He was up at 5:45. Watched Smurfs as Carly left. We then read several chapters of Magic Treehouse #7: Sunset of the Sabertooth. He was being Peanut, the Mouse, who is cold and cuddling behind my back and watching me read over my shoulder. We got into taking photos, then he wanted to go for a walk and take pano photos. We got our warm clothes on. He was being a fish again and said he pulled up his sweatshirt zipper with his fins. Outside he pulled some weeds near the door, then we got on our walk at 7:50.
We wandered around singing songs to Tal Garden. We played with the soccer ball in the ball chute thing, but that just lasted a couple minutes. He wanted to take a panoramic photo. He was protective of the ball, wanting to put it back in the bike so no one would take it. There wasn’t anyone else in sight. I convinced him to set it on a seat next to us. Took a few photos, doing them together, then he wanted to keep walking. He was doing rocket blasts with his hands, Hilo style, and when we got to the little park south of us (where the didgeridoo player was) he blasting all sorts of monsters that were going to come out of the bushes and attack me or throw up on me. Did one more pano photo and blasted more monsters, then headed home.
We finished reading Magic Treehouse #7 then got our books together to take back to the school – 7 in all. He then watched Timmy Time. We went upstairs to start some laundry. He said “Today’s washing day. Tomorrow’s dragon day. I fight dragons with my rockets.” Then he asked “Dada, can we actually play the guitar with GarageBand?” We ended up playing mandolin instead. He would choose chords on the phone that he wanted me to play.
I exercised and took a shower while he watched Timmy Time and Smurfs, then gave him a shower.
Back downstairs I cut strawberries and made teriyaki salmon sandwiches for lunch. He ate all the strawberries before I could join him at the table. Listened to Chemical Brothers and he loved it, adding the first two songs to his playlist. He then requested Toca Robot Lab so he played that for a bit.
As we got ready to go he played with the cardboard tube from the rug, simultaneously trying to destroy it and saying he wanted to keep it forever. He asked if we could ship it and when I asked why he said he wanted it forever.
I had planned on driving down to another park in Netanya, then going to the Ace store. But August really wanted a walk on his orange bike instead. So we did that, leaving at 1. We walked up to the dead end, adding to our cat count – think we were up to around 18. He said “I always use number magic to put numbers on the animals.” In fact, as we kept walking we were fighting more monsters and robots and he had all sorts of powers: “Let’s use our brick lasers” “Really heavy falling tree power” “Hurricane power”
We didn’t walk for long and decided to head to school early. On the way I let him hold the container of new crackers. When I went to get him out, I found him eating them like a sandwich, six crackers at a time.
We went to the library. Returned 3 Magic Treehouse books, Du Iz Tak, Ada’s Violin, and 2 Berenstain Bears books. Ilana said there was a class coming in soon so August and I went and grabbed a bunch of Berenstain Bear books, a Star Wars book, two Magic Treehouse books, and a book called You Don’t Want to Live Without Electricity. We went back to our usual bean bags and read much of the electricity book, then three Berenstain Bears books: Learn about Strangers, Forget Their Manners, and Ghost of the Forest, which we read twice. August figured out right away that the third ghost was Mama Bear and thought it was really funny.
We went to the bathroom once, and while we were there he was saying big numbers. When I had trouble following them, he said he had “Comma power” and put in commas so I could understand the numbers.
When he was done in the library he carried the seven books we had to check out up to the desk. He realized that Liz was gone, but Amanda helped us out and checked out the books. She asked what we had done over Thanksgiving and I mentioned that we had gone to the beach. I said we had made sandcastles, and he added “And moats”.
We left the library at 3:10. Put on his sweatshirt and he wanted to pull up the zipper on his own, which he’s been doing recently. He’s been doing other things more independently too, like he can usually push the drinking fountain buttons on his own now.
We first went to the preschool playground. Spent most of the time cooking “toad spots” in a pan and tasting that. Looked up and saw the moon and we talked about the gibbous moon, which he joked was the “give us moon”, so we kept telling the moon to give us things. Then he was asking why we couldn’t walk on the big chunks of wood and we talked about stable versus unstable and demonstrated by having him crouch down and I tried to shove him off balance, which he found quite funny.
We went to big playground and he spun around a post saying “Go go go” until I got him to stop. We went up to his rocket and climbed in that. Think we went to Neptune. Back down on the playground he heard two girls tell a boy (a brother, I think) that their game was “Girls only”. August was concerned about that and kept watching them. He wasn’t sure if he could go on the play structure. He was then saying “Only big boys can play!” as we played around.
Done there, we went back to the library building, riding the elevator up after using his rockets to fly him across the lawn. We sat outside the library and he sent Carly messages on the phone. He was ready to go, so at a couple minutes to 4:30 we walked a slightly long way to Carly’s classroom. Ayal saw August practicing saying “Mama! Time to stop working! It’s 4:30!” He liked that as a bit earlier he’d said something to us about how Carly should go home. We burst through the door and August delivered his line really well.
We got home at 4:50. He was falling asleep as they nursed. Got him back awake by Skyping with Cherie, then we ate dinner. Tried to get him to read some of our new books, but he was tired and didn’t feel like reading. He lasted until 6:45, at which time I left them to sleep. I asked what he was going to dream about and he said “Helicopters!” He was asleep by 6:50.
Rockets:
V:
Cracker sandwich:
Reading:
Doing circles:
In his rocket:
