He slept all the way until 7:25. Twelve and a half hours. I came out of the office and he was at the top of the stairs. He told me “Don’t come down.” I asked if he wanted to be downstairs by himself. He changed his mind, saying “Come down.” Downstairs, we took off his diaper and he spotted a new insect, with two long antennae, on the ground. Got done looking at it and said “I’m gonna turn on the air conditioner and turn it up really high…I’m really warm.” After that he climbed on the couch and asked “Dada, could you get some dried Cheerios and set up some Care Bears for me?”
Watched Care Bears, and when he had had more dried Cheerios and still wanted more I suggested more foods, but he wanted something he could eat on the couch. So I cut up grapes and allowed those on the couch. He was being itchy this morning, and it was bothering him on and off through the morning. We put cream on at one point. We read Hilo, reading the first five chapters. Chapter 5 ends with Hilo being crushed, and shown to be a robot. When we started playing with pillows August turned that into a game: “Crush me apart.” “I want to play that robot game.”
I went up and took a shower. He sat on the toilet the whole time and talked a lot about his spit. Back downstairs he wanted to be a towel machine, a battery machine, and a leaves machine. Then he was a broken machine: “The clouds in me are a little broken.” We went outside for a few minutes and I found a pine cone thing from our trees that we haven’t seen before. August wanted a cracker, and I gave him one of the square crackers. At first he was eating it outside, but then he went inside and was intentionally dropping crumbs for the ants. I wasn’t happy about that and as I swept I said I wouldn’t play that game with him. He said “You won’t love me anymore?” When I assured him otherwise and hugged him he said “You don’t have to like me” “I’m not your baby; I’m mama’s baby.” “I’m playing a game you don’t want…I’m gonna play a game you don’t want me to play…The game I’m going to play is when you don’t want ants in the house.”
That done, we set up the pillows as a conveyor belt and it was a battery sorting machine. He would be the batteries being dropped on the belt, then at the end of it I would put them in a box (a pillow), close, tape, and label it, then pick it up and put it in the truck and drive the batteries to the store in the kitchen. We did that 27 times. He kept saying “It’s a comfy ride.” He let the machine get broken down after that. He then planted apple trees, before remembering the Robot Factory app and wanting to play that. We played that together, and he got into the process of making the robot, trying it out, then going back and making it work better.
We did part of a round of Animal Hospital, a few more rounds of the battery game, then left for downtown at 12:50. We first went to the bank where he helped with the ATM to deposit more of the relocation money. When we were done with that he said “Thank you” and gave me a hug for letting him use the machine. We then went to the Israeli restaurant by the pizza place for lunch. August had said he was hungry a few times. I ordered falafel, but when the guy brought out our food the first things were hummus and pita and salad: “Those are all the things I don’t like!” He ate a bite of pickle but said it was too spicy. When the falafel came he ate a couple bites but then said he didn’t like that either. I got ketchup. It was in a Heinz bottle but clearly not. August tasted it on the falafel, but wouldn’t eat anymore. He said he just wasn’t hungry, but I couldn’t tell whether he really wasn’t or whether he just didn’t like it. He did, however, drink all of the mango drink he got.
August had said he needed the bathroom. Not one there, so we walked across to the library. Right, it’s closed during the middle of the day. But then he was saying he didn’t really need to go. We went to the hardware store where we got rubber bands, more Tupperware, and exchanged the light bulbs I’d purchased for the fixture that doesn’t work for bulbs we can actually used. I used some more Hebrew on the older guy that works there, but he seemed down so I asked if he was tired. That turned into a little lesson on times of day.
We then went to the mall the grocery store is in. Rode the elevator to different floors (it is small) but no bathroom. August said he still didn’t need to go though. So we went to the grocery store and bought frozen fruit, which was pricey, for smoothies, bananas, and then looked for raisins. No raisins, but we got apricots, cranberries, and covered peanuts in hopes of finding some more snack options for August. He ate one apricot after we had paid, and one cranberry. And that was it.
We then walked home, taking some back roads. He did need to go to the bathroom when we got close, but he made it just fine. He wanted to play more Puffin Rock-inspired games, saying “I want to play the Silkie game…I want to invent it.” We played Flynne, and he was waking me up. He really screamed once, and I held up my hand to ward him off. He ws still coming towards me and I bonked him in the nose or lip. He wasn’t happy about that, and kept doing his whiney I’m-not-happy-with-you cry for a few minutes. At 4 the digger came home across the street, so we watched the guy park that and he felt better. We read more Hilo, and finished most of it, more than three-fourths finished, before he wanted to start over at the beginnng. He was asking about the title, which includes ‘earth’, so we looked at the Solar System app and the different planets. We were doing that for just a couple minutes when Carly got home.
He ate a lot of the rice curry for dinner. I told him he couldn’t have just rice bites, so he thought those were exciting – he also agreed to eat a lot of veggies so he could have just rice bites. For his goals earlier he had wanted to learn about stickers and cotton balls, so we found videos on how both are made. We then played more of our box game and he watched an Ask the Storybots episode. When he was asking to watch that, or something else, he told me “You never say ‘fine’ now, dada.”
We went for a walk, over to the west in basically the same area as before. Earlier though, so not dark. On one street there were two loose dogs walking slowly ahead of us. I slowed down but Carly thought they looked nice. When we got towards the end of the street though and they were still some way in front of us I wanted to turn back, and just in time, as one of the dogs turned to us and started barking. We kept walking away, and it followed us close to a block. Carly grabbed some rocks and when she started to throw one at it it turned and ran away.
After that, Carly got August to get out and walk, holding her hand. He walked most of the way home from there. I picked him up to show him one of the water tanks on top of a house and when I set him down I made the mistake of setting him in the stroller, so he went back to riding. At home Carly tried to get him to walk up the stairs. But he told her “Ma-MA! We always ride up the stairs…so that’s why I don’t have to get out.” She managed to push the stroller up the stairs.
We were back at 7:20. He and I watched/played Lucy and Pogo and Carly showered. He then played Shake the Tree. While doing that he got off the couch and I asked if he needed to use the bathroom. He said no, but then as I played the game he got back on the couch to watch, but then said he was peeing. I grabbed him off the couch and he started crying. Some got on the couch, but not much. Carly took him up and cleaned him up. I went up and gave him his shower. Carly then managed to brush his hair. He wasn’t fond of it, but he didn’t stop her from doing it. He was asleep a bit after 8:20.
Photos:
In the box, ready to be carried:
Mama and Zinnie in the swing:
