Friday, January 5: Thunderstorms and a new kind of Zinnie walk

I was woken by a huge clap of thunder a little before 6:30. Just before 7, as Carly was about to head out the door, we heard “Mama!” from the stairs. She went up to see if he would go back to sleep. They came down about 7:20. We said goodbye to her (she took the car today, as it was pouring rain) then he did some typing on my iPad before remembering he wanted to buy Toca Tea Party. I agreed. He said “Yeah! Because I love tea!” And talked about how he’s had tea before. “Let’s buy a Toca app every OTHER day.”

He was singing “Do you know the muffin man…that lives in British new?” And “…that lives in New York City?” Got a video of part of it. The Muffin Man song is in one of his apps, so I’ll have to see what it actually says. Also, as we sat on the couch he said to me “Happy New Year!” When the Toca Tea Party app was ready we had a tea part with Peter Rabbit as it has three spots. We got through one tea party, but then his iPad restarted at the dish washing part.

I made him a spinach pancake for breakfast. Then he requested a strawberry smoothie, so I made a fresh strawberry smoothie. He entertained himself by setting a bunch of alarms throughout the day on my phone. I let a few go off over the next few hours before turning the rest off.

We read The Sisters and a big storm blew in. He pretended the thunder was monsters and was blasting them. He saw a face and said “Why’s that face lying down?” It was a sad face. We finished reading The Sisters, then he played the recorder. We then Skyped with my parents and heard about their trip to Everett and played piano.

After Skype, the number 14 came up for some reason. August told me “You can’t love that number. I do. Only one of us can love something.” But a minute later he changed his mind and said “You can love that number.” We played with the Lego cars, then he drew words and art on the chalkboard. Back to Tea Party for a tea party with Horsey and Marshy. We then played recorder and drum and comb together. We read the Lulu Witch book, then he sang from the songbook. Made up songs, but he wanted me to sing”Zip-a-dee-doo-da” and he really liked it so he ended up learning the words. We went upstairs and he watched Sarah and Duck and I took a shower.

Then gave him his bath and the power went out. The downstairs neighbor texted, asking if I could check his electrical box. Told him I was pretty sure the whole neighborhood was out, but we’d check the box when we were down with August’s bath.

We finished up and went down and out the front door. Actually, I did at first, and August, who had only put on pants, yelled at me to close the door. Later, I realized the heater was turned up to 30. He said he had done it because I was letting the cold air in. August came out with me so he could flip a circuit breaker for fun, and we watched the wind. It had blown over our bookshelves but they had luckily caught on the fence so little damage. The rain and wind though stripped some of the paint off.

Back inside August started making a big pile of stuff that he said was for the cars to drive down. It just kept getting bigger though, and he sang “Zip-a-dee-doo-da” as he built.

In the kitchen he found a bottle of soda water and asked “Is that the kind of drink that turns me into a bubble? The more I drink, the bigger I get! Until I pop! Then have to be a NEW bubble!” We put it in the refrigerator for later.

He went to his chalkboard and told me “Dada, I’m gonna make a piece of art!” He would tell me when he was done and ask me to take a photo. He added to the pile, then we ate pizza for lunch. I had cut mushrooms to put on a frozen pizza. He didn’t eat much of it. We were listening to music and he requested our New Year playlist. He then asked to listen to something that I love. But that was a new song. At some point we flipped to YouTube for something and he wanted to watch the orchestra version of Frozen that we’ve seen before. As he sat there watching it he said “I will NEVER be in an orchestra.” Wouldn’t explain why.

He wanted to play the Very Hungry Caterpillar apps but soon switched to Earth Primer. He had that on my iPad and I was doing Hebrew on my phone and we kept helping each other out. He would ask me to read what it said on his screen, etc. It was some good learning and tea time. We ended up playing the head pushing game, which he wins, so then I won the kissing game. I told him he could win the kissing game if he just kissed my cheek once. So he did, but then said “I don’t ACTUALLY kiss.”

He was eating more strawberries and crackers and kept eating and eating. I asked where it was all going. He was getting silly and said of his stomach, as he held up a book, “It’s about the size of this book.” He did some more chalk art, then took photos of me to be blurry. We were talking about going on a walk. Earlier in the day I had looked at the forecast and said it would rain until mama got home. Now he asked, as there was sun outside “Were the people that control the weather wrong?”

We went for a walk at 3:20. He said “It will be a Zinnie walk!” And it was, as he steered us basically the entire time. I realized there’s been a progression of Zinnie walks: first he just pointed the direction, then he could tell me the directions, and now he can steer himself.

Up by the pine tree park it started to rain and we ducked right under a bush that was hanging out. It was perfect, as it then poured for a minute. While there we got to see a nice big rainbow. We kept going up to town and he really liked the downspouts on the mall/grocery store building. I started to turn us around, but then he said there was actually something he wanted to see in town. So we turned back and kept going. We turned left and walked towards the hardware store. We were following the river of water that was flowing all the way down towards the grocery store. At about the hardware store we could see where a stream was coming down from in town, through the dirt, and across the road to join it.

It was good timing after he had just been looking at runoff, infiltration, and erosion in Earth Primer. We talked about those, and we also saw oil on the water, so talked about pollution and how streets, etc. increase runoff. We kept following the water, then down the street at the other end (where we’d followed construction water before) and we followed some more runoff down the hill towards home.

August was singing Ants go Marching and got to 33. For most of the numbers the ant was building things, like “stops to build an address” or “build a post” etc. He then stopped, then jumped to 91 and sang to 97. We walked over to the big drainage area from Kibuts Galuyot towards the bridge to the mall. There was a good amount of water running, and it was from the street, down the ditch and through the pipe to the sides of the highway. August said “Mystery solved!”

We were home at 4:25. Carly had been home for a bit. They opened the presents from Vivian and Colin: a poop fidget spinner, a piece of art from Vivian, and a shirt for Carly.

He got on his nursing mittens. He went to the bathroom and said “And besides! I don’t even need my stool anymore.” He’s obviously grown, as we got a stool for the downstairs bathroom for him, but now he doesn’t need it to wash his hands and can even turn the water on on his own.

He had more smoothie then went to the chalkboard. He’d asked me to draw something earlier and it ended up being triangles with numbers in them: “After I erase this number thing I will make the last picture of the day. That you can take a picture of.” He drew something and was doing made-up letters: “This is a weird alien words…accented pofingo…”

He wanted to play Tea Party but wouldn’t let Carly play. He then ended up in the Hangeul app – I think because when skyping he had been typing in Korean and gramma asked him if he could read it and he said he didn’t remember
. He was doing the musicians names, etc. that I used to not like and I didn’t mind now, since he was just practicing to remember the letters. He asked “Can it still matter? Could you still not like that?”

He was hungry, but rejected all of our food ideas, including the spinach pancakes. Then I thought of jam. Pancakes with jam did it. I made a second one for him and he got a bit demanding: “Dada, why’s my pancake taking so long? You should cook it faster.” “You forget-ed a fork. That’s gonna make you go to jail.”

Back on the couch he found the princess story maker app and we made a couple of pretty good videos. We read more of Magic Treehouse #14. August remembered the soda water and asked “Can I have some of that drink that turns me into a bubble?”

After that Carly took him upstairs to get ready and they did Drops. I asked him what he was going to dream about and he said “Bad dreams, rainbows, rain…and thunder!” I left them at 7:20.