50 and he was asleep at 9.

Fun with time-lapse:

Finding beautiful things on Google Maps:

The wrecking ball:

Running his experiment during math class:

Pool time:

Explaining a two-story school:

Telling a story through dance:

He was up a little before 7, so we all were. We all got up about 7:10. He went in on the Zinnie bed and played synthesizer and then the math game for awhile on his own. We were in other parts of the house. Downstairs he watched StoryBots and I got him vitamins. He was outside with Carly for awhile, hitting things with his bolt. He came inside and Carly took recycling up to the cages. She brought him back bottle caps and some treasures she had found him. I went and took a shower. Using the chalkboard, he taught her about dividing squares into rectangles and rectangles into squares. She taught him about dividing squares into triangles. He was then lying on the floor and she was just sitting in one of the red chairs. She scared him when he forgot she was in the chair.

I got him scrambled eggs and shnitzel for breakfast. He asked, “Did you know spiders have 25 eyes?” I wished him a happy half-birthday. He ate little pieces of the three kinds of cake from the party yesterday to celebrate. He was trying to use his half-birthday as license to break the rules: “It’s my half-birthday, so I can sit on the table. I can do extra stuff.” August was excited about his half-birthday and didn’t think anyone in his class or the world would have a half-birthday. When I asked why, he said, “Because you’re special people!”

Carly drove to school to get notebooks she needed to grade. I made the rest of the pancakes. When she came back he was right in the doorway playing the synthesizer to surprise her. We all sat on the couch and played with the synthesizer. He can pretty precisely play the keys following the tempo of the arpeggios each key makes, which I hadn’t realized. When I tried playing he told me I was playing it wrong and had to wait for the pattern to go back to the original note and then he showed me.

He was then drawing on the chalkboard and driving Carly crazy with the carpets sound of the eraser. From all of that silliness ‘Looniness’ word of the day.

We finally left by 12:40. I had planned to take him to the pool while Carly did some work, but he nixed that plan, not wanting to go to the pool without mama. He wanted to go to the Snakes and Ladder playground instead. He said, “Where every last (something) will die.” It was clearly a quote from something, and he thought it was from the Erie Pirates book.

We made it up to the playground. He first headed to the climbing portion and he wanted to do the running in circles thing with me telling him how fast to run. He then rested in the hammock part while I rested on the ground. He took photos from up there, then got down and did more photos. We went on the spinning thing, where he was the sun in the middle of the solar system. We heard a guy blowing on the shofar horn for Rosh Hashanah and August was copying the sound. Awhile later the guy came through the park and started talking to us. He asked if we were Jewish and when we said no he quickly turned and walked away. Would have liked him to play it for us though. We rode on our spaceship for a bit, then somehow the playground was all made of pineapple. So running around and pretending to eat everything made of pineapple became the major game for the day. He eventually decided that things that swung were made of apple.

We sat and read some of Magic Tree House #28 and ate our snack. We then left by 2:10. We took a slightly longer route back, heading west a block to come down the other side of the pine tree park. He twice said something about how we would have been home already if we took a shorter route. Close to our playground he dropped the orange hair band thing he had found a few days ago. We walked back a bit to find it where he had dropped it.

At home he took all of his clothes off. He had some popcorn with Carly after we made him put some clothes on, then I took him up for his bath. At one point he had gone to the bathroom ll on his own, but came out laughing, saying his underwear was funny. He had gotten both legs in the same hole. He was pretty filthy from the runny nose and skipping a bath yesterday, etc. And it had been a week since washing his hair. He was playing with the hairdryer and convinced me to let him take it downstairs to play with. He was pretending to plug it into things to provide power: first a round metal disk (which was the end of a poster tube) and then downstairs the refrigerator. I had the refrigerator provide too much power and it blew up. He liked that and played it several times. He wasn’t happy though when, after he had made it fall on the ground and when he had hit me with the cord part, I took it way and retired it from being a toy.

He did a soup experiment, putting lots of things, but mainly old chili powder in a pot, then we boiled it on the stove.

We ate apples and honey, and then he helped me do all of the dishes. Carly had been making food and had made a carrot soup and rice with broccoli and tofu. We read the Erie Pirates, Hungry Fox and the Midnight Pies, and the Zach math book. He then watched Curious George Christmas, or part of it. He had said he was tired earlier, and yawned a few times.

We then went for an evening walk. To the southwest again, then back up

Vatikim and through the park and back home. Stopped along the way to smell some flowers.

Went for a walk

Back home we finished Magic Tree House #28. He quoted the math book “I can’t even grow mold on a sandwich” I made him peanut butter Toast. He climbed up on the counter, which normally I wouldn’t let him do, but he just sat there, all calm. He told me, “I want to see all the zookeeper’s in there.” His old joke bout the peanut butter. He used a butter knife to stir the peanut butter.

He played the synth a bit, then was negotiating the bedtime order. We compromised by reading the “Sneetches’ story first. We then brushed his teeth and then went down to say good night to Carly.

Back upstairs we read Will I have a Friend? We discussed the connections to his experience at preschool. He told me, “Did you know at preschool I’m just standing? To me that’s actually playing.” I then sang a bit and lay next to him until he was asleep about 9:15.

Surprising mama with the synth:

Controlling his running:

Being the sun:

The shofar:

Eating the pineapple playground:

His boiling soup:

Half-birthday cakes

Watching mama leave

Trying to hit the fan

He took 17 photos of what we call his adventure water bottle, so it is clearly important to him.

Their squares and triangles and rectangles

On the hammock

selfie

Being the sun

Eating the pineapple playground

How their latest batch of slime dried

Lazy on the floor

Smelling flowers

Chilling on the counter

He was up by 6:20. Carly and I were still sleeping, or trying to, so he just sat in bed for awhile. Then he started talking: “Mama, I’m gonna tell you something you don’t know. You can tell your students. Ten days is when you get to hundreds of hours…can you tell that to your students?” He was then a wake up machine, sitting on the edge of the bed: “I’m supposed to be sitting chose to the edge, silly….” He said that would be his job “for the rest of the time I’m a kid.” He was also a weather detector after he looked out the window and said it had been raining. We went downstairs at 6:40 as he ‘helped’ us get up by pulling us out of bed.

He played on his iPad and I rested on the couch. It started raining and Carly went out in it. August went out after awhile to catch rain in a cup. He was then soaking it up from the table and putting it in his cup. He then drank that. He kept trying to catch rain, but it wasn’t falling fast enough. He talked about leaving a cup out so it might fill up.

We went back inside and he played the Sarah and Duck Sleepover app. Then went back out to Carly. They came back in after awhile, with him saying, “Mama, can we do yoga cuz your shirt says yoga?” They watched a video and did yoga. When I tried to take a video of him doing it he stopped because he was wiping his nose. Stopped the video right before Carly said “That’s the snot pose.” They did yoga and I made pancakes for breakfast. Those were a big hit. We had frozen blueberries in the freezer. “Maybe we could give this to other people, like Mikaela.” “Mama, we have four days for the weekend. So we have time to make a bracelet for Mikaela.”

After breakfast he was on the couch with me as I filled out a contact form for the school. They had questions about who they could share your contact info with and would give lists, but then you could write in an additional option, which didn’t make sense. So for what information they could share I also included “hat size”. For who they could share August’s information with I added “elves and wizards”. And for our information it was “tugboat captains’. He was making up instrument machines: “Every time you play it you see the note over there and a tube sucks it up over to there and plays it.” He typed a lot of crazy stuff to Cassie on Skype, then he and I did some reading but only read two chapters of Magic Tree House #28, High Tide in Hawaii. He then wanted to do math games with Carly and they did TodoMath. She was teaching him the American coins.

I took a shower, then came down and they were still doing a lot of math. I went up and cleaned the bedroom, listening to Nevermind. We have the small bed slid under the big bed now. Back downstairs they were reading Skybrary. They had read the Erie Canal Pirates and Zachery Zormer and made Möbius strips out of paper. Rosie’s Rock and Roll Raft. When we finished he went to Carly and asked, “Mama, do you think I could make something like that by myself?” They talked about making a toy one first. We then read Mr. Mouse’s Motel and The Problem with Sisters and Robots. He played Sound Rebound for awhile, then he wanted to build things out of cardboard. He got cardboard from recycling and had me cut shapes and he was gluing them together in an abstract shape. He later would call his shapes “oars”, by which he meant rafts.

I was making baked salmon for lunch for August and me and I asked Siri to convert a temperature for me. He then asked, “Hey Siri, what’s the air pressure outside.” Siri said she couldn’t do that that on the HomePod, but then I figured out it actually works on the phone.

He helped me wash dishes (his idea) and then I baked the salmon fillets. He helped a bit with that, helping put the olive oil mixture on them. He and Carly went back to the cardboard and were making rafts. He ws hungry, so we got out the blue chips and ate those with hummus. He opened the fridge and sort of closed it on himself: “Oh, well I’m a polar bear and want to feel the cold.” We ate our salmon, then he watched Max and Ruby. He was still hungry so we had apples and honey. He ate almost a whole apple.

Still hungry, so I got him a pie crust cookie. When the honey was gone he was spinning the bowl with his finger and told me, “I’m practicing. So I can do that gear thing, remember? The writing gear thing.”

He wanted to do an experiment to see how soap would soak into a towel. We ended up testing soap on a variety of things, like a tissue, white cardboard, glossy cardboard, brown cardboard, and a rag. Worked really well as an experiment as we ended up talking about it a lot, and led to the words of the day being ‘glossy’ and ‘saturated’. He then did some bead math with Carly, but he wanted to do math with her on TodoMath. He was doing greater than and less than understanding that just fine. Carly and I were remembering doing that in elementary math.

Carly went upstairs to Skype with Cherie. He was then a robot cat with me, he’s been one with Carly a few times, and was cuddling with me on the couch. It became a game where I would be someone that found the homeless robot cat and agreed to take it home. We added a little to the mosaic on the floor and took photos of our progress. He took photos inside, then went outside. He was swinging my hat at the speed of light. He hit the swing with the bolt thing he found the other day over on Vatikim and said “That’s because it’s the loud instrument shop.” We went upstairs to the bedroom with the macro lens and took photos. He was then giving out tickets, and I was asking funny questions like, “What happens if you teach an elephant to play cards?” Then more of the robocat adoption game again.

We came back downstairs and played some Math Tango on the couch. Carly made popcorn and they ate popcorn. Lots of yummy noises. I let him download the Tiggly Chef Subtraction game. August told me, “I love you tons, but I love you extra when you buy me things.” Carly made a mango smoothie and we played the subtraction game. He had the rest of the salmon for dinner, but he had had too much popcorn though and only ate about half of it.

We all went for a walk. We walked to the southwest, towards the strawberry fields. August stopped to take photos a couple times, and he found a white bit of tubing that he called a treasure. It fell out of the bike, but we found it again on the walk back. He took photos of a metal bench to show how dirty it was.

We got home and I went out for a run. Carly gave him a bath, and when I got back they were reading the fossil book from the book exchange last year. He was asleep at 8:30.

Gathering rain water:

The snot pose:

The instrument maker:

The soap absorption experiment:

Spinning my hat at the speed of light:

Sound experimenting and knocking off the branches:

Catching rain

Cooling off in the fridge

Salmon

Checking on his timer

New treasure

He was up at 6:57. Seemed pretty well-rested and back to normal at first. He watched a Puffin Rock and we got going. But he immediately started to stress out about school and wanted to stay at home. He did remember when we turned the light on last night, looking for the cockroach. He had said something about the light and Carly turned it off and he went back to sleep. “When mama turned on the light last night…” His main complaint this morning was that the nature walk was too long and he didn’t want to do it. He has never mentioned this before, and last week had said he should wear his shirt with animal tracks on it every Friday for nature walk.

Eventually, we got going just before 6:40. When I tried to say something about it he barked, “Let’s talk about it when we get to school!” Walk to school was okay. But at school the worrying over the schedule began. The teachers then started to throw hand grenades into discussions over the schedule. First was the announcement that there wasn’t a nature walk,but Fitness Friday up on the grass. The whole elementary school (and some middle?) was up there and there was music playing and 4th graders, then a P.E. teacher, leading some dance/jazzercize exercise time. I went up with them and held August most o the time and we danced around.

August had said I could leave after that, but as they lined up I tried to hand him off to a teacher but they missed the cue and didn’t take his hand. I had to walk him down the stairs, then there was more uncertainty. We sat on the bench and he said he just needed to know how many more minutes of outside time there was before circle time. We went and asked and they said “20 minute”, which was a lovely answer, as I had said 30. But then they added “…and then we’re going to an assembly.” Well that led to a whole lot of worrying about the assembly. Eventually Andrea ran through the schedule, but because of the assembly and other things we don’t usually include it was a lot more items than our usual discussions and he thought it was going to be an extra long day. This led to me writing out the entire schedule for him to prove it was a normal day, with times attached.

Through all of this there was a lot of crying and thus tons and tons of snot and lots of trips to get more tissues. Eventually we had to do a crying leave. I was reluctant to do it when they weren’t armed with tissues and I felt bad bout making them to hold hands with a kid covered in snot. Also, when Andrea would try to take his hand he’d say things like, “Don’t grab me! I’m going to be bad! I’ll be too loud! I need to be outside the whole time!”

I left at 9. I went up on the sidewalk and listened to him calming down. It was taking several minutes, but sounded like they were able to do their circle time. He just wasn’t joining in. I waited for 5 minutes or so. He still wasn’t happy, but was quieter.

I rode my bike home, then came back at lunch. When he came out, the first thing he told me was that he’d had a cookie at snack time. I think Yaya had brought them. That would be the first thing that he’s eaten on his own at preschool this year. Then he handed me the bottle cap. He had spotted it against the wall this morning in the middle of being upset. He had held onto it and now gave it to me to save for home.

Sitting at the table, he told me about Rosh Hashanah and that they’d had honey and apples for snack. He ate that as well. Derin sat across from him and talked to us. Told us he’s going to Switzerland for vacation this weekend. Also, he had been carrying my hat around and showed me how he could spin it in circles. Then he asked me to write down his anthropology notes:

• Some people were playing police

That’s it. He told me of the morning, “I thought that if I’m sad you’d change it to no check-ins, sneakily.” He cleaned the whole table and I left as they were lining up to go back in.

I worked in the library, then sat at the picnic table 9my bench was taken) He ran to me. We talked to Andrea about the meeting and arranged to meet over on the grass. We went over to Mandy’s classroom and Carly got him hanging out with them. Andrea and Marion came over and we met sitting at a picnic table outside one of the language classrooms. We were quite disappointed in the meeting, as it wasn’t a conversation about his progress, but 30 minutes of telling us I needed to stop checking in at lunch. Which literally could have been a 5 second conversation or email, as in my last email I had said they could let me know if they thought we should do something different about the check-ins. And there was no discussion of meeting his interests or needs or of his strengths.

Contrast that with a minute later when we went over to where August was hanging out with Mandy and the three girls. Mandy commented on his memory, they had been impressed when he was investigating how many “supports” the ping pong table had, and he looked at. Set of lockers and said how many were open without counting them. She was impressed he could visually see the numbers like that.

Gaby had taught him the word ‘nuby’, so that was the word of the day. It sounds like it kind of a gamer term for someone who hasn’t learned something, like ‘idiot’, but they were using it in a sillier sense. He said “Everyone in the whole school except me…is a bit (nuby).” I had bought popsicles from the cafeteria and Grace went and got them out of the freezer and they had them. August chose mango. Carly went up to her classroom and we talked to them a bit more. I told Mandy and Matt about the project for Sabeel.

August and I went to Carly’s classroom. Carly said I could head home, as I was going to ride my bike. They were setting up to do some painting when I left. I had a little time to listen to more of my audiobook and some Nirvana (#17) before they got home about 4:50.

He ate the rest of her lunch from the cafeteria. He pretended he was a kid who forgot his lunch from home. Carly went upstairs and he and I watched Brain Pop Jr. videos. He was still hungry so I made French toast and he ate two pieces. We then read The Unexpected Love Story of Alfred Fiddleduckling and then Zachery Zormer Space Transformer in Skybrary.

Carly took him up for a bath and got him ready for bed. I said goodnight and he was asleep about 8.

Fitness Friday:

Rosh Hashanah song:

Running to me and Reia’s birthday:

Another song:

Looking big

Fitness Friday

Making Mandy nervous on the stairs

Mango popsicle

Getting ready to paint

He was up a bit past 6 and came down with Carly. We read more of Magic Tree House #27 and then he watched Puffin Rock and ate his vitamins, Cheerios, and apple. I took a shower and he was still hungry so Carly made him peanut butter toast.

We got walking before 7:40. We sat and read the last two chapters of the book. He was reluctant to let me leave, although not getting as upset as yesterday. Went though a lot of tissues, but hopefully his sinuses were pretty drained by the time I left. He kept wanting to know precisely how many activities were between now and lunch and how long each would be. At one point he said, “Let’s divide it into chunks.” He wanted me to check in more. I left at 8:30 and he held Marion’s hand as she walked him back across the outside area.

Rode my bike home, then back to school. I was sitting on the PKA bench when they came out just after 12:30. He thought he didn’t have a lunch but it was hidden behind a backpack. He told me he hadn’t gone to the garden. And he had watched kids play the coding card game. Wasn’t clear what he’d done. He ate a good amount at lunch and I talked to Reia a bit as she was sitting across from him. He said he would choose yoga for the afternoon activity. I was surprised it wasn’t makerspace. Seems like he’s trying them out as he was in the garden last Thursday. He asked me to write down his anthropology notes:

• people were kind of making a mess of fake food but cleaned it up.
• some people were being really crazy in the classroom. They were running. The teachers said it is not okay.
• people haven’t been playing with clay lately. Not even paint.
• “Thry won’t listen to me.” If he tries to ask what they’re doing, although he hasn’t tried it.
• People have been practicing the one thing at a time goal. “Can people do that at home?” He wanted to practice.

Randomly, he asked me, “How much is 12 plus 12?” When I said 24 he thought about it and said, “So if an hour hand pointed at a twelve it would be half a day!” And then he figured out that if it said 12 again it would be a day. He got one of the sponges to clean his spot and I packed up his lunch. He let me go once they started to line up.

Ran out to me 2:55. Andrea asked if I knew were the Magic Tree House book went. I said I’d taken it has he had brought it out to me at lunch. Apparently he had forgotten this and was stressed out about it. He told me how he had signed up for yoga class, but apparently the teacher didn’t come. So he watched makerspace but sounds like he didn’t join in. He said they did a card or board game and tested batteries.

He took photos around the outside of the preschool. He took a photo of a frying pan lying in the grass and he ran to show it to Marion to tell her about it. I got out the macro lens and we had fun figuring out how to use it. Lots of talk of texture and shape as he was looking for photos.

We sat and played the Human Resources game that he had spotted on my phone. It is basically another learning to code game. Played a couple levels, and he learned of the ‘Go To’ and ‘Copy From’ commands. Particularly for the latter I talked about how computers store data and compared it to what they do in the StoryBots episode.

He found a ball and returned it to the playground. I pointed out red bumpy ball. He asked, “Dada. Do you want to see my porcupine?” When I said yes he threw the ball at me. We sat and he ate Cheerios. He spotted a bunch of harvested kale on the PKA bench and tore some off to eat. He said he thought it was his last chance to eat kale. We went to look. I led us to where the kale had been by the door. He told me that was the wrong kale, as that was where the dino kale had been and this was a different kind of kale over in the garden. He explained how they were different colors and different shapes and tasted different. I told him he was teaching me about kale.

We headed up towards the library. As we went up the stairs he asked, “Is there anyone that takes care of wolves?… Like saves them…But how do they communicate with them? They’d like bite them.” We went down the elevator so he could make a little noise in the echoey area, then went to the library. He had me play chess, and as I was explaining I said that a piece was vulnerable. He asked, “What’s vulnerable mean?” We made it the word of the day.

We went and looked for books. He got the next Magic Tree House and I found a book called The Unexpected Love Story of Alfred Fiddle Duckling. Bar, Omri’s oldest sister, was tickling August and chasing him. He was having fun, but both Liz and I had to tell her to calm down, as they were being loud. Liz’s younger daughter, Eve, was helping out, and had checked in the Magic Tree House book we had brought in, and now checked out the books when August brought them to her.

Carly showed up and August showed her the word stick things, where the letters spin and you try to spell words. She then found the Scieszka Math Curse book and checked it out. Liz gave him a bookmark that smelled like pineapple. As we left he asked, “Dada, will I ever get a bookmark that tastes like pineapple?”

In the car he said, “Dada, as soon as we get home, let’s get ready to go on a walk to take pictures. Let’s take the macro lens.” As Carly went to park, August told her to not park by the big bush across the street because it was poisonous for our car: “Car coisin (poison) drains the battery of your car when you’re gone.”

We did indeed go for a photo walk. He found all sorts of different textures in the wood and rocks as we walked up to the playground. Took photos of plants up there and I told him I was ready to go home and eat: “That’s why I said we’d only go to the park cuz I knew you’d get hungry.”

We were home at 5:20. He finished an Ollie and Moon and we watched the how do ears work episode of StoryBots. We showed Carly some of his photos from yesterday. He played TodoMath as I made him pizza. He did a great job asking for help and when Carly went to help him he said, “You’re a really good teacher.” He ate his pizza, then played Quick Math Jr.

I took him upstairs to his bath. He said he should make a bracelet for me. We went down and looked at our bead options. He said I could wear mine everyday. He’s a little sore that his teachers don’t.

He said he detected an asteroid that was going to hit the earth after “all three people that live in this house are dead.” I asked if he meant near-term, or like thousands of years. He replied, “No. It’s going to be right after all three of us die.”

He then had a machine: “It smashes together rocks with these smashers when you turn a crank. It has a million rocks in it. It has a little tube, and the flour comes out.” But then he decided the first machine only made wheat, then a second crank turned it into flour.

Downstairs he ate both pieces of French toast that Carly had cooked for him. We then read The Unexpected Love Story of Alfred Fiddleduckling and then on Skybrary read Mr. Mouse’s Motel and a a new book called Zachery Zorner Shape Transformer. He didn’t want to make a Möbius strip out of paper, but we liked the book.

Took him up to bed and we discussed the meeting with his teachers after school and the possibility of him being in Mandy’s room while we met somewhere else, like Carly’s classroom. August was trying to visualize it and used the headboard. He pointed at the top of it and at the mattress level and said, “So this is upstairs and this is downstairs.” It was cool how he was visualizing it. No conclusions, but he was open to the idea, knowing there might be science and popsicles involved.

I left them at a 8:25 and he was soon asleep.

‘Everybody do this’ song:

Explaining no yoga class:

Playing with Omri’s sister Bar:

Word sticks 1:

Word sticks 2:

Doing photography outside the preschool:

His plant from last year is still alive

Rocking in his chair at lunch

Taking photos

Seeing how they had cleaned out the garden bed

Eve checking out his books

He woke up about 5:50. Carly came in and got him back to sleep, but he was awake again at 6:05. Less than 9 hours of sleep. Downstairs he played with the synthesizer and was really excited when he found there were a bunch more settings he could use to change the sound. He then remembered how he wanted to watch Puffin Rock. He watched the episode with the sleeping hoglet, the puffin way, and Bernie and the bee. He watched the next one and really laughed at the story with Mossy’s flea, especially when it got on Flynne.

Before we left he talked about the schedule. But he said, “Only yesterday was a really good schedule.” He meant that he wanted me to stay in the afternoon. I asked if he wanted any of the Bob Books to look at during rest time. He initially said no, but then said, “I need the Bob books I can already read…I was talking about for the future.”

We left on schedule at 7:30. Everything went fine as we got to school and dropped off his stuff and went outside, although at one point, in talking about his sniffles, he said “I think it’s a cold.” Andrea was back. And I thought I was about to leave at one point, but he stopped me. He sat on my lap for several minutes, but went downhill. Eventually they started circle time outside, but he really didn’t want to participate in that. He started crying, and there was lots and lots of snot. I figured he hadn’t had enough sleep and was sick enough I could spare them from having to deal with the snot. We talked to Marion and headed home 8:35.

Lots of blowing his nose on the way home but he ended up with lots on his arms and shirt. As we started he said, “If I ever have snot on my arm when we are at Gramma and Grampa’s, please let me go upstairs in Grampa’s garage cuz I think there’s rough stuff I can put on me.” To rub off the snot. We had gotten a permission slip from Marion to leave campus before we left and he asked, “Can permission slip be the word of the day?” And we spotted cat #54.

At home he asked about making a toy chair out of clay. When we read When You Give a Mouse a Cookie I understood why. The mouse made a whole room out of clay. We haven’t read the book since we checked it out and he remembered that detailsl from months ago.

We also read Mr. Mouse’s Motel. After that he played with the synth. He watched an Ollie and Moon, then did some art on his iPad. I suggested a science experiment and he showed me the floating egg one. We speculated in whether it would make the egg salty or not, so I fried the egg. Result: not salty. He ate the whole egg.

We played a few minutes of Green Planet, then he watched some Pink Panther and I worked. We were listening to Elvis. He requested popcorn and we shared some.

He had some lunch, sneaking the second bar before having fruit or egg. We then did a second science experiment: putting salt on ice and seeing what happens. You then put food coloring on and see how the ice has been pitted. He then played with the eye droppers in water and we put regular and salt water in the freezer to see if they freeze differently. We exercised and he then played a Sarah and Duck game. He randomly said, “I hate Ms. Karen.” Wouldn’t give a reason, but later he apologized and said he was just joking. He also said, “I’m so negative today…about food. I only want treats.”

He asked, “Why does Gramma and Grampa have the most impressive things in the world?…Like their tools and stuff.” I talked about going outside and taking photos, as he’d talked about wanting to take photos last night. He suggested he get on the counter, like when he waters the plants, and look for birds through the window. He took photos out the window and closeups of things around him on the counter. He took a photo of the dirty pan. A nice photo, actually, then used it as evidence that I should wash the pan. We were also taking apart the burners on the stove so he could photograph them and see how dirty they were. And he took a video of himself making up music as he sat on the counter.

He then wanted to go take photos outside. I asked if he wanted me to go with him and he said no. He went out in the yard by himself for about 5 minutes. Back inside he took more photos around the house.

When I wouldn’t let him play iPad yet he told me, “I’m never gonna make rules.” We read half of Magic Tree House #27, then on Skybrary we red Mr Mouse’s motel and he watched a video about interesting jobs. Earlier he had watched the one about the Jewish/Arab Jerusalem school. I showed him that we still had old Bob Books on the iPad and he read the first one easily on his own but then didn’t want to read anymore.

We went upstairs and wrestled on the bed. He was enjoying having me push him over and saying “push” or “shove” at the same time. And often I would miss him completely, which was even funnier. I did the thing where you get someone to put their hand in front of their face, then I pushed him over with that, and he found that really funny.

We went and started a load of laundry. He helped and pushed the button. We headed downstairs and read more of Magic Tree House. He had eaten one piece of carrot, but had otherwise refused any of the options for the last couple hours. He was now ready for noodles and tofu and veggies and ate all of that. Carly got home and went to take a shower. He and I ate hummus and crackers. We had listened to Elvis Presley earlier and now finished The Velvet Underground and started Abbey Road as we continue our listening project. Carly came back down and he was spinning the straw things around in the air so you couldn’t see the end. Carly asked why that was and he explained, “That’s because it’s moving so fast your eye can’t take pictures fast enough.”

She got dinner for her and when guest saw it he said “Yummy!” and went to eat some with her. I went up to do some work about 6. I heard them playing Dragonbox Big Numbers and he had the last of the pie. She gave him a bath and I heard him having a good time in the bath. He was telling her about computers at one point. I went in for a few minutes before she put him to sleep. They were going to read the Sneetches as I left. He was asleep at 8.

I got the new website set up in the evening. Still a little more work to be done to get Ulysses to post to it, but after this initial work it will be a lot less work to publish the blog posts.

Shwoing me the floating egg experiment:

Laughing hysterically at Pink Panther:

A little song and a yawning thing from yoga class:

Taking photos on the counter:

Singing and fork drumming on the counter:

Taking photos outside:

Pink panther song and special magic:

To find the special magic:

Probably a sign of what was to come

Before we left school

Science experiment

Eating the egg of science

Exercising

His first selfie?

Photographer Zinnie on the counter

Taking a photo of a ball in the yard

The photo he was taking

He was really laughing about something at one point in his sleep. My guess is Pink Panther. Or “U Really Got a Hold on Me”. He woke up at 5:55 and asked for Carly. I got up and she went in and he went back to sleep. He woke back up just before 6:30 when I finished my shower. He went downstairs and found Carly outside. As she got ready for work, he and I finished reading Magic Tree House #26, Good Morning, Gorillas. He asked what ‘shrubs’ were so we looked up the differences between shrubs and bushes and made it the word of the day. He then watched The Pink Panther and I got his lunch and snack ready. It was the hungriest he’s been in the morning. He ate his vitamins and Cheerios, then asked for more food. I got him a few slices of apples and he ate those and asked for more Cheerios. Ate those, then the second half of a Zone Perfect bar (the other half was in his lunch).

As we got ready to go he walked around the grass and said, “So it’s a pretty easy schedule. I can handle four hours without you. Then it’s lunch. Then 20 minutes without you. Then library time!” It took a few minutes at school before I could go, but I was leaving about 8. I watched from the top of the stairs. He didn’t join in on anything, but he also seemed to be doing okay. He was standing around the table of plants when other people were looking at them.

I headed home, then came back at 12:30. They were already out. He was sitting across from Lydia. He told me I had forgotten my hat and he’d brought it out for me. He had his lunch, but hadn’t opened it. Got it open and he started eating and I thought I could try to take off. But he told me, “Here’s your choices: You can stay until the end of lunch or you can leave and I’ll stop eating.” I stayed, and he ate a lot: his mandarin oranges, his bar, some raviolis, some hard-boiled egg, and a few apple slices. I stayed for a few more minutes and asked him if he’d been an anthropologist. He said yes, and told me, “Some people were playing with water and putting it into buckets.” But he said, “They were too busy” for him to join in. I asked if he’d noticed anything else and he said, “There wasn’t really anything that was too important.”

I was able to leave as Karen got them to line up. He reminded me to come back for library time. I was back at 2. Marion was by herself for rest time. Three kids were asleep and the rest of them were in the atelier playing with the wood pieces. I went in and helped out. Library was apparently at 2:20. August didn’t know what to build, so I showed him how logs can be used to move an object, like a moving road. Marion told me he wouldn’t wipe his nose without her helping him. Sounds about right.

We got the kids ready to go and the two of us walked them to the library. No second teacher and no other parent. So she gave me a list of the five kids who were being picked up. She’d take the bus kids to the busses and I’d take the five back to the classroom. And in the library Ilana was gone. Her mother is visiting and I met her yesterday. Apparently she is sick. So Liz did Library time. She said told the class that she had two daughters. When she mentioned Lillian August said “I know Lillian! She is in Mama’s class. Well, last year.” She actually has her this year as well. Liz read a story about a kid taking all sorts of animals to the library. She had puppets or stuffed animals for all of the animals. She then asked them what would happen if other animals, like bears or unicorns were brought to the library. August said the owl might peck holes in the wood shelves.

For checkout time he got If You Take a Mouse to School, which we’d read last year. I walked the 5 back to class. It was now just before 3 and two were picked up immediately. August and the other two sat on the rug and I read them Everyone Can Learn to Ride a Bike. The other two were picked up but we finished the book.

We went out and he ate a second lunch on bench. He finished his ravioli and ate the Cheerios. Rejected the apple as pesto had seeped to that side. He ate more today than I’ve seen him eat in a day for a long time. He talked about plants: “You know the palm with the pouch? It looks better with the protection…you can see it by the pool.” We talked about going over there and seeing, but Carly would be ready to go home before we did that. We got the bicycle book out of the classroom and read it on the bench. He stood inside watching Marion’s younger daughter playing computer games.

We walked around and he had me read the names of the kids in PKB. He said, “I love the word Louise.”It made him remember Max and Ruby and ask to read it later. We looked around, trying to decided which plants were bushes and which were shrubs. He was then anthropologist Zinnie. He told me to write down: “People play games a lot.” Carly found us and we headed home.

We got here at 4:20. He told us he likes picking slime and snot off his hands. He then sang happy birthday in Hebrew. It had been Anna’s birthday, he thought. He watched Max and Ruby and was laughing a lot: “I love it.” He played the anatomy app and told Carly, “I’d like to introduce you to this.” I noted his use of ‘introduction’ and how that had been a word of the day. He said, “Introduction box” and explained, “Where you store your minds of introduction. Like how good something is.” He has used the term ‘introduction box’ before, and it still didn’t make sense. I asked “Are you speaking English?” He replied, “Yes. Are you teasing me?”

He and Carly played Dragonbox Big Numbers and he said he really liked how fast she got the apples. She then left for the middle school curriculum night. We did more anatomy app, then we made tea out of the lemony plant we had picked the other day. We put ice in his and he drank it. We played a couple games from the Sesame Street app. One had us doing high fives with our eyes closed. When we got it down I realized that he was cheating and had opened his eyes. For the second game we got socks and underwear and threw them into circles made out of the straws, skeeball style.

We ate the teriyaki noodles for dinner. He then watched some BrainPop Jr. videos and I did the dishes. We listened to the Beatles’ White Album. He had some pie, then really got into taking photos with my phone. He decided he was taking photos of people littering. he had me act like I was dropping my plastic on the ground, then told me “It doesn’t break down…” And lectured me on garbage. Then, ‘Now I’m taking photos on kids playing good and kids playing bad.” And he had me play with his kitchen and make a mess so he could take a photo and tell me what I had done wrong. He went around the room taking photos of everything, saying it was all garbage.

We checked on Dragonbox Big Numbers for a few minutes to see his last building being built, then went up to his bath. He asked, “Dada, can I take photos of lots of things? Like if I see a tree that’s half dead we could remember to give it water.” “Like I can tell my teachers stuff with the photos.”

And then in the bath he said, “Remember those cars and trucks I sended out to kill animals?” He’s referring to when Jeff had picked us up at the airport and August made up robot cars that he sent out that were killing animals. Really random then and more random now. It is all on video, so no need to explain.

We changed the bedsheet, then read Picasso’s Trousers. He wanted a story from me, and I told him the old Puffin Rock story I made up. He didn’t remember it at all. It is about Baba trying to swim and getting caught in the waves. He had trouble getting to sleep with Carly being gone. He rolled around a lot and kept asking me questions. I sang a few songs. Finally, he started to get upset a second time and asked, “Could you look on your phone to see where mama is?” I said no, but told him I could ask mama to wake him up when she went to bed so he would know she was there. He said, “Okay” and rolled over. He fell asleep at 9:20 just as I heard Carly coming in the house.

The rolling thing:

Unicorns in the library:

Talking on the bench 1:

Talking on the bench 2:

Bush and shrub:

Sock throwing game:

Killer cars and trucks:

Picking snot off his arm

Washing the table

Library time with Ms. Liz

A library book

Sitting on the PKA bench

Watching Amelie play computer games

Tea from his mug

Finally asleep

At 6:45 I heard him coughing and sniffing a lot so I went in and found him awake, still lying on the bed. He stayed on the bed, but facing the wall, blowing his nose and waiting for his sinuses to drain until he lay down and rolled over to me. He lay across the bed with his head on my leg. He slowly rolled and scooted up until his head was on my chest. Finally, at 7:13 I asked if he wanted me to bring the iPad up so he could watch a Pink Panther downstairs. He said, “Downstairs.” We went down and he said, “Vitamins.” He watched two Pink Panthers, “Pink Pest Control” and “The Scarlet Pinkernel”. He laughed, and talked about how there was a dog on a motorcycle, and asked why they were chasing him. I said we could watch it together later.

He said something like, “So, you’ll drop me off, then come for lunch, and I will see you at the bench at the end of the day.” Turned out to not be as easy as that though.

On the walk to school he asked, “What did people do when they didn’t discover cars?” I talked about using horses, then he added, “Maybe they used trains.”

At school we sat on the ground and read “Slowly, slowly, slowly,” said the Sloth by Eric Carle. He sat on my lap and liked the book. There were a lot of new words on the last page and on the two pages listing all the animals at the end and August said they could be the words of the day. I took photos of those pages so we could talk about them later at home.

He had difficulty letting me go after that though. He had me ask what they were doing and Marion talked about taking care of their plants and looking at the persimmons they had picked up in the orchard, which she had cut up. We watered his plant together, as he wouldn’t do it by himself. No Andrea, with Karen there instead. He had me ask Marion what they were doing today. We then sat on the stairs and were anthropologists for a few minutes. I thought I was going to be able to leave at one point, but he couldn’t let me go yet. He wasn’t upset, just didn’t want me to go. And was stuffy. And lying on the concrete steps at one point while we were being anthropologists.

He wanted to know when they were going inside and made me as Marion. She needs to work on her bluntness, as she started talking about how it was going to be “In a long, long, time.” August got upset about this, thinking it would be hours. But a couple minutes later she asked if he wanted to go in with her to help get clipboards. He reluctantly said “Okay” and I was able to leave at 8:30. Adult-directed and he was fine.

He was in a good mood for lunch. He poked his head out a little early and saw me, then pointed out a cat. We were up to number 50 by the end of the day. I had to tell him to go back inside until he had permission to come out. He brought his water bottle and lunch out with him. I don’t know if it was our talk on Friday bout how he needed to bring those out himself, or the fact that Karen was the one bringing them out for lunch this time. He sat and ate a good amount

Sounds like they are short-staffed and only Marion would be with them for rest time. So I told him to follow the rules of rest time. He made me put his lunch away for him, but then stayed sitting at the table as I said bye and left at 12:45. He was playing with his water bottle, sliding it back and forth on the table.

Oh, and he told me that his photo was in the room where the book swap had been. I had asked how it went and he said, “Remember when we did that book share?…the book swap? That’s where I got my picture taken.” There was a big flash when they took his photo, but it went well.

I picked him up, and when he came out he was carry his lunch box, snack bag, his water bottle, and my bike helmet. We sat on my bench and he ate. He was singing the Pink Panther song. Anna heard him and came over and told him the Pink Panther “dead ant” joke: What did the Pink Panther say when he stepped on an ant? Dead ant, dead ant…

I mentioned we didn’t have plans for the rest of the day and he said, “Oh, I can make plans for you…Pez…iPad…we could spend sometime in the library…then home.”He talked about the iPad and told me, “There’s a new activity in World School: nouns and stuff.” He looked at the anatomy app and showed me the skin: “That’s the sweat.”

He had a pretty runny nose, but it sounded like things went well and he was in a good mood. He told me he just lay on the floor for rest time: “It’s still really boring, but I like it.”

He moved on to Metamophabet. For the ‘kaleidoscope’ he told me, “This is the magic kaleidescope. It shows you germs and viruses and parasites and fungi.” We went to the library and he had me play chess against myself. At the end he actually moved the queen into checkmate and was really excited. We walked back to the book section and talked about reading a book, but Carly showed up before we had time to do so.

On the walk home we topped at a set of recycling bins and collected bottle caps. Got about 15. As we got closer to home he joked “Did you know Ms. Anna had 93 kids and she named them all Ms. Marion?” He then recited parts of Too Many Daves, which neither of us has read with him for a couple weeks, and sang a song about 23 sons.

We were home at 5:15. “I want you to get my iPad immediately. Good use of ‘immediately’” He complimented himself with his word usage. He then practiced being an anthropologist with Carly. He was practicing both observing and then participating. Carly would play, and he would walk up and ask, “So what’s this all about?”

He then played with the straw things. Made a snake instrument out of them that went all across the room. He ate teriyaki noodles for dinner, but left most of the veggies. He claimed, “Why do I have to eat more vegetables? Ms. Andrea lets me just eat rice and noodles and bread.” He sang a little song. No idea on the influence: “Across the greasy road, across the greasy road, onto the motorcycle road.” It continued on to being a story about a turtle. He then sang a hand jive sort of song that he had learned, maybe from Ms. Andrea, and asked me to take a video of it. He said, “Coposetic Doo Doo bomb.” I mentioned I hadn’t heard him say that recently. He said, “Omri doesn’t laugh when I say it.” He has also mentioned other kids not laughing/saying anything when he sings funny songs or Pink Panther. He was then repeating, “The harder something is, the bigger you dream.” He didn’t know where that came from.

He ate more veggies, then had pie and ice cream and ate outside while Carly took a shower. She came back down, and we watched a few Sesame Street songs together. In “We l sing with the same song” he thought one of the girls on a swing looks like Eve. We also watched “Elmo’s song”, “What’s the name of that song?” “U Really Got a Hold on Me”, and “I Lost My Cookie at the disco”.

Carly took him up for his bath. I was going to put him to sleep, but he was tired and so she just did it. He was asleep about 7:50.

Checkmate:

Too Many Daves song and reciting:

Practicing being an anthropologist who joins in 1:

Practicing being an anthropologist who joins in 2:

Song and hand movements from school:

Hard to get up

Resting/sleeping on me

Observing

Ready to go

Ready for chess

Found checkmate

Pie

He popped awake at 6:25, just before my alarm went off. I followed him down a few minutes later. Carly had gotten out the Wheels on the Bus puzzle, but he was just sitting on the couch playing with the music thing. He wanted to take off the battery cover to see what kind of batteries it took. He asked, “Can I do it myself?” He needed a little help opening the small case of screwdrivers and getting the screwdriver turning, but otherwise had fun doing it on his own. He got the cover off and spent another ten minutes playing with it and making it play.

Carly tried the puzzle with him for a few minutes but he wasn’t really interested. We finally gave him the iPad and he mainly played with the synthesizer as he sat next to me on the couch. He said it was the best app on his iPad. I got an email from my parents asking about when August put the flashlight back together. Mom reminded me that he’d spent a lot of time with Grampa in the garage testing the batteries in the flashlights this summer.

He switched to BrainPop and watched the video about determination that he’s watched before. It is about Mia not being good at playing recorder and almost giving up, but then she talks about grit, etc. It has a part about where she builds a birdhouse and it doesn’t come out right and she goes back to the instructions and realizes her mistake. At the end it has a moment when the robot’s recorder blows up and he watched it over and over again as he found it very funny.

He helped me make the French toast, being machine that mixed as I put stuff in and that then dropped each piece of bread in the batter. We ate, and he played with the straw things with Carly while I took a shower. He played with the anatomy app, and as he scrolled through all the systems he said, “Can you imagine ALL this being inside me?…Like, THAT is inside me right now.”

We got going just after 9:30 to the mall. We collected a bottle cap along the way. He wants to do art with them, having been inspired by the pieces hanging outside at PKA. Later in the day we also got a new StoryPark article with a photo of him doing a counting activity with bottle caps, so also an inspiration. He called the garbage-strewn dirt parking lot a good place to find bottle caps.

We got to the mall at 9:45 and went to wait for our haircuts. He started playing in the play area and had the elephant upside down and was jumping from it to the border cushions. He then made up someone named Junkin: “Junkin loves kitty cats. Junkin hates dogs. Junkin is ruler of that pizza place right there.” Carly went in to wait for the barber, and he played the game, like in the pool, where he had a machine that would take me to other parts of the world. Eventually, he was taking me around the world and running circle after circle to do so. He would also talk about how much he likes this little play area, even though it’s for babies.

He went into the barber when her realized Carly was gone. He watched as she got her hair cut. The barber gave him two pieces of candy, and he ate the strawberry one now, saving the apple for later. We went back out to the play area for a minute, but then the barber called me in. Carly got him his iPad for a few minutes.

She headed down to the art store to find more string/twine. We caught up, and I remembered we needed paint for the wooden chair. August initially wanted all sorts of colors, but we talked it through and he was very happy with the two tones of blue that he chose. We went in to find Carly in Tiv Taam but she was fast and finished as we got in there.

On the walk back I had mentioned the rainbow bridge in Seoul. He asked what we called this pedestrian bridge and I said it was just the white bridge. He then said no, it was the “Cloud bridge” because it was white like a cloud. I said that was a more positive take on it, and that he had also been optimistic about the bottle caps. I was talking about him being more optimistic than me, but he kind of ruined it by saying “Because my brain is goodest.” But he then said that we are better at different things and that changed it back again.

We got home at 11 and he played Math Tango on my iPad. He ended up finishing all the levels, on his own. His math has clearly improved over a few months ago, as he had been getting frustrated with the math as it was over his level.

I made him pizza with pesto on it and he said he liked it better than the piece without. He had also been looking at the anatomy app and made up “Ekdroke… It’s a system you get in your body when you’re like 19…well, it turns your water into pee.” He spilled his milk on the table but we got that cleaned up.

He then had pie with the brownie ice cream outside. He and I started painting the chair. He helped for about 10 minutes before losing interest. Carly was cooking the teriyaki tofu and veggies noodle dish.

He went in and played iPad. He came out and asked me to come play with him a couple times. I finished the first color then went in. He was playing the synth, but then wanted to play the teasing or baby waking up games. Put my foot down and said I wouldn’t do those as there are plenty of other ways to play with music. He switched to the anatomy app instead and we looked at things like heart valves and veins in the brain.

In the bathroom he became a big voltmeter: “I’m made of metal…I have a voltmeter in me…it senses the magnetic force…” To Carly he explained, “I’m made of voltmeters and there’s metal inside me and the magnet senses into the concrete to the wires and the electricity goes through me to my volt meters and it shows you how much energy the house is using.” He saw something stuck to my leg and said, “that’s the problem with your leg hairs. That why you should cut your leg hairs. Well, maybe they’re good for something so you shouldn’t cut them.“

He said that his right side voltmeter was for upstairs, and his left side was for downstairs. When he got out of the bathroom he got. Marker and he put marks on his leg and abdomen on both sides to remember which side was which and where the voltmeters were.

Back out on the couch we were talking about how you actually measure electricity and I pulled up videos about amps and volts. He had moved on to something else though, and Carly and I were more interested.

He did something on the iPad then I said it was time to put it away. He didn’t protest when I took it, but then got upset and hit me. Carly took him upstairs for a timeout and practiced saying he was frustrated.

We left at 2:40 to do some errands in town. They were putting in the metal gates across street. So much noise going on over there, but they are moving quickly, so hopefully not much longer.

We parked in the dirt lot in town. Carly headed to the post office and August and I went to check out the new cafe that opened in the mall. He wanted to go over to the post office and was sad when Carly came out, done already. He still insisted on going in, but then realized he thought this post office was boring. He was picturing one in the United States, which is more interesting. We tried to go to the pharmacy, but it isn’t opening for another week. We then walked down to see what is going on with the place that used to be Malkin. More packed up inside, but not very. Hopefully a coffee shop will reopen in there sometime, but it doesn’t seem like it might be anytime soon.

Back in the car August found his missing pair of dark pink sunglasses – they were in the sunglasses holder in the car. He had wanted to put them in there once, then we forgot about them. We left at 3:05 and drove northeast of Even Yehuda to another nursery Carly had herd about. Went down a junky dirt road to get there and almost gave up, but found it and it was quite nice. August had really been wanting to send Carly messages on my phone, and he was also seeming tired. So at first we stayed in the car and he sent some messages. Carly told us there were birds inside though so we went in. He had fun watching the birds. Carly got three plants. August brought up his pink cactus, calling it expensive, and we ended up talking bout how something could be more than we want to spend, but we could still afford it. We used the word ‘pricey’ and made that the word of the day.

At home Carly got to work on the plants in the window planters. We took out one of the screens we don’t use and she also cleaned the windows, so it looked really nice when she was also done with the plants and rocks among them. I got to work painting the second color of the chair. August didn’t want to join me. I had continued to listen to the Rolling Stone Top 500 Albums list. This morning it had been The Beatles’ Rubber Soul, then Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On as august and I painted, and now the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street. Listened to all of it and finished the chair right at the end of it. Took longer than I expected. Carly finished the new plants and rocks.

While I did that they had Skyped with Vivian a couple times, and also Cherie and Colin. Vivian said they had had a peach pie, so Carly was glad that we had just had an apple pie. And Vivian said they had bought two water bottles, and luckily we had bought two new water bottles as well. He watched some Pink Panther while I had dinner and made ravioli for his lunches.

I gave him a bath. I had turned on the switches for the hot water heater. He didn’t want his bath warm, so he used the stool to turn off the hot water. Carly got his lunch together while I washed his hair as it is picture day tomorrow. We then used the blow dryer on it. As he went downstairs he sang a little song: “Words are made out of letters, letters are made out of sounds, and sounds are made out of particles, and the particles bounce around and make more waves…” May be from/inspired by the Storybots about how the ears work.

We read Skybrary books: Mr. Mouse’s Motel, which we quite liked, then Gertie Gorilla’s Glorious Gift, then Dilly Dog’s Dizzy Dancing. Carly went up for a shower. We then called my parents and August asked why they weren’t on Skype. He was quiet on Skype though. Getting tired. But when I told him to say something about school he said “I love school!” He talked about wanting to do dizzy dancing on the bed before he went to sleep. Carly took him up and he did a little dizzy dancing, then she put him to sleep while I kept talking to my parents. He was asleep about 8:45.

Leaping:

Around the world:

Painting the chair:

Birds in the nursery:

Noise from across the street:

Doing it himself:

Marking his voltmeters:

Buying plants:

Finished chairs:

Carly’s beautiful plants: