It was our first family day in Tel Aviv. Carly had been to the city for a couple of work things, but it was the first time August and I had gone. Even though I only saw it for a few hours, first impressions are quite positive: It feels much more comfortable and artsy compared to Netanya, which is sterile by comparison.
He and Carly got up at 6:20 after he had been nursing, then just lying on the bed for awhile. I got up twenty minutes later and they were reading 26-Story Treehouse. When he saw me he got up, went and got his water bottle, and told me to fill it up. August got silly pretending to be Edward Scooperhands, the ice cream scooping robot in the book: “Wood, hair, dogfish, skin, blood, germ ice cream”
We read more 26-Story Treehouse, reading the ice cream part, but then reading a couple stories we haven’t yet read. He was hungry so I got him some of the Honeg Bunches of Oats, our new cereal. After he was done he said “I should go to dada.” I suggested we do more reading. He asked “Is reading or eating or cleaning all I can do right now?”
We played the Edward Scooperhands game and he asked for mango, cleaner, cardboard, and water bottle flavors. We read more of the book, then moved to the squirrel game. He got Carly involved, getting her put in prison for waking up the squirrel. He let her have her coffee though: “Police, don’t take her coffee.” He was then the shrew crew, Baba, and Flynne: “I’m going to destroy my lair, I’d you don’t mind.”
Carly was getting ready to take him out for a walk. I suggested he try his red sunglasses again as his white ones are getting rather scratched. He rejected them. They took recycling and went for a walk at 9:20. I took a shower. They went up to the playground on the right as we walk up to town. They were back at 10:25. He saw the air conditioner and said “I left the air conditioner on.” He wanted to nurse but didn’t like that she was sweaty: “Don’t be gross!”
We went outside to give cats water. There were now 3 tomato plants. And I noticed it had rained while we were gone: there was still water on a plastic bag of soil, dirt that the ants had dug up on the patio was crusted on, and there was a circle around the top of the table. So we missed our only shot at rain so far in Israel, probably while it was 100 or so where we were. Anyway, he played with the sap, finding where it was squishy and where it wasn’t, then putting holes in it. We speculated on it getting bigger and bigger: “What happens if the sap takes over our yard?”
Carly baked one more batch of spaghetti for lunch. Then he played the Edward Scooperhands game with Carly: “Hands into scooping mode!” They read Curious George Goes to the Hospital. Or most of it: Every time they read he wants to nurse before they finish a book. I then read bits of Every Thing On It to him and he watched Peg + Cat, then looked at Google Maps. He then played the Orchard game. I wasn’t doing anything, and he said “You’re so funny dada… You’re so funny bird…Oh bird.” When the bird got close to him (it steals all your fruit if it gets too close) he had me build a nest for him to hide in as we made the last couple moves. Totally something that he gets from Carly.
We got going and left at 1:15, with Carly driving. He was hungry and had some pretzels that Carly had bought. They were round. He asked “How’d you make the pretzels mama? Did you use a cup?” That was a a Peg + Cat reference, where Cat makes a painting of circles and when asked how he did it he replies he used a cup. He asked “How are they so round?” even after we told him she had bought them. He didn’t believe it was a machine and thought that Carly had made the pretzels. We played the germ game and the Edward Scooperhands game – he remembers a lot of the flavors from the book. We arrived a little before 2.
We managed to find a parking garage, then walked west. We found a main commercial street in the Old North area. Most things were closed, of course, but there were a few places open and we were looking for a coffee shop. Found a falafel/kebab sort of place instead and decided to eat there, at הלבנטיני. We got the lamb kebab, which came with fries and pita and all of the sides (they do a lot of sides here, like in Korea, but we like most of them here), the roasted cauliflower, which was quite good, and a grape juice for August (although it was closer to a soda than a juice). We liked it all. August mainly ate the fries and the cauliflower.
We left there at 3:30 and continued west to Independence Park. There we first saw the mosquito statue, which I had previously found on Google Maps. August pretended to me a mosquito biting me. We then walked along the top of the cliffs. Carly asked if I thought he needed sunscreen. I said no but she put it on anyway. August asked “Why didn’t he want to protect my skin?” About 3:45 we found the playground.
Carly sat and read and I played with August. He tried some of the climbing things, or at least checked them out, then played on a slide, going down a few times and throwing his shoes down: “I wanted to slide them down. I can’t. It’s not slidey for shoes.” He then invented the gravity game, where I pulled him by the ankle and talked as if gravity wanted him down the slide: “Gravity wants me to always be on the ground?” “I don’t want to come down, gravity! I love to stay up.”
He then spotted a shop window area and went in to be a shopkeeper and decided it was a seed shop. I bought some seeds from him (he said they had raspberry, strawberry, blackberry, and a couple others), then asked him for advice on how to plant them and take care of them. He did pretty well. When I asked if I should water them with water or tea he said “Fresh water. No salt.” And when I asked if I should put them in the freezer or outside he said there wasn’t any sun in the freezer. It then turned into a tortilla store, but I refused to buy any tortillas because he said they were 100 dollars for ten of them (the seeds had been 14 dollars or so). Then it was a chocolate store, with samples. I said something about unicorns and he said “Unicorns? I think if it was a pet store…This is a pet store!”
Then, there were some other kids with a bubble gun and August joined in, chasing bubbles. He lost a shoe while doing it, but couldn’t pause long enough to put it back on and played the next ten minutes or so while holding a shoe in one hand. And at one point he was playing by himself, talking away, and I went over and pointed it out to Carly.
We headed back and were home by 6. He played with the pillows: “Perhaps I’ll block Bernie’s grotto.” He went outside with Carly for awhile, then read one chapter of 26-Story Treehouse (chapter 6, of course, with Edward Scooperhands). Ate some spaghetti, then Carly gave him a bath. On the bed he was a machine making things unless things got in him: air conditioner, light bulbs, water, too much power.
Earlier, at the restaurant, he had suddenly closed his eyes tight, then was eating with his eyes closed. Looked like something was bothering him but he didn’t say anything. I asked him why he had done that and he said “Bite-ed my tongue.” Think we were then joking about nursing with me, and he said “Boys turn into dadas; girls turn into mamas.” Don’t think we have explicitly laid it out like that, and asked if we had told him that or if he had figured it out. He said “Figured it out.” He was then asleep by 7:40.
