He was up around 6 to go to the bathroom. He tried to go back to sleep on his own and lay there for a few minutes. They got up at 6:10. They read That’s not a Hippopotamus and made a stump. He had milk, and was playing Airplane on the iPad when I got up a bit later. We played chipmunk game and snake. He said there was an egg pipe into our house, bringing eggs for the snake. I went up to take a shower and as I went I heard August try to understand where he came from, asking Carly: “But where were you when you weren’t anywhere?…In your tummy?…Were you underground?…we were all born?” and asking how he got in mama.
We were getting ready early to go to the beach before it got really busy and hot. Before we left, he asked “Do I have all my clothes on?” Something he’s been doing regularly before we leave the house. So far we haven’t forgotten his pants or anything. We left at 8:50. Carly drove and we went to south downtown Netanya and parked by Argaman’s Beach. We walked north along the trail for 15 or 20 minutes. We stopped in the shade of a hotel where August played on these snake-like concrete benches and Carly went to find a bathroom. He climbed over those, then found plastic spoons that he took and threw in the garbage. Carly came back, and we headed back south. He was a machine that was making drinks for me, starting with a “Bottle of wine.” Which I think he knows because I wouldn’t get him out of the cart in the wine section at Tiv Taam yesterday. He also found a metal nut on the ground and said “I want to go home and start a bolt collection.” But a minute later he decided he didn’t want it. A small dog walked by and he shouted “Don’t lick me!”
We got back to the car and kept walking down the hill to Argaman’s Beach. The beach here isn’t sheltered like the other beach, so the breaking waves come right to shore. August spent most of his time playing in the sand, and Carly and I took turns going out and floating and swimming. The second time I went out far enough that I couldn’t touch the bottom. That was far enough. August waded in with me for awhile. We went up to the showers and August played in the sand and faucets and the stream from the shower area.
We left there at 11:20 and stopped at the bathrooms, then made the steep walk up the hill to the car. We got to the big Tiv Taam at 11:50. Actually, first we were going to go to Arcaffe to eat, but it was crowded. So we went and got a cart. Carly had to go back to the car to get a 5 shekel coin to get the cart. Then, after just a minute in the store, August and I parked the cart and went a few feet away to get corn. We turned around and someone had stolen our cart. Not only theft (albeit of about $1.50), but also we couldn’t get another cart. And there were no baskets available. Luckily, we found a big kid car/cart and used that. Very difficult to steer around the store with its crowded and narrow aisles though.
August found two Skittle-type candies in the car thing as he rode in it. He didn’t even think of eating them though, instead wanting to take them home to see what would happen if he put them in water.
We finished shopping, Carly went and got the car, and we were home at 1:20. Played a little iPad, then we played that the shrew crew was in the hospital. We read Peg + Cat The Chicken Problem twice. Carly cut up a mango for him and he ate all of it, then had some of the rice stuff. We read A Pocket for Corduroy. Carly was making spaghetti, and August had a little of that. He nursed and pretended to be a baby in Carly, tasting what she ate. We were then pretending to be cats:
Him: “There’s infinity poop in your bottom.”
Me: “How’d it get there?”
Him: “From your infinity of eating.”
We were then a garbage truck and power plant: “LOADS of power.” “This is a meter that shows how much garbage there is.” He then wanted to go recycle, but first played upstairs, throwing all the dirty clothes down the stairs. They nursed, and he was falling asleep. Woke him up by saying it was popsicle time. We had gotten some at the grocery store. We went and ate them outside. They were raspberry with raspberry ice cream in the middle. Carly swept the tree things that fell because of the wind last night. It was probably more than I picked up all through the week. August picked one of them apart using his tweezers, sitting in front of the kitchen door, with raspberry all over his face. He went to the bathroom and we finally started to get going to the playground at 5:15.
But while I was locking the door he somehow fell on the steps. Carly came out to comfort him, then he was distracted by something falling from the tree. Carly went back inside, and I was able to get him to head to recycling after we watched a bird singing for a minute.
We walked up and did all our recycling, then went to the playground. Went on the standup teeter totter, but then he bonked his head a bit when he was getting off. A first, as when he got upset his first inclination was to run home. I stopped him before he got out. I picked him up and took him over to the drinking fountain. He usually really likes it as it drains to the grass. Got him to calm down, though he didn’t care about it. Instead, he saw a little boy going to pee in the bushes, then I got him interested in the green hanging chair thing. Then, we remembered the game we had talked about playing earlier: Hilo. He was generally Hilo and I was the bad robots and he was destroying me by attacking me and putting leaves and water in my parts and having it rain on me, etc. He is now one of those boys we used to always see pretending to be superheroes in the parks in Korea.
He found a bottle in the playground and we went over to the plastic cage and recycled it. By the recycling he started stuffing my pockets with leaves (to break the bad robots). We were standing close to the garbage and I told him I wanted to get back in the playground, away from it. He said “I LOVE stinky garbage. I LOVE stinky garbage.”
It was getting close to sundown, the end of Shabbat, and the playground started to fill up. August both liked this, but was also bothered by how busy it was. He saw other kids playing in just their underwear and he wanted his shirt off. Took that off, and he went and played on the play structure and went down the slide a few times. Busy, but we managed to do the game where he slides into me once or twice.
Eventually he said “I want to go home cuz there’s all this barking and kids…But why are there all these kids? It’s close to nighttime soon.” We actually kept playing, and it was me, getting quite hungry, who eventually got us to head home about 6:20.
Carly had baked some of the spaghetti, because that’s a thing we can do now. We ate dinner, then he played the Space app with Carly. Carly took him up to a shower, then he got the bed wet and told me “I want to play blanket fights.” When I said we didn’t really have blankets he said he couldn’t do anything. Eventually we read some Hilo, then Carly came up. He kept wanting to read, but also wanted to nurse. Eventually sleep won out and he went to sleep about 7:45.
Photos. Playing on the benches:
Playing at the beach:
Popsicle:
Shirt off at the playground:
