He slept up on the bed between us for awhile during the night. He kept banging around into us and the headboard, but it was nice to have him up there.
Carly got up earlier, setting an alarm, then August was up about 6:50. He and I went down together after he lay on the bed for a few minutes. At one point I had gotten dressed but lay back down. He said “I thought you were going to find mama.” When we went down he asked me what my guess was for where she was. I guessed thecouch. My guess was wrong, as she was coming in from outside.
I went back to bed as I had a bit of a headache. While I rested a bit longer, they organized the kitchen cabinets and she made him oatmeal. I came back down and August asked if we could by Toca Store – he’s seen it on the list of Toca apps a few times but I haven’t bought it for him. He told me “I love stores!” “But not real stores.” He told me that he would really like the app, and I think he even said “I promise!” So we got it. In it, one person sets up a little store with 5 items to sell. The person on the other side then buys things and pays for them. When your purse runs out of coins it is a magic purse and will give you a few more. Usually only once, but sometimes more than once. You only count to five, and there is no giving of change, so I didn’t think it would last us long. But it was the game of the day.
We played a few rounds, then I went and took a shower. When I came back down they were still playing. Carly had already warned him about his bath and he went, if not willingly, only reluctantly. In the bathroom he found the puzzle button thing and sang other songs to tune of Old McDonald. In the bath he talked about all of the toilet paper/paper towel rolls in the bottom drawer. I got one for him and he was a “spy cow”. He then dropped it in the bath. I took it out and it became an experiment to see how and for how long it would dry. He also tried to climb over me to escape his bath early.
I took him downstairs wrapped in his towel. Today he said “crack, crack, crack” and came out of his towel ‘egg’ and flew around the kitchen. We played Toca Store again. He was saying things like “Those are our best sausages! They cost…” He got that from Carly. Carly was cleaning as we played. We then did Drops. A new word came up. It flashed the Hebrew, then the English. With no picture or sound, August read ‘parents’.
Carly was making him a pancake, and I said we could read a book while he waited. He wanted to read a big book, and chose the dinosaur book. He said “Tbat will take longer than the pancake!” We read a little, then he was being a “meomite”. I asked what that ws and he said “A meomite is a tall poisonous plant that reaches 19 millimeters.”
We ate spinach pancakes, then he was making up a song and built something out of pillows. He Asked Carly to get him more pillows from upstairs. She asked what he was building and he said “No, it’s a secret. I’ll tell you when it’s done.” When it was done it turned out to be a cracker machine “It makes every shape of cracker!” He then added himself to the machine, becoming a conveyor belt at the beginning of it as he lay on the stool and put his feet up on the chair. It then turned into an amazing tomato machine “I made a magic sun…dada, do you want to make a dive sided cube tomato? Then put in the ingredients!” Not only that, it could make tomatoes of any shape: cubes, five-sided pyramids, etc.
We were getting ready to leave, and David, our neighbor, was outside the fence. August asked me if he had found his key. August has mentioned David’s missing key every time he’s heard/seen David. So I asked August if he wanted to ask David and he said yes. We went out, and I had August ask him. August asked it nice and loud. David told us he had found it in something in his house. So mystery solved.
We left at 11:50. August was talking about “There’s a key in our key!” I thought August was being silly, but then he asked to see my keys. I got them out and pushed the button to make the physical key come out of our key fob: “See, that’s what I was talking about.”
We drove to the garden center we had once seen in Ein Vered, with pictures of a kangaroo on its signs. It turned out to be bigger than we thought. We walked around to the entrance, and the woman took us to see the fish pond. Carly went off to look at plants and August and I started by trying out a bench and swing. Of the bench he asked “what kind of wood might it be?” We then walked around and looked at wind chimes. There was one kind that would tangle easily so I told him to be careful with that one, then for all of them after that he kept asking if they would tangle.
We went out and saw the trees, and found one with really interesting pink fluffy flowers. Carly got a roll of bird netting to try to keep the cats out of the new vegetable beds and a bag of manure. I took the bag to the car, then I showed August how the gate latch worked and he tried it. We all then walked back through and looked at the slightly neglected sample garden areas.
Carly thought it was going to start raining so we got going. We went and looked for the tractor museum, but the road turned rough and it was supposed to close in a couple minutes at 1. We could park and walk to it sometime. The same with the Parrot Farm to the south, we found.
We drove into town. We stopped at the strawberry stand and Carly got 4 cartons of strawberries for 40 shekels. The prices have come down, and that’s cheaper than the grocery store. We then went to the post office, where Carly mailed a postcard. We walked from there down to the grocery store. August was impatient for more “chocolate bar” and Carly ended up taking him out and I finished the shopping.
We were home after 2:30. He was obsessed with the Toca Store game, but I made a deal that we would play a round, then read a book chapter. We read a chapter of Polar Bears Past Bedtime, then played Toca Store. Then the first chapter of Clementine. More store. Then we finished Polar Bears Past Bedtime.
He and Carly then played the gas station game, which is just a him and Carly game (I asked to play it once, and he said no, it was just for mama). In it, the spaceship is the gas station and his two Lego cars race around and need gas and go and fill up. When he had them fill up he said “Dispense, dispense, dispense”. I think we were both surprised by that one.
We then started reading Magic Treehouse #13: Vacation under the Volcano. Carly had cooked an artichoke and they ate it together. He decided “I love artichoke!” He then typed on my iPad. He was typing and copying and pasting and testing autocorrect. He’d type a few letters and see what it turned into.
I made a fresh strawberry smoothie and we all drank that. Carly had put the netting up and spread the fertilizer. We did Drops and he was choosing different categories, but ones I agreed to. Carly had been talking about going to do recycling and I said we should go now. He asked “Can I go to the bathroom first?” Carly then said that she’d take him. He said “Dada, can I go with you? You’re the best person ever.” When Carly insisted she wanted to go, he said “No. You’ll mess up the garbage…cardboard in the plastic, plastic in the cardboard. Glass in the bags, bags in the glass.” He had used what I’d been saying earlier to explain why he should go help mama do recycling since she hasn’t done it too much.
But when it came time to walk out the door he was fine with Carly going with him. He sat on his orange bike only to find out the seat is still wet. They changed his pants and put a towel down. They did recycling and were then gone for quite awhile. I was correct in guessing that they had gone to the park and played store. I asked what he had bought and he said “lots of things”. One thing was apparently pink shoes. They were back at 6:25. He came in and asked “Dada? Do you want to make some
crackers?” We then fixed the roof of his cracker warehouse (earlier, he had jumped into the middle of his machine and I said he had jumped on the crackers. He claimed there was a roof – now, he said there were some cracks in it).
He wanted to continue the reading/Toca Store pattern. He chose A De Activista first and we read most of that. Then Toca Store. He then nursed. Carly noted it wasthe first time he’d nursed since the morning. I said “You’re a big kid” He said “Uh-uh”. We then finished reading The Sisters. He was hungry and Carly had made him the last spinach pancake. He was still hungry so we had some banana bread.
Carly took him upstairs and I straightened up. He had been reluctant to go upstairs until I had suggested he could help mama with Hebrew again. I went up and suggested he dream about Hebrew words. He said “Bad dreams…and Hebrew words.” I left them at 7:45.
Nursery:
Artichoke:
