August was up at 6:30 and came down on the couch with Carly and nursed. He was there until she left, then watched two episodes of Ask the StoryBots: How Airplanes Fly and Why Do You Have to Brush Your Teeth. He said he wanted “two episodes, two books”. He didn’t leave the couch until after 7:30. He then started playing at being a germ, and at this point he did run across the floor and back once as he attacked my teeth. I tried to keep him on the couch and he played at being a sick baby lizard, then the Flynne game, waking me up on the couch: “It’s a vacuum cleaner that can suck up foxes.” But when he then wanted to be a chipmunk gathering nuts I took us upstairs. We were then playing upstairs on the bed in his room until after 8:10. He looked at Carly’s Q, 14, Z, and K paintings and asked “Why is there a K?”, since K wasn’t one of his favorite letters. I explained how he practiced writing it a lot and would say “Line down, sideways V turns to K.”
We did his car puzzle, then listened to StoryBots songs, including the airplane one. He then had an airplane: “My airplane goes two octillion seventy-seven miles an hour.”
We went downstairs and again straight to the couch where we read some Smurfs and then some Magic Tree House. He was hungry, so I got up and started slicing apple while August had started watching Beethoven’s Ninth.
While I was slicing apples, suddenly a broom handle was hitting our window. Our downstairs neighbor was hitting it from his yard. I immediately went out the kitchen door. He was not in sight, so I called “Shalom”. He came around the corner and was about ten feet away. He started telling me that August woke him up “at 7”. I apologized but said I wasn’t sure what we were doing wrong. I told him we don’t wear shoes inside.
I tried to talk to him about it, but he just kept saying “If he wants to run you take him to the garden (park).” I suggested he should call Shmuel. I meant to talk to him about something to do with ceiling tiles or lowering rent, but he cut me off and started talking about how he was going anywhere and we should move.
I offered to give him my phone number but he refused it, saying “I’m not calling you at 7am.”
Finally, as I told him I’d see what we could do he got threatening and was pointing his finger at me. He said “If I can’t sleep, you won’t sleep.” I said “Please don’t threaten me.”
He then left. I emailed Carly to let her know what happened and called Shmuel. Shmuel assured me his behavior was unacceptable and he would talk to him. I felt better for awhile, but don’t know how the neighbor will react to getting a call from Shmuel.
August had walked around outside in his socks while this was going on. We went inside and I talked to him about why the man had talked to us and how we need to be quiet in the mornings. He, of course, wanted to be loud. We went upstairs and he played GroGarden and I exercised and then wrote up what had happened. We played with the blocks, saying words for each letter, and he said “V is for vein”. With the smurfs he made a machine “to make a potion that turns clay into smurfs.”
I took a shower as he watched the how candy is made videos. He reported to me again as I showered: “Billions at Easter alone…a brush knocks off the extra starch…” I really wanted to get out of the house, just for a change of scenery and because we really needed to go to the bank to try to order checks and to get some groceries, but I couldn’t get him out of the house. He wanted to play with Duplos, kept distracting me while I tried to make snacks, etc. Finally got snacks made, then we played at being plaque attacking people’s teeth on the couch: “We’re making people’s breath stinky.” Then some more Duplos, and we finally left at 11:30.
Stopped along a rough stone wall on the way up as he wanted a snack, a Larabar. There was a short piece of rope attached to the wall and he pulled it and surprised me by saying “If I pull on it it makes a force at the end.” That’s mostly from that how airplanes fly episode.
We got to the grocery store and couldn’t find a basket, and I realized my coin thing was in the other backpack. But then I remembered we needed to go to the bank first. So we did that. Went upstairs and August sat and played GroRecycling. I first talked to a guy who told me I could order checks online and that it was actually the bank’s philosophy that customers should be able to do that themselves. He suggested I try it on my phone, and he would answer questions if I couldn’t. So I sat and tried – actually good, as I discovered there is an English site. The app is only in Hebrew and that’s what I’ve been using. However, I couldn’t find the check ordering option in English. Then a woman asked if I needed help. I told her I couldn’t find the right spot on the English site. She told me I could also order through the ATMs, and the woman downstairs could help.
I had just realized that I get an error message when trying to click on the link on the Hebrew site, but at that moment she took me to the woman to help me downstairs at the ATMs. But then I realized I had no idea what my PIN was. So ultimately unsuccessful, although closer.
August had done a good job of following us around, carrying the iPad with him. We got the bike, then went to the grocery store. Still no baskets and the place was busy. I just settled on getting a six-pack of beer, as Jack was coming over when we got home and that was all I could carry, basically.
On the way home August was asking for the Hebrew word for things and we would look them up: sand, brick, wood.
We were home right at 1. Talked to Jack and he said Rick ws coming too. I told August that Jack and Rick were coming: “But I don’t like anything coming near us…They hit other people, even me…” But I had told him he could have a popsicle later (at the store he had been a machine that led me to the bakery counter) and I now told him he could have it when they got there. So we hung out outside until they showed up. August had his popsicle, then watched Peg + Cat. I joked he is now going to love having people over as he got popsicles and got to watch extra shows.
I sat with them outside and we had a beer and discussed insects, people that ride motorcycles, and the little free library. They had some good ideas. They helped take apart the doors, then we painted the outside of it. I brought August out and he helped me paint a bit. Didn’t want him too close to the spray paint fumes though, so we hung back and Jack and Rick did the rest.
They left, then we ended up inside drawing on paper. He hasn’t really been into just doing art for quite awhile, but suddenly he was using the red marker to draw picture after picture, mainly of man-eating things: “That’s the man-eating fish…that’s the man-eating cord…That’s the safety sign.” “That’s the man-eating bubble…that’s its digestive system. Say ‘I didn’t know bubbles had digestive systems.’” “It’s actually a robot that takes care of people.” The last had been the progression of his drawing as it turned from a man-eating bubble into a doctor robot (with three eyes, one ear, and a bunch of arms and legs). When he showed it to Carly later though the two had been combined and it was a “man-eating doctor robot”.
When he was done drawing he wanted to watch something on his iPad. I said he had had enough and he got upset and started hitting me. I carried him to the couch and then he actually started hitting me with his head. I got upset about that, and then he really started crying and said “Sorry!” Took a few more minutes to help him calm down. We then read the Puffin Rock book Goodnight, Beautiful Moon (which we hadn’t yet read), then some of Gargamel and the Smurfs until Carly got home.
They nursed, then he showed her his drawings. He then started drawing again: “I’m gonna make another machine…This is
a man-eating jungle.” He continued to work on it for quite awhile, and Carly and I went outside. Carly asked “Can I have one?” August heard her as he drew and said “But then I can’t have another popsicle!” She had meant one of the beers I’d bought. He drew for a long time then came out with us, watering plants, and picked another ripe tomato. While out there he asked “Stars are bigger than rockets or planets? Why? Cuz they’re like huge?” He then asked where the red bag was and helped pick up some of the tree things. He ate apple and peanut butter outside and I put painting stuff away. He was asking about Hebrew teen Numbers. I called it an evening as the mosquitos were attacking.
Inside he was a garbage can and had me throw stuff in him:
“I’m checking the meter see how full the garbage is.” – a reference to GroRecycling. It was getting time for a shower, but we were playing with Duplos. He was starting to count them by 3s. Carly gave us a muffin that Holly had made as it had nuts in it. August and I talked about how it was good, but it wasn’t delicious as it didn’t have chocolate in it. We played a bit longer and he made a play structure , then Carly called to her. He knew it was shower time and yelled “No! Mama!” But ran to her. Then asked “Can I get the bed wet? Secretly?”
Carly took him up, then I gave him a shower. He talked about a machine to make the muffins so Carly could eat them: “I have a machine that turns muffins with nuts in them into muffins with chocolate.” “Mama would like that.” “Yeah, but it pollutes though…it needs garbage that it burns to burn the nuts…It burns the air people breathe.”
He then got the bed wet, secretly, at 7:05. On the bed he was reciting numbers and getting bigger and bigger: “7 is bigger than 1….16 is bigger than 7…70 is bigger than 16…and 277 is bigger than 70…” He was then a baby birdie. We then read the Mother Goose book. I asked him who Elsie Marley looked like and he said “Mama”, so he remembers that. Then when we sang our “Saw a ship a-sailing” song he held he last note really long, which I’d forgotten we did. We looked up the equator on my phone as he had talked about being a baby bird in the winter and flying south “To the South Pole?” He was ready for sleep and was asleep by 7:55.