He had some big coughs in the middle of the night. Carly got up around 4 and August sat up in bed a few minutes later and said “Mama? Where are you mama?” But then the miracle happened: he lay back down and went to sleep. 15 minutes later or so he woke back up and wanted a tissue. I went and got one and helped him with some snot, then he lay back down again and went back to sleep. Unfortunately, the cold just wasn’t letting him sleep. A few minutes later he sat up again and wanted mama. I told him to lay back down and I’d go get mama. He did. I went down and told Carly what had happened. He slept another 10 or 15 minutes before we heard to door open so we ran back up and this time Carly helped him back to sleep, I thought, at 4:45. He said “I don’t want to cough.”
I fell back to sleep, but I guess he never really did fully and they got up. I got up at 7:15 and Carly left for work a little while later. We watched a little more Puffin Rock while I drank some coffee and then took a shower. With the iPad off, he then wanted to play with the jar of coins. I put them in a plastic cup, and then he spilled them out and played with them and put them back in. It then turned into a science experiment, as he wanted to put in water. From there he added green soap, sugar, paper, and corn flakes. Oh, and a tea bag. We talked about diffusion and dilution and absorption.
We then did a second experiment, and decided to put some sugar outside to see what would happen. I had him make a hypothesis on what would happen, and he decided that animals would eat it, and the animal would be ants. In determining what to do we started to make our list of rules for experiments, which mainly was that we couldn’t hurt any animals. So we put sugar on a piece of cardboard and placed it on the edge of the lawn.
Back inside he helped me crush his allergy medicine and put it in his water. He wanted to put more in but I said too much could make him sick. I think he somehow misunderstood and thought we had put too much in and he got really sad and upset, thinking we’d done something wrong. He went to the bathroom and got him dressed, then he found the Smurf Pez dispenser and was giving me shots with it. We also listened to the new Arcade Fire album today and a playlist of 1991 alternative hits.
As we were getting ready to leave for a walk to the park, I realized that water was actually leaking through the wall from the bathroom to the bedroom, and had in fact started to damage the desk we bought. Let Carly know. She was with Ada, on their trip to Tel Aviv and Jaffa, and Ada contacted Eve (sp?), the school maintenance person who had driven us from the airport. He came in about 15 minutes. August and I played outside while we waited. He joked with August a lot, trying to take August’s coin (he was playing with a ½ shekel) and August put it in my pocket and kept telling Eve that. Eve decided he could install a marble edge to keep water in the shower, and he also looked at the washing machine and realized that the drain was clogged and that the pipe in back had to climb too high for the pump. He cleared the drain, and said he would shorten the pipe when he came back on Sunday or Monday to fix the bathroom. During this time August had been hiding in the corner bedroom, but peaking out and playing, and then came out to watch him clear the drain.
After he left August and I had some lunch. A PB and J for him and a sandwich for me. August was spitting in the grass, and he had also found a little screw in it and played with that, throwing it down the slide and also scraping the bird poop off of the slide. He tried to convince me to let him watch more Sarah and Duck or Puffin Rock: “The episode I’m going to watch is my favorite.” He remembered Colin sitting on my foot and Chuck’s foot and bouncing and wanted to do it. Turned into a rocket and we did that for awhile. We headed back outside, and as we did so he started talking about his beds and Vivian and finally said “Where will Vivian sleep?” I think I had mentioned that another kid could sleep in the second bed when we discovered the pull out bed. He had clearly been thinking about it.
We spent some time raking the lawn. The ants hadn’t come for the sugar, so we theorized they didn’t know it was there. He suggested we move it by the ants by the slide, as there were several there. We did, and made sure that there were some ants walking across the cardboard.
We finally left the house at 12:45. He played at the playground for awhile, mainly talking about which things were for babies and which were for big kids: “Babies can’t sit on that.” “Anything you sit on is for babies, alright?” There was a little toddler there, and they played close together. He started to climb a ladder, and the baby tried to climb the other side. They barely touched, and he got down and came over and told me all about it, and seemed to be relieved when I told him it had been a gentle touch. We played a little hide and seek and went on the teeter totter where you stand up.
We then went to the pharmacy and got bath soap for him and shampoo and conditioner. The woman spoke English and guessed we were with the American school. I grabbed a Zone Perfect bar for us to share and realized it was more than 3 dollars. Got it anyway, and we went and sat on a sad bench and ate it. August said “Dada…in going to get you something special. Just for you! Something round…” I reminded him about how he had gone back to sleep on his own without mama last night. He seemed to remember – I think he said something about me getting a tissue for him. He then decided he’d go to sleep on his own right then and there and lay down on the concrete by the pharmacy building: “I always sleep here. I’m awake until there’s an ant crawling on me.”
We headed home at 1:50. He put all the coins, now clean, back in a cup and added water. He said he was making something for me and mama. We then played tea game, or a variation there of, where he gave me a drink and there was something disgusting in it: “I made a drink for you.” When I wouldn’t let him watch anything he said “That’s mean.” We had planned to go to the pool at the school and swim with Carly after she was back at 3, but Carly asked if we could go to the grocery store since they closed early and would be closed on Saturday. So we did that.
As August put on his shoes he was having trouble getting one on, as the back piece was bending. He told the shoe “Stop playing that game.” Then he told me “I’m not coming with you…just stay here and play. That not the most fun thing.” We briefly interacted with our neighbor again as she was getting in her car. She said hi, and also said he should have a lot of water. So she speaks English as well. We walked over to the Tiv Taam grocery store. August was falling asleep as we got there. He said he wanted to go mint shopping, then fell asleep at 2:45. I was taking my time shopping, as it was easier with him asleep to figure out what they had. Then ran into the Kerns and two of their kids. We talked for quite awhile, about the bike shop, our houses, etc. August woke up at 3:35, a couple minutes after I left them, as he was facing the candy aisle, unfortunately. I went over and found the Kerns in line to checkout so he could briefly see them.
We then finished shopping. August had a couple mints as we did so, and he remembered that it was “English Breakfast” tea that Carly liked. It was sometime after 4 before we headed home. There, he got upset with Carly because he still couldn’t watch anything and was hitting her. She cut up a mango and I added it to yogurt and he ate a good amount of that. We all went outside and he used Carly’s spray bottle to add water to the sugar. That did it, as the ants instantly started coming. The two of them then cleaned the slide together and he played more with the little screw. When we went in we watched a couple videos about tetanus. He wanted to watch more, but they start to get
rather disturbing, and I said no.
They played for awhile and I went up and sorted his clothes and emptied one suitcase. We then went out on a walk. Carly’s first walk into town, and our first leisurely walk. We looked at the red sand along the way, and August enjoyed playing in it. We walked past the grocery store and then over to the playground by the park. They briefly went on the swings, then went on the merry-go-round together. There was another girl there that was interested in him, but he was being shy. He showed Carly how he could climb up the spiral and then step over to the play structure on his own. Played a bit more, then just a little of the badger in the slide game, which he brought up, before we headed out.
Getting quite dark at this point (8:15), and we took our backroads route home. At home he read Dinosaurs Love Underpants and Splat the Cat with Carly, and Sarah and Duck Go to the Duck Hotel (which we bought) with me. Carly gave him a bath. He was clearly tired, but was telling me he wanted to read more and also said he wanted to sleep in his room in his bed tonight. So interesting that he’s developed that idea – mainly comes from Vivian, I think. He was asleep by 10.
iPad on his head:
Closing his eyes:
Part of my pointing series:
Outside the pharmacy:
Napping in the grocery store:
On the merry-go-round with mama:
