He was up about 5:55. He looked around and asked where mama was. I told him she was downstairs and he asked if it was a holiday for her. Carly came up and they nursed. They came downstairs a few minutes later. He walked around, turned on the fan light, then went and sat in one of the red chairs for several minutes, just resting there. He then got down and did some math on his own with the blueberries before turning his attention to the number line. He really wants to write on it with the blue marker line mama, but if he does it will end with him being upset about it, like when he did the 3 on it. So he just looked at it for a few minutes, then went outside with Carly for a few minutes to look at plants. Some of the carrots are finally popping up. Still no cilantro.
Carly left and we read 13-Story Treehouse, about half of it, and ate Cheerios and apple. I then made some pancakes but he didn’t really eat his. We did some math on the number line and he used the bathroom, then played Human Body and Earth while I typed. Then played May getting sick and did some number line. He finally got around to eating his pancake. In Dragonbox Big Numbers he found a weird glitch where the number 100 sort of followed him around. I got ready to make banana bread.
We went outside for a bit and looked at the plants and the pitch. There was a little string of pitch hanging down that he decided to break off. Back inside we made banana bread. He kept being overly enthusiastic with his stirring so we ended up with a pretty messy counter. Shmuel called, saying he was on his way to plant the papaya plants. He arrived about 10:15.
August was a little weary at first, and then David, our neighbor who we’ve not yet met, also came in the gate to say hi and August didn’t like that at all. He was also not thrilled about Shmuel using his hose. But when I asked him to tell Shmuel about what we have planted, August went to each and every pot and said what was in it. But then he retreated inside for awhile and kept playing Dragonbox Little Numbers. Shmuel and I took a break and sat and drank coffee.
After that, August came out more and was really watching what Shmuel was doing. Shmuel was really saturating the ground before putting the papaya plants in each spot, and so we talked about infiltration and why Shmuel was doing that. Shmuel asked August a question, and August tried to tell him about the showers at the Mediterranean and watching the water go in the sand. Shmuel rather missed the answer, and started talking about the Mediterranean instead. Then, August was getting really comfortable with Shmuel, and there were actually a couple minutes where I went in and did some dishes. When I came back out, August was sitting right next to him and they were talking. But right as I went to take a photo August got up, and I realized he was starting to get upset. There had been a big block of soil/clay that August had initially thought was a brick. Shmuel had told him what it actually was, and that it would dissolve with water. August and I were waiting to dissolve it when Shmuel was done with the hose, and August was waiting pretty patiently to do it (in the meantime he had been picking at it with his spade and shovel). But now Shmuel had started to dissolve it himself. August was upset and told me “He’s not letting me do it!”
Took him in and he had some more banana bread. I realized another aspect of August and language is that people rarely understand what he is saying, as even when they speak English it is their second language, so find him difficult to understand. So the exception was when we got in the car with Carly and Mandy and he was telling them about the smoothie and cookie and too much sugar, etc. and Mandy understood what he was saying.
Anyway, Shmuel left at 2:20. August and I did some more Dragonbox Little Numbers. Then I captured another of the big bees in the kitchen. Then I realized it was the one I thought I had killed earlier when Shmuel and I were having coffee. August and I looked at it, then I let it go. I made cheese and olive pizza for lunch, then he watched Ask the Storybots and I finally took a shower.
We were planning to go to the school again (I would have liked to have gone swimming), but he wasn’t into the idea of leaving. Seemed nap-bound. He started doing some imaginative play on the couch. He had watched the Storybots episode about rain formation, and said he created “Not r-a-i-n, r-B-i-n….It floats higher…” I got him to contemplate books to return to the library and he wanted to return Du Iz Tak and Charlie Cook’s Favourite Book. He said “I want to return it cuz it’s short…I want longer books you can read to me.” He also spent a lot of time explaining to me which stacks of books were books he wanted to return and which he wanted to keep longer. Then, he was back to imaginative play: “I’m making something up…wzitgb…Then all our best molecules turn to wood, then they just disappear!” From there he started to be “billions” of heat molecules, going up into the air. It was sort of based on the rain episode of Storybots, with the molecules going up and down.
That went on for quite awhile, then he was over counting the blueberries and Duplos: “Dada, I was counting those by hundreds and I soon got up to thousands.” Nice use of ‘soon’, but I kind of messed him up with the counting song, where you jump from 10s to 100s to 1000s, etc. as that’s what he generally does.
We got out for a walk at 3:10. I figured he was probably going to nap, as he didn’t object when I put him in the big stroller, and when I asked if he’d rather use his orange bike he said he wanted to stay in the stroller. We wandered up north, then took some back streets. At one point we went through a little path and came out at a little park area and realized we were surrounded by cats. Someone feeds the cats there and there were a good dozen there.
We got up to downtown and decided to go to the grocery store. But being Friday the doors were already closed at 3:40. Customers were still coming out, but no more allowed in. We got to the park by the library and August got off to play. He went up and down the stairs, then climbed the spiral thing. He also remembered pretending that there were raccoons in the helter skelter. I tried to grab him through the bars at one point and he said “Don’t eat me!…You eat food. You know, like I eat…Larabar and apples and cakes… Chocolate cakes and other cakes.”
Carly told me she was leaving work. At first August just wanted to keep playing at the park, stepping on berries. But he was done a minutes later. So we hurried off at 4:06 and caught up with Carly, who waited for us by Vatikim Street. We walked with her, then stopped at the Tal Garden park – the one by Jack and Celeste. He played around for fifteen minutes or so. He put leaves in a cup of water that someone had left on the ground, then kicked it over. He turned around and walked back to the playground but missed the step and fell down, scraping his knee. He ran off towards the other end of the playground, and Carly went and comforted him.
We saw the neighbors on the way home. August was still upset, and didn’t enjoy meeting David again for the second time in a day. We were home after 5. They nursed, and apparently Carly gave him some chocolate since his knee was hurt. Later I had joked about something, saying I hadn’t given him chocolate before dinner, and he excitedly told me that mama had in fact done just that because his knee was hurt.
Anyway, he went outside with Carly for awhile, then they came in and nursed and she read him some of The BFG. I had wanted to get some Roald Dahl books for him, so when we decided not to go I asked if Carly could. She got that and James and the Giant Peach. He ate some banana bread and I made a banana and mango smoothie. He played some GroGarden and was very excited when he figured out on his own that 3+19=22. Carly took him to the bathroom and he was excitedly talkin
g about sparkly paint for some reason – I think it had to do with the color of the pot. We thought he would go to sleep early, but then he and I read Pablo and His Chair and the first 100 or so pages of 13-Story Treehouse. Carly took him up for a shower, then we played a little on the bed. He was asleep about 7:30. Right before we went to bed we heard him really talking and thought he was asleep, but he was only talking in his sleep. Sat up, then flopped over.