I remember that he had a bad dream during the night and Carly consoled him. He came down at 6:30. First asked Carly if his hands were cold, then put his feet on her stomach and asked if his feet were cold. They then read much of Best Friends for Frances. When Carly asked what kind of animals they were I said badgers, but August declared them foxes. A bit later when he wanted to watch Julius Jr. I joked he couldn’t use my iPad until he admitted they were badgers. He won the exchange by stating “They’re badgers but I still call them foxes.”
Carly headed to work. He watched more Julius Jr., then he was a Trap-O-Matic, which was an invention from the show that detects traps. I made eggs with broccoli and cheese and he played with rubber bands on the nobs. He said “I hate that noise.” when I turned on water to boil. He wrapped a rubber band around his fingers and said “This is like a roller coaster.”
Ate breakfast (he ate his entire bowl) then built a big symmetrical shape with Duplos. “If you put the Duplos along the edges it makes it more stable. Mama told me that.” It turned into a playground. He stated at one point “Oh, the Places You Will Go doesn’t really exist cuz you can’t wander off by yourself…what if there’s no maps?” We played a level of Math Tango. I said I didn’t remember what ‘review’ was in the game. He said “Review means when you do something back over again.”
He played Toca Tea Party will I took shower. In the bathroom he asked “Why do ghosts not really exist?” When I was done shaving he said “Good enough” We had a tea party, then did his CAR puzzle. Then took his bath. Afterwards he played with his bracelet as a luggage conveyor belt. When we walked downstairs he brought the R from the car puzzle with him. He said he didn’t have his C case (suitcase) from the conveyor belt “But I have my letter R case.”
He played with the mop handle on the chair and we discussed ‘pivot point’. I went to make sandwiches for our outing and he watched the latest Wintergatan videos of building the new Marble Machine: https://youtu.be/iFuUSe44jtk He really liked the “sad part” where he knocks a piece off the machine and it breaks. He watched a couple more Wintergatan videos, and said “Actually, typewriters doesn’t exist…They don’t exist because they don’t work anymore.” He then did the pivot machine with the mop again and talked about the Frida book for some reason. I think he and Carly may have read it recently: “What’s Frida?…and she had babies…she had a dream and she divided into two Fridas. Uh-huh.”
We left at 12:10. Finished the latest Story Pirates podcast (episode 12), then a Tumble Science episode on sea stars. He didn’t believer that sea stars have thousands of feet. Arrived at the park at 12:35.
Getting out of his vest he looked at the Velcro and asked “How does that attach? Can you tell me?” We paid for parking on got in the stroller. I asked and put on his sweatshirt. He then said “It’s pretty warm. I don’t need this.” I told him I’d just asked if he wanted it and he said yes. He replied “And I said yes‽” Stopped and grabbed three books. He asked “How is spit made?” What if we didn’t have it?”
We got to the music area at 1, looking at the zigzag sculpture on the way. He played it a bit, then we sat on a bench and ate some lunch and had a good discussion: about step counts, berries and seeds you can eat, a video he watched yesterday about the soil: “There’s layers of the ground plants don’t grow in.” “Dada, why can’t plants push the rock if they’re so thick?”
“Why doesn’t leaves grow on roots?” “But why don’t they grow on the branch that is straight up?” He meant the trunk and we did some good speculating. He played the musical instruments a bit more but was then ready to get walking.
As we crossed the pond a couple asked me to take their photo. Perhaps my first full exchange in Hebrew of more than a couple lines. Well, just 3 or 4. But it was something. As I took the photo, August was looking down at the water and “How deep is it? I think it’s pretty deep.” When I agreed, he said “Actually, I was just talking to myself.” I had just talked to myself back at the lunch spot when I was wondering if I’d put the strawberries away.
I stopped and took a photo of the statue of a person playing accordion upside down. August patiently waited on his bike while I went up the hill to do that. We stopped at the covered playground and played there. First on the small spinning thing. His word of the day, which we had discussed earlier, was ‘momentum’: “When I got on here there was momentum.” He was a machine on there, then went up on the play structure: “Remember I have 90 mechanisms.” We played on the tilting thing on the ground (more discussion of pivot points), then he went on another spinning thing, with a spiral on it. He asked me “Could you apply some force?”
We stopped at the bathroom at 2:20. He spotted the changing table and we reminisced about them. I brought my right hand down to point to something just as he decided to close it and the table whacked my hand right on the pinkie area. Didn’t feel too good.
Over at the other playground he asked me to sing “Yellow Submarine” and he got a rice cake snack from a woman who had a box of them. He liked it, but commented on his lips getting dry and sticking to it – a good connection back to our previous discussion about what would happen if you didn’t have spit. I pushed him in the acorn spaceship. He asked and answered himself: “Why don’t I like little stuffed animals? It’s because I can’t hide in them.” And he said “This has some momentum from those kids.”
He then wanted to be termites in the log: “the top wood is the sugariest.” We sat in there for 10 minutes or so. We needed to get back to the car but stopped briefly at the exercise equipment. He talked more about momentum. We got to the car right at 2:50. He asked me “Do you still call water ‘wawa’?” I explained that he was the one that called it ‘wawa’ and he seemed surprised that babies made up those words, not adults. We talked about a few more examples, like Colin’s ‘mima’. In the car he said “I saw some tic tacs but they’re not manual because they have fancy tastes!” Actually a rather sophisticated joke, and he had mentioned something else being manual earlier. Not quite sure where he had picked up the manual/automatic distinction. I think maybe in discussing typewriters and the electric ones being more complex. I asked him what else was ‘manual’ or ‘automatic’ and he said “Something that’s manual versus automatic is guitars! Because people play them!” After taking the photo of the couple we had seen a guy playing a guitar and he had asked something about it being manual, versus a guitar in GarageBand.
We listened to an old Story Pirates and bits of other ones we hadn’t finished on the way north. We went to Tiv Taam at the mall. Watched some salsa dancing outside, then went shopping. Busy, busy. He wanted watermelon but I didn’t get one. Figured Carly could choose one tomorrow.
We got home. Carly was already there, having left school about 3. They had a half day with students, then a meeting. I ate, then Carly went outside. We played some Seuss Band. Then read Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?, Hunches in Bunches, The Zax, and Tadd and Todd. He wanted Skybrary and said “I love Skybrary!” He had it read Keep Your Distance to him (we had read it before). He then had it read a few books to him: I Can Do It Myself, Freda Plans a Picnic, and Jenny Jenkins.
Carly was getting him strawberries, milk, and Cheerios to eat. He asked “What are you making for me? You’re taking ages.” But then he didn’t eat much. Carly skyped with her mom. Derek and family are in Mexico now so we saw them. He then read Life on Mars with Carly. He randomly asked “How much cupcakes i
s there in the world?” He read one of the new Seuss stories with Carly and was reading a lot of the words. He then turned into a complicated music machine, based on the old machine we had seen in the Wintergatan video at the museum – with multiple instruments, songs on paper, and doors you could open to see how it worked.
That led to playing Sound Rebound and he really liked trying to make it quit as it is a buggy program. Carly went up and took a shower. He finally agreed to eat some dinner and chose the soup. He ate the whole bowl, so he and I sat on the couch and each ate a cookie. Which meant he was in a talkative mood: “How can tons of people walk on sidewalks if there’s space underneath them?” I talked about what we could do tomorrow while it rained and suggested a smoothie at the mall: “We’re not going to get a smoothie; it’s a rainy day.” He asked “Can I see your teeth? Wow.” He was then a “Dig-a-rator…” machine.
He was ready for upstairs. We went up and read 10 pages of The Sisters. Carly took over and let him fall asleep up on the big bed. He was asleep sometime after 8.