Carly woke him up about 6:30. He was grumpy when Carly left, but I got him to say “I really love you, actually.” We read some Clementine and he got up to turn on all the “suns” (lights): “No, I’m just trying on the three more suns…cuz we’re dandelions.” Carly had gotten him some Cheerios and strawberries and we had some more. We finished five chapters of Clementine. There was a mention of tattoos in the book and he asked “Why can’t kids have tattoos?” I had to answer it a couple times, then he had us acting out getting tattoos and kids having tattoos and then growing up. He played Montessori Geometry and I exercised. He told me “Dada, I just turned into a curvilinear triangle.”
We then both did Wizard School. He was doing “arte abstracto” and told me of one “It’s another part of a weird alien…I saw it when I was blasting someone into space. There’s another person waiting for me to blast them into space.”
We went upstairs and he watched Timmy Time. I realized that he’s starting to sing along to the Timmy Time theme song in Swedish (which is the default – neither English nor Hebrew is available). I took a shower, then watched the end of a Timmy Time Halloween story with him.
Then, the miracle of the day: I had the bath all prepared for him, and when he went in he stepped in. We spent the next 15 minutes spelling words out of the foam letters. He complained a bit when I washed his face, but that was it. Incredible. We had realized that 4 of the letters were missing. After he got out of the bath he walked over to the sink and said “Dada, open this door.” He had apparently remembered that the bath toys were in there, and sure enough, there were the four missing ones.
We were listening to Jingle Bells and 12 Days of Chriatmas on repeat. Downstairs he sat in front of the iPad choosing and listening to songs in his playlist as I got snacks. Had some vegenaise and crackers, then did a little of the puzzle. He went to the bathroom and was saying grumpy things. When I pressed him on why he would only answer “Because.”
We got outside and I was changing my mind about going to the zoo, as the drive was longer than I thought. Then I checked the hours and realized it closed at 2:30. So it wasn’t worth it to drive over an hour each way to only have a couple hours in the zoo. We decided on Herzliya Park instead. I had mentioned Ra’anana Park and he instantly said “Nooo, because I’m worried about the money.”
And he said “I don’t like you.” When I picked him up and asked him to actually explain why he said it he said “Can I have some dada time?”
Listened to Jingle Bells about a thousand times on the drive. 30 or 40 minute drive. We drove at the northeast corner of the park. Went and and saw a nature area. And a sign that told us to watch out for snakes. He said he wouldn’t watch out and told me that was my job. We went down and sat on a bench by the pond and ate lunch and watched the ducks.
We saw a high school class come from the north with cages, now empty. We were intrigued but didn’t figure out what the cages had been for. We walked north and found a bird watching shelter. August said he wasn’t patient enough to wait for birds, which I said was fine. He then started shouting “Go!” at the imaginary birds out there, which I let him do for a bit as no one else was around.
We walked a bit further north until it came out on the corner. August spotted a map and we looked at it. Realized we hadn’t paid for parking and did that, then headed to the huge playground. He led the assault on the play structure. He pretended it was like the 13-Story Treehouse, with different levels. We climbed up and up and had to go across all of the shaky bridges really high up. Looked out from the platform at the top of the big slide, which is the highest point in the park. Pondered going down the slide, which was bigger than the big slide he did in Korea, but decided against it until we saw other kids doing it.
We worked our way around and then down the play structure, then out and next door to the smaller kids’ play area. Played on the tugboat, and asked me “Are there snakes up here?” I lay on a slide and he climbed around a bit, then said we should be wolves eating crocodiles. Went and played inside the plastic hippo, which has a picture of organs with labels in English, Spanish, and French. He pretended to eat it: “I tried the inside but it was kind of tough. There’s no juice inside…Dada! Eat the inside. It’s sour.”
We went over to the snack stand and got a mango and raspberry smoothie and a snack bar that turned out to be coconut flavor. He said “You know, a smoothie makes me shut down…it clogs my pipe. You need to clog out my pipe. Besides, sometimes my pipe overflows when I drink too much water.” When we ordered he realized that some of the smoothies were Xed out on the counter. He asked the guy “What does the black Xs mean?” The bar was pretty good, I thought, but he wasn’t too fond of it. I told him that gramma would like it. We talked about our favorite fruits: “Mango is my favorite fruit.” I said raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries.” He said “And watermelon too!”, remembering Carly’s joke from months ago.
Then, randomly: “Dada, I think what makes a smoothie fly is magic. Oh no, the whole cup is flying away! Catch it! Use my rockets! It’s faster than two rockets. We need more rockets. Maybe 99 nonillion rockets…” We had mainly drunk the smoothie while sitting at a table outside the snack shop. It got cloudy and windy and threatened rain but never came to that. We went back to the little playground so he could throw our garbage away in the penguin garbage can. Carly called. August started singing “On the seventeenth day of Christmas…”
I spotted a little library area and we went over and looked. He listened to The 12 Days of Christmas on my iPhone while I looked. I grabbed a couple of English book and a Hebrew book of short stories that looked interesting and might be a translation learning project for me.
We then went for a walk around the south end of the park. He wanted to listen to the Elements song on the phone as we walked. Walking by the lake we saw a couple of the interesting ducks/geese in fight. One seemed to really have the other by the neck. As we stood there for a few seconds, wondering if it was really hurting the other one, a couple of middle school girls came along and waded right in and broke up the fight.
We kept walking. August asked me what scale he should sing in and I said blues scale. He said “It sounds like someone painting in the color blue.” We listened to some other songs, then stopped at the bathroom. He told me the toilet paper was rolled down, then he rolled it up. He told me “I didn’t want anyone wasting toilet paper.” He also sang several lines of “Elmo’s Song” on his own.
As we walked back to the north we saw three people practicing some acrobatics (holding each other up with their legs, etc.) He spotted a rope thing hanging between two trees and went to climb on it, after first asking “Dada, are you watching for snakes?”
We stopped on a bench to eat a snack and play with the interesting drinking fountain (there’s a mystery one that may be for dogs, but then just drains out the back past an odd metal pole that seems like it should do something).
We got to the car at 3:05. I had turned the clicks off on the media system, but now as we sat in the car (him in the driver’s seat) he turned them back on when I wasn’t looking. When I found out he started laughing really hard. I said he was happy with himself and he exclaimed “I’m so happy!” He pretended to drive: “Okay kids, were on the highway. We’re putting them up. We’re telling you seventeen times and you’re not putting them up.”
He got tired on the way home and we just barely made it: he was either going to get really upset or fall asleep. We got home
and played some Wizard School, then Carly got home and we had some dinner. They did some of the puzzle made read some more Clementine.
They went upstairs and he played with her spray bottle. Back downstairs he pretended to be water and had me trying to pick him up, but he would drain out of my hands. Amazingly, they both had hiccups at the same time, which has never happened before.
Carly had to run back to school to supervise middle schoolers selling hot chocolate at the elementary concert. Carly started listening to music in the car, so Apple Music stopped in the house. I switched to listening to KEXP, which we don’t do enough of. I had found out that Pat DiNizio of the Smithereens had passed away, so we had been listening to some DiNizio, and John Richards mentioned him on the Morning Show and played a Smithereens song (“Beauty and Sadness”). August also got to hear Pearl Jam play “It’s Okay”, which I sing to him. He wasn’t overly impressed though.
We went and cut and glued book labels for our little library books. He liked using the glue stick. We read a little Little House in the Big Woods, then went and finished the puzzle. We played TodoMath a bit, then Carly got home before 7:30. She made hot chocolate for him and he drank that.
We all went upstairs, and he asked me to turn on the cat ornament. We were all sitting there and he at first said he didn’t want to go to the bathroom, but after a couple minutes just went in on his own, no complaining. I left them at 7:45. I told him “Dream about ducks. And snakes. But not scary ones.” He sat up and said “I’m gonna dream about scary ones!”
Puzzle:
Pointing:
Herzliya Park:
Hippo organs:
On the hippo:
Penguin garbage can:
Playing music and watching the ducks:
One of the ducks:
Driving us home:
