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Carly woke him up at 6:30. When he came down to me he was a hedgehog, as Carly was wearing her WBAIS shirt with a hedgehog on it. He curled up to me (being pokey) and ate some worms. We typed a little on my iPad and Carly headed to work. He found Gus on the Go Hebrew Stories on my iPad and we spent close to a half hour working our way through the Three Little Pigs. The app really works well for scaffolding vocab.

He wanted to switch to Wizard School, so we got his iPad and he did a lot of art. I was also writing words in English and Hebrew and he was sounding them out. He watched some Sarah and Duck and I made us a smoothie and we watched together. He walked around the room waving back and forth and said he was a wobbly tube man (a reference to 91-Story Treehouse, I think it was – one of them, at least). We read Curious George Cleans Up and I then exercised while he watched more Sarah and Duck. He then pretended that I was trapped in a whale, then said he was a whale. I had thought he was stuck inside the whale with me, but he clarified: “Noooo, I’m a whale and you’re sick inside ME.” We then did squirrel games: I was going to work and leaving him at home alone (he never mentions where Mama Squirrel is), there were snakes in the meadow, then we were driving in the squirrel car together (which apparently has two bathrooms in it).

We then read Biscuit Loves the Library. When I was done he asked me to read it backwards, so I did. As squirrels we were then driving to the nut store, and he had us go upstairs to another nut store. This store let us eat the nuts. I said “That doesn’t seem good for their business” He forcefully replied “ACTUALLY, it is.”

He played Sound Rebound and I took a shower. When I came out he asked “Did you not like your shower?” I assured him I did, and he said “But you SPRAYED yourself!” Then “Did you get water in your eyes?”

We made pizza with corn (left over from making the pisole) and ate that and listened to music. He chose songs while I worked on hanging up a couple of the photos that had fallen. He was singing quite a bit of the 12 Days of Christmas, although when I took a video he mainly hummed. We then made banana bread. August helped the entire time, and started by mashing up the bananas with a knife and fork. He said “Bananas, are you okay?” And said “I’m a cutting and stabbing machine.” The entire rest of the process, and pretty much the entire day, was an ongoing dialogue with inanimate objects, with me having to supply the responses. He talked to the bananas and eggs constantly as they got mixed up with the other ingredients, then to the banana bread itself in the oven: “Bananas, are you happy bleeding in there?…Cuz they’re human bananas. I told you.”

We put the banana bread in the oven (he had gotten brown sugar and cinnamon along the way and liked the mixer and spatula), then heard the ice cream truck. I raced us out, which, given that he’s three and there are two locked doors to go through, took awhile. He has a lot of business up on the dead end though, so it was easy to catch up. We bought a bubble gum one for Carly and a mango popsicle for August, and paid back the ice cream guy the 2 shekels we owed him from last week.

We started counting cats on the way home: 5. At home we hung up lights in the kitchen and on the railings and bannister. Had to switch them once and adjust a few times, so quite a process. August helped as much as he could, and kept talking to the lights: asking if they liked being hung up, turned on, etc.

We ate some banana bread. He sat at the table slowly eating it and making yummy noises and listening to the music. We were listening to David Bowie all afternoon, after listening to his playlist earlier.

Carly got home after 1:50 following her half day. August had been so great and helpful with me today but he switched once she got home and just wanted to nurse. He was upset as tried to get food and ate outside. Finally got him to play Math Tango and he surprised me by reading several full sentences that he’d never seen before on his own. He was then making up music on toy piano: “there’s a piano in the meadow. It’s stuck in the sand. It’s a magic piano. When I play it it sinks in the sand.” He then gave Carly a piano lesson, showing her how to play Yankee Doodle and how to make chords. We talked about going to do recycling and he wanted Carly to come as well. He asked if she knew how to do recycling. She hasn’t really done it. When she went upstairs to get ready he said “Mama doesn’t know a lot of things.”

We went to recycling with Carly. Got most of it done but then he needed the bathroom. We came home, and Carly stayed here. He and I went and finished recycling, then walked around the Holly block, then saw Holly walking Doby as we continued to walk down Kibuts Galyeot. We walked down to the big Israeli flag, then took the path across the field to the trail. We’d never done that before as there is a flight of steps. He was talking to the bike as I carried it up and down the stairs. ‘And down’ because once we were up he decided he wanted to go back down by where the Israeli flag was to see what was at the end of the block.

We had been adding to our cat count and got to 15 (give or take one) by the time we were home at 5:15. They nursed and he wanted the nursing mittens so I got them. We had dinner and he ate a lot of beet greens. There was a lot of saying “Oh, dada” to me, which Carly has taught him to say when I say something funny. Carly and I were talking about Sabeel and she mentioned the tour she went on. He shouted”Tour? There’s no tour around here!” Carly explained he probably didn’t realize it but she had gone on a tour with other people. He said “When we taked care of Nellie?”

We read Berenstain Bears and Too Much Pressure and they nursed. Carly was trying to convince him to let her cut his hair. He said “I will NEVER let you cut my hair.” I got him to say “I want to look like the boy in the Sesame Street video.” There’s an old Sesame Street video that I’d found when he was a year old or so (in the ABC or 123 app) that I showed to Carly and told her I liked the hair on the boy in it. She didn’t like it at all.

He wanted to watch something so we watched the Peg + Cat episode with The Hannukah Problem. He went upstairs with Carly and wandered down in underwear and socks a bit later. Took him up and we got him ready for bed. I told him to dream about Christmas. He added “and volcanos…and tornados.” He was asleep about 7:20.

Kitchen lights: 

Stomping on recycling: 

Cuddling in the chair: 

Up the stairs: 

He was up around 5:45. Not really fully awake as Carly came in and nursed him and he was close to going back to sleep and no hurry to get out of bed. He followed Carly around a bit, but then got upset when she needed to go downstairs and get ready. I tried to distract him, but ended up having to calm him on the couch. He was able to do that and waited for her to nurse again. I then got Wizard School set up on his iPad and he finally accepted it and we made a picture of a dog. He said “Let’s buy the 1 and the 0 because 10 is the dog’s favorite number.”

Carly left and we read some Plumdog. I tried turning on the heater and after awhile realized it wasn’t heating. Someone had turned the temperature down to 17 yesterday. But then when I turned it up it didn’t seem to be working either. Spent some time tinkering around with that, comparing to the one upstairs and going outside. August enjoyed following me. Eventually we went back to Plumdog and it started working after a couple minutes. In Plumdog the dog is left alone at one point and August started acting it out: “I’m a baby mouse…can you leave the baby mouse alone…can you be a dada mouse going to work?” In the evening I realized that August is almost always pretending to be quiet animals: squirrels, cats, mice, shrews, hedgehogs…probably because he dislikes loud dogs so much.

There was a lot more acting out of Plumdog, then he played Sound Rebound and other music apps and I exercised. The leaving games continued with squirrels: “Could you be Dada squirrel going to the grocery store?” And pretending to get a toy though the mail slot (which happens in the book). We read four chapters of Magic Treehouse #11. We collected acorns and other nuts, then he played the toy piano and said “If you press the keys the acorns fly out…up to our pile.”

We went up and I took a shower while he watched Sarah and Duck. His bath went well again, playing mainly with the squirt cars and cups today, and a little letter spelling. He was grumpy at the end though as I washed a bit of his hair. Out in the play area he played with the drying rack, knocking it over, moving it around a bunch, and putting it back up. He came over and said “Splat! I splatted my bad mood on you.” I asked “From your bath?” He had been playing quietly and I didn’t realize he was really being grumpy. “Yep.”

I loaded laundry and he saw an iHerb box with a QR code on it. He said “Go to that website. Is that a QR code?” He reminded me the bad mood was on me, then when I was pretending to be grumpy he said “Do you like me? It seems like you don’t like me…Do you still have mad?”

We had had cheese and crackers and vegenaise before his bath, so I didn’t know how hungry he would be for lunch. We went downstairs and made a smoothie: banana, mango, and mixed fruit. As he waited he wanted mango, so I thawed four bites for him. Then four more. Then two more. After that and the smoothie I figured he definitely didn’t need pizza right away so we held off on that.

We drank our smoothie and listened to the Smithereen’s Especislly for You. He went and played toy piano, then used the keyboard on GarageBand. He was humming along to his improv, then playing with long notes and sustain: “I was doing whole notes.”

I went outside to put the glass in the door of the bookshelves, but didn’t make it far at all. August came out, picked up the screwdriver, and scratched the side of the cabinet. I got upset and took him inside. He was mainly upset when I said we couldn’t play any more iPad, etc. until the evening. We finally sorted all that out and calmed down and he picked Berenstain Bears and the New Baby and he had me read it in both Spanish and English. Realized that like Peppa Pig there are two different stories about how they get their house. In this book it says that Papa Bear made the house in the tree. In a different book they move into it and it is already a house that needs to be fixed up.  Then read some Clementine. There was mention of gummy worms and August sang a “Yeah gummi worms” chant/song and was a gummy worm machine.

Had a little more mango, the read Berenstain Bears and the Double Dare. We finally left at 2:25. We got in the car and he requested the song “Constellations”, which we found from one of those Skype videos, then he yelled “One! I spotted a cat right there.” He had spotted a cat up on a fence. We drove to school, but as we got close he was enjoying listening to music and I asked if he wanted to keep driving. He said yes and we drove up through Even Yehuda a ways. Found an odd park/play area composed of painted tires and a house with an unseemly number of Greek/Roman-inspired statues and vases around it. He said he wanted to head to school, and we made it just in time as he almost fell asleep.

We got there a little before 3 and so it was starting to get busy in the courtyard area. We saw Celeste and a student that knows August. But August said “No time!” and claimed a sucking thing was pulling us away. It pulled us down through the elementary school, then downstairs, then back to the kindergarten rooms where we looked at fish they had in various containers outside.

Then to the library, where the “pulling” took him to the to computers. Distracted him from that though and we got a big stack of Berenstain Bears books and Magic Treehouse books. He grabbed one that was about polar bears – it was number 31 or something like that – and we got that as well. We went and found a couple girls in the winter wonderland area, so went to the aisle over and sat on beanbags. Over in the kids area he had spotted something: “A menorah!” He knew it from the Peg + Cat Hanukkah episode. Next to it were three dreidels. We took one back with it and he was figuring out how to spin it. I was taking a video when suddenly something fell on him. It was a black piece of cloth that was dropped through the shelves by a girl we would learn was named Rosie and in 1st grade (her sister was in 3rd grade and reading a book called Amulet).

They started playing by throwing/passing it through the shelves. She came over and we talked to her and they started playing with pillows. They gathered pillows from the benches and other beanbag areas. Luckily almost no one else in the library (and school is over before break – tomorrow is a half day that is basically a party day), although I reminded them of library voices several times. As they gathered pillows he said “Wherever you go, I will go!”

They made a chair out of the beanbag chairs and pillows and took turns sitting in it. He said “we’re going to live here forever!” While he was sitting in the chair she sat on the ‘arm’ of it and sort of hugged him and said “You are a good friend.” They kept playing for quite awhile. While looking at the beanbags August read the tag and said “It has the same Hebrew word like Ilana’s house.”

Rosie took him over to the kids room and showed him the big elephant. She was about to climb the shelves to get it down but I got it down for them. They were playing with it and a pillow, carrying them on their shoulders and Carly came and spied on them, Rosie’s mom, Sunita, came and got Rosie and we all headed out. We put the pillows away together, then checked out a good pile of extra books for the winter break.

August was kind of sad to stop playing with Rosie, but happy to see Carly in her room. We carried our iHerb order and the box with August’s Christmas present in it out to the car and were home at 4:15.

They nursed, and he asked Carly “Did you have a good day at school?” He had some dinner, then Carly walked over to the store. We kept eating, then played Wizard School, Carly came home. We said something about Hanukkah and joked about it, Seinfeld-style. August copied me: Five more days!” With his hands apart like me, Carly had gotten a chunkier kind of hummus and August liked it. She cooked beet greens and he ate it, He says he really lik
es them.

I was spinning him around and getting us dizzy, then we read Berenstain Bearskin books: Junk Food, Blame Game, part of Too Much Pressure. He wanted to send messages to Korea Megan, After a couple minutes he said”I’m not going to send her keys anymore. It will get boring if I just send keys.”

I saw on Facebook that Gaynelle Derr, who had taught English at MTHS when I was there, had passed away. She’s dealt with severe diabetes for a long time, so shouldn’t be a huge surprise, but still a tough one. Jon Ummel had already passed away a couple years ago. Breysse has retired, Kinnear and Franklin are at different schools, Isakson is in New York, and Falk has moved on to admin. So White, Ellinger, and DeMiero are the only English teachers still there from when I was there.

Carly took him upstairs and got him to brush his teeth and go to the bathroom. I went up and helped put on pajamas. I tried to get him to kiss me instead of vice versa and he said “I don’t like kisses. I never do kisses. Even when I’m a grown up. Kisses are icky.” So hilarious. I asked what he would dream about and he said “castles”. I left them by 6:45 and he was asleep by 7.

Licking me: 

Fish: 

Dreidel: 

Chair: 

Trying to get the elephant: 

Carly woke him up about 6:30. He was grumpy when Carly left, but I got him to say “I really love you, actually.” We read some Clementine and he got up to turn on all the “suns” (lights): “No, I’m just trying on the three more suns…cuz we’re dandelions.” Carly had gotten him some Cheerios and strawberries and we had some more. We finished five chapters of Clementine. There was a mention of tattoos in the book and he asked “Why can’t kids have tattoos?” I had to answer it a couple times, then he had us acting out getting tattoos and kids having tattoos and then growing up. He played Montessori Geometry and I exercised. He told me “Dada, I just turned into a curvilinear triangle.”

We then both did Wizard School. He was doing “arte abstracto” and told me of one “It’s another part of a weird alien…I saw it when I was blasting someone into space. There’s another person waiting for me to blast them into space.”

We went upstairs and he watched Timmy Time. I realized that he’s starting to sing along to the Timmy Time theme song in Swedish (which is the default – neither English nor Hebrew is available). I took a shower, then watched the end of a Timmy Time Halloween story with him.

Then, the miracle of the day: I had the bath all prepared for him, and when he went in he stepped in. We spent the next 15 minutes spelling words out of the foam letters. He complained a bit when I washed his face, but that was it. Incredible. We had realized that 4 of the letters were missing. After he got out of the bath he walked over to the sink and said “Dada, open this door.” He had apparently remembered that the bath toys were in there, and sure enough, there were the four missing ones.

We were listening to Jingle Bells and 12 Days of Chriatmas on repeat. Downstairs he sat in front of the iPad choosing and listening to songs in his playlist as I got snacks. Had some vegenaise and crackers, then did a little of the puzzle. He went to the bathroom and was saying grumpy things. When I pressed him on why he would only answer “Because.”

We got outside and I was changing my mind about going to the zoo, as the drive was longer than I thought. Then I checked the hours and realized it closed at 2:30. So it wasn’t worth it to drive over an hour each way to only have a couple hours in the zoo. We decided on Herzliya Park instead. I had mentioned Ra’anana Park and he instantly said “Nooo, because I’m worried about the money.”

And he said “I don’t like you.” When I picked him up and asked him to actually explain why he said it he said “Can I have some dada time?”

Listened to Jingle Bells about a thousand times on the drive. 30 or 40 minute drive. We drove at the northeast corner of the park. Went and and saw a nature area. And a sign that told us to watch out for snakes. He said he wouldn’t watch out and told me that was my job. We went down and sat on a bench by the pond and ate lunch and watched the ducks.

We saw a high school class come from the north with cages, now empty. We were intrigued but didn’t figure out what the cages had been for. We walked north and found a bird watching shelter. August said he wasn’t patient enough to wait for birds, which I said was fine. He then started shouting “Go!” at the imaginary birds out there, which I let him do for a bit as no one else was around.

We walked a bit further north until it came out on the corner. August spotted a map and we looked at it. Realized we hadn’t paid for parking and did that, then headed to the huge playground. He led the assault on the play structure. He pretended it was like the 13-Story Treehouse, with different levels. We climbed up and up and had to go across all of the shaky bridges really high up. Looked out from the platform at the top of the big slide, which is the highest point in the park. Pondered going down the slide, which was bigger than the big slide he did in Korea, but decided against it until we saw other kids doing it.

We worked our way around and then down the play structure, then out and next door to the smaller kids’ play area. Played on the tugboat, and asked me “Are there snakes up here?” I lay on a slide and he climbed around a bit, then said we should be wolves eating crocodiles. Went and played inside the plastic hippo, which has a picture of organs with labels in English, Spanish, and French. He pretended to eat it: “I tried the inside but it was kind of tough. There’s no juice inside…Dada! Eat the inside. It’s sour.”

We went over to the snack stand and got a mango and raspberry smoothie and a snack bar that turned out to be coconut flavor. He said “You know, a smoothie makes me shut down…it clogs my pipe. You need to clog out my pipe. Besides, sometimes my pipe overflows when I drink too much water.” When we ordered he realized that some of the smoothies were Xed out on the counter. He asked the guy “What does the black Xs mean?” The bar was pretty good, I thought, but he wasn’t too fond of it. I told him that gramma would like it. We talked about our favorite fruits: “Mango is my favorite fruit.” I said raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries.” He said “And watermelon too!”, remembering Carly’s joke from months ago.

Then, randomly: “Dada, I think what makes a smoothie fly is magic. Oh no, the whole cup is flying away! Catch it! Use my rockets! It’s faster than two rockets. We need more rockets. Maybe 99 nonillion rockets…” We had mainly drunk the smoothie while sitting at a table outside the snack shop. It got cloudy and windy and threatened rain but never came to that. We went back to the little playground so he could throw our garbage away in the penguin garbage can. Carly called. August started singing “On the seventeenth day of Christmas…”

I spotted a little library area and we went over and looked. He listened to The 12 Days of Christmas on my iPhone while I looked. I grabbed a couple of English book and a Hebrew book of short stories that looked interesting and might be a translation learning project for me.

We then went for a walk around the south end of the park. He wanted to listen to the Elements song on the phone as we walked. Walking by the lake we saw a couple of the interesting ducks/geese in fight. One seemed to really have the other by the neck. As we stood there for a few seconds, wondering if it was really hurting the other one, a couple of middle school girls came along and waded right in and broke up the fight.

We kept walking. August asked me what scale he should sing in and I said blues scale. He said “It sounds like someone painting in the color blue.” We listened to some other songs, then stopped at the bathroom. He told me the toilet paper was rolled down, then he rolled it up. He told me “I didn’t want anyone wasting toilet paper.” He also sang several lines of “Elmo’s Song” on his own.

As we walked back to the north we saw three people practicing some acrobatics (holding each other up with their legs, etc.) He spotted a rope thing hanging between two trees and went to climb on it, after first asking “Dada, are you watching for snakes?”

We stopped on a bench to eat a snack and play with the interesting drinking fountain (there’s a mystery one that may be for dogs, but then just drains out the back past an odd metal pole that seems like it should do something).

We got to the car at 3:05. I had turned the clicks off on the media system, but now as we sat in the car (him in the driver’s seat) he turned them back on when I wasn’t looking. When I found out he started laughing really hard. I said he was happy with himself and he exclaimed “I’m so happy!” He pretended to drive: “Okay kids, were on the highway. We’re putting them up. We’re telling you seventeen times and you’re not putting them up.”

He got tired on the way home and we just barely made it: he was either going to get really upset or fall asleep. We got home
and played some Wizard School, then Carly got home and we had some dinner. They did some of the puzzle made read some more Clementine.

They went upstairs and he played with her spray bottle. Back downstairs he pretended to be water and had me trying to pick him up, but he would drain out of my hands. Amazingly, they both had hiccups at the same time, which has never happened before.

Carly had to run back to school to supervise middle schoolers selling hot chocolate at the elementary concert. Carly started listening to music in the car, so Apple Music stopped in the house. I switched to listening to KEXP, which we don’t do enough of. I had found out that Pat DiNizio of the Smithereens had passed away, so we had been listening to some DiNizio, and John Richards mentioned him on the Morning Show and played a Smithereens song (“Beauty and Sadness”). August also got to hear Pearl Jam play  “It’s Okay”, which I sing to him. He wasn’t overly impressed though.

We went and cut and glued book labels for our little library books. He liked using the glue stick. We read a little Little House in the Big Woods, then went and finished the puzzle. We played TodoMath a bit, then Carly got home before 7:30. She made hot chocolate for him and he drank that.

We all went upstairs, and he asked me to turn on the cat ornament. We were all sitting there and he at first said he didn’t want to go to the bathroom, but after a couple minutes just went in on his own, no complaining. I left them at 7:45. I told him “Dream about ducks. And snakes. But not scary ones.” He sat up and said “I’m gonna dream about scary ones!”

Puzzle: 

Pointing: 

Herzliya Park: 

Hippo organs: 

On the hippo: 

Penguin garbage can: 

Playing music and watching the ducks: 

One of the ducks: 

Driving us home: 

At one point during the night August got up and started to leave the room before we stopped him and got him back in bed. Then he was up early, around 5:30 or so. We all got up at 6. Carly set him up in his bedroom, watching Timmy Time and with the heater on. The house is so cold in the morning nowadays without the heaters on. So his small room is a nice morning cave. At one point he asked for Cheerios, so I went down and got a bowl with strawberries, zucchini bread, and Cheerios for us. When I came back he said “Toda, toda, toda. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

He was his usual grumpy self to Carly when she left. Teenager August, Carly says. He then typed on my iPad. Yesterday we had created a special key on the onscreen keyboard that types ‘August’ and he said “Now you don’t have to type ‘August’ anymore.” He typed ‘car’ on his own. We switched to sending each other messages on Wizard School. He said “I will NEVER be the wizard’s friend.” I had said the Wizard could turn me into a frog. He said he didn’t want that. I asked “What would you want the wizard to do?” He replied “Just turn outlets into iPads.”

We continued some Wizard School downstairs. He watched the video on how to read music. After reading so many books yesterday he wasn’t into reading this morning. I was looking for one of the Berenstain Bears books we own, and he asked “Berenstain Bears and the nursing mittens?” When I couldn’t find it I mentioned it might be out in the car. He wanted to go find it so I carried him out and we looked. Ended up finding it inside. He wanted me to be someone trying to open a car and he was the car: “I have a car language” Yesterday I had explained to him why our remote only opens our car, and not any other car.

We skyped with my parents. He started taking the books off the shelves for fun. When we were done he read the time: 26 minutes. I asked him to help me put the books back on the shelf and he was an “Organizing machine”. He spent a few minutes watching Skype emoji videos. He asked of one “Is that a disco video?” It did, indeed, have a character that looked like a disco dancer. Don’t know how he knew that. He’s watched “I lost my cookie at the disco” a few times, but not recently. Rather a connection to make to a 5 second animated video.

He played some Simple Machines, then got into Loopimal for the first time in a long time, as I exercised. I played some Loopimal with him and he did some dancing to it. He was making patterns in it. We went upstairs and he watched Timmy Time and I took a shower. He stopped after one episode and was playing in the play area while I finished. He knocked the drying rack over but he was okay in the middle of it. Then played with it that way.

I drew a bath for him today. Went no better than a shower, and possibly worse. We went downstairs, and he wanted to do the underwater floor puzzle. We did about half of it, then took a break. He was being a bird, which continued as I made us a mixed berry smoothie with frozen mixed berries. He ate several frozen cranberries and blueberries as a bird. He went and stood on the mop handle and called it a “Twig”. After drinking our smoothies (he really liked it) we went outside to water plants. He was still a bird, flying around the yard. We went back inside and finished the puzzle. We were listening to more of the Hebrew children’s songs and he added a few to his playlist. He was even singing along to “Agada”. I was cleaning up in the kitchen, then looked around the corner to find him just sitting in the Lego box. He stood up by the time I got over there.

We finally got ready to go. But out in the car he wanted to pretend to drive and to play with things. We sat out there for quite awhile. He said things like “I’m taking a different route.” Saw David enter his house, then a few minutes later August and I went inside to use the bathroom. Back out in the car David came out looking for his keys and wondered if we saw anyone. We had not.

We drove down to Hatzipor Garden, which is a park south of Netanya Stadium. We had ridden by in a bus and there is a cool bird sculpture on the corner. So it looked promising. But it wasn’t. August fell asleep just as we got there. I couldn’t get him awake as I put him in the stroller, then at the park I took him out and climbed up the sculpture, carrying him and trying to wake him up. No luck. Back down on the ground I tried harder to wake him up. Stood him up on the ground and he slept standing up while I held his hands. Another time he simply walked over to a bench and lay his upper body on it, back to sleep. After he was asleep for about 15 minutes I finally got him up, looking at the other bird sculptures. He liked those when he saw them, and then wanted to climb the big one. He didn’t realize he had just been up on it.

We took the stroller off road and onto the rougher, bumpy paths to the south. Not much else in the park, except for an ant nest where big black ants were piling dirt. August liked the bumps though.

We walked out of the park on the west side and went across the street to a store called Home Design, in the eBay building. Nothing too exciting, but there was a fish tank by the elevators. He climbed up on the couch next to it to see the fish. Later realized it was a $6000 couch. I showed him how the magnetic tank cleaner worked. We then wandered around looking at couches: “Why are there so many couches?” He wanted to make nests on them. And he read a sign on the wall. We rode the elevator up to the second floor. Both directions he lay on the floor, even though it was just one floor. He chose elevator over escalator coming back down: “Yeah, the elevator. I really like elevators.” We left at 2:35.

We walked to the west and north, checking out the shops over in that area, including the meat shop that I read about (that actually has a lot more than just meat, but August did get to see big sides of beef hanging up) and a toy store where we bought a couple of cheap magnet Hebrew word sets.

We went to Tiv Taam and had a good shopping trip. August was helpful, and got out of the cart and was leading me around the store part of the time. As we waited in a typically slow line, he sang a “smash smash smash” song to the tune of Jingle Bells.  In the car we were listening to Jingle Bells and the Twelve Days of Christmas over and over.

Carly had said she should walk home, but I knew that we might see her walking home, and told August that if he saw her he should yell out his window. He did, and he yelled “Hi mama! Do you want a ride?”

At home he wanted to try the pesto vegenaise I had found. He decided “I love veganaise!” Had some dinner, then they did the ocean puzzle together. He and I read Berenstain Bears and Mama’s New Job. I did dishes and they started Clementine and Magic Treehouse #11. He then did chord lookup and played on the toy piano while Carly took a shower. He was putting the chords on arpeggio and then on repeat so the iPad would play it over and over, then playing along on the toy piano or iPad keyboard. He was getting pretty good with a couple chords.

I took him upstairs and we read Plumdog. I asked him what he would dream about and he said “Treehouses!” He was asleep at 8:15.

Park: 

Fish tank: 

Elevator: 

He was up right at 6 with me. Hard for me to get up as just a little earlier I had thought it was about midnight, literally seconds before Carly’s alarm went off. He watched Kipper and Carly got him strawberries and Cheerios, and when Carly headed to work he quite cheerily said “Have a not good day at work!”

He then watched one Smurfs episode (Fountain of Smurf), then we turned to books, reading more of our reread of The 91-Story Treehouse, pausing to play some chords on the piano and Piano Companion, then finishing Magic Treehouse #10. We found Red River Valley (which is central to the book) on YouTube and listened to it. He then wanted the songbook. He had me sing a few of the songs, then made up his own. He then wanted me to sing Go in and Out the Window, which I’ve never heard, so we found it on YouTube and sang along to a couple versions. He was then watching kid song videos for Ants Go Marching, etc. and singing/humming/playing along with them.

Back to 91-Story Treehouee for a couple chapters, then he needed to go to the bathroom. He declared he had turned into an octagon, then after I washed his hands he was a circle: “Now you can cut me any way you want.” (Lines of symmetry) “A machine squirted ten sides into me, so now I’m a decagon.” He had more and more sides and had me cutting him up or his lines of symmetry. He was also counting keys on the piano as he played a scale – I had started to explain chords like C add 9 to him.

He played Simple Machines and I exercised. We went upstairs and he watched Sarah and Duck while I took my shower. We watched one together downstairs, then another together upstairs first. We then played the geometry app together, finding the shapes in the pictures. Gave him a shower and he was pretty upset despite not touching his hair. Think we’ll try a bath tomorrow just to mix things up, even though he says he doesn’t like baths. Clearly he isn’t liking showers either.

We went downstairs and he asked for “more תות”. Strawberries, that is. He’d already had a couple bowls with Cheerios and strawberries. Cut him a couple more, then made grilled tuna and cheese for lunch. While he ate he said “Dada, I don’t like people.” We talked about that, and I talked about people he liked. He denied liking some of them, saying “No, they kill me…no, he killed me too.” A couple minutes later he said “Why do pilots not take baths?” We then figured out he meant “Captains”. This was a reference to either the 26-Story Treehouse (the first we read) or one of the Magic Treehouse books (more recent) in which there is a pirate captain that doesn’t bathe. Either way, surprised that he picked up on that.

I got some iced tea and he wanted a straw for it, then some honey on the straw. Carly had left some of her Tic-Tacs on the counter, the white mint kind. So we each had one. He said “Dada, does your mouth fee cold?” “I’ve always wanted to have those mints.”

We went back and did more reading: Berenstain Bears Sitter and Dentist books,  finished You Wouldn’t Want to Live without Bacteria, and finished our re-read of The 91-Story Treehouse.

He then had me carrying him outside on the pillows – each pillow would go a different distance, based on its size. Then a lot of imagination play based on books – something being drawn twice, “that sign says if we teleport again we will be teleported to another planet.” We turned into frogs. I emailed Carly about our plans to walk to the school library and walk home with her and he sent her a few messages and a GIF.

Before we left he went to the bathroom. On the toilet he told me “I smashed the living room.” “Why?” “There was a fire. I used my magic smashing board to smash it. It put out the fire. The fire got smaller every time I smashed it.” He then did a pretend phone call, which I wish I got on video, where he asked who it was, etc.

We got out on a walk at 2:10. He invented the Ants Go Marching letters song, where the ants go marching “A by A’. Each line then ended with something that started with that letter (but didn’t rhyme). We only got up to E though before he got distracted by running over a paper cup. He pointed out “That’s Jack’s house”. Then I pointed out a helicopter in the sky. He joked “Did you say ‘Nelliecopter?” There was a big yellow fruit on the road that he crushed with the bike wheel. When he was done he said “Sorry fruit that I smashed you. But I think wanted to smash you.” As he sang a song he said “I have three hands. I’m pressing the notes with two. And I can strum with the other one.”

We got to the school, and as we walked towards the library we rode by a guy that was standing and looking at his phone, not moving. August pointed and said “That’s a statue.” Luckily, the guy smiled. We were at the library at 2:35. He helped return our big stack of 7 books (everything except the clean water book). I wanted to look for books, but he kept saying someone was steering us and pulled me to the winter wonderland area they have set up. There is now fake snow on the ground. But the bean bags and polar bear were gone. We huddled together on the snow (he said we were cold squirrels). I had dragged him back to the kids room to pull a couple of books (the Clementine book and another couple books we ended up not looking at) and tried reading those. After the preschool class left the kids area he was okay with switching the squirrel nest to in there and piled up the bean bags in the back right corner. We got a stack of Berenstain Bears books and read those:  Forget Their Manners, The Truth, Bad Dream, and Mama’s New Job.

When we were done reading, he spotted the library computers: “Someone’s steering me to the chairs again…Now they’re steering me to sit. They’re pushing the down button…” They then steered my hand (which he pulled) to the keyboard. Spent the next 20 minutes or so figuring out how to use a mouse. Played around in the Paint program, changing colors and making pentagons. Also played with Publisher. On the library website he found a Neil Gaiman book, Fortunately, the Milk which we then found in the library. Carly walked in to find him sitting at a computer, looking very much like a big kid. We checked out Clementine, two Berenstain Bears books (Mama’s New Job and Bad Dream), Clementine, Max Axiom Photosynthesis (He was excited when I found that one), Fortunately, the Milk, and Magic Treehouse #11 and #12.

We walked home. On the downhill he wanted to roll on his own. Carly was spotting him, but letting him do it more and more. He was figuring out steering and using his feet as brakes. We were home around 5.

They went to nurse and Carly said his hands were cold. He wanted me to get the nursing mittens. I went up and found them in the box of winter clothes. I was talking about what to do tomorrow and said we should go to Ra’anana Park. He said “But I’m worried about the money thing.” That is, the parking meter. After he went to the bathroom he just wore underwear and a shirt while Carly and I were cold and wearing sweatshirts and pants.

Had rice and soup (and chips) for dinner and he wanted to send messages to Korea Megan. He was getting grumpy and upset with Carly when he couldn’t nurse. I almost got him to read a book with me, but then he decided he wanted Cheerios and got upset again when we told him he could have more dinner.

Carly took him up to bed and I did dishes. They read some Berenstain Bears. I came up and read Plumdog. We then did a couple timers and he practiced trying to sleep. He asked for mama and she came up. I left them at 7:10. I asked what he would dream about and he said “Robots” I suggested libraries and he said “Robots and libraries.” Asleep soon after.

Smashing:

Nursing mittens: 

Nursing 5:30 and up before 6. Very upset until close to 6:30. Dr. Panda Handyman with Carly. He and I read Curious George Cleans Up. They went downstairs and nursed and I went and laid down for awhile longer. When I came down he was playing TodoMath. I helped a bit with that. He has gotten into the Daily and Mission sections, trying to get the monsters you can earn. We read more of Magic Treehouse #10. Carly made sandwiches for us. I made my sandwich. August went to the bathroom, then was singing Yankee Doodle with all Z words. Then imagining “Dada, there’s a rocky cliff there…Ther s some smasher robots coming up. I must destroy those….Let’s destroy them together…You know, I’m pretty powerful.” “I crushed your hat becuaee it was a scary ghost.” Lots of swirling on the rug and getting dizzy.

I took a shower. They watched videos about beets. We left at 9:20. Carly drove the 42 kilometers up to Leket Israel Binyamina. August and I read The Cat on the Mat is Flat. We got there at 10:02 and parked and were confused as there was no one there. A bus with an Israeli school group and then a bunch of cars from WBAIS pulled in a few minutes later as we were out wandering around, looking at the mud.

We walked a couple hundred meters up to the beet field. We got to picking and August loved it. Really loved everything about it. He would help us pull, pull on his own, put the beets in the buckets, use his rockets to help us dump the buckets, compare the size of one beet to another, etc. He also liked the shapes of the beets, calling our attention to “interesting” beets. When everyone else first got there he was being antisocial and he and I walked behind everyone else over to the field. He warmed as we picked beets though. And we were picking next to Grace and Gaby, which added to the fun and also helped him: they would talk to him, and when he heard them say something he would ask questions, or be concerned when one got hurt and ask if she was okay.

The coordinator declared we were done around noon. 6 crates of beets picked. Took a group photo, then walked back to the car. August walked much of the way again before asking me to pick him up. He was then singing a “2017” song.

On the way home August reached over and pulled the door handle. Didn’t open, but set off the sensor and broke the seal a bit. Carly pulled off at the next exit and we figured out how to turn on the auto door locks. August was also looking at Google Maps on my phone and told Carly we were close to the Mediterranean Sea and was excited when we were able to see it. We then read Kipper’s Birthday.

We got home, used the bathroom, and grabbed the rice dish, juice, and zucchini bread we were taking to the middle school holiday/Holly’s birthday party. It was at Ilana (the librarian) and Howard’s house, right up near downtown.

August again did pretty well with people. A little shy at first, threatening to say “go”, but started to get him food, and that changes everything. Carly got a plate of food and he sat with her on the ground outside and ate a bit, then he and I went in and he played on the couch and in the beanbag. He kept being a snail or a squirrel getting stuck in it. Jillian came in and he was speaking squirrel language to her. Later, he was trying to speak car or squirrel language. He started that to the Hebrew teacher, then he said the only Hebrew he knew was ‘Shalom’. I said what about numbers, and he started to rapidly count in Hebrew, lying on his back on the beanbag, and got up to 49, I think.

He wanted some juice so we used his straw from his water bottle. When Carly came in and played with him on the bean bag he was getting stuck in sap. They sang “Happy Birthday” to Holly, then Carly got a plate of desserts first. They sat out on chairs and ate. August told me “The fruit salads really good.” I went in and got desserts and he shared more of mine. We also had some soda water. He turned to Carly and said “Did you turn off the oven?” A random reference to a little drawing in 91-Story Treehouse. As he was talking he kept saying “Besides…” and “Actually…”

Near the end, as people were leaving, he declared “I really liked all the foods except…except all the people.” But he had actually done quite well with people. In fact, as we were talking to בת-חן (the Hebrew teacher – Carly was discussing starting lessons with August, and I was discussing Hebrew songs with her that August likes), Ilana took Carly and August for a tour upstairs and August let Ilana pick him up to show him the roof.

We got home at 3:10. As we got to the house he said “Uh-oh. Something’s happening. I’m getting squishier and squishier. I think I’m turning to mud.” I think the “squishier” reference was to the beets and how some of them would be soft. August and I played with Legos and I made a rocket and we read Curious George Cleans Up. He wanted to go upstairs, where we found Carly in the bedroom. I rested and they went down and made popcorn and watched Planet Earth.

We went for a walk at 4:45. Walked down to where we thought we saw an owl yesterday, but no owl today. As we walked he declared “We’re mixing chemicals with a roasted chicken…We’re trying to figure out what makes the chicken explode.”  No idea where that’s from. He was also using his rockets to pretend we were flying off a cliff. I reminded him of Carly’s rule, which is ‘No having fun near cliffs’ and so he was then saying “We’re having fun on a cliff!” We walked to the end of that trail (at the highway) and back, then just counterclockwise around our block.

At home we played Math Tango and Carly cooked the beet greens she had brought home. August liked them and ate a good amount. We read Biscuit Goes to the Vet, Biscuit’s Hanukkah (which we bought for 99 cents) and Paddington. August was getting tired and asked to put his pajamas on on the Zinnie bed. He took a long time on the toilet and was talking the whole time: lots of talking of Pluto (he claims it is a planet) and pressing buttons and moving to a restaurant and typing in search… We got him dressed and in bed. I told him to “Dream about beets” and he said “and parties!” I left them at 7:25 and hew as asleep by 7:40.

Chewed beet: 

Bucket carrying: 

The fields:  

Carly was up early – 4 something. August was up sometime after 5:30. They read Berenstain Bears, had oatmeal, and did a lot of nursing. He had just started watching a Christmas Timmy Time when I came down. I watched it with him, then he started the Storybots Christmas. He paused it after a few minutes and wanted to read The 91-Story Treehouse. We read a couple chapters, starting from the beginning. Played some toy piano, then we went back to the book and got to page 120.

At 8:30 Carly headed to the store to do some grocery shopping before it got crowded. August typed a bit, then played Montessori Geometry. He then got a flashlight and was using it to turn other things into flashlights. He then played Math Tango and I exercised. Went upstairs to watch more Timmy Time and I showered. Carly got home as I was getting him grapes for a snack. I gave August a shower. Fine, as usual, until I started to wet his hair, at which point screaming breaks out.

They nursed, then he played with the flashlight again and was looking at belly buttons and teeth: “Are there anymore belly buttons to look at?” Carly tried to get him interested in riding his balance bike. SHe had it outside and said she was going to use it. He came and called up to me: “Mama takes my special blue bike and I want it back!” So he was interested in it, but still didn’t want to ride. I cut him some strawberries for a snack, then we read more of 91-Story Treehouse. We played Wizard School. I sent him a picture of a wizard, asking if August wanted to be his friend. August said “I’ll send you ‘no’. Cuz you’re dada. You’re not powerful.” I made a picture of a snowman and August named it “Wind”. We read the sample of a book called Clementine, kind of a Ramona Quimby sort of character, and August liked it. The school library has 8 or 9 of the books, so might be our next series. He was alternating between Cheerios and apples: “Could I have dried Cheerios? I finished my apple. There’s nothing in my hand anymore!”

Carly was making food, a rice dish. Then they made a Lego rocket. August came to me and said that I made big rockets but mama made small rockets. We had been missing almost all of his spoons. I found a couple in a drawer yesterday, then he found 3 in the Legos. Think they ended up there after he was putting things on the magic towel in the water. We are back to full kid spoons now.

I was getting stuff ready to make zucchini bread. August came and helped with a few things: peeling and grating zucchini, putting in some ingredients, licking the spatula. He and I got out on a short walk, about 15 minutes, doing more of the touching things to find out what would happen game. We came back to take out the zucchini bread. Got some to take with us, then walked up Kibuts Galyeot – counted a total of 17 dogs and cats. Near the end we saw the biggest cat we’ve seen – a huge fluffy orange cat under a car – followed by a kitten.

We were back at 4:10. Carly had been making pisole and it was done. August had been asking for “chippies” earlier, even though he hadn’t seen them. He somehow knew there’d be chips. We had some pisole and chips. He was joking around and said “Maybe some coffee will help.” He wouldn’t tell us where he got that phrase, but sounds like something I’ve probably said when we’re reading and I’m getting tired. He was also humming the Timmy Time theme song a lot. We read some of Magic Treehouse #10. He was getting sleepy, so we went up and brushed his teeth. He had a jolly time playing a game with Carly where they were hiding the remote under the blankets and laughing hysterically (well, he was, not Carly). He was asleep at 7.

Reading outside: 

Licking the spatula: 

Portrait of his feet: 

Walks. Big cat: 

Crushed watermelon:

Tunnel: 

They were up before 6. He sat in on his bed and watched a Timmy Time then the StoryBots Christmas while I typed. He paused Storybots and started typing on my iPad. Switched to Wizard School and made all sorts of art and little videos and audio recordings. Carly ran to school. He sang “Shanky Shoodle”, changing every word to start with ‘sh’ – he did this with a couple other songs during the day as well, and I think it is a reference to The 91-Story Treehouse when a character does something similar.

The meeting with Shmuel (our landlord), Ada (from school), and Shai (the neighbor) was scheduled for 8, out in our yard. Carly had coffee ready. August was fine with going for a walk, and everything went smoothly until he wanted to stay with Carly. He instantly started screaming when I tried to get his sweatshirts on. It was just a few minutes to 8, so I ended up hauling him out and clumsily getting the bike out of the gate and pushed August up to the park, him screaming all the way. He calmed down, but wasn’t happy. We spent a lot of time just standing up by recycling, him not wanting to move. Eventually we started walking and went around the Holly block. Could see them all still sitting outside, so we walked towards the bridge, then down the trail on this side to the old highway, then started to take the trail branch to the south that we’ve never taken. Walked by some orange trees, which was nice, then got a call from Carly.

She said that the meeting had gone well and that Ada and Shmuel and done a good job of being on our side. They wanted me to come back to meet and shake hands with Shai. I was reluctant to do so, but felt that if I refused that it would look bad. So August and I hurried back. Carly took August inside and I went and sat with them outside. Only took about 5 minutes, but this didn’t go so well. The one concrete positive from the meeting was that they agreed that if he was going to be driving really late that he would text us before going to bed to let us know he’d be sleeping in the next day. That’s something to work with.

We had gotten back close to 9. They left, then I went up and took a shower. August and I then drove Carly to school. When we got back we did more Wizard School. Really a lot of fun, and a lot you can do with it. There are also all sorts of educational videos, and August found one (on his own) on how to read music and watched it. We also added an account for Carly and need to put it on her phone. We read some 91-Story Treehouse. He was then in imagination mode and having us sit on chairs and stools and pushing buttons that would take us places, flying, etc. Then “When I eat honey we both start to spin. I think this is the thing that gets us out of here!”

We both had tea and he got the big dinosaur book down and we read bits of that. We were then hopping around (with me holding his hands) and he had us fall up the steps. In his bedroom he decided there were clues everywhere:”There’s lots of clues in here! Find a clue dada!” “That sign says it will get there and yuckier OVER TIME!” As we left his room: “bye bye clues!”

Downstairs he did some piano improv, then he continued with the clues and yucky things. We read more 91-Story Treehouse. I got him a flashlight and he looked around: “Clues! Are you in there?” He found “Green Marshy” under the couch. Found the chapstick in my pocket and put some on, then we were pretending we had empty brains (as happens in 91-Story Treehouse) and shining the flashlight in our ears.

He played TodoMath and then I shared one of those hearing test things on Facebook with him. I could hear up above 8000 and was surprised when he cut off by 8500. But it may have just been that the iPad’s speakers cut off at that point and he was slow in saying when it cut out for him.

I was doing some typing while he played TodoMath and he told me I was being mean. Some progress though, as when I asked what he meant he explained he wanted “more dada time”. He wanted me to play with him. So I did the catapult thing in Simple Machines with him. I then put Jimi Hendrix on the iPad and told him what we were listening to. He said “Like in the Treehouse books?” There’s a guitar player in them called Jimi Handrix. I said yes, and explained that he now understood the reference. We also did the pinball thing, trying to stack up as many pinballs as we could on each side. When he ran off to go to the bathroom he asked “Can you turn off my iPad? We don’t want it to waste electricity.”

We left to go to the recycling cages at 2:25. From there we walked around the Holly block. And then I heard it: the ice cream truck. It stopped for us, and he recommended something for the kids. I only had a 10 shekel coin and a 100 shekel note. He took the 10 shekel coin and said I could pay him the rest next time. August sat on his bike, eating the ice creamsicle. It was bubble gum flavor. Wasn’t melting too quickly, but eventually we headed home and ate the last of it out of a cup with a spoon. Heard the ice cream truck again and hurried up to the park, but lost the trail. I had grabbed more change and also wanted to buy one for Carly.

We walked north a couple blocks, then back south. We had remembered the Juicy Juice song I’d made up back in Korea and were singing that. We walked by some barking dogs and August said  “Sorry, I don’t have any treats for you.” “…Ice cream for you…If the dogs bark I won’t give them any ice cream.”

Then he got into a big game of wondering what would happen if we touched a certain bush, or stone, etc. It was from The 91-Story Treehouse, where they have a big red button and they don’t know if it will make rainbows come out of their noses or destroy the whole world: “What happens if we touch that tree? Let’s ask that thing and find out.” We wandered over and up Kibuts Galuyot and back down. We stopped outside the synagogue and while we sat on a bench we watched a video about the scale of planets, stars, galaxies, etc. I’d earlier seen posted on Facebook. August liked that, and we talked about the enormity of the universe. In the comments there was a link to “The Galaxy Song” from Monty Python and the Meaning of Life. So we watched that as well, as August found it funny – especially when he climbs into a refrigerator at the end. I told August I thought he’d be a big Monty Python fan eventually.

We got back to the house and played in the yard. August asked where his stick was. I realized that Shmuel had probably broken it to make sticks for some of our smaller plants earlier in the day. So we went in the storage space and got August a new stick. He was happy. August remembered that he wanted to watch the video of “We all sing with the same voice” from Sesame Street. He suggested doing it outside. So I put the iPad out on the patio and he watched a few Sesame Street songs while I raked up the tree mess from the wind and the rain we’ve had.

Carly came home and we eventually ended up inside. I made grilled cheese for dinner. They watched the how to read music video again. He paused it to come and eat and finished it after he was done eating.

We then finished The 91-Story Treehouse. On the iPad he found the songbook and soon remembered how he used to sing from it. He sang for awhile, then found ABC-DEF-GHI – the song that Big Bird sings. I pulled up the video and we watched it. I now have it down pretty well so was singing it as I took him upstairs. We brushed his teeth and got his pajamas on. Got him on the toilet with the bell.

Left them 7:30, but heard him upstairs 15 or 20 minutes later. He came down and told me “I waked up at 7:56.” “Mama isn’t letting me nurse.” We read the Berenstain Bears and the Sitter and finished the Science Project book and read more of Magic Treehouse 10. He went back to bed after 8:50.

From Wizard School: 

Checking to see if his brain is empty: 

Chapstick: 

Ice cream: 

Climbing: 

Watching Sedame Street outside: 

He woke up before 4. Carly got him back to sleep finally about 4:30. He was then up just before 5:30. Carly had him using the program she used for the Hour of Code and I heard “Meow, meow, meow” He also figured out how to use command+T to open a new tab. He ate a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast. He did chord lookup in Piano Companion and Carly headed to work. We read a few chapters of The 91-Story Treehouse and then were pretending to be in a chocolate waterfall (from the book). I got out the Listening Lotto game and we played that. Turned out to be rather easy for him, identifying which picture went with which nursery rhyme we heard. I thought he’d at last learn a few new nursery rhymes, but that went pretty quickly too. We each had a board at first, but even though he won the first round he then didn’t like the idea of winning and losing, so we shared a board after that.

He was still hungry so I made some toast. I had a half and before I knew it he had eaten a piece and a half. He was talking about snow a lot and mittens and boots – that was from the three little kittens nursery rhymes. We brushed our teeth and listened to some Mr. Nicky, then left at 8:20 to meet Carly at the rental car office. She had driven the rental car and after home room headed down.

We got down there and I found a small parking lot across the street that was empty. We parked in there and August spotted a Smurfs picture painted on the wall of the building. Returning the car went smoothly, then Carly came across and we took her to school, listening to the dinosaur and water cycle songs along the way.

Back at home we stayed in the car and played for a long time. August played with the window controls, pretended to drive, and adjusted the fade and balance. We went through the radio and programmed all of the stations as well. Oh, and I let him honk the horn a couple times. He was also singing “Look up at the clouds and tell me what you see”.

We went in side and he played TodoMath and I exercised. He found the RelationShape game and was really into manipulating the shapes and matching them and I took a shower. He came in after my shower and asked “Can we have some dada time?” We played it together and he said “You know, dada, this game is pretty good.” And he said things like “We need to focus on this shape.”

I started a pizza in the oven then we gave him a quick shower. He was pretty happy, as I said I wouldn’t touch his hair today. We went down and ate pizza and made a banana, mango, and carrot lassi for lunch. He drank a lot of that, and ate some of the carrot before it went into the smoothie – it was much like the video from a year ago of him eating grated carrot.

He requested the elements song and he was singing along with it – he’s getting more and more of the words. We then read a few chapters of the Magic Treehouse #10 book. He went back to music and was walking around singing “Look up at the clouds” and chose others songs.

We got out for a walk at 2. He wanted to hear the clouds song again on my phone. We stopped by the entrance to the trail and were looking upat the clouds, which he said looked like people. We then sang “Down by the bay” I made up a line about grasshoppers, and he asked “Does grasshoppers sparkle things?” I was really confused until I got him to say it was from a Sarah and Duck Christmas episode. We went down and had fun in the echo tunnel, then walked up to the main road and took a left and walked up to the strawberry stand. It was closed, then we took a right and walked the dirt road home.

On the road we first spotted horseshoe prints, then tractor tracks, then dog prints so we followed all three. At the top of the hill we saw a school group coming. August initially said he was going to yell ‘go’ at them and started to. I threatened walking back the way we had come and he changed his mind. We stopped at the park on Vatikim and played with the ball thing. August was interested in which hole the ball would come out, but he wouldn’t get off the bike. So I played by myself. I finally got him off the bike when we found a big branch on the ground with thorns on it and he wanted to pick up the branch. We then stopped at our park and had a snack and listened to the Mr. Nicky dinosaur song on my phone.

We got home at 3:45. As we came in I said there was something I wanted to do when we got home but I couldn’t remember what it was. He said “Watch Sarah and Duck!” I said “Ahh, that’s it. Good job remembering.” He replied “Sometimes I remember things you don’t remember. But sometimes I don’t remember things you don’t remember. But this time, I do!” We figured out it was the Petal Light Picking episode, and there was indeed a grasshopper that hops across some glowing flowers, although it only lasts about two seconds. Interesting that he picked up on that. We then watched the Balloon Race episode. Carly got home, and they Skyped with Cherie.

Carly then headed to the bank to deposit some cash. August chose to stay here. We read the new Berenstain Bears books: Sitter and Visit the Dentist. August remembered Simple Machines (I had mentioned it when we were reading the Berenstain Bears Science Project book at the library yesterday and talking about wedges and pullies). So he played Simple Machines and Carly was home a bit later.

We had some dinner, then August was picking Carly’s backpack up and setting it on the couch. She asked “What are you doing with my backpack?” He replied “Lifing it up. I’m a pulley. I have six pullies.”

He was getting tired early, as was to be expected. We got him up and his pajamas on. I told him to dream about pullies. He was asleep at 7.

Looking at cloud shapes: 

Through the echoy tunnel: 

Following tracks: 

He was up with the alarm again. Around 3am he was up enough that I was afraid he was waking up for good but Carly got him back to sleep. He watched Timmy Time again this morning. As Carly was getting ready to leave, August decided he wanted to go for a walk. So we were getting ready as well and about to leave a minute after Carly left. But she came back, asking if we could give her a ride to work as it was about to rain. It then started pouring, and we waited a minute until it slowed before we hurried out to the car.

On the way we listened to “The Elements” song so Carly could hear her. As we got home he sang Yankee Doodle to the tune of London Bridge. We then played the new Montessori Shapes app. Kind of cool as it has all sorts of advanced shapes. We then skyped with my parents. August typed Arabic numbers to them. Afterwards, he was being a kitten. At one point he wanted some of the string from the roll of twine I was using to hang the hooks. I cut him some and he played with it like a kitten. I also took care of him, giving him (pretend) food and water. I finished hanging the hooks by the door in the entryway so now August can get down and hang up his own sweatshirts.

He played “Lightly Row” in Chordana and then watched one episode of Timmy Time. He then watched Arabic and Hebrew vocab songs. There is one that talks about learning Arabic to read the Koran, etc. and he was singing along to the words. I exercised and showered.

We then went downstairs to make some lunch. He was being cranky and trying to stomp on the floor and hit the living room wall. Had to take him upstairs a couple times, which just slowed down making lunch. We had falafel, sweet potato fries, and apple. We listened to the elements songs as we ate.

We then did some pretending: “Can we be lungs not getting oxygen?…a body dying on the moon?” “Words dying? That means someone put the wrong letter in us!” He wanted hot tea so we had tea and read the bacteria book. We were then hedgehogs. I liked his sentence: “It seems to me we have to curl up in a ball.” Next read Berenstain Bears The Trouble with Pets.

He got back to pretending, but forgot where we were: “Hey dada, what are we? Hedgehogs? Kittens? Oh, I’m a little puppy.”

We got ready to go, he played with a wire twisty tie thing and was impressed that he couldn’t ruin it, then we headed to school. Headed into the library about 2. He really liked the fireplace made out of books Christmas display with two of the stuffed dogs lying in front of it. Looked at that and the Christmas lights for a few minutes, then headed back to the kids section. Liz was there and asked him if he liked the display and he said yes. She was a couple aisles away after we grabbed a bunch of Berenstain Bears books to read, and I remembered that the online catalog had said that they had The 91-Story Treehouse. I suggested he go ask Liz and he went and asked “Do you have 91 Story Treehouse?” We read part of the Berenstain Bear Science Fair book, then went out and sat in the winter display area in a beanbag. He reached up and grabbed a book off the shelf and it was a Harry Potter book. I found Chamber of Secrets (they didn’t have the first book) and August first lounged there and pretended to read it by himself. We then read a few pages of it together. August liked that Harry was a wizard and some of the descriptions of the Dursleys.

We checked out our books and headed to the playground at 3:20. Wasn’t really rainy, but it was a chilly wind. He sat in the Jeep and was hungry so ate a whole banana. He started singing “Hop on the water cycle” and I didn’t even know what it was, but then he told me we listened to it in the car when we were listening to science songs. It is a song off of Mr. Nicky’s Science Project.

It got a bit rainy and windier, so we decided to head back to the library. We sat in a chair in the lobby and ate a Larabar. We listened to the Water Cycle song on my phone and Carly came and found us. She had gotten our insurance today AND got a call that our car was on the lot and we could pick it up. Well, sort of. Then they said it hadn’t been washed yet. But we pushed and said we were picking it up anyway so we could return the rental car.

So we drove to the Skoda dealership. August got to have one last spin in the spinny chairs, as an uncensored Eminem song, then a rather not-safe-for-work music video played on the big TV behind him. Carly did some signing and August played with Shmuel’s calculator (he was shy about asking for it, but we got him to do most of the asking, although he wouldn’t say ‘calculator’). Then it was out to the car. I got in and got the tour.

Then we were off. I put the car seat in the new car andAugust and I drove the new car home. Carly took the rental car to get gas. The navigation screen was really quite cool: it showed me the map, while my phone, in the holder next to it, showed the upcoming instructions. We were home at 5:30. Carly was home soon after.

We had dinner (he had chocolate pancake, soup, and pita). He was upset when I wouldn’t let him have more pita, even though he had barely touched his chocolate pancake (his loss, my gain). He melted down, ready for sleep. He needed to go to the bathroom though, and as he sat on the floor, crying, he said “I will NEVER do it! Can’t you just kill me?” Turned his mood around pretty quickly with the bell and letting him ring it to tell us he was done. I told him to dream about the new car and he was asleep at 6:50.

Had a good downpour a bit later. August then came out at 8:50. Carly took him back in and had him soon back to sleep.

Grumpy after his shower: 

Reading: 

Snack in the Jeep: 

New car! 

Hanging up his coat: