At one point during the night August got up and started to leave the room before we stopped him and got him back in bed. Then he was up early, around 5:30 or so. We all got up at 6. Carly set him up in his bedroom, watching Timmy Time and with the heater on. The house is so cold in the morning nowadays without the heaters on. So his small room is a nice morning cave. At one point he asked for Cheerios, so I went down and got a bowl with strawberries, zucchini bread, and Cheerios for us. When I came back he said “Toda, toda, toda. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
He was his usual grumpy self to Carly when she left. Teenager August, Carly says. He then typed on my iPad. Yesterday we had created a special key on the onscreen keyboard that types ‘August’ and he said “Now you don’t have to type ‘August’ anymore.” He typed ‘car’ on his own. We switched to sending each other messages on Wizard School. He said “I will NEVER be the wizard’s friend.” I had said the Wizard could turn me into a frog. He said he didn’t want that. I asked “What would you want the wizard to do?” He replied “Just turn outlets into iPads.”
We continued some Wizard School downstairs. He watched the video on how to read music. After reading so many books yesterday he wasn’t into reading this morning. I was looking for one of the Berenstain Bears books we own, and he asked “Berenstain Bears and the nursing mittens?” When I couldn’t find it I mentioned it might be out in the car. He wanted to go find it so I carried him out and we looked. Ended up finding it inside. He wanted me to be someone trying to open a car and he was the car: “I have a car language” Yesterday I had explained to him why our remote only opens our car, and not any other car.
We skyped with my parents. He started taking the books off the shelves for fun. When we were done he read the time: 26 minutes. I asked him to help me put the books back on the shelf and he was an “Organizing machine”. He spent a few minutes watching Skype emoji videos. He asked of one “Is that a disco video?” It did, indeed, have a character that looked like a disco dancer. Don’t know how he knew that. He’s watched “I lost my cookie at the disco” a few times, but not recently. Rather a connection to make to a 5 second animated video.
He played some Simple Machines, then got into Loopimal for the first time in a long time, as I exercised. I played some Loopimal with him and he did some dancing to it. He was making patterns in it. We went upstairs and he watched Timmy Time and I took a shower. He stopped after one episode and was playing in the play area while I finished. He knocked the drying rack over but he was okay in the middle of it. Then played with it that way.
I drew a bath for him today. Went no better than a shower, and possibly worse. We went downstairs, and he wanted to do the underwater floor puzzle. We did about half of it, then took a break. He was being a bird, which continued as I made us a mixed berry smoothie with frozen mixed berries. He ate several frozen cranberries and blueberries as a bird. He went and stood on the mop handle and called it a “Twig”. After drinking our smoothies (he really liked it) we went outside to water plants. He was still a bird, flying around the yard. We went back inside and finished the puzzle. We were listening to more of the Hebrew children’s songs and he added a few to his playlist. He was even singing along to “Agada”. I was cleaning up in the kitchen, then looked around the corner to find him just sitting in the Lego box. He stood up by the time I got over there.
We finally got ready to go. But out in the car he wanted to pretend to drive and to play with things. We sat out there for quite awhile. He said things like “I’m taking a different route.” Saw David enter his house, then a few minutes later August and I went inside to use the bathroom. Back out in the car David came out looking for his keys and wondered if we saw anyone. We had not.
We drove down to Hatzipor Garden, which is a park south of Netanya Stadium. We had ridden by in a bus and there is a cool bird sculpture on the corner. So it looked promising. But it wasn’t. August fell asleep just as we got there. I couldn’t get him awake as I put him in the stroller, then at the park I took him out and climbed up the sculpture, carrying him and trying to wake him up. No luck. Back down on the ground I tried harder to wake him up. Stood him up on the ground and he slept standing up while I held his hands. Another time he simply walked over to a bench and lay his upper body on it, back to sleep. After he was asleep for about 15 minutes I finally got him up, looking at the other bird sculptures. He liked those when he saw them, and then wanted to climb the big one. He didn’t realize he had just been up on it.
We took the stroller off road and onto the rougher, bumpy paths to the south. Not much else in the park, except for an ant nest where big black ants were piling dirt. August liked the bumps though.
We walked out of the park on the west side and went across the street to a store called Home Design, in the eBay building. Nothing too exciting, but there was a fish tank by the elevators. He climbed up on the couch next to it to see the fish. Later realized it was a $6000 couch. I showed him how the magnetic tank cleaner worked. We then wandered around looking at couches: “Why are there so many couches?” He wanted to make nests on them. And he read a sign on the wall. We rode the elevator up to the second floor. Both directions he lay on the floor, even though it was just one floor. He chose elevator over escalator coming back down: “Yeah, the elevator. I really like elevators.” We left at 2:35.
We walked to the west and north, checking out the shops over in that area, including the meat shop that I read about (that actually has a lot more than just meat, but August did get to see big sides of beef hanging up) and a toy store where we bought a couple of cheap magnet Hebrew word sets.
We went to Tiv Taam and had a good shopping trip. August was helpful, and got out of the cart and was leading me around the store part of the time. As we waited in a typically slow line, he sang a “smash smash smash” song to the tune of Jingle Bells. In the car we were listening to Jingle Bells and the Twelve Days of Christmas over and over.
Carly had said she should walk home, but I knew that we might see her walking home, and told August that if he saw her he should yell out his window. He did, and he yelled “Hi mama! Do you want a ride?”
At home he wanted to try the pesto vegenaise I had found. He decided “I love veganaise!” Had some dinner, then they did the ocean puzzle together. He and I read Berenstain Bears and Mama’s New Job. I did dishes and they started Clementine and Magic Treehouse #11. He then did chord lookup and played on the toy piano while Carly took a shower. He was putting the chords on arpeggio and then on repeat so the iPad would play it over and over, then playing along on the toy piano or iPad keyboard. He was getting pretty good with a couple chords.
I took him upstairs and we read Plumdog. I asked him what he would dream about and he said “Treehouses!” He was asleep at 8:15.
Park:
Fish tank:
Elevator:
