He was up about a quarter to 7. I heard them waking up but was still quite asleep as I was up late the night before. Finally I realized what day it was and got up and hurried downstairs before August. We made coffee and skyped with my parents and opened presents. The first box he grabbed was long and skinny and he predicted the thing inside would be long and skinny. It was a small telescope. When he opened the calculator/cash register that we had gotten for him at Ikea he took it outside played some Zinnie shop for a couple minutes before we headed back inside. He liked the monkey from Dee and Grant. When we asked him to name it he thought for awhile and decided on “Monkey nice banana” He introduced the monkey to the other friends. And Paul got August his first new set of Legos: A set from Cars. When we hung up August pointed out that it was an hour and 17 minutes and 17 seconds and that that was a very long Skype.
Carly had Swedish pancakes ready to go so we ate those. He ate more and more and more. He preferred them with cinnamon and sugar and called them cinnamon rolls, after gramma had mentioned cinnamon rolls during Skype.
We also had a lot of fun with the optical illusion thing, which makes it look like a frog is floating in the air. We found that a small scrap of paper also worked well, as did a Lego head. Carly later decided she wanted to take it into work to put on her desk, as students would love it.
Then we got Cubetto, the wooden robot kit that I had backed on Kickstarter. It teaches basic programming and logical thinking skills, like algorithms and subroutines and programs. And at the same time involves story telling and make believe. He started with me and we figured out the basics. Then he and Carly opened the Polar Expedition kit and started playing through that. When Cubetto wouldn’t go where they wanted it to August would say “Oh Cubetto!” We also opened the Logic expansion pack, which includes a random and a reverse command and had fun predicting what they would do.
August then wanted to go up and get the alien, so we did that and he introduced the alien to Cubetto. August and I then did Drops with the alien, then we got ourselves one last Christmas present – a subscription to Drops so we could use more time and also start using it for Arabic and French as well. Of course, I quickly realized the downside: In the free version you have to go in order and it starts with more useful things first. Now, we could choose any category we wanted, and August of course wanted to choose the last one (#99), which is ‘Spa’. So he had us learning things like ‘bathrobe’ in Hebrew.
Carly mentioned something about babies, and August said “I like babies. But I hate Christmas. But I love presents.”
I went and took a shower. Back downstairs Carly was getting ready for cookies. August was playing in the kitchen door and we realized he was getting the “crunchy” syrup off the outside of the syrup container and eating it. He started doing the peanut butter cookies with Carly. When he realized his stool wasn’t in the kitchen he started stressing out about it “Oh no!” even though it was just right outside. Initially hetold me “Besides, eating the ingredients is not worth it, dada.” But after having some spoonfuls of peanuter butter, he then started stealing the peanut butter chips, then other crumbs of things he could find. Carly observed “Youve stopped helping and are only stealing.” I then came up with my funniest joke for some time: “Ahh, a future politician.”
When Carly curtailed his chip and ingredient stealing he couldn’t handle it and got upset. They went upstairs for a time out. Came back down and didn’t make it any further. Back upstairs. So I took over making the balls and baking the cookies. He came down again. I asked “How’s he doing?” He said “Not so good.” He was better though and helped me finish up the rest. He rolled the dough into good balls and used the fork to make the cross hatches on top. He heard the song “Christmas in Prison” by John Prine on my iPad and asked to have it on repeat: “Could you put it back on the jail song. I really liked it. Could you add it to my playlist?” I talked to him about how he got upset but he claimed that nothing but time helped him calm down.
I let him lick the spatula, then got started on the chocolate chip cookies. I had invited Jack (his wife Celeste is in Italy on a vacation right now) to go with us to Chinese food in the evening. He invited us to go birding with him. Carly decided to stay home with August, but I decided to go.
So August and I quickly worked on the chocolate chip cookies. He started out helpful again, but when it came to chocolate chips he just wanted to start stealing a bunch again and melted down. I got everything together, except for combining the last two bowls and then baking the cookies.
Jack picked me up and we had a lovely couple hours of birding down at Yakum, just south of Ikea. It is where Carly, August and I had walked with him in the backpack. We were at the north end though, and Jack instead drove us down to the west entrance off of 2. We saw an egret, then a heron, then five or six other birds around the pond area. We walked around the paths after that, through the Roman cut to drain the swamp, etc. and didn’t see much else, but it was a great day for a walk and a beautiful spot, and we had a good chat.
We got home at 3 and I gave Jack his cookies. I then figured out that Carly and August had gone up to do recycling. I started to head up that way and they were on their way home. While I was gone they had opened the little ice cream toy (it came with his ice cream from the ice cream truck and I just found it in my pocket), finished the cookies, played on the iPad, and gone to recycling.
August and I then made the cookie deal: he would share one with me now, then get another cookie for dessert. Every day after this he would get half of a cookie as a snack, then a half as dessert. That would continue until we ran out. And I’d put them in the cupboard so they weren’t out torturing us all the time. We shared a chocolate chip cookie then played with the alien more, traveling through time with the help of the dinosaur book. Carly headed upstairs for a rest. We played Classify It, then he became a ladybug (9 spots, I believe) (random, because it wasn’t in the game) and wanted to eat aphids off of all our plants. We went outside so he could continue with all of our outside plants.
Carly came down and they skyped and watched Vivian and Colin opening presents. August was concerned about Vivian being sick: “Is there doctors there?” “Did you see Vivian throw up?”
Jack couldn’t make it to dinner as he was waiting on phone calls. We went to Ishimoto Sushi in town. Carly got the tofu noodle dish and I got a chicken rice dish. August liked both, but seemed to like mine better. A lot of yummy noises. I also ordered a root beer, but it was a malt root beer. Wasn’t on the alcoholic list, but tasted like beer. August didn’t really question not being able to taste it. As we left at 5:50 he asked “Did we get everything?” He was then being a ghost. Or warning us of ghosts: “Warning! Scary ghost!”
On our way back we drove over to the Kerns’ house and dropped off cookies. Only Jill was home though so we dropped them off and left. We were home at 6:15. August got his dessert cookie and was really excited, but then went straight to Carly and asked “Do you want some of my cookie?”
They played with the two balloons. August realized he could throw it up and catch it: “I’ve got it!” “You can have green and I have pink. Our favorite colors!” “I’ve got super power rockets on!” “I got you, balloon!” As much as he liked playing with them, he really liked the idea of popping them. Carly got a pin and he popped both of them.
He then spotted his stocking and since we hadn’t hidden it he wanted candy. We let him have a Dum Dum, whi
ch he enjoyed licking for 5 minutes or so, then saved the rest of. He was in a good mood and told Carly “I love you more than anything in the world!” He was arguing that he should get treats everyday: “Treats everyday. And healthy food too. But I won’t remind mama to give me healthy foods. So that’s a problem.”
We read Pete the Cat Saves Christmas and some of The Sisters. We got him ready for bed and he said he’d dream about “Santa…and scary bad dreams…and monsters eating me!” I asked what his bad dreams were about. He wouldn’t tell me but said I could guess. I asked if they are about pretty flowers. He said “Those aren’t nightmares!” I left them at 8:05 but he came back down 10 minutes later. We did more reading: More of The Sisters, the Fancy Nancy books, then Peppa Pig’s Christmas Wish. Thinking about the Fancy Nancy book he asked me “Tomorrow when were walking can we watch out for sidewalk cracks and step over them?” He said he knew it wasn’t bad luck, but that he would be fun. He went back up a little before 9. It still took awhile and I heard him a bit later. Think he was asleep around 9:15.
Telescope:
Lines connecting family members:
Chinese food for dinner:
Monkey Nice Bananas:
