Author: Ryan/Dada

7:10 “Look at the machine I built…dangerous parts…” “Time for wakey!” They went downstairs and when I wet down a little later they had the globe out and were reading Thr Sneetches. They got up to get honey milk for him and he joked I was still asleep: “Can you believe dada’s still asleep?” “Can you believe dada’s still upstairs?” “Maybe he has a headache.”

He went outside with Carly and helped her take care of the plants. He was a broccoli plant with spikes all over so the moths couldn’t lay eggs on him. He got his pajama pants wet and took them off, then put his shoes on and went back outside in his underwear.

Made him oatmeal with syrup. He and Carly gave me all sorts of advice on how to make it properly. He was so excited when I put in “extra” syrup that he fell off the stool. He ate at the table and asked me about the rock climbing ropes we had seen. I looked up images of harnesses and rappelling setups and we discussed them. Carly squeezed an orange for him in the fruit press thing that Cherie had brought. They then went to make a stress ball using a balloon and flour.

They Skyped with Chuck and Cherie in Denmark as they made stress balls outside. I typed and did the blog and watched Formula 1 qualifying. They came in to get soap to experiment with making slime and freezing it. August said that seeing how long it would take to freeze would be another experiment. I took a shower. When I came down August told me about freezing the slimes. One of them froze solid. He was clingy to Carly throughout the morning, and who was looking trying to now look up slime recipes.

She started cooking the chicken and he shared some pita with me. I showed him how a piece of foil was like a parachute and he stood on his stool and dropped it. Then dropped other items to compare. He helped shake seasoning on the chicken. He wanted to touch the chicken, then we washed his hands. He tried dropping other objects but was choosing objects that were too heavy. I took apart a tissue. He noticed he could see through one part it not the other. It had two layers still. He got another tissue and took the layers apart on his own.

Carly had invented a sort of Israeli wrap, like something they had had for lunch at school. August ate some and liked it. He grabbed Carly’s grey sweatshirt and wore it as a scarf. He asked what repetitive means, then asked “Speaking of repetitive, can I watch Max and Ruby?” I said yes, but he chose to watch The Magic Schoolbus instead. I did the dishes and Carly did laundry and wrote one postcards. With Duplos he and I built a big crane, seeing how long we could make it and making a big counterweight. We then turned it into a bridge.

He was getting upset about wanting to nurse as we were getting ready to go outside. I stayed with him and he calmed down, although held on to her grey sweatshirt for a couple minutes. Got him to the bathroom and we went outside at 1. They sat on the swing. August let it leak that Carly had dumped out the cat’s water dish, which I had filled yesterday. I thought the cats had knocked it over so had already refilled it. There was some cat poop in the yard, and I cleaned it up following Carly’s specific instructions. One of the cats has been up on our patio as well as you can see footprints in the dust.

We got walking to the mall. He said we were showing Carly the way as it has been quite awhile since she’s actually walked there. We got to the outside playground at the mall and he wanted to play. He started by showing me around. Then went on the plane and he flew us to China. He asked what we should do there and I said build a wall. He had some sort of argument with Carly and said “But still enshumgedorflug.” It was his first use of his word for beyond infinity in one of their infinity arguments.

He then took Carly over to one of the houses and showed it to us. He cooked food and put ice cream on potatoes. When I said that didn’t sound good he told me “I learned that in food school.” He then took us to the second house, which had his bathroom and work area. He said “I use stomach acid in there to cool the air down.”

We went inside and he was frustrated he couldn’t get a treat at the candy stand. Got over it though and played in the inside play area, chasing me with the squirrel thing. He was then a hurt squirrel, breaking his leg: “Well in this country people drag me by the foot a lot.” “In magic land a week isn’t that long.”now you have to lay in bed 298888 million years.” “This is my lab to make surgery better.”

Carly went to the art store and got school glue and other supplies for making slime. She and I then took turns in the pharmacy. Got August some flosser things. August kept playing in the play area and Carly headed down to Tiv Taam. I convinced him to follow after a few minutes so we could help look for things for our school lunches.

We then went to the Wok and Walk restaurant outside for lunch. Got the veggie pad Thai and we shared it. We left at 3:10. On the walk he asked me something, then told me “You’re probably wrong so I’m gonna tell you my information.” Just a couple weeks ago he was telling me I know everything. Then he said “I just discovered that every country has bad things except Jordan.” He meant monsters to blast.

We were home after 3:20. He found a rubber band in the kitchen and asked “Why do I get sad when a rubber band breaks?” They went outside and started making slime. I watched him mixing some with his hands, and he randomly said something about “One year ago there was a dinosaur war.”

I went up to work. They were still doing slime at 5:50. they did a few different recipes, using things like shaving cream, glitter, and little ball things. We talked about something being high, I think we meant a pitch, and he said  “You mean like this high? Like house high?…Like up to a galaxy?”

We had dinner at 6:15. He ate the stir fry. Continuing the gamification of getting him to eat and drink healthy things, Carly was sneaking him milk against my permission. He was giggling and I said “I smell something fishy.” August assured me “The smell of something that makes you stronger is coming from off in the distance.” And he said “I put milk on the roof to see if it would get moldy.” It was dusk, and the mynah birds and Eurasian jay were going crazy, making a lot of noise. We’ve watch the birds chasing off cats and a hooded crow recently, and we found egg shells on the ground under one of our trees.

August picked up the tree things, seeing how many he could hold in one hand. He was excited there was watering the cat dish since Carly had dumped it out earlier. 

I took him up to his bath at 6:50. He told me “I learned a word called ‘Green Olive Chaser’…from Magic School Bus.” I think they were small and an olive rolled after them.  He told me about writing with pen on his leg when Carly was looking at slime recipes and didn’t notice. He asked if just a few germs could make you sick. We talked about immunities and resistance. Played with bubbles, then finished his bath.

I went into the office and he climbed on his Zinnie bed and held Merry (née Angeles) and had a dialogue with Merry about knots in Merry’s hair, ending with calling Merry “little buddy”.

He wanted me to carry him downstairs to find Carly, but downstairs he then chose me to put him to sleep. I was surprised. A month ago I wouldn’t guess he’d actually be picking me like that. Said goodnight to her there and I took him up. We read Mendel’s Accordian for the first time (got it at the book exchange). He told me that how he goes to sleep is that “Someone sings to me with the light on, then I sleep with mama.” He didn’t complain thought when I turned the light off and started putting him to sleep at 7:53. I sang Imaginary Bars, Idaho, and Animal Life. He was asleep before 8. Easy peasy.

When Carly opened the door last night to go to bed he was sitting up in bed, kind of like a zombie. Eventually laid back down. In the night he ended up on the bed and slept the rest of the night between us. He tried getting up before 6 but Carly got him back to sleep, then he woke up at 6:30. After awhile I went and got some dry Cheerios for him and his iPad. He watched the Magic School Bus on the bed, then moved out to the grey couch upstairs while Carly worked on her closet. I got up about 7:45 and August said he was done with the show. He ended up going in with Carly and helping her. They were talking like robots and he was a “delivery service” using his claws to move things.

I made him oatmeal, or started to, then helped Carly move the desk back into the big room. Cary finished up the oatmeal for him, then he was eating it and had me play the “Don’t eat any more! Don’t get any stronger!” game. He realized he finally had to go to the bathroom. Yesterday he said something about how wasn’t it amazing that sometimes he doesn’t have to go to the bathroom for three hours after he wakes up. On the toilet he said he did the “frizzily drizzily” when he woke up – that is, he messed up the back of his hair.

Carly got us in full cleaning mode this morning. She brought down some styrofoam from a box as garbage and August got really excited by it. Told him he couldn’t break it up, but he was playing with it other ways. I went outside and washed off the car luggage bag. He started scraping it on the bike tire, which ripped it up. Stopped him and had him help me clean it up. But then he wasn’t helping, and instead was waving his hands to spread it out. I put him inside on the couch as a timeout while I cleaned the rest. Carly came along and he was upset and told her I had taken the styrofoam away. They nursed, and only after which he told her he was supposed to have had a timeout on his own.

They went and did a little magnet science, then she hid eggs outside side. He likes to spin in the kitchen with me while she hides the eggs so he can catch glimpses of her. I asked if they wanted a smoothie. He came in a second later and was upset as he thought I had already made it but now he had to wait. He drank his smoothie and talked about blocking a faucet – a topic that has come up a few times since reading about faucets.

I needed to go take a shower and he wanted to watch balance beam, so he watched the London 2012 balance beam finals while I took a shower. Before I left he asked “Do you go to gymnastics with your mama and dada?” He watched it upstairs while I took a shower. They were then watching a video about the solar system when I got out. We used one of his old diapers as an experiment in the bath water to see how big it would get. He joked “Those babies really peed!… That’s the pee storage area.” The diaper burst open so we had to clean out the tub and start fresh. He then played with bubbles and asked me to make bubbles for him and when there was enough he said “Enough already!” He served me bubbles on a letter and said “This is gourmet!” He was doing a decent job of letting me wash his hair, but got really stressed out when I said I needed to rinse his hair. We talked about worry and stress, which he’d discussed with Shmuel when he said he had been dealing with a lot of stress. Got him out and went and dried his hair. He used the hair dryer a lot on his own.

Went downstairs and he ate nutty noodles outside for lunch. He and Carly went and picked their biggest carrot yet. But they didn’t taste as good as the little ones. Back inside he was playing with the foods from his kitchen: “I made an arch out of the foods in my basket but dada didn’t look at it.” He was upset it fell down before I saw it. They went and made a Duplo arch, then he and I made a structure out of Duplos. He was then with Carly on the couch and got sad that he couldn’t smell his own hair. Carly offered to cut it so he could smell his own hair, but he replied “But then my hair would be shorter…I won’t be able to pull it as much.”

He had some dry Cheerios, then was getting sad when he didn’t have as many songs on his iTunes playlist as I do. He asked Carly “Can I have more songs than dada has on his playlist?”

Carly got ready to go to the store and they left at 2:40. He was totally chill in the cart at the store, eating his dry cheerios and making sculptures out of the groceries in the cart. And he helped get the vegetables for stirfry. They were back right at 4.

He came in, excited to once again give me a consequence for reading him ‘idiot’ and ‘stupid’ in a book: “You can’t use anything electronic for 5 minutes!” He. Wanted to play with the vegetable steamer and we took it and the salad spinner outside. He poured water through, then spilled it out on the patio. He discovered the suction effect of surface tension if he put the salad spinner hole down, and that it skated on the water. I turned on the hose to give him more water on the patio, and he ended up catching water from the hose in the spinner.

He and I then left at 4:50. Carly stayed to make stirfry and have some alone time. He was quoting Vegetable Patty from The 52-Story Treehouse “mash them and smash them and…” As we got walking he asked me “Why do trains leave at a certain time?” And asked about “All aboard”. We’ve discussed that phrase a few times. He stopped to run over some kumquats. We had to backup and he talked about how it was one of the first times we backed up on his bike and we worked together.

We went and did recycling. He did one big thing of plastic that he had to use his rockets to do, then was upset there wasn’t more big stuff. We started walking to the snakes and ladders playground, but he wanted to take a longcut through our park. I let him lead us, and it turned out it was to do the zig zags through the gate parts – basically chicanes, in racing terms.

He asked me to sing “Animal Life” on the way up. A good crowd at the playground. We did a lot of playing on the car thing, wth him being the luggage that runs away. A little hopscotch and remembering our Korean numbers, then over to the climbing part. He was hanging from the ropes and kicking the bottom of the platform thing. I talked about how if he got stronger he’d be able to pull himself up onto it. We talked about pull-ups, and how I couldn’t do one either, and we decided we should both exercise to do pull-ups. He also said I should eat more broccoli and cauliflower like him to get stronger.

We went back to the car/spaceship and he had me driving us to other universes and planets. We got off to take a tour of Mercury and we walked around. He spotted things like a sock on Mercury and he said “Go figure.” He played with the drinking fountain and I pointed out a rose bush and asked if he knew what they were. He said “I ASSUME they aren’t snapdragons.” Found a ladybug and had it on his hand. Then he smelled the roses. He and Carly had been discussing the phrase ‘fresh and rosey fingered’ earlier.

We left just before 6. Took the long route home. He was spotting/beeping at colorful things, mainly blue things as he knows I like blue. As we got close to home he said “I won’t beep at the cactuses. Too sharp.” He called to Carly from the sidewalk. She answered him from inside, through the screen windows. He said it wasn’t her though: “Its the call of Cornelia…it’s a sound museum.” That’s a Magic Schoolbus reference.

We had stir fry for dinner and ate outside. Back inside they read Tallulah’s Solo. I got out the shortbread cookies that Chuck and Chere left and we had a cookie and milk. Carly got him dry cheerios but he said they were stale. Some were and some weren’t and they played ‘stale or not stale’. Carly declared “This is the best game ever.”

They then read Where the Wild Things Are. August was getting tired and it was part 7:30 so Carly started to take him upstair
s. He requested that I carry him. Upstairs he went to the bathroom and started playing in the sink and faucet with Carly’s comb. He said his word “Enshumgederflug”, which means more than infinity, and declared it “My best word ever.” He said he wanted it on the blog. From our trip to Tel Aviv: https://youtu.be/9qu8sNgD4UU?rel=0

Carly brushed his teeth and I went up at 7:55. He wanted to go to sleep in the big bed. I sang “Animal Life”, “Big Numbers Song”, “Take Me to Church”, and “Rock Me Mama”. He didn’t say a single word the whole time and fell asleep by 8:10.

He was up at 7:07. Heard him call “Dada” upstairs, like he knew mama was at work.  Went up and got him and brought him down. Eventually he watched an episode of The Magic Schoolbus. we then skyped with my parents. He wanted to watch the watermelon video of the girl who got hit – he really liked the phrase “Right in the kisser”. He watched that and some balance beam videos while we talked. I told my parents about the airwander.com website and I mistakenly said “stayover”. He corrected me: “You mean stopover.” We took care of Monkey Nice Bananas and MNB wanted his Cheerios: “I know Monkey Nice Bananas wants Cheerios, but I’m gonna put them on top of a tall coal plant.” We hung up at 9:10. He then wanted the iPad doctor game that we haven’t used in months and months – Pet Doctor Jr. and we put MNB in it and took care of her.

They weren’t down there, but he remembered Carly’s old bear and the one he got at the hospital and wanted to give them new names as he didn’t remember the old ones he gave them. He came up with Marshmallow Puffed Bear for the one from the hospital and named Carly’s Cottonball Stuffed Bear.

I asked him to get the peanut butter from the fridge and he found the chocolate pudding he’d gotten in town a couple months ago. I let him eat it. He said “Let’s not tell mama I ate this without getting my hair cut.”

We then went up and he watched Wild Kratts and I took my shower. He ate apples and peanut butter. When I was done with my shower he told me it had been pretty short because he had only eaten two and a half apple slices. Interesting insight into how a 4-year old tracks time. Sometimes he does indeed run out of cheerios and in the middle of my shower while he is watching a show and I hear him yell “Dada! I need more Cheerios!” He was then spraying me with a mixture of chemicals (he said it was 4) to get rid of skunk smell. Apparently the episode had been about skunks. He asked “What is your belly button for?…Catching dust?” I said I doubted that, and he acted out how you could lift up your shirt to catch dust with it.

In the room we had slept in he found a crack in Carly’s tissue stuffing into the window to keep out mosquitoes and he stuffed in a tissue and told me “If you ever get more mosquito bites just let me know…”

We went downstairs. I had caught one of those weird bugs earlier and he now really examined it in his bug catcher before we let it go. He told me “Dada, do you know I like living soap bubbles? It tastes like clear.” I said “Are you ready for one more Dada Zinnie adventure?” That was all I said, and we haven’t talked about our usual adventures coming to an end of sorts, but he asked “Why the last one in Israel?” We’ve been talking about starting preschool on Monday, so I don’t know if he was just being really perceptive or what. Before we left I filled up the cat dish with water and he watered some plants.

We left at 10:50. He was talking about skunks and asked if every animal has a way to scare off other animals. We talked about defense mechanisms and listed other kinds, like sloths and porcupines and turtles, that don’t scare off other animals. August then said that he had teeth that can eat steel. Before we left he confidently told me he didn’t need his iPad on the trip. He hasn’t used it in the car for quite awhile. He said he could look at things, and he spent the first 15 minutes or so giving me a running commentary of all the interesting things he could see. He remembered the sesame treat he had had from Jordan (the one we didn’t eat until he found it back here at home next to the backpack and Cherie tried as well). He talked at length about how it wasn’t really sweet but that it had an interesting taste that wasn’t just sesame and he wondered what made the interesting taste. And he discussed watering plants.

Got to the zoo at 11:50. Had a good look at elands, then we watched a zebra rolling in dirt. August asked how the animals are fed if they’re wild animals, and he noticed that the zebra poop was black and wondered why it wasn’t the color of hay: “Wait. Why is the poop black if the hay isn’t?” We parked and went into the zoo.

Skipped the playground at first and headed to the left. We got to the children’s zoo, but he said he didn’t want to go in: “it’s too smelly.” Looked at the camels (which he thought were monkey at first, they were so furry), then to the elephants. We watched the African elephant and he worried about it running out of food: “I don’t like it when things run out of things…like spaceships.” Running out of air or fuel, he said. We found this old treehouse sort of thing and climbed the stairs to it. He wondered what the thing next to it was. He said “Yeah. That’s still the question…It doesn’t look like much.” It was a stage area. Walked by the giraffes, then he was ready for a hotdog. He stopped to see the jungle cat though and we saw a zookeeper feed it a chunk of meat.

We sat in the same bench by the pond and ate our hotdog. He then wanted a smoothie, so we walked back over to the juice stand and he chose a banana and mango smoothie. We sat at a covered bench area and drank it. Saw little birds with nests up at the rooftop. Stopped at a bathroom. He was turning his head, saying he could turn his head more than other people. Not sure where that came from, but he was being like an owl, but we hadn’t seen any yet. On our way back we walked a path we hadn’t walked before and saw a vulture, then little waterfall feature that he played with. Then we actually did see owls. He said “I bet they can’t turn their heads like me!”

We found the snake and monitor lizard area. We talked about them, then he was being a guide, telling me all about the snakes and how they squeeze you to death.

We got to the playground at 2:45 and played for awhile. He found a shekel in the sand and wanted to put it in his treasure boxes at home. There was one of the tall, scary walkways that was closed and he speculated on why it was closed – part breaking, too dangerous, etc. I then found a little bow hair clip and it was a second treasure for him. He buried it as hidden treasure, then we would sail away, come back, and dig it up. He wanted to put it in his treasure boxes as well.

We headed back to the car. He fell down getting out out of the bike and scraped his left knee a bit. He wouldn’t let me see it: “Don’t look at it!” Luckily, no blood. We left at 3:10. The lion part was closed by then. He was a little sad we didn’t get to do the full outside part.

We had to stop for a little gas on the way home. As we drove he said “Is spit mainly bubbles?” He then pointed out it was the first time he’s used the word: “The first time I used ‘mainly’…Yes. I know the answer to that.” I thought stopping for gas would be quick. He stayed in the car seat and had the window open. I didn’t have a gas card so only got 4 liters to get us home. took longer to remember how to use a credit card though so August got out of the car with me. Figured it out and headed on our way.

He was falling asleep just before we got home. Listened to “Go” several times though and got him home awake. He searched for Carly and found her inside. He told her “You would like the weather outside. Come with me!” He asked us to use reverse psychology on him to get him to go to the bathroom before we left. We were being robots: “What do you mean? I emptied my bladder.” He asked “Dada, when you drink more water does that mean your spit glands make more spit?”

One of the ELL teachers at the school had arranged a little gathering at Poleg Beach. We headed down there, stopping at the gas station along the way. We got down to the beach about 5 and were the only ones there until about 5:40. August went straight to playing in the sand. I did a little reading while he and Carly played. Cherie, the organizer, and her husband and two kids arrived first
. Then the other ELL teacher, Alex, and her husband. the two boys are like 12 and 13. One of them started to bury August’s legs, and they did an awesome job of playing with August the entire rest of the time. I went up to the restaurant to get us something to eat – a chicken steak and veggies thing that was pretty good. While there, I met an Israeli guy who had lived in Lynnwood for 3 months before the rain drove him south to San Diego. And just before that I had found out that Cherie had grown up in the Okanagan Valley in Canada. Cherie had brought these big cushy red chairs that blow up with the wind and August enjoyed bouncing on.

When I got back down with the food, August was excitedly playing with the boys and talking to them a lot. They were digging a big hole, and later were throwing sand into the water. No time for eating. He ran over to me and told me he needed to go to the bathroom. As I carried him up he said “I hope those boys didn’t hear me say that…I always don’t want people to hear me say that…for funsies.” On the way back he ran across the sand and said “That mechanism allows me to walk on very squishy sand.” He spotted the boys climbing on the stacked beach chairs and wanted to go look: “I need to find out.” He called up to one of them “Be careful!” We went back to the gathering and he did an experiment, all on his own, where he spit on the dry sand, then the wet sand, and he noticed that it soaked into the dry sand better. We talked about why that could be.

We left at 7:30. He came up with a new word: “Icelogical” He said it meant wood chips. As I drove us home he asked why there were two lanes going into Even Yehuda, one for turning left and one for right, and couldn’t it be just one lane. I talked about when it gets busy and there are backups. We were home just after 8.

He had eaten some of the chicken in the car, and now ate more of the veggies. He asked “Why sometimes cars stop on the road to remember wars?” He then shared some pizza with Carly. We took him upstairs and got him ready for bed and we did some mosquito killing. Carly put him to sleep at 8:50.

Carly got him up close to 6:30. He came down and had Cheerios. Out of nowhere he said “Do you know laughkernels? When we cook them they laugh…and when we eat them they musha gusha – but in a musha gusha voice.” Carly said goodbye to her parents and headed to work. We then left right at 7.

Took pretty much exactly an hour, driving down 4. He got to ride in his booster seat and did really well, doing a lot of looking out the window. He pointed out construction cranes at one point – I think he was remembering reading about them last night. He and Cherie did Sugar Baby. Whenever we talked about something (Derek, Hank, Chuck’s beard) he would ask what we were talking about. They sang the rest of their songs, and he asked about the  Zipline Cars again. It was a sticker/logo he had seen (and I think read on his own) on the van that picked us up at the Candles Hotel after Petra.

We dropped of Chuck and Cherie. He stayed in his seat and got good kisses from them as goodbyes. I jumped out to give them hugs, then jumped quickly back in before he could get upset. Cherie had left a biscuit cookie for him to have on the way home, and told him about the nut treats left at home.

Before we got driving he asked about how we could see light if it was so fast. And then, in a robot voice, “reminder coming, reminder coming. Please find those sugary treatsint he house. Oma saved some sugary treats.” And “I show you how I put a reminder into your brain. I attach a pipe to your pipe then the reminder goes from my brain to your brain.” And “when I turn my rockets on in traffic I don’t bump into anything. It’s because of this counter weight.”

On the drive home he was asking questions about high wires. He described a trick on a high wire. I know we’ve watched a video on high wire acts before, but asked where this was coming from. He remembered: Cam Jansen and the Circus Mystery. Been quite awhile since we read that, and only once or twice. He then asked what ‘duplicate’ means. We discussed the word. Not sure where he got it. Then he made a machine that makes a person quiet. If they’re supposed to be quiet but aren’t you just point it at them and then you don’t hear them. “Dada, I gotted ear wax out of my ear to study what color it is. It’s orange.” “Dada, how does your body make earwax?”

We were home at 9:10. We went in and he went to the bathroom. He speculated on why mama could be home (maybe if the power went out at school). We found the treats and he told me “I like the ones without pistachios.” Put a few in a bag and went for a walk. We walked around the Holly block, then towards the mall, but continued on the path all the way to the road bridge over the highway. We got there just in time, before the sirens for Holocaust Remembrance Day went off. We watched everyone come to a stop and get out and stand for a minute. I recorded the first half of it, then picked August up for the rest of it.

We were home at 10:20. One of the black cats was under the swing, and spent much of the day under there. Inside, he acted out being the cat under a swing and being nervous when people came home. We watched a few videos on things he’s been asking about: first part of one of the Marble Machine update videos, then one on why light goes through glass, then one on why boys have nipples but not “nursing”.

I took a shower and he watched The Magic Schoolbus. During his bath he asked about setting fire to ships with shields (going back to that Archimedes display at Madatech – although we didn’t even see it this time at the science center). He continues to be skeptical about my explanations for why it doesn’t actually work (based on Mythbusters), We also ended up discussing armor. He played with bubbles and started to sing the Sesame Street “Rubber Ducky” song on his own.

I had seen Shmuel down in the downstairs yard before we had gone upstairs. He now called and asked if he could come in the yard. I ran down to let him in the yard, then ran back up to get August out of his bath. Got him dressed and we went and said hi to Shmuel. I went in to make coffee for us. August stayed out and got right to work pulling weeds with Shmuel and telling him things about our yard. Shmuel taught him that he could pull the green sprouts off the trees or they’ll become branches, and pointed out something that isn’t a weed, but a flower. And August pointed the cone things out to Shmuel way up in the trees. We sat and had coffee and August ate the leftover teriyaki noodles for lunch.

Shmuel left, and we went in and August did a pillow pile and we hid things. August had me play the recorder and he moved the xylophone stick in it to change the sound. He then discovered that the xylophone stick fits through the blueberry blocks. He asked about balance beams again, so we watched a YouTube video of a balance beam routine. He really liked it so we watched a couple more. Then a high wire video. We also watched videos on slingshots and catapults. The catapult videos led to a video from the Amazing Race of a woman having a watermelon come back at her and break on her head. He took the blueberries off the xylophone stick and told me they were meat he was serving to me – kebabs.

I invented the “Hugaroo”, which is like a ‘kissaroo’, but just a big hug. He asked “Does it have a pouch, like a kangaroo?” He then wanted to cuddle in my pouch like a kangaroo.

We got going to go to school and he made up a song that included “Monkey slipped and fell down…monkey swinging in the tree…” In the car I asked him to sing it again and he came up with a quite different version. We were driving at 2:20. He asked “What’s ‘errand’ mean?” He then told me it was from the Seuss story about the pants with nobody inside them.

We got to the school and went to the preschool playground for awhile. He worked on the car. He wanted tools, and I gave him things from the backpack, like a carabiner and his brush. He got on the teeter totter and said it was a machine that makes hammers: “it shoots out hammers… That’s enough hammers for one day.” He asked me “Isn’t it funny that Opa’s name is actually Chuck?” We saw Tessa for a minute and talked about having them over again sometime. Finally, he went to the other end of the playground and made blackberry pie. He asked me “Can you do an errand for me?” He often does that after learning a word, using it in his own talking.

We went into the preschool and upstairs to his class. He insisted I be in the classroom again, although right inside the door was okay. Class was about The Very Hungry Catepillar. I went over when he did the coloring part to help out.

As we left he looked at the block area and asked me “How can a teacher teach someone to build if they already know how to build?” I said they could help teach you new ways to build. He said “Yeah!” As we left, Mariam said “See you Monday, buddy!” August said “She called me buddy!”

We played in the music area. He wanted wooden things to hit the instruments with, so we were finding sticks and blocks when Carly showed up. She helped him find more things. He would then say “Let’s add that to our collection dimension.” Found several things. He ate some sandwich, and pulled the crust off and gave it to me. Carly was surprised that he doesn’t eat his crusts, but he never has. She said peeling it off was a good method, and he said “I reminded mama that when she makes sandwiches she can peel the crust off.”

Carly took the car to go to the mall to go to Tiv Taam and to get a pizza from Pizza Hut. August and I took his bike and walked up to his activity class. On the way he asked about whether we can know everything and why imaginary things don’t exist. I said I really liked how he thinks about things like this, and we came up with three possibilities regarding imaginary things. I said that maybe when you make something up for the first time (and he thought up a cat with no mouth
or fur or tail) you are making it exist; second was the idea that we could think of an infinite number of things, but even though the world contains billions of things it doesn’t contain an infinite number of things, so it was a good lesson in infinity, and finally I suggested that just because he doesn’t know of a cat with no mouth, fur, and tail that doesn’t mean that just such a cat doesn’t exist somewhere else in the universe.

At class he went and hid behind the pillows at first. Adele was the only other other kid there to start with and Sigal said she had asked about August at the last class (the one we missed because we were in Jordan). It was just the two of them as they started and played with the bear shapes they could climb through. Sigal then had them set up a bunch of cones and much of the rest of class involved carrying rings back and forth to put on the cones. The two other boys showed up (Ee-tie and La-veed, phonetically). He was getting tired, and Sigal commented on it. She set up the final course and August went the wrong way on something and told me “I was getting confused.” Near the end he was climbing through the bear things and fell over. He lay there for a few seconds, pretending to sleep, until Sigal picked it up off of him. He got up and went back to playing. At the end of class he was then looking in the mirror and it turned out he had a bit of a bruise on his forehead. Later, he told me and Carly that he had been pretending he had a brain bruise and had shut off – that is, that he had had a concussion. I had taught him about concussions earlier.

We went out and found Carly in the car. He asked her “Are you gonna drive this puppy?” He was very happy to find out that Carly had already gotten a pizza and taken it home. When I had told him we’d have pizza at home he thought we had to go and order it and wait for it and then wait even longer until we got home.

We went home and ate pizza outside. He told Carly what Shmuel had taught him about picking the green things and the weed that was actually a flower. Carly got him milk and he blew bubbles in it. He gave Carly a “hug kiss” and then told Carly “Lets take care of the plants.” “I learned something about these flowers.” A bit later he wanted to do kaleidoscope cards on the swing with her.

He came inside a bit later with a blue plastic piece that he’d found out in the yard. He wanted to put it in his new treasure boxes: “The first time I have my own treasure collection where there’s a treasure I can put in there…yeah for treasure!” Put his other treasures in the boxes as well: his Korean coins, bracelets, Q robot, etc.

Upstairs we made the beds. He likes when Carly does a thunderstorm with the sheet. Carly asked to cut his hair and he said “One time when dada cutted my hair he snipped off some skin. Right, dada?” She even offered him chocolate and he refused.

I was going to try to put him to bed, as he liked the idea of falling asleep on the big bed. Carly said goodnight and left. He requested the “Nonsense song”, which is Shearwater’s “Animal Life’ (one of the songs of sung to him hundreds of times when putting him to sleep, but just recently started singing again. He then got excited and told me “that’s where I heard ‘balance beam’!” And he asked “What’s ‘anodyne’ mean?” (Another word in the song) He asked me “With Oma not here how can I musha gusha?” And he asked what ‘agree’ means. I explained and we ended up practicing “we disagree” sentences. He asked me “What’s the name of that person that can loosen their arm and take the bracelet off?” He said I had told him, and the closest thing I came up with was ‘prosthetics’ and he said that was it. That was an interesting way for him to remember that.

He said he had changed his mind and wanted mama, but I suggested I just sing a few songs first. I sang Rock Me Mama, Animal Life, and Take Me to Church. He was asleep by 8:15, tucked into the big bed. Pleasantly surprised he fell asleep without any sort of fuss.

He was up at 7:30. He went outside with Carly and I went up to take a shower. I came down to August eating oatmeal and really excited about giving me a consequence: “Your consequence is not reading any books at all” “Mama, we really need to give dada his consequence.” Turned out there was no reason to give me a consequence; he just wanted to. Carly got him dressed and got out some pants that she remembered as being too big last time she tried them. They fit, but were now on the tight side. We went downstairs where Cherie was and she mentioned being from the 50s. I don’t think he really has much of a grasp of years, much less decades, but he caught on to what that meant and asked “How old ARe you?” They discussed generations, then he was a being a baby. They did “Spidey spidey boop” – something that Carly did with him as a baby and Cherie used to do to them. 

He was acting like a baby after that, then asked me “What’s balance beam mean?” He said “I think…” When he didn’t continue I asked “I think what?” He said “I think…that’s all you get.” We then discussed the difference between a high wire and a balance beam. He also made up a “swuggly bug” song.

We got ready to go and I told him to go put on his shoes. He then went to his shoes and told himself “I have five seconds to put my shoes on. Five, four, three…” We left right at 9.

Once we got going he asked “Do you have any Oma treats?” She had something and was trying to get him to guess what it was. She asked “Can you think of something yummy that starts with ‘rice’?” He thought about it and shouted “Rice cream!” Nice one. But it was rice crackers. We listened to Story Pirates for the first time since Chuck and Cherie have been here. Episodes 15 and 16, mainly. August and Cherie sang “Where is Thumbkin” and he’s really getting into the words of it. I got a video of them doing the Sugar Baby song together earlier in the trip, but should have gotten videos of the other songs, like the Thumbkin one, as well.

We got to Haifa and bumbled around a bit finding parking. Found an old, tight, underground lot. The guy wanted us to back in, so Chuck switched with Carly and he did it. We walked up to the science center, and Carly kept walking, up to a coffee shop to have some alone time. The Tea Pool Cafe, I think.

We were in the science center by 10:40. Stopped at the bathrooms, then August chose to head up to the science stuff. No play area. First to the da Vinci room. He started by going to the sets of gears and giving them a very complete explanation of how the sets of gears work and how they are for going different spends in a car. He explained other thing as well, and we were remembering the names of the gears from The Way Things Work. And he noticed that the ball bearings were turning more slowly than the stick he was turning. Out in the hall he demonstrated the lift thing, then we headed over to the sound room. Played around in there, then went up to the puzzle area. I solved two of the wooden puzzles that I hadn’t solved before. Back down in the sound room the three of them spent a lot of time watching the binary counting machine.

We wandered down the hall and looked at the birds for a few minutes, then across into the power plant area. August and I did the pedaling while Chuck and Cherie wandered around the rest of the room. August then wanted to show them the video screen with a delay. We played with that for a bit, then went upstairs, past the most out-of-control class of students we’ve seen there. August led us to the room with the planets in it. He sat in the phases of the moon seat that spins around and we discussed the different phases. Wandered around looking at other stuff and seeing how much he would weigh on other planets.

Then on to the magic room. Sadly, the beach ball was missing. He and I went to check to see if there was an extra me in the other room with the floating ball thing, but there wasn’t. Cherie lay on the bed of nails and August got to turn it on. Into the chemistry room to play with the big bubbles, then briefly to the dental room to brush the big teeth, then we finished up in the dark room, where August went straight to the one that you spin to see the picture projected on it. He is no longer afraid of that room – he ran right in and wasn’t bothered that I got stuck holding the door for a bunch of people. We also spent a few minutes looking at the bubbles form and catch each other in the tube of thick liquid.

We went outside and found Carly sitting on a bench, reading. We walked to the car, then I drove us down to the German Colony area where I lucked out finding a parking spot on the street. We walked up to the restaurant Douzan, mentioned in the Palestinian guidebook. Sat outside. Carly and I ordered a couple of the Arab dishes, while Chuck and Cherie got two of the salads. August mainly ate the teriyaki salad that had noodles and chicken. He was hungry when we got there so Carly was letting him ‘sneak’ apple slices under the table. He thought it was hilarious to let me catch him. Think he bonked his head or something and Carly tried to kiss it. He told her “Kisses don’t magically make this better.”

He had a religious discussion with Carly and Cherie, which started when he asked “Can you teach me something about Muslims?” She talked about Ramadan, which led him to ask “What brings you closer to God than fasting?” And then “How do you get to God.”

We left at 2:20 and walked down the hill, towards the port. He was discussing religion with Carly as we walked. She taught him the term ‘agnostic’. We saw the cranes at the port, then turned right and saw all the birds flying around the huge building. Circled around to where the car was and I drove us up to the lookout point over the Baha’i Gardens. On the way up “Rocket Man” came on and August asked for the volume up. Walked up a couple blocks to get there. We spotted some cooling towers and a guy heard us and said they were for a refinery.

We walked across the street and up to the Louis Promenade park area. There’s a playground and we played there for about a half hour. He mainly played with Carly. He was a baby-talking spider on one thing and they spent the most time on one of those big logs suspended by ropes that swings back and forth. There was a big rope sort of structure but the ropes were rather loose, meaning it was harder to climb. August wanted to play on it but thought it was too hard: “Mama, they should have made that easier.” They sat together and she said he was as cute as something. He got cuter by saying “No, I’m as cute as one little bit of light.” And he put his head on Carly.

Stopped at the bathroom, then we walked back to the car about 4. On the drive back we listened to more Story Pirates, then read Seuss on his iPad: You’re Only Old Once, Oh, the Places you’ll Go, and The Zax. When we got home Chuck said “Let’s go straight to bed.” August responded with “Oh, Opa.”

We were home by 5:30. Carly went upstairs with a little headache. August said “Dada, I’ll invent a way for sound to go upstairs to the bedroom mama is in.” We watched the Magic Treehouse Lost in Space episode together. He ate nutty noodles for dinner using the stool as a table again. Cherie used her reverse psychology one more time: “Dont eat that cauliflower!” We got dinner, and August came to Carly and asked “Mama, do you want to go outside? It’s so beautiful out there…fresh and rosy fingered.” We ate outside, and August went down the slide several times, playing with and taking instructions from Chuck.

After dinner he played GarageBand with Cherie again. He went to the bathroom and decided it was time for us to read The Way Things Work. And he had some Cheerios. We read about pullies, cranes, screws, escalators, elevators, screws, faucets, and drills. Carly took him up at 8. He and Cherie did “Where is Thumbkin” again. Had a good goodnight to
Oma and Opa, then in the bedroom was joking about “I love the name Poop Poop” He brought the name up a few times today – it was a name the boy in his coding class called himself yesterday before class. And I pointed out that August liked to change his name too (right before that, going up the stairs, August had told me he had a screen on him where he could change his name). I left them at 8:30 and they fell asleep together.

He was up at 7:10. I had just gone in the bathroom and when he came down he saw Chuck and Cherie but not me. A bit upset by that. I held him a few minutes, then he sat on the grey carpet. He spotted the shark, which Carly had hidden as part of the Duplo hiding yesterday but apparently they had forgotten about. Took a photo of him with it to send to Carly as the good morning photo. He then ate Cheerios and watched a Julius Jr. sitting on the couch between Chuck and Cherie.

When the episode was over we read Sneetches and Other Stories and Wild about Books. He wanted to go upstairs with me during my shower, so he watched a Magic School Bus episode while I showered. Chuck had made hash browns so we went down and ate some of those. I cut allergy pills to restock the supply for August, then he had more hashbrowns and watched the rest of the episode.

Chuck and Cherie went up to watch Promises. He drank some water drink and got talkative: “What makes things go up if there’s not something pulling them up?” (He meant there’s a force pulling things down, gravity, but not clearly an ‘up’ force). He helped me brainstorm and we discussed ways that things go up: buoyancy, lift, bounce, suction, wind. “Dada, I’m gonna make everything connected…in the whole universe.” “Dada, how do scientists study animals but not get hurt?” Discussed cameras, tags, trackers, darts, etc. “what about if you’re studying a bee?” We looked up images of beekeeper suits.

Took him up for his bath. Listened to Chemical Brothers and played with bubbles. Same game as yesterday where I couldn’t see his hands through the bubbles so I couldn’t wash his hands. He was kicking his legs around and said “I can push/puss legs”. He said it was something Oma did/said.

After his bath he said “I’ll tell your something: jelly is between a liquid and solid.” He then asked how that could be if there were gasses, liquids, and solids. We looked it up but I don’t think I found a satisfactory answer for him.

He banged on their door and they came out. Cherie asked if he missed them and he needed attention. He said “I like to make noises through doors and interrupt people.” They went back to watching the movie and I hid the Duplos upstairs for him several times.

We went downstairs and he wanted to play with the rubber stamps. I did his full name out of rubber stamps. When they were done with the movie and Cherie came down we asked about the legs thing. He said “Puss legs…like pussapotamus.” We decided it was probably from “Roll em roll em sugar baby.” And he misheard her when she sings it fast.

It had started to rain earlier, and now there was another solid downpour. I went out and put grocery bags in the book shelves to protect the books. Cherie and August played with the rubber stamps and had a debate about words. He said “Castedonia…that’s the best word in the cosmos.” Cherie claimed that ‘Oma’ was the best word. They then had a competition to see who could reach higher to prove their word was the best. But then he changed his mind: “The best word in the cosmos is…Amazon.” The thunder had started after the last downpour and he now had an invention: “most lightning-proof thing available.” He went upstairs to do laundry with Cherie, then downstairs they put away the rubber stamps.

I asked about books to take to back to the library: Z for Zeus “Oh, I loved that.” And he gave me a thumbs to keep “The Artist and Me”. A minute later he said “I just discovered the carpet is warm and we don’t even have a floor heater.” He was sitting in the spot I had been when looking at books.

He played with the instruments with Cherie, then they played with GarageBand and the keyboard for a long time. He showed her how to use the sampler and explained ‘trim’. They kept playing with different sounds on GarageBand. For lunch I got him peanut butter and apple and made a smoothie. He ate an they went back to GarageBand. He paused and came and cuddled with me while Cherie got food for lunch. They then played Musyc and then the Earth app. He was really into the polluting part: “I’m trying to pollute as much as I can.”

We got going a little after 2. We dropped off Chuck and Cherie at Ikea, then drove back up to the school. We got to Carly’s classroom right after 3. I was bring her the blue table they had painted. I didn’t want August to go in the classroom, so I asked a student who was coming out if she could take the table in to Carly. Carly was amused by that. Turns out the girl is an older sister of one of the boys in August’s class.

We then went over to the coding class. August was a bit shy after not seeing people for a couple weeks, so it took him a couple minutes to get comfortable. He wanted me to stay in the room. The teacher suggested he sit at the end of the table and he could see me through the door. I went out the door to show him, but he got immediately upset even though he could see me the whole time. I sat inside, reading Eugene Ionesco’s Exit the King, and he did fine. They colored and put stickers on a piece of paper – a sort of algorithm, then played on the iPads. He needed some help with the stickers, but didn’t call me over at all during the iPad time. Except when he wanted some apple.

We went to the library and he returned some books, then we went to the bathroom and Carly met us at the library. We went and picked Chuck and Cherie up at Ikea. They’d also walked over to the Tiv Taam.

When we got in the house Chuck and Cherie had already gone upstairs. August joked “I thought Oma and opa were here. Did they go on that flight?” I got some nutty noodles for him and me. He sat at the table and asked “Could we listen to that My Baby’s Coming Back to Me song?” Yesterday, when we got in the quiet house, he said we should put some music on. He ate a bowl of nutty noodles and a full cup of the smoothie from earlier. For each song that came on he would ask “What’s this song about?”: “This Year”, “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?”, “Let’s Get This Over With”, “Hurt”. We read a Bob Book, The Old Truck. I started to read the one called Before and After but August suggested we play the game of the same name.

We played that and had a good story going. Cherie and Carly came downstairs. He then got the idea of playing with the vegetable steamer and pouring water through that. We did that, with the water going in the salad pinned. Still made a good mess of the floor though. He then did a pillow pile and had me hiding Duplos and things in it. After several rounds I was getting tired of that so suggested that I hide the Duplo eggs. Did that, then suggested it was reading time, at 7:30. I hid the Paddington book in the pillow pile and after he found it Carly read it to him. As they read it Carly asked “Strawberry tart…could you make me one of those?” He replied “I don’t have that power.” Carly was incredulous: “All your powers and you don’t have the power to make a strawberry tart?” I think he decided he could.

Carly said something about getting a stomach ache from too many treats, and he said “We’re in magic land! You don’t get stomach aches!” She took him upstairs and I took up Cheerios. He heard Cherie talking about her blister, and when he got to see it he was excited: “Oh goody, oh goody.” And he got his treasure baskets that Chuck and Cherie had gotten him at Ikea. He liked the ideas of those.

Carly was with him for awhile, then I went up from 8:25 to 8:55. Sang “Over You” “ABC Song” “Big Number Song” “Barricade” – songs I haven’t sung for a long time. He was tired but not gong to sleep. He told me “Yeah. My choice is mama.” We switched and he was asleep soon after 9.

He was up a little before 7. I walked him down and he slouched around on the rug. He climbed up behind Cherie on the couch and talked to her and played with her hair. Sent a drawing message to Carly. I made him oatmeal and mango. As he got up at the table he asked “What are your lips for besides talking?”

I took a shower and we got ready and left the house at 8:20. We found the yoga studio in Ra’anana, just a block west of the Skoda dealership and dropped Cherie off for a class. Chuck, August, and I then drove to try to find the ‘Restored Garbage Mountain’ on Google Maps. Drove down some dirt roads but didn’t see anything that looked tall enough.

We continued on to Ra’anana Park instead. A short but nice visit there. August wanted to go over to the music area. I said we’d stop and show Opa our favorite sculpture. He asked “Favorite sculpture in the universe?” I said no, in Ra’anana Park. He wasn’t impressed and said “You get a pffft for that.” ‘pffft’ being the noise with his lips that he always makes when he isn’t happy about something. We stopped at the zigzag sculpture and August still enjoyed it, then we spotted the tractors and other farm equipment displays. He drove a tractor and said it was also a juice machine: “I do fruits and veggies and mixes.” When I ordered a juice he would pull a lever and then a hand would reach out and hand me the juice.

We went to the music area and turned the spinning one and played with a couple others. We then walked back and used the bathroom. The back part of the zoo was open and we went in there for the first time: martens, chipmunks, porcupine, pelican, storks, jungle cat, peacocks, and others. August noted that the birds were trapped in the cages.

We left right at 10:30 and went and picked up Cherie. Timing was perfect. We then drove on to Hayarkon Park in Tel Aviv. Got walking at 11:15. We took the north side of the river downstream, then the south side on the way back.

We had a nice walk down, stopping to look at some graffiti along the way. August was talking and singing the whole way. He made up one song and asked if I liked it, then requested that I record his next song.

We got down to the boardwalk area and stopped at Greg Cafe, where August and I ate the day before his birthday, at 12:30. August and I shared the sweet potato ravioli and he got the strawberry and mango smoothie with yoghurt – I think the best smoothie we’ve had. And I got the sahlab – a drink made from hot orchid cream, with coconut, pistachios, and cinnamon on top. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salep?wprov=sfti1

August and I headed across to the sand area while they waited for the check. Got some sunscreen on us and proceeded to play in the sand for a long time. There was a big pile of sand that August started by attacking, then he was burying his feet and legs. Then he asked me to do it. And again. And again. And again. Probably 20 or 30 times total. Sometimes with him lying on his stomach. He really liked the feeling of it and the coziness of the warm sand. While I was sort of on my hands and knees he burrowed under me and said it was his nest in the sand. Meanwhile, Cherie and Chuck relaxed on a bench and Chuck walked the boardwalk a bit. We also got to watch a lot of planes taking off from the airport. Some modern planes, but then also a lot of smaller planes that looked like vintage military planes. Or maybe just trainers.

On the walk back we stopped at a few playgrounds: the first was the big one right by the waterfront, where we had not played the last time. He ran off and did a walking course, then ran to the other end where there was a pirate ship that rocks. We sailed and dug up treasure. Then up on the big play structure. He wanted me to follow. At one point I had to take the backpack off and push it ahead of me through a climbing tube. August went on without me and let me struggle. He then went down the big slide, then I did.

The second was a small one where he just wanted to walk on one of the rolling things.

And the third was a playground we had played on before when we walked across to the south side of the river. He was trying to climb a plastic structure that looked like tree routes. He was talking about how he was trying to choose his route. Earlier we had investigated and discussed the big climbing wall on the other side of the river.

We also saw a lot of different forms of transporation; sail boats, row boats, roller blades, etc. I asked what sort of thing he’d like to learn and he said something like “I can basically make mama nervous with just about anything”.

We stopped at the bathroom and August and I went and paid for the parking, then we were driving at 4:35. He asked again where the bubble came from for the Big Bang. We dropped Chuck and Cherie off at Tiv Taam to get milk and a few other things. They then walked home. We took advantage of having the car to ourselves and listened to “Go” a couple times. He pointed out what part of the song was his favorite. Earlier, the Eels song “Hey Man” came on and August was excited because it was the mystery song he had been humming before we left the house.

When we got home and he saw Carly outside he said “Can you teach me what you taught your students?” When Chuck and Cherie came in the door her asked “Did you have a good time at the store?” They all ate dinner outside (August ate a lot of nutty noodles and broccoli and cauliflower. When I asked “Do you want broccoki and cauliflower?” He replied “Oh yeah” I heard him ask Carly “Can you teach me about diagrams?” He had asked me on our walk about diagrams.

Carly hid the eggs inside, but then they spent a lot of time outside, with her doing the flowers and plants. They came in he found the Duplo eggs, then she hid them again. Earlier, when I was upstairs, another one of the squishy balls had burst. This time more dramatically, luckily on the tile floor.

He found the eggs, then she took them upstairs to hide. While he waited on the couch with me he said “Wait, where’s that bear that I got at that hospital?” Earlier in the day he had also been talking about the pipe heating system in Korea and how we could see all the pipes under the sink. They were having a good time upstairs and eventually she got him ready for bed. I came up and said goodnight and he was asleep at 8:30.

We were up before 7:30. Downstairs, he and Carly played with the rubber stamps. Chuck and Cherie were then both down. August came over and curled up next to me. He was then being a hedgehog and having me kiss his head and get poked. He and Chuck ended up talking about Bedouins, then camels. August said he doesn’t want a camel. Cherie asked what he thought camels ate and he joked “Coffee containers! That’s what they eat!”

Cherie showed him the carrot bits that they were growing in water. Two of the three seemed to be growing. On his own he said he wanted a beach day. Carly made him oatmeal and he ate outside. They came in and August wanted Cherie to hide Duplo eggs. She hid them outside, then they came and they went upstairs and hid them upstairs. I went and took a shower.

When I came down Chuck was on the floor with August and they had been doing dot painting: galaxy, power lines, generator. Carly and I tried to take him upstairs for a bath but he got really upset. He hit the mirror with his hand, then when he rolled on the floor he bonked his head. I sat with him and got him calmed down and gave him a bath. He had lots of bubbles time. He tried to wash his own face by putting bubbles on it but the bubbles were tickling him and he was laughing.

Downstairs he played around with Carly on the couch and we did the William Tell overture thing. They went upstairs so Carly could change. Carly said she’d change into an elephant: “You can’t be an elephant. You’re not in a circus!”

Back downstairs he was balancing on one foot while holding on to the chair and putting his other foot high in the air. He ate some parmesan, then had nutty noodles. And more nutty noodles. He ate a ton.

He played by himself over by the rubber stamps. There was a cardboard roll from something and he used it as a rubber stanp. He then filled it with the wooden rubber stamps and was seeing how high he could pull it up before the tower of rubber stamps would fall down.

He wanted Duplo eggs hidden outside, so while I did that I heard them learning about atoms. After he found the eggs it was Chuck’s turn to hide them.

Carly and I got ready and left at 12:05. We told August goodbye. He reacted as expected. He got a good grip on the strap to my bag. We walked up to Malkin in town and each had a coffee drink. I worked on Hebrew and read. We then ordered the green shakshuka and the green juice (celery, cucumber, apple, and ginger).

The post office was busy on our way up, and after we left Malkin Carly got a number and we waited for awhile before she gave up. We walked home and were here at 2:35.

Chuck and August were on the swing doing patterns wth the kaleidoscope cards. He was glad to see us, but not in a hurry to leave Opa. When we had left he had been upset for about 15 minutes, banging on the door and trying to leave the gate and pacing around the yard and trying to get his bike to follow up. Eventually he asked “What if they don’t come back?” When he calmed down he ate ice cream. All the ice cream. “I just eated ice cream. Without any healthy things…two cups of it.” They cleaned under couch (started with looking for a lego) and found the missing wooden frog. And the missing Lego. They built with Duplos and he and Chuck made animal cages or something of the sort.

Inside we talked about how much fun he had had with them and Carly suggested being babysat by the Kerns. He said “But the question is, do they have treats?” He wanted to do kaleidoscope cards on the swing again and wanted it to be Oma with him. So they played on the swing and I think also did a piggy back. And they were singing children’s songs that she knows.

Calry and Cherie walked to Holly’s house to pick up a couple of little tables for Carly’s classroom. He and I sat on the floor and he said he wanted attention. I asked “What kind of attention?” He said “Talking attention. I love that kind of attention.” So we were just sitting there, talking, when they got back a few minutes ago. He did kaleidoscope cards with Carly for a minute, then was hungry and wanted peanut butter and apples; “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Carly and Cherie then drove to the mall to get flowers for Holly. August ate a whole apple with peanut butter and then spoonfuls of peanut butter. 

We made a list of things he wants to learn from Bat Chen for when he wants to play with other kids. Things like “Do you want to play?” He had me cut up another apple and ate another slice and had more spoonfuls. He made a nice mess of the knife and spoon with peanut butter.

He went and played with the Duplos, breaking all the bonds in his “storage area” (between his legs) and singing a “All bonds need to be broken” song. He went and noticed that the watermelon was softer in the experiment.

We discussed the lights I can and can’t change, making a whole tour of the house with him asking me if I could reach that light or that light. We talked about how all the mold probably died in our grape mold experiment and he acted out being the mold dying. He played more with the peanut butter “More zookeepers than there are in the universe…they’re jumping around and stuff.”

We then played the Before and After game we got from my parents. He didn’t care about the rules, and made a big story with them. He went to the bathroom and told me “But don’t say ‘Would you like to reconsider?’” – something that Carly says to him when he says he is done.

He and Carly learned about Earth worms, then black holes, white holes, and the Big Bang. He pointed to his stomach: “Do you want to look through this green light? If you looked through this green light you can see all the things the big bang maked-ed.” Speaking of the Big Bang, he asked “Now wait, where did that bubble come from?…everything comes from something.”

They went out and did some spray painting of one of the little tables she got. I discussed plans for the next couple of days with Chuck and Cherie. They came in and he went to the bathroom and Carly washed her hands. He realized she hadn’t used soap on his hands so he washed his hands in the kitchen sink. He saw Chuck and Cherie playing cribbage and said he had played that game with Oma earlier. It had a winner “but that’s okay cuz I winned-ed”. He whispered the end of it. He watched them play and gave away Cherie’s cards. Chuck wanted to out his shirt on but August said “I survived the cold.” Chuck called him “one tough cookie” and August liked that phrase. He watched two full games of cribbage- Chuck won the first, Cherie the second. At one point he took some Oma hairs outside and left them for the birds – they had talked earlier about how birds like to use things like that for ther nests.

At some point the rest of us all ate dinner, kind of at our own times. August didn’t really have much in the evening after his apple and peanut butter consumption.

He and I then read about gears and cams and cranks in the How Things Work book. He was really into it. We read They Saw a Cat, then the first story in the Peppa Pig collection.

We took him up at 7:50 and I left them at 8:05. He wasn’t calming down though so I went up at 8:35. We sang songs – his favorite today was “Animal Life” and he requested it a couple times. Haven’t sung it recently. He said”Let’s not tell mama I was talking a lot.” At one point I talked about how tomorrow we were going to take Oma and Opa on a Dada and Zinnie adventure. That got his attention and his eyes lit up: “A big dada Zinnie adventure?” He was getting quite tired and about ready to sleep, but needed to go to the bathroom. He went and did that, then I switched with Carly and she put him to sleep.I left them at 9:20. I still heard them at 9:30, but I think he was asleep soon after that.

We were all up about 7:30. We stayed up in the room until close to 9. He watched one Max and Ruby, then a lot of Julius Jr. I updated the blog and read and got him his water and dried Cheerios. He climbed up on the bed and looked out the window and said that everything looked smaller. He made a machine that made things bigger. When we went downstairs he asked “What does snow taste like?” He wanted to find Carly and had me open the sliding door and he spotted Carly sitting outside. He and Carly played with the globe and he said he was bigger than the world and had a lot of parts: “If you read the dictionary you’ll learn from me.”

They then played with Duplos and Carly mentioned that he had woken up a lot last night. I asked him why he didn’t sleep well last night and he said he heard noise downstairs. We were skeptical that he heard any noise and he joked “Maybe David was chewing gum again in our house, right?” “He’s putting it on our pictures, and my kitchen, and the flowers outside!” He said there was no blue gum though. We discussed eye colors and he said my eyes were “boring”. He went and inspected Cherie’s eyes, then went to Carly. I went to take a shower. He showed Cherie GroRecycling, then I took him up for his bath. Washed his hair and he insisted I blow dry it. I blow dried it and brushed it in the bedroom. He asked Cherie if he could have one of the nut treats. She let him have two to help him recover from the bath. He said “Warning, warning. Not mama food.”

We went downstairs, and a bit later Chuck was teaching him about ‘suggestions’. August caught on and offered Chuck suggestions: “I suggest you wear that shirt every other day.” “I suggest you eat cereal twice a day.” August then wanted to play with the alien, so we had a mystery to solve. Today we talked about how solving mysteries is more than just finding clues, but also finding things that aren’t clues – that is, ruling things out. He found the alien in the toy box, then took the time machine to dinosaur times.

We left at 11:25, driving to Tira to see the Saturday market. August joked about Cherie’s fat, and she pointed out he had fat on his body too. He responded “What do you mean? I don’t have any nushy gooshie…I’m not as old as you!” He ate more of the snack mix we had bought before our Jordan trip. It seemed like there were more and more peanuts and Cherie joked that they were reproducing. But August decided “Well, peanuts can’t make babies so I guess we’re gonna run out.”

It’s only about 10 kilometers and 20 minutes to Tira. But you have to drive south, then loop back around to the north as there’s only one paved road into the Arab town. As we got close to town traffic stopped. So we parked at the edge of the road and walked. We hadn’t brought a stroller so I carried August most of the time.

He was singing the Smithereens song “Top of the Pops” on his own as we walked. He’s asked about what the song is about a couple times. When I was getting tired he said he was a generator that made every kind of power. I said I operated on pizza, coffee, and tea power, so then he was generating pizza.

We couldn’t find the market and wandered through town. Sort of headed towards a green area on the map, then east to a roundabout. Found a shawarma place and ate lunch there, getting shawarma pita sandwiches. August liked the meat and ate the chickpeas from the plate of hummus. I got him an orange juice. I asked the guy at the counter where the market was and it turned out we had basicallly walked by it early in our mile+ walk into town.

Chuck and Cherie had decided to walk home from there. So we walked west together for a bit, then Google Maps took them north and we headed west and south.

We found the market and wandered around. Kind of a normal household goods market, but still interesting. And with a couple of food places. August stopped to play with bath toys and a spinning sea monster toy at one place, then was playing along to some super music (a song called “Bababa”) at a CD stand. Finally, Carly stopped to get a shrak bread sandwich to take back. August watched the woman baking the bread and in particular the bubbles forming. August then saw the sample sandwiches and the one made with Nutella. I could sense what he want, although he hadn’t asked yet. When I said we’d get one sometime in the future but that for now we had pie and ice cream at home he was disappointed.

As we headed out we saw a little girl crying. I then saw the mom looking at the girl’s foot and I said “Oh, she hurt her foot.” August was excited and said it was the first time we knew why a kid was crying. Not entirely true, as we’ve seen kids get hurt and cry, but he was on to something; Usually we don’t know and he wants us to speculate on why the kid is crying.

On the way to the car he was chanting “pizza power generator” so I chanted with him. We got driving at 2:10. We listened to “Top of the Pops” twice, then “Go”. We were home at 2:35.

Carly was making watermelon juice and he wanted a water and watermelon chunk experiment. They put chunks of water melon in water in a plastic container to see what happens. They got out the number line and did some math.

I learned about airwander.com and Carly and I discussed possible stopovers on future summer travel. Alas, too late for this year. August got the musical instruments out, but then found the stick to the frog instrument, but no frog. It was a mystery. We searched some more downstairs, then he and I went upstairs to investigate in the drawers. No luck. But he did find the squishy balls from Gramma and Grampa and the smiley face he bought at the park. He threw them down the stairs.

Carly started hiding eggs for him outside. Carly’s started correcting him on verb conjugations of irregular verbs, as sometimes he seems receptive. Not this time: He said “I seed you hide it.” “Can you say ‘saw’?” “No. Cuz that’s not the word I use.”

I had told him earlier that “Top of the Pops” was the first Smithereens song I had heard, and it was as a video. I found a video for it on YouTube (although I’m not sure it is the correct one) and tried to show him. He was intrigued, but eggs being hidden was more intriguing.

She hid eggs eggs for him twice. I helped him find eggs. We went in and he requested water drink. We made it and he drank it outside. He went in to the bathroom, and they ended up discussing sukkot and why some people don’t have money. When I came around he switched to me getting upsidedownia. One of the cures involved eating rocks. I said that rocks were hard, and he made chewable rocks: “Apsacapsabillia” – rocks that are softer than water. He had a very specific pronunciation for it, and taught it to me until I had it down.

Chuck and Cherie made it back. They had stopped at Tiv Taam and brought me a bottle of port.

August and I did rubber stamps and he had me spell ‘upsidedownia’ and something else. He said he wants the teachers and kids at school to call him August, but he was indifferent to learning how to spell his name.

We then read the rest of The 13-Story Treehouse. Chuck and Cherie started dinner time. I got August a dish of the cheesy noodles and cabbage and carrots. Cherie brought him a bowl of broccoli and cauliflower. He ended up eating a bunch of veggies – more than the pasta. Chuck got him pie and ice cream, then played a little game with August, circling the table while he waited for August to sit down. As he was eating, August pointed to a berry and asked Chuck “Are you gonna tell me that has my name on it?” Earlier in the day when August was eating Cheerios Chuck was telling him which Cheerio had his name on it.

Inside, Carly started some cleanup. August said we had “The mystery of the missing lowercase Z” as that letter was missing from the rubber stamp set earlier. He helped Carly roll up the number line. The splat balls are gettin
g old and seem to be dissolving. He poked one on the top of the pokey plant and it started leaking. We took it outside and he squirted most of the water out of it.

Carly took him for a walk to do recycling and they went to the park for a little bit. He told me he did the shaky thing and went on the spiderweb swing. He told Carly “The password for the locker thing is 14 14 14.” They were back at 7:45.

He ran in and told me I had a consequence for reading the words “stupid” and “idiot” to him in The 13-Story Treehouse. He has picked up on the words and started using them with Carly. He said my consequence was that I couldn’t have any work time or use my iPad for the rest of the evening. Carly read Thump, Quack, Moo to him, then parts of Z for Zeus.

I took him upstairs at 8:20. His mind was really racing and he was doing a lot of talking: “thread power” “smelling generator”. He said he wanted to sleep with me in the bed, but then changed his mind and wanted to be on the floor. We called Carly up to say goodnight, and he sad he changed his mind and wanted to go to sleep with her. We gave it a try though. He said I could sing 3 songs. He was very nearly asleep and couldn’t keep his eyes open. He got sad and I said I’d go get mama. He said “Thank you”. She came up and I still lay next to him and he fell asleep after a couple minutes, about 8:55.

We were up just after 7. He was wanting me to steal Carly’s phone and then a tissue while in bed. Downstairs he ate Cheerios on the couch, then Cherie read Cam Jansen and the Lion Lunch Mystery. I let him watch Julius Jr. then it froze. He got sad and I let him watch on iPad. I went and took a shower. As I was finishing up my shower he wanted to come in and use the bathroom. While he was on the toilet I asked why he had to use this toilet and couldn’t go downstairs. He said the sink was plugged with gum. I asked who had been chewing gum in our house and he said “It was David (Dah-veed), the neighbor…He’s been doing it at night when we’re asleep…he should have a consequence.”

He discovered he could make mouth bubbles. In his bath he made bubbles and chanted “agitate, agitate, agitate, agitate…”

As we finished with his bath, Carly and Cherie left to go to the big Tiv Taam and Ace. Chuck had left a bit earlier and was planning to meet them at Ikea. While they were gone I hid eggs outside, then inisde. He tried his balance bike for a minute. He was hungry and wanted oatmeal. He told me to make it just like mama does. I said I was, but then he told me that mama makes it in a big bowl, then pours it into a Zinnie bowl. I just had it in a Zinnie bowl. I covered it with another bowl, but he hypothesized that there’d be too much pressure and oatmeal would still spill out. His hypothesis proved correct, although not much actually spilled out.

While I was making the mango part he brought over the meditation bells that Cherie brought and was using them as a pulley on his fingers. Right as I was telling him to take them over a rug he dropped them on the hard floor. May have been the moment that led to our later troubles, although it was 10am, so shouldn’t have been a big deal…

He then started asking questions: “A person doesn’t have arms. How do they do their jobs and stuff?” He then asked about people that didn’t have arms or legs and we talked about quadriplegics and services for people with handicaps. He also asked how prosthetics could work.

I realized that everyone else was gone so we could listen to our loud music. He chose the Chemical Brothers, and asked me to pick him up so we could have a dance party. Earlier, Carly had written ‘now’ on the blackboard and he had copied it. He now erased the ‘n’ and changed it to ‘wow’. He showed me the structure they had made out of Duplos, then took it all apart and we made a big block that was the layers of ground.

As we finished that up, Carly, Chuck, and Cherie got home. Ikea had been closed due to Pesach/Passover. I went up to rest for a bit, and they made watermelon juice.

I found out yesterday evening that Thursday had actually been Palestinian Children’s Day. When we had celebrated Palestinian Mother’s Day we had talked about how there was also a Children’s Day. So I told him that today was Palestinian Children’s Day. I was going to take him out to pizza and then to a park. He chose Ra’anana Park. He wasn’t happy about Carly staying home and asked, we’re not sure why, “Are you going to talk while you work?…You, know, say words with your mouth?”

They typed words on her computer and I got ready. They were robots talking to each other, then turned into robot pirates.

So August and I got going about 12:20. We drove into town but VIPizza was closed. We headed south on 4 and went to the mall. We went inside and Pizza Hut was also closed, although almost all of the other eating places were open. He wanted to play in the indoor play area though. No one else around. So we started playing in there. After awhile two girls came and one of them pretended to be a cat and the other, the older one, rode the squirrel thing and chased August. He had a lot of fun with that, even as he was a little scared and would hide on me. More and more kids showed up. He saw other kids doing forward rolls, so started doing them himself. We then worked on a head stand. He said he knew what that was: “I seed it in that christmas book…You know, that What Do You Do with h an Idea? book.” He also did the crab walk.

We were there for the busy time, then the crowds started to dissipate. We played attack squirrel ourselves now, and when other kids were playing with the squirrel he was pretending to be the squirrel (getting squished, etc.) when someone else was on it.

We took a break and he lay on the edge and rested, then we had a snack. It emptied out and once again we were the only ones. Played more attack squirrel. He kept asking what else he could do there, and I taught him the standing long jump and he practiced that, and we did more head stands.

We went to the bathroom at 2:30. He ripped off toilet paper on his own. I told him not to rip off more. He tried to convince me to let him rip more: “But when you practice something more you get better at it. Can I practice more?”

We went outside and he wanted to play in the outside play area, which was busy with kids. We played on the plane and pretended to fly to Cyprus, Morocco, South America, and San Carlos. There was a girl and a boy playing on the plane with us. The girl had colors waved into her hair and he was intrigued by that. He then went over on the train with another girl. She showed him her lemur stuffed animal. I asked, in Hebrew, what it was. she went and talked to her mom and came back and told me the Hebrew word for lemur.

Finally, after 3 hours of playing at the mall, he was ready to head home. He hadn’t shown interest in getting other food, and was fine that we never made it to Ra’anana Park.

We came home and I made a banana peanut butter chocolate smoothie. What he’d actually wanted last time I’d made a mango strawberry one. Carly said “This is really good.” He said “Yes. I agree with that mama.” She ended up drinking too much and it gave her a stomach ache. For something he said “I did. But I can try to do it again though.”

Carly went to Younes to get some of the salads and tamboon bread. August was in the bathroom and he was being photons. He could see all the colors. We talked about x-rays and utraviolet and infrared. He asked where the poop was before it came out of your body, so we looked it up in the anatomy app. We also looked up what the gallbladder and kidney do.

He noticed how the front axle tilts on his tractor, so we talked about why that is and then made a bumpy road for the tractor. Carly got home.

Cherie said we won’t starve tonight. He replied “What do you mean? We don’t ever starve at night.” He and I took the light up ball upstairs and played with it in the dark. Then did more road for the tractor. Carly went and lay down, then came down after awhile. August was being sick as well: “I’m sick cuz I tried-ed the smoothie.” He said he was copying her because “I’m the same except I don’t have any nursings.”

We all ate dinner outside. Carly went back upstairs for awhile. He wanted to follow but I bribed him to stay down with Julius Jr. He hadn’t eaten dinner (full on smoothie) but ate a stick of cucumber that Chuck gave him. He and I then read Thump, Quack, Moo. Carly came down and they had a little love competition. She then taught him a country finding game on the globe using hot/cold.

The three of us went for a little walk, about 30 minutes. Came back to find a stereo sitting up on the ledge outside our kitchen windows, blaring music into our kitchen. A gift from the neighbor. I reached out and turned down the volume. Got it all on video. The neighbor came out. Videotaped the entire confrontation. Chuck came out and talked to him as well. He tried to come in through our gate, which was locked. He then wanted Chuck to come over to his yard to discuss the situation. Anyway, we talked to the landlord. Neighbor is moving out at the end of the month. Really should have called the police, but the landlord was against it.

Carly had taken August upstairs, then had him watchin
g Julius Jr. He seemed pretty unaware of what had happened, thankfully.

Cherie had made a mystery berry pie (the frozen mixed berries they have at the store) and we ate pie and ice cream. As he ate he made yummy noises to the tune of “Rocket Man”. When he was done he said “I’m full of pie and ice cream”. We took him up, got him ready, and he was asleep by 8:40.