Sometime after 12:30 during the night he sat up and said “I need to go to the bathroom.” So I took him. As I carried him back he said “Read a book”. I said we needed to go back to sleep. He crawled up to Carly. I asked Carly about it later and she didn’t realize he had gone to the bathroom.
Around 5:30 he had been nursing for a long time and Carly had had enough. He got really upset and wouldn’t calm down. Carly took him to the Zinnie bed. I went and got his water and a snack and the iPad. At first he was even angrier when I tried to play Storybots or something. Eventually he calmed down and started to play something and I went back to bed. I was getting up, slowly, around 7 and he came in and was pulling the blanket off of me. Carly had brought the big piece of styrofoam in from the laundry area and he had me carry him on it.
Downstairs he showed Carly how to play Yankee Doodle again, then they made the hologram thing she had brought from Planetanya. They went in the bathroom to get it to work. You get it to work by setting it on a phone/iPad playing a video from YouTube. Back out in the living room he just watched the video on its own.
Carly was in winter break cleaning mode right from the get go. She wanted to turn our bed and return the rolling bed from the Zinnie bed to his room and set up a mattress on the floor next to our bed for him. So I ended up doing much of that, with Carly’s help turning the bedframe a couple times as we had to stand it up. I finished putting the beds and mattresses back together and they ate oatmeal outside and took care of plants.
Back inside I read Plumdog with him for awhile (he really likes that book), then I went and took a shower. He was doing TodoMath. Let him play a few more minutes, then I took him up and gave him his bath. More squirt cars and we had the letters swimming today (which we used to do in Korea). When we were done he used his foot to pick up the letters and talked about them not wanting to go back to the bag (again, from Korea).
He talked to Siri and we got ready to go, then was playing with Scratch and Carly’s computer. He would do something and tell Carly “What did you do to my computer?” And he told me “It’s Mama’s computer, dada. Don’t interrupt me. Or you’ll have to pick the papaya plants. And weed the garden.” I wasn’t actually interrupting him, but it was a line from Berenstain Bears Forget Their Manners. Then he was using the red marker as a wand to make us disappear and reappear.
We got out to the car with Carly driving and we drove up to Caesarea. On the way we read some Clementine. He spotted a McDonald’s sign and said “McDonald’s! We can eat at McDonald’s!” I was surprised he recognized the sign so easily, as we’ve never really talked about it.
We first went to the Casesarea beach with a Roman aqueduct running along it. We sat under the aqueduct, then went down on the beach and played around. August wanted to make a moat, so Carly went up on the beach and they made a moat around her. He then got upset though when he wanted to fill it with water but we didn’t have anything to do it with. He wanted to go home and was trying to walk back up to the car but we wouldn’t go. Finally, convinced him to take off his shoes and feel the crunchy sand. He then had fun picking up chunks of sand and destroying them. Initially we weren’t letting him “sandify” us but eventually it turned into a game. Spent some time burying his feet in the sand and they were crabs. Carly was surprised that he knew that sand was broken up rocks, but he knows erosion pretty well from the Earth apps and from our time playing at that stream by the Dead Sea.
We headed back to the car, trying to get sand out of everything and failing. Drove to Caesarea National Park and got tickets for just the Crusader city part, as it was about 2:30. Saved the Roman portion for another time. August liked going over the bumpy path in the stroller, but he liked the ramp more, saying he liked to run up ramps. We wandered around the harbor and out to its farthest point. Carly made fun of me for taking a photo of the power plant. She didn’t think many people would do that.
We walked back to the lawn area about 3:15 sat and had a snack. A baby came over to us, interested in the snacks and did a nice roll. August wasn’t impressed with the roll or the baby. August was eating a grape, a piece of pear, then getting a chip. He was okay with the order, but didn’t like saying “please” each time, so was pushing buttons in the air and claimed that “8 8 works without a please.”
Headed home about 4. We read part of Fortunately, the Milk by Neil Gaiman on the way. He was really interested in the part about the aliens wanting to remodel earth.
At home they Skyped with Korea Megan for over half an hour. Gave her a tour of the house, and I talked to her about how the trucks have ‘Horn OK Please’ painted on them there. So that Carly could talk to her I was ‘entertaining’ August by spinning him around and made up a little chant:
I’m entertaining Zinnie
By spinning him around
By lifting him up
And flopping him down
Eventually August said “Dada, stop entertaining me.” After Skyping we read some more of Fortunately, the Milk. Then all three of us were doing Wizard School. I told him “I’m going to send you the funniest thing ever.” He said “You mean the Treehouse books?” I sent him a picture that said ‘Robot poop’. Perhaps not as funny as the Treehouse books, but it got a good laugh from him.
He was then getting tired and Carly was talking about reading to him and he slipped and hit his chin/neck on the corner of the coffee table. No real damage, but it hurt. Carly took him up and he was ready for bed. For dreaming I suggested beach and ruins. He said he’d dream about “Beach and robot poop and ruins and Wizard School”. I left them about 7:10. He was asleep soon thereafter.
Wanting to go home:
Back to the sand:
Feet as crabs:
Caesarea. Photo Carly made fun of me for taking:
Snack spot:
City walls:
