Carly woke him up just before 6:30. He came downstairs at 6:45, in a very good mood and requesting Garfield. We read Garfield and Carly headed to work. We read all of the 7th Treasury and he had some Cheerios and Larabar. He was then reciting a lot of Garfield lines: “I miss those days…encore, encore.” We started reading Garfield again. I said the author’s name, Jim Davis, and he joked about it: “No, not that author: Jim Widnick” “There’s a sticker on every page of the book.” Judd Widnick is the author of the Hilo books.
We skyped with my parents. He kept asking them to send him emojis. “I’m ready for the kiss now.” He sang the Hebrew letters song for them. Got to 40 minutes on the Skype call. And he did the lip thing where you rub your finger up and down to make your voice sound funny quite a bit – he learned that from Garfield. And he got to eat a cookie to show them what we made.
He went to the bathroom right after we were done, then we went upstairs and got him clothes and added the toilet paper roll to the collection as he requested. Back downstairs we watched the garbage truck pick up our garbage. He then watched the Why is the Sky Blue? episode of Ask the StoryBots. We were then typing on the iPad and I showed him how to copy and paste and keep doubling. We got over a million characters, which was very exciting for him.
He watched Wanda and the Alien and I took a shower. We played Toca Blocks for awhile then I gave him his shower, which he hated. We went down and read all of Mummies in the Morning (the Magic Treehouse book) for a second time, then some more Garfield. He was hungry and ate some zucchini and cheese, then we went outside to water and pick up a bunch more of the tree things that had fallen. We did machine cleanup of the tree things. He was then playing with new sap on the left tree. It looked whiter and foamier than the other sap. He was touching it and I thought he was just going to get a little sticky. But then he came over with big gobs of it all over his hands. We washed most of it off with the hose, then went inside and washed them more. Didn’t bother him too much apparently as he went back and got his hands a bit more sticky again. It gave him the opportunity though to say “It’s no use. I can’t get it off.”
Back inside we read yet more Garfield. He really likes the one with “Oh no, morning found me.” He was then repeating: “I can’t cook. I’m out of tofu.” He claimed it was an Egyptian guard in The 65-Story Treehouse that said it, but I don’t remember the guards even talking about cooking, much less tofu.
After he went to the bathroom he ended up riding his balance naked. He was then talking about the “nikud”, the vowel system in Hebrew. “I’m tzadi sofit. I’m an end sound. I make ‘ts’.”
We got headed out the door at 1:45. Took awhile to change the seat in the car, etc. and get going. We drove to the very planned and artificial-feeling neighborhood north of Even Yehuda, east of Netanya Stadium. There’s a mall at the southwest corner I wanted to check out, but it turned out nothing is open in it yet. There are also several parks to the west, situated in the center squares of the planned blocks. We parked and hopped in the stroller and headed to the first park, Herzog Garden and got there at 2:20.
We paused and he ate some banana chips as a snack. But before we actually started playing he was saying mean things towards other kids, mainly “Go away!” We started to leave, but then he really wanted to play in the park. We walked around to the other side of the park, and I let him get out. He was being a machine that was broken: he explained he had both red things and green things – the red things were bad things to do, like hit people, and the green things were good things, like throw acorns (presumably not at people). He pretended that he was doing both things. We sat on a bench by the playground for more snack and talked about why he could joke about killing things like weeds, but not people. One of his choices/switches was now “Picking to death weeds”. He also used the “It’s no use.” line again. He did a lot of running around as a rocket, and said he started slow and it took him 2000 years to speed up. We ran around the playground together, on and off a little hill, and he asked me to fix his red/green switches. Did some more racing around and went down a slide once, then decided to get going.
Back in the stroller I gave him a small container of Cheerios. Not sure if he had a bad grip on it, or just thought the lid was still on, but he turned it over, dumping them all out. Most landed in his lap and the stroller so we were able to save most of them. We left at 3:10. We walked to the east and south, checking out four other parks, but he wasn’t interested in stopping. He was most interested in getting to 10,000 steps.
We got back to the car and headed to the school. Carly had told me that all three of our boxes from the U.S. had arrived. Her Hebrew class was over at 4:15 and we were going to pick up her and the boxes. He got quiet as we drove through north Even Yehuda and I told him not to fall asleep. As we drove by the studio where his classes are I looked back to see his eyes closing. He was asleep a maximum of 5 minutes by the time I got him out of the seat. He rolled over and tried going back to sleep on the back seat. I got him out of the other side and carried him in. He woke up more when we got to the library, although he immediately kicked off his shoes and said he was going to fall asleep in the stuffed animals: “I’m going to sleep in here.” But then he said “It’s my 3D video phone. I better answer it.” He used his shoe as a phone and I was Mr. Big Nose (from the Treehouse books). He was then a tortoise and I was Tortoise Mr. Big Nose.
We went to Carly’s classroom and she had cleared off a cart. I used it take the boxes out, then made a second trip with bike trailer parts. While I was doing that he was playing on the beanbag chairs and picking up beans that were leaking out and they printed some pages from the computer. Carly and I carried things on our last trip and he walked out to the car.
We got home and he played Toca Blocks while I started opening boxes and Carly made grilled cheese sandwiches. We now have a full set of knives and all our supplies for hanging up the rest of our art. And the framed Breathe and reading posters to hang up.
We ate, and he kept saying “I’ve been waiting to play guitar.” So I went up and got the cords and we plugged it into the iPad and started playing guitar. We moved upstairs to be nice to Carly. A lot of August pushing down frets and asking what that note was when I played it. And he liked changing the amps and pedals on GarageBand.
Eventually we went downstairs and they opened the four splat balls that my parents had put in the boxes. Those were a lot of fun. Carly put on a timer for 7 minutes until he used the bathroom. That worked. Back with the balls he was throwing them at the ground and said “Look at this, Girl.” Called her that several times. They also opened the decorate it yourself mug present from my parents. They actually had it in Chelan this summer but we were so busy we never used it.
August and I then played with all of our ‘new’ Legos while Carly took a shower. By ‘new’ I mean the Legos from when I was a kid. I was remembering which ones were mine and which were Paul’s. We mainly put together all the people, and I did something we probably didn’t do 30+ years ago: put the long hair on the police officers and fire fighters. We also put together the police and fire boats.
We cleaned up all the legos, then read most of the Frog and Toad stories we have. He wanted to read them, because the mail carrier Lego figure reminded him of the Letter story. Also brushed his teeth.
They first attempted to go to sleep after 8. But he sat up and said “It’s no use.” He came down the stairs and told me “I woke up
at 8:22.” But Carly took him back up and they read The Sneetches and Wild About Books. But he was back down at 8:44. He was talking silly and said “I’m speaking millipede language.” He opened Plumdog on the iPad and read it in millipede language, then had me read a good chunk of it in English. We then read a new BabyLit book I got called Edgar Gets Ready for Bed. We read it twice and he was Edgar saying “Nevermore!” He was then August, also saying “Nevermore!” I would say things like “Take a shower!” and he’d say “Nevermore!” Finally, we read The Fall Festival. He was ready now, and he was up and asleep by 9:20.
Among the plants (and wiping sap in his hair):
Naked biking:
The grin:
Asleep:
On his 3D video phone:
Wearing my hat:
Reunited with more of our stuff:
Pouring out Legos:
