Author: Ryan/Dada

He got up right before 6. I told him to lie back down. But he said “Go downstairs.” Carly heard and came in and patent about twenty minutes with him before they came down. He sat down and as a crane handed me Du Iz Tak? We read that and noticed the changing of the mushroom and grass this time, then he and Carly did the Hokey Pokey. We started to read the book again but Carly got him cereal and he went to eat that. He was being a caterpillar in a cocoon when Carly was ready to leave and she had to first watch him become a butterfly. After she left we were butterflies being eaten by birds for awhile, then he played with the chalk. He wanted to “dissolve” some in water, but I suggested food coloring instead. He had fun with food coloring and asked what I meant by ‘opposite’ colors. So we looked at color wheels. He had some food coloring on one of his hands and talked about his hands: “This hand is for playing and eating; this hand is for picking things up.” He then wanted to play Big Dragonbox Numbers. He was rather obsessed with that game all day, even turning a lot of our pretend play into Big Dragonbox Numbers.

We went out to watch the garbage truck, and I had a shop: “Shop, you sell motors that don’t need a lot of power to work.” While playing the actual Big Dragonbox Numbers with him he was being a caterpillar and wanting me to do the math problems: “Dada, can you do a bee math problem while the caterpillar turns into a butterfly?”

We went outside and did watering, etc. and back inside played the Orchard game, then he watched Wanda and the Alien and I went and took a shower. We then made banana bread together, and spent the whole time discussing Big Dragonbox Numbers. While it baked we ended up on the rug in front of the air conditioner. He lay on my chest and kept discussing Big Dragonbox Numbers. That was quite fun.

He was getting hungry. Looked in the fridge and he saw the new cartons of milk, one of which had robots on it: “Can I try the robot flavor?” We pretended it tasted like motor oil. While he drank that I cooked mushrooms and made pizza and put that in when the banana bread was done. He had an ice cream shop and accused me of stealing ice cream, so the police got me in trouble. And then he watched the Peg + Cat sorting episode.

We ate pizza and banana bread for lunch. He wanted to go do recycling, but was then sorting ice cream, and a worm sorting dirt. Then played lots of sick baby squirrel game – sometimes with a machine in it and with elements of Dragonbox Big Numbers mixed in. He rode his bike a bit in the house and sang along to “Sentimental Wars”. I went out and moved the car seats and cleaned the one we borrowed: “I got crumbs in that car seat when I ate crackers in the car…Does Cassie like clean things?”

Then back to Dragonbox Big Numbers. I was playing his Zinnie Songs playlist and he was singing along to “Somebody come and play” and then a couple of the Poli English songs, one of which was about crossing the street. When a rock song came on he said “I can’t sing along to this one…I can’t talk along to this one…I love the traffic one.” So we went back to that song and played it a couple of more sounds.

Then, before we left he was a machine: “It sprays out chemicals that changes the sounds.” He was then humming the tune to one of the Poli songs, but changing the sound to it. Then he was a machine that changed the color of traffic lights, so that yellow meant stop, etc.

We got out the door and he was playing with the stroller and tripped down the stair, taking the stroller with him. He curled up on his stomach and I went and picked him up. He was okay: “The machine is breaking down.” “The crane is picking up the machine.” He then played in the yard and got the stick things from the swings and broke them: “I’m just making more work for mama when she gets home.” He got on the teeter totter on his own and was riding fast – the weight was starting to tip up so I had to hold the other end.

We finally left at 2:30. Got to the school and parked outside. Went in, taking the car seat to Carly’s room, but found Cassie first. Then Carly came from the other direction. August gave air high fives to Cassie. Holly then found us and so did Grace, who gave him a high five. He said hello to another student who said “Hi, August!” But when Dudley said hi August said his voice part was broken. We went and did can recycling, then headed back to the library. We had planned on going swimming, but he wanted to go to the library. On the way he said “I’m a machine that makes librarians think you can play in libraries longer than ever.” I assured him that the library wasn’t closing early today, that it just closes early on Fridays. At the library we went back and got a bunch of books. Went to the stuffed animals and read The Mr. Fix-It Man, That’s How! (twice), Maisy Goes to Preschool, and How Scary! Who scares who from one to ten? We then read the Fix-It man book again. He went to the bathroom, then was running back and started to take an early right, as he often does, into the librarians’ office. He fell and get a bit of a rug burn on his knees – just enough to feel it. He was concerned about it, but didn’t get upset. In the toy corner he found a little plastic bee and we played a bee game for 10 or 15 minutes. He or I would use the bee to go get nectar for the baby bees back in the nest.

At 4:30 we headed out and met Carly outside. We went to the car and drove to the community center. We went downstairs to the class and met the teachers. Pretty sure I’ve met one of them – works in one of the shops or something. August was a bit nervous/reluctant at first, but then when they started running in circles he joined in. He kept holding his shorts, even though they were folded over. The class was mainly in Hebrew, so Carly helped him out as well. At one point I heard him say something like “I’m wearing out my parts when I run.” There was some game involving hula hoops on the ground. Carly didn’t understand the explanation, but August was fine, as he made up his own game: “You go in the circles they BLOW UP!” And it was quite funny when they would run in circles and he would run the wrong direction. They played duck, duck, goose. August got to do it, in English. In this version you said colors and when you said ‘black’ that was the person that chased you. Finally, there was a big obstacle course path set up. Kind of like Teuni Teuni, but all wooden stuff; a little different from all the soft, padded stuff in Korea. And he said something like “my motor’s starting up and I’m not done yet.”

He really liked the class, but then the bad news: the guy had neglected to tell us the classes might be full. And quite full by the sound of it. Carly talked to the guy afterwards, then to a woman. August is on a waiting list. There is also a ballet class, but it is just for girls.

We got home a little before 6. We all had some quiche for dinner, then played some iPad. Carly started to take him up for his bath about 6:30. He decided to fight it today. So skipped the hair washing. He was still quite upset in bed until I started suggesting we do nonsense things, like go to the playground, or eat a ton of chocolate. He was asleep at 7.

Photos: 

Wanting me to play with him: 

Unhappy with the new car seat: 

On the library floor: 

He was up at 6:40 and asked “Mama downstairs?” He went down and I came down by 7. We read Du Is Tak? Then went out to check on his tomato seedlings. A fifth seed is now coming up. He put fresh water in the cat bowl. Back inside he said “Not much noise in here. Turn on some music.” He was hungry and requested the honey cereal. He and Carly nursed and read part of Berenstain Bears and Baby Makes Five. He and I read the ice cream chapter of 26-Story Treehouse. He told Carly he didn’t want egg, but changed his mind when he smelled hers. He sang a “Ketchup is my best” song to the Bluie Dance tune. We played the Pip and Pop game. He had a new machine: “It’s a machine that makes new mice out of owl pellets.” Carly was then tickling him when he said he wanted to nurse and I joined in. Finally, in the bathroom he joked “I think they’re airport Megan’s toilet paper rolls.” Don’t know where that idea came from.

We left right at 10. We first went to the community center near the school, where a man told us there were classes for August’s age Monday and Thursday and 4:45 and we could come see a class. We planned to go tomorrow.

We then headed over to the Ir Yamin Mall. We first went downstairs and to the baby store, where we tried out a couple of booster seats (August wasn’t too fond of the process) and I bought a pink-lidded snack container like our blue one. And Carly found a package of forks and spoons and we got that. We then walked down and Carly picked up her shoes. August and I looked at bikes at the toy store, then I found a balance bike for about 80 dollars. August went in the little padded play area and played around. A smaller boy came over and threw a ball back and forth with him a couple times. Before we left I also went and bought a bucket and shovel set for playing in the sand.

We headed home and were back at 12:20. We went and checked on the tomatoes. August said “Every time we leave and come back there’s more.” By the end of the day we had five sprouting up. He and I were putting together his bike and Carly was planning on going to the store. He didn’t like us talking and hit me quite hard. We took a break and Carly went to the store. Eventually he calmed down and we watched Peg + Cat. He was singing along to one of the songs. I heated up spaghetti and made the rest of the sweet potato fries for lunch. He then tried the bike out inside, then we went to recycling after 2.

As we walked he said “Dada, I made a machine that takes water to Holly’s house. It makes clean water out of dirt water and toilet water and poop water and pee water.” We first went and did cardboard. He threw away the big box from his balance bike while I held him up. When he got down down he held a finger. I asked if he had a paper cut and he said “No…Actually, yes I do.” He got sad and I picked him up. He wouldn’t show it to me, and it was a good ten or fifteen minutes before he stopped holding it. And that happened because he saw weeds in the cracks of the sidewalk. I said it was okay for him to kill the weeds. He started by just using his feet, while holding his finger, but eventually started reaching down and pulling them out.

We went in the actual playground and I sat on the circle swing and he rode his bike around. HE came over to me and we played around the swing, and he got on for awhile and I pushed him. All sorts of discussions. Out of nowhere he said: “Over time things get expensiver and expensiver…because the workers put in more money…the foods and drinks, dada…” Don’t have any idea where that came from. Maybe he’s been reading some Marx. Playing the ice cream game he said “Edward Scooperhands just scooped Dark Side of the Moon…I think it would be good because it’s rocky…” Dark Side of the Moon is actually a flavor listed in the 26-Story Treehouse book. But the rocky part would be a connection he made from the Space app.

We left at 3:10. He rode his bike home, taking a long time to get home. Mainly because he was being all sorts of machines, one of which killed weeds with power. At one point he pretended to eat mango and wanted me to be the mango tree not wanting to have my fruit eaten. He said to the mango tree: “That’s what fruit trees and carrot trees are for, picking to eat, mango tree! Then I eat it and it turns to poop and it goes to my poop machine and is made into new apple trees!” He also said “Could you be that cigarette butt about to go boom when I run over it?” Several times he said “We’re almost home!” When we weren’t, really. Finally, I suggested I push him and he pick up his feet and I showed him what it would feel like to ride faster.

We were home at 3:20. Carly had gone back to the mall and bought the booster seat we had thought about. She had then gone to the grocery store at Tel Yitzhak, which we hadn’t been to yet. She then stopped by the nursery, which is across the street from it and bought a big pot and two bunches of a pink flowering plant to put in it and a small pot and (as August called it) “interesting plant” to go inside on the big table. August told her about riding his bike: “Dada showed me how I could go fast…I picked up my feet and we goed fast.” And he told her he didn’t wear a helmet.

He said “I need to play Big Dragonbox Nimbers. Get some stone.” He remembered that well as that was his plan before we left. But he was convinced to go outside to plant the new flowers, at least for a couple minutes, then came in and played it. He then switched to the grotto and the queens game. He wanted to nurse and I was keeping him from nursing. I said it was because I loved him and he said “I love mama the most cuz she bought those flowers.” And “But mama loves me so much I think if you grab me and don’t take me to mama, she’ll cry.”

I made quiche and Carly mopped the patio. August played iPad outside, then came in and was being Pip and Pop on his own. Eventually he got me involved and they were sick. Carly got ready for a walk. August was being crazy, then was being a snail, then a slug.

They went for walk 5:45. When they got to the corner there was a sunny spot and Carly asked “Are you going to be okay without you sunglasses?” He replied “Well, still kind of sunny.” So they had to come back for them. They just walked around a couple blocks while the quiche finished cooking and were home at 6.

He had quiche for dinner and said he loved it. He went to get a drink and dramatically said “I’m thirsty and my hands are really dirty and my water is WAY on the carpet.” He thanked Carly for cutting up his quiche and she told him to thank me for the quiche: “Thank you, mama…thank you, dada.” And it said it was “WAY yummier than Cheerios.” after I said he was making yummy noises like when he eats Cheerios.

Carly let him have a treat after dinner – some of the chocolate cookies. But he got upset when he didn’t get to choose any of it. We then read 26-Story Treehouse and got to chapter 11 before switching to the sick squirrel game. He had the viruses getting in trouble and going to prison, so then he was asking what prison was really like.

We Skyped with my parents – he was being machines (water bottles and baby bottles – said they could have one) and getting crazy. Wanted to show them his new Maine shirt so we went up and he showed them both of his Maine shirts. He was focusing on sending them emojis so wasn’t really answering questions, but when he heard us talking about the Dead Sea he spoke up and said the Dead Sea was warm and the salt stinged.

After we hung up he went to the bathroom. He asked “Can you be the poop wanting to be pooped out? Can you be the toilet paper going in the toilet?” Carly gave him a bath and we got him ready for bed. He was asleep by 8:50.

Trying out carseats: 

Adjusting the seat: 

Not showing me his finger when he has a paper cut: 

Riding home: 

Helping plant: 

It was our first family day in Tel Aviv. Carly had been to the city for a couple of work things, but it was the first time August and I had gone. Even though I only saw it for a few hours, first impressions are quite positive: It feels much more comfortable and artsy compared to Netanya, which is sterile by comparison.

He and Carly got up at 6:20 after he had been nursing, then just lying on the bed for awhile. I got up twenty minutes later and they were reading 26-Story Treehouse. When he saw me he got up, went and got his water bottle, and told me to fill it up. August got silly pretending to be Edward Scooperhands, the ice cream scooping robot in the book: “Wood, hair, dogfish, skin, blood, germ ice cream”

We read more 26-Story Treehouse, reading the ice cream part, but then reading a couple stories we haven’t yet read. He was hungry so I got him some of the Honeg Bunches of Oats, our new cereal. After he was done he said “I should go to dada.” I suggested we do more reading. He asked “Is reading or eating or cleaning all I can do right now?”

We played the Edward Scooperhands game and he asked for mango, cleaner, cardboard, and water bottle flavors. We read more of the book, then moved to the squirrel game. He got Carly involved, getting her put in prison for waking up the squirrel. He let her have her coffee though: “Police, don’t take her coffee.” He was then the shrew crew, Baba, and Flynne: “I’m going to destroy my lair, I’d you don’t mind.”

Carly was getting ready to take him out for a walk. I suggested he try his red sunglasses again as his white ones are getting rather scratched. He rejected them. They took recycling and went for a walk at 9:20. I took a shower. They went up to the playground on the right as we walk up to town. They were back at 10:25. He saw the air conditioner and said “I left the air conditioner on.” He wanted to nurse but didn’t like that she was sweaty: “Don’t be gross!”

We went outside to give cats water. There were now 3 tomato plants. And I noticed it had rained while we were gone: there was still water on a plastic bag of soil, dirt that the ants had dug up on the patio was crusted on, and there was a circle around the top of the table. So we missed our only shot at rain so far in Israel, probably while it was 100 or so where we were. Anyway, he played with the sap, finding where it was squishy and where it wasn’t, then putting holes in it. We speculated on it getting bigger and bigger: “What happens if the sap takes over our yard?”

Carly baked one more batch of spaghetti for lunch. Then he played the Edward Scooperhands game with Carly: “Hands into scooping mode!” They read Curious George Goes to the Hospital. Or most of it: Every time they read he wants to nurse before they finish a book. I then read bits of Every Thing On It to him and he watched Peg + Cat, then looked at Google Maps. He then played the Orchard game. I wasn’t doing anything, and he said “You’re so funny dada… You’re so funny bird…Oh bird.” When the bird got close to him (it steals all your fruit if it gets too close) he had me build a nest for him to hide in as we made the last couple moves. Totally something that he gets from Carly.

We got going and left at 1:15, with Carly driving. He was hungry and had some pretzels that Carly had bought. They were round. He asked “How’d you make the pretzels mama? Did you use a cup?” That was a a Peg + Cat reference, where Cat makes a painting of circles and when asked how he did it he replies he used a cup. He asked “How are they so round?” even after we told him she had bought them. He didn’t believe it was a machine and thought that Carly had made the pretzels. We played the germ game and the Edward Scooperhands game – he remembers a lot of the flavors from the book. We arrived a little before 2.

We managed to find a parking garage, then walked west. We found a main commercial street in the Old North area. Most things were closed, of course, but there were a few places open and we were looking for a coffee shop. Found a falafel/kebab sort of place instead and decided to eat there, at הלבנטיני. We got the lamb kebab, which came with fries and pita and all of the sides (they do a lot of sides here, like in Korea, but we like most of them here), the roasted cauliflower, which was quite good, and a grape juice for August (although it was closer to a soda than a juice). We liked it all. August mainly ate the fries and the cauliflower.

We left there at 3:30 and continued west to Independence Park. There we first saw the mosquito statue, which I had previously found on Google Maps. August pretended to me a mosquito biting me. We then walked along the top of the cliffs. Carly asked if I thought he needed sunscreen. I said no but she put it on anyway. August asked “Why didn’t he want to protect my skin?” About 3:45 we found the playground.

Carly sat and read and I played with August. He tried some of the climbing things, or at least checked them out, then played on a slide, going down a few times and throwing his shoes down: “I wanted to slide them down. I can’t. It’s not slidey for shoes.” He then invented the gravity game, where I pulled him by the ankle and talked as if gravity wanted him down the slide: “Gravity wants me to always be on the ground?” “I don’t want to come down, gravity! I love to stay up.”

He then spotted a shop window area and went in to be a shopkeeper and decided it was a seed shop. I bought some seeds from him (he said they had raspberry, strawberry, blackberry, and a couple others), then asked him for advice on how to plant them and take care of them. He did pretty well. When I asked if I should water them with water or tea he said “Fresh water. No salt.” And when I asked if I should put them in the freezer or outside he said there wasn’t any sun in the freezer. It then turned into a tortilla store, but I refused to buy any tortillas because he said they were 100 dollars for ten of them (the seeds had been 14 dollars or so). Then it was a chocolate store, with samples. I said something about unicorns and he said “Unicorns? I think if it was a pet store…This is a pet store!”

Then, there were some other kids with a bubble gun and August joined in, chasing bubbles. He lost a shoe while doing it, but couldn’t pause long enough to put it back on and played the next ten minutes or so while holding a shoe in one hand. And at one point he was playing by himself, talking away, and I went over and pointed it out to Carly.

We headed back and were home by 6. He played with the pillows: “Perhaps I’ll block Bernie’s grotto.” He went outside with Carly for awhile, then read one chapter of 26-Story Treehouse (chapter 6, of course, with Edward Scooperhands). Ate some spaghetti, then Carly gave him a bath. On the bed he was a machine making things unless things got in him: air conditioner, light bulbs, water, too much power.

Earlier, at the restaurant, he had suddenly closed his eyes tight, then was eating with his eyes closed. Looked like something was bothering him but he didn’t say anything. I asked him why he had done that and he said “Bite-ed my tongue.” Think we were then joking about nursing with me, and he said “Boys turn into dadas; girls turn into mamas.” Don’t think we have explicitly laid it out like that, and asked if we had told him that or if he had figured it out. He said “Figured it out.” He was then asleep by 7:40.

Carly was up about 4:15 and left to go hike up the Snake Path with the kids and see the sunrise. August woke up at 5:50 and was quite upset. He was still sleepy and wanted to go back to sleep. It was still really dark and he didn’t understand it was morning: “I want to call mama! Mama’s never coming back? She’s staying up all night? I’m sleepy! I don’t want to sleep with dada!” He settled down a couple times and we watched the sunrise out the window with him resting on my shoulder. But then he would get upset again. He directed me to the bathroom so he could go while he was still upset.

Finally, about 6:15 he calmed down for good and decided to read The 26-Story Treehouse. We read four chapters then stopped for a cookie, then read chapter 5. He said “Every page we go on I want another cookie.” I let him have one more cookie after another chapter. He ate part of it hand held it up and said “It’s a U.” He also wanted me to be the cookie not wanting to be eaten. I convinced it it was yummy and then it was happy with being eaten. He then switched into squirrel mode and said “Sorry Dada squirrel, I need the ice cream part.” So we read chapter 6 of the book, which has the ice cream part. We played some squirrel game and were resting. He then played Sarah and Duck Sleepover and I rested, then watched Sarah and Duck while I took a shower and cleaned and packed.

I commented that his sunglasses were etting pretty scratched up and we should buy new ones. He said “No. Or find some people have lost…I want to do that.” Carly’s group was running a little later than planned and were waiting for a cable car down. So August and I went up to breakfast. As we went up the stairs he sang a “Up to the sky” song. We got cereal and a variety of other things for breakfast. We beat the students there so I could also get to the coffee machine. We ate breakfast at a table by the windows with a view of the Dead Sea. Carly got there, then went with us back to the room after breakfast. But he didn’t nurse at all because Carly was sweaty after the hike: “Are you gross?”

We played more baby squirrel game in the room (he made up a “bumpadee” song) and then left at 9:30. We drove up to the visitor’s center this time as we were in a hurry. He was impatient with the ticket line not moving and started to point at and tell the people in front of us to “Go faster!” and I had to threaten to get out of line. He was being a price machine and putting price stickers on everyone and everything: “It cost 17” I asked what it was and he said “wine glass. Will you buy it?” He was then saying “Price, price, price…” as he put stickers on everything. I put a sticker on him and asked how much he cost. He said “14. Cuz that’s still my favorite number.”

We were some of the first people on the cable car and he got to look right out the front. He loved the trip up, and we got a great view of the path that Carly had been on earlier. Up at the top we took a few minutes looking out at the view, then got going inside Masada. He started on up the stairs and then we stopped at a bench to look at the big map model. Initially I was carrying him around. He did okay for awhile, looking in the storerooms. He then sat in the sand and was playing in it, pretending to bury and dig up cat poop. He wanted me to pretend to touch it, then to smell it, which I said no to.

We continued on to the northern fortress and he was starting to get impatient and wanted to go back down. But Carly had told us about a model of the water system so we needed to at least find that, and I wanted to see the western side where the Roman path had been built. I put him in the backpack and he did better after that. We found the water model and he got down to pour water in that and watch it go down the paths into the holes. We talked about how that was actually a model of the mountain, and sort of looked at how the hills corresponded to the map.

An odd moment was when I heard music playing and realized that there was music playing at a stage area. It was The Bloodhound Gang’s “Bad Touch” with the lines “You and me baby ain’t nothing but mammals, so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel”. An odd song to hear playing in a place where you’re not even allowed (according to Lonely Planet) to eat.

Carly called to tell me they were leaving early. I had hoped to follow the busses back, so this wasn’t happy news. August was ready to head down the cable car anyway, so we hurried over and caught the cable car down. By the time we got down, found the elevator, got in our car, opened the gate of the hostel, parked, went in and used the bathroom, got our bags from behind the counter, and got going they had been gone for about 20 minutes. Carly said they were stopping somewhere along the way, but I figured that wouldn’t be soon and there was no reason to try to follow them.

So when Waze suggested a slightly different route on the way home that ran a little farther north than highway 1 I decided to take it. It took 90 north, then 1, but the veered to the north on 437, went through a checkpoint and across to 50, then up to 443 and on to 4 and home.

At one point along the Dead Sea, stuck behind a line of slow traffic anyway, I pulled over at a viewpoint to have a good look at the Dead Sea and get August a snack. We then continued on, and I saw some big caves in the cliffs to my left, a bunch of actual sinkholes to the right, and a sign for “An old cemitery (sic)”. Will have to check that one out next time we are in the area. It reminded me of when Carly and I were in England and we saw a sign for ‘Ancient Castle’ and had to go check it out.

The 437/50/443 route was certainly interesting, as I saw two boys riding a donkey, a cement factory (or something of the sort), two Israeli soldiers in full gear standing next to the husk of a burned out car, two checkpoints, and big sections of the wall.

August for his part, had been talking about falling asleep before we left the hostel, telling me that he was still going to be sleeping when we got home. The reality was different: he watched some shows and played on the iPad. At one point he stopped playing, and sort of hugged it and closed his eyes for a few minutes but didn’t fall asleep. He said he was done with the iPad and went without it for 30 or 40 minutes. He closed his eyes a few times, but didn’t go to sleep. Instead, he kept asking “Are we to our street yet?” He started to get frustrated, especially when we got on 4 and traffic slowed down. So I gave him the iPad back.

We got home at 2:15. We played the baby bee game, with dada bee bringing nectar for the baby bee. And: “Can you say ‘I want some honey to make my blueberry honey cake?’” “I have a cup of honey you can use for your blueberry honey cake!” He described an elaborate cake with all sorts of fruits on it, but then said “It burned and caught on fire then exploded.” I cooked a couple of the okara patties and he ate one with ketchup, then we went back to the bee game, only this time he wanted the police to get people in trouble for waking up the baby bee. We went out and checked on the tomato plants: he was shocked to find two plants growing, then a black cat ran out from under the wooden stand. Then August reached for the watering can and tipped it over and broke it. An exciting minute. The cat just want and lay down behind the Zinnie house. He watered the plants and weeds and filled up the cat water, then we left at 3:20 to go get Carly. He kept asking me “Can you say…?” and it was basically the Pipe Conductor story from Peg and Cat.

We got Carly and came home. They nursed and he played some iPad. Planets, I think. They then read a few pages of The 26-Story Treehouse, but then he stopped her, saying it was a secret. He wanted to read it with me a few minutes later, so we read more of it. He wanted dry Cheerios so Carly got him some. We had him ask nicely, and he said “The nicer I g
et…The nicer I say it, the more I get?” Carly then made some scrambled eggs for him while I read. We also read most of Berenstain Bears and Baby Make Five.

They went upstairs to play on the bed for awhile, then were back downstairs playing on the couch: “Can you be a hundred and sixty and seventeen viruses growing in babies bodies?” “Can you be a machine that makes the baby feel better right away?” He calls this “medicine water” and it drowns the germs.

Carly went up to do laundry and we finished Berenstain Bears and Baby Make Five, then read Sarah and Duck Stay at the Duck Hotel and the the Mickey Mouse book. I got a book called Space Dog but it is not much better, although the art is better. When I gave in and read the Mickey Mouse book he said “Fine. Finesy Minesy.” It was time for his shower, so he flipped through Hilo and I read it in fast forward. I then took him up and gave him a shower, washing his hair. He got the hair wet, and as we were getting him ready for sleep Carly and I were talking about how he was sad in the morning. He didn’t want us to talk about it. He was asleep about 6:40.

Photos. Same sunrise as Carly: 

One sock cookie-eating boy: 

Looking down on the trail Carly walked up: 

Masada: 

A stop to look at the Dead Sea: 

Home: 

Tomato plants: 

He sat up at 6:30 then got up and went and looked out the window, the first of us to see the sunrise over Jordan. He gave a big “mama hug” when he went to her. We went down about 6:45 and waited to go in for breakfast. He said “Hi Cassie” and got a high five from grace. He then stood looking in the window into the cafeteria and spent some time lying on the floor. We went in for breakfast and he wanted to try everything again. He mainly ate the berry yogurt, the “banana bread” (more like a coffee cake bread), some egg, and the veggie quiche thing. After every meal he has helped me take our plate back and separate out the silverware and garbage. And as I was holding him after breakfast he gave me a good hug.

We went back to the room at 8. We read 26-Story Treehouse, which he thought was really funny. Carly left at 8:30, then we played the chipmunk game for quite awhile, making a nest for him out of the pillows.

We finally left a little before 11. We drove to Ein Bokek and found parking at a mall area by the beach. August helped put money in the meter, then we went over to the beach. Changed in the restrooms then went to a covered area on the beach and had a snack before going in the water. We went out on the wooden ramp to the shaded area actually out in the water. The sand and walkway are scorching out, and amazingly seems to get even hotter the first few feet in the water. August floated around for a couple minutes, but with his floaties on didn’t seem too impressed with the water and complained that it was too warm. I floated a bit, then went to him. Got him over on the beach, where he played in the sand and waded a little and I was able to go out and float again. I tasted the water, just a lick of my finger. August saw my reaction and wouldn’t do it. He did, however, really like the salt crystallizing on the posts.

We got going and took some time in the outdoor shower area. August was being a machine, breaking up the clumps of sand, when Carly came and found us. They had gone on a stream hike in the morning and had just arrived at the beach as we were leaving. We then went and changed and went over to the mall area to the Cafe&Cafe. We had brought cut up mango with us from home in our cooler. I’d put it in the fridge last night, but we were disappointed today to find that it had started to go bad. He was disappointed with that, so was talking about wanting a mango smoothie. We got a mango smoothie and a pressed sandwich – basically a pizza sandwich with tomato sauce, cheese, and mushrooms.

When we finished that August was a crab crawling through the mall and finding different floors that he said were the sea. We got in the car and drove over to where Carly had gone on the hike. She didn’t want us to do the whole hike (slippery rocks) but thought we’d really like the stream. She was correct. We got in the backpack about 1:20 and hiked up, under the highway (admiring the trilingual graffiti) and along the stream. The stream is basically the trail. There is a cool tree tunnel at one point. We got up to a kink in the stream where the cliff is close in on the left and it gets a little waterfall-ish. The walking became more difficult there so we stopped and walked back and found a shady place to play.

He got out of the backpack and started walking in the stream. He started pushing sand in from the little bank and it was making the water cloudy as it rushed downstream. I pointed it out so he did it more. We talked about how it was going down to the Dead Sea. He asked “Why it might go to the Dead Sea? Without taking a car?” We talked a lot about erosion, and looked at how the different sized rocks did or didn’t move down the stream. He then wanted me to be the sand: “Could you be the dirt that doesn’t want to go to the Dead Sea?” “Could you pretend to be the dirt washing down the stream?” That turned into a big game, with some of the sand wanting to stay in the stream in the shady spot and other sand wanting to go for the ride.

There was a bigger round stone that I said was the storytelling rock – it told stories to the sand around it. When August wanted to hear a story though it talked so slowly that we didn’t want the story any more. August was then a digger that moved the storytelling rock. Eventually, he replaced it with a different rock, which was supposed to be a storytelling rock, but turned out to be an ignoring rock. He would ask if it could talk about things and it would just say “No.” “Could you talk about grass? Trees? Photosynthesis?” “Gravity? Suction?” “Can you  all about why you can’t see air?”

Finally, he turned into a virus machine, that was actually making the viruses big enough so that you could see them: “This machine makes germs and viruses bigger.” He kept asking me to look in the machine to see the part that made the viruses bigger: “Can you see the part that makes the viruses bigger?” Then he switched motions and was a box burning machine. As we played there, a few times people walked by and would smile at him or say hi, and one guy patted him on the head. He said hi back a couple times.

Finally, about 2:45 we changed him in to dry clothes (he was confused as to why we were changing out in the open, saying “Most people don’t want me to be naked.”) and started walking back, him walking in the stream. He was cautious about any mossy (moldy) looking part, as I had said they were slippery, although I really only meant back at the tunnel. He wanted the to ignoring rock to actually talk about something, so in the tunnel he asked “Can I learn how shadows go away when you’re in tunnels?”

We got back to the car, cooled it down, and drove south about ten minutes to a gas station. I punched enough numbers in that it finally let me get gas. I noted that my watch now said 104 degrees (at the beach earlier the electric sign on the lifeguard station said 42 Celsius, which is close to 108 Fahrenheit).

We started to drive back north to the hostel and August said he needed to pee. Luckily, there was a viewpoint that I wanted to stop at anyway, so I had him pee in the gravel, which he was very excited about. Took a couple minutes enjoying the view, then got driving and was back to the hostel at 4:15.

As we got out of the car he got very slightly bonked in the head with a door. I ended up letting him have one of the cookies and he said “I want to tell mama I ate the cookie cuz I was sad.” We left the key at the desk for Carly, who was about back from the agricultural center with the group – in fact their bus pulled in as we walked out. I had him in the backpack and we walked up the hill to the Masada vivistor center. We were planning to go up the cable car, but it was closed, with the last car coming down at 5. We went outside to look at the view. Pretty sure he mocked me, saying “Oh my gosh, look at the view.” We walked up the outside stairs and saw the cables for the cable car, and I pointed out the Snake Trail, which Carly would be walking up in the morning: “Is that where mama and the kiddos are going?” He referred to them as “kiddos”, like Carly sometimes does, several times. He also wanted to know more about rocks, so I started to tell him about the three kinds of rocks.

We briefly looked at the gift shop at books (looking for English books about trees and birds, etc. in Israel) then headed back down, getting to the hostel at 5:05. I had been carrying him in my arms and he slumped over at one point. We joked he was a robot and his balance meter had broken. Down in the parking lot he found a piece of broken spring and said “This spiral thing broke out of my balance meter.” He wanted to show it to mama, so he carried it to the pool and we found her and showed her, then put it in the bag.

We went and changed into swimsuits, then went in the pool. He just started swimming off among the big kids. Did several high fives with kids, and there was an older guy that he gave high fives to before telling him his hands were
underwater. They talked about other things as well, but I couldn’t hear. Grace came and talked to him and asked him what he thought of the pool. He said “It definitely isn’t the Dead Sea.” Which I think is a sentence I said to him a few minutes earlier when we got in the pool, but I was impressed that he remembered it and used it correctly in context in a conversation. There was another girl with a waterproof camera and he swam up to her and said “Is that waterproof? Is it floating?” She then took a selfie with him.

Carly got in and I got out. They played for several minutes and I got back in for one more swim before the pool closed at 5:45.

We went back to the room. We were talking about the kids in the rooms next to us, boys on one side, girls on the other, and he asked “What gender mean?” I said he was a boy and Vivian was a girl. He disagreed: “I’m a girl, and vivian’s a boy.” He didn’t nurse at all until 6:20. And he told Carly about the cookie: “I ate-ed a cookie after dada bonked my head with the car door.”

Carly went to supervise and we read 26-Story Treehouse. We also played the baby chipmunk game and it was sick. I mentioned having to save it, and he said  “But some animals die at the end of their lives.” Also “Luckily I have a powerful medicine that can kill trillions of viruses growing in my body!” As we left to go to dinner at 6:55 he asked “Is the kiddos awake?”

Dinner was pretty much the same as yesterday, but with mashed potatoes instead of roasted potatoes. And we had a chicken leg as well. He said “Hi Dudley!” a few times but Dudley didn’t hear him, but a few minutes later he was back at the table and did. Before we left at the end of dinner he said bye to Dudley and to Cassie, and gave them and a few other teachers high fives.

Back in the room Carly tried to put him to sleep around 7:40. Didn’t work though, and she went to supervise kids. We read the Treehouse book and then played the Space app. Carly came back about 8:40. He told her “I love you so much; I won’t let you die!” He was asleep by 8:50.

He was up around 6:30. He nursed and played baby with Carly then she got ready to go. We drove her to school as she had her backpack for the trip. As she got out of the car he said a very nice “I love you mama!” to her. But as soon as the door closed he said to me: “Now move.” On the way back he looked out the window and talked about seeing “interesting trees”. We were back at 7:40. We played a lot of the mold and viruses game – at one point he said there were 114 germs growing in him, at another point he said there were books “through your eyes”. He was then a book making machine, making noise and then handing me books:  “Here’s 150 books!”

We watered plants, then did another round of ant battling, closing off more cracks around the sliding door, where they have really reemerged. He played Space and drank milk while I did snacks. We then walked up to the recycling cages to do recycling.

Back home, he went to the bathroom, and wanted me to talk as the poop and pee not wanting to go down the drain. He then said “I can’t get out of this fire! I’m burning up!” Which was disturbing, but then a little less so when I realized he was being the garbage in a garbage power plant.

We got in the car and he said “Bye house!” He had the house say bye back, and said it was a “magic house”. We were driving at 10:05. The drive took about two and a half hours and was, thankfully, rather uneventful. It was, however, very interesting and scenic. We liked all the trees that suddenly appear when you head west (we went down 4, then east past Jerusalem on 1, then south along the Dead Sea on 90). There are trees and hills to Jerusalem, then suddenly you are in the desert.

The terrain of the desert was fascinating, and it felt a bit surreal to be driving through a desert, just me and August, and seeing signs for Ramallah, Jericho, and Jerusalem. I saw camels and donkeys, and a sign for a place called Og (which struck me as I loved the book The Secret World of Og as a kid). We drove through one checkpoint along the way, but were waved right through.

August played games on the iPad and paused and looked out at times. He was the one that spotted a flock of very large birds, maybe forty of them. He was also a machine a lot. We arrived at the Ein Gedi Nature Reserve at 12:28. We were meeting the school group there at 3, and just stopped now to get our bearings, stretch, and have a snack. Didn’t really get out, as as we sat there the temperature ticked up to 102. He sat on my lap though in the driver’s seat and we had a snack. The Vampire Weekend song “The Kids Don’t Stand a Chance” played on the radio and he said “I like this music.” He also looked out and spotted what he thought were dead trees and pointed to them.

We left and headed to the Ein Gedi Botanical Gardens. It turns out the entire kibbutz of Ein Gedi is the botanical gardens and you pay to get in. We stopped and went into the office to buy tickets. They sell seeds and August wanted to buy some. I looked up a couple things but they were too large for our house areas. We drove in and parked and first went to the small zoo at about 1:30. He seemed to be confused by all the dirt on the ground, asking “Where’s all this dirt from though?”

In the zoo we first saw peacocks, then the brown nutman (Nasua narica) – a Latin/South American raccoon. We watched it drink and cool off in the water. We then walked through the rest of the zoo. It was at least 102, and his face was getting quite flushed. He wanted to go to the coffee shop, and that seemed like a good idea. We saw the monkeys and lemurs (one had a baby on its back – don’t think I got a great photo, as they moved so fast, but they got up quite close to us) and several other animals, then made our way back up the stairs, got back in the stroller, and walked north towards the coffee shop. Along the way we looked at several plants and stopped at the lookout over Wadi Arugot. Near the coffee shop we saw the two huge baobab trees and the ficus.

We went to the Baobar coffee shop inside the hotel. He got a lemon mint slushee and I got the coffee one. I was a little afraid he wasn’t going to like it, but he did and drank most of it. He really liked how it was turning to water and talked a lot about that. If he got some on the table he would use his finger to turn it to water. And he said “I think if other animals ate this they would freeze up. It’s way too cold for them…That’s why I don’t let any raccoon drink my slushee.”

We went out and saw the baobabs and ficus some more and the big date palm. He looked at it and said “I see that kind of tree ALL THE TIME.” We had also seen palm farms at the north end of the Dead Sea.

Carly had said they were running a bit late, so we waited until she said they could see the Dead Sea before we left for the Nature Reserve. We caught up to them just as they were starting the hike at 3:20. As we got hiking he was being machines and said “This machine makes new people out of old people.” We hiked up with the school group until there was a part where you had to walk through a tunnel with a stream in it. Carly was nervous about me hiking with August and that was the limit. She continued on with them and we stopped to play in the stream there. It was actually a really cool spot and we would have been quite content to play there. There was a sign and chain keeping us from one part of the stream and he asked why. We talked about what a nature reserve was and about protecting habitat. He was then a machine that seemed to pick up on that: “This machine needs things that would kill the animals and it puts out good things for the animals to eat.” I was in the middle of getting his full explanation on video when Carly and Ayal came back, saying it wasn’t too much further and we should keep going.

So August walked the rest of the way up and we made it to the David Waterfall. Only had about ten minutes there, but August enjoyed it, wading in the water and playing with rocks. The group headed back, going back the way we had come. Ayal suggested we take the other route, the usual route back, which also made more sense to me as it was in the shade. So Carly and I spent a few minutes longer at the waterfall with August then we headed back. We stopped to watch some ibex feeding and saw one jump up to knock down another branch. There was one section that involved steep narrow stairs with big gaps right through the railing to a cliff several feet tall. But we had August walk down them, with me in front and Carly in back, and we made it down to the bottom. Easy after that.

Followed the busses to the Masada Youth Hostel, listening to the Lumineer’s “Dead Sea” on repeat about 5 times (seemed appropriate). We got to the hostel at 5:20. We got room 217 and the keycard didn’t work so Carly went back and got the regular key. August’s soap had leaked out of the bottle, through the plastic bag, and gotten my short and shirts. Luckily, that was it. So I washed those in the sink and Carly took a shower. I had sweated so much the front of my hat was soaked like I’ve never seen it. August played Elmo Look and Find and Music 4 Kids. Carly went out in the hall to supervise the “kiddos” and August went out after a minute to ask her how they were doing: “Are they doing good, medium, or bad?”

We went to dinner at 7. August wanted to try everything and was very excited by all the food. The first meat we’ve had in Israel since the party as we had a chicken pattie thing here. Grace gave him a high five earlier as he was seeing how the kiddos were doing in the hall, and he would continue to get high fives from Grace and other kids throughout the trip. At the end of dinner he lay down on the floor and said he was sleeping.

Went back to the room while Carly went to the drum circle event. He watched Peg + Cat and I gave him a shower. He did a whole dialogue thing on his own with our talking house, with it saying things like “Wait, where’s Zi
nnie?” He looked out the window at the now dark Dead Sea. I turned off the lights inside so we could actually see but he wanted them back on. We talked about how pupils work though and he said “That’s what my eyes are doing with this light?” He continued to look out, but was looking at his own reflection and doing a little dance with his hands.

He said “I think I should read some books.” We read the awful Mickey Mouse book and Sarah and Duck Stay at the Duck Hotel. He then made his first solo phone call to Carly, where I let him do all the talking, telling her “I want to nurse.” She came back from the drum circle and was nursing him to sleep just before 9.

Photos. Ready to go: 

Pointing at dead trees: 

Sweating at the zoo: 

Looking at the date palm:

At the waterfall: 

Walking back: 

Hot. Very hot: 

View from the hostel looking out at the Dead Sea: 

High five: 

Looking at his reflection: 

Comfy while reading: 

He was up at 6:10 again. Watched Wanda and the Alien. He was a little frustrated with Carly for going to work and wouldn’t say goodbye to her. Had banana bread for breakfast, then played Dragonbox Numbers and ate bread upstairs in the bathroom while I took a shower. Back downstairs he started a big game on the couch involving being viruses and mold. He had asked about the mold again in the bathroom and why we open the window and I mentioned why it is bad for your lungs to breathe in mold. He was also an airplane motor “To the countryside.” And he talked about going for a walk and wanted to find full green garbage cans “A different street each day.” We never actually got out on that walk today.

He kept being white blood cells and mold, climbing on my chest to be each, with the white blood cells having a “yummy dinner” of the mold cells in my lung. At one point he got off and as he played Human Body said a whole dialogue that he made up between white blood cells and mold cells as their dinner, which ended with the mold cells saying they were dying. He was also my heart pumping and I explained the path of the read blood cells through my body, like in Human Body.

We moved over to the air conditioner and continued the moldy air game, as he was breathing in moldy air. And it got more interesting: “I’m a drill putting a hole in a pipe leaking mold in your lungs.”

We spotted ants, and then took a good amount of time finally deploying wet and dry borax for the ants, both inside and out. We’ll see how that works. He watched an episode of Puffin Rock, then we went and watered the seeds, then played the Pip and Pop game. We read two books: Look after Your Planet and That’s NOT a Hippopotamus! He went to the bathroom, then he was a paper cutting tree, doing karate in the living room, chopping up paper coming off a conveyor belt and making newspapers.

We left at 11:10 to head to school and pick up a car seat that Israel Cassie is letting us borrow for the trip. As we drove there he said “Mama said there’s a hedgehog there that looks like Spikey.” He ate apple as we waited for Cassie. One slice had some peel on it and he told me “You can eat it if you want, dada.” She came out to her car and gave us the seat. August was unimpressed, but when I said he could see better he agreed to try it out. So I put it in and he moved into it. He said he still liked the one in Pennsylvania better though.

We drove over to the Drorim Mall and went to the Tiv Taam. Not a cart in sight, although there were only a few people in the store. When we left there were suddenly tons of them – August thought that was pretty funny. A couple times aswe walkedthrough the mall and started shopping I would say something and he’d say “Oh, okay dada.” After we had just two items he needed to use the bathroom, so we popped out to do that. Back in the store, he was helping push the cart and said “My turn now”. I wondered where he got that line and realized it was something that Mossy says on Puffin Rock when they are moving rocks from in front of Bernie’s grotto.

A pretty quick trip through the store, getting water and a water bottle, granola bars, and Cheez-its for the trip and a few other things. August was a crane helping to put things on the conveyor belt and take them off. Oh, and in the store he started dancing to the music that was playing. And near the end I asked if he wanted to get a drink and he chose apple juice. He then said “Oh, thank you.” and gave me a hug.

We stopped in the mall to drink the apple juice and try one of the granola bars, then headed home and got home at 1:10. He found a feather on the sidewalk and said “I WONDER what kind of bird it is.” But then he decided to leave it behind and set it down and said “Bye bye feather. Bye, August…It’s a magical feather!”

We went in and quickly made pizza with salmon and zucchini for lunch and ate it, then headed back to the school, getting there at 2:35. We went to the library and he needed to go to the bathroom. We used the bathroom there and he saw a drain in the floor. He said “I don’t think it’s for anything. It’s just random.” We went into the library and there was a class finishing story time in our normal area. We grabbed the box of small animals and played with them at the other end of the room. We found (well, he spotted) some bean bags and played on those. Mainly with the crocodile chomping my finger: “Crocodiles can be REALLY dangerous!” We were by the poetry section and I got a Shel Silverstein book I’d never read (Every Thing On It, or something like that) and a Jack Perlusky collection. The class left and we went over to the picture book section. He spotted the Curious George section and we got Curious George Goes to the Hospital and we sat in the story area and read it. He also found…

After that we started to go to check out our books and return all the other. But he saw a boy watching Paw Patrol on one of the computers and was captivated. I left him there and went and did the checking out. Grace and a friend came in and said hi, then went back to see August and gave him high fives. Oh, he also stopped to watch a student printing something at the printer.

We went and found Carly at 3:45. They printed something, then played classroom. He used the highlighters, then wanted to know how clothes are made. He said a different desk was that classroom, and they found a video on YouTube. Then he wanted to know how you make buildings. He moved and said “This is the building class”.

We had planned to go swimming but he had wanted to play with Carly instead. As we were leaving he also talked about wanting to see the hedgehog, but I told him next time.

At home I cooked up an okara pattie for him and he ate that with ketchup, then played a little Dragonbox Numbers. He wanted a blanket to be cozy, so I got that. We read Du Is Tak? and he really liked that. It is about insects who build a treehouse in a plant that grows. It uses a madeup bug language, so you have to use the pictures to pick up on clues as to what they are saying. The sweet potato fries were ready, so we ate those for the rest of dinner. Carly was upstairs finishing packing during much of this.

On the couch he was making a tunnel under my legs, moving my legs to adjust it. Then it was the Pip and Pop game. Carly skyped with Chuck and Cherie and August showed them the insect book, as Cherie was the one who had brought it to my attention. We watched one episode of Puffin Rock, then he was kicking pillows down from the couch like in the episode about Bernie’s grotto being blocked – he was being May.

I gave him a shower, then we went in on the bed. He played with Carly: “I’m gonna be the motor of the rocket…you’re gonna be the person going to space.” He was also a chain machine and a towel machine. He was asleep at 7:30.

He nursed at 5:50, fell asleep briefly, and was up at 6:10. He played Dragonbox Big Numbers after Carly stopped nursing. He was working to make the last building. I went and got him underwear to change into. Carly left and he was fine. We had dried Cheerios and he got the game to start making the final building. We discussed what he could do while he waited for it, and there is a place he can exchange could nuggets to coins. He said “Change punches for coins?” He’s always called them ‘punches’ and I don’t know where that came from.

About 7:50 I heard someone moving our garbage can and got him ready so he could go out and see the garbage truck when it came. He wanted to go out right away, so we went and waited for the truck. He played on the teeter totter while he waited, and realized he still had his pajama shirt on. It came at 8 and we watched it pick up all the cans on our street. He then wanted a “walk and carry”.

I just locked the gate and we walked west, around the roundabout, then back. On the way back we saw the garbage can again and watched it and he found two big leaves that he used as wings. We walked over towards the bridge and speculated on whether the cafes would be open at the mall. He wanted to go find out, but I said another day. A couple times I suggested going home and he said something like “I just want to keep walking and the machine will put out empty garbage cans.” We also went up to the park and he played a little on exercise equipment. We then walked the back path back to the house and were home at 8:30.

He spotted the black and white car drinking from the dish. He found a random seed on the green chair. We went in and had toast for breakfast (he kept saying the jam was the best, but didn’t eat either of the jam pieces until after eating the honey ones and the cheese ones) then he lay in the floor for awhile, went to the bathroom, and realized I’d raised the air conditioner temperature: “Why’s it not 17?…Did YOU change it?”

We started making banana bread, but then I noticed another truck outside. It was a lift truck and they were changing burnt out light bulbs in the streetlight, and one was right outside our fence. We went out and watched the guy change it. We then planted the tomato seeds in the can and August watered them. We also planted the random seed that August had found. We talked a lot about the watering: “Why the soil sucks up all the water and says ‘I like this water’?”

We went back to banana bread. He asked “Can I have more brown sugar since I was so sad this morning?” He then developed a game where I pretended to be an ingredient, not wanting to get stirred in: “Can you pretend to be baking soda not wanting to get mixed in?” When we were done he licked the spatula and wanted to play Dragonbox (Little) Numbers. He then went to the bathroom and said “Besides, I don’t think I’m gonna be very long…No, poop too.”  Talking about the sound the toilet paper roll holder makes upstairs when he clangs it to tell us he is done he asked “Sounds like a car breaking down?…Remember, from the Peppa Pig story?”

The banana bread was about done, so I prepared pizzas and put them in when the bread was done. We ate pizza for lunch, then while I was on the phone with the guy at Skoda about the roof of the car we cut into the banana bread and ate some of that.

We went back to Dragonbox (little) Numbers. He hasn’t played with one in a long time and it was cool to see the difference. He was talking about how he was estimating the lengths of the blocks as he added them up, and seemed like he was more cognizant of combining numbers in different ways.

I took a shower, then we played more together downstairs. He very seriously told me his favorite part of the game: “The part for me that’s really important is tracing…For stars.” We then read some of Hilo and ate more banana bread. We looked at Google Maps together to decide what to do today, then played with the Space app. We then used the pillows to pretend to be a rocket taking off. We played the distance game thing on Space and talked about AUs.

We had been lazy around the house long enough and finally got ready to go and left at 2:35. A 15 minute drive, and he fell asleep about 10 minutes in. I drove north to HaAlonin Park (or Sargeant’s Grove, or Netanya Forest) and parked. I got him out of his verse but he said something including “No” and lay down across the entire back seat. I went to the other door and picked him up. He slept on my shoulder as I carried him into the park. He woke up at 3:05 as I put him in the backpack. I gave him some ‘waking up’ mints and he talked about the fruit flavored ones being the waking up ones and said “I don’t know if carrot tic tacs or mints even exist.”

Nothing too exciting in the park. It is a flat forest a few blocks square in the middle of the growing city. So the breeze and shade was nice. We walked around and he hummed the whole time and made music. At one point he said “this music will last hundreds…Trillions of years…Trillions of machines!” We spotted one playground but he wanted to keep walking longer. We walked to the east end and found a second playground. He liked the trees there: “This one looks different…I want to find out what those trees are.” I realized one of the trees was still half green – it seemed they were dying trees. He asked a lot about that, then we walked up on the observation tower. Up there he talked about how far he could see. I asked, of the big construction site off in the distance “Do you see a them working?” He replied “No, not right now. I think they’re having lunch. The cranes aren’t moving.” “I can see hundreds and hundreds of miles away without getting closer to them.” He also spotted a tree in the grove below us that was also clearly dead.

We got walking (and making music) again. We walked back to the first playground. It was also mostly in the sun, but he spotted that the end of the slide wasn’t and talked about how he could go down it. But he never did, as we got out of the backpack and he spent all the time digging in the dirt and playing with dead grass.

We talked to Carly about picking her up from work, and left at 4:05. On the path he spotted the markings and said “That’s a long, long F.” He hasn’t spotted letters in random things for quite awhile.

We were driving at 4:15 and picked up Carly in front of the school and then headed home. He stayed in the car for a few minutes, playing. When we went in he said “When we were driving and I was playing Gro Garden I was about to move on to another game I haven’t played in awhile.”

Inside he nursed and played baby with Carly while I ate dinner, then we were animals and played hospital with me. We used the stuffed animals and had hospital beds for all of them and him. We were then robots destroying each other.

He had earlier gotten out the blue bag and wanted to do recycling, so he and I went to do that now. He took off walking, but part way asked “Will you carry me dada robot? There’s lots of dog poop there.” We did the recycling, then he wanted to play at the playground. We played on a couple of things, then he wanted to do the waking me up game on the slide. We did that, and he said “This game is for three year olds only…When I am five years old I will still play this game cuz I will be heavier and hurt you more.” He saw other kids with his shoes off and wanted to take his off, so I said yes. He slid down a few more times and found that he could walk up and down the slide with his shoes off. So I was laying there, waiting for him to come down. I heard him say “Oh, this is fun”, then a second later I heard him fall and his head crashed into mine. We got up, and the first things he said “Is mama gonna tell? I don’t want mama to know.” He repeated the second sentence as I carried him back. Not sure why he didn’t want Carly to know.

We got home and Carly heated c
orn and spaghetti for him, which he devoured. Carly took him upstairs and started laundry. He did a “Mama said…” as we got stuff to put in laundry. He’s been doing that more often, being able to tell me something she’s told him. Earlier, it was with the Space app and weighing the planets on scales: “Mama said that means it weighs more.”

Carly gave him his bath at 7:15 and they played on the bed together while I put the Israel Lonely Planet book on Carly’s Kindle. I went up to say good night. Carly said “Got me brown tree.” August asked “Why you say ‘brown tree’s? Is the tree dying?” He was asleep by 8.

Photos: 

He was up at 6:30 and saw me “What? Mama go to work?…I’m gonna go downstairs. You stay on the bed.” He left and closed the door behind him. They played the baby game. There was lots of talk about runny yellow poop, then he had just started watching Wanda and the Alien when I went down. We ate Cheerios and I sat next to him. He played the baby game with Carly again for a long time “Dada said it’s play time but the baby has to sleep. Sorry dada, the baby has to sleep.” The baby would also poop and he would want Carly to go bury it outside, like a cat. He and I read a couple books. We purchased Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Space Adventure, which turned out to be simply awful, as the plot was basically incoherent, and read Peg + Cat The Chicken Problem.

I then went and took a shower. I came down to August being really dramatic: “If you cut my hair I will not love you!” He was watching Puffin Rock, and eating cookies, but the hair cutting wasn’t going too well. He also said “I want to go to dada!…Dada loves me!” I sat down and tried to hold him and help, but we didn’t do much better. He would let her cut his bangs, but touching his ears or neck was too much.

About 11 we left and headed to the Ir Yamim mall in south Netanya. We parked, then went in and first looked for the shoe repair place, which was on the basement level. August and I looked at a baby/kid store while Carly found it, then Carly went to look at backpacks and water bottles at an outdoor store. He and I first went and looked down a colorful hallway that he said looked like a pipe. It was an entrance to a bowling alley. We went back and into the store with Carly. We also got a first aid kit for the car. Not sure if it was usual behavior, but when Carly then went to pay the guy first tried to sell her a different water bottle, then questioned her backpack selection.

We wandered around much of the rest of the mall to see what was there. August looked down from the second floor at a juice place we might try in the future. Our one other stop was the Fox Home store, which has reasonably priced home goods. Didn’t buy anything, but we might in a week when we come back to pick up Carly’s shoes.

From there we drove up to the nursery at Tel Yitzhak, just south of the school. August and I looked around for outdoor plants, then at the seeds. August was pointing at the seeds to tell me which he wanted to plant: “That and that and that and that…” He really wanted tomatoes though for mama, so we got those. He was disappointed that I said pumpkins weren’t an option. Carly found a wooden box to put inside under the air conditioner and chose three plants to put in it. There was a cat on the counter that inspected our stuff as we bought it, and a black kitten nearby. August was happy while we checked out and Carly went to get the car and I hauled things to the exit as he was stepping on the little bits of tile on the floor.

On the way home August was talking to himself in the car, and I figured out he was telling the Wanda and the Alien story where Alien stops the waves and they talk to the sea creatures.

We were home at 4:20. Carly planted the plants and August watched. I killed the ants and rewashed the dishes. We suddenly have a lot of ants coming in from near the sliding door. I also went and got the old metal can from the driveway area to use to plant tomatoes in later. Carly made oatmeal for August and he ate two full servings with fresh mango. They played more baby game: “I want to pretend to be a baby in your tummy, please.” Then we played squirrels, with a digger destroying his nest, like in the Bill Peet Shady Glade book: “The digger that parks across the street…It’s a mean digger.” They nursed, then went upstairs to look for dragons. I played around with him up there, growling. Dragons are a mean animal to him now, much like there are now mean robots. The robots I understand, from Hilo, but I’m not sure where the mean dragons originated. I was singing Puff the Magic Dragon on the way up, but he wasn’t convinced.

We played the Hilo game, with him destroying bad robots. At one point there were 973 Hilos. We were all getting ready to leave: I was going to drive to Ikea and they were going to the mall to do some shopping and get a smoothie. I joked that he couldn’t have fun without me, and if he did have a little fun he had to take a photo. He asked Carly at one point “Why are we leaving dada behind‽”

We all left at the same time. At Ikea I looked through the upstairs, which we had not done last time. They called while I was in the store and August said  “I’m having so much fun!” I ended up scouting out things like book shelves and cushions for the swing. I got a set of sheets, a drill, a set of tools, a tape measure…think that was it.

I was home at 6:20. Drove there on the main road, then back through the Keara Netter route, without needing the map, so that felt good. When I came in August announced “I’m having so much fun!…infinity fun, never stopping!” I asked what they had done and he told me “Buyed-ed stuff and after we buyed-ed stuff I got a smoothie.” He kept thinking that Carly was making pizza but it was baked spaghetti. We ate that for dinner, then they played the Flynne game. He was Pip and Pop (funny that he is always both of them) and Carly was Flynne and he kept throwing up “Owl pellets in Flynne’s lair.” And they were picking strawberries that were ripe.

Just after 7 we skyped with my parents. August typed and talked to them a bit (we discussed the fires in Washington and dad asked what a fire needs and August did a pretty good job of remembering the three things), then played Dragonbox Big Numbers and Carly and I were able to talk to them. I took August up for his shower and washed his hair. He got the bed wet as usual, then we used the pillow as a rocket and flew to Venus. He didn’t want to stay there though as he’s afraid of the volcanos, so we had special space suits, although he was still wary of them. He really wanted to read the Mickey Mouse book again, so Carly volunteered to do it. She thought it was awful too and told me to delete it. He was asleep at 8:45.

Baby trying to sleep: 

Car inspecting our purchases: 

Our new plants: 

Shark socks: