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We had quite a good day today, as long as you ignore the horrible meeting where we were asked to voluntarily withdraw our child from school.

He came down just after 7:30. Sat on the couch for a couple minutes. I went upstairs to get our allergy medicine and back downstairs he started asking me how many parts I thought an airplane had. He told me the electric gate at school had big bolts he would show me. He went and dig in his building kit for a minute and came back with a bolt and said they were like that, with the spiral. I taught him ‘thread’.

He worked on the thing he had built with Carly several days ago. Said he needed my help, but he was okay. He said it was now a “huge solar panel that gives us electricity.” When I read him the morning message from Carly he listed and said, “Anyway, let’s finish this circuit.”

He showed me the city he had made in Hoopa City 2 last night with Carly. He had placed a lot of observatories, but called them “telescope societies.” That was too cute to correct. I worked, sitting on the floor close to him. He was talking to the game: “Ready for some roadway?” Then in a squeaky voice, “Yes, boss.”

He switched to Dragonbox Big Numbers and played while I worked next to him. I would help him with problems when he asked, and I was seeing progress in his math. he was starting to understand the process for adding two numbers that go over ten. Also progress, he decided to stay downstairs, playing the game, while I went up and took a shower.

Back downstairs he ate strawberries and had oatmeal for breakfast. We then discussed tools, and plans for the day. He didn’t want to go to Planetanaya as it is outdoors and he was afraid it would rain. Talking about tools, he said, “I’ve been inventing other electronic tools for myself, did you know that? And I’ve started to share them with other people.” And he asked, “Is there anything you want me to invent?” Yesterday I requested a flying suit for a turtle. Think we got distracted before I requested anything this time. He said, “I made a tea infuser for you…the one you had in Korea…it looks exact the same.” He meant the one with a bear at the top that I was wondering what had happened to it a few weeks ago.

He then compared his three shakers: two he had made at school, and one he had made last night out of a paper cup with nails in it which he had taped shut, then taped a pencil or something to as a handle. He described how they made different sounds. He then told me all about his vitamin C machine (he called it “Calcium C”) and how it squeezes oranges and gets all of the vitamin C without any of it being lost to the air and then you suck it out with a straw. Finally, he looked at his insect collection and speculated on why the grub wasn’t going under the dirt.

We left at 10:30, headed to Ace and other stores in that mall to mainly look for a jeweler’s set of screwdrivers. We went in the mall and looked at Bug, an electronics store. No luck. We walked the length of the mall. He had me pick him up and put his head down on my shoulder for most of it.

We then went downstairs to Ace. No luck on the screwdrivers, but he spotted a battery tester. I then showed him a multimeter, which was just a little more, and we ended up getting that. He was also excited when he spotted round pads for the chairs, as he knew I had run out of them. Finally, I found a nice latch to attach to the door of the Zinnie house to keep cats out.

We bought those, then headed to the pizza place in that mall, only to find it closed. We walked across to the other side and looked at Office Depot, but no screwdrivers there. So we went back to the car and headed over to a pizza place called Katorza just east of Winter Lake Park. We parked around the block and walked and found it. August got a slice of cheese, I had olive. We shared a grape drink. As he ate, he watched music videos on a big TV and had me Shazam a song.

We left to head to Planetanya, but when I put in the directions on Google Maps it told me it didn’t open until 4pm. So I stopped by Winter Lake Park, but August said he only wanted to go home. I relented and headed home. Later, when I explained which park it actually was, he said “Oh, I would go there.”

At home, at 1, he played 15 minutes of Dragonbox Big Numbers. We then got out the multimeter and figured out how to use it and test batteries. We had several new and old batteries, and we also went out and got the three used batteries in his bike, which was in the back of the car. He asked why it was a multimeter, and we discussed multi- (a word of the day). .he made a connection: “Like unicorn…” Where ‘uni’ means ‘one’.

We went out for a bug and graffiti walk at 2:30. He took the permanent marker with him, and I let him draw on a leaf. He drew symbols, and told me, “Only robots would understand it.” He picked it, and told me it was to go under the chair with his other things, and then he would send it to another planet.

Soapy water came out of a yard across the street and went down the road. We followed it, and were eventually floating things down it and then making dams. That was a cool development.

We headed home and got ready to go to school. We had found a solar-powered light across the street and he said that Mikaela would like to take it apart with him. We also took insects to show her. We drove to school, getting there at 3:20.

From the car he spotted a house with actual solar panels, not just the heating systems. we headed to Caryl’s classroom. She was in a meeting until 4.

In the classroom he pulled up al the window blinds, then, as we were early, we took apart the light ourselves. At 3:45 he asked how long it until Mikaela got there, and I said 15 minutes maximum. He asked what ‘maximum’ meant. I explained, then he asked why I don’t use that word more often.

Mikaela arrived, and I headed over to Mike’s office. Mike and Vicky arrived first, then Carly then Shary, as the other meetings finished up. The less said about the meeting the better. Shary (the elementary principal), in the very first communication from an administrator regarding August, basically described him as dangerous and with little chance of succeeding in a school setting. She even suggested we’d have to make “substantial” changes to our parenting style for him to ever succeed in a school setting. We sat there, shocked, as she mischaracterized everything that had been happening. In short, we were asked to withdraw August. Either all along the teachers and Vicky were sugar-coating everything, or Shary was spinning everything to pad her case that August didn’t belong at the school. Given that the psychologist warned me that Shary “doesn’t like little boys who misbehave” and forces them out of school, we’re guessing it’s the latter, or a combination of both. For example, she claimed they’d started having conversations about the students “weeks ago” about kindergarten, and were considering not allowing August to continue in kindergarten. And yet, two weeks ago we had a parent-teacher conference, much of which was reassuring us of all of the support that was given in transitioning to kindergarten, with no mention of concerns or the possibility that he wouldn’t be allowed.

In short, a good riddance of bad rubbish. While we are very upset with how it was handled, we were already really concerned with how August would respond to the kindergarten reading curriculum. They focus on it a lot, but August is already advanced in reading, and doing the typical gifted child thing of reading by memorizing full words and not by sounding out individual letters. We were also concerned about the larger class size, and with Shary being the admin directly in charge without a caring preschool director inbetween. And, of course, there was the worry of keeping him at school on a daily basis and wondering how today would go, and whether him walking around stressed out for 4 hours each day was actually good for him.

So, my first feeling was actually of a weight being lifted. We could go full in on the homeschooling and get back to a routine that still feels more natural to me (given that I did it for years with him) than getting him ready for school every day.

We went back and picked up August. It had only been 40 minutes, but they had done a lot. He had told her about how he has little people living inside him (a new story for us), and about how he has a lab and can see ultraviolet light, but other people can’t. They went for a walk and he showed her how fast he could run. He later told me they had gone to the nature reserve but couldn’t find a tortoise. They did art on the whiteboard and he drew a really complicated abstract shape, then asked her to “replicate it.” She attempted to do so, and he found her attempt really funny as she made a lot of mistakes. When I walked in, she had started to read him a book, but August later told me it was a boring book from mama’s classroom for “adults.”

We said goodbye and headed home. August and I stayed out and he helped drill holes (he’s getting better at it) for the latch and we put it on the Zinnie house. Worked really well. We were discussing foods, and making cookies for Mikayla. He suggested we had ingredients on hand, and I said basically just for sugar cookies, which I don’t really like. I explained that other cookies have more “pizzazz.” He asked what that word meant, and said that he’d heard it on Max and Ruby.

For dinner he ate a bowl of broccoli with a little butter and two soft-boiled eggs with crackers. Carly came down and he showed her the multimeter and how it works. He did something that bothered her, like kissing her neck, and when she explained she didn’t like it he said, “Sorry, I won’t do it again. I promise.” Which is the kind of positive reaction we haven’t seen from him, so that is nice. He had a bowl of oatmeal, and he said, “Hey Siri, please play Josh Ritter.” Which was a nice thing to do for Carly.

He then took Carly out, I thought to show her the latch, but another thing we had done when we were outside was use boards to block the places the cats can come in by the front gate. I don’t know why we didn’t think of that before. He insisted on piling the wood high enough to close the entire gap, but that does block the gate moving. It will also be possible to leave the top row off and have the gate open and close. They got distracted and never made it to the Zinnie house. They sat on the swing and I heard him say, “If I see a really dark cloud we’ll go inside.” He was a little traumatized by our recent rain experiences. I went up Nd did and hour of work.

Carly gave him a bath and he played in the sink. I think they also added to his sculpture. He came into the office, wearing his shirt as pants and put his pajama pants on his head. He spent a few minutes looking at himself in the mirror while dancing and singing a song about Captain Underpants. We went into the bedroom and read Nick and Tesla and formally introduced homeschooling to him. He was very positive on it, as long as he got to choose things. He also liked the idea of weekly field trips. I talked about still playing with his friends, and he ended up singing a great song about Eve. He changed the subject by asking, “I have a question for you: What do you want me to make?” This time I requested a swimming suit for a bat so it could swim like a fish. He installed gills so it could breathe. For a visualization we were a worm snake, then he spent several minutes just making up music. He finally fell asleep at 9:50.

2 song and working on math:

The Calcium C machine:

Battery testing:

Symbols on a leaf:

Following the water:

Captain Underpants song:

I started waking him up at 8. Took until close to 8:20. Took quite awhile for him to get going. He went downstairs, then leaned against me as he woke up and ate his vitamins.

He ate a couple strawberries and played Dragonbox Big Numbers, then had oatmeal with brown sugar. I sat next to him at the table and worked and helped him with his math and number writing. He was totally singing, mainly about the game. He then started the copying game. He asked, “Could you please copy me? Even when I say esophagus?” I asked, “How will I know when to stop.” He replied, “Oh, when I say refrigerator.”

He asked what is class was doing right now. I said it was likely literacy group. “Do you think Ms. Vicky is saying ‘What about the E?’” He was done with iPad, and asked for the macro lens. He took a couple photos of crumbs with it, then asked me to add the Billy Bragg song that was playing to his playlist. He asked me to blow up a balloon with the bicycle pump. I blew one up, but it doesn’t work too well. He found a permanent marker in the drawer and when I read the label it included Instant drying.” “Instant? What’s that mean?” First word of the day.

He then had me help him create a balloon creation, taping them together, then adding a paper cup. He colored dots on the balloons and wrote in the cup with the permanent marker, and would eventually add the circuit board and switches from the light thing we had taken apart. He liked the idea of his balloon creation floating and got a little grumpy when I said we couldn’t get a canister of helium. “What’s a canister?”

I started a project of organizing his art kitchen and putting signs on things. I would get him to read the signs. He wanted to put hot glue on a balloon as an experiment. I did it as he watched from across the room and took a video in slo-mo of it popping. He also did a water mixture of sorts, using the drill to mix it.

For lunch we made soft-boiled eggs. It turned out what he had been wanting was hard-boiled eggs, like we used to have, but soft-boiled was a good discovery:

“Remember those adventures in Korea when we’d eat those soft-boiled eggs?…I liked cracking them.” “We had them here too.” As we ate (I used a plastic lid as a egg holder and showed him how to break it open with a spoon. We dipped crackers in it, since we didn’t have toast) he asked, “What did we mostly eat in Korea?” We talked about Korean food and what we ate. He then was asking a lot of questions about whether he would have been able to use a hot glue gun when he was three or a baby.

He’s asked about the living room windows, which aren’t clear, a couple times recently, and today asked, “How is it blurry like that when you look through the living room window? How? How? How?” As we ate we also were discussing aardvarks and what and how they ate (he stuck his tongue in the egg and pretended to be an aardvark). He says he makes paper out of ant larvae.

We watched a little more of the race and he said he liked the rainy race. As he went to the bathroom he asked, “Do you think to a snail my poop would be giant?” He remembered the civilization building game we had played on my phone and wanted to play it sometime. I told him I could put some building games on his iPad. I found a couple of free Lego games and a couple others and installed those, and he played one of the Lego ones while I took a shower.

Back downstairs we glued a cable to a speaker and I finished signs. He started talking about short bits of times and invented the “Infinitit…way bigger than the other numbers I’ve made up.”

We finally got going outside when he went out at 2 to release the insects. He took them across to the fallen cactus, to the little safe spot in it and released them there. We then spent the next hour looking for insects in that area. Studied a couple of ant nests, and found a lot of new insects. He had 6 or 7 in the bug catcher by the time we were done. “That’s a cool rolly Polly.”

Taya was being watched by Grace after school and we planned to go play with them. We were already running late when August was playing around with the hammer outside and somehow hit one of his fingers. I picked him up and comforted him for a couple minutes, and noticed he was pressing his eyes tightly shut. I tried to get him to use the calm space. He sort of did, crawling under the chair next to it for a minute.

We finally got walking after 3. To school by 3:30. He was humming music on the way. We searched the campus for Grace and Taya. Not on the playgrounds. August suggested Cassie’s room. Not there, and not in the library or cafeteria. We were intrigued by the elevator not working; the door was stuck open at the top. We ended up at the nature reserve and I thought about looking for a tortoise. August found one after a few seconds. We looked at it and picked it up, then let it go.

August asked, “Where on Earth do you think Taya is on campus?” He found a couple little treasures. We headed back to Cassie’s room and found them. He excitedly showed Grace and Taya the bugs and then we captured a crane fly that Taya spotted. Just a couple more minutes, then Cassie showed up. We stayed with them and walked them to the exit.

August wanted to head home as well, so we got the iHerb box and I balanced it on the handlebars. August suggested putting it on the seat, and he was hanging off the front of the bike. We tried that for a few feet for fun. He was asking a lot of questions on the way home and I had to keep stopping to hear him. Near the end of the walk he was asking about trucks and cars and their heights and we discussed the concept of ‘aerodynamic’. We were home at 4:50.

We fixed and revised his Lego ship and were going to start on a new circuit when Carly got home. I went up to work for an hour. August came in once to check in and Carly came and got him. I was getting weird withdrawal notices from the Washington college savings plan account and had to call my dad to get the code to let me into the account. It turned out to be nothing, and later in the night they sent out an email about problems with their email system. While I was upstairs I heard them making a lot of noise, in fun I think.

When I came down he was making a big structure out of string throughout the kitchen. He as so into it he didn’t want dinner. He said, “It’s like a maze of duckings.” As in, ducking to avoid it. Carly headed upstairs. He kept adding and playing, taping things to it and expanding it to reach the coffee table. He started to hug me from behind. Sweet at first. Then rougher. Finally, I asked him what he wanted to say, and he said, “Im hungry.”

For dinner we both had chicken soup and shared the last of the focaccia. He said answering the question for cotton candy was like when he had to do dance move for something at the Halloween thing. He said it was like money, and I explained ’barter’ to him, and another new one was ‘in advance’ when I said we should have defrosted his frozen treat in advance. He ate some of that and talked about a class of kid elves that were on a field trip. He took down all of the beige strings from his big creation and stuffed them all into a little bottle that Eve had given him.

I took him up for his bath and we got that done pretty quickly. He had been asking to watch a video about how popsicles are made, so we watched that on the bed (https://youtu.be/jW1O1XTjgMA). I read I Will Take a Nap! and had him brush his teeth. Carly came in and I left them at 8:30. Took her awhile, as I still heard them at 9:15.

Balloon creation:

Balloon popping slo-mo:

Soft-boiled egg:

Today’s insect collection:

Music on the way to school:

Tortoise time:

Showing off his insects:

Web creation:

I let him sleep until he woke up just after 8:30. I picked him and held him for a couple minutes, his head on my shoulder. He then sat on the couch and I for him vitamins and his allergy medicine. For reading he requested the Skybrary book where someone has homework problems. I didn’t know what he was talking about, but we figured out it was Oliver Otter’s Own Office. We read that, then he wanted to watch the Magic School Bus episode where they build a rover. We found it – it’s an episode from the new series.

He told me of a super medicine he invented. One drop of it could cure you or protect you from thousands of things. He then asked me for things for him to make. I said a machine that would do my work for me. He said I wouldn’t have to pay for it up front – since I would use it over time I could pay for it monthly like Siri or electricity. Thought it was really interesting that he thought of that.

We made oatmeal and discussed his straws as he played with the rainbow one. We discussed the difference between ‘beverage’ and ‘liquid’ and he came up with “snake poison” as a liquid that wasn’t a beverage. So ‘beverage’ was a word of the day.

He watched Wild Kratts and Magic School Bus and ate all his oatmeal and I worked. We then did more work on the printer, taking it apart, and used some of the parts to add more to his hot glue sculpture. He was being a bit cheeky with me, telling me I was at fault for getting burned: “Then you shouldn’t hold it awkwardly like that, silly.” And when he didn’t hold a piece long enough for it to stay glued he said, “YOU shoulda holded it. YOU’RE the expert.” I told him he was the hot glue expert. And when he picked up the glue gun to glue something he said, “Turn on supervision.”

At some point he randomly said, “At my birthday party, I’m never going to invite my teachers. Cuz they’ll just want to teach.” I went upstairs to look for the cream for his lip. When I came down he said, “I hung that up.” It was his green/red chart from his last day, from the previous week, when he didn’t get any red dots. He had found it over on his art kitchen, I think, and hung it up on the refrigerator with magnets. He stood on the stool, leaning back against the counter and gave me a sort of sheepish look. I went and gave him a hug.

We went upstairs, and he told me the cream was taped up in his wall creation. I took it out to use on him, and he wasn’t too happy with his sculpture being touched. He responded by fixing it, adding to it. He did that while I went and took a shower. When I came out he had quite a creation, and said it was a machine. He had the fan included in it, and said, “It has to be on for a full hour…it’s making Siri stronger and smarter.” He had me sitting out on the couch so he could surprise me, as he added more. He ran out of tape. I knew there was a full unused roll in the bedroom and told him, “So get that other roll.” He replied, “I taped it.” We had to go downstairs and get another roll.

He asked, “Why am I good at electrical stuff?” I said something about practice. He said, “No, you’re wrong…because I practice on my world.” We went downstairs, but then found something he wanted to add, so we went back up. We watched a little racing. He talked about making insanely fast things in his lab and told me, “I like to make things that are insanely fast so I win trophies and stuff and hang them up.”

We went downstairs for lunch, having pizza and crackers with cheese and meat. We sat on the kitchen floor and kept watching. He asked if an insanely heavy car would hydroplane. He then talked about a skyscraper from the bottom of the ocean. He talked about how you could see sharks and everything out the windows. There’s a sort of electric fence that will keep them from touching the skyscraper though, but not scare them away though as you’d still want to see the baby sharks and things.

Before we left, he had the idea of letting the snake go. I think I had mentioned a day or two ago that we didn’t know how to feed it, but I hadn’t mentioned it again. This was his idea. We took it out and let it go in the garden and watched it as it crawled several feet until finding a rock to crawl under. He said, “Bye, wormy! Bye, snakey!”

We headed out for a walk at 1:30. We wandered around, and he told me, “I discovered a color…sonic green…a kind of green people can’t see. But I can.” He asked, “What’s an exoplanet?” Another word of the day. He had learned it on Magic School Bus. He also asked, “What predators is guard ants good at keeping away?”

Our initial goal was to find rocks to turn over to find another snake. We tried a few rocks across the street, but no luck. We wandered the back streets then headed up to our usual stopping spot and looked around there. He did find a new green bug that we hadn’t seen before. And he found a metal piece on a pole that he said was like something he’d seen before. And at a garbage area we found a sort of motion detector to take apart.

We headed back south, and down to the pathway starting by the cloud bridge and then over to the old highway area. We tried different paths down there. The highlight came when I turned over a rock to find I had broken open an ant nest. We realized there were hundreds of little white dots. It was the ant larvae, and over the next couple minutes we saw the ants pick them all up and take them somewhere else. We watched them for several minutes, and August got a stick to go poking under other small rocks and old paper towels and things.

We got home at 3. Inside, we took apart the motion detector. And we were both a little itchy-eyed from our walk. He went and washed his hands and eyes a bit. We started watching the Formula 1 race, and did the car game with me lying on my back on the floor.

He then wanted to play on his iPad and play Dragonbox Big Numbers. He started from the beginning, and was having a lot of fun doing it all by himself. Carly got home, and he got hyper. They started doing more hot glue. They went upstairs to wrestle and he added to his machine up there. Then were were back downstairs and doing more hot gluing. He was being mean to her again and had a timeout at some point.

He got the sushi rice and we put some in a lavender balloon and played with that. He then had another time out because he responded badly to me making him stop tipping on the dining table chairs. He and Carly had chicken soup for dinner (I’d already had some food) and I sat with them. He then played with the lavender balloon with her. She took him for a timeout when he hit her because he didn’t like how she was passing the balloon.

He got two little wrenches and wanted to make a horn on his head using one of the headbands. I went up to do some work, about an hour, and they did that. They made it, but realized it needs a counterweight. She took him up for his bath, and I heard him singing on and on, “Da da da…” He said it was to postpone his bath. Eventually he had his bath.

I then came in and we read Nick and Tesla. Took a long time to get him to sleep. We did a visualization being a photon going away from the sun. We had fun thinking about that, and how long photons could be traveling and what happens to them. I talked about having lots of “brother and sister” photons. He didn’t like my anthropomorphizing: “Brothers and sisters protons? Protons aren’t alive.”

I sang him some songs, and he requested “Always” by Erasure and wanted to record me singing it on his iPad. He had done that once, and said that he could record me singing all the songs, then he could just play the recordings of me singing the songs. So I let him record that, then we turned off the lights, a little after 9. Sang more songs, then it was quiet time. He asked two questions this time before finally falling off to sleep: “How does a photon travel so fast? I know it doesn’t have any mass.” Then right before falling to sleep he asked, “Can I have a soft-boiled egg for lunch tomorrow?” Not sure when he learned about soft-boiled eggs, but they come up in discussion every few weeks or so.

Hot glue gun:

Explaining his creation:

The upstairs machine:

The upstairs machine 2:

Discussing his underwater sky scraper:

Releasing snakey:

Inside of the ant nest:

Marker Slo-mo 1:

Marker Slo-mo 2:

He went to bed late and slept late today. Kind of failing on adjusting him to the new time. He was up around 8:15. Not sure if Carly woke him up, or he got up on his own. They were upstairs chatting for quite awhile. They came downstairs and Carly was able to convince him to go upstairs on his own to get his iPad. She gave him chocolate chips for blowing his nose. They read Captain Underpants together, then she made him oatmeal.

He ate and watched Wild Kratts. He went upstairs to find Carly, then came down and started digging in the fridge. He found the big leaves that Carly’s students had given her and ate some. He then wanted to make a mixture, and did that in a small pot, measuring out small amounts with the measuring cups and a butter knife.

Carly headed to the store. We played with the Legos and watched F1 and F2 qualifying while we did so. He expanded and revised his ship from yesterday. He said, “Its like the Goosey Grow 2000.” Which he said was from Captain Underpants.

When he wanted to move to the circuit set he did a good job of cleaning up the Legos. He took apart the circuit that we had made before and chose a new one to make. I heated us up pizza and we ate that as we built it.

Carly got home and handed him a big bag of balloons. He had been asking for balloons for a couple of days, and when he had heard she was going to the store he asked her. The first one we tried had holes in it. The second one he started bouncing in the air, seeing how many times he could bounce it.

We got him to pause that and pick up the spices, etc. from his mixture earlier. He then gave Carly the pink one and told her she could practice with it, and gave her some pointers. We filled a blue one with quinoa and he played with that. Paused to put the hourly cream on, then when he was playing with it it popped, showering quinoa around. He went and hit Carly. I talked to him, and he calmly went and got paper and drew a picture of a face on it, crossed it out, and handed it to me and said, “That stands for no love.” But at least it was a calm response, and a new strategy on his part. He then apologized to Carly.

He was going to try alone time, but wanted to play with his iPad instead. He played with music apps. He then did do alone time, playing with the straw things, and I went up to take a shower. When I came down Carly was giving him some of the soup. “I love it.”

We then got going to International Day. It had been moved inside due to the rain. We parked and walked in. He explained all the reasons he doesn’t want to ever wear a wristband: it is too tight, it is sticky, you have to wear it for the full time, and he doesn’t know how to get them off. He wasn’t reassured when I said we could solve some of those.

Anyway, we headed in and to the gym. Full and overwhelming at first. Then the treats started: pie and cookie from Poland, waffle from Germany (he’d told Carly earlier he’d wanted waffles sometime). We watched some of the capoeta (sp?) demonstration, then went back to treats and a little learning about countries: chocolate thing from Brazil, a maple cupcake with maple syrup infuser from Canada, cotton candy from the United States. For that he had to answer a question, and while we waited our turn I talked to Anita. Very understanding about everything. And August waited very patiently. He answered the question (colors of the New Mexico flag, which was on the wall) and got his cotton candy.

He really liked that. It was his first cotton candy ever. He said it tasted like cherry medicine. And he asked Carly the question he had had to answer.

We walked over to the cafeteria, where there were more booths. He wanted something from the Kazakhstan booth, but it cost money. We walked to the other end, and I bought some of the food coupons. It was run by teenage boys, so they handed me a bunch of extras.

Carly and I got coffees and I got the bread thing August wanted and some pad thai. We sat at a table outside for awhile.

We headed back into the gym one more time. Candy saw August go by and yelled at him to come back. He came back, said hi, and she ran off again. Back in the gym we had a bread-flavored drink from Russia, learned about Kenya and Zambia (he correctly guessed that giraffes live in Kenya, based on the photos he saw), and at the Netherlands booth he was given bread with chocolate sprinkles on it and told that’s what Dutch children eat for breakfast. He liked the sprinkles, but not the bread.

We went to walk through the cafeteria one more time on our way out. Outside, August heard the music and started doing some impressive dancing. The song was in Hebrew and included “du-du-bong”, which is what he used to repeat with Omri last year. Don’t know if it is a common Hebrew phrase, or from the song.

We headed out. They took the car home, and I rode my bike, not wanting to leave it taking up space. We were home around 5. I saw a printer up by the garbage place and got it and set it by the door as it was wet.

August was pretty hyper. I had him go open the door and find the printer. He showed me the structure he’s made during alone time, explaining it had a security system that caught bd guys and threw them away. Carly headed up to talk to her parents. We took apart the printer as we listened to the Spacemen 3 album Losing Touch with Your Mind. She came down and August told them all about taking things apart. We figured out it was the 10th thing we’ve taken apart. ‘Engineer’ was a word of the day.

August got a bunch of springs and little pieces out of a larger piece and showed Carly how he’d done it. She then took over and helped him, then they started making a sculpture out of the parts using the hot glue gun.

Carly headed up to take a shower. He came over and we discussed the endurance race (Nurburgring 24 hours) I was watching in the background as I typed. He’s been categorizing races based on which ones the drivers can go to the bathroom during (endurance races) and the ones they can’t (shorter races). He was hungry, finally, and ate a full bowl of the chicken soup that Carly had made earlier today. He then had a slice of toast.

We went upstairs and read a little of Nick and Tesla. Then started a game where he sat on my stomach, and put his feet on my hands and those were a gas and broke petals, and he drove a car. He was doing everything to avoid a bath, and started to get upset when it was time to go. Carly came in and helped calm him down, and I took him in and gave him his bath and was able to wash his hair.

In the bedroom, as I dried his hair, I noticed some hairs that needed trimming. Carly came up and trimmed them, and gave him a couple chocolate chips. I was pretending to be grumpy and said it was maddening. “What’s ‘maddening’ mean?” Another word of the day. We did the car game again, and ended up discussing hearing and not hearing things, and ended up discussing sign language. He had good questions, and we discussed hearing aids. “What’s ‘amplify’ mean?”

Downstairs he showed me their sculpture and speculated on whether we could find anything to take apart tomorrow. We got him to brush his teeth, and I left them at 9:10. He had been taping things to the wall, and I heard him tell her, “Everything is attached because this is called the signalmaker.”

Playing with the balloon:

You eat the rest, scrap boy:

Watching at the international fair:

Leading us through the gym:

His first cotton candy:

Dancing to the music:

Explaining his straw structure:

Taking apart the printer 1:

Taking apart the printer 2 – the Sophia ad:

I heard him wake up at least once during the night, but he slept pretty well. He got up at 7:10. They started reading The Mouse and the Motoecycle and when I came down I read more of it to him. He then watched Wild Kratts. He went up to find Carly, and I made scrambled eggs for breakfast. He had a timeout as he hit her about how she was cutting the coke can they were using to make a castle.

We ate breakfast. He didn’t eat much, wanting toast and jam. He went to cuddle with her when we were done and said, “I want to cuddle until your brain hurt.” They had decided on a stopping word for if he wants us to stop something. He thought about it and decided on “Esophagus”. So he would ask us to copy him, then say random things, but when he said “esophagus” we were to stop. This was a game throughout the day.

We took apart the webcam and fed the butterfly. I did dishes, then he was doing a decent job of playing by himself. I went up to take a shower. They were reading Pippi Longstocking as I left. When I came down he was doing alone time. He finished drawing a picture and gave it to her, then they both had an Oreo.

He and I then headed out for a Dada-Zinnie adventure. We got in the car and drove up to a random park area to the northeast, in Kadima. We were listening to The Field on the way up, and I took a slightly longer route to come up the east side of Kadima to see what was over there. When I parked I looked back and found him almost asleep.

We got out and got on the bike. He tried to catch a spider on the side of the car before going, but no luck. We walked up to the playground, but he just wanted to find insects. So we walked out the park to the east and to an empty lot I’d driven past. We looked among the flowers and started to have some success: I caught a little bee-like thing, then he added a ladybug and two kinds of beetles.

We walked back up into the park, stopping to look at more of the ants that we’d seen on the way down. I tried to get him to play there, suggesting imagining games, but it had gotten windier and cloudier, and even with his sweatshirt he wanted to head to the car.

So we did that, and I tried to decided on a place to get food. Being Saturday there wasn’t much open. I called Carly to see if she’d like to join us for pizza at Shabtai or for us to bring her pizza. She chose the latter.

We drove across to Shabtai. Busy when we got there, so we had to park down the hill. Then, I decided to order a large pizza to go. We ordered a half cheese, half with artichoke and mushrooms and goat cheese. They told us 20 minutes. We went outside to decide how to wait, and it was feeling warmer, with a little sun coming out. So we decided to sit at a table outside, and he ordered a peach iced tea and I got a cappuccino. We read Nick and Tesla for a few minutes. When the pizza came they had made a mistake and made it all with the toppings. No worries, as they had already started a small cheese pizza.

He waited patiently, picking cheese off the big pizza, and using his rainbow straw on his peach tea when it came. His pizza came. We both ate two slices. I noticed big clouds rolling in, so we got going. We went inside and waited while they took payment and then went to box up the pizza. We heard thunder as we waited.

We got going, and as soon as we were out of the shop it started raining. we had about half a block to walk. It steadily got heavier and heavier and I stopped to get the umbrella. It blew inside out. We kept going, me keeping it over him. Tried to fix it once, but it blew back. Then it turned to rain. We cut diagonally across the road and it started to hail. I was keeping calm and encouraging him to move faster. He was clenched up, taking short, quick steps. He said, “I’m moving as fast as I can!” We got to the car, and I set the pizza on the ground and fumbled to unlock the car and get him in. The pizza boxes were pretty wet, but the pizza was safe.

He shivered a bit, but I turned on the heater and he said he was okay. We got home at 3:40.

He took off his pants to change them. He noticed his truck underwear on. He complained about it, saying, “It’s the most truckiest underwear I’ve ever seen.”

He went up to Carly, joking that we hadn’t brought any pizza for her. She came down, and he wanted to use his floor cleaner. He wanted to just spray it around, and not wipe. He said it was magic and “It just soaks up the dirt, and evaporates.”

He spent some time playing with music apps on his iPad, starting with the synth, then moving to the Seuss Band app, and ended up having me play it to unlock the other songs.

I tried to address his dry lip/nose by cutting a bandaid to put on it, as the skin was peeling. He just took it off though. So we declared we were putting cream on it every hour, and started using Siri to remind us. He was okay with that. I said the next project was his hair: I’ve been trying to put hair clips in it, but he always takes them out quickly.

He’s been talking about wanting his hair to go down to the ground, but his stance changed when Carly offered him treats. So, 3 or 4 different treats later he had a lovely new, short haircut. We couldn’t decide whether he looked younger, like 3-year old August, or like an older kid. At first she was just going to do his bangs, and early on, when she started to move to the side, he complained “Mama! I told you not to cut over here!” Extra treats solved that.

We read Nick and Tesla. ‘Singed’ was a word of the day. He then took Carly’s leftover lettuce in the salad spinner and added all sorts of other things to it, like coffee grounds, and eventually we took it out to the compost, just as it started to rain again. Back inside he said, “We were just in time. We had a good window.”

We listened to the new Steve Earle. Earlier the new UNKLE. We played with the Legos. He took apart the spaceship and wanted us to make the land vehicle. We started on it, and he’s really improving on turning the pieces in three dimensions and putting together the plans, but then he ended up making his own ship and was really excited about designing it on his own.

He was then having us ask for things from his lab. Carly wanted a greenhouse, while I asked for a drone that could carry a person and a projector that could project a movie anywhere I want. He told Carly her greenhouse was 200 bucks, while mine were much cheaper, as he was better at those, and hers was bigger.

We read a couple new books that I bought for him on iBooks: Everything You Need for a Treehouse and Forever or a Day. He had a lot to say about both, but particularly the latter since it had to do with time and its passage and speed.

Carly took him up for a bath. He saw himself in the mirror and said, “I look preeety different.” He danced and was silly for several minutes. “I’m cute!”

I went up and put him to sleep. We did an outside our body/inside our body visualization, which didn’t really calm him down, as he noticed so much and had so much to say. He said he can feel his heart beating harder when he gets upset at school. He tossed around a lot, and was finally asleep at 9:45.

A picture for mama:

Looking for bugs:

Synth time:

Haircut:

Slicing oranges:

Seeing himself in the mirror:

We moved the clocks forward an hour last night. Carly got him to sleep earlier than usual, but his biological clock had different ideas. He was up a little after 6. He asked where Carly was. He seemed confused that it was still dark. He went downstairs, and when I came down 20 minutes later he was asleep on Carly’s lap. He kept sleeping and Carly pulled out the bed and put a blanket over him and headed to work. He laughed in his sleep and tossed around under the blanket a lot. I re-covered his feet a couple times.

I let him sleep When it came to waking him up I couldn’t. I started around 7:30. One time he just kept pushing me away. Another time he had his eyes open and sat up for awhile, but went back to sleep. I started a Berenstain Bears episode and after a few minutes I pulled him upright, and he finally started to wake up as he cuddled against me and watched.

He moved to the table to eat, but didn’t say anything to me until I was getting him dressed and ready to go, and that was a simple “No” when I asked if he wanted to take something. We used the umbrella to get us out to the car. I think his first sentence came in the car when he asked if stoves or ovens get hotter. At some point he said he liked sleeping in because it meant he got to take the car. That may have been as we were heading to the car.

We didn’t get to his classroom until close to 8:30. He asked why there were only bikes and cars by the school (no busses) and why it was so dark as we walked through campus. The hour change was definitely affecting him, although the darkness was also because of the clouds.

They were finishing up meeting when I dropped him off. He got fascinated with the iPad stand that was out and was playing with that when I left, although he told Andrea he was going to go to the weaving area.

I went to try to deliver the hummus to GAIA, but the food was already gone. I asked Eileen, the MS secretary, and she called but the guy who delivers it had already left campus. I put it in the staff lounge fridge and worked in the library until the Parent Education Program at 10.

As I left to go to that, I realized I had August’s water bottle. I walked down to deliver it, and found him outside at the corner of the preschool, picking up a chair and taking it inside. The whole class was in the atelier. I said hi, and he simply said, “What are you doing here?” I said I was dropping off his water bottle, and he carried on back inside with the chair.

The Parent Education Program was good, with a local therapist running a session on ‘Emotional First Aid’ about somatic response to stress/trauma. I also learned a new Hebrew phrase (“Yebsader” – it will be okay) and pondered the different ways to pronounce ‘Address’ (ah-DRESS versus ADD-dress).

I had about twenty minutes after the session before needing to pick up August, so I went and walked around the big field twice while listening to an audiobook. I then headed to the preschool.

Everything started out okay. As I walked up the class was busy inside. August was swinging on the door. He had two red dots, so not great, and they both involved Marion. They were starting to do clean up, so I asked him to pick up rubber bands I saw on the floor. He went and threw those away, and Marion wasn’t happy about that, as they were good rubber bands, so I helped him pick them out. I talked to him outside for a minute as I packed our stuff, and asked if he’d apologized to Marion for hitting her. When he said he didn’t know, I went and asked her. She proceeded to tell me all about his behavior, right in front of the other children, with them listening. Simone kept trying to get my attention as well, and when Marion was done he showed me the paper he had been waving between us. It was, in fact, his own chart of August’s behavior today, with red dots on it. It was as Simone started to explain what the dots were for that August first tried to cut the paper, then threw the scissors at Simone. They hit him in the cheek (a small scratch, but no blood, thankfully) He was frustrated and upset that we were talking about his behavior, and even more so when Simone started doing it.

Marion was comforting Simone, and August then hit him. I addressed August, and had him apologize, and took him outside to think and finish getting our stuff. I went back in and gave Simone a hug and told him I was sorry. I wanted to go back in and talk to Vicky and Marion, but they disappeared, and I didn’t want to leave August out front on his own for too long. Basically, I assumed this would result in some sort of suspension, but I also don’t want him returning to school anytime soon. The teachers shouldn’t be unloading about a child’s behavior in front of the other kids like that, and they shouldn’t be letting the other children tattle on and make their own behavior charts for the other children. While Marion was unloading on me, the kids behind her, who were doing stop motion animation, were basically in a yelling match. Basically, their open options Montessori-style classroom is often too loud and chaotic, and August is spending all that time (as the PEP session I had just attended reinforced) in survival mode, with his limbic response always engaged.

So we headed to the car and drove home. We discussed hurting Simone. He had found a dead crane fly outside and brought it in to look at with the microscope. We had just started looking at it when Carly’s computer shut off. We read and finished the A to Z Mystery book, with ‘trespassing’ being a word of the day.

We played catch with the rainbow squishy ball he had found on a sidewalk a few days ago, then we went outside and ripped up some newspaper to put in the compost. He said, “I think Eve would like to see we have a composter.” One lone bee came buzzing around and he speculated, “Maybe it’s an abandoned bee. Maybe the queen kicked it out cuz it did something bad.”

Inside, he wanted to use his floor cleaner (a mixture from upstairs). He put it in the spray bottle to use and sprayed some on the kitchen floor and wiped it. He had a couple crackers with cheese while we baked the potato pastry things and made scrambled eggs. He ate two full scrambled eggs with cheese, then was pretty full by the time the potato things were out. He ate some of that though.

He started talking about tiny things, and we ended up discussing Planck length again. He would later tell Carly about it. He has mentioned the photo of an amusement park ride up on the wall from Carly’s friend Peter before, and he asked about it now, and its blurriness. We discussed speeds and cameras. He got his tape measure and we experimented with it. He was trying to get it to touch the ceiling, but it was bending over. I was able to do it, as long as it curved the right way. We then measured how long it could horizontal before it would bend in each orientation.

He commented, “It’s crazy how humans can do this kind of thing (build tools) but other animals can’t. We’re smarter than sharks…humans have the greatest range for how far they go from home…” We have discussed the tool-making ability of humans at least once before.

He played with the boards on the steps outside as we got ready to go for a walk, making them flip up by standing on one end and experimenting with putting boards on other boards. He swinged on the swing for awhile, then we got walking by 3:30.

We only made it across the street at first. We had a good discussion of what could live under the cactus that had fallen over, and when it had happened. He caught a couple insects along the way. By the garbage area he found a part of a circuit board, and was convinced it wasn’t one that we had broken. As he pushed into the bushes he said, “I’m out in nature.” He talked about how study nature was science, then started singing a “Science, science, want to sing it again” Ironically, he wouldn’t sing it again for a video.

He turned over a rock and found a worm. He talked about taking it to school to show Simone. He talked more about taking things to school, and about school in general, than I think he ever has. I started to take a video, but it started squirming around, then he dropped it. It was no worm, but a snake. He dumped out the other insects, then wanted me to catch it. I was able to do so. He was excited to show Carly, so now we actually went for a walk, and I managed to have us meet up with her as she came out of the little path at 4:15.

He excitedly showed her the snake, adding to it climbing up on the rock to combine two scary things at once. He was talking about whether he’d seen a snake before, and remembered the snake from when we were geocaching. He showed Carly a snail and explained it was an “In-between” snail. That is, between the big ones and small ones.

At home, Carly showed him the bag of things she had been given for him to take apart. So we sat on the kitchen floor and started doing that. First we took apart a portable light. That worked really well, once I figured out the trick of using a pair of pliers to get more torque on the small screwdriver. There was then a little cylinder-shaped portable speaker and we took that apart. He kept talking about taking the parts to school.

He and Carly then made a fort when he wanted to do imagining games with her. He decided he wanted it big enough for us all to fit in, and Carly got a sheet. He did most of the building of the actual fort, and said, “I learned about making forts like this from dada.” We were all in it for awhile, pretending to sleep, then he was on my back in it.

Then a rough spot. We had had him tape the lid down on the container with the snake. Now he went and took the tape off, and was taking the lid off as well. When I put it up on the fridge for five minutes, he ended up throwing his shoes at Carly and she took him up for a timeout.

Meanwhile, I found the snake in the guidebook thing we have. It is a Eurasian worm snake. When he came back downstairs we went outside and put dirt in a hummus container and transferred the snake to it, as it was starting to rain.

We realized he hadn’t had dinner yet, and he ate some of Carly’s leftovers from school lunch.

I took him upstairs. Before a bath he taped up an apple with paper towel and toilet paper. He told me, then repeated to Carly, that this was his plan for his Halloween costume: to cover himself with toilet paper.

As he did that I noticed that there was a live space walk going on at the ISS, so we watched a little of that. I then gave him a bath. He then taught me the bathroom dance, which I’ve heard him do with Carly. Basically it involves putting your knees together and dancing around like you need to go to the bathroom.

In the bedroom he told me that on his planet there aren’t any rules. I asked what happened when people did bad things. At first he said he’d only seen that happen a few times in billions of years. But then he explained there was a light side and a dark side to his planet. On the light side people were nice, but on the dark side they were doing bad things to each other. I wondered where he had come up with this light/dark thing and he told me it was from Aardvark and the Ant when the go to the moon and Aardvark goes to the dark side.

He then told me he had done some of the chasing game today. He started because Eve he done it: “So I was chasing too. Kind of fun, actually.”

He was hungry so we went downstairs and made some toast and I read Nick and Tesla to him at the table. He told Carly about his plan for a toilet paper costume for Halloween. We got him ready for bed, and I left them at 8:50.

He was feeling sick sometime after 10 and whimpering. Carly called me up. He was complaining about his stomach, and also his throat and ears. I gave him one Tums and a little children’s Tylenol and we had him try to go to the bathroom. They went back to bed. He tossed a lot, but finally got back to sleep.

Paper for the compost: https://youtu.be/rOdzZ4B6UNk

Studying the cactus: https://youtu.be/npapVb5QJZg

Looking in the dirt: https://youtu.be/6EPr7cU9rQE

Worm snake 1: https://youtu.be/Yr_PWiw4wm8

Worm snake 2: https://youtu.be/YrYK26o8Acg

Playing the banjo song: https://youtu.be/bWk9Texjrks

Carly woke him up around 6:45. She headed to work and he watched StoryBots (about candy) and had banana bread. When I went over later I noticed he hadn’t eaten his oatmeal and I asked why. It has happened: “I’m tired of oatmeal.” We got going right at 7:30, but by the gate he found a big black beetle. He got a hummus container from the Zinnie house and dumped out what was in it, and put the beetle in. We included a small branch and leaves so it could right itself. I asked if he wanted to leave it here, but he said he wanted to take it to school. He thought that Simone would like it.

More discussion of cars on the way to school, and he sang a “mini van” song and carried the beetle most of the way. We walked down to the classroom at the same time as the bus kids, and August showed Simone the beetle. Down in the classroom, everyone wanted to see it. He told someone he thought it was a dung beetle, and debated with Marion if it was the same kind of beetle that she sees across in the fields (August thought they were smaller).

I stopped by the second hand sale that GAIA or another club is running and ended up getting three things for August. I went and put them in Carly’s mailbox for later. I biked home, worked, then rode back to get him. I dropped a headphone adapter off to Carly quickly, then went to his classroom. They were starting a meeting, and he was using a little sponge to clean up the water, he said. I found out later what had happened: Eve had opened her water bottle and it spilled “everywhere”, including light splashes on his papers for the day.

August had one big incident, where he hit Simone when he wouldn’t share his snack with the bug, and it escalated from there, and a smaller incident. He had done well in literacy group.

We went to pick up the clothes from Carly’s box, then August let me look again and we got four more things. We walked home, discussing vehicles as usual.

At home we fed the butterfly sugar water, then I placed an iHerb order. August was going to go play by himself, but we heard an unusual beeping noise from something for a second and he said he was scared so he climbed up on me the whole time.

For lunch he had crackers with cheese and meat, and a whole banana. He asked, “Why’s it called an airport?” We discussed the names of ‘airport’ and ‘airplane’. He then did alone time. He played with the jumping robot thing (after we changed the battery), then with the circuit set. He needed some help fixing the circuit set, then played on his own a bit more.

He the red timer to tell him how long until we needed to head to school. He seemed eager to go play with Eve, so was a little impatient, but handled it well, trying to find something for himself to do. He remembered he had more watching time, so watched one Max and Ruby.

We drove to school and walked down. Simone told him that Candy had squished the beetle. August had given the beetle to Simone earlier, and when I had picked him up had wanted to get it back. I had convinced him to let Simone keep it, and we’d go find something as good. The plan had been to go across to the field, but by the guards’ room he found a spider that we captured and he said was even better. Along the way he found a tiny beetle thing and put it in with the spider.

We went in the classroom and Eve was drawing on the whiteboard. August went and asked for a marker and joined her. Candy was standing next to him, and he drew a big picture of her. It was the first time I’ve seen him draw a picture of someone.

Heather showed up, and I took Eve and Zoe out on the playground. The three of the started on the swing for several minutes. Eve and Zoe continued on to the kitchen area, and August stayed on the swing by himself, with a string with a piece of cardboard on the end tied to the swing and dragging on the ground.

August headed over to the kitchen area and helped Zoe and Eve with their restaurant. The little Korean boy from PKC was also their, although his mom wasn’t around, and Zoe and I held up the cover of the sand area several times so they could all get toys out of it. August helped Zoe clean up the restaurant. I was able to do some reading.

Zoe then started a new thing, as she climbed over the fence into the greenhouse area. Eve went over with her, but needed me to lift her out. While August, Eve, and the boy climbed on the fence, Zoe found a small kickball and asked me to play ball with her. I did that until she was distracted by the scooters. August had Eve get some random sticks from the other side of the fence, then he added them to the rather rickety structure Marion and the kids had made in the garden, as a sort of sculpture.

They all ran over to the big playground and I was able to sit and read again. They started by playing on the monkey bars part. August was doing something new where he sort of jumped from the platform to hang on a bar. They then ran over to the swings. Grace and Lillian were there, babysitting another preschooler. To Grace he said, “Hi, nubby girl.” He then watcher Grace and Lillian and the kid they were babysitting and Eve and Zoe play a circle game, although he didn’t join in.

Heather came and picked up the girls, and we headed to Carly’s room. He greeted her well, but then was trying to get to her ‘treats’ drawer and was frustrated. So he and I took off and drove home and she walked a bit later.

He had the idea to make a bird house, so we went out and looked at our wood options. We brought a lot of wood in, and we discussed our plan for a bird house. I started sawing one piece, but it was very hard, so I called it a day. He wasn’t happy with me about that.

A bit later he said, “Just FYI, I didn’t wash my hands.” He picked up ‘FYI’ from me. For dinner he had half a cucumber, noodles, then a small bowl of oatmeal. He then joked around, “FYI, I don’t have on my FYI, so if you want to FYI…”

We took out compost, and we talked about the flies and I talked about it being ‘enclosed’. He asked, “What’s ‘enclosed’ mean?” A word of the day. He yelled “Compostobomposter” as he ran to Carly. He discussed what can and can’t go in the compost and cheese and milk. He said something about a ‘compound’, then asked, “What’s compound mean?” Then, he refilled his water bottle by pouring water out of Carly’s water bottle into his. She said that was some “quality” water. He asked, “what’s quality mean?”

She took him up for a bath, then I went up and read to him. We discussed peregrine falcons: “I know you told me crows drop things to open them, and monkeys use sticks, but only humans make electronics…”

Carly came up to try to get him to sleep earlier since the clocks move forward an hour tonight. I left them at 7:45. Took awhile to get him to sleep, but it was at least a bit earlier than usual.

Minivan song:

Drawing a picture of Candy:

Eve reporting on the swing with August and Zoe:

August on the swing:

Garden structure and running to the other playground:

Song on the couch:

FYI:

He was up at 5:43. He lay against me for 5 minutes, then headed downstairs. He was with Carly when I went downstairs. He wanted to save some watching time for later, so he watched the Marble Machine #70 video, then a Max and Ruby, then stopped. We then finished the circuit set we’d been working on.

We got walking to school, and he did a “Nice compact hatchback” chant along the way. His nose was already dirty halfway to school. Don’t know how. At school I took him into the bathroom to wash it, and he washed it himself.

I went home and worked and returned on my bike. As I got there, I saw him from the top of the stairs. He and a few other kids were playing on the side of the building, with a xylophone or something. They went inside after a few minutes and I sent a message this time letting them know I was there. Andrea brought him out after a couple minutes.

He had had a great day. A rather minor incident where he hit Millie but then apologized right away. It sounded like he’d spent most of the day with Eve. He sat with her at lunch and had a good conversation, then afterwards, Andrea said, they probably spent an hour and a half together, first in the weaving area, then inventing things in the makerspace. And Vicky had said it was another good literacy group.

He did some funny dancing in the classroom to the song that was playing, putting one arm on a book shelf and a foot on the overhead projector, before we left. Outside, he asked if we were returning for playbill. We then talked about the idea of returning for the specials in the afternoon, like yoga and playball. He liked the idea, and said he was ready for a “little more” school.

We walked home. At the trees in bloom in the entrance to the school he asked, “Dada, do you think these are fruit-making flowers?” He then spotted a newspaper on the sidewalk and jumped off the bike and grabbed it, saying, “Dada, we could use this newspaper for our compost.” He soon found a second newspaper.

He hummed some nice music on the way home. We snuck the newspapers under the gate, and continued on to the mall to celebrate his good day.

At the mall we went to the candy stand and August took a few minutes to decide, and he said it was hard to choose. He ended up with a colorful sugar stick thing. He said next time he’d get one of the red or green licorice sticks. He ate that, and then we ordered a small sweet potato pizza from Pizza Hut. He played in the little play area while we waited. He was a squirrel again, and when he fell over on his squirrel scooter (the rocking squirrel thing) I would see him at take him to the vet to get fixed.

We took the pizza outside and ate on a bench by the play area. He took a small piece of the sweet potato to try, and somehow choked on it. Like really choked. He was coughing the whole time, but was reaching out to me for help, clearly in distress, I turned him around in front of me on the bench, and just hit his back several times as he kept coughing. Took a few more seconds, then I could tell he had coughed it up. The whole thing was several seconds (15 to 20?) long: long enough for me to set down the pizza, decide to turn him around, do so, realize he was still coughing so didn’t need to do anything drastic, and then hit his back for awhile.

Luckily, he recovered his appetite and ate his half of the pizza. We then walked home, getting here at 2. On the way he chose to wear his hat backwards, then found a thing that he thought looked like a pom Pom.

He played with his butterfly: “I’m playing with my butterfly. I’m getting it to stay on the top for this many minutes.” Like his alone time. “It’s really tricky for the little butterfly.” He got a little frustrated when the butterfly kept getting off the top of the enclosure and I had to explain that the butterfly didn’t understand what was going on, and that it was earning sugar water.

We took the dying flowers out to the compost, then studied the dead little green beetle under the microscope. He pulled off the antennas and put them on tape on the floor to keep them still. We then studied the body, and realized he had also pulled off the head and we could see inside the hollow body. We also looked at a little nail. He spent some good time putting pieces of spaghetti noodle in his robot toy, getting them to stick in.

We were talking about something (Hilda episodes? Books?) and I used ‘penultimate’ and made it a word of the day. He found the box of the robot project we had gotten him for Christmas and we built that. It moves really strangely, like a combination of a rat and a frog, and he enjoyed watching it go around the house, and was also a bit terrified of it.

He accidentally pulled a leg off of the butterfly, so we put it under the microscope as well. We could see the little hairs, and pointy part at the end, but also realized it was still twitching.

We then walked up to do recycling. While I went and did the plastic recycling he studied a broken toy excavator. He then noticed ants carrying fuzzy things and followed them all around the edge of the parking lot to their nest close to the recycling bins.

He was looking at cars on the way home, and I taught him the idea of a ‘dream car’. Another word of the day.

Carly was already home when we got there. He ignored her t first, and wanted her to keep working. He had found a U-bolt with a nut on one end, and remembered he had a nut for the other end. That nut, however, was a little too big. So we wrapped it with duct tape and it worked. I could screw the nut on now.

He then went and cuddled with Carly, then they went out and put paper in the compost bin. I think they also took something across the street. He had also had me punch a hole in the top of a strawberry container so he could plug a pair of my headphones in. It was his new music machine, and more portable than just plugging into his bike. He had both me and Carly try it out. He also showed Carly the robot toy.

For dinner he ate some of the noodles and some asparagus that Carly cooked. He ate enough to earn some of his frozen treat. We read Fix It, Sam (his library book), then did the thing where he runs to us and I catch him. We did it the other direction this time, with me by the air conditioner. We went upstairs to wrestle for awhile, then came back downstairs.

Carly took him upstairs, but he came back down and wanted his tool belt. I went and got it, and he filled it with tools and went upstairs with it on and played in the sink. He made a floor cleaner and used it on the bathroom floor. She washed his hair.

I took over and he asked, “What’s a gondola?” Don’t know where that came from, but I explained and we watched a video of Venice. We read The Falcon’s Feathers. We then looked up photos of six pack holders and animals stuck in them as it was mentioned in the book.

Carly came up and I left them around 8:30.

Nice compact hatchback:

Music on the way home:

Hopping robot 1:

Hopping robot 2:

Twitching leg:

Following the ants:

August was up at 5:53 when my alarm went off. He went downstairs and yelled “Mama!” and ran to her. He watched Wild Kratts for awhile, then we did some reading and playing. We were walking at 7:33. He did some new humming on the way to school, and did it the whole way. He showed Andrea the iPad screen and camera. As I left, I talked to Marion outside, just thanking her at first. She started talking to me about their whole profile of a learner thing that they’re working through, and how she had a big talk with August about ‘boundaries’. Which, while not bad, seemed to kind of miss the mark as to why August is haven’t trouble.

I headed home, worked, and rode back to pick him up. They were over on the playground at 12 today. I peeked around the corner to make sure he was doing okay, and he was listening to Vicky read from a big (oversized) book. But Hector saw me and started yelling “August, your dad is here!” I was quite annoyed, as I could have had another 10 or 20 minutes. I’m going to change how I pick him up in the future, waiting on the bench until they send him out. He’d had a two dot day, although I guess it was better than yesterday.

We headed home, discussing cars along the way. He asked if race cars have trunks, and that led us into a discussion of open-wheel racing versus sports car racing and aerodynamics. There’s a small black dog up close to school that I’ve seen out on the street before. August was nervous as we got close to it, as it was loose. It started following us, and followed all the way down Hashomron. It continued as we went down Vatikim, often taking the lead. It continued with us on the bath between streets, and then through the park. August and I were joking about how it was making sure we got home. It went all the way to our house, then continued across the street to the garbage area.

At home we ate banana bread and made a strawberry and mango smoothie for lunch. I installed a new Sesame Street Music app on his iPad and he played that and something else for awhile. He then wanted to play with the light circuit set, and wanted to build the big layout shown on the front of the box. We got that about half done before needing to head back to school for library time. Before we left, he saw a bug by the door and caught it. He wanted to take it with us.

When we got to school they were out on the playground. We left the bug in his cubby, then went over to them. Eve gave him a big hug. We got ready for library and walked up. August was doing fine until we were in the library and he started to run and tripped over the foot of the TV stand. He managed to rip some of the masking tape on the floor. I got him back to where the class was, but he wasn’t calming down. He screamed once and I took him away to the center. He seemed to be calmer, and I let him go. But then he flung two containers full of colored pencils. That was the end of it. I cleaned up one, and he cleaned up the other, and we went back to library time. Ilana read Harry by the Sea. He checked out Fix it, Sam.

We went down to the classroom and got the insect, then went back up to the library and asked Liz for masking tape and fixed the small bit he had damaged, and another spot that needed it. He showed Liz the insect and she said it was a silverfish, and they come out of the books.

We went down to find Taya. We waited a few minutes and Cassie showed up. We went out on the playground with Taya, and Cassie went back to her classroom for awhile. They played together, and we played hide and seek. We headed over to the bigger playground, then some friction. August tried to climb on something next to her, and she used her grumpy voice to tell him she wanted to do it by herself. August watched her doing tricks, but the she said she wouldn’t come to his house and he hit her, lightly. I had him apologize. A couple more minutes, and they were talking about what she was doing, but she then said something kind of mean and he hit her again. Another apology. They then went different directions. She went across to the big structure and he kept playing where he was.

Cassie came and had Taya apologize, and we all got going. Carly was walking home so we drove. In the car we looked up ‘silverfish’ on Wikipedia. While we talked about it, he asked, “What’s ‘wingless’?” A word of the day. We drove home, and when we parked I looked back and found him almost asleep.

Carly was already home. They went out to get leaves for the compost, then went up and did a little wrestling. She then went up to work. He played with the drill, then we had noodles for dinner. He didn’t like the cooked cucumber in it, so he requested fresh. He happily ate half a cucumber, then we watched Wintergatan videos (68 and 69) and he had frozen treat. He asked me to put up his iPad out of reach this evening so he would have watching time tomorrow evening. He said he would have liked to watch Hilda, but I had said no since he’d used all of his watching time in the morning.

We fed the butterfly sugar water, then read more Nick and Tesla. He said that if he found eggs on the ground and they were chicken eggs that he’d let them hatch and he’d want a chicken as a pet. He then started taping things to the iPad, and when he taped the egg timer to it he said it was a bomb. He must have gotten that from Pink Panther.

Carly came down and they talked about “The snuggle monster.” He cut off its tentacles and killed it. He played with his butterfly and liked how it would ‘stick’ to his finger when it hung on it. He told Carly, “Feel the stickiness.” When she gave in and put her finger in and touched it she said, “Woah.” He replied, “Told you!”

Carly took him up for a bath and they read Madeline. I came up and the A to Z mystery book about the falcons. ‘Ring’, as in a metal band around the falcon’s leg, was another word of the day. We skyped with my parents for just a few minutes, as he was needing to go to sleep. We did a baby bird visualization and discussed his day. As we were trying to go to sleep, he told me, “I’m leaving.” I got him to lie back down and he was asleep just before 8:30.

Music on the way to school:

Dog leading us home:

Playing with Taya:

Spinning:

Silly before bed:

So a rocket landed about 3 miles southeast of us sometime around 5am. August and I slept right through it, but Carly woke up because of the alarms, or the sirens after the attack. She wasn’t quite sure.

Carly brought August down at 6:45. He watched Max and Ruby. The robot ad came on, and he told her, “I love it. It’s a robot ad.” We did our usual breakfast and also had banana bread with butter. We got walking, and saw some butterflies. One briefly landed on him, and he said, “What do you think I an? A flower?” It was sunny when we left, but then a cloud came over. There were dark clouds around, so we went back for our rain stuff but didn’t need it. As we got close to school he talked about not getting red dots today.

I rode my bike home, then rode back at 12. He had had fun building, but otherwise had a really rough day. He had a long meltdown after being denied rubber bands he had climbed up to get. Marion was keeping him from hurting her/other people, and he couldn’t stand her touching him. When I showed up he was with Vicky, wearing his noise blocking headphones, and had put flowers in a jar with water and was stirring it to make them swirl around. He showed me that.

We walked home, and he noticed that the butterfly migration wasn’t really happening now. At home we did composting. One of the things in the bowl was a grapefruit. We didn’t cut it up, and I saved it and we washed it off and then juiced it. It was a little overripe, but good for juice. He drank a good amount of it. We then made banana bread dough, and put it in the fridge to bake later.

Before we left, he found a ribbon from a present and decided to wear it as a necklace to STEM class.

We drove to school as it was raining a bit. There was an all-staff meeting to address the rocket attack and safety, so Vicky did STEM class instead of Andrea. They read Whay Do You Do with an Idea? then made things out of playdough and parts. He made a big satellite, then worked with Candy to build something.

After class, we were about to go find out what Carly was doing, when she came along on part of a tour of all of the safe rooms in the school. She walked upstairs with us, then she headed back to her classroom. We took his robot costume to the car, then walked over to Heather’s room to see about picking up the printer to take apart. She wasn’t there. We looked at the art out in the halls, and August chose his favorite pottery piece: a pink house.

We went and returned Fing to the library. Along the way he told me all about one of his inventions, which was like a water wheel but very different and you could charge anything with it. Carly met us, and we headed home.

On the way out, Mikaela spotted us and gave us a set of keys to her apartment. We drove home, and she let us go check out her apartment to figure out which keys does what, and decide what we would do if the rocket sirens went off again. It was interesting to finally see the apartment. It is small, just going under our kitchen and part of the living room.

On the way down the stairs, I talked about how our couch was on the other side. It suddenly made sense to August: “That’s why you don’t want me to kick the wall!”

While they were downstairs I went upstairs and ran around and jumped and made all sorts of noise in the house. The conclusion was that Shai was, in fact, crazy. Carly did mention being able to hear the chairs sliding and August’s stool clanging on the floor. So when they came up August helped me put pads on the stool and three of the chairs.

We had forgotten both his morning bar and his pre-STEM bar today, so when he asked for the STEM bar I let him have that. He then went upstairs to wrestle with Carly.

Downstairs, he did 14 minutes of playing alone time. He came to the kitchen once, wanting to cut up a tomato with the yellow scissors. When Carly objected he said, “It’s Scissor Sunny…one of my characters.” Carly did a quick talk with him and he explained, “It was going to be for my story: they were going to have tomato and pasta.”

He chose a piece of noodle for one of the characters instead of the scissors and went back to playing. He was making food (his coins, some tomato, bits of spaghetti) for the characters, the main one being his robot toy from Simone.

After his time was done he kept playing for a few minutes. He then took out compost with Carly. I had baked the banana bread and it was done, then found a spill on one of the cupboard shelves. I called it an “unfortunate spill” and later August would ask if I’d cleaned up the “unfortunate spill.” By taking things out we figured out it was one of those juice pouches from the pizza place, leaking very slowly.

He ate noodles and veggies for dinner and I let him have the juice pouch, but he said it didn’t taste right. He had banana bread with butter instead. He told me, “This is way better than your cornbread.”

Over on the couch he asked, “What’s a janitor?” I explained and he exclaimed, “Like Ms. Sveta!”

He was then playing by himself with the spaghetti and the circuits set with the gears on it. He was taping pieces together to spin when the motor was on. He kept doing more and eventually needed my help.

He asked me how I was doing putting together the kit car he gave me (the one with wings) and we discussed that. Then, “Here’s another kit: real inflatable underwear.”

Carly came down and wanted to try out a hook for one of her classes on us. We sat on the couch and she started. It involved explaining rules. August asked, “What’s stricter mean?” So another word of the day. August kept repeating what Carly said, and then agreeing with it: “Kids learn better if they’re not hungry. Yeah.” Carly took him up and let him play and gave him a bath. I read Nick and Tesla for 10 minutes, then she came in and I left them at 8:40.

STEM creation with Candy:

His teenage girl voice:

Playing by himself:

Working on his circuits invention:

School time with carly:

Working on his letter writing: