He fell off the end of the bed sometime in the middle of the night. Didn’t seem to bother him too much. But towards the morning he was nursing a lot. Carly got him back to sleep, but at 5:55 he woke me up shouting “Go!” in his sleep. He got up and went downstairs. When I went down a few minutes later he was watching Peg + Cat. Carly headed to school. We read Berenstain Bears Moving Day, then played Toca Blocks and Toca Plants. The latter is a pretty good puzzle sort of game as you figure out how to make all the new plants. We then Skyped with my parents as we won’t be able to talk on Thanksgiving. He was typing all the alphabets we know backwards, sort of, on the iPad keyboard. That is, he was typing ZYXWVU… but doing it in Hebrew, Arabic, and Korean to see what it would look like. He type a lot of words to them, but in the end kind of got upset when he wanted to type a word with the ‘z’ in the middle. My mom suggested ‘gazelle’ and we were typing that, but he had gotten it in his mind that he wanted it in cursive (I’d been talking about how Arabic letters change based on their locations in words, kind of like English letters in cursive) and when he realized he couldn’t type in cursive he got kind of sad.
After we were done Skyping he finished Peg + Cat and I exercised. We then went upstairs. He played with the calculator on my phone and I introduced him to the advanced calculator layout, with all sorts of new keys for him to learn. I took a shower. We then read a Peppa Pig book (the collection with seven stories) and Little Critters Fall Festival, then gave him a shower. Not too bad.
Got headed out at 11:20 to head to the bank. Again. Ada had come through with our temporary Israeli licenses yesterday, so we are back to driving the car. I tried to put August’s shoes on him, but he only tolerated them for a minute before deciding he wanted to go back to his green crocs. As we got in the car I said something to him and he replied “No it doesn’t, you silly old beast.” I laughed and asked what that was from. It’s from James and the Giant Peach. He was then being an animal but told me “You don’t know if I’m a mouse or a Plumdog. It’s a secret.”
He had been wanting to play GroGarden again at the bank, but when we got there he first played with the calculator on his iPad, then came in and played with the one on the desk for the rest of the time. The guy said he didn’t know why the account hadn’t been unfrozen, but he submitted the request again and got an email back saying it would happen during the night. As we got ready to leave, August realized he’d forgotten to play GroGarden. I let him play for a minute and told him he could play later at home.
We headed back to the car. He riffed on the Peg + Cat song, singing “The problem is solved, the other problems is not solved, everything’s on fire.”
At home he played GroGarden. He talked about Peg + Cat, as if he was Peg, and said “Cats not solving the problem with me, because he is sick, and in the bed.” Which as far as I know never actually happens in the show.
I made us tuna sandwiches and sweet potato fries for lunch. We ate that, then read Plants Vs Zombies Timepocalypse, then had a zombie laser fight with the pillows as the lasers. He had brought the paper mache ball from Vivian downstairs yesterday. He said he didn’t need it anymore and started to destroy it. The damage was already done, so I let him take the rest apart over the garbage can. NO ONE TELL VIVIAN THIS!!!
We then got out on a walk. I’d planned to drive to a park over by Ikea, but he requested a walk on his orange bike. I wasn’t sure how well the weather was going to hold up, so I didn’t press my plan. On our walk we discussed what the song “Sentimental Wars” was about and we talked about being sentimental about things from Korea. August then totally got jumped on by a little dog that was licking him. I actually had to push the dog off of him and shoo it away to its negligent owner. August didn’t like it, but didn’t scream or get upset. We then found the tunnel under the highway and walked through it. It has a really good echo and we spent a lot of time at one end playing with the echo. We walked through to the other side, past a big puddle, some horse manure, and a lot of graffiti to find it just ends in a dirt road now. On the way back through the tunnel he was looking down at his feet, slumping over the handlebars and said “something strange happened. I turned into a peddle.” And at some point he just shouted out “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik!” We got to the end of the trail, at the main intersection with the road that goes up past the school. We talked about going up to the school, but he decided against it, which turned out to be good as Carly stayed a bit late to finish up some grading.
Looking back over the fields he saw a cylinder-shaped building that he hoped was a waste treatment plant. We turned around at 3:10, went back and walked the dirt road at the north end of the strawberry fields (they area all covered by plastic domes now), almost getting back to the main road again, then headed home. He played in the dust and dirt along the way. He was turning us in circles and said “If we keep doing this I will change.” A reference to the Toca Plants and Elements games. I saw a big white bird (kind of owl shape) fly over and said “Come back bird!” He narrated “But the bird didn’t answer.”
We got home at 4. Played some GarageBand, then Earth Primer. We read/played through that, doing more of the section on water that we hadn’t done before. We read half of Max Axiom Magnetism. He asked for more Cheerios but was upset when I offered dinner instead. Carly was home at 5:30. He was falling asleep as they nursed. Woke him up with some Beethoven and Carly gave him a chocolate chip, then he played Earth and Animal Hospital on the iPad. We read the two Berenstain Bears books.
He went upstairs and after going to the bathroom washed his own hands, then brushed his teeth all on his own. We then did flops on the bed – fun in themselves and also fun because it makes Carly nervous. I told him to dream about flops. He then loudly stated “I don’t like showers!”
He didn’t fall asleep though, and came down at “7:28”. We read Biscuit Visits the Doctor, Would You Feed It to the Monkey, Splat the Cat, 1-2-3 Peas, and Hap-pea All Year.
He went back up to Carly. I heard some crying and I think he fell asleep sometime between 8:30 and 8:45. Carly fell asleep too though, and she woke up for a bit around 9:30.
A lot of dancing that has to go on here:
Standing on the bricks:
Pillow zombie lasers 1:
Pillow zombie lasers 2:
Bye bye paper mache:
Echo in the tunnel:
After his shower:
Deciding he wants the shoes off:
Our long walk:
