This Is Our Blog

He was up at 6:20. I was up but he bear me downstairs. When I came down he was telling Carly all about telephones. Like that they have one with buttons in the preschool, but there are old ones that you used to turn. I can’t remember where he heard about that, but it sounds familiar. He then told me: “Dada, today I’m inventing a translator to tell us in English what every single creature in the world–well, if you want to talk to an English person and you speak Hebrew…”

He asked me to check to make sure his caterpillar wasn’t dead. Aviva was fine. He watched a Berenstain Bears, then in something that was really funny but also gross, he was playing with my toothbrush and used it to “tickle” the caterpillar.

When he went to the bathroom before we left he asked about Carly taping the lock to the bathroom door: “You know what? Why were you afraid of me locking it if I could reach it until I was 16 or 17?”

We got walking at 7:35. He declared he was walking, which negated our on-time start, but it was nice for him to walk. He made it about a third of the way to school. A few houses up he spotted a huge snail and we got a video of it moving around. He was asking about what could break other things, like steel and diamonds, and asked what colors diamonds were. I told him about the variations and why, and he went on to talk about a rainbow diamond. I think he had made it.

We still got to school before the bell. He went right back to the new puppet area. I broke up some hitting between Eve and Simone, then headed out. I didn’t talk to her, but I learned who the speech therapist is that will be working with August.

I worked, then rode my bike up to Gutale and met with Marka about gifted/student support at the school. They are going through a recent diagnosis, and some academic/social issues at the school. I then rode to the school and was talking to Reia’s mother for a few minutes. When the kids started to come out, Lydia came up to me and told me that a caterpillar had peed on August and it was really hard to wash off and that he was up with Ms. Andrea. I went up and he was in the office. I thought he was upset about the caterpillar pee, but it turned out that he and Lydia had been putting water in the caterpillar enclosure, and when Marion told them to stop he got upset. He had ripped a couple of their notes/posters up there and was helping to tape them back up.

I sat with him and Vicky and Andrea and processed that incident. But he was happy that he’d done the calm space thing a couple times on his own. He only had one red sticker on his sheet (although this was clearly a second one). Andrea told me he had done the raspberry at her for the other. He had then stuck his tongue out at her, and argued it wasn’t bad like the raspberry.

But he also told me how he had felt the “bubbly feeling” a couple times and gone to a calm space. Very proud of it, but he couldn’t give me details on where he went. Sounds like once it was into the office.

We caught up with Eve and Zoe outside on the playground. He got right to playing with them and I talked to Heather. Lots of talking to other parents today. She then went to load the kiln, and I helped the kids on the swings. They were going on ‘box’ style with two people on at once. August did it with Eve and Zoe twisted them up and let go.

Heather came back with paper and markers to make posters for the girls’ basketball game. Heather asked what he wanted written on the paper for his sign. Not knowing what the heck she was talking about, he told her “ET3”. A little more explanation later, and he agreed to a big “GO”.

Cassie had called, asking if she could bring Taya over with us while she continued a meeting. She did, and Taya went and played on the playground with Gabe. When August and Eve and Zoe were ready to head to the gym, Taya was still playing with Gabriel and refused to listen to me. August started to get upset. He didn’t want Eve to leave without him. So Orlee, Gabriel’s mom, said she could take Taya to Cassie.

We went to the game and the three kids spent some time holding up their signs and cheering. Eve and Zoe were yelling “Go, falcons!” August was saying things like “Go, trees!” Although I can’t remember what things he was putting in there.

After awhile they got hungry. They had snuck some of August’s snacks in the gym, then Heather came back with some bars. I took the three of them up the stairs so they could eat outside the gym and look down on the game. Down on the floor, Mike invited them to run on the court during halftime. August was a bit hesitant about that, but followed Eve around a few times. They also climbed on the pads at the end of the gym, and raced down and back the hall to the drinking fountains several times.

We got going close to 5. We met Carly as she was walking towards the gym. Zoe was calling him “August-Poggest” and he was giggling, calling her things like “Zoe-Pooey.” Carly noted that he responds similarly with her as he does with Bar.

We walked home. He ate some dinner, then he and I sat down to do something for Marion for hitting her when she made him stop pouring water in. I asked what his favorite thing to do with Marion is and he said, “Finding stuff in nature, like snails.” When it came time to draw it though he didn’t know how to do it. I had the idea of doing a video for her instead. He did a first take, then did something at the end of it that ruined it. For the second take he did it as a song, which was a nice touch.

He asked Carly, “Are we poor?” He was thinking about the photo of Josephine on the fridge. August and I read something, Hilo, I think, and we read the word ‘hooligan’, so that was the word of the day.

Carly took him up for his bath, then I took over to put him to bed. He reminded me that he’d gone to the gym before with Carly to see hockey. He remembered the “great” loud music that time. Somehow we got talking about the size of the universe and that there isn’t an edge. I explained the best I could, but he said that was “confusing”. He then claimed, “I’m a 90 dimensional August”. We also talked about how safe shells are for crabs, did a lava visualization, and did the rocking thing after he asked me to. Thought he was about to sleep when he said, “Dada, I have another question for you: Would a block of steel get crushed if it was at the bottom of the deepest sea in the word?” He finally fell asleep at 8:45.

Message for Marion:

Explaining his translator machine:

Big snail:

Mendameter Screw song:

Building with the caps:

Spinning on the swing with Eve:

Running with Eve:

Cheering at the basketball game:

Running on the basketball court:

Running to mama 1:

Running to mama 2:

He was up at 6:35. He went downstairs and ran to Carly and they cuddled on the couch. When she had to get ready he started watching Pink Panther. I finished his snack and lunch (Carly had made him quesadilla) and oatmeal and he ate that at the table.

All went smooth in the morning, and we were walking at 7:37. Got there after the bus kids, but he happily went and started playing. I may have blown it though, as we forgot about the hat. I was about to walk away when he came out with Marion. He was upset and hitting her because she took away his hat. It took five or six minutes for him to calm down. Eventually though, he picked a flower for her and took it in and apologized to her and gave her the flower and I left.

I went home and worked, then returned to school to meet with Vicky at 2pm. We’d been meaning to meet to discuss literacy group. No issues to address, but just out of curiosity on my part to know what they’re doing. She showed me the tile rhyming game they’ve been working on. She said he’s improving at it, but the difficult part for him seems to be looking at the pictures, converting that to a word, and then thinking of the sound. If you just say a word for him, like ‘dog’, he can easily tell you a rhyming word. He’s making progress on his pencil holding and writing. And she showed me all of his art/writing in his journal. His art is becoming more figurative with practice; I’m not entirely convinced this is a good thing, as the way they go about it seems to tell him that abstract isn’t as good and figurative art. And she talked about the stories he’s been writing. Like changing Jack and the Bean Stalk and something else. They did their own stories most recently. He drew a picture of him walking away from his house. When they went back the next day to expand them, he didn’t want to add to it, although he watched everyone else and commented on discussions about their stories. Eventually he told her that it was him walking down the street with his monster, but he said he didn’t know how to draw that, so she helped him.

A few minutes before 3 I walked out, as the yoga class was getting out. He spotted me. I was surprised, as he wasn’t supposed to be in yoga today. He told me, “I had a rough end of the day.” But it turned out that it had actually been pretty good. No issues with other students today, and the one other red sticker was for blwing a raspberry at Andrea. And he was in yoga because he had left Playball and come inside, then Ms. Rina suggested he go in yoga class with her. He asked me, “Did you know yoga came from one country?”

He said there were two times that he felt the “bubbly” feeling today and went to a calm space. He was very proud of this, and a bit later asked me, “Do you like how I felt the spinning feeling and I walked away and found a calm space?”

Outside he looked at the flowers on the trellis and commented on how the vines had grown over the whole thing. He had some snack, and wandered over on the other side of the elementary school, where Bar saw him and ran over and gave him a big hug. He was very excited by it. He wandered back and into the classroom, and Marion used him to test how high she should hang the puppet theater that they were making. August had told me he had made a second hand puppet, with wings or feathers, I think, but had then cut it up. Andrea told me he had been animating it, so we might still get to see it at some point.

We got going, and as we got upstairs we saw Ms. Rina. She told me how he had been reluctant to go into yoga today until she told him about how it came from India, etc.

As we went out he stood in front of the security guard and sang a very funny song that went something like, “Snoggle snoggle door door.” And had some dancing with it. As we walked out he asked me, “What’s the difference between a gate and a door?” We left at 3:50. Something reminded him of jello, and specifically, “The kind of jello we had all the time in Korea.” Not entirely sure what he is talking about. He told me it wasn’t in plastic cups.

As we walked he talked about “If I was a bird…” and having nests up at the top of a tree or on a skyscraper. We saw a lift truck changing a street lamp, and he said he had a lift truck that he used to study bird nests. We were home around 4:45.

Since he had technically gotten two red stickers I couldn’t take him to Kravitz to pick something out, but I told him that otherwise he had had a very positive day, so he could have the rest of his ring pop and we could watch an episode of Hilda.

Carly got home, and we read some Hilo, finishing book 5 again today and starting again from the beginning of the series. He had nutty noodles and I kept reading to him at the table. He got the caterpillar new food, choosing part of the lavender plant. When I suggested it might be too smelly for the caterpillar, he was tough on it: “Huh. I don’t care. That’s the food it gets today.” When we said he was being tough, he replied, “Pretty hard juice, baby.”

We went upstairs and wrestled on the bed. He went to the bathroom, and when he washed his hands I told him he had plenty of soap. He asked, “what’s plenty?” So ‘plenty’ was a word of the day. He played with and talked about his ‘chemicals’.

We went downstairs and made popcorn. We started to read Hilo, and he said that watching something was the best thing ever. I said something like “Watching something is better than dada reading to you?” He immediately said, “I take it back!”

We then talked about today at school, and he asked to see the chart. We reviewed it, and made a couple of revisions. We went upstairs and he had a little more of the lollipop while I washed his hair. Went smooth again, but he didn’t like when I tried to dry his hair with the towel. In the bedroom, as we used the blow drier, he did a good job of explaining how he doesn’t like the squishing feeling on the wet hair.

We talked about what I’d learned about literacy group, and he asked about ‘figurative art’, so another word of the day. I went downstairs to get something and told him to put on his pajamas while I was gone. I started talking to Carly, and after a couple minutes August started yelling for me, then came down. He had had a grin on his face when I left, and we now knew why. He was singing a “Jangle of the keys” song, and came down with his pajama pants on his head, and the shirt tied around his waist. He was hilarious.

When he calmed down from that, he said, “I like Aviva.” And said, “We’re going to let it out in th tree, so it can come down and see us…a pet caterpillar until we move…”

Up on the bed he told me all about a robot bug teacher that he made for himself out of parts from a toaster and other things. She is small and he can carry her around. He had used gold that he found to pay for tools, like wrenches. The robot bug teacher makes him do what she says, but sometimes he makes her do what he says. He said, “My robot teacher I made said I’m big enough to use the phone.”

Upstairs, I read him part of Freckle Juice. We started from the beginning, but then skipped forward so that we could read the part where he makes the juice and gets sick. Carly came in. He told her, “I think I need to love you less because I love you so much I think I’m gonna die.” I left them at 8:25.

Walking the little hill:

Caterpillar feet:

Knife experiment:

He got up just after 6:30. When I came down he was finishing up his oatmeal and then watching the Berenstain Bears. He was talking to Carly. He asked what a word meant and she explained. Would have been a good word of the day but none of us could remember what it was a few minutes later. They discussed the wood project. He said”I don’t like hard things. I only like easy things.” He was smothering her and she moved to the black chair. He wouldn’t stop, and she went upstairs. Got him to go up and apologize after awhile.

He remembered the caterpillar, which he had put in the bedroom on the counter. He picked it up and was going to go take it outside and let it go. But then he thought it was dead and set it down. Apparently he had talked to Carly about being afraid of it dying. It wasn’t dead though and started moving so I showed him. August then took it outside and got it mustard greens after I dumped the old plants and the poop out of it. Inside we watched the caterpillar start chowing down on the leaf. Got a good closeup video of it.

We then skyped with my parents. He showed them the caterpillar and told them all about it. Paul was in the screen at first and August went and hid from him.

Carly talked about taking August to the cafe in Netanya, and August said he wanted to take the caterpillar with him. He and I built with Legos, and made a structure to hold up the caterpillar enclosure. I asked if he had named the caterpillar and he named it ‘Aviva’, another name from Wild Kratts. Meanwhile, Carly had been productive, figuring out how to pay for our car security system (the free year had run out) and ordering the emotions set thing.

They left at 9:45. They went to our usual cafe and had a mango and banana smoothie that was really good, and a salmon bagel sandwich. August ate all the salmon and Carly had the veggies. They also read a lot of Captain Underpants. August rode on the little carousel at the top of the big steps in Netanya. We’ve seen it before but he hasn’t ridden that one. They then went down and played on the beach. They had good luck with weather, as they had sun while it seemed pretty cloudy and windy here.

They got back at 2:10. They had found a big microwave on the side of the road, between, August told me, an orange recycling bin and a car. I carried it in from the car and we cleaned the grease off of it and started taking it apart. As we were talking about it we talked about the parts that would be in it, and how it worked. August didn’t understand why I said it makes microwaves. August, confused, said, “What? Microwaves are big! They can’t fly though the air!” So ‘microwave’ became a word of the day.

We got stuck a couple times. For one, it had some of the star-shaped screws on it, but our star-shaped bits just wouldn’t work on them. So August got frustrated, but both times he told me he was at a 4 or a 5 and we were able to calm down. We stopped for an early dinner, although it was more like my late lunch. We had nutty noodles. We got back to the microwave and I pried the bottom open. He told me, “You’re the master of song. I’m gonna make a book about you…becuase you pried it open. Hmm, maybe about how you’re smart.” The second time he got upset was when he poked his finger with a wire. It got red and started to bleed a little. We were able to get him a bandaid and he calmed down.

Carly was getting messages on her phone so we took it up to her in the office. Downstairs he wanted me to play checkers with myself, so I did that. He then got broccoli leaves for Aviva the caterpillar. We sat on the couch and read, finishing Hilo, book 5.

I took him up for his bath. He had started to call us “Head burglars” after they got back. That is, people who steal heads. No idea where that idea came from. He was talking about it again, and explaining it sounded disturbing. He tried to make it okay, saying, “Only bad people like people in wars, pirates…” He also joked, “I’d like an alien to attack me, then I could scrape, punch, hit, spit…”

We went downstairs and I let him lick some of the ring pop that he got at Taya’s birthday and has been wanting to try. We sat on the couch and read through the chart and he suggested a few changes. He insisted that it have areas between the numbers in the rubric. I said he could simply describe himself between numbers. Sounded very much like Carly’s discussions about rubrics with Jeff at school. Carly came down as we were talking, and August cast a “Sound shield!” when he didn’t want Carly to hear us. She reminded us of what had happened on the beach: he had gotten upset when he got his pants wet in the water. They were able to change them and calm down.

We ate popcorn and watched episode 5 of Hilda. He commented on a section looking like a time lapse and I explained what a ‘montage’ is and made it another word of the day.

Afterwards, I suggested he might be ready to see a movie in a movie theater this summer with Vivian or Thatcher. He discussed the sizes of movie theaters versus the theater he knows at school, then explained he had built a hug movie theater that stretched across the ocean. It had billions of screens and it sounded like you actually had to take a plane to go to them.

He was still hungry so I cut up an apple and he had a couple slices. He talked about the teacher in Hilda being short, and he said, “My teacher at robot school was this tiny!” “Like, they were afraid of the kids. It was embarrassing. Down right embarrassing…DUMB right embarrassing, my teacher called it.” ‘Down right embarrassing’ is a phrase from the Berenstain Bears episode he watched earlier.

We took him up and got him ready for bed. I left him and Carly at 8:20.

Caterpillar eating a leaf:

Telling Gramma and grampa about the caterpillar:

Rhythm on the microwave:

Casting a spell:

Funny noises for his song:

Feeding the caterpillar:

He got up after our usual get-ready-for-school alarm went off at 7:20. I got up but was still upstairs and heard him telling Carly how he stores stuff underground so that we can actually have more stuff than the preschool. It isn’t his lab though, as that is even deeper, in magma. He didn’t eat much oatmeal, but wanted a treat that we’d talked about yesterday. He watched a Halloween Berenstain Bears episode, then ate some apple. He told us about his compost machine. He said it could take rotten food, and that “it neutralizes it”. He seemed to conflate it with adding nutrients, but also seemed to know that that meant getting rid of the odor.

He’s been saying “Huh” a lot recently. A little concerned it is a hearing issue, but he’s also been doing it as a joke to annoy us, so hard to tell. We played with legos and added to the lego tower. He was adding guns, and explaining what they all did. More of what he learned from Simone at school. He said of the tower,”There’s two awkward levels.

“

I let him destroy it, then he finished the rest of his half of the apple. He chose a cookie and ate it while we watched part of the Formula E race. He lost interest in that after a few minutes, and went in the kitchen, where Carly was cleaning out the fridge. He wanted to make a soup, and got a big pot. He used a lot of the getting-old-but-not-moldy ingredients: almond butter we didn’t like, curry paste that was too old, etc. It was quite a mixture.

He boiled it, and Carly headed to the store. We watched a little more racing, and ‘rookie’ became a word of the day. When he wanted to go do something and I was still watching he told me, “Remember, screen time. We can’t look at screens for the entire day…dada, I’m making a point.” He wanted to play with the Duplos. I said we needed to clean up the Legos first and we started with a robo-clean up. He had wanted to do the Duplo zip line again, but he changed his mind and wanted to watch me build a tower instead. He told me, “I’m kind of made for supervisor.” He found a random piece of paper and said, “I’m gonna read what the old village used to say…if anything’s hard you need the supervisor. The supervisor’s August.”

We discussed Korea memories. He said he had pictures in his head of not going to school and taking naps in the backpack, and the back of my head and singing songs. I kept adding to my tower and at one point he said, “Wow. Really lovely.” He told me that even though he’s a robot, his brain is still developing. It has ten parts, but will have billions more. When my tower got taller and taller (I was trying to get it to the ceiling) he made a safe room under the table and chairs using pillows and watched from there. I made it, and he was excited to show Carly when she got home.

He tried the new hummus with her, then made an earl grey chocolate tea for me using the french press. He talked about the pieces of tea that wouldn’t float up anymore and asked for that word again. He meant ‘waterlogged’. We’ve used that word a few times, but I don’t know if it’s made it as a word of the day.

He buried Carly in pillows on the couch and I went up to take a shower. When I came down they were looking at checkers, but he wanted her to play by herself as it was a winning game. He got a timeout for repeatedly grabbing her and touching her shirt, which he really likes the feel of (a sensory thing).

I took him out for a walk at 12:05. He was singing lines from “Hey Man”. Our goal was to find more things to take apart. We walked around the Holly block, but no luck. So we continued on up to the Snakes and Ladders Park. He went on the play structure, then the spinny thing. He asked what it was actually called, and the best I came up with was what he had said: ‘spinny thing’. He ate the corn crackers, then we played the luggage game on the jeep. He had us do a quick game of snakes and ladders, then he played on the motorcycle and I got some great photos of him.

We got walking at 1:20 and headed north to get tofu, which Carly had forgotten earlier. We went over to one more recycling area. Nothing to take apart, but there was a squeegee he wanted to take home. I convinced him it was broken. Then I spotted a caterpillar. We had the bug case, and we put it in that along with a weed I pulled.

We walked up to the grocery store on the corner. Along the way he saw something that at first he thought was interesting, but turned out to be boring. I taught him ‘deceiving’ and that was another word of the day. We got the tofu and a roll of crackers, and he went and got a strawberry yogurt. Again, the same kind he remembers from when we moved in. He said it was healthier than the chocolate pudding, but still really sugary.

We headed home at 1:45. We saw dark smoke off to the east. He said it was “a really fast Coca-Cola factory” making a lot of pollution.

He carried and watched the caterpillar the entire way home and talked about it. At home he showed it to Carly and told her everything about it, like how we’d seen its feet. She had been making nutty noodles, and we ate some and watched a little more of the race. He went outside when Carly said it was time to tear out the next papaya plant that is dying. She tried to help him saw it, but was too nervous, so I took over.

He came back in after awhile and we watched the end of the race, then read a couple chapters of Hilo #5. He wanted something to take apart, and I couldn’t think of anything we had. He pretended to give me something and said, “Fake oxygen in you to make you think harder.” He found a paperclip and bent it and put it in the drill. Carly watched a video about woodworking with kids, and I went up to do some work. At one point I heard him come in the house and yell to me, “Dada, mama’s taking a long time to saw this piece of wood. Ha.” I heard him from upstairs. He didn’t wait for a response and went back outside.

After awhile they came back in and he came upstairs and told me they were going to the hardware store, and I wasn’t supposed to look outside because I couldn’t see what they’re working on until they’re done. I helped them get ready to go, and he took the caterpillar. He said, “We’re showing the caterpillar around the town.” He had talked about showing it our house when we were walking home. He then hummed “Better Not Wake the Baby” to it

They went to the hardware store and were back at 4:50 and kept working. I know they got a saw, a clamp, and some screws. At about 5:30, as I was heading down to see how it was going, they came inside. He had gotten upset when a screw kept getting stuck and couldn’t calm down. I went in the bedroom and did as he had said, just blocking the door so he couldn’t get out or really hurt me, and stayed calm. It worked and the whole thing, including processing, took no more than 10 minutes.

He had more nutty noodles, then upstairs he found me sorting through some papers. There were some empty file folder sorts of things and he claimed one and put it down with his stuff in the closet. We then wrestled and did the time machine game on the bed. He asked me to tell a story, and specifically requested the preschool and the dragon egg story. Except he changed the ending: instead of the dragons destroying the school, he initially said it should be the class pet. But then he changed his mind, and the dragon rather unintentionally destroyed the school, and the teacher rescued it and took it home as a pet. When the dragon destroyed everything it included “even the disco ball.” He then wrote a further ending to the story: “Then she realized she doesn’t know how to take care of dragons, so she takes it to someone who writes stories about dragons, and they say ‘I don’t really know about dragons’ so she takes it home and studies it. And she realizes it looks weird.” Then she let it go to live on its own.

For bath time he went to the bathroom, then wanted to fade color out of his shirt by putting it in hot water. He said Carly had let him do this with towels. I told him that must have been brand new towels, but he wanted to try it with his shirt anyway. So he did that. He then had his small washcloth and we did a funny faces game, holding it in front of my face, then having a different funny face. I washed him (he’s handling baths so much better now) and then he talked about making a chemical and having us drink it and it would make us do anything he said. He wouldn’t have to say please or thank you, and he could say it in a grumpy tone and we’d still do it. He thought that was pretty funny.

In the bedroom he put on his pajamas and found a fuzz on his leg. He said an elf put it there: “Elves play tricks on their owners sometimes.” He explained that owners can ban them if they want, if the tricks are too mean. He was getting “ban” and “abandon” a bit confused, which just made it cuter.

We went down and all watched episode 6 of Hilda and ate popcorn that we buttered ourselves and then half a cookie again. He chose episode 6, skipping 5, because 6 looked really spooky and he said he liked spooky things. When the episode was over he got upset about not watching another one. I took him upstairs and he calmed down quickly. He said he’s more ticklish when he starts getting upset: “Well, I am more ticklish when I start spinning…now I’m normal ticklish.”

We played on the bed, doing the anesthesia and scaring me game that he and Eve had developed. He went to the bathroom and I killed a mosquito. He checked in with Carly, asking, “Mama, did you ask your students where they get their sticky rice from?” He had really liked the sticky rice in the sushi, and she mentioned she had students who eat sticky rice a lot and that she’d ask them. She hasn’t actually been back to school yet though. I left them at 8:15. Didn’t take too long for him to fall asleep.

Adding guns to our tower:

Admiring the tower from his safe room:

Shwoing mama the tower:

Touching Mama’s feet:

Sawing the papaya plant:

He woke at one point in the morning and fell back asleep with his head on me. He was up at 6:53. He went down to Carly. I heard laughter, and he had oatmeal and they read Captain Underpants. I finally made my way downstairs. He watched a dominoes video then Wild Kratts. I was then holding him upside down, at his request, and he took his shirt off. Carly said he had done this with her the other day, also taking off his pants. Sure enough, he managed to get those off as well. He had energy, and Carly took him upstairs to wrestle. He ended up making a potion with a ton of ingredients in it. He called me up and showed it off to me. Downstairs, he did some satellite work (typing in Pages to control his satellites) and then they went for a short walk and I took a shower. They got back 10:50.

He had some of the “yummy noodles with tofu” and made yummy noises throughout. He then asked, “Can you shake me fast with two pillows?” We went upstairs to do that, and at one point he fell off the bed again as he rolled away from me. He didn’t hit the ground as hard this time. And when he was still upset he asked me to shake him. It then turned into the time machine game, where he leaves the time machine when he’s not supposed to. He got out of the time machine back when there were other species of humans. He had armor that kept him safe and he stayed in the past and said he invented this like beds and concrete that he needed.

We got going to Tel Aviv at 11:40 with Carly driving. August told me at some point, “Dada, did you know the smaller a car is, the faster it goes? So an SUV is slow. So I like our car.” He didn’t want to read in the car. He listened to music and pointed out the fruit billboard to me and a train that went by. He fell asleep at 12:14 and had a nice ten minute power nap.

Cassie was in a conference call, and so after I pulled Cassie’s car forward so we could park behind her we went over to the park, where Taya was with her babysitter. August played on the teeter totter first and was shy to go over to Taya. When she spotted me she then spotted August and ran over to him. And they were off.

Taya introduced us to all of the gan kids that were there with their teachers. I think we met about 7 of them. Carly went to get coffees for me and her, and when she came back she found me surrounded by 3-year olds who were chattering away, particularly a girl named Emily who was telling me everything. August climbed on the benches with them and Taya, then he wanted to show me the merry-go-round. They all followed and got on as well. I didn’t have to push, as there were two boys that did most of that. Taya then wanted on the kid swings and the preschoolers followed, and I was pushing all of them and also August on the merry-go-round.

It was time for lunch, and we followed Taya and her babysitter back to the house. Taya was grumpy as she was hungry, and it went back and forth as to whether we were going to go out, or eat food there. In the end we ate there, and Cassie had made chicken soup and put out things like cucumbers and hummus and tuna.

Taya and August had fun with temporary tattoos. I ended up with two cats on my arm and Carly had something on her hand. August played a lot with a big helium balloon from her birthday that was losing its helium. There was also a big tube with art supplies and stuff in it that we opened, although neither of them really used it. They ran around crazy for awhile as well.

We ate, and the kids interacted a bit more, but there were signs that they’d had enough. Taya had taken something away from August and put it in her room, followed by all of the things from the tube and a few other things. She had then set up a store. He and I bought a few things from her.

Then, August found a karaoke microphone that needed new batteries. August has been wanting a microphone for weeks and was really excited about it. The screwdriver they had wasn’t the right size, but I got it to work. August knew where they kept batteries and he got them. Taya came over and was interested as well. As soon as I got it back together and working Taya grabbed it and wouldn’t give it to August. August lost it, and Carly took him to Cassie’s bedroom. It was a rough one, and the first time Carly’s seen him really lose it. She had me come in after a couple minutes.

He calmed down enough eventually to get going, and we left at 3:30. Cassie was taking Taya to a science class. In the car he fell asleep around 3:50. I carried him in and he kept sleeping on the couch. We let him sleep until Carly woke him up at 5:40.

He woke up with a lot of energy, and was really on for the rest of the day. We made him oatmeal. I tried to talk to him about what happened and he told me, “I’m not ready to talk about it.” He chose to do it after his bath in his pajamas. They read a little “Pippi Stinkstockings” and he asked, “Can I clean the floor with my feet?” They made pads for his feet, but I’m not sure if he actually skated with them.

He went to the bathroom and told me, “I force-ed my body not to poop at school. Cuz I need a check and I heard my teachers say they don’t do that. So I just pee.” So we agreed that he needs to work more on wiping himself, wiping at least twice before he asks us for help. He seemed happy with that idea. When he was getting dressed he walked over to me and asked, “Can you put those on?” as he pointed to his pants. He then wiped his wet hands on me and said, “Just kidding. I can do it myself. I just wanted to do that.”

And he said, “Dada, I already told you that everything in our house is part of a soap delivery system.” For some reason we said something about soccer, and watching it with Paul. He said, “Remember how I was afraid of uncle Paul? I’m still afraid of uncle Paul.” “I’m just afraid of him upstairs. When he is downstairs I’m not.”

We built with Legos and he supervised as I built a skyscraper out of them. He told me, “You must be a brave dada” to build that tall and we talked about how I had built a lot at Gramma and Grampa’s house. He talked about how we have invisible elves in our house (like in Hilda) and said, “That’s the elf uncle Paul. There’s an elf named uncle Paul.” He asked “What’s a vent?” and that became a word of the day as we talked about different kinds of vents. He said,”I invented a binifroscope.” “It can see the stuff that is in empty space that’s so tiny.”

Carly and August inspected his soup from yesterday before she dumped it out. He decided it was thick from the molasses. He then said, “I need to go back to work.” Supervising me, that is. The instrumental version of the Hebrew song “Endencino” came on and he complained that he didn’t like the Hebrew songs anymore. I pointed out this version didn’t have words. He replied, “It doesn’t have words. That’s a problem with it. I like songs with words in it.”

We went upstairs and there was more elf talk: “I need to get Rimono, another elf in our house. Rimono likes water. I’m going to put him here. With his family. His whole family likes water.”

I gave him a bath. Afterwards he talked more about elves: “A bad elf, but it’s not trying to be better like me, stole a raspberry, so I put it in the sticky timeout room.” “Marlaco. She just wants to get a cake from the store room for her next birthday.” “He’s called Vehicle becuase he likes inventing new kinds of vehicles.”

We processed on the bed and he did a great job talking about it. He said that he didn’t mean any of the mean things he says when he’s upset, and he said he doesn’t like being held. That we should just block the door so he can’t get out. We went downstairs to where Carly was talking the Cherie and Chuck and he talked to them.

We then made popcorn and all three of us watched episode 4 of Hilda. I got all three of us half a cookie. He did a good job of apologizing to Carly for earlier. We took him up and got him ready for bed and I left them 9:30 and I went for a walk.

Ingredients of his soap creation:

Playground with Taya:

With the gan kids:

Merry-go-round with the gan kids:

Crazy with Taya:

A tune before bed he wanted recorded:

I was woken up twice before my book group meeting by the dog out in the yard across the street. The second time was about 1:05, so I got up and started a movie before my book group meeting. My meeting was good, and long, and ran until about 3:30.

August got up about 7. He did some watching, had some oatmeal, and earned a couple red stickers. Not an auspicious start. One was for blowing a raspberry at Carly as they were negotiating what the reward would be today. He wanted to go to a toy store and buy something. I had also heard them doing some reading. It’s a very rainy day outside (there had been a lot of thunder and rain during my meeting), so they hadn’t gone out at all.

I came down just before 9. He watched a video about building dominoes out of LEGO bricks. When I told him he needed to skip a commercial that was a video game involving fighting, he hit me, and Carly took him up for a timeout.

When he came down he apologized, then sat on the floor looking at the poetry book about inventions on his own for several minutes. He asked what we should do, and I suggested we read The Berenstain Bears and the Prize Pumpkin. He said he had already read it with Mama earlier and he didn’t like it because it was a little kid book. It looked like they had also read some more of The Wild Robot.

We read a few chapters of The Magic Tree House #50. We then made things from Legos. He told me everything he has learned from Simone about making weapons out of Legos. He made a “model” of a fighting car that won the “Great War of 1868…it killed everybody else…” “This part can pew, and this can pew…”

Out of nowhere he said, “Remember when I told you that robot babies is babies for a real long time? That’s because they live longer than humans.” I actually don’t remember him telling me this. At one point he went to the bathroom and just kept talking, ostensibly to me at first, about his car ane everything else. And he asked, “Employs…is that a good word?” We discussed what ‘employs’ means (as in ‘uses’) and that was a word of the day. I made a vehicle he liked and he asked, “How did you manage to make that one?…Did you make a lot at your home with Gramma and Grampa…So that’s how you did it?…Ha. Funny.”

I sliced some apple but didn’t peel it. He told me I had to peel it. I said he’d eaten one with the peel on it with Mama. He said, she “got lucky” because he’d forgotten he preferred the peel off. We played catch with his bag of seeds for a few minutes. He’s getting better. He wanted to make a concoction, but then decided to make me something in the french press. He made coffee with some chai tea in it, which wasn’t too bad. He then made a nice concoction in the little pot. Found a ketchup packet and he included that.

We then read all of Freckle Juice. Well, all except the last three pages, as Carly came in the room and he got distracted. I had to read it myself. I really remember having this book when I was a kid. He helped Carly make Swedish pancakes by shredding the carrot and I went up to take a shower. When I came down he was finishing a pancake. I had one and then made the last one. He shaped it using the spatula in the pan.

Carly threw away the printer parts and he helped. He unintentionally scared her like I do, standing in a place she didn’t expect him to be. He was hyper, and Carly was trying to get him to put his clothes on so they could go out in the little sun we might have today.

They headed out for a walk a little before 2 and were back at 2:35. He was being pretty grumpy on the walk. He got totally upset over a wrapper or something. Not sure I heard the whole story. Carly told me that they had talked about (earlier today or yesterday) about how he blames other people when he makes a mistake (like tripping or something) because it makes him feel better and it is hard for him to admit he made a mistake.

Carly wanted to keep walking. He did something to her or me right before she left, and I took him for a timeout. She went for a walk. He wouldn’t calm down, and wouldn’t let me help him calm down with the rocking. A couple times he would start to calm down, but it was clear he was still upset. He would then strike out at me again. I called Carly and asked her to come back. This was the first time we’ve experienced what Marion must have experienced at school. By the time she got back he had actually calmed down, and he let me rock him and I had the idea of asking him about how calm/upset he was on a scale of 10. He’s been really good with using such scales for things like pain and sleepiness. He liked the idea, and we started to work out what each number meant, with 1 being so calm he’s about to fall asleep and 10 being he’s lost control.

I made notes, and took it downstairs and Carly started making it into a chart with pictures and colors, and a column for what we do at each level.

He and I used tape to attach a 9V batter to a motor from the printer and it worked. He showed her, and with our permission used it to do art, scraping one of the plastic boxes. He said he was drawing a model of a fish.

He had a timeout with her. She came back down and I took over. He and I did the rocking thing, and discussed what it feels like when he’s lost control. He described it as being in his tummy. He then made some connection to how he can see pictures in his mind. I didn’t understand, and I started recording after that, but unfortunately he didn’t explain the connection again. But he went on and on about how he can see memories and pictures in his head (which he’s said in the past) and that he can see two things at once, what’s happening right now, and what he’s picturing in his memory. Not clear at all, but it sounds like maybe he sees his memories really vividly, and bad memories give him the same sort of feeling in his stomach. Just a guess though.

He as much better now, and was hyper. Carly was going to go get food at Sushi Ishimoto. He said he wanted to go see the new location, so he and I were going to go instead and give Carly some quiet. He was very excited, and I had to tell him to put on his shoes. Startled, he said, “Oh, I never thought of that.”

As we left he said that our next house needs to have a keypad on the gate like the house across the street. We parked in the dirt lot in town and went up to the new Sushi Ishimoto location on the second floor of the mall. He liked it, and said it was nicer than the last location. He really liked their plants. We ordered the regular noodles with tofu, the pad thai with shrimp, the shiitake sushi rolls, and the veggie tempura rolls. While we waited we looked around some more and he spotted the same baskets that he has for his treasures, and we read some of the Magic Tree House book. He asked what was in the middle of the table, and it was the wine list. He asked when he could drink wine, so we talked about drinking ages and how coffee and tea were different.

We left at 6. He saw the moon and stars. In the car we discussed brightness again and why only the sun and then really bright things very close to you can damage your eyes.

We got home and he went to smothering Carly. We ate. The pad thai was unfortunately spicy, but he liked the other one, and the sushi. He was excited that one of them looked like the “Korean sushi” because the seaweed was on the outside. There were seven pieces of sushi left, and he asked, “Since no one is eating that, should I finish it?”

He went to the bathroom and had his pants down for a long time. He then found the water hose from our backpack and played with it and the laundry rack. He got a tub for water, taped the tube to the rack, and drank on the other side. I think it was supposed to be a spring coming out of the rock. We turned the laundry rack into a full cave with pillows.

He went to Carly in the kitchen and fell down. He handled it well and let her comfort him. Got a green sticker. I took him upstairs and he had a good bath and let me wash his hair. While I was looking for his toothpaste, he told me, “Forgetting about something is the start of losing it.” He told me about an electric cactus, then told me, “I don’t really need a lollipop anymore when you wash my hair cuz I’m doing a good job.”

Carly came in to put him to sleep. He told her she was the best mama ever, better than Oma. “You told me you’re really good, so I think you’re better than Oma.” I left them at 8:15 and went for a walk, listening to the Harari book.

At 9:15 we had a Skype consultation with Dr. Postma, the director of SEN Gifted. That went really well, and he basically told us to categorically ignore everything that Dr. Aviv had told us. For one, he told us the sticker charts were going to do more harm than good, as they would just make everything more dramatic. Indeed, this is what we had seen in the past 3 days: Thursday was great while he thought he was getting the treat, then the rest of the day was hard once he found out he wasn’t. He had a good day on Friday so was great through the day. This morning he woke up and got two red stickers before I had woken up, and it had made a mess of his whole day. Later, I realized the flaw with the system was what would happen at school when he got two red stickers early in the day: that would be a guaranteed falling apart, which they’d have to deal with. Before, he was calmly telling me about his bad incidents at school, and accepting the consequences of it. Also, the best thing to do is more of what they’ve been doing: using each incident as a teachable moment, making the drawings and words. Thursday they didn’t do that at all with the Simone incident.

The weapon car:

Weapon car 2:

The motor and battery:

Making a fish with the motor: