Carly said he wanted to read books at 3am, but luckily went back to sleep. He slept later than me for once, only just barely. I had just made it downstairs when we heard “Mama?” at 6:25. Carly headed to work and he was playing on the iPad, typing. He asked “How many words are there?” We looked up some numbers on how many in English and all languages. And I was explaining how there were thousands of languages. He said “Like Frenchinado. It’s a new language. It has nineteen million…”
I made French toast and straweberries. He ate almost a full piece. As he was almost done I asked if he wanted another and he said yes. I had just cracked another egg when he changed his mind and said he was full. He wanted to do food coloring experiments and I said yes and he went to get out the containers. He told me blue had leaked and held up his hand, covered in blue. It could have been disastrous, but wasn’t. When they had organized they had put the spices, etc. in plastic bins. It had just gotten on that and wiped off. Same with the counter where he set the leaking container. We went and washed our hands. They were slightly blue all day, but nothing else was.
On the iPad I suggested he find the app with Muffin Man in it. No luck, but he played with a few apps along the way and had fun in the Monster Lab app making monsters. In Hebrew he used the AR view in Drops and was going through the categories one after another, reviewing. When we had a lot of words in a category he would say “We’ve done a fair amount of that.” We exercised. He asked “What happens if you don’t exercise for a whole year and it (phone) reminds you? A police officer would come?”
He said the black chair was a pipe, so we climbed in it to explore. There was a treasure chest, then a sucking machine in it that sucked us over to the square rug, which was a “whirlpool in a wardrobe”. He said it sucked off his clothes and started to take off his clothes. That was a reference to the Treehouse books where they have a whirlpool and it sucks off their pants. The whirlpool took us to another world.
He said he wanted to go for a walk, so we left at 9:45. Started up north and found a bag of books. Rescued an old Hebrew dictionary, a couple of random Hebrew children’s books, and Dr. Seuss’s Happy Birthday book, in Hebrew. That was the big find. We dropped those off at home, then we wandered down towards the trail. Ended up at the little not-much-of-a-park. I reminded him how he had blasted monsters there once, so he was doing that. He climbed on the rocking log thing, then we went over to the merry-go-round. Played a bit more, then we sat on the merry-go-round and studied Hebrew.
I explained to him how 2nd person pronouns (you) are gendered in Hebrew and gave him examples. He got grumpy and insisted that I use the girl pronoun when talking to him. I said okay. Then a minute later he was still grumpy and told me “It doesn’t matter” which pronoun he chooses. A cat wandered over and was nice to us and I pet it a bit. I told August though that you have to be cautious around cats you don’t know because they might scratch. He didn’t want me to pet it anymore. He was then a kitten, climbing on my lap.
He eventually got out and got on his bike and was riding around the little park area on his own. Then he was a cat again: “I’m going to scratch the furniture when we get home…I’m gonna snag some of my אמא’s clothes when we get home.” At first I thought he was still being a kitten and he meant he was going to scratch the clothes. But then he talked about using them in one of his piles, and I realized that he meant he was going to ‘snag’ them as in ‘steal’ them. It was a word he got from The Sisters, as one of the girls ‘snags’ her sister’s clothes. Also, I liked the use of Hebrew instead of ‘mama’.
We left at 10:30. I thought we were going home, but he initially drove us towards school. He asked “Can we go back to bus rides sometime?” I said yes, in a couple days we could. He drove us up the block, then back down and said he wanted to sit at the bus stop for fun. So we did. But when I asked what we were doing there he said he had “tricked” me and we were actually going to take a bus. I pointed out we couldn’t take his bike, and I didn’t have money for it. But it’s as a good trick.
We were home at 11. He really wanted nutty noodles for lunch so we had those. He then was setting up pillows and things (books, spice containers) and told me “I was trying to debug the computer!” First I thought he learned ‘debug’ from Carly while playing on Scratch, but the I realized it was from The Sisters when the older sister ‘debugs’ the computer by surrounding it with chairs so her sister couldn’t bug her.
We decided to get some new Sarah and Duck cartoons, so we got season 5. Watched one together, then I took a shower. He was hungry, so we went down and made a smoothie. We then a did count-to-ten superfast bath for me, then he helped me clean things up downstairs and we searched for our library books to figure out what to return. We found the noun book and Berenstain Bears Stage Fright book upstairs.
He asked “What if we learned-ed all the words to learn?” I said there’s always more to learn. He responded “Like us learning French?”
We left at 1:25, on his orange bike. He got a chocolate snowman from his stocking. He took a bite and said “The chocolate snowman said ‘Oww’.”
We got to school and first saw Airport Megan. He did a good job talking to her. We parked the bike and went in and he returned the books, carrying them all over to Liz. Then walked across to the cafeteria and did our metal recycling. Been awhile, so the bag was pretty full. He can now stand on his own and just get it in the container. Hard for him to see the hole though, so he preferred me to pick him up.
As we walked back to the library he asked “Do you remember the first time we came to the library and it was closed?” I couldn’t believe he remembered that, but it was true. We met Amanda and she said the library was closing. We saw Ada as we entered the building and talked to her for a minute. We went in the library and set down our stuff. He looked up at a framed puzzle of penguins and said “That’s a lovely puzzle.”
We went to look for books, and he was really into finding books and would have checked out about 20 if he could. We got a stack and started reading You Wouldn’t Want to be a Medieval Knight in the reading area. A preschool class came in. They said he could stay for story time with them, but he wanted to go away. So we went to the corner with all the beanbags and he made a wall of them. We read a little more of that, then read Berenstain Bears and Baby Makes Five and Too Much Birthday.
He wanted to go play, so he scooped up all the books and just carried them up to Amanda to check them out on his own. We walked down to the preschool playground. On the way down the stairs he was looking to blast things and he declared a woman coming up the stairs a monster and started to blast her. I tried to stop him, but she found it amusing and blasted him back. He played at the music wall and play kitchen by the entry of the preschool, then headed to the playground.
At the playground he played the xylophone tubes and then set about doing some cooking with the pots and stuff. There were some slightly older girls playing together and they got in an argument. August would pause and watch them. Then, one of them came over and started helping him fill up the pot with wood chips. He told me “That one helped me fill it!” She started playing with him, and told the other girls “This is my best friend.” One of them said “Do you even know his name?” So she asked. I told August to ask back, and she said “My name is B-A-R.” (It is short for something.)
August was attached. They cooked together, then he followed her over as she used the dirt/sand to put out a fire in the
castle they were pretending was in the passage through the building. They were picking some leaves, then the girls all ran off and all the way to the big playground. He said “I need my leaves…I’m following her!” And chased after. I watched from the passageway. It is the farthest he’s every played away from me – maybe 50 to 70 meters. He followed them back around the other way a couple minutes later.
He and Bar (and Olivia) were then getting dirt wet in a pan and getting their hands dirty. I rinsed his off once with his water bottle, then the second time he just stuck his hand on in, getting it nice and dirty. He followed them into the preschool a couple of times, and I went through with them once. He, Bar, and Olivia lay on the grass a bit, a distance away. Once, when coming back from the preschool, he saw Olivia go through a metal archway/trellis. He commented on it, and I started to show him the vines that were planted and how they were starting to climb it.He was interested at first, then said “No time!” and ran off.
Bar and Olivia and their parents left about 4. August and I put all the pans, etc. away (something no one else seems to do ever), then went up to the entryway of the library. I looked at the free book shelves and saved Patrick McManus’s They Shoot Canoes, Don’t They? and Eugene Ionesco’s play Exit the King, which I was particularly excited about.
Leaving the library Carly talked to another teacher, who asked August his name. He first replied “Zinnie”, which was interesting because he had told Bar “August”, then said “I call myself Zinnie and August nowadays.”
We left at 4:30. He had been so calm and happy all day it had to change at some point. He was wanting to ride on the wrong side of the bike path, then yelling at people on the way home. Carly picked him up and carried him the rest of the way and he was better.
At home they looked at the plants outside, then had nutty noodles for dinner. He wanted the marble machine video, but instead we found these videos of other Rube Goldberg-type marble machines. August was fascinated and watched video after video of them. He went outside with her for a short bit. He wanted tea, so I brought him cinnamon and honey tea. They skyped with Colin. Colin was excited to see August and still calls him ‘Ata’ and was telling him about the digger in the video they were watching.
August and I then read a good chunk of The Sisters before Carly took him upstairs. They read a little of the Medieval Knights book, but then switched to baby mode. Read a couple of the little nursery rhyme books, one of the Pigeon books, and part for Brown Bear, Brown Bear. And they looked at the kaleidoscopic stacking cards that my parents got him last year.
I suggested he dream of marble machines. I left them at 7:40.
I watched episode 3 of the new season of Black Mirror (haven’t watched the other episodes yet), then did some Sabeel work. When I went to bed I heard him whine in his sleep “Can I do anything?”
Food coloring:
AR view in Drops:
Chocolate snowman:
Spying:
Reaching recycling:
Playing with Bar:
