This Is Our Blog – Page 79

Tuesday, September 4: preschool and library time

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The rolling thing:

Unicorns in the library:

Talking on the bench 1:

Talking on the bench 2:

Bush and shrub:

Sock throwing game:

Killer cars and trucks:

Picking snot off his arm

Washing the table

Library time with Ms. Liz

A library book

Sitting on the PKA bench

Watching Amelie play computer games

Tea from his mug

Finally asleep

Wednesday, August 29: preschool and reading

Carly was driving to work so stayed later. She woke him up about 6:45. August told her all about another planet with humans. They can’t use soap so they take longer baths. They don’t have the material for toilets so either holes in the ground. And they have cats that you aren’t allergic to.

He watched the StoryBots episode about how computers work (Snoop Dogg is the special guest) and I got his lunch ready. We were walking just after 7:30.

I was able to leave him at 8:20. There were a couple of sobs as I did so though. But by the time I was up on the sidewalk I listened and I didn’t hear anything, and Marion was talking to Andrea, so he must have been okay.

We had read a chapter of Magic Tree House and then August and I were talking about how long check-ins needed to last (he brought it up and said that he didn’t think they should stop until kindergarten). Hector came over and asked why August wasn’t playing. I tried to get August to answer him, and August said he’d tell me and I could tell Hector. It was his explanation that he was thinking about how to play with the kids. Of course, by then Hector had moved on. And my attempt to talk to him about things he could do went nowhere. he did say he built a machine out of the window blocks yesterday. But he didn’t like any of the outside things to do. I thought he would like the painting with chalk in water on the bricks, but he said he could paint at home. He was picking the old glue off of the art pieces made out of bottle caps glued on wood and enjoying that, at least.

Instead of audiobooks I listened to Cloud Cult’s Feel Good Ghosts on the way home.

Well, I am sitting on the bench outside PKA. We will see how this goes. I arrived after they came out for lunch today. Also, he had dropped a couple of treasures he had found and was mourning their loss, so he was crying when I got here.

He calmed down and ate, but as I made talk at the table I said that Playball was after rest time. Ms. Mini said he was on vacation. So, the not knowing what was happening next really bothered him. We sat on the bench and his teachers finally got back before 1:15. We found out they were just going to have more exploratory time. But August said, “Rest time is the problem!”

As the teachers took them in for rest time August was insisting I had a choice between taking him home, or staying with him. “So what is your choice?” When I said I’d stay until he calmed down, he took that to mean I’d stay here. He instantly calmed down and went in for rest time, telling me to do my work on the bench.

So I hung around school. Didn’t have my iPad to work, but listened to an audiobook and finished it, wrote some emails, and walked around a bit.

When he spotted me after school, about 2:50, he came running, very excited. I had moved over to the bench in the covered are through the elementary school. He had done fine for the rest of the day. Andrea said that when he got restless on his mat she brought him his timer and he was fine. The kids that weren’t napping went into the art room and made things out of natural materials: sticks and rocks and things. He told me a little about it and it sounded like he had fun.

Andrea asked to meet with us. I suggested right now, with August there. She was waiting for Marion to come back from the busses. August and I, and Candy, started to read a book about patterns in nature. But then the announcement for the all-staff meeting came on and there wasn’t going to be time. August and I moved out to the PKA bench and he ate his after-school meal while I read the rest of Magic Tree House #25. We dropped the book off at the library and then headed home.

On the way home I sang a couple Sesame Street songs for the first time in quite awhile: “What’s the name of that song?” And “We all sing with the same voice”. He then told me I and everyone else was wrong about the metric system. He claimed that the centimeter was the longest unit of measurement. I had apparently fed him some magic for for dinner last year that let him know this.

We were home before 4. He demanded, “I’ll play on my iPad and you’ll make me some water drink. Okay, dada?” We did a few things on the iPad and Carly got home. I went upstairs and did about an hour of work. When I came down she was making him a smoothie.

They read I See Kitty and a Bob Book. Carly offered him a lollipop if he helped her read, and suddenly he was reading everything. They did a second Bob Book. He chose cherry, and said “It tastes just like medicine.” I saw pigeon right outside our kitchen window, in the dirt of the planter box, and August named it “Porken”. He then sang part of the “Goodbye everybody, have a superduper day” song from school. We read Go Dog Go together. For much of it he red one page and I’d read the next. In Skybrary we read the Jeremy Jackrabbit book. Words of the day are journey and jittery. Carly made popcorn and he had much of the bowl and we read another Skybrary book – the Gorilla book from the same series.

He brought the piano up on the couch with my help and made up songs on it, gradually taking all the keys out. I then took him up to his bath. That was going fine until he wanted to drink out of Carly’s spray bottle. I told him he couldn’t put it in the bath water, but then I stopped him when he tried to. He had a meltdown over that and that ended with Carly about to put him to sleep and I said good night. But he argued we hadn’t brushed his teeth. So I brushed his teeth. We discussed his stopwatch and how long to 1000 hours

He wanted a story, and gave a premise of a story. The three of us re on a walk and he plays in some trees and finds a door and we go through it and a bunch of other doors and we find a bunch of gold. It was put there by a kind person who ends up sharing the gold with us. He wanted the light on during story telling, so I brought the lamp in and plugged it in. I then told a full version of his story.

I then sang songs and he was going to sleep. He was facing away from me, then suddenly rolled over once and asked, “Dada. That bead that I founded: do you think we could paint it with blank paint?”. I said yes and he immediately rolled back over. He rolled back towards me one more time, putting his hand on my watch. He was clearly asleep a few minutes later, about 8:45.

Tuesday, June 28: preschool, library time, and a walk to the mall

He was up at 6:47. He came downstairs and lay on the couch. I asked if he wanted to read or he wanted a few minutes of quiet and he chose a few minutes of quiet. We then read Skippyjon Jones, choosing ‘fan’ (as in someone who likes something) and ‘amok’ as words of the day.

He had time to watch one Pink Panther before we left, as I gave him vitamins and some bread. He watched it, but then complained “It wasn’t even silly!” and got sad about it. He accused me of giving him a not-silly one on purpose.

He calmed down though and we got walking before 8:40. On the way he found one of those magnet business cards on the ground and said he would use it for his magnet art/sculpture. As we got closer to school he asked me to tell a story. So I told a story of a magnet that was made at a factory and had a dream of being a part of art. The other magnets make fun of it, and it ends up in a garbage bag. But then the garbage bag is dropped by the garbage truck and the magnet lies on the ground until a boy comes along and picks it up and uses it in his refrigerator art. Still had a minute, so I made up a joke: two palm trees were standing next to each other. One palm tree said to the other, “Hey Frank, going anyplace today?” Frank replied, “Ugh. You say the same thing every day.” August thought it was pretty funny.

At school we found out there was indeed library time this afternoon, so I could come back at 2 to help with that. We then sat and read a couple chapters of The Magic Tree House #25. He was hungry and ate some of the Cheerios from his lunch. Marion was happy to see him eating.

We talked about him choosing one thing inside and outside to try to do today. This started to unravel, as he said he was happy just standing and watching. Also, earlier he had asked if I went home during the day. I said that yes I did. He’d seemed fine with it at the time, but now he brought it back up. We ended up over on the PKB bench. He talked about skipping school, and also asked “Can I do school at home?” He settled on us doing half and half – him “alone” half the time, and me there half the time. I explained I was there now, then would be back for lunch, then for library time. I’d be in the library for rest time, but including that I’d be on campus for 3 hours, and off for 4. I said that was close to half. He was trying to do the math and add up the time, and I was rushing/estimating too much and he told me “I need it to be exact!”

We got that straight, then the last thing he was upset about was being told what to do. He wanted me to tell the teachers that it was okay for him to stand and watch. We talked to Marion and she agreed that no one was trying to force him to do anything. I was able to leave at 8:40 as it started to rain a bit. Nice for the walk home though.

I got back at 12:30 and waited for them to come out the door. No August. I went in and he was hanging out by the book area. Got him to get his lunch and we went out.

Got him eating food for lunch, then tried to leave. He said “You said 3 hours…I was already alone for 4 hours…” At another point he said “I don’t know what to say.” Mainly impressed that he is speaking so calmly and clearly most of the time. I got away a few minutes ago when Andrea came over and talked to him about his lunch.

Also, he told me he got a cut/scrape on his right knee. He wasn’t upset about it, but said someone did it “on purpose.” He didn’t provide any other details though.

I came back for library time. Marion and Andrea helped walk the kids to the library, in pairs. At the library Ilana was surprised to see us early – she had thought it was to be at 2:20, not 2. Also, she pointed out there are usually two parents. Andrea came in and stayed a few minutes, then Ilana said she could go. The class is less squirrelier than they were last year. Ilana read a book/they listened to a song about the library and treating books properly. Of course, right after Andrea left there was the drama: August had a torn toenail. He came over by me, but I couldn’t find my clippers. He eventually got it off and was okay. And first Hector had to go to the bathroom, then Candy. So I escorted them. For checkout time August chose a book called I See Kitty. They checked out their books and each got a bag. Andrea and Marion arrived to walk us back.

Back in the classroom they had a few minutes to look at books. We sat over by the couch and read August’s book out loud. Sophia listened too. We then started to read her book, a book about trucks which is actually nursery rhymes adapted to have trucks in them. Pretty funny. Andrea rang the bell for the goodbye meeting. They went over to say their goodbyes. She would pick up the rocks one by one and they’d read the names together and say goodbye to that person. She also mentioned that they just watched the video of August singing in the pool, and she sang the song that he was trying to sing. It has more words, about paying attention, but I kind of like August’s version better. Finally, there is a goodbye song that they sing.

After class we went out on the PKA bench (the big box that has been on it for the last couple days was gone) and August ate more: Cheerios Nd apple sauce mainly. I went back in to get the Magic Tree House Book and talked to Andrea for a couple minutes. She said he’d done really well for rest time, and when he’d gotten his scrape today he was upset but calmed down well. August wanted to play some iPad on the bench and he played the Montessorium Geometry app on my iPad for a couple minutes. But I convinced him to head home. We left at 3:30. As we walked out the gates he asked, “Hey dada, when are we going to play pinochle? I really want to play pinochle.” Apparently pinochle was in a StoryBots.

On the way home he wanted to do a video of his version of the “That’s my body” song, which included lyrics about how he only gets one body, then wanted to sing a new “Sidewalk Sealant” song. He then spotted shadows of a palm tree that looked like a crocodile mouth, stopped to look at a moving water meter, and was an answer machine as we got close to home.

We were here at 4. He drew new Hangeul, then Mooka Mook, letters on the chalk board and explained them to me. He asked, “Did you know mooka Mook has nine thousand, eight hundred letters?” He then played the insect app and we ate crackers and hummus. It was difficult to get him moving agin and I had to let him watch one Pink Panther before we left about 4:30.

We walked over to the mall to find out that little kids festival was happening again. Inside, the saw a talking tree statue and really liked that. Then there were animatronic dinosaurs. There were two that you could actually ride, and he stood in line for a couple minutes to do that, but then when he understood you couldn’t actually control them at all, you just sat on them, he changed his mind.

Going by the natural food store he remembered that it had free samples. We went in and they had honey, served in honeycomb, and he used a stick to get a couple samples of that. In Tiv Taam we got carrots and cucumbers and more fruit for his lunches. They didn’t have the kind of hummus that he and Carly have been liking, so we got two of the smaller varieties to try.

Outside, I saw that Pizza Hut was selling slices. We got one each, then sat on the ground in the playground area and ate our slices. August was being really calm after that, but agreed to go try to play on the blow up carnival area. We went and waited in line for the obstacle course one. The guy let me go with August, and I could barely keep up with him. August was through it in a flash. He thought about going again, but then wanted to wait for the little hand crank paddle boats in a little pool. We waited there a couple minutes, but th
en at 5:55 the word came to shut it down. We went calmly, but I saw another guy who was waiting at the front of the line arguing with the poor guy who was just following instructions.

We left at 6 and walked home. On the way, I talked to him about school, and asked what he would like to do. He replied, “The best thing I can do at school is just standing.” I asked why and he said, “Remember? I need to think about how to play with the other kids.” So, I’m not really worrying too much about him not participating. I think there is a lot of thinking going on, and as long as he isn’t saying he’s really bored I think it is okay.

Near home we spotted cat #42. Carly was taking a shower when we got home. He watched Pink Panther for his 20 minutes. He was then repeating “Play now!” from the video game commercials that he likes.

He was then lying on me as he ate carrot. Lots of negotiating over smoothie and carrot. He wanted me to go to school and give the kid that knocked him over a timeout. And he told me to install surveillance cameras in the classroom so we could know who did that. I think he got that from Captain Underpants. He had found Captain Underpants at some point yesterday on my iPad (he has started to use search in iBooks and Skybrary to find books – not that he’s actually typing words in, although he understands the idea, and has us search by author for the books he likes in Skybrary) so I had reluctantly read a chapter, and it was the chapter where the principal catches them doing the pranks with the helps of surveillance cameras.

Carly cut up mango for smoothies and I got his bath going. He wanted Skybrary, so he had the app read him the book about the Sam, the inventor girl. When he finally got his smoothie he drank a little bit, then admitted he was too full. Carly put it in the fridge for tomorrow.

I took him up to his bath. We did a quick one today. He then wanted Skybrary “immediately”, and agreed we should read on the “cozy” bed. We read Rosie Raccoon and. Funny book about Erie Pirates. He was then talking about Niagara Falls. We read If I Ran the Zoo by Dr. Seuss, then Carly was up at 8:30. She brushed his teeth and put him right to sleep.

Monday, September 3: picture day

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Checkmate:

Too Many Daves song and reciting:

Practicing being an anthropologist who joins in 1:

Practicing being an anthropologist who joins in 2:

Song and hand movements from school:

Hard to get up

Resting/sleeping on me

Observing

Ready to go

Ready for chess

Found checkmate

Pie

Monday, August 27: preschool and swimming

He was up at 6:39. I went up and we lay in bed for ten minutes. He was then ready to head downstairs. We read It Starts with a Seed. Decided that the word of the day is ‘arboreal’. He watched the StoryBots episode about why you can’t eat dessert all the time. That ran a little late so we had to hurry out the door. Got to his classroom right at 8.

At school we sat out at their side playground and read The Case of the Hungry Stranger. He then requested that I check in on him. I asked how many more days he needed me to check in. He thought about it and said “Two”. I was able to leave about 8:15.

I rode my bike back at 12:30, finishing listening to The English Patient on the way. They were finishing up looking at a book on the floor. He came over to me, and Marion had a talk with us, saying he hadn’t done anything today. He had told her he would just stand for two hours. And hadn’t eaten any snack. We talked about discussing in advance at least one thing that he would try to do the following day, so he had a goal to work on. August tried to say that there wasn’t anything that was learning.

I helped him get his lunch and go outside. He told me he didn’t want to eat anything and wanted to save his food in case he needed it. I told him I would stay while he was eating, and that worked. He ate some of the rice and mushrooms, grapes, apples, applesauce, and carrot.

But then he got upset about rest time and got really sad. But we went and sat on the PKB bench and I talked about sneakily playing with something during rest time. I also made the point that rest time was all about doing nothing, which he had successfully done all day. He liked the sneaky idea, but also didn’t want it to be sneaky – he wanted his teachers to know it was okay for him to play with something. We went in and I got him a few letter tiles to play with. He sat on the mat with those and was playing with them when I left. He had his timer as back up (when I had walked in earlier he had told me “You forgot the timer!” I showed him I had put it in his lunch.)

I was able to leave at 1:10. I returned at 3 with the car. We sat in the classroom and ate some of the bread that the class hadn’t eaten. I looked around the room at the toys to think about things he could choose to do during indoor exploratory time. I asked what his favorite thing in the classroom was and he directed me to the easel wall and told me that his favorite thing was scratching off the old paint. We talked about the blocks that he liked and I suggested that I could give him challenges in the morning for him to build later, like a power plant.

We saw Anna and I asked her why she’d drawn an ice cream scooping machine on the thank you card she gave August. She said she had started with just drawing ice cream, but then realized it needed to have a machine since it was August. So a total coincidence that August had really liked the Edward McScooperhands machine in the 26-Story Treehouse last year. I thought maybe he had told her about it. This conversation came after August noticed that none of the teachers (they were all in PKA for a meeting) were wearing his bracelets. But Anna said she had it in her special place with all her other jewelry.

We went back out the PKB bench. I started talking to him about not doing anything, or not playing with other people, and he said, “Well, that’s just my thing.”

I took his timer back into the classroom. When I came out he was looking down through the bench. He told me, “To the ant the brick is a lot of space; but to us it’s not a lot of space.”

He ate some bread and other things. We talked about him not doing anything. He seemed to understand Marion’s concern, thinking that she thought that he was bored. I asked why he had told Cherie that Lydia was his best friend at school and he said it was because when he was partnered with her she was nice to him. And e says he hasn’t been playing with the other kids because they don’t play the games he likes to play – like building things or really cooking things. The things he does with me. Finally, I was asking him if he was thinking about how to play with the kids when he wasn’t playing with them. He lit up at this idea and agreed that that was it. And he explained that he wasn’t doing anything because that gave him more energy for thinking. And he felt optimistic that he would start playing with them more.

He was ready to head to the playground. He had asked me to bring his iPad after school as he really wanted to play on the play on the play structure. I said I was going to send mama a message, so to play something by himself for a few minutes. He chose the Mammals app because he said it was easy for him: “Well, the easiest for me. Maybe another kid has a different choice.” I thought that was an interesting statement, after already considering things from the perspectives of others when talking about Marion and the ant.

We played up there for 10 minutes or so. We saw Grace babysitting Taya while Cassie was at the union meeting. August and I went to the library. He returned Magic Tree House #24, It Starts with a Seed, and The Case of the Hungry Stranger and we checked out the next three Magic Tree House books, 25 to 27. He let me go in the bathroom and change into my swimsuit and he stayed out in one of the red chairs and played a minute of iPad. Carly showed up as I was going to get him to change.

We went to the pool. They went to change together, then joined me in the pool. He got in without floaties first, and talked about the idea of learning how to jump in the pool. We played around until it closed at 5.

As we walked to the car he spotted a skeleton in the window of the art room. He liked it, but then invented a machine to show all the layers and systems, like in the anatomy app. He wanted to show the art teachers his app.

We got home at 5:30. He had a meltdown over Carly making him hold her hand and practice crossing the street, then when I stopped him from breaking apart a piece of styrofoam he found near our gate.

He calmed down ate a bowl of curry for dinner. He showed Carly the ant nest in the Insects app, which he had started playing at the playground. He was then playing other apps, doing his 20 minutes, but then got upset when it was almost over. Stopped the timer at 3 minutes when he stopped. But then he fooled me, coming back to the iPad, but then when I asked Siri to start the timer again he immediately left the iPad. He thought that was pretty funny.

They opened the caramel ice cream today and took their bowls outside to eat it. He came inside and did learning games on the iPad with me. Put a few words in Writing Wizard, then I reluctantly let him play the Sesame Street word cookie app. But he at least learned one new word: “Flit! That can be a word of the day!”

I took him up for his bath. He was really seeming sleepy, and whined about going to the bathroom. But then once in the bath he wanted to play. Put soap in and he agitated to make bubbles. He put bubbles on his face Nd called himself “Bubble man”.

On the way back downstairs he saw Candyland and really wanted to play it. Downstairs Carly saved me by playing with him, but he lost interest after about 30 seconds. He said he was hungry, but was then upset about food choices (his leftover lunch). He agreed to a slice of apple, then Cheerios. He was in the bathroom upstairs, playing in the sink, I think. As Carly came in he turned around and gave her a grumpy look and said, “You’re not good parents…you don’t let me make any decisions.” Funny, more than it was harsh.

Similarly, in on the bed he started with something mean, but it was actually a well-stated, calm statement of his feelings: “I can’t stand you…You annoy me when I am p
laying games and you tell me I have to stop.” I read a few chapters of Magic Tree House #25 to him. He got his water bottle and we filled it. Disaster though as he tried to set it next to my tea mug on the dresser and knocked over the mug. Literally the most destructive spill he’s done, as it got a couple books, and may have spelled the end to the table runner from Vietnam. I left them after reading a couple more chapters and he was asleep around 8:10.

Reading at school in the morning:

Ice cream:

Sunday, August 26: mall and bread baking

We were all up around 7. I went down first and made coffee and got him vitamins and Cheerios, then went to lay back down for awhile due to a headache. I got up and took a shower and folded laundry. Downstairs he was going to the bathroom and Carly bribed him to wipe himself. He was excited about this: “I love treats…I love the rewards. That’s why I love cutting my hair and wiping myself. You convinced me.” He played Camping with Grandpa and finished a word search with a little help from me for the first time. He was then identifying the black-eyed Susans again and said, “I see them all the time in Pennsylvania.” He tried Bloom Flowers and really liked that. He narrated to himself how a dandelion grows from a seed.

Mikaela’s remote wasn’t working on her air conditioner and Shmuel wanted her to try one of ours. So when she said she could do that, August and I went to meet her at the gate. We kept going though, and delivered the remotes to her at her gate. August was happy to see her and dothe delivery. She tried both, but neither worked. She had mentioned that she didn’t have toys in the yard like we do. Back in the house he joked “She doesn’t have as much toys in the yard cuz when she went to the house she didn’t get a kid.” And said, “I put a magic doll, and when you go to the house you get a kid…so when she’s at work I need to do that.”

He had oatmeal, then we tried reading the first Boxcar Children book but it proved too scary. Instead, we did Skybrary, reading Sammy Skunk’s Super Sniffer and Bobby Baboon’s Banana Be-Bop books from the A to Z series. He then had “My special nose” like the skunk a described our scents. I joked that the word of the day should be ‘filter’, as in a filter on what he says. He was then pretending to be a baby on the “Last day in the womb”.

We then walked over to the mall. We stopped and got haircut appointments for Carly and me. Then went shopping at Tiv Taam, which went fine, but he was acting tired. We got home at 12:30.

I put away groceries and cooked hot dogs while Carly gave him a bath. I blow dried his hair a bit, then she trimmed his hair. They had hot dogs. Well, August started his, then said “I change-ed my mind.” He wanted the ice cream first. He did a good job of patiently waiting for Carly to finish her hot dog first. He asked “Is Mikaela here?” When the answer was no he said, “That means I can actually run!” He then figured out how to rip a layer off the lint roller, after first asking Carly if he could take one off.

They ate ice cream outside, then he played math games on the iPad. He found the skeleton app, which he hasn’t used in a long time, and was using it to tell me what bones I broke. I got the very green bananas (they had only had bananas, and they were small green ones) ready for the bread by baking them, smooshing them, and microwaving them. The vacuum cleaner stopped working on Carly and August suggested it was clogged. A minute later Carly took a clog out of the tube and it started right up. August was very excited and said, “I’m your assistant. If th vacuum cleaner shuts down just dial 123-drconpuppa.”

He then helped me with the blackberry banana breakfast loaf. Earlier, to Carly, he had said “everything dies…except for plastic.” He did more of the skeleton game with Carly. In the bathroom he proved he could wipe himself and pull up his underwear and shorts on his own, provided there was a lollipop afterwards.

He went outside for awhile. Inside, he quoted the Camping with Grandpa book: “Ready to hit the trail?” Cherie called on Skype and talked to August. She asked who his best friend was in school and he said, “Lydia!” And told her “I have two best teachers: Ms. Anna and Ms. Andrea…Ms. Marion.” He and Vivian then did a lot of typing to each other. Of just nonsense, of course. They turned it into a competition, of course, of who could type longer.

After they hung up he played the Mammals app and was making the elephant poop, talking about how many pounds of fruit or vegetables it was eating and how much poop was coming out: “That’s so amazing.” He asked me to be a patient again so he could diagnose my broken bones. I was telling more and more elaborate stories, to which he would just respond “Okay” then tell me what bone was broken.

Carly took him outside for a experiment, where they turned a cup with water in it upside down on a piece of cardboard and the cardboard stayed attached. The real word of the day became ‘air pressure’. I had downloaded a full anatomy app for him, not just bones, and he now played with that. He ate a small cucumber with Carly, then had curry for dinner. More anatomy app, and him being a “crazy doctor”. He played with Siri on the HomePod, having her play music, and did some dancing.

The bread turned out really well and we ate some bread. I then went for a bike ride before 7. The did science experiments: putting a straw in a potato, floating (with peel) and sinking (no peel) orange, how water bends light by putting a straw in a glass, and invisible ink. They were painting with their invisible ink when I got back. He asked “Can I do it…like that famous painter?” He meant Jackson Pollock.

They were reading books in Skybrary and I took over. We read a little more, then he was ready for bed. He said good night to Carly and then I took him upstairs. He wanted to let his iPad run out of battery but changed his mind when I said it would probably stop his stopwatch. He explained that Vivian had confused ‘stopwatch’ and ‘timer’ and he thought that was funny. We brushed his teeth. We then read Madeline and realized we found a mistake in that there are 12 girls in one of the pictures, just one, when Madeline is still in the hospital.

We did the meditation and read the first story in Nightlights. I told an August story where he and Teegan are able to visit Ms Robin after school while their dads talk. They had received letters in the cubbies from Ms. Robin. They don’t have time to go down the tunnel, but Ms. Robin gives them silver nut keys and tells them they might help them to visit.

August said that August and Teegan should be the same family. We settled on a sleepover as a way they could find enough time together to visit Ms. Robin.

I sang a couple songs. He cuddled close to me, then tossed and turned for quite awhile. It was 9:50 or so before I was sure he had fallen asleep.

Resting or bored at the mall:

Lollipop:

Blackberry bread:

Sunday, September 2: mall walk and a new plant store

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leaping:

Around the world:

Painting the chair:

Birds in the nursery:

Noise from across the street:

Doing it himself:

Marking his voltmeters:

Buying plants:

Finished chairs:

Carly’s beautiful plants:

Saturday, August 25: Poleg Beach

They were up about 6:40. He came down and watched a Wintegarden video on YouTube, then asked for the new StoryBots: “I like the cranky guy at the beginning.” He watched the episode on how the ear works, then went to the bathroom, then watched the one on how volcanoes work. He said he was feeling better so I didn’t have to take his temperature. I did anyway, and it was 38.1. So lower than yesterday, but still high.

He did a little beading with Carly, then read a little of Magic Tree House #24. Didn’t last long though. I finished french toast and he ate that and played the Sesame Street word cookie game. Carly took recycling to the cages. After we ate he played Sound Rebound. He applied what he’d learned in StoryBots about the ear: “I put a wall of these here so it absorbs them…it’s the eardrum…then sends it to the brain. “ He then made brains underneath “Mama! Look what I made! It’s an eardrum!” And he explained it to her.

I took a shower and they read Skybrary: Hungry Fox and the Midnight Pies, Oliver Otter’s Own Officr, Scrubba Dub, Carlos, and Happy, Healthy Ajay! They then did a science experiment with an egg. August was very excited about it. August pretended to build something and said, “I’m a great builder machine. You accidentally built it on Saturday.” The experiment was to float an egg in salt water. As they put salt in it he said, “Well, it’s rolling around. Maybe that’s what the salt does. It makes it smoother…” Carly transferred the egg to plain water and it started to make a little squeaking sound that sounded like. Bird. Carly joked that it sounded like an animal and it kind of scared August and he went and sat on the couch.

They switched containers and got the egg floating. He had an idea for another experiment: “Add pepper, baking soda, and an egg like this and the egg will explode!” They then did another experiment, seeing how food coloring moved differently in hot and cold water. August said, “So it’s a hot day, so we can easily get hot water, right?” carly asked how did knew know that and he said, “Well I put-ed a tube in your brain that puts it in my brain, so now you don’t know it, right?”

After that experiment he then whispered the water and oil experiment with me and he did it with Carly. They put food coloring on top and watched it drip through the oil to the water.

Carly headed to the store. We read Let’s Investigate with Nate: The Solar System and read most of it. We then did another experiment – our classic with putting oil and water, then putting baking soda and old spices on top and seeing the clumps work through the oil and fell to the bottom. Then, bubbles of oil escape and go back to the surface. We played 5 minutes of Green Earth, then I tried to get him outside. He went back in for his shoes, but then wouldn’t come back out.

We read more of Magic Tree House #24. It talks about dynamite, so I showed gust photos of dynamite, and we watched a video of a house being blown up with dynamite.

We ended up with several words of the day, after August asked “Can we do ANOTHER word of the day?” They were ‘higher concentration’ (which Carly had explained to him during the egg experiment), ‘lend’, and ‘dynamite’. Carly got home. He and I put the words of the day in Writing Wizard. He managed to switch over and play Endless Reader on his own, then we made a person detector machine in The Everything Machine. We made it say things in a creepy voice when it sensed a face.

He blew his whistle and scared us. I asked “Who gave him that necklace?” He then called it “The goodest necklace in the world.” His temperature was now down to 37.4. He played on his own with the globe for several minutes. He ws talking about the Atlantic Ocean and Atlantic coast and some other things.

We cleaned up the experiments, then went upstairs to get Duplos. We discussed how I was still trying to fix Carly’s computer. He said, “Let’s go to the mechanic. The mechanic knows everything about computers.”

We built with Duplos and sort of did challenges, like seeing how wide of an object we could make with just a small base. Carly made a coconut curry. I asked August does when he wrestles with Carly. He said, “I just roll around and do sneaky stuff.” There’s something too about a fake hug wrestling move, but he wouldn’t tell me about it.

We watched a video about what your appendix is for after August asked. He asked because of the book Madeline. We went upstairs and poured out his treasures on the bed and talked about/played with them.

Cherie called on Skype. August thanked her for the necklace. Carly talked to her upstairs and August and I finished reading Magic Tree House #24.

Carly had initially made the curry spice, but managed to fix it. We ate some, then I went up to rest for awhile. I never had a fever, but think I was also affected by whatever August had. When I came down he asked “What does “well matched” mean?” It is from the Sarah and Duck episode where she gets a musical instrument. He hasn’t watched that in several days.

We got ready to go and left at 4:40 to go to Poleg Beach. We were out on the beach by 5:15. I sat and read, and they played in the sand, doing some digging. I went out in the water for a little while, then came back in with them. Carly took a turn out in the water. August sat on my lap and told me, “Dada, I love you but I don’t like that you’re not letting me read Captain Underpants.” He then spent a lot of time being a “wave weather machine”.

It was hard to judge the tide as it wasn’t changing much, but was slowly coming in. The entire time we were there there was a group of older kids who had made a pretty substantial round castle on the beach. They protected it from the incoming tide, but as we left at 6:50 it was finally crumbling beyond repair.

August and I had talked about tsunamis, and I’d assured them there wasn’t much likelihood of one, especially on the Mediterranean. He was continuing to be a wave detector and predictor and told me “In a thousand years there’ll be a tsunami in Israel. But we’ll be dead, right?”

We got home. I went for a walk and Carly gave him a bath. He was asleep when I returned around 8:30.

Friday, August 24: me to Jerusalem

He woke up as Carly was leaving at 6:30. I was still finishing up in the bathroom so he started playing GroGarden as she left. I came down and got him vitamins and Cheerios. He watched Pink Panther and really laughed at an old one, where he’s on a cruise ship. A woman wears him as a fur and he said “She putted on Pink Panther!” When a deck chair chased him August said “A chair is running!” He spotted a cat on a roof out the kitchen windows. #35. I mentioned how he was good at spotting things up high and told him about how he first looked up at the checkered light coming through leaves in Seoul on a walk in his stroller. It was between our apartment and the stream and the first Carly and I noticed him responding to something outside of his stroller.

He requested some of our bread and was randomly calling out chord names: “G majors…C minor…F…” He asked if we could read Magic Tree House #24. I read one chapter at home. On the way out the door he was looking at his Dr. Seuss backpack and said. “I have the worst backpack ever…I hate yellow.” Sorry, Gramma and Grampa. He’s never expressed a dislike for a color before. He also asked, “Do you think 9 or 10 people equals a thousand hairs?” We left at 7:50 and drove to school.

At school we sat outside and read a chapter and a half of Magic Tree House. He was calm, sitting on my lap, but as soon as I said I needed to get going he got upset and insisted I check on him during the day. I took him inside as the class started to get ready for a nature walk. He told me, “You can’t leave until you promise to check on me.” I reminded him that they had my phone number and would call me if they needed. He had me write down my phone number on paper so he had it himself but still wasn’t appeased – he wanted to know that he could call me any time he wanted. I said I couldn’t promise that, and it would be up to the teachers, and they would probably take him to a separate room. But then Marion came in and he talked to her about using the phone and assured him that the other kids would understand why he was using the phone, etc. When he was sure that she’d let him use the phone he let me go and they went with the “train” to start their nature walk. It was about 8:30.

I went to my meeting at Sabeel in Jerusalem. No traffic, so just over an hour.

I never got a phone call from August, so I knew he had had a good day. He still didn’t eat any food, and he had to take a break outside with one of them during rest time (he later told me that he had helped set up for the tea party), but good overall. Carly said there might have been something robot-related for maker space. Finally, he said he didn’t any tea because he didn’t have a straw. He actually has one at the ready in his snack bag, so I’ll have to remind him next week. August said there wasn’t really maker space, but someone wanted to do the turtle cards again so he did that. When Carly picked him he wanted to keep my phone number in his cubby in case his teachers ever forget about him.

And Cherie had sent a charm necklace like the one Vivian had. Vivian’s was Carly’s old one, which she must have given to Cassie/Vivian a few years back. August had really liked it while we were there, so Cherie found one on Etsy. August really likes the whistle and toothbrush. When Cherie showed Vivian the photo of it, Vivian was now jealous that he had a whistle.

She took him to her classroom and he spent most of the time talking to himself and lying on the floor as she worked hanging up things up. And he stayed in the classroom while she ran to the office to get grapes out of the fridge.

I got to school and to the classroom at 4:45. He was playing on the floor. He requested my watch and continued to lie in the bean bag chair and talk to himself as he played with it. Carly said he could answer questions by running to the Yes, No, Maybe, and Don’t Care signs in her room. When I tried it with him though he said, “I’m to tired.”

We got going around 5. At the car I asked Carly about his hat. She went back to look for it and found it on a table in the grassy area. She must have dropped it when walking him to her classroom after school.

As I got him in the car he asked, “Am I ever going to be a professional wrestler? To get money? People actually do it…Mama told me.” Apparently she had.

We were home at 5:20. He lazily climbed on the couch and I asked him, “Are you feeling okay?” He shook his head no. I felt his forehead and he was hot. He was excited about StoryBots season 2, out today, and ppropriately chose the episode “How do you get a cold?” I went and got the thermometer and took his temperature under his tongue for the first time, getting temperatures of 38.9 and 39.1 at 6:20. Gave him some medicine. He switched to Pink Panther and we had him skip one of the war video game commercials that he likes. He said, “Maybe I should play this when mama is at work.”

I went for a bike ride. They had popcorn and then he ate a lot of apple. I read him some Skybrary books: Freda Plans a Picnic, Yoko Yak’s Yakety Yakking, and Oliver Otter’s Own Office. His temperature was down a bit. Skipped a bath and Carly got him ready for bed. Went upstairs with a bunch of books, but he was quite tired and went straight to sleep, by 8:40.

Saturday, September 1: school pool and baking a pie

He came out just after 7:10. Seemed like he knew it was a weekend as he said “Mama”. Usually he’s been saying “Dada” during the week. He had 20 minutes of iPad time. Played Weather and then watched things on BrainPop. He wanted to go outside and check on the slime. Couldn’t find one of his shoes and I finally found it hiding under his stool in the kitchen. He thought that was amusing.

They went out, then came back in. He told her, “In preschool, when you finish a book you have to start at the beginning again. That’s the rule.” I figured out he meant at rest time, so that kids weren’t getting up and down repeatedly. He explained that during rest time, “I just lie on the furniture, getting up and down every few seconds…like I’m wandering around like this.” But then he said he stays right by his mat. Carly suggested he could look at Bob Books for rest time. He was slightly open to the idea.

He decided the word of the day was ‘introduction’. We weren’t sure where that came from, and he talked about an “introduction box”. Still no idea. He said he was a word of the day machine and made up the word “Butroncrunch”. “Its when a button crunches and you use glue to stick it together.”

They went upstairs to get things for an experiment. As he went up the stairs he said, “I’m so tired I’m like a sloth.” Which was a nice simile. They came back down and I made scrambled eggs. He ate the eggs. He told one of us, “I want to introduce you to the science experiment.” They hung a string across the kitchen and made a scale out of two cups on it to measure the weight of Pez. He also decorated the line and I helped him cut and hang up a piece of cardboard. He said it was a sign and said, “I’m trying to make a counterweight store.” It changed a bit, as the line bounced up and down: “That’s why it’s called the up and down store…candies that bounce up and down in your tummy…” He had some Pez, then I headed to a shower.

I came back down as he was finish iPad time. He was doing math. I then did a little synthesizer with him, playing together. We started a mosaic on the floor. He liked doing the lines but declared us done right after starting he coloring. Carly had a sandwich and he was hungry. So I made him peanut butter and syrup toast and cut up an apple.

We then read some more Magic Tree House #26 and watched a video of gorillas playing, as August had asked if gorillas actually do that. He had more iPad time and wanted to play music for Carly and wanted her to order him to do things on it. We talked about going to Tiv Taam and August give his opinions of the two locations: “Yeah, I hate the big one.” He explained his preference: “When I go there (the small one) I smell candy…” He played more music on the iPad and talked about how he had been making music his whole life. He was playing Bandimal and showing Carly how to do it: “And I’m great at teaching people how to make chords. And I’m great at making animal music.”

He played some other music apps, then somehow started making up the “The everything that starts with a B store…Would you like to buy any B things?” We joked about things that start with B that you could buy, and I mentioned bop burgers in Korea and sighed. August asked, “Why does dada miss Korea so much?” Carly questioned the same thing, as I had been the one that wanted to move. We talked about how we like going new places, and August agreed: “I LOVE going to new places. 2 thousand hundred percent!”

I then went to the big Tiv Taam to do the shopping while they stayed at home. I got back at 1:40. They had done some art. His art was of a dream. Before that it was someone’s imagination. They had also had a smoothie.

He wanted to do iPad art. So we charged the pencil. He drank more of his smoothie. Carly tried to give it to him in the glass jar it was stored in but he insisted on one of his cups. He ate potatos that she had cooked and I had a shnitzel sandwich. We then used the Apple Pencil and did some art. Then back to the synth app. He was really into iPad music and art today. He repeated “That’s because I spend my entire life making music. “

We wanted to get out of the house and away from the iPad so we headed to the school pool. Our usual lovely time at the pool and we stayed a bit over n hour, until it closed at 4. August then wanted to show me the orchard, so he walked us over there and showed us where they’d found the fruit. He also spotted the lemony plant and said we could make tea with it and ripped some off for us to take home and make tea. We also stopped in the middle of the library building and he had fun making echoing noises.

We headed home and August and I got to work making pie. Actually, I started by prepping all the apples, then he came over when it got interesting. And at one point we dipped apples in honey for the upcoming new year. All went well until we were putting on the crust. He just wanted to eat the leftovers and not make cookies out of them. He got really upset that he couldn’t and had to eat dinner instead. After a few minutes he said, “No one’s being nice to me.” I picked him up and calmed him down and cuddled. Eventually he calmed down, and a bit later he ate dinner. He helped roll out the extra dough and cut it into interesting shapes for the cookies using the pizza cutter.

I got the pie in the oven and Carly asked when it would be ready and acted impatient. August told her, “Mama, your can wait patiently.” I started to get ready to go for a run, but then Nathan and Ruby and Ceder called on FaceTime. I went out for a short run, getting back just as Carly was taking out the pie and then hanging up. It was supposed to cook for 45 to 60 minutes, so I figured 45 was safe. Unfortunately, it was burnt on top. Luckily, it would turn out that only the crust around the edge was really too far gone.

I quickly took a shower and Carly put cinnamon and sugar on them and baked the crust cookies. We dug into the pie, with vanilla ice cream, of course. August wanted both a fork and a spoon and I said, “I like the way you think.” Fork and spoon. He explained, “I think I have a different kind of brain than other people.” ”I think quicker…and I can learn so fast…I can go out of school in a flash.” We also ate a cookie.

August and I read some Magic Tree House. In bed we brushed his teeth and I tried to tell him the ant and the grasshopper story. He wasn’t that interested in it though. Carly came in and I left them at 9:10 and he was soon asleep.

The up and down store: