Author: Ryan/Dada

He got up at 6:10. Sat up with me for a couple minutes, then said he was going to go find mama. When I came down he was watching episode 2 of Wild Kratts again, about whales and squid. He had been telling Carly about water pressure. When Carly headed to work he said “I love you so much” without any prompting. He showed me the Duplo that he and Carly had made last night and sat there admiring it for awhile. He then destroyed it and we made a big snake-like sort of structure that he then had the sisters play on.

Over on the couch he said “We should try a new food today.” It turned out he meant in a restaurant. We read a little of the Thea Stimson book, then watched one Smurfs story and a Julius Jr. episode. He then went and invented things under the table and on the couch. He asked me to clean the floor under table. He found the spring and made a bubble machine from it. We looked at the “Imagine” shirts that Cherie had sent for him and me, a black for me and pink for him. He said “What? I thought they would be different…I like the shirts Oma sent us.”

We then did a sort of hide and seek game with the spring hiding it in the shoes, etc. and giving him clues. We went up and I started a Wild Kratts episode for him. He chose the walrus episode. I meant to go take a shower while he watched but I ended up watching the whole thing. I then took my shower. He started another episode but then stopped it and came into the bathroom. In his room he hid the C from car puzzle from me, then was hiding it from himself. He said “I already looked under, between, front, and back of all the animals.”

He played with the squirt gun from the zoo in the bath. We went downstairs and he took the keys out of the piano, then helped me put it back together. He was then pretending to be a whale that was so big it destroyed our house. He was asking a lot of questions and making it har for me to make a smoothie. He told me “If you tell me when you were a kid it might not be exciting.” Made a banana and mango smoothie and we drank that. Then played Sound Rebound and Rockmate, a new little music app that we bought, and Zen Studio, which is sort of a meditative geometric coloring book thing.

He wanted more crackers and peanut butter and said “I’m gonna be thankful for that. Please. That’s how I’m gonna get you to give me crackers.” Instead he ate the peanut butter sandwich from yesterday. He wanted more and I told him there was just one slice of bread and I could make a half. He said he didn’t want but I made it anyway. He was surprised to find it folded over – he had pictured just a slice of bread with peanut butter on it.

We got going and he was out on the bike when I went back in the house to get the backpack he yelled “Buuuuuuh!!!” I asked “What was that?” “Uhh, a loud noise.”

We walked over to the mall. It was busy because of the Friday market. He went and played around the playground for a few minutes. Sort of tried to run around with some other kids, but mainly climbed on things. He then said he was ready to go.

We went inside to the hair place and the guy, Egan, was able to fit me in. August walked around the chair, wearing my hat backwards, and watched him cut my hair. Pretty fascinated. At one point he said “Look at all those special tools!” And when he used the blow dryer August went “Whoa!” Later August would say he didn’t like how the guy moved my ears. That would be really ticklish for August. Egan gave him a couple little candies. He ate one lemon Mentos while he watched and another after. When we got to the grocery store I couldn’t find the fruit chew thing for a second. August started to get upset, then I found it and he happily announced “Mystery solved!”

Did our shopping, but no raspberries, fresh or frozen, for our breakfast bread recipe. Got zucchini instead for zucchini bread. He did most of the putting of food on the conveyor belt. On the walk home he decided on the long way, but then we went down the steps that lead to where the big Israeli flag is.

At home he said he didn’t want to make the bread today. We played the kids world atlas app and he liked the game where you put a flag where you think an animal lives and it then shows you how close you are. We were discussing the different continents and which animals live there. Then some of the Rockmate app, and finally Zen Studio. He did some of the templates, then drew a picture on his own and said it was a police app. He went to the bathroom and was now a whale again that could go “Twice as deep as the deepest whale that ever lived could dive.”

Then to Duplos: “It’s going to be my greatest invention ever…it’s not done yet but I call it a popcorn projector.” Carly came home. He kept working on the popcorn machine and added a part that adds toppings. He joked “It has za’atar, baby dinosaur bones…” Carly went outside and he and I kept playing Duplos. He was upset when I wouldn’t let him watch a show or eat Cheerios. Carly came in and we were getting food. She told story of when she was pregnant she tried to run to go get pizza at school but couldn’t. She ended by saying “But I still got pizza.” I said “Surprisingly, a Hollywood film hads never been made about this saga.” August was saying something and stopped to say “Oh, dada” and went back to his sentence.

He ate a little peanut sauce and rice and tofu. We did more of the atlas app and pins game. They read The Sound of Silence and finished it upstairs. He had tried to complain that Carly doesn’t read as well as I do, claiming “She makes up words.” Then read The I Love You Book. I said good night and he was asleep by 7:30.

A busy afternoon, and he was pretty worn out by the end of activity class.

He and Carly had a restless night. He was up at 5:55. I was awake but slow to get up. Carly brought Cheerios in to the bedroom for him, then he moved up on the bed with me. He then lay down next to me and put his legs under the cover. We stayed there a good 20 minutes before I finally got up. They nursed, then played snakes and ladders. The started to make up crazy rules in snakes and ladders, like goin up the snakes and down the ladders and being able to steal the other person’s roll. Carly headed to school a bit later than usual, taking the car to take the rocking chair to her classroom. August played Toca Blocks. He was asking my help for somethings, but a theme started for the day started: “I can do that myself…I already knowed that.” He told me “I don’t remember if I sleep-in.” And “You shouldn’t set alarms cuz I always hear them.”

He ate some peanut butter crackers. He said “There should be a limit to how many blocks you can use in Toca Blocks.” I said “But that would make it hard.” Him: “Then it would be a challenging game.” Me: “Dada doesn’t much like challenging games.” Him: “But then you get to learn from your mistakes.” Me: “That’s true.” A bit later, after I told him we’d discovered everything I knew about in the game, he said “Can you delete Toca Blocks from my iPad? I don’t like it anymore.”

He sang  “Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream… microscopic dreams.” I was updating apps on my iPad, and he was afraid that an update would change one of the apps he dances to: “Don’t ever install (update) apps I dance to…cuz I like to dance to them a lot.” We tried toSkype with my parents but they weren’t online. He played Fox and Sheep Music Box and I exercised.

We then went upstairs and I introduced him to Wild Kratts, the other show that Derek reminded me Thatcher loves. As we watched episode 1 August said “I love this…as much as Thatcher does.” I liked that he didn’t say “more than”. I watched a little, then took a shower. After my shower I finished episode 2 with him, then he wanted to play with the Smurf figures. I used them to tell a story where Gargamel kidnapped Baby, but the Smurfs got Azrael, then traded to get Baby back.

We did his shower, then went down stairs where he played with his pivot point and lever. He said one of those was the word of the day, and I suggested ‘water pressure’, which he had loved from Wild Kratts: “Yeah, that’s the word of the day.”

We left at 11:30. We saw David next door, and he pointed out that there was a guy working on our water pipes (they are connected), installing a new meter he said that would make it cheaper. Didn’t quite understand that. On the way to town August pedaled fast and I called it Mach speed, so we ended up discussing the speed of sound and the sound barrier. We got to the hair place. It was open, with two people cutting hair, but they said they were booked today. Odd, as the first time I walked in it was just one guy working and not busy. I put my hat on August, backwards, and he got on the bike and wore it much of the way into town before saying “I like your hat but you can have it back.” He pointed to where they’re installing a new sidewalk and said “They’re making progress on that.” He then said it for the new mall across the street, and later for a house we saw on the way to school.

We went to the coffee shop and got our usual table. I had told him I knew what we were ordering for lunch, but that he could have whatever drink he wanted, and of course it was the hot chocolate. I had a latte. He was surprised when it had marshmallows on top this time. When the server noticed my hand and asked about it August commented that everyone notices it and asks.

I heard the Beatles’ “Blackbird” playing on the stereo and pointed it out to August he said he liked it. When the next song was “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” I said something about it and he started talking about how he wanted to point out the songs. We practiced some Hebrew using the popsicle stick things from class last week. Then our green shakshuka came. It was spinach in a cream sauce with Bulgarian cheese and an egg. And it came with a little loaf of bread that we used to for dipping. The side was roots salad, with skinny sticks of beets, potatoes, and carrots. August asked “Why if you have a mustache you get egg in it?” And said “That’s spinach-y goodness.” He ate a lot of all of it, including the spinach.

He was generating power from the fans overhead and also said “I use a lot of power. That’s why I made a lot of hats for everyone to wear that provide me power.”

We heard U2’s “Moment of Surrender” and I pointed it out. He liked it and wanted it added to his playlist and said “I call it a better name…’The life of breeze’.” Then “Dada, you don’t really let me point out songs. I want you to let me point out songs all the time.” He then played with the abacus and tilted it to make an included plane. We discussed friction, and winding inclined planes, and he was a winding inclined plane winding up a rope. We then built a raft and a magic treasure box out of some plastic building block things.

We got going and walked to the park by the library. We went on the merry-go-round. We’d seen a few babies in prams, so he pretended to be a baby now, sleeping in a pram. I had heard Elton John’s “Rocket Man” in Everything Sucks! on Netflix the other day and thought he would like it since he always has rockets. I played it. He didn’t like that I know more songs than him: “Can you let me listen to more songs than you? Please? Can we please listen to songs you’ve never heard? But you need to not watch it.” I suggested he listen to some new music with Carly when I wasn’t around and he could tell me about it. I asked how that sounded: “Not so good. I want to listen to music by myself.” He then broke out crying.

He sat in my lap for a few minutes and we got going. He insisted on going home as there were fun things there that would make him feel better, but when he calmed down he was okay headed to school. There were some loud mynah birds that flew by. He didn’t see them and I said I could point mynah birds out to him sometime. He grumpily said “I’ll point out minah birds to YOU.”

We were walking at 1:50. Stopped at the construction site to watch the work and he pointed out the rods and I told him it was rebar, which we’ve discussed before, but not while seeing it, and we discussed what it is for. As we got walking he lifted up his shirt and said “Dada, I want to tell you something…see that little system? It beeps whenever there’s an earthquake.”

A few times he mentioned wanting to get a new handle for his bike to replace the right one, as it is kind of scratched up around the edge. I told him to not think about it and he said “It’s messed up…I can’t stop noticing it.”

We were at the WBAIS library after 2. We returned 5 books. They have things up for the lunar New Years and he learned he was born in the year of the horse. He didn’t like that I was year of the dragon and Carly was year of the goat. He wanted us to have the same one. He started crying again and we sat on a bench. We went back to the book area he did a little art on the computer. I found 4 books that he liked the look of: The Sound of Silence, My Many Colored Days by Dr. Seuss, Great Day for Up by Dr. Seuss, and a Thea Stilton graphic novel called Mystery at Sea.

He needed the bathroom so we went. He saw a pipe coming through the wall and we followed it to the drinking fountain. Back inside he took the books to Liz to check out. He told her and Amanda “I’m in a do it by myself mood.” I told them about the I Can Do It Myself book. And he asked me “Can you let me do everything on my own?” We went back into the kids book area for awhile and did
treasure hunts, using the books on the shelves and beanbags and squares on the floors for clues.

At 3 we headed to the preschool. We stopped by Bat-Chen’s classroom but she is still not back. At the preschool we had a few minutes to hang out downstairs. Bar asked him to come to her house again. They were all discussing ages and August told the director he is a 5-year old now. We went up to Hebrew class, which was all about the story of Purim. She told it with hand puppets. Then they cut out pictures of the characters and glued them on paper and colored them. August had a lot of scissors practice, with me holding the paper. They then finished with listening to a song which we’ve heard before: “My little little clown, why won’t you dance with me?” They danced around to it and August had a lot of fun with that. I sneaked down the stairs for a minute. He saw me going down. I came right back up and he wasn’t upset but wanted to know what I was doing.

Words: king, queen, the end (hasof?) Who is he? Who is she? People: Haman, Esther, Mordechai, King Ehash Verosh

Other girl: Leduh

He had played at the kitchen stuff outside and we were outside discussing how he felt about me not being there all the time when Carly showed up. She had driven to Ikea after school to get more stuff for her classroom.

He said “Oh no” when he saw Carly. He still wanted to play. We went over to the playground and he played on top of the car, then we played on the teeter totter, and he had to go cook in the wood chips area for a minute before we left.

Drove up to activity class. Carly tried to start class with him but he just wanted to nurse. I took over. There was a new girl and mom in class today. August did fine through the animals part and then we played with plastic squares. We were taking turns being horse and rider with it when he hit his mouth on it going in. We went out and took a break with Carly. We went back into class for a few minutes, but then when they were picking up the squares he was upset when Yav got some of the yellow squares.

He was still upset as she got out the parachute. But he loved the parachute part, which he called a tornado. He liked picking up the balls and throwing them back on top of the parachute. They picked up the balls, then he wanted his water bottle. He was drinking from that and walked behind Sigal who was walking backwards. He was really upset and I was about to take him out but he said “I don’t want to miss the tunnel part!” He did the tunnels part for a couple minutes, but kept being upset. He said “This is not good!” We headed out, leaving just a couple minutes early.

At home he was still having a hard time. Carly told him his dinner choices and he wanted me to change the dinner choices. He played Duplos with me, then Carly and I switched and kept playing Duplos. I went up and did some work. They also read some of Thea Stilton.

He came to see me. He excitedly told me about eating dinner and eating enough that Carly gave him dried cheerios. I said we had had a busy day and he said “That’s why I was wored out at activity class.” And he told me that the most upsetting part of the day was actually when they were picking up the balls after the parachute was over and he didn’t get to pick up many of them. I hadn’t even realized he was upset about that.

I took him in to bed and he practiced putting on his own shirt and pants on his own. He’ll get both those down pretty quickly if we have him practice. We brushed his teeth. Carly came up and he started a little competition on who loved whom the most. I said we all tied and all won, and he said that mama said that mamas win. To Carly he said “I love you more than any mama or dada has ever loved anyone.” As I left he said “I hope dada doesn’t need a lot of work.” I left them at 7:25. I heard them come out a few minutes later as he had to get a drink of water. He fell asleep without nursing. He suggested they do the timer thing that I do. It took him a few minutes and was asleep a little after 7:45.

Carly was back to regular school again. He was up about 6:30. Came down and I picked him up and held him until Carly came out of the bathroom. After Carly left he wanted peanut butter crackers. He saw them on the plate and said  “That’s shaped like a toilet. I’m about to eat a toilet.” He watched Julius Jr. and ate his crackers. We then made a Duplo machine and exercised. He played the Me app for a bit, then we did some Wizard School. I wanted to get going to the zoo, so we went upstairs. Had to play with the Smurf figures briefly, then I was able to take a shower. He came in and had fun locking my watch for a minute. When I put on lotion he wanted me to make letters. He said one looked like a letter from shakmook language and said “I’ve been teaching birds to read shakmook language all day.” He wanted a Thatcher treat during our drive but said “I’m afraid to tell mama. She might say ‘aargh’…that’s my hypothesis.”

He also decided he wanted to make a backwards A ah apples song. Downstairs, I got his clothes off, then he had some naked time before I got them on. He put just his shoes on and said “Why do we always have Dr. Seuss songs stuck in our heads?” We were then humming a Seuss song and he was dancing around with the mop. Pretty funny.

Got him dressed, then cleaned up a bit. We had found a few of the math blueberries in the container with the musical instruments. He was playing with them and said “They do make a great noise. Maybe that’s why they’re in the instruments.” We left just after 10. Listened to music on the way down, mainly the Julius Jr. song on repeat many, many times. Took just over an hour on the way down. No reduction of traffic after rush hour, apparently.

We went to the zoo first this time. For the driving part August mainly stood up in the back seat, holding on to tightly to the headrests on the front seats. We saw a hippo walk into the water.

At the zoo part we went in and played first at the playground for a few minutes. He went on the zip line things twice. He then decided he was ready for lunch. We went into the restaurant area. He got a hotdog meal and I did the hamburger. The hotdog and hamburger were okay, but the fries left a lot to be desired. He was excited though that canned mango juice was an option and we both went for that. His meal came with a little plastic water gun. August talked about how Carly would want to eat outside, but he wanted to eat inside. We read Seuss’s You’re Only Old Once.

We got going and took about an hour walking the primates loop of the zoo. He posed as gorillas in a cut-out photo thing. At the gorillas they have a family tree of the gorillas, there are eight or so. Apparently Lukas, the patriarch, is kind of famous, as I heard two groups pointing out Lukas and calling him by name before I even found the sign. Then a high school group came and the tour guide was pointing them out by name. August was on his bike, and the high school girls rushed and shoved in front of him to take photos, but then one of them noticed and pulled him right up to the glass. We headed on to the orangutan and gibbons. There are ropes that you can hang on, and August did that.

We got going on a walk around the loop. Saw all sorts of primates. They have a lot. We saw a baby baboon and he asked about the baboons’ bottoms, so we read the sign. Then saw a mandrill up close, eating some plants. He walked on a balancing log by a bats cage, then needed a bathroom, so we kept going. Not a long time in the zoo itself, but August wanted to do more of the driving part. Went to the bathroom by the parking lot at 1, then went to do more of the driving part. August said “What does stupendous mean? Treats is stupendous!” After he ate some apple I let him share the last cookie from our batch.

This time August sat in the front seat. Saw most of the herbivores, like the antelopes and addax and wildebeest. Listened to old Story Pirates stories as we went. In one of the author interviews they sang a song called “I Sing You a Song”. August liked it and we found it on Apple Music and added it to his playlist. The lions were sort of hidden in the bushes this time.

I backed up at one point and August saw the backup camera screen. A few times he wanted me to put it in reverse so he could turn the wheel and see the lines change. The most exciting part was when we drove by the ostriches. They are curious of the cars. One walked right by August’s window and he said “Hi, ostrich!” Another came and looked in mine and pecked at the window.

We then went to the big playground in the Ramat Gan park next door. About 2:15. I mentioned that we hadn’t watched the nature show that Thatcher likes and that Oma recommended to us for a long time. I told him to remind me at home but he reminded me right away. He said “I reminded you here!”

He drove us along the brick edging as we went, which makes his voice sound funny as he sings, and apparently especially with his fingers in his ears. We got to the playground but played for just a minute with the sand toys which I’d brought along before he needed a bathroom. We found a nearby bathroom, then came back. He went on the big wheelchair accessible merry-go-round. He sat in one of the seats and said “This is small. There’s no WAY a wheelchair could fit in here.” He then sat in one of the little spinning seats and got himself spinning. He lounged in that and said “This is the life.” A reference to the Plant a Tree with Me book, which we haven’t read in a long time.

Had a bite of hotdog. Then said “I need a treasure map. Because we’re pirates’.” We did a bunch of silly treasure hunts, making him run and climb around the playground. Something binged ay one point and he said “It was my hotdog maker. It bings every time it makes a new kind of hotdog .” At one point we ran to the spider web thing and he said he won at first, then said “Actually, it’s a tie.” He’s liked the idea of ties since I introduced them.

He kept wanting to do one more treasure hunt. Finally pulled him away close to 3:30. Stopped at a part where there are little ramps to let him roll down them in the bike several times. He looked at the lake and wondered how deep it was and hypothesized about that. We then walked around the lake for the first time. He got a little upset when I said we didn’t have time to go to the coffee shop. But he liked a little sculpture garden, and climbed on one of them and wanted a photo of a couple others.

Got back close to the car at 4. There was a sax player sitting on a bench, and repeating a 4 note line that August liked and was repeating. August noted that it was actually 3 separate notes, as one was repeated.

We got driving and were listening to Story Pirates. At the end of one he heard them mention Twitter and asked about Twitter, then specifically told me about Plumdog and how Plumdog’s owner dresses her up and posts the photos on Twitter. He also said we should try Squarespace for free, as that’s one of the ads. He was impressed to find out that our blog is on Sqaurespace.

He had been doing the radio station thing on his bike and one of the songs I sang was “Take Me to Church” and he had asked if I made it up. I said no and explained how we used to listen to it and he’d fall asleep. Well on the drive back we switched to music – more Julius Jr. several times – then I played that song. It went quiet in back and I looked back and saw him with his eyes closed. And grinning. But he was also getting sleepy for real. Called Carly and had her talk to him. She promised him hot chocolate if he stayed awake. Then put on some “super music”and more Julius Jr. etc. He managed to stay awake. Although we forgot the hot chocolate.

We were home by 5:30. Carly and I were talking about her teaching and he asked her “Could you teach me something about Israel?” “Why do different countries have different people?” “Why do people eat different foods?” “What did
you teach your students about Israel?” Carly was telling him about different people and holidays in Israel and she told him about Yom Kippur “What is God?…How does God help you?” He was excited to find out that the Muslims spoke Arabic, and that a lot of them lived in Jordan, which he knew about, and asked why they lived there. He asked “Is there another name for Gob…you know; the person that helps you not die.”

Carly then Skyped with Derek. Thatcher told us about the lizard he caught. August was being a baby and cuddling with us. Afterwards, August and I watched Coyote Peterson, which  was the show I was thinking of earlier. We had asked Derek for the name. August chose a video where he is bitten by a giant desert centipede. August watched the first few minutes over and over: “That’s the cool part.” He liked the centipede bite and also the guy getting bit by a big snapping turtle.

He played a couple minutes of Robot Lab, then Carly took him upstairs. We finished the last round up on the bed. I left them at 7:15. August urged me to not stay up too late again.

He came down at 7:10. Carly was outside so I picked him up and we went out to get her. He cuddled on my shoulder, and told her “I sleeped in.” They nursed and he requested Cheerios. He snacked on them, not doing anything else, and asked me “Why do I always want Cheerios and peanut butter crackers in the daytime?” He then watched Julius Jr. I did some work while they put keys in the piano randomly, then took out the insides of the piano. August ended up over in the red chair showing Carly how he uses the mop as a lever: “That’s a pivot point, and that’s a pump pushing it up and down. I’m teaching mama how a lever works…See, it’s harder.” I took a shower. They had been playing with the wood blocks as dominoes, making a tower, and making a playground. They had found that the cylinder ones don’t make good dominoes. When he finished his playground he said “Look, that’s a great challenge for kids.”

Carly didn’t leave for Model UN/Conflict Resolution until 9:30. As she left I got August to tell her to have fun. He added “But not much of fun cuz I don’t want to miss out on the fun.” Then “Mama! I want to come with you!”

We built a playground, then went up and did his bath. He scrubbed the shower, I started laundry, and we watched a couple Marble Machine videos. Back downstairs I made French toast and he ate two full pieces. He asked me to bring down the instruments container and we played those. He took apart the cheap tambourine. Then played some music apps: Auxy, Bloom, and GarageBand: “I like drum kits a lot.”

He ate four and a half strawberries and said he wanted pizza. I heated us up a couple of slices and took it outside to eat. We went out for a few minutes, but he barely tried his pizza. It was rather quick after breakfast, and he had also said he wanted to eat pizza at the shop. I got some of the books to put in the library and wrote a couple a couple numbers inside the covers. August got upset that he couldn’t write and stopped helping do the tape. Over on the couch he demanded crackers and threw his bowl. I went to pick him up and take him upstairs for a timeout and he untaped my cast and I stepped on one of the piano keys and cracked it.

We sat on the bed and he calmed down, then we went down and glued the piano key. He said unwrapping my cast had been my punishment for not letting him write. We then ended up acting out germs and white blood cells on the couch. He then sang the line “Emily Pearl is a big girl” to Old MacDonald. I realized it was a line from a Skybrary book called I Can Do It Myself! Which he only read once or twice.

He wanted to play Human Body but then found the Me app by the same company. We already own it but haven’t played it, so downloaded it, but then it froze. We went in the kitchen where I was looking for my drink mix stuff. He had gotten some random items out of the cupboards, then spilled the popcorn and some of it had fallen on the floor. He was first a Sweep-a-matic 3000. Then a Picking-up-machine 4000 (the new model). I looked behind the oven and took the microwave down to do it. He helped me clean the top of the microwave.

Carly got home at 1:50 as I was making the drink, having found what I wanted up on the top shelf. August excitedly told her about how the drink mix works, then drank a lot: “I like-ed that.”

I was sitting under the black chair and he crawled under it and swept with his hand. He played under there, pushing me from below. Then he sat in the chair and had me do it to him. He ate some more strawberries, then we got ready to go on a walk. He played with the Teuni Teuni Monster Drum and rolled it on the floor. He speculated on why it rolled back to him, and Carly taught him ‘hypothesis’: “My hypothesis is momentum.” He had also seen some tomato slime on the cutting board and thought it was ice cream. He kept talking about it: “Mama confused me once. I thought the tomato was ice cream.” We said he could eat his cookie on the bike. I put it in the snack bag and he wondered where it was: “I smell a cookie. That’s a hint.”

We went for a walk. We walked down to the tunnel that echoes, as Carly hasn’t been there yet. August showed her how we were magnets as we walked. Got done with the tunnel at 3 and headed back. August had wanted to go to the park by Jack’s house, but on the way back changed his mind. We had a good discussion on the way back about “rule party” and how he needs to be in charge sometimes.

We were home at 3:30. I was feeling tired, so Carly took him to the store. They drove to the big Tiv Taam at 4 and were back at 4:50. I watched some Altered Carbon and did some work. When he was home he was hungry and I heated up some peas and meatballs for him. He ate that, then he wanted to play blocks with him. He said “Oh, I have control but you can play with me.” A reference to our earlier discussion about being in charge sometimes. I asked him how shopping went and he said “I behaved 100 percent. But I lost Mama’s list.” They found it. I talked to Carly later and she said he stayed in the cart the whole time, then did most of the putting things on the conveyor belt and most of the bagging at the end.

We then did Duplos and made a structure: “We’re putting on the finishing touches then we’re done.” We had the zookeeper play on it and he said “It’s for acrobats.” Then he said it was a machine. We played part of a snakes and ladders game, then read Monster Party. He got the salad spinner out and played with that.

Carly made ginger peanut sauce and spring rolls and we ate some of those. August got to lick the spatula off, but then basically threw it at Carly when he was done. After a little timeout with her he went back to his Duplo machine. He said “This cord is called the umbilical cord.” He was then on the couch with Carly and they played out a little routine they’ve developed: Him: “Why do you always say…?” Her: “Why so you always say ‘Why do you always say?’?” Him: “Why do you always say ‘Why so you always say ‘Why do you always say?’?’” Etc.

Carly went up to take a shower and he and I read the Cat and Alphabet books. We then read two Bob books from the Sight Words collection. Or rather, he read them. We haven’t read anything from that box since we’ve been in Israel. We read book 17, “The Old Truck”, and I just read the first word of each page and he read the rest. Sentences like “Can Ted make the old truck new?” We then read book 20, “Before and After”. He read it almost entirely on his own, with sentences like “Before a snack, Peg will wash her hands.” Carly came down and saw the end of it. She then realized the books have little activities at the beginning. That book suggested using words like ‘when’, ‘while’, ‘until’ in sentences. Carly asked if he could do it, and he was just making up nonsense. Then I modeled for him, using a funny sentence. He caught on and we did several. He laughed a lot, and would ask if we thought his sentence was funny. We looked at the activities in a couple others and discussed those as well. One was listing adjectives. He did a pretty good job of listing adjectives, and came up with ‘unlovable’.

We played some more of the Me app, which had frozen earlier in the day. August made a cool picture of himself, then drew a picture of an alien.

Carly took him up and got him ready for bed. Did a little kaleidoscope cards. I left them at 8:15.

Word of the day was ‘Castledonia’, which is one of the places they go in Julius Jr.

He woke up sometime after 6, but then fell back to sleep until 7:10. He watched Julius Jr. When Carly said he’d stop after an episode and then they’d reada book and play outside he agreed, but then turned and said “Dada, what do you think of that?” He sneakily started to watch another episode, then reluctantly agreed to play with Carly before she headed to school for the MUN/Conflict Resolution thing: “Okay.” They went and played Duplos: “That part’s pretty amazing, right?” He was doing some good humming/singing while they played.

I went upstairs and did a little work, then came back down before 9. They were still playing Duplos and had made a treehouse. She headed to school for the MUN/Conflict Resolution thing. We did a little more Duplos, then read some Smurfs, including the Clockwork Smurf story. He said he liked the other version, so then we watched the episode with Clockwork in it. I exercised. He picked up on a line in the Smurfs and said “They’re going to give him a taste of his own medicine.”

He went in the bathroom and asked me “Can you pee in garbage cans or not?” When I said no, and why would you be able to he replied “Because gross things go in garbage cans.” We went upstairs and he played some Sound Rebound and I took a shower. He came and hung out in the bathroom. He was playing with the fold-up stool and said “When they didn’t have drawbridges and doors they used this kind of door.” as he rotated the stool back and forth.

We did his bath, then went downstairs and he had some naked time. We had bought some of the meatballs at Ikea and I’d started those before his bath. He liked the meatballs, but then I set them in a bowl of broccoli and cheese. Carly had come home for lunch. He then got picky, and wanted the stir fry instead, but didn’t like the little cheese that had stuck to his meatballs. I think Carly traded some out for him and he ate some meatball, but nothing else.

I headed upstairs and worked, coming down at 12:55. They had been outside, and were now back at the Duplos. He had made a plant growing machine. August had wanted to play the alien and gas station game this morning and they didn’t have time. He asked for it again and she played it with him before she left. First time I’d seen it, and he was doing a lot of laughing as the gas sprayed everywhere, etc.

She headed back to school. He asked “Why did mama tell us we should go outside…she wants everyone to be outside when it’s sunny?” he was then a sticker finding machine, and I carried him around to find stickers. He was then the trapinator machine and we used treasure maps we got different places (eBay, etc.) to find treasure and he would detect traps. Ended up in the bedroom and we played with kaleidoscope cards.

Carly hadn’t been clear on her afternoon/evening plans and we hadn’t heard an update, so we were trying to figure out what to do. We were planning on walking up to town and trying to get my hair cut. We talked about picking up a pizza to bring home and we talked about noodle pizza and things I missed from Korea. Made a list. He says he didn’t miss anything. But he got kind of excited about noodle pizza.

He found Auxy on my iPad and we made another song. The program suggested the name ‘Jealous Wombat’ and he really liked that. We exported it as a video, and then he played with the settings a lot, figuring out how to change tempos and keys and scales on the fly. He was a machine changing with the tempo.

We got ready to go, and as we were going outside Shmuel was here. He said he needed to take a photo of the power meters. We talked a little and he said he wasn’t doing very well, but didn’t elaborate on why, and August wanted me to “make it up”. He also talked more about his missing purple bag.

We walked to town and stopped at the mall. Sadly the hair place was closed. We looked at a little toy/stationary store we hadn’t looked at before. August found a pink squishy ball kind of like the one he got from Bar. He played with it in the store and found out that it lit up. He wanted to buy it, but was then fine with putting it away when he was done.

We then stopped at the hardware store to see if they had keychains, as two of the metal loops on mine were all bent and the keys were falling out. The owner just happened to have two metal rings in his hand from something he had just stocked and gave them to me. Perfect.

We continued on to the pizza place. Took a few minutes translating the menu for fun and ordered a large pizza with mushrooms and Bulgarian cheese on half. While we were there we read There’s a Wocket in My Pocket, The Bippolo Seed, and Oh the Places You’ll Go! August ate a whole piece of pizza. I held the slice at first for him, then he was able to hold it by himself. We also had our usual juice packs.

Carly left school about 4:30 and came and picked up us and the pizza. We were home before 5. Carly and I had more pizza. She ate outside. August tried bringing the broom inside at one point, then was scraping the “gross stuff” on the ceiling outside the kitchen door. I had gone upstairs and when I came down he told me how Carly had changed her mind: first telling him he couldn’t do it, then saying it was okay.

We played with Duplos and he made machines: the tall-vi-nator 3000, which made things tall, and the “The Low-fat 3000…the name doesn’t mean anything.” Then a cookie shooting machine, and a gumball machine. He kept asking “Do you want to build a machine with me? I’m the greatest inventor ever!”

We talked about how he doesn’t miss anything about Korea. Said he remembers Logan. Debated whether August was a quiet kid. When I said he knew a lot of words so probably did more talking than a lot of kids his age. He then stopped talking to show how quiet he was. He also told us he didn’t want us to keep talking about Korea.

Carly was talking about what she did today and asked how much I knew about Hamas. August interjected, saying “I know a lot about Hamas…Do you want me to teach you?…They fight on the stove…and they EAT people!” Carly told me that he he hadn’t nursed during the night, but she still had a restless night due to bad dreams. He said  “I had so many bad dreams too! It’s just that I didn’t tell you them.” August said to Carly “Can I ask you a question? Tell me about when you were a kid.” Apparently she often tells him stories about when she was a kid before he goes to sleep.

They did some colored pencils, drawing parts of a cell. We then did blocks, and he made a machine that makes amphibians. He sang a short “zolta zebra flew away” song. Carly took him upstairs and he took a long time in the bathroom. I had set up the book display boards this morning, and he took all the books off of it, saying those were were the ones dada said he could read before bed. They read Ameli Bedelia Under Construction. I left them at 7:40.

He was up a bit before 7. I came down a little later and the iPad froze on him as he was watching Juliue Jr. I read Life on Mars to him, then we played with the blocks, making a big structure out of all of them before he knocked it all over with his head. He played Sound Rebound with Carly but got sad when she didn’t like when it made a lot of noise. He wanted the screen to fill up with the balls so it would quit, while she wanted to balls to fall off the screen so it would stay more music-like. He stayed sad for awhile and Carly asked what he was sad about. He did a good job of expressing his feelings: “Because you didn’t play with me!” Then turned it into a game by being sad together. We heard the gas get delivered outside. They played Toca Store on his iPad. He told Carly he lowered prices because customers didn’t like it being expensive. Carly turned it into a lesson in supply and demand. At one point she asked”Do you know what ‘stealing’ means?” He replied “That means taking something that belongs to someone without their permission.”

He switched to playing Toca Blocks on his own and Carly went outside. He finally agreed to go out with her if she got him crackers with peanut butter for him. I went and took a shower. When I came down he was sitting outside playing Toca Blocks and eating his crackers and peanut butter.

He got really upset when I tried to take him up to a bath – hitting me and biting my shirt. Carly and I switched and she got him up and in his bath. When he came down he did a nice job of entertaining himself while we finished getting ready to go. He built a structure out of Duplos and I suggested it was a preschool. He said it was the playground outside it: “Every time the kids go to preschool they can play at the playground for ten minutes. That’s nice, right?”

We left at 10:30. I remembered we hadn’t looked up a Velcro video. He said we forgot to look up videos of how you see. I mentioned rods and cones. He said no, when your eyes are closed. He’s very interested in the colors and shapes when his eyes are closed and when he covers them with his hands.

We drove to Ikea. A pretty successful shopping trip: throw pillows for the pillow covers we got in Jaffa, a couple outside chairs, a frame for my Shepard Fairey print, bins for books in Carly’s classroom, and various other small things. August did some foot prints and hopscotch, but his favorite thing was helping Carly get the bins for her classroom. He said “I can’t believe you let me get so much…It was so nice of you to do that.” Carly stood in line and August and I went to get food. It was just at noon. But no falafel for a half hour, so we settled for hotdogs and got one ice cream, which was sort of for sharing, but he had most of. He was really thankful for that as well.

We got home at 12:40. I did the pillows and picture frame and August stayed outside and helped Carly with the chairs. He really got into using the wrench. He also made a stick breaking machine and broke up his stick. When he came in he didn’t like the new throw pillows on the couch and threw them on the floor. He got over it pretty quickly though.

Carly was getting them food in the kitchen and he played with rubber bands on the cabinets. One broke and he sort of got sad when it did and hid between Carly’s feet. We sat outside and they ate (I’d already eaten). August excitedly told me “Dada, the secret ingredient is maple syrup!” We were then talking about the flowers and I said his flowers were really nice (the ones from seeds). He said “We’re so lucky there’s purple ones because I love purple!” “Huh? Different kinds of pink?” Earlier he had told Carly “I don’t like when it’s sunny because then you go outside and don’t play with me.”

He wanted to play Toca Blocks with me so we went inside. We played on his iPad, and did all of the block mixing to discover all the different objects.

Carly headed to school at 4. It is the MUN/Conflict Resolution thing. I’m not really sure what all is going on, as it sounds like more than a regular MUN conference. August and I played with some music apps, and in particular were getting into looping in Auxy, which we haven’t used. He liked a song we made and wanted to make sure we saved it. I asked what we should call it and he said “Odin and Newt”. He then wanted to watch Julius Jr. He watched that and I did some reading and we ate broccoli and cheese for dinner. He ate a good amount, so then we had milk and cookies. He wanted me to sing the Julius Jr. song, and I found it on Apple Music. It was the long version and we listened to that several times, and he used my glasses as a sort of instrument, but he was a bit bothered by the song being different than in the show. Then I found the shorter versions from the opening/end credits and we were listening to that on repeat when Carly got home at 6:20.

She went into the bathroom with her and I heard him say something like “I can’t believe there’s kinds of pretty toilet paper.” We read a few pages of Sisters 3, then he played GarageBand, mainly with Carly. He yawned and she noticed. He said “Mama, I’m not really tired. I just did that for funsies.” He then asked “Dada, why can’t I stay up in the night time like you?”

They played cards – he basically just wanted to sort the cards, he dislikes having a winner so much. Carly said something about something be impossible and she asked if he knew something that was impossible: “Not getting any food or water or air to breathe” “living without any sunlight” “Living without a brain.” “Not having any stores to buy anything from.” Carly pointed out that some people grow their own food “But what if they don’t have any seeds?” “Eating tons of food until you explode.” “Choking on a rock and a doctor never fixes it.” We also taught him ‘improbable’ – I gave him the example of Oma and Opa walking through the door in 5 minutes. He sat, deep in thought.

I read Kipper’s Birthday, then Carly took him up. I left them at 8:15. He nursed, but then lay down and was still awake for awhile, then fell asleep on his own about 8:30.

Thunder and lighting hit at 11:30 last night. I watched it from the kitchen and kitchen door for 20 minutes or so. There was one big bolt that was quite close. All the street lights went out when it struck and they came back after a few seconds. Carly was woken by the thunder, but August slept through it. During the night he ended up on the bed though and was waking up a lot. In the morning I got up with him about 6:40 and Carly got up a bit later. One of the very few times he and I have gotten up before Carly.

He watched Julius Jr. At one point he asked me for water. It was right on the ground next to the couch, after he had pushed it off. I said he could do it, and he said “I’m watching a video.” I set it at the other end of the couch for him to get.

Carly had opened the sliding door to admire the rain. August went over to her and realized it ws open and ws concerned the rain was getting in. He said he was a cold baby. Carly didn’t understand him and basically asked “What’s a cold baby?” They played with Duplos. He ran over to show me how 1 Duplo plus 2 Duplos makes a triangle. Carly told him to walk on the way back: “Why? Is it Saturday morning? I HATE Saturday morning.”

Back on the couch he dumped Cheerio dust on me. I asked Carly to vacuum me off. He was with Carly for a bit,then wanted to play Sound Rebound. I put Sound Rebound on his iPad. “Can I play with you? That would be even more fun.” Rain poured down again outside. They played Sound Rebound and got it to quit. Carly taught him the old blowing-in-the-Nintendo-cartridge thing. He got up to go to the bathroom and asked “Could you do interesting stuff for me while I go to the bathroom? Hey, do I need to go to the bathroom?”

More Sound Rebound, then he and I finished reading Best Friends for Frances. Then read I Am NOT Going to Get Up Today! Then switched to the iPad for Too Many Marvins, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!, There’s a Wocket in My Pocket, and The Shape of Me and Other Things. He said “I want to learn about a nature app on my iPad.” Then played Earth Primer and the Nature apps. Carly made cauliflower and made me a pita sandwich. August had pita and hummus and za’atar but rejected the cauliflower.

I took a shower. When I came down he was watching Smurfs. Carly finished her tea, then took him up for his bath. There was a moderate level of screaming. He tried to tell her that I filled up her spray bottle with bath water. They read some Bob Books on the bed.

She came down to enjoy a couple minutes of not-rain outside. August came and wanted to play on my iPad but I was completing a work task. He waited patiently, sitting next to me, until I was done. He then played Toca Blocks. Carly picked some of the plant in the window box and made him lemon tea. He was upset when she wouldn’t put more homey in, then got his shirt wet and took it off. He had taken his pajamas shirt off earlier after Carly washed his hands. When he was still wanting more honey Carly thought he asked for a hug when he said honey. He ate pita and hummus and some salmon salad and we finished the mango juice. He asked Carly to move over to the couch so he could sit next to her.

He made a bridge out of books between the couch and coffee table. They had a Lego person on it. Then they sort of played cards. Carly made a shopping list and he said “We need more Duplo persons, and Lego persons, and edge pieces, and water bottles!” He talked about how many water bottles he has, and I got out the pink Hello Kitty water bottle we got but he refused to use. He played with it and really liked the way the cap pops open. I told him to try drinking from it and he gave it a try, but was instantly disappointed. He doesn’t like how the water come out.

He asked “How does springs work?” “I have a spring in me that you can’t see that has bumps on it and it hits me to make me walk.”

They left at 2. They first went to school. Later, when I asked Did you play school? He said “Yeah, a little bit.” When I talked to Carly she said they actually played with the spinner from an old board game she found in the cabinets. He also played with Word and projecting things on the screen, printed some things, and played with the chair going up and down. And they enjoyed the thunder and lightning. They managed to miss all the rain though, as it was dry when they went to Tiv Taam in the mall. They got back at 4:20.

He came in and said something about “Like peas in a pod”. He’s really into idioms and saying, and was also using “a great balancing act” a lot. Carly tried to get him out on a walk while the weather was good, but he refused. Ate some crackers and hummus. He sat on the couch and played with the motorcycle Lego. He asked who built it and where it was fron, and he told me I shouldn’t have played with them when I was a kid because then it means he has less to play with now. The logic wasn’t clear on that one. He also asked “When did you stop playing with Legos when you were a kid?”

We then played with the salad spinner and talked about momentum and friction. He then threw the lego tree in as it was spinning. Some times it would spin back out, other times it would press against the side.

We went upstairs and brought down the box of blocks to do dominoes. He and Carly had talked about the “domino effect” earlier when they were making the bridge of books. From dominoes it turned into a game of seeing how far he could get the cylinder-shaped blocks to roll, starting on a ramp. He then made towers with their base in his bowl. The towers would make gold once you added sugar or something to them.

He wanted to play Piano Maestro (not something I can do too well right now), and he helped Carly set up a profile and get started. She played for while, then he switched to his account, but was still only comfortable playing the one-note songs and the two-note tutorial. Not ready to start any of the two-note songs.

Played Sound Rebound and had great fun making it quit. We then read some more of The Sisters, about 10 pages. He hadn’t eaten much of the stir fry that Carly had made earlier. He finally agreed to strawberries, and ended up eating quite a few. He’s rather picky about his strawberries now – no green bits and he likes them cut pointy. He talked me into taking him up to bed. I took him to the bathroom, then got his pajamas on and brushed his teeth. He told me I should just drink tea in the morning so I could go to bed earlier. He pieced that together on his own. I left them at 8:20.

I remember that he had a bad dream during the night and Carly consoled him. He came down at 6:30. First asked Carly if his hands were cold, then put his feet on her stomach and asked if his feet were cold. They then read much of Best Friends for Frances. When Carly asked what kind of animals they were I said badgers, but August declared them foxes. A bit later when he wanted to watch Julius Jr. I joked he couldn’t use my iPad until he admitted they were badgers. He won the exchange by stating “They’re badgers but I still call them foxes.”

Carly headed to work. He watched more Julius Jr., then he was a Trap-O-Matic, which was an invention from the show that detects traps. I made eggs with broccoli and cheese and he played with rubber bands on the nobs. He said “I hate that noise.” when I turned on water to boil. He wrapped a rubber band around his fingers and said “This is like a roller coaster.”

Ate breakfast (he ate his entire bowl) then built a big symmetrical shape with Duplos. “If you put the Duplos along the edges it makes it more stable. Mama told me that.” It turned into a playground. He stated at one point “Oh, the Places You Will Go doesn’t really exist cuz you can’t wander off by yourself…what if there’s no maps?” We played a level of Math Tango. I said I didn’t remember what ‘review’ was in the game. He said “Review means when you do something back over again.”

He played Toca Tea Party will I took shower. In the bathroom he asked “Why do ghosts not really exist?” When I was done shaving he said “Good enough” We had a tea party, then did his CAR puzzle. Then took his bath. Afterwards he played with his bracelet as a luggage conveyor belt. When we walked downstairs he brought the R from the car puzzle with him. He said he didn’t have his C case (suitcase) from the conveyor belt “But I have my letter R case.”

He played with the mop handle on the chair and we discussed ‘pivot point’. I went to make sandwiches for our outing and he watched the latest Wintergatan videos of building the new Marble Machine: https://youtu.be/iFuUSe44jtk He really liked the “sad part” where he knocks a piece off the machine and it breaks. He watched a couple more Wintergatan videos, and said “Actually, typewriters doesn’t exist…They don’t exist because they don’t work anymore.” He then did the pivot machine with the mop again and talked about the Frida book for some reason. I think he and Carly may have read it recently: “What’s Frida?…and she had babies…she had a dream and she divided into two Fridas. Uh-huh.”

We left at 12:10. Finished the latest Story Pirates podcast (episode 12), then a Tumble Science episode on sea stars. He didn’t believer that sea stars have thousands of feet. Arrived at the park at 12:35.

Getting out of his vest he looked at the Velcro and asked “How does that attach? Can you tell me?” We paid for parking on got in the stroller. I asked and put on his sweatshirt. He then said “It’s pretty warm. I don’t need this.” I told him I’d just asked if he wanted it and he said yes. He replied “And I said yes‽” Stopped and grabbed three books. He asked “How is spit made?” What if we didn’t have it?”

We got to the music area at 1, looking at the zigzag sculpture on the way. He played it a bit, then we sat on a bench and ate some lunch and had a good discussion: about step counts, berries and seeds you can eat, a video he watched yesterday about the soil: “There’s layers of the ground plants don’t grow in.” “Dada, why can’t plants push the rock if they’re so thick?”

“Why doesn’t leaves grow on roots?” “But why don’t they grow on the branch that is straight up?” He meant the trunk and we did some good speculating. He played the musical instruments a bit more but was then ready to get walking.

As we crossed the pond a couple asked me to take their photo. Perhaps my first full exchange in Hebrew of more than a couple lines. Well, just 3 or 4. But it was something. As I took the photo, August was looking down at the water and “How deep is it? I think it’s pretty deep.” When I agreed, he said “Actually, I was just talking to myself.” I had just talked to myself back at the lunch spot when I was wondering if I’d put the strawberries away.

I stopped and took a photo of the statue of a person playing accordion upside down. August patiently waited on his bike while I went up the hill to do that. We stopped at the covered playground and played there. First on the small spinning thing. His word of the day, which we had discussed earlier, was ‘momentum’: “When I got on here there was momentum.” He was a machine on there, then went up on the play structure: “Remember I have 90 mechanisms.” We played on the tilting thing on the ground (more discussion of pivot points), then he went on another spinning thing, with a spiral on it. He asked me “Could you apply some force?”

We stopped at the bathroom at 2:20. He spotted the changing table and we reminisced about them. I brought my right hand down to point to something just as he decided to close it and the table whacked my hand right on the pinkie area. Didn’t feel too good.

Over at the other playground he asked me to sing “Yellow Submarine” and he got a rice cake snack from a woman who had a box of them. He liked it, but commented on his lips getting dry and sticking to it – a good connection back to our previous discussion about what would happen if you didn’t have spit. I pushed him in the acorn spaceship. He asked and answered himself: “Why don’t I like little stuffed animals? It’s because I can’t hide in them.” And he said “This has some momentum from those kids.”

He then wanted to be termites in the log: “the top wood is the sugariest.” We sat in there for 10 minutes or so. We needed to get back to the car but stopped briefly at the exercise equipment. He talked more about momentum. We got to the car right at 2:50. He asked me “Do you still call water ‘wawa’?” I explained that he was the one that called it ‘wawa’ and he seemed surprised that babies made up those words, not adults. We talked about a few more examples, like Colin’s ‘mima’. In the car he said “I saw some tic tacs but they’re not manual because they have fancy tastes!” Actually a rather sophisticated joke, and he had mentioned something else being manual earlier. Not quite sure where he had picked up the manual/automatic distinction. I think maybe in discussing typewriters and the electric ones being more complex. I asked him what else was ‘manual’ or ‘automatic’ and he said “Something that’s manual versus automatic is guitars! Because people play them!” After taking the photo of the couple we had seen a guy playing a guitar and he had asked something about it being manual, versus a guitar in GarageBand.

We listened to an old Story Pirates and bits of other ones we hadn’t finished on the way north. We went to Tiv Taam at the mall. Watched some salsa dancing outside, then went shopping. Busy, busy. He wanted watermelon but I didn’t get one. Figured Carly could choose one tomorrow.

We got home. Carly was already there, having left school about 3. They had a half day with students, then a meeting. I ate, then Carly went outside. We played some Seuss Band. Then read Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?, Hunches in Bunches, The Zax, and Tadd and Todd. He wanted Skybrary and said “I love Skybrary!” He had it read Keep Your Distance to him (we had read it before). He then had it read a few books to him: I Can Do It Myself, Freda Plans a Picnic, and Jenny Jenkins.

Carly was getting him strawberries, milk, and Cheerios to eat. He asked “What are you making for me? You’re taking ages.” But then he didn’t eat much. Carly skyped with her mom. Derek and family are in Mexico now so we saw them. He then read Life on Mars with Carly. He randomly asked “How much cupcakes i
s there in the world?” He read one  of the new Seuss stories with Carly and was reading a lot of the words. He then turned into a complicated music machine, based on the old machine we had seen in the Wintergatan video at the museum – with multiple instruments, songs on paper, and doors you could open to see how it worked.

That led to playing Sound Rebound and he really liked trying to make it quit as it is a buggy program. Carly went up and took a shower. He finally agreed to eat some dinner and chose the soup. He ate the whole bowl, so he and I sat on the couch and each ate a cookie. Which meant he was in a talkative mood:  “How can tons of people walk on sidewalks if there’s space underneath them?” I talked about what we could do tomorrow while it rained and suggested a smoothie at the mall: “We’re not going to get a smoothie; it’s a rainy day.” He asked “Can I see your teeth? Wow.” He was then a “Dig-a-rator…” machine.

He was ready for upstairs. We went up and read 10 pages of The Sisters. Carly took over and let him fall asleep up on the big bed. He was asleep sometime after 8.

He was up just after 6:20. Down on the couch he was humming a line and I figured out it was “Do, a deer, a female deer.” He watched Julius Jr. as Carly headed to work. I made a banana, mango, and strawberry smoothie. He was pretending to call through vents and pipes again and asked me to clean the floor under the dining table. Too dirty for him. He then made a little Duplo play area on his own.

I was getting things ready in the kitchen to make cookies. He calls rubber bands “ribbon bands”. He confused me a day or two ago asking how strong ribbons are. Turned out he meant rubber. Also asked “What kind of conveyor belts did they use in the past when they didn’t have run by motors?” I asked if he was ready to make cookies. He said “I’m going to learn this Hebrew word first.” He made one of the letters, then was seeing very abstract letters BETWEEN the magnets in the shapes that were made: “That looks like a lamed and that’s a dalet.” And “Look at that shape. It’s like a tusk tooth of a Narwhal.” He then said “I’m gonna wash my hands to want to help you, you know.” He then ran off and washed his hands and came back, all on his own.

We then made cookies. He poured the eggs into the big bowl on his own. He also talked about how he was doing better making cookies this time and not getting upset. As we baked them he got excited: “I’m ADOPTED to cookies…I’m magnetical to cookies!” Meant ‘addicted’. When they were ready I gave him a funny-shaped one. He said “That’s the biggest one you’ve ever given me.” He said “I have a mystery for myself about how many cookies we’re going to make.” The answer turned out to be 43.

He then asked what drowning is and we had a discussion of swimming and lessons. A couple minutes later he said “I have another way to save people. You go to them in a boat and they sit on a floaty thing and you take them back to the shore.” “What if there’s not enough floaty things?”

I exercised and he played Figure on my iPad. He then had a mystery song, and correctly guessed it was from TodoMath. He then played TodoMath and we went upstairs. He refused carrots as a snack, saying he doesn’t like carrots or vegenaise anymore. I took a shower and we watched a Julius Jr. During his bath we watched an Animal Cell video. He mainly watched the guy running from the police part at the beginning. Then watched SciShow Kids Why Do We Get Goosebumps?

He randomly declared “There isn’t a tooth fairy that has a wand.” Then downstairs on the couch he said “Maybe magic is hard so it doesn’t exist.” I suggested we take a little rest before we got going on our buys afternoon. I pulled him over to me and he lay with his head on my side for a few minutes.

We walked up and did recycling. Or mainly I did, as he said “I’m more excited about school.” He did the glass though. He was asking if I liked his music and I said I loved the songs he made up. He replied “And I love the songs you make up.” We sang some “I Lost My Helmet in the Spaceship” on the way back.

While I put the bike in the car he hugged/protected the car and talked about not wanting anyone else to touch it. He then played in the car while I went in and got the backpack, etc. At the gate he asked “How can it lock if it’s kitty cat shapes?” Indeed the shape of the hole that the deadbolt goes into looks remarkably like a cat. He went in to go to the bathroom and asked “What’s the largest number invented?”

We listened to episode 12 of Story Pirates in the car today. We stopped at the Even Yehuda library to return the two Hebrew books we hadn’t really read. I apologized for not reading them and he said “Well the books doesn’t really have many feelings.” He wanted to put the books through the slot next time.

Back in the car he noticed the clicking of the engine idling. Sounded slightly different for some reason. Left there at 1:50. Drove to the school and went to the library. He walked in with the bag of cookies and gave them to Liz and said they were for the librarians. He played in the big stuffed animals. The fifth grade class was back in the kids area. We found Best Friends for Frances and checked it out and were going to head to the playground when the fifth grade started to leave. August wanted to head back to that room. He found Life on Mars by Jon Agee and I found Is that WISE, Pig? by Jan Thomas. He was hungry and wanted a snack and I realized I had forgotten the snacks at home.

We were about to leave and run home but then I realized we should ask Carly. Went and found her leaving her room. She got us her container of fruit and a plastic knife. He wasn’t happy about it, especially after Carly had a cookie. Didn’t really get upset, just grumpy. We sat in a chair together outside the library for a couple minutes. I asked if he was nervous about the Hebrew class and he said he was. We talked about it a minute and that seemed to do the trick. He then agreed to go deliver the bag of cookies to Mandy, then head to the preschool.

We stopped by Mandy’sclassroom but she wasn’t there, so he left the cookies on her computer. We looked at an aquarium with tadpoles in it, then headed to the preschool.

We went in and found Miriam, who was at Bar’s house and who teaches the Hebrew class. August had a few minutes to look around the preschool and liked it much more this time. Class was upstairs, and there were 4 other kids (including Bar, who technically isn’t in the class as she knows Hebrew). They did some greetings (we learned ‘sababa’ – very good/awesome). Then most of class was watching/acting out a Hebrew version of the song Five Little Monkeys. I participated. August was the doctor the first time. They then all got little sets of the monkey family and doctor and colored them so we can act it out at home. He asked a few times when class was over, etc. but at the end when she asked if he had fun and was coming back next week he said yes. And we shared some of our fruit with Lana and Thomas and Bar. I didn’t catch the name of the other girl, but she is a friend of Bar’s and they played together the first time at the playground.

Outside August ran around with them playing hide and seek until August decided to play on the playground. He climbed on top of the car thing on his own. He worked on the engine up there (that goes back to playing with Liam up there and working on the engine). He was singing the Julius Jr. song. He had talked about how much he liked it earlier. He used “Tin can foil…it helps it not squeak.” I briefly met Lana’s mother.

Carly came over and met us. He showed her how he can go down the slide with his legs over the sides, then we walked up to his activity class. Carly walked with us, then walked home while I stayed with him.

Class was a full parent and kids class today. Which worked really well, as all three of us participated. August was dancing and looking in the mirror. He got close to the mirror and said “Now I can look up my nose! That’s what I like about mirrors. My eyebrows are BIG.” They played with frisbees and he was balancing it on his head and his hand. And he surprised me by sitting on the frisbee and spinning himself pretty fast just using his hands. When they were being animals he chose snakes. For the big setup at the end he did a great job of pushing himself on the scooter across the floor with a frisbee on his back and then stacking the frisbee on a stack. But his favorite part was the mat that had arrows on it pointing different directions. You jumped from one to the next, spinning in the air.

At the end of class she has them sit back down and throws a pretend star to them which they catch, then throw back. He was excited about that part.

On the way back to the school and car we stopped at the park. We saw Gaby and Grace along the way and let them know it was us who dropped off cookies on her mom’s computer. We got to the park and it was still quite light – days are gett
ing longer. He did a bunch of climbing, then left at 6:20. As we left he saw a little kid with one of those push bike things that looks like a car. He said “We should get one like that. It has a steering wheel and everything.”

In Story Pirates they get hit by a tornado. In his continuing attempt to figure out what is real and what isn’t, he said “Tornadoes don’t really exist.” I had to tell them they actually were, but they don’t usually suck up people. He thought about it and said “I don’t EVER want to live in a country that has tornados.” I told him that meant we couldn’t live by Vivian.

We went inside and they nursed, then he drank the rest of his smoothie. Soup for dinner. Encouraged him to eat more and more bites until he was stuffed. Then show Carly how he could eat bites when she came inside from taking care of the plants. Ate a decent amount, then had a cookie, which he happily ate on the couch. When he had a couple bites left I remembered milk. Got him some milk for the last couple bites.

He read  Is That Wise, Pig? and at least part of Best Friends for Frances with Carly. She took him upstairs and I left them at 7:30. Think it took quite awhile to get him to sleep. I heard talking, but not crying.

Delivering:

Big cookie: 

He woke up and asked “Can I go to the bathroom before we go?” I asked go where. “Downstairs.” After he went to the bathroom I told him he could go downstairs and mama was there. He started down the stairs then stopped and asked  “Are you sure?”

Nursed and then Carly got up from the couch and he lay there. And then asked “Dada, could I have some Cheerios?” in what sounded like a British accent. He had fun putting Cheerios down his shirt, then did a “Magical disappearing hug” with Carly. He watched some Smurfs. Carly had locked the gate when she left and asked me to unlock it. I went and did so, then got an email a couple minutes later saying the gas delivery guy had already come and couldn’t get in. August played Easy Music, working on the rhythms and songs parts, then he was being a sick bird on the couch. He asked “Do animals get sad?” We then played Sound Rebound. At one point, when I hadn’t made any jokes, he said “It’s not nice of you to make jokes…I just don’t like jokes.” We then played Musyc. So a lot of music creation in the morning.

I exercised, then he was making a machine with the mop, chair, and a pillow on the floor: “This is a complicated machine…that’s the pivot point.” “Squeak…it broke cuz it’s out of oil.” Earlier he had made machines from Cheerios, as if they were gears. He drank the leftover smoothie from yesterday, then played some Seuss Band

We played xylophone and piano. I taught him the G major scale as the xylophone starts on G and played two octaves at once. We took the xylophone over by the piano and were playing scales together.

He was then going through different vents,  a la I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew, and went through vent 5:  “I discovered a tiny trap door.” He started discussing Max and Ruby and tried to argue that it teaches you things: “That’s one thing it teaches you; it teaches you not everybody likes eggs.” He made a conveyor belt out of a rubber band on the cabinet handles.

We took crackers and peanut butter and smoothie up on his bed and I took my shower. He said “Hi merry! Here’s my bracelet!” I forgot Angeles was now Merry. He used it as a conveyor belt. We watched a Julius Jr. together. He played with his bracelet: “It looks like lips. It’s my latest invention.” He had me take photos of his different shapes.

During his bath I chose a SciShow Kids video on why we see color. Then watched some  Dr. Binocs videos and a video on brushing your teeth.

I made a tuna sandwich and apple sauce for lunch. He just ate the apple sauce. We trimmed his nails and cleaned them, then he played with the clippers and was figuring out how to use them. He also asked how they work and we talked about levers.

Played some Seuss Band, then finally got outside, where he played on his teeter totter and hummed Seuss songs. We had planned on driving to Winter Lake Park, but he decided he didn’t want to drive. He just wanted to ride his bike. He said “The walk will be fun.”

We decided to go to the mall and get chocolate chips for our cookies tomorrow. On the way he asked “How’d they cook things before they had stoves?” We were to the mall by 2:30. Stopped at the play area outside. Did some climbing around, then there were a couple of girls he was trying to play with. But they kept moving somewhere else when he got close to them. I got him and told him it looked like they wanted to play by themselves. We got on the airplane. He said “Dada, I have a glitch in me.” Then a minute later he said “The problem is I’m not designed to play with other people…I’m not. See? It’s not in my program.” He cheered up as he was a machine delivering things “Its a pretty complicated machine.” One thing it delivered was “Butterfly glasses…Actually, it makes you see like a unicorn.”

We went in the train. He saw a girl with balloons – she must be 8 now – and said “But I don’t EVER want to get balloons. Because I might let go of them.” He had me act out having balloons floating away. When I pretended to cry he told me I shouldn’t: “But it’s okay for big people.”

He tried again with some of the girls and this time it worked: he was chasing a girl around, and she was chasing him back, and a couple of other girls got involved, including the girl with balloons. She got the balloons snagged on the train and one of the small balloons broke off and floated up in the tree. August said he liked that part. Maybe not if it was his balloon.

We played on the train again: “I’m going back in time, you know. To see scientists! The father I go more scientists!”

He declared he was done playing and we headed in to the grocery store. I first pointed out the restaurants we haven’t eaten at yet and he was excited about trying them sometime.

Shopping went well. There chocolate chip selection was minimal, so we got a variety to try them, including white chocolate, which he wanted. He told me he doesn’t like tuna anymore. He announced, probably thinking of the balloons earlier, “When it’s oma’s birthday I don’t want Oma to suggest a party. Too much people.”

We left at 3:40. Studying his arm he said “I really don’t know why those hairs is there.” He had noticed hairs on his leg a day or two ago. We talked about what it does and evolution.

We got home and watched one more Julius Jr. I made a joke about something and then said I remembered I wasn’t supposed to make jokes. He now told me that jokes are funny. Carly came home. They nursed, then he was whispering nonsense to me.

We had dinner. Carly gave him some of her leftover noodles from lunch at school, but he didn’t like them as it was too peppery. He had some soup instead.

I went upstairs for some work time. August didn’t want to let me go and came up with me. Got him back downstairs to Carly and they watched a toothbrushing video at his request and a couple of videos about Golgi apparatus and other cell parts. “I like where it stores the things and packages them up…and the part where it shrinks when it doesn’t have water.” He talked a lot about it. They then ended up using the Namoo app. They came up to me before 7:30.

He liked jokes again after I made one to Carly: “Jokes are funny.” Carly was about to put him to bed when she remembered she was going to ask him “What does peace mean to you?” It is something that her students are doing. She took him into the office and he asked “What? You’re gonna put my foot in a scanner?” That’s a reference to The Sisters when Maureen wants to scan her cast. He really liked making a video and answering the questions, then did a freeform video. Took him to bed and I lef them at 7:50. He was asleep by 8.