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I finished reading In the Skin of a Lion in the morning. August slept until 8:40. Colin spent much of the morning chanting my name. Derek made tons of crepes for breakfast, which were a big hit, especially with cinnamon and sugar. And August had one with chocolate syrup (his idea).

We were all getting ready to go on a morning walk. He was worried about not being ready on time. But we were. He’s continued on a line of his odd humor: “Penis, defender of the penisverse…nursings, defender of the nursingverse.” Which all started with “Zinniebot, defender of the multiverse.” He sled me to go on the walk without brushing my teeth. He jumped on the couch and said “recharge me, please.” He talked to Carly and she recharged him.

We got walking, most everyone, about 10:15. We walked south on the eastern trail. He did fine at first. They were doing red light, green light down the road. Andrea said “Let’s see who can stop the fastest” and when she said “Green light” he took a step, then froze.

As we walked along the trail though he had more of a mixed bag. We saw some deer and looked at things along the way. Did some leading with Thatcher, but was getting upset that Vivian and Thatcher were leading and ahead of him.

On the way back, he was doing math with Andrea. She asked something like 20+20 and he said “I think we need a calculator!” He was getting upset about being slower again and someone said they were older than him. He said, “I’m19,000 years old.” But then he complained ‘I can’t actually change myself.”

We were back at 11:20. He had a small rock and wanted to take it down to the vice. Sounded like a game he’d played before down there. We got permission from Andrea and went in. He banged the rock on the vice and it would cast magic: “Everyone in the world is a rabbit… Chair… Water… Sock…” He continued it upstairs.

I lay down for a bit to let allergies pass. Not too bad, but the most I’ve felt since being here. When I came out Cherie was giving the kids the splat balls that look like poop. They ended up playing in the bathroom with the door closed, which was fine by us as it kept the noise down: “I pooped on the wall!” “Poop on you!”

Glecy arrived right at 12. People had lunch and there was a lot of craziness, then they all went to the beach at 2 and I stayed and worked. Derek came back to start dinner and said he thought they were staying longer. I walked down, but met them in the parking lot by the beach. August had dragged the floaty thing all the way from the beach, and refused help the entire way, even pulling it over a log. Glecy said he had spent about 70% of his time on the beach digging and making paths for the water. Carly tried the paddle board again, and Kayla floated on the floaty.

I carried him back and he noticed my new wireless headphones. He listened to them and was excited. He liked New Order’s “Shake It Up”: “So good!” And he was excited about wireless headphones. He then sang a “wireless headphones, wireless headphones” song.

He tried playing Chutes and Ladders with Cherie, Thatcher, and Vivian but got upset when he was losing, so I took him for a break. He went back with Cherie when they were done and he was rolling the dice for her while she moved. Carly and I then played with him and we did a couple hands of cribbage, then he got out the Sequence box and wanted us to try and play it. There was no board though, which he would have gotten upset about, but dinner was ready so he got distracted.

Derek had cooked the geoducks they had caught. He breaded parts of them, and did the rest in pancake things. Cherie had made lasagna.

August told me he needed attention and I agreed to play Magnus Kingdom with him. He got some chips and said “This is my snack when I pay Magnus Kingdom, okay?” He was then with a bunch of the kids and Derek, who was doing magic with a ball. August and Vivian were then sitting on the back of the couch, and she was flopping backwards onto the couch. Colin copied her and bounced on the couch and did a flip off it, backwards. Which might have been okay, but then his head hit the coffee table. Glecy jumped up and grabbed him.

Andrea had made a berry pie, so we all had some pie and ice cream. I was going to wait, but since August was having some I decided to have some as well. By the time I was finished scooping mine up, he was done. So I let him share some of mine as well. Colin then wanted some attention and we played with the poop ball together.

We were all going down to the spit to do s’mores. Andrea’s parents had brought wood and her dad, Kim, had a fire going. We got walking, with Vivian, and then realized that none of us had told Cassie and Jeff that we were taking Vivian, so I ran back and told them.

At the beach, everyone realized we didn’t have any marshmallow sticks. I messaged Levi and Sarah and it turned out they had three, but by then Kim had come back with long sticks. Which were necessary as he’d built a huge fire that would have taken a long time to burn down to coals.

While we waited, we had sat on a log and thrown rocks in the water. August leaned on Cassie for quite awhile. I pointed out Mt. Rainier and suggested we go there next year. He said he wanted to climb to the top.

Someone roasted a marshmallow for August and he had a s’more. I roasted one marshmallow, people freaked out about burnt marshmallows being unhealthy, and I made it through a family photo before leaving to head back to the house at 7:45.

I read in the bedroom and heard deer out the window. Two young bucks. Glecy had been asleep when I got back but was now up, and I pointed them out to her. Everyone got back at 8:35. Not sure what they did after I left.

August requested playing on her tablet with Cherie. He argued “It’s my last chance…” He was then driving her crazy by repeatedly asking “Why?”

I took him in for his shower. Let him play for a few minutes (he made a barrier of things along the edge of the tub) then I washed his hair. I started drying his hair with the hair dryer, then Carly moved him to the bedroom and finished it.

He did lots of good nights to people, but especially Cherie. I left them at 9:40 but he wasn’t ready for sleep. I went in and read 3 chapters of Two Dogs in a Trenchcoat, which I hadn’t read any of before. We came out t 10:05. Vivian and Colin were still out so he got to stay out while Carly finished getting ready for bed. He ws asleep at 10:20.

I finished reading Mrs. Vargas and the Dead Naturalist in the morning and did some work and typing.

He was up at 7:40. Came out, then went back in with Carly for awhile. He came out, and perched on the back of the couch next to Cherie. I went and took a shower. Derek made eggs and he had that and some toast for breakfast. He’s been having a lot of math discussions with Thatcher: from discussions of googleplex and infinity to Thatcher asking addition problems and then them debating the right answer until they figure it out.

He played with the robot, and we all planned a visit to Steve and Claremay in Centralia, the details of the negotiations underscoring the complexity of  negotiating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

I moved August’s car seat into Cherie’s car, between Vivian and Colin. Carly and I felt like cave divers in Thailand getting into the back of the car, and Cassie and Jeff drove/navigated. August played some Monster Physics and Crazy Gears on his iPad.

We got to the house in Centralia at 12:10. Ran in and to the licorice candies. But August didn’t eat any. He’s already tired of them. Downstairs he found peppermint candies but I put them up on the shelf, leading to a couple timeouts when he couldn’t handle that. I had told him he needed to wait until after lunch.

He settled down and played with Colin in the toy room. He and Thatcher then made a laser shooter out of Duplos, and emerged and were shooting it around the house. They had some lunch. We had made fake chicken burgers and Claremay had made applesauce, which August called “Candy applesauce”. Thatcher said, “I said the F word.” But it was “Oh my gosh” that he had said, so he meant the G word. Thatcher and August had some more math conversations today.

We then went back downstairs and were playing there when one of the kids spotted a big insect on the sliding door, outside. Thatcher ran around to the other side. We figured out it was the a banded alder borer beetle https://www.insectidentification.org/insect-description.asp?identification=Banded-Alder-Borer-Beetle. They are attracted to fresh paint, and the house was just painted last week. We went outside after that one flew off and realized there were others. Saw about six total.

August ended up in the play area again with Jeff and Colin. He made the train track and sang “I need a train, so I’m making train tracks.” Colin was baking cookies and dinner and sharing those, but then was playing with 4 metal cars. August was pretending to wash them with a nozzle but Colin didn’t want to share them.

Near the end we went outside to see the beetle that thatcher had caught. He and Vivian named it ZZ as they had been calling it a zebra bug. We started cleaning up the play room, but then August had to use the bathroom, then had a timeout. He was then upset when he didn’t really get to clean up.

We went outside and they let ZZ go, watching the insect fly away. Vivian really wanted to walk the paths close to Chuck and Cherie’s old house (we had driven by the house on the way in – looks the same, except for the RV spot growing over with weeds). Cassie agreed. Colin fell asleep before we got there, so Jeff stayed with him.

The rest of us walked down, stopping to get a few blackberries. We got down to the pond and they threw some rocks in. August couldn’t handle just one at a time and got upset. On the way back up we saw a lot more of the blackberry bushes and had a lot of blackberries.

Colin woke up as we left at 3:45. We tried to keep things quiet so he might fall back to sleep, but he didn’t. I gave August the iPad to do some art. And Carly was doing quiet cookies with the other two to keep them quiet.

Carly passed forward the fry things and Cheerios to August. He did a good job of sharing them Vivian. And tried with Colin. He handed back the Cheerios and said “Colin is not responding to Cheerios.” Colin was getting more upset as we got close. I calmed him for awhile by putting my hand up by him. He was pulling my finger and I would make animal noises. August asked “When we get home can we say potty words in Oma’s closet?” We were back by 5:15.

He went downstairs to do art with Andrea and the other kids and they watched some show. They came up and he started to melt down. Carly took him in and he fell asleep at 7. Carly and Chuck went to play tennis. I got ready for bed and was falling asleep next to him when he woke up at 8:30. He just popped up, as if from a nap. Went out and they were watching the Curious George movie. He was instantly hooked, and said it was funny. They had made some popcorn earlier (Carly had done it before she left) and he ate some now.

We took him in about 10 and they read some of the Hilde book. He was repeating “Cardboard, glasses, and cranky.”  And said those were cat names. He was asleep at 10:50.

He was up at 7:30. Derek made pancakes for breakfast, then he played iPad with Thatcher and the other kids: Slice Fractions and Dragonbox Numbers. He FINALLY went to the bathroom at 8:30. It had been 13 hours.

I took a shower, and everyone started getting ready for the beach. He screamed to get down from bunk bed once. I heard him screaming in our bedroom at one point and was about to go in when I realized Carly was putting sunscreen on him. I decided to stay out of that. He found a rock in the pocket of his swimsuit. He was then doing magic with it, rotating it in circles and going “Zap!” When he was done doing magic with it later he threw it on the ground. He was then with Cherie in their room. I heard him ask “What’s that?” I heard her responding “It’s a Sanskrit symbol…” They were then discussing the right to a lawyer writ of habeas corpus. I don’t know how that came up.

We left at 9:50. He sang “Open the door, get on the floor…” He had me carry him and he whispered it to me in my ear.

We got to the beach and helped haul the stuff and paddle boards down to the beach below the wood fort. It was close to low tide. The kids headed down the beach, looking for animals, and I went with them this time. We spent close to two hours on the beach. August and I made dams and canals for the draining water. Carly floated in a floaty, then tried a paddle board. Andrea brought down a chair and was reading Simplicity Parenting, which I’m reading on the iPad.

We stopped for a snack at 11:45. Right at low tide. Hank had shown up and he and Cherie had gone over on the other side of the spit where Brad, Tristan, Chuck, and Derek were digging for geoducks. I told the story about the one time I remember digging for clams when I was a kid and the weather was awful. I finished with something like “I wondered why we weren’t at the playground.” August told me “You shouldn’t have gone to the playground, cuz the playground isn’t likely to have clams.”

Andrea had little snack mix bags for the kids. August picked the M and Ms out of his, and shared with Colin and Kayla when there were issues over colors.

We slowly got headed out to see how the clam hunting was going. We hauled stuff up to the truck, and spent some time at the swings. I then carried August across the outlet stream and along the spit. August told me of something he had been thinking, and said “You know what? Sometimes I think of things just in my head.” August asked about oysters, and we talked about pearls. I said something about how pearls are valuable and used for jewelry, and August then outlined, on his own, the whole process of people finding the pearls, selling them to stores, being made into jewelry, and people buying them to wear.

We got over there about 12:45. He saw someone laying on the ground, arm in the ground. August asked “Are they burying that person?” We watched the process for a few minutes until they called it a day, then we headed back.

At the house, Colin played with August’s robot. He started a game where he handed me the robot, then he went and lay on the edge of the rug and I released the robot and it rolled towards his head. I was surprised when August wanted a fake chicken burger for lunch. He ate a chunk of Carly’s, then part of one she made for him. He and Thatcher went in to Cherie’s room and played on her tablet with her. I went in and did some reading and rested.

When I came out, he was playing Jenga with Brad and Tristan. He did a few rounds, pulling out blocks. When it started to get shaky he declared “I’m going to stop playing.” Brad and Tristan kept playing, and as it got bigger he said “Oh, that’s so impressive.” There was a big potty word discussion between the kids and Cherie until that was ended.

Carly, Cassie, and I then took our three and Thatcher to the playground. We all piled into Cherie’s car, and the kids got to not have their seatbelts on. As we walked to the playground he held Cassie’s hand. Went on the swings first, and when I was pushing him he said “I’m getting an underdog, Tia Cassie.” When he wanted to slow down he said he had to “Defeat the momentum”.

Brad and Tristan left, stopping by to say bye to us. August told Cassie all about germs and bacteria and included “Because I’m a scientist.” He said “I have a DNA changer. Right now I have boy DNA now I have girl DNA.” Carly tried to get him to ask Cassie about RNA or something. Instead he said “Remember in Israel you told me to ask uncle Jeff about his guns?” Carly joked about how we don’t like guns, but Jeff can have them. He asked “Does that mean he’ll say nah nah nah nah I have guns and you don’t.” And “I won’t do any thing with the guns…I’ll just leave her and we’ll ship them on airplanes. Wait, can you ship guns on airplanes?”

He then got into a big investigation over how many swings the playground had. He declared that things like shaky bridges he would also count as swings. He went and declared the rope ladder and a chain thing swings. He decided there were 7 in total.

Cassie went and asked about opening hours of the pool. She and Vivian went to play ping pong. August and Thatcher played together for a long time, sitting first on the bench swing together and talking, then moving to the tire swing. August got sad when Thatcher said he had written on the tire swing and August wanted to do the same thing. But it turned out Thatcher was kidding. It was something someone else clearly older had written.

We all went in and they played checkers and with the pool table. On the walk to the car, August made up “Diaper miper…a game where you shoot diapers at trees.”

We were back at 5:10. The three oldest kids played with the Jenga pieces. They were knocking down towers and I showed them how to use Jenga pieces as dominoes.

Dinner was fish and a great dish from Derek. The secret that Chuck was going to make milkshakes leaked out, and the kids got hyper. Carly took them downstairs and they played games downstairs for a few minutes. He had some difficulty letting Thatcher and Vivian being in control of red light, green light, or some such game.

They came back up when Chuck had finished making their chocolate milkshakes, and they all loved that. There was some general craziness and the possibility of more red light, green light. And Colin started calling me ‘Ryan’ for the first time, and not ‘John’ or ‘August’.

Just after 7 we took the kids all down to the water. It was high tide, so we got to see it all the way up to the seawall. We went over by the tire swing, and they found a bucket and filled it with stuff for the crabs they found. I was able to sit and do some reading. A couple of bigger kids came and were jumping off the tree with the rope swing. Jeff tried it and almost crashed into the tree. Vivian and Thatcher both climbed up and thought about it, but couldn’t quite make the jump. Very brave of them to even consider it.

August had some troubles on the way back, including yelling in my ear right after he promised not to. No surprise when he fell asleep soon after we got back, by 9:20.

He woke up at 6:30, but Carly got him back to sleep. He was up again after 7:30. He had some french toast for breakfast, then played with the dominoes with Colin. Chuck came over and played with them. August talked to Chuck about beach rules. He was thinking of the beaches in Israel where the lifeguards tell kids where to swim. Kayla and Thatcher came up.

I took a shower. When I came out, August told me “Opa called me ‘Shorty’.” When I asked how August responded he said “I knocked down his tower.” This was a complaint he mentioned multiple times, and also to Carly and Cherie. But Chuck never said that. He simply built a tower taller than August, and August interpreted that as teasing him.

Everyone else was getting ready for a trip to the beach. August wanted to wear his swimsuit. It was still a bit damp so Carly put it in the dryer. August then joked “Put me in the dryer…I’m like 99 percent water on the inside…and blood cells.” He then helped Chuck and Kayla and Thatcher play Candy Land. August would draw the cards for each of them and hand them a card.

They all walked down to the beach at 9:45. Played a little up where the fort is, then went down to the beach. Carly went out on the stand-up kayak. Thatcher held onto a geoduck and Chuck and Jeff tried to dig it up. Thatcher let go when someone else dug up a shrimp. They also found crabs. They made a dam on a little stream and the dam disappeared when the tide came in. And crows got into some of the food, eating the peanuts.

I worked, having a phone call with a woman from MPAC, and returned a call from my mom to discuss Sunday.

They were back about 12:30. He was with cherie for awhile. Not sure where they were. He spotted Thatcher and Vivian with Starbursts they had gotten in the truck and he wanted one. I found the honey treat that my mom had bought him at Bear Foods in Chelan when he was asleep and broke that up for him. He had a piece of it now and was happy enough to then eat nutty noodles for lunch. Cherie and Chuck put the Wild Kratts on the TV and they watched two epsisodes. Chuck and Cherie had already left, and we were leaving next. August then spotted Thatcher with M and Ms. Thatcher was nice enough to give him some, solving that problem. We were getting in the car and the bathroom freed up, so Carly took him in to the bathroom. Kayla was saying goodbye to us from the window as we left, and asking where we were going. We left before 3 and got to Chris and Tami’s just past 4.

Looked around the house, and August headed to the back bedroom with the toys in it with Tami. They were back there by themselves for 10 minutes or so, then Tami came out. We were all heading out on the deck and Chris realized August was missing. He then went down and played with August for a good 10 or 15 minutes. They played with a construction truck and lift, and a set of boxes of different sizes. Chris was impressed with how quickly August caught on to how they worked.

Cassie and company arrived at 4:35. Then Derek and company. August came out with a little Hungry Hippos game. August wanted to play the Slice Fractions 2 game, which he had spotted on his iPad and is new. We played a little together. Apparently not about fractions, but is good problem solving. Thatcher came over and they played on the hanging bed out on the deck together. It was really cool to hear them discussing their problem solving and working through several levels. Don and Theresa showed up, and friends Claire and her husband, who used to be an English/Philosophy teacher at Columbia Basin Community College. Did a lot of discussing of Palestine and my work and travel plans with people. Chris and Tami are heading to Spain and Germany soon.

I looked at the big Audubon book, finding the page that was open at the Beinecke Library when we were at Yale. August found the binoculars and we used them. They came in handy when a big ship went by, that was supposedly a carrier support/work ship. Spotted small subs on the side.

Jeff and I were discussing travel and I mentioned Kazakhstan and he mentioned Borat. Jeff said that people had thought he was from a made-up country. He then asked Derek if he’d seen the movie, and Derek thought he was from a fictional company. Later,  Jeff, Derek, and I were trading puns in the same spot. Not the most literary of discussion spots.

Derek did most of the cooking for the fish tacos. But lots of food overall. August was disappointed by the watermelon salad. He took bites on his fork over to Tami at the sink to wash them off. She didn’t understand at first and threw his first piece away. He persisted. But it had a dressing on it that changed the flavor of the watermelon. For desert there was a wonderful rhubarb dish. August had gone back to playing with Thatcher and didn’t have any, but the kids had had popsicles.

Soon before we left, someone was picking the kids up by the feet. Colin saw this, and I saw him flop down on the couch on his back and stick his feet up into the air. His way of asking to be picked up.

We left a bit after 8. August fell asleep promptly in the car by 8:15. At the house Carly bonked his head taking him out of the car, but he went right back to sleep.

Sock hands: 

Playing with Uncle Chris:

Ship: 

I heard crying and bonking at 4am or so. Both Carly and I thought it was Vivian bonking her head, but it turned out it was Colin bonking his head on the floor and being upset about the dinosaur toy. He had woken up because his diaper leaked. It had interrupted my odd dreams about someone ruining their car by overheating it and about mom being on TV.

I got up at 5:40, but not early enough. Cassie and Colin were up as I was making coffee. I listened to the long songs issue of Ball of Wax and read a few stories in the short story collection Stephanie loaned to Carly. I’m also making decent progress on In the Skin of a Lion, which I need to finish by next Monday.

The other kids slowly got up, and August was last, a bit past 7:30. General chaos after that, although not too bad. August was quiet and there was a lot of coloring going on. Colin and August pulled each other around by the jump rope.

I took a shower and they were playing on the bunk beds. August ran out to Cherie and said “Poopie!” Cherie said he could just ask for a hug “Instead of saying ‘poop’!?”

He played with a matchbox car and Colin came and asked for it. August shared it with him and Colin said “Thanks!” They then shared it back and forth for a couple minutes.

We played chess using the wooden chess set on the shelves. We had white win. He was then upset about Colin getting a chip. August hadn’t really had breakfast yet and had to eat something healthy first.

As we got ready to go for a walk we were in the bedroom. I took the robot from Spenser out of the backpack. He showed it to Vivian and Colin and said “Yeah! Spenser made it!” He hadn’t understood that the robot that Spenser said he was making, and would give to him when he was finished, was different than the toy robot he had given August. In fact, at the end of the day with Spenser August had thought he had to give the robot back to him so he could keep working on it.

August wanted to wear his tennis shoes so I got them out of the car and attached the crocs to the backpack. We got walking at 10:15. Derek drove the truck down as they were taking their boats. We went to the second beach entrance. The water was low, but a bit higher than the first time. So when Vivian and Colin tromped across the stream to the spit it was trickier for me to carry him across.

We ended up at the swings again with me giving him underdogs. He chose ‘mechanical’ as the word of the day. Colin went on the swing next to him. August then lay on the swing and played with the gravel below him. Each rock was an underdog.

We walked out on the west beach. Most of the kids ended up walking down the beach with Carly. Derek was out on his stand-up kayak fishing. Chuck’s friend Paul and his wife Marie came over in their boat. I talked to Paul for awhile and the cases he and Chuck worked on. He told me his version of the jackhammer story, where they settled a dispute between their clients by playing a round of golf to determine who would pay for the jackhammer (Chuck won on the 19th hole) and then spending 4 hours breaking up concrete themselves.

I then sat and read a story form Mrs. Vargas and the Dead Naturalist. The group came walking back along the beach. August, Vivian, and Thatcher were talking about what foods they would and would not eat.

Thatcher and August worked on the fort, finding wood and playing by themselves for awhile, then we worked our way back to the house. We had nutty noodles for lunch, then August and Carly played chess with Vivian and Thatcher. That went quite well. I went to rest and work, and they moved on to dominoes. Paul and Marie had come back to the house, and when I came out I saw someone else I didn’t recognize. Quite a full house. It quieted down and I finished up an email and came out to find Hank about to leave. Hadn’t even realized that he was here too.

August sat with Cherie and they played a game on her tablet. Lots of talk about achievements. He ended up using some word with her, ‘poop’ I think, and had a consequence. He said “Sometimes it just comes right out of my mouth.” He got really sad. Cherie taught him to say “Puppies!” instead, which seemed to work a bit.

Carly and I took him on a walk after 4. We took the stroller and walked to the right, doing the loop around the community center. We took a look at the pool. Carly said it was no Ramallah. tried the TV there, but no channels. Outside Carly pointed out a curvy tree and they talked about what trees need and why it may have grown like that. When they discussed sunshine August said “so maybe the computer inside it…” We walked back the west side and were back at 5.

We had a debate over ‘antidisestablishmentarianism’. Jeff was doing Legos with the kids but August wasn’t interested. Derek had made a curry for dinner. August gave it his seal of approval. Andrea taught August and Kayla “Zip a dee doo daw” as a replacement for ‘potty’. He then had a long discussion about nursing and how bodies develop with Cherie, sitting in the chair next to her. She thought he said “you da bomb” to her, but I’m pretty sure he was chanting “doo doo bom”. Carly, Thatcher, and August played with the dominoes again. General chaos for awhile. August had me work on the sphere thing and I got to 94.

We headed to the pool after 7. I walked, giving me some time to listen to some music. He was with Opa, doing tricks with the noodles and floating with them. Jeff asked Chuck to take the dinosaur, and August called Chuck “dinosaur parent”. He had August totally floating with a noodle under his arms and one under his feet. I got in for awhile. August asked “Where is that dinosaur I was babysitting?” He was also putting the noodles and dinosaur on “the spaceship” – that is, sliding them through the slot into the big pool.

We were back about 8:30. We had left first, with Carly and August driving and me walking back the long way. She gave him a bath and she took a shower. He was watching Puffin Rock, then the other kids watched with him. Then the kids (minus Kayla) were running around look for “Sho sho”. No idea what that was about. Oma offered them videos. They chose something with called Pokoyo but August got really upset about it. He wanted Wild Kratts instead.

Carly tried to put him to sleep but he couldn’t let it go. I watched an episode of Magic School Bus with him. About butterflies. Left them again at 9:45. I thought he had fallen asleep, but at 10:15 he was still crying. He ws saying something like “only way to live” and “I can’t live”. And that he’d never get to watch a video with Oma. I went in and sang some songs (“It’s Okay” and a couple others) while he was next to Carly and he fell asleep just after 10:20.

He was up at 8. I heard him asking for us and went in. He asked for Carly and then lounged on the bed while I went and got her. They hung out for awhile, then came out. August wasn’t too social towards Chuck at first. He got the sphere and had Carly working on it, having her work on the second path “You need to make it the right direction; it’s powered by gravity.”

I took a shower. Cherie made him toast but he barely touched it. I think because it just had butter on it, but he wouldn’t say anything when I asked why he wouldn’t eat it. He and Cherie sat together and played the game he likes on her tablet. Carly made him an egg and he ate that.

I took him out for a walk with me at 11:40. A few houses down, we saw a doe along the roadway, a few feet from us, and watched her eating the bushes. We kind of travelled down the roadway with her a bit. We went to the second beach entrance, at the other end of the spit, and took a few minutes to play horseshoes. He wanted me to keep going until I actually got one around the post, but I didn’t know how long that would take.

We left the stroller and walked down on the beach. He looked at the broken shells and spotted the lines of seaweed, etc. left on the floor and talked about how it was evidence that the tides had been up here. This was something we had discussed yesterday on the beach.

The tide was down, so I was able to pick him up and step across the outlet stream of the lagoon without getting wet. He had wanted to look for crabs, but the beach was different here, with smaller rocks. We threw rocks in the water. He was taking rocks in both hands and throwing them, sort of crisscross. He sat on my lap and ate the rest of the apple for snack. I got the small binoculars out. Paul had loaned them to me one day and I’d put them in the backpack and forgotten about them. August had fun with them, looking out across the water at boats and trees and exclaiming how big they looked.

Eventually we decided to head back to the house. I figured Vivian and Colin were there by now. The tide had come up. In fact, a couple of times August went and hauled our backpack up away from the water. We looked at the outlet stream, but it was high now, and the bank down to it was loose anyway. So we walked the spit the other direction, back to the beach we had been on yesterday. We discussed the wind and the wind sock thing along the way. As he walked along the road, using the binoculars, he said “I love my binoculars.” Really have to get him his own binoculars now.

We got back by 1:10. We had walked the rest of the loop around to the house. He got out of the stroller and ran towards the house, yelling “Binoculars!” Carly asked where he got them, and he yelled “Uncle Paul!” Vivian came down the stairs and greeted him. He seemed uncertain how to respond. I asked who it was, and he said “Rada!” In the house, he went crazy with saying “Poopie” to everyone, then he and Colin were Qing everyone together. I’m not sure what made him start that.

The kids went back in Vivian/Colin’s room with Chuck and Cherie. I heard him call for me when he wanted down. I waited in the hallway for a few seconds though as Chuck and Cherie tried to help him. But he got sad and upset that I wasn’t helping him so I had to intervene. They found a jumprope and Carly took them outside to show them how it worked. After that, Carly suggested gnomes, and August said “I need to teach you about making gnomes out of pinecones…there’s all these interesting materials.”

They went for a walk out along the trail to the west with Chuck and Cherie, and I did some work. They were back about 4 when Derek and company arrived. Craziness ensued, and I kept working for awhile to avoid some of the chaos.

Cherie had made an absolutely huge bowl of nutty noodles. There are a lot of dishes in the house, but they have metal on them, so the only ones that can go in the microwave are the children’s dishes. So when August went to get something for his nutty noodles he chose a cup. At first I tried to convince him on a plate, but then decided that was a good solution.

A bit later, August put on his shoes and walked outside around the deck all on his own and even walked by Eddy. He paused and called back to me at the door “Dada come if the dog comes towards me.” He did it, and came in the other door. Seemed to be testing himself with the dog.

Colin started the cookies. August saw it and chose one, choosing white chocolate macadamia. It had been an early dinner, and cookie was about 5:30. We then spotted a raccoon out in the yard.

They got the kids together for a group photo, then Andrea had gifts for all of them: personalized bags (August’s matches his dinosaur bath towel) and a post-swim sweatshirt thing. The kids all put them on and everyone then headed to the beach with the kids, leaving Chuck and Cherie behind for some peace and quiet. It was drizzling as we walked.

We walked out on the point to where other kids had made a fort of wood. The kids started adding to it and going on expeditions to get more wood. There was also a rope swing and people took turns on that. Vivian and Kayla went wading in the water. I had some fun with photography. Carly sat on a log and hit the bark, making a drum noise, with a stick that Kayla insisted she add to the “bridge” the kids had made out of sticks.

Jeff and Cassie headed back as Vivian was all wet. The rest of us took longer. We started to walk back, but stopped at the swings. Kayla and August were on the swings and Andrea and Carly were giving them underdogs. Andrea told the story of Derek breaking his arm when he was two, and August asked “Can I break my arm?” We’d also been talking about broken arms when I was working on throwing rocks earlier. Oh, and when we were on the beach together this morning I had mentioned doing a word of the day. I chose ‘verdant’, but then August came up with ‘bionic’. He said he knew the word, but didn’t know what it meant. So more broken arm talk there since I have metal in my arm.

I headed back to the house, but they stayed a good half hour longer. They went down to the lagoon and Derek showed them how to catch spider crabs.

They got back at 8:10. He shared another cookie with Carly. Vivian and Colin were still awake. There was a lot more playing. I gave August his bath and washed his hair. He wasn’t happy with it at all, but actually took the hair washing okay. Vivian played a lullaby for him on the guitar. He and Kayla played on the bed and he explained the lamp to her: “It’s a two pivot point turning lamp.”

He went to sleep pretty quickly at 9:30. Carly told me of a couple incidents during the day:

While he’s normally very cautious, when Vivian was jumping on a rock out in the water he copied her. When Cherie said of something “it’s not the end of the world” August agreed and told her what the literal end of the world would be like – when the sun ran out of fuel and went dark, but it would be a long, long time in the future. 

He sat up at 8:05. Blinked a bit, then threw himself back down on the bed for a few minutes. We got ready and headed down to breakfast in the hotel. August has started lying down in the elevators again. He called them something like his “quick elevator rest”. And he said “I have a sensanation that tells me when an elevator’s about to stop at the right floor.” He spotted the “colorful cereal” (Fruit Loops) and had that first. I had biscuits and gravy and hard boiled eggs and yogurt. He was refusing most of the food items, but finally started eating cantaloupe for small pieces of the sweet bread I had.

Back in the room he had a flying car that took us to the raspberry stew stand. Carly noticed our suitcase was starting to break and he got really worried about it. He wanted us to call someone to fix it: “Turn on the telephone!”

We left at 10:10. He sang the “Sidewalk sealant” song in the car. We played the pirate game on the iPad and finished it. We then stopped at Alexander Park as we were running a bit early. he went on the merry-go-round, then Carly got him up the slide but he wouldn’t go down. He swung from the bar on top though, making Carly nervous. There was a slightly-older boy there banging on the slide, and August banged on it too. He went on the swings next to Carly and was pretending to be a record player, getting stuck and having me put on new songs. He sang “Wood ship, go let’s go by the wood ship.” We headed to the car about noon and as we drove he looked out and sang a couple songs: “Garbage can garbage can, you are full.” And “Flower, flower, you are wilting.”

At the motor home Cherie made us corn fritters. We were afraid August wouldn’t eat them because he’s been refusing corn because it sticks in his teeth. But he declared “Perfect amount of corn”. They played random Candy Land and Carly got the splay balls to play with and we did slo-mo videos of them splatting on the table. As we left, he wanted to see the batteries in the motor home. He told them “Chief Joseph Dam had a truck for tours with an entire set or batteries!” He then kept asking Chuck questions about the motor home and they spent a few minutes looking at the wires and hoses connected to the motor home. And Cherie had shown him how the awnings fold in.

We drove over to Claremay and Steve’s. We found them down in the garden area. Claremay gave him some blackberries, and we opened up a head of garlic so he could see what it looked like. Claremay showed him an animal hole in the yard, and gave him a green blackberry to try after she thought he said he wanted a “white berry” when he said “ripe berry”. August had the idea of giving Steve one of the unripe berries, and the two of them had a lot of fun as August tried to get him to eat it, and Steve hid the berry in his hand and pretended to eat it.

He then went on an edible plant tour with Cherie. They had nesturtium, snapdragons, lemon balm, and a couple others. He said the lemon balm was his favorite. He’d gotten a licorice when we came in the house, and now had more. He then acted like a fish and had Carly catching him with a fishing pole. Claremay surprised us with a white cake with chocolate chips. August wanted a second piece, and when I was asked permission I explained my philosophy that grandmothers were allowed to feed him whatever they wanted to. Moved on to rocks for awhile, then he asked “Can we eat a daylily? Is day lilies edible?”

We got going north and stopped for gas at 3:20. He helped wash the windows. We played the chess game and read some of the first Sisters. He needed to use the bathroom so we stopped at. Starbucks. We played more chess and he got a card that talked about how to use two rooks for a checkmate. When we came across that scenario a few minutes later he said “So, let’s do what that card taught me.” We were listening to the Songs for Lipton playlist. From the car I ordered three pizzas from Good Guys Pizza to be delivered to Derek’s house. We sang the sidewalk sealant song together.

Carly talked about him needing a bath “sooner or later” when we got to the house. He told her “Stop thinking about sooner or later, please!” He wanted to wait until the nighttime.

We got to the house and Thatcher was spraying the hose up in the air and letting it fall. August didn’t get wet. He said “Let’s wait for the spraying to go by then we’ll run by like in the pirate game.” In the pirate game we had been timing the character’s run through a tunnel when lava would drop down. As we got out of the car Thatcher brought the hose down to spray the sand box thing and hit us indirectly. August was not amused. I took him in and dried off in the bathroom. He wanted to stay in the bathroom forever.

Eventually got him in the kitchen area and he found a bouncy ball. He bounced it around and talked about how it had momentum. The pizza came at 6 and we ate it outside on the grass on a blanket. He was nervous about dog poop on the lawn and wanted me to carry him between the house and blanket.

Inside they went up to the playroom and Carly was with them. When Thatcher and Kayla cme up he announced through the microphone “Don’t make the towers too tall, okay?” He had been telling Carly to stop building a tower and it fell down. He then delivered shapes to them for building, using a truck.

I headed off for my concert, the 30th anniversary concert of the Posies at the Neptune. The Neptune is now a theater and concert venue. I remember seeing a few movies there, particularly Das Boot. I parked across from where the Mac Store used to be, on 45th, and walked to the Ave. I walked north to 50th, then back south along the Ave and a bit on 15th. Book store was closed for the day. Gyro-cery still exists. Saw a sock store for Carly, and appropriately, a Korean BBQ place two doors down. Lots of Vietnamese places now, although still enough teriyaki joints. The best name was Pho-Shizzle (or was it Sizzle?) I walked up to Red Square, then headed back up to the Neptune.

After the concert I returned to the car, then got cash at the WSECU. Tried to go to the two Dick’s on the way back to the house, but both were crazy busy. Back to the house at 12:30. Had some leftover pizza and juice and went to bed.

While I was gone they had a bonfire and made s’mores. August cooked a marshmallow but didn’t want to cook it too much because he didn’t want it slipping off. But then he remembered that he wanted to try. Raw marshmallow, so he switched for that. Had his s’more in parts. He decided cooked marshmallows were better, but he was fine with what he had. He was upset when they didn’t pour water on the fire (they just put the cover on it) as he wanted to help (and perhaps Smokey was in his head telling him they were doing it wrong). They then all had bath time together, and he was asleep right at 9. She didn’t wash his hair, and when I went to bed he was sideways at the top, his head in my spot. So I put my head right next to him and could really smell it.

I watched the British Grand Prix on their big TV. It finished just as Thatcher and Kayla were getting up and a bit before August, who was up after 8. Derek made pancakes for breakfast, then I took a shower. They were playing in the play room with blocks. Andrea told Kayla not to knock something down, but August had a positive attitude: “Then we could build it again!” He and Thatcher were then making sound machines, and arguing about how loud they could be, and how many eardrums they could break – getting up to their favorite ‘-plex’ numbers. August now says “ enshmugadorflugplex”.

He initially didn’t want to leave. He was having too much fun with Kayla and Thatcher and didn’t want to see new people. We got to Stephanie’s at 10:10. Outside, she let him choose a rock that had belonged to her great-grandmother (she had started learning geology late in life and then collected rocks all over Washington and Oregon). Got him inside and he played with their new piano that someone down the street had given them. He sang songs for them, then did a ‘poop’ improv on the piano. Just caught the end of it.

Played with a wooden car track for a bit, then outside he enjoyed picking alpine strawberries off the bush and eating them. Ruby chose Loyal Heights Park for our destination and we got walking. Left the stroller behind. August noticed cracks in the sidewalk that weren’t sealed, and we adapted his sidewalk sealant song. He started singing “Why did they forget about the sidewalk sealant?”

We got to Loyal Heights Park. They went on the teeter totter-ish rocking thing like in Israel and Korea. Then over on the swings. He was on his stomach and looking at the shadow of the chains: “It looks like the chain is stretching!…Like a slingshot!…Optical illusion!” Stephanie then had the idea of making gnomes out of pine cones and materials from around the park. He loved that. Used grass, pine needles, flowers, wood chips, etc. When Stephanie went to find a home for her gnome in the trees across the park he went with her, going out of view for a few minutes. When he really gets involved in something he doesn’t mind us being gone. In Chelan it was the garage with my dad and the birds/squirrels/gardening with my parents.

We did more gnomes together and went to hide them together, then even more and he went with Stephanie gain.

We then decided to walk up to Larsen’s Bakery to the northwest. On the way August started singing “Open the door, look at the floor.” I realized it was one of the songs from Ball of Wax Quarterly #50 (“More Bones” by Wiscon), which we had listened to in the car. I taught him the next line, “everybody walk the dinosaur” and he kept singing it over and over. I played the song on my phone so Stephanie could hear it, then as we walked August and I listened to the original Was Not Was song as well.

At the bakery, August chose an orange sugar cookie, Carly got a chocolate chip cookie, and I got a cranberry scone. Carly and I shared a latte. We sat inside and ate. Nate and Stephanie shared small chocolate cookies and brioche with us.

We walked back to the house and saw their backyard. They filled in the pond and made it into a sitting area, with a small fountain that flows into a rain barrel buried underground. August picked mother strawberry and we got going.

We stopped at Safeway after crossing the Tacoma Narrows bridge (August and I talked about the bridge and engineering as we crossed it). We got chips and beer and wine a few other things. August said “Fresh and rosy fingered like the dawn”, which is the full quote from the Odyssey that Carly likes. We left there at 4:20.

We got to the house. Chuck and Cherie were already there. August was instantly drawn to the bunk beds that were going to be Vivian and Colin’s. He could climb up in a second, but needed me to lift him down. We took the toy guitar out and tried to tune it, but it wouldn’t stay in tune. Levi and Sarah and the three girls (Cadence, Hattie, and Evelyn) were here, and the girls said hi, then were watching something downstairs. August and I played with the 3d sphere puzzle with a metal ball in it that you move along a path by rotating the sphere. He would watch closely as I worked on it. He got hurt once when he was holding it in front of his face to look at it and walked into the end of a couch.

Chuck and Cherie cooked up some lamb and beef patties for dinner and we ate those with a big salad she’d made.

I convinced August to come downstairs with me to see it. We went down and he immediately saw the vice on the bar/workbench and sat on the tippy stools. He only fell over twice, but landed pretty gracefully. He ended up playing with Hattie and Cadence. Hattie was pretending to be some sort of animal and August was copying her. He was then running around going “Nibble, nibble” at everything. He ended up chasing them around, saying “Nibble, nibble.” Eventually they had to leave and we said goodbye.

We then headed out for a walk. We went to the beach at the start of the lagoon. We saw a deer, then went down and saw the little crabs. Carly headed back to take a shower and the two of us stayed, doing a crab “scavenger hunt” and throwing rocks with barnacles into the water so they could get more food.

On the way back we took a slightly longer path. He told me, saying nice things, “Hey flower, love heart, fresh and rosy-fingered like the dawn…”

At the house he was hungry and ate Cheerios, apples, and milk. Got him ready for bed and I left them around 10. Asleep pretty quickly.

He woke up right at 7:30 when I turned on the TV to try to watch the World Cup match. After he got up, he spotted his Dr. Seuss backpack and wanted to wear it and really liked it.

We headed to the motor home at 9. Cherie made french toast with yogurt and blueberries and syrup. She taught him the word  ‘miniscule’. He spent more time with the sink and flushing and asking questions about the plumbing. They went to the bedroom and came back with Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders. They played Candy Land. August, before he won, said “Yeah, well while we were playing I turned it into a winning game. I like winning.” We played with the splat balls and we did slo-mo videos of them. August and Cherie then played Chutes and Ladders. He learned “Jimminy Christmas” from Cherie. She told him the stories in the game and they talked about which were natural and imposed consequences. And he chose being sick over not having candy for a week when given the choice of consequences.

We left at 11 and drove to Portland. August played some Magnus Kingdom on the way. He was acting pretty sleepy by the time we got there but ended up not taking a nap all day. Kind of surprising considering all the time we spent driving.

We knocked on Spenser’s door and called him. No answer. So we walked up to Monsoon Thai and sat outside. Ordered pad see ew and peanut curry with shrimp. For drinks we got a mango juice and an iced Thai coffee and an iced Thai iced tea. He played the We Aargh Pirates game. He mainly ate the pad see ew as the curry was a bit spicy. But he dared the spice enough to eat three and a half shrimp.

When we got the check she brought three hard candies. August said “I know I’m full, but if I notice a treat, I want it.” He didn’t actually like it all that well (he said it was too big) and we threw it in the bushes. As we were walking back he was repeating “Biannual, decade, score…”

We got in the car and Carly dropped us off at the OMSI. We bought tickets and started exploring at 2:30. We started in the space hall, which isn’t actually very big. He mainly played in a Gemini capsule, pretending to be an astronaut. We then went to the general exhibits and played with a big musical instrument. We went to the end of the room and spent a lot of time with the wind stuff: making paper fly up through the tubes into the air, making a wind scuplture, folding a paper airplane, etc. Then the shipping containers and cranes and scanning the shipping containers to see what was in. There were then activities on water pressure and tsunami waves that he played with.

From there we went upstairs and across to the topographic map area. There, you played with sand, scooping it into hills and valleys, and a projector from above projected a topographic map on top of it. Very cool. Left that when he needed to use the bathroom. Found the life science area and wandered around there, and ended up at the food waste pinball game, playing that with other kids for quite awhile. We spent a few minutes in the minerals area, then played with the wine turbines.

Next big thing was the permafrost exhibit, with an area where you built things with Lincoln logs and then saw what happens when the ground lowers. Played and played with that. He said “You’re all the people in Africa dying…this is your food storage…” Not sure where he’s heard of famines… And then there was a fossil fuels whack-a-mole sort of game. Played a few rounds of that.

From there he said he wanted to control the robots he had seen. He led me back to the general hall and to the robot four-in-a-row game. We watched a game finished up, then he played. He didn’t like that it was a winning game. And when he lost he handled it well, but as we walked away he was clearly frustrated and talked about how it was stupid.

We went to the google.org robot exhibit. The downstairs was okay, but not spectacular. But he had fun controlling a robot, watching a robot tour guide, and playing with the robot grips. He liked the Roomba display and had me act out going to work. He would then have the Roomba clean, and I’d come home to find everything clean. But upstairs was where the excitement was. they had these cubes that you could build into a robot, and we spent a half hour or so there, adding pieces to a robot and changing them around. The only disappointment was that the dancing robot show was done for the day, even though there was still more than two hours left of the day.

He did a few levels on a screen that had a coding game like the ones he played in coding class, then we exited through the gift shop. August wouldn’t let me look at the gift shops at all, which was probably good for the bank account. I was tempted by a mug with a robot on it.

Outside the exhibit he played with the tilting labyrinth game, then we found the 6 and under play area. It was now past 6 and starting to clear out. There were only a couple kids there when we got there. August ended up playing with the only other kid in the sand area and with the ball/tube area. That kid left and we had the whole place to ourselves for the last 20 minutes. August set up a shop in the shop area and showed me his “wares”. He sold me some canned goods and stew and we finished by having a tea party (reminded me of having tea in the little kids area at the children’s museum in Seoul) and helping pick up some of the balls, veggies, and fruits.

Played with a windmill sort of thing, then he found a nickel on the ground. I told him we could take it downstairs and drop it in one of the funnel things. We went down to do that. It wasn’t a donation thing, but the balls were missing so we used the nickel anyway. But he dropped it on its side Nd it fell right in. I tried to grab it but missed. You could reach in down below, but it had bounced somehow and was nowhere to be seen. It was 7, so I just left it. He seemed okay with that at the time.

We went outside and took a selfie outside the science museum (like outside the one in Seoul), then met Carly right after 7. When she asked him how it was he said “The winning game was stupid, the colored sand was stupendous.” He was then worrying about the nickel: “Is it okay that I broke the rules with the coin?” He was afraid it would get stuck inside the ball path area.

On the way to see Spenser I told him he should sing “Better Not Wake the Baby” for him as the Decemberists are from Portland. August told me “It’s not from the Decemberists. I made it up inside me and sent it out through a cord into the car and out the speakers.” He laughed at his own story. “At Spenser’s house I’ll attach the cord to the wall and it will come out the stereo.”

We got to his house and Spenser met us outside. He gave August a present wrapped in yellow tissue paper. Lots of it. August thought it was funny as he kept unwrapping and unwrapping. It was a plastic robot toy that walked when you wound it up. He was thrilled by it.

We started walking to Monsoon Thai again to get mango sticky rice. Would have taken about an hour as August was playing with the robot. I picked him up. At the restaurant, August initially sat next to me. But when he had an opportunity, he climbed up next to Spenser and asked “What rules do you break?” They had a hilarious discussion about nose picking and going backwards on an escalator. And dams. August showed him the Magnus Kingdom app and they played that together. It was really cool to see the two of them together and I wish we could have August spend more time with him.

While we were gone, Carly and Spenser had gone to Peter’s bar (although Peter was out of town) and played card games with a couple of Spenser’s friends from the bar. Spenser told Carly about moving out of his last apartment and his bicycle accident last year.

We said goodbye and drove over to a grocery store. Picked up food out of the salad/food bar and a small container of strawberries. Then drove to our hotel in Vancouver. In the elevator,
on our way up to our hotel on the third floor, he also pushed the button for 2. He had a hilarious giggle as it opened and closed at 2. There was a mom who was very understanding and her daughter who was 6 or 7. They found it funny, and apparently the girl had tripped and hit the ‘call’ button the day before.

We got to our room and ate dinner. He ate the mac and cheese and some veggies and several strawberries, once I bit off the tops. Carly took a shower and he had us acting out his cord attached to the car and playing songs though the speakers to unsuspecting drivers game. Got him ready for bed (skipped a shower) and he was asleep at 10:30.

He slept until 8:15. He wanted to play Math Tango and I gave him the iPad to play it on the couch as I tried to take a shower. He wanted help though and Carly tried to help him. He told her “Dada’s in charge”. I let him play Green Planet while I took a shower. When I came out he was upstairs eating hard boiled egg, watermelon, and cereal, and milk for breakfast.

He was then playing with my mom out in the living room, pretending to be Cindy. He was lying on the back of the couch, pretending to sleep. Obviously much less concerned about cat fur than he was when we first got here. After she said something about the cats not using the mat at the front door, he was then pretending to come in, bringing in dirt.

We got the car packed, and as we were heading out he sang nice “Bye” and “Goodbye” songs to them. We took the usual family photos in the front yard, then left at 10:15. He played Magnus Kingdom in the car, doing a lot on his own. We then read some Sisters (when I objected, he reminded me I liked the first book better so we should read that) and Loch Mess Monster. He then fell asleep from 12:39 to 1:40.

I woke him up and we ate a cookie. He played with a new app, something like What’s in Space, and ate a couple graham crackers and some apple. We stopped for gas, then he was holding my phone and looking at Waze.

We got to the motor home at 3:45. Inside he asked them “How’s this a home, if it’s out of home?” He was excited by the kid’s cup with liquid and glitter in it, then played with the three splat balls that Cherie gave him, one of which is poop. Chuck said something about him needing a haircut, then Cherie said “We’re going to let it grow.” He said “Thank you!” He explored the kitchen with Cherie. He had some orange juice and blew bubbles. Chuck asked if he heard a bubble machine. August laughed and made a mess. “You shouldn’t have said a funny thing!” More splat balls, now getting the third poop one.

We left at 4:15 and went to Claremay and Steve’s. Chris and Mark and cousins, with a camper Eurovan, were there from San Francisco. August was nervous and hid under the table. We went up to the toy room for awhile, then outside when everyone else left. He got more comfortable and ate potatoes and roast and carrot for dinner, then loved the berry and custard pies. He asked Chuck “On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is super good and 1 is super bad, what is it?” He gave me the last of his pie because “I don’t want my pie cuz it’s too slippery.” He then walked down to the garden with Chuck to see berry plants. On the way down I heard him say “Snapdragons!”

They came back up and took the bowls of rocks over on the table between Steve and Claremay. August was asking both of them what specific rocks were.

We went back to the toy room. He played and sang a song about Palestinians and needing to get out of a wall. Didn’t get that one on video. He found a doctor kit and used it on me. As we got ready to go, he was sad as he wanted to spend more time with Oma and Opa. He then spotted the licorice container. Ate several jelly beans and other licorice things that Carly and Cherie gave him. He also sat in the new chair with Carly and said it was tight because she was taking up most of the space.

We left at 6:50. As we drove he sang the “Only Children” song, making up his own words. First time he’s sung that. We were talking about Carly’s uncles and he was upset she has more uncle’s than him. He told her “You need to apologize to me.”

At the motor home he went to the bathroom and really liked the flushing. He told Carly he remembers racing Vivian to the bathroom last summer. Although he doesn’t know why he was always racing her. He turned on all the light switches and explored the bedroom with Cherie. He loved the flushing, and asked “Can I flush two more times?” When he flushed it reduced the water pressure in the kitchen, which was a fun game. He then asked Cherie about the “lives” game on her tablet

We then walked over to the putting green. Opa introduced him to golf and putting. August had fun with that, but mainly he liked having Carly and Cherie putt and he would retrieve balls for them. When he wanted Cherie to do it he said “Try, Oma.” He then was making a tunnel with his legs. It was one point if the ball went through his legs, and another point if it went in the hole. We saw a rabbit, and it ran fast, so then August was running around like a bunny. While Carly was putting she kept missing and said “I keep going to the right.” I replied “At least it’s not an election.” She said it was my best joke ever.

We said goodbye and headed to the Holiday Inn Express. Once we were in our room he asked “How did they get their food at that castle?” He explained more and described both Apollonia and Masada.

We headed out for a walk, getting the stroller out of the car. He noticed that our car didn’t have any neighbors, but when we came back it had cars on either side of it.

We walked up into Chehalis, past where Carly used to put pennies on the tracks and volunteer at the call center. We turned left and walked through downtown, admiring the amazing clouds and passing where Carly bought erasers and took dance classes. Turned left and passed the two open bars and an open Thai restaurant. Back by the train tracks we saw two trains go by at the same times. August had run out of Cheerios (he had spilled some early on our walk too) so Carly said we could stop at the gas station. Stopped and got him a small pack of blueberry breakfast biscuits.

At the hotel I proved that “Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.” is a real idiom (Carly didn’t believe me). So I sang a song with the line. August said “I’m going to laugh forever.” We played around and Carly took a shower. He sang a song that went “Alarm clock alarm clock, I love you, I love you.”

I took a shower as Carly started to put him to sleep. When I came out I heard them talking about preschool. It had been mentioned earlier in the day that he’d start preschool again in 6 weeks or so. So he brought it up again. I was falling asleep and think he fell asleep around the same time, 10:15 or so.