He was up at 6:55. He watched Wild Kratts then we watched a little of the Formula E race. I got him some peanut butter crackers. We played Seuss Band, then read the rest of Zita the Spacegirl, then started from the beginning again. We discussed asteroids and meteors and the like and he said he could blast “meteor showers”. Not sure where he learned that phrase. He spent time blasting things and talking about how strong his rockets are.
We played one game of Carcassonne. He saw the ad for Super Monsters on Netflix and said “Well, I’m more super.” He watched more Wild Kratts and I exercised. He talked about power suits and superpower disks: “If I have too much food in me I will have a malfunction (mile-function)…I can just handle 19 piles of food.” He made up a letter on the chalk board (like On Beyond Zebra) then we played with the musical instruments and he invented one. He said “I say activating a lot.”
We went upstairs. “I don’t think anyone else eats peanut butter crackers except me.” Yesterday, when we were walking back from town, he said he thought he was the only person that counts cats. He played with the GarageBand sampler and I went to take a shower. He came in and played in the bathroom while I finished. He used Carly’s spray bottle to pour water in the sink: “Look! You don’t want to miss this meteor shower!”
While August was taking his bath I got a message from Betsy saying that today would actually work the best for meeting up. She is an ELL teacher at Mountlake Terrace High School, and her son worked in Korea and I met up with him once. Anyway, August and I had already decided to head to the beach, so I suggested we meet up in Netanya. They had said 30 minutes, so August and I hurried and got ready to go. But it turned out they were faster than they thought, as they were already in Netanya.
In the car we listened to “Electricity” on repeat. August was picking up on words like “ultimate” and “discovery” and “alternate: and discussing them. He was also talking about being a generator: “If they didn’t discover me they would have run out of power. So it is good that they discovered me.”
I gave them the coordinates of Winter Garden Park, but when we got there it turned out they were on the east side. So August and I drove around and found them. We discussed options and left it up to August. He wanted to play at the spiderweb playground first, so we stayed there.
Played there for 20 minutes or so. I accidentally said he’d start preschool in a couple weeks and he heard: “What? A couple weeks? But it is supposed to be next year.” He seemed okay with my explanation that I meant ‘several’ weeks and that I was starting with him.
He went to the spiderweb and told us it wasn’t sticky. He got glue to make it sticky, but needed scissors to open the glue. He showed Betsy and Shlomo one of the shops he buys things from. They we went on the wheelchair merry-go-round and Betsy went on with him and Shlomo pushed.
Shlomo mentioned ice cream to him, so August was ready to go. We stopped at the bathroom, then led them over to the waterfront and parked near the hotel. Back at the playground August had found a strip of plastic that he then gave to Betsy and she wore as a bracelet. Now, out of the cars, August was telling us that plastic doesn’t break down into dirt and that we should recycle the piece of plastic. So we took it from Betsy and put it in our recycling bag.
We walked on the cliff path and want to the Landwer Cafe down there. They treated us to lunch. August and I had sweet potato and ginger patties with rice. He ate a bit, but not a ton. August was getting impatient for glidha (ice cream). So we left and walked up to the Italian ice cream place at the other end. August chose the Smurf flavor (it was blue, with a picture of a Smurf next to it) and I got caramel. We went outside and ate our ice cream. August didn’t eat all of his, and he joked “I stopped when I got to the Smurf bones.” I said that was some pretty dark humor for a three year old. He then ate most of the rest of mine instead. He liked mine better. He accidentally spilled a little out on the boards, then spilled the rest on purpose when he was done.
We stopped on the walk back up and took photos with the Mediterranean in the background. He stuck his tongue out for photos. He took a good photo of the two of them. I held him up, but he had control of the phone.
They had talked about how they had met at a kibbutz 30-some years ago. He was living there and she was volunteering. They talked about what kibbutz life was like, with the full community deciding things like who got to travel and which kids would go to college.
Said goodbye at the cars and pondered still going to the beach, but realized we didn’t have time. Called Carly then picked her up at school. She asked him what did you do today? He wouldn’t give her a straight answer: “Nothing. Just sat on the couch…Went to California. No, the age of Palestinians.” When she asked what kind of ice cream he had he said “Magical ice cream that gets colder the more you eat.”
We were home at 4:25. He played with instruments and did math ad Duplos with Carly: “But it’s not JUST a bridge.”
I then got going to the guys night. Just four of us today. And Jack was still recovering from some surgery. We went to the Beer Shop place and had a beer (I had a Petrus Aged Red), then got a falafel at the falafel place before heading to Black Panther.
He was asleep at 7:45. They had read some Sisters 3, so he took Marshy up to bed with him, like Maureen with her bunny. They talked about San Francisco before he went to sleep.