They got up at 6:36. He was upset and wanted to keep nursing. When I came down they were playing with Legos, making a base to protect their spaceship from aliens. August said “Only the nice ones can come in.” He was singing his mashup between When Johnny Comes Marching and The Ants Go Marching.
We read the rest of Max Axiom Magnetism and part of Plumdog. We shared some zucchini bread. August then looked at Google Maps, asking “Where should we go today?” He then wanted to watch Kipper. Started with Arnold’s Balloon Trip on YouTube.
I went and took a shower. Back downstairs they went outside for a bit. August came back in and we were hedgehogs. He started saving grubs and worms for later, as we learned that hedgehogs do (by paralyzing them). And “We’ll also make worm bread. That’s gonna sound good for us but not humans though.”
He and I went for a walk at 9:30. He was singing songs really low and said “I’m playing in a lower octave.” Then “The scale I’m singing in is called blues smash. It sounds like people smashing water.” We wandered around and eventually up to the dead end and back. We were counting cats and ended up with 8 cats and one lizard on our walk. We eventually ended up at Tal Garden and he wanted to use the ball thing where you throw the ball in the top and it comes out of one of three tubes. We headed home for a ball, but figured he’d want to stay home. We were home at 10:10. He said “Can we eat a grub? This is our secret refrigerator.”
I spent some time hanging new hooks up for the photographs above the dining table and some other pieces we’d taken down when the previous sticky stuff failed to work. They went outside, then upstairs to get ready to go to the mall. They had a secret, which August eventually told me: getting a chocolate smoothie. He helped me hang hooks by peeling off the old tape and then helping put the new strips on the hooks.
We left about noon. Made it over to the mall and started clothes shopping. August wanted to get the smoothie first. He made it through the first shop, where we just bought some underwear for him (which he hasn’t been wearing for a couple months), and sort of made it through the second (where Carly got one pair of pants for him to see how the size works). But he had a meltdown when we said we were going to the grocery store next. Carly took him out the back mall doors while I went and did the shopping. I tried calling Carly, then walked around the mall myself. She had forgotten her phone and gotten locked out. She grabbed one more item, then we paid and headed for a smoothie.
August was doing much better – the getting locked out and walking around had really distracted him – and they went for a smoothie. I went back to the second store to look for socks (no luck), then to מאיה, the health food store, where I found some fluoride-free toothpaste for August. I found them out on the bench, drinking the smoothie. I helped August finish it and Carly ran in to the pharmacy and to the cleaner to pick up a blanket we had dropped off. When Carly came back August said “Thank you mama for the smoothie.” We headed home at 1:20.
August wanted to walk the long path home, but Carly was carrying the blanket. August told her to take the short way, and we would see her at home. He kept wanting to know what key we were singing in, so when we got home at 1:45 I installed the Piano Companion app on my phone we we’d always have a piano handy to play a note.
Carly had made salsa, so we had some of that and other food. August primarily likes the cilantro out of the salsa so will ask me to pick that out for him and put it on his chips. Carly went outside, and he played on her computer with Excel and Maps. He was singing the Peanut Butter and Jelly song to himself and making up nonsense words. When Carly made him a sandwich earlier he had asked me to sing it, then we were singing it on our walk. I put up pictures and a few more hooks, organizing our entryway.
After 3 we got in the car and drove over to Udim, south of Ikea and went to the Udim Reserve. Put August in the big backpack. We walked up a short trail that ended at a cliff where they had cut through to make a channel to drain the swampland to the west. Walked back down that, then down a dirt road that was supposed to take us over to the National Trail. I said “Oh, There’s no bridge here.” He immediately responded “Then why are you still walking‽” We walked north on a parallel dirt road. August was being a bit demanding for snacks so we ignored him. He said “I’m going to use a different tone now.” We looped around to the car and left at 4:15.
We drove to Ikea and had a wonderful shopping trip as August was having a ton of fun. He found a couple of hopscotch courses on the floor and hopped on them and followed footprints and arrows on the floor. He hung from the handle of the cart while Carly pushed it. We got a rug to put in the kitchen and a few small things. We got a hotdog, fries, and falafel sandwich (and an orange juice) and sat and ate them there. He was then spotting ‘exit’ in Hebrew on the floor. All was well until we exited, then right as we went through the checkpoint he tripped and fell, I think looking back at the guy talking to us.
In the car he sent messages to Carly from my phone. At home they Skyped with Oma and Opa and he traded messages with Chuck. He then found the long cardboard tube from the rug and Carly went outside with him so he could play with it. They played tug of war with it, and after winning a couple times he let Carly be the strongest.
Back inside he found the tape measure and was measuring everything, pretty accurately now. He played GarageBand on his iPad to play electric guitar – which Carly wasn’t excited about, but then I told him that was a great idea and he agreed. We read to chapter 8 of Magic Treehouse 6, then Carly took him upstairs.
They were being fish up on his bed. He went to the bathroom and was speaking different languages. He was still a fish until I said that fish don’t nurse. As I said goodnight to him he said, unprompted, “I’m gonna dream about magnets.” I left them at 7:40 and he was asleep by 7:50.
In the backamapack:
Udim Reserve:
Ikea:
