He woke up while I was still up on the bed, about 6:25. He was scratching at his hands and had been itching a lot during the night. He had seemed to develop itchy red spots before his bath yesterday. Ended up with them on his feet, hands, face, and neck, and one on his lower back. They didn’t seem to be spreading though. A bit later I found some Cortisone in the bathroom, so we didn’t have to go to the pharmacy.
Carly headed to work and he watched Wild Kratts. We played Seuss Band. He’s getting pretty good. We then read a lot of Dr. Seuss: The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, To Think that I Saw it on Mulberry Street, and Bartholomew and the Oobleck.
I was trying to find the “I Can Dance” song from the preschool yesterday. Not available from iTunes, but finally found it. Need to buy it though. We went and played the camping book with Cubetto and listened to music. One of the obstacles for Cubetto looks like an X and he really got into talking about why X is useful (as a letter, a plus sign, multiplication). In a robot voice he said “Z is very useful cus it is used in zigzags.” Finished the Cubetto camping book, then had some toast with peanut butter and one with cream cheese.
He asked “How can planets be made without people? They don’t have hands?” We discussed the universe and galaxy formation and the Big Bang, etc. “But where’d the dust come from?” I asked his idea: “From a different world.”
He also asked “Why they use the word ‘sister’?” My etymology answers aren’t always satisfying for him: he likes when I can explain the parts of a word, like bicycle. For sister I showed him the OED entry for it and how it came from different languages. Not exactly what he wanted.
We went up and I took a shower. Then he played for a long time in the bath. Allowed me to do some clean up upstairs and put his bed in order, fix the closet doors, etc. In the bath he told me “I’m gonna tell you something about me. I can walk on water.” Me: “Oh, like that animal? The…” “Monitor lizard!” He had learned that on Wild Kratts. At the end of his bath he said “I’m a rubber ducky that came alive.”
He played with the CAR puzzle on his clean bed. I remember when that was too hard for him. He was humming the “Christmas Ameoba”. He talked about not wanting to ever sleep on his bed because he was worried about falling off it. I pulled out the lower bed which he called the “safety bed”. And he practiced rolling off the top bed to see how it feels.
Went downstairs and said I was going to make grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. He said he didn’t want any. I asked “Don’t you like grilled cheese sandwiches?” He replied “Yeah, but not anymore. Remember, things change.” With this last sentence he was giving me a big grin; he was throwing a line I had used upstairs back at me. I had told him that when he said he wouldn’t want to sleep in his bed.
Made a mango and strawberry smoothie and he basically just ate that for breakfast. He was asking how water actually evaporates and we watched a couple videos on the water cycle and evaporation. His big takeaway was that he molecules don’t break apart when they float into the air.
He asked “What ‘hyena’ mean?” Then “What ‘wild’ mean?” I explained ‘wild’ versus ‘domestic’ and he had some difficulty wrapping his head around how animals live on their own: “Someone has to be with them if they have a baby.” When discussing how they eat: “What do you mean? They have to cook it.”
I let him watch one more Wild Kratts and they used the word ‘adaptation’. He got really excited. A day or two ago he’d been asking me what ‘aventation’ meant and I didn’t know what word he was talking about. He explained that he had meant ‘adaptation’: “We solved the mystery!”
He then asked “Dada, why don’t humans know why all the stuff in the world come to life?”
We got going and down to Poleg Beach about 1:30. He was wearing his pink sunglasses at first but it turns out they are loose on his head and fall off. Switched to the other ones. He had some struggle getting through the sand with the bike down to the beach, but made it. We watched where the stream reaches the sea, then walked along the beach and found a shaded spot to play. Somewhere along the way he asked “How does the force work though?” when referring to gravity. Told him we’d have to look it up.
Got out the beach toys and started playing. First smoothing sand, then burying our feet. Stopped to eat a couple of our cookies. A girl who turned out to be two and a half came over and dropped a blue shovel by August and picked up his pink one and took it back over towards where her mom was. August saw, but wasn’t bothered by it. He ended up being totally cool with sharing all the beach toys with her. She also sat on his bike a lot and played with it and he didn’t mind at all. Such a huge change from a few months ago when he talked about how he’d never let anyone touch his bike, and when we parked it places he was afraid other people might take it or use it.
They didn’t interact a whole lot, but played next to each other. Later, he and I were down near the water and he started spinning around on his hands and feet, making lines in the sand. She joined in and was following him around. The mom came over and talked to me. The girl’s name was Alili (like hallelujah in English). The mom talked about how she’s a stay-at-home mom and how great it is because they do things like go to the beach. The first person I’ve met in all this time who has had the same view on it. And Alili is heading to school next year, mainly for the ability to socialize more, so kind of like August. The mom had also been asked to do a drama program for 4-8 year olds at WBAIS. She was a drama teacher for 10 years and adapts Hebrew stories into plays for kids. She didn’t know how well it would work in English though so she declined.
Back up in the sand, as we were burying our feet, August would be a crab under the sand and then pinch me. We also buried our feet together. We talked about what ‘technology’ means and he said “I’m a so complex technology.” In packing down the sand he said “Get stronger, your majesties!” He had me hold him like a baby and he pretended to fall asleep. He then saw a sign that warns about rip currents and how to swim out of them. I explained it to him, then we acted it out several times. He was the current, and I was the swimmer either swimming the correct way (to the side) or just trying to go back to shore and getting pulled out instead. He’d then tell me to “Swim to the side!”
He went down to the water and he was making shapes with the round cups. Alili and he mom left, then he had me bring buckets of water up and pour them in a little tunnel thing he had made. When I came up once he was cuddling in the sand next to the backpack. He was a bird and it was his nest and he was sleepy. This lasted for several minutes. We added to the nest with the blue bag and the picnic mat over him.
We got packed up and got going. Pushing through the sand to get to the wet sand we actually lost the left wheel of the bike. August fell over. He found it all very funny though. The wheel went back in and still seems usable though, although looser than the right one. We tried to go to the bathroom but they were closed. On the way to the car he saw a white car and said we should get a car like that. He said he would still call the white car “Skoda Mama”. I said it wasn’t even a Skoda. He replied “Well then people will be confused…Yeah, that’s my destiny.”
He asked me to put Cortisone on and requested it “everywhere” it was itchy. More specifically he wanted “Where it starts to be footed.” That is, his ankle. He said his feet bothered him in the night.
We drove up to school (we were listening to old Story Pirates episodes on our drive today) and picked Carly up a block from sc
hool. I drove them home then I drove to the new Herzliya Medical Center for my follow-up with the doctor. Got there right at 5, but had some reading time until I was called about 5:40. He looked at it, then said we could take it out. He just reached over and pulled it out before I could say anything. A slight aching after he did it, but not much.
Horrible traffic on the way home. Got here at 6:50. When I arrived they were upstairs. He was saying he wanted to go to bed, and he wanted to sleep with me. He was pretending to yawn. We didn’t think he seemed all that sleepy. I showed them the piece of metal that had been taken out of my hand. About 3 inches long.
Downstairs he played with the vegetable steamer, which we had indeed bought as a toy for him when he liked the one at Derek and Jill’s house. He kept saying “I can’t believe it gets so small!” He was into confusing us mode when Carly asked about something and he said it was from “planet Groovy”. I asked where ‘Planet Groovy’ was from and he replied “Windows!”
He ate some more pasta for dinner. He asked Carly “Mama, why is there borders that make countries in-between?” We had discussed borders a bit when he was asking what a passport is for. There was also more talk of why we can’t know everything – how there’s always more stuff happening and things to learn about.
We played some Seuss Band and read I Can Lick 30 Tigers Today! and On Beyond Zebra. One more Seuss Band song then we went upstairs. I tried to get him to sleep. He was itchy so I went and got him the cream. I switched with Carly about 9 and they were both asleep soon after that.
