Really raining in the morning. He was up at 6:00. Carly let him on her computer, but he’s figured out how to use keyboard shortcuts to switch between programs and open and close windows, so he was messing around. He was watching Peg + Cat when Carly left. Had banana bread for breakfast. We switched to books, but we couldn’t find the Plants Vs Zombie book (Timepocalypse) that he wanted. We started reading James and the Giant Peach instead, but he bit his tongue. His response was to want to leave the house: “Can we go? Can we get out of here?”
So we went for a walk at 7:45. He said “I don’t really like the nighttime.” Not sure why. We sang the zero at the bottom of the sea song county by different numbers: 14, 11, 5. And made ups some new words for Ants go marching: 2 is achoo, 3 is sneeze. We walked around the Holly block, then headed over towards Jack and Celeste’s, but as we headed through the paths we felt a couple drops of rain. Looked up to see a huge dark cloud approaching. We turned around and started hurrying home. He was fine though: “My rockets is waterproof!” We made it in the gate and I pushed him up to the porch at 8:05. We had barely made it. It started pouring and I told him I was just going to leave the gate open for now. He was laughing as he asked: “Is it going to keep raining for millions of years? Billions? Trillions?”
We went back to looking for the zombie book. We used a flashlight to look under the couch. August said: “It’s really dirty in there. I don’t want books to get dirty.” He had also wanted to mop today and he was wiping the floor with the mop, although we didn’t use water. He found Green Marshy under there. We then went and checked the car and found the book in there. Back inside we read all of Timepocalypse. When we were done he was being the plants and I was the zombie. “Slap, slap, slap…I’m slapping you to the dark side of the moon.” Took me to a cylinder planet to burn me up.
He wanted me to sing Yankee Doodle in a specific key, so I showed him how to change where we start playing it on the piano and we played Yankee Doodle in different keys. He then wanted to switch to the electronic keyboard and we played GarageBand.
We headed upstairs and he watched Ask the Storybots while I took a shower. Afterwards, he told me “Dada, all I see is a bunch of elements. There’s a bunch of elements looking at us.”
We then left on a walk into town. First stop was the library, where we could now open an account. We looked at the same pollution book and clock books as last time and I found The Very Hungry Caterpillar to check out. After we translated a few more words in the pollution book he was sick animals again, and sang “I’m a baby fish, getting infected.” He then spotted a sign above the toy area and we translated the whole thing, with him doing a lot of the typing. It told parents to keep the area clean.
We went up to open our account and found that the pollution and time books are for library use only. Rather odd, as they are just old beaten up books. So we just got the caterpillar book. But we found out that the librarian’s name is Rifka and she lives at Habrosh 9, just four doors up from us.
From there we headed to the bank, where we tried the ATM and found that we couldn’t withdraw money. Last night we had found that at least two other teachers also couldn’t access there accounts. So we went upstairs. August played GroGarden while I talked to the bank staff. He also came in and played with the guy’s calculator. At one point I looked over and found him flipping through a newspaper, moving his finger on the lines as if he was reading. After about a half hour and talking to two people (and them calling other people) it seemed like the problem was solved: they thought there was missing paperwork on our account, like a W-9, but they checked and it was actually all there and was a mistake and the lock would be lifted “in a few minutes”.
So we went to the park where August scratched at the icky spot, which was kind of gummy due to the rain, with a stick. It reminded him of oobleck and he started asking me about that book. Kind of chilly and windy, so we then headed to the ATM, where we found our account still wouldn’t work. We hung around for a bit, trying to decide what to do. He played at the edge of the steps, looking down below. He wanted to go to a restaurant for lunch but I told him we’d do that tomorrow in Jerusalem. So we left there at 1:45 and went to the bakery instead. Got a few cheesy things and one chocolate one, which he called the poop one. Walked across the street, back to the park, and ate them, starting with the chocolate one. He quoted a Garfield strip: “What are you trying to do? Make us sick?”
From there we went back to the ATM yet again. Still didn’t work. Figured we’d come back tomorrow and try it and we headed home. As we walked past the park where we saw the fruit fight he remembered it: “Dada, when the kids were throwing that fruit the park cleaned itself up!” He then did a lot of talking about and pretending to fight zombies. And everything was a zombie: brick zombies, tree zombies, etc. His funniest was the “poop zombies” when we saw dog poop. Home after 2:30.
We finished James and the Giant Peach and he wanted to start from the beginning. We read Du Iz Tak instead. He then did some zombie playing: “I got brains for my brain cake…Can you be a zombie? Fight, fight, fight, fight, fight…” He also lay on the floor and put his arms and hands in the shape of a heart.
We then headed back out and walked up to the school and that library. He first played in the stuffed animals and pretended to be a slow turtle, crawling along the ground when we went to look for books. He pointed to the built-in benches and asked “Can we sit on those?” I said yes, and he replied “But they’re for not behaving.” He once saw a boy who was getting in trouble be told that he had to sit there because he was misbehaving.
He had wanted to check out Berenstain Bears books so we looked at those a lot. We sat and read four of them: Slumber Party, Messy Room, Blaze a Trail, and Green-Eyed Monster. We checked out Green-Eyed Monster and Moving Day, Magic Treehouse 6 and 7, and Max Axiom Magnetism. Carly found us and we left at 4:30 and got home at 5.
At home he was pretending to punch everything. I took a video to show Cherie what her Plants Vs Zombie books have wrought. They nursed and I gave him a shower that went just fine. He sent messages to Oma – I had him write “punch”. He didn’t really eat much dinner. We read Frog and Toad, Berenstain Bears and the Trouble with Chores, and Peppa’s First Sleepover. Took out the piano keys and put them back in.
He went upstairs with Carly. While on the toilet they did toilet paper math with the squares of toilet paper. In the bedroom he had turned the fan on to oscillating. Carly turned it off and he said “What did you do to my osicillating machine? That’s insane!” They read some Pooh poems, then he was ready for sleep. I asked what he’d dream about and he replied “hurricanes and tornados…and magnets.” He was asleep at 7:45. Before he went to sleep I showed him that we’d made it to 20,000 steps for the day. He’s been wanting to do that.
Playing it like a piano:
Bakery stuff:
Making a heart:
Reading books in the school library:
