We were up before 7:30. Downstairs, he and Carly played with the rubber stamps. Chuck and Cherie were then both down. August came over and curled up next to me. He was then being a hedgehog and having me kiss his head and get poked. He and Chuck ended up talking about Bedouins, then camels. August said he doesn’t want a camel. Cherie asked what he thought camels ate and he joked “Coffee containers! That’s what they eat!”
Cherie showed him the carrot bits that they were growing in water. Two of the three seemed to be growing. On his own he said he wanted a beach day. Carly made him oatmeal and he ate outside. They came in and August wanted Cherie to hide Duplo eggs. She hid them outside, then they came and they went upstairs and hid them upstairs. I went and took a shower.
When I came down Chuck was on the floor with August and they had been doing dot painting: galaxy, power lines, generator. Carly and I tried to take him upstairs for a bath but he got really upset. He hit the mirror with his hand, then when he rolled on the floor he bonked his head. I sat with him and got him calmed down and gave him a bath. He had lots of bubbles time. He tried to wash his own face by putting bubbles on it but the bubbles were tickling him and he was laughing.
Downstairs he played around with Carly on the couch and we did the William Tell overture thing. They went upstairs so Carly could change. Carly said she’d change into an elephant: “You can’t be an elephant. You’re not in a circus!”
Back downstairs he was balancing on one foot while holding on to the chair and putting his other foot high in the air. He ate some parmesan, then had nutty noodles. And more nutty noodles. He ate a ton.
He played by himself over by the rubber stamps. There was a cardboard roll from something and he used it as a rubber stanp. He then filled it with the wooden rubber stamps and was seeing how high he could pull it up before the tower of rubber stamps would fall down.
He wanted Duplo eggs hidden outside, so while I did that I heard them learning about atoms. After he found the eggs it was Chuck’s turn to hide them.
Carly and I got ready and left at 12:05. We told August goodbye. He reacted as expected. He got a good grip on the strap to my bag. We walked up to Malkin in town and each had a coffee drink. I worked on Hebrew and read. We then ordered the green shakshuka and the green juice (celery, cucumber, apple, and ginger).
The post office was busy on our way up, and after we left Malkin Carly got a number and we waited for awhile before she gave up. We walked home and were here at 2:35.
Chuck and August were on the swing doing patterns wth the kaleidoscope cards. He was glad to see us, but not in a hurry to leave Opa. When we had left he had been upset for about 15 minutes, banging on the door and trying to leave the gate and pacing around the yard and trying to get his bike to follow up. Eventually he asked “What if they don’t come back?” When he calmed down he ate ice cream. All the ice cream. “I just eated ice cream. Without any healthy things…two cups of it.” They cleaned under couch (started with looking for a lego) and found the missing wooden frog. And the missing Lego. They built with Duplos and he and Chuck made animal cages or something of the sort.
Inside we talked about how much fun he had had with them and Carly suggested being babysat by the Kerns. He said “But the question is, do they have treats?” He wanted to do kaleidoscope cards on the swing again and wanted it to be Oma with him. So they played on the swing and I think also did a piggy back. And they were singing children’s songs that she knows.
Calry and Cherie walked to Holly’s house to pick up a couple of little tables for Carly’s classroom. He and I sat on the floor and he said he wanted attention. I asked “What kind of attention?” He said “Talking attention. I love that kind of attention.” So we were just sitting there, talking, when they got back a few minutes ago. He did kaleidoscope cards with Carly for a minute, then was hungry and wanted peanut butter and apples; “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Carly and Cherie then drove to the mall to get flowers for Holly. August ate a whole apple with peanut butter and then spoonfuls of peanut butter.
We made a list of things he wants to learn from Bat Chen for when he wants to play with other kids. Things like “Do you want to play?” He had me cut up another apple and ate another slice and had more spoonfuls. He made a nice mess of the knife and spoon with peanut butter.
He went and played with the Duplos, breaking all the bonds in his “storage area” (between his legs) and singing a “All bonds need to be broken” song. He went and noticed that the watermelon was softer in the experiment.
We discussed the lights I can and can’t change, making a whole tour of the house with him asking me if I could reach that light or that light. We talked about how all the mold probably died in our grape mold experiment and he acted out being the mold dying. He played more with the peanut butter “More zookeepers than there are in the universe…they’re jumping around and stuff.”
We then played the Before and After game we got from my parents. He didn’t care about the rules, and made a big story with them. He went to the bathroom and told me “But don’t say ‘Would you like to reconsider?’” – something that Carly says to him when he says he is done.
He and Carly learned about Earth worms, then black holes, white holes, and the Big Bang. He pointed to his stomach: “Do you want to look through this green light? If you looked through this green light you can see all the things the big bang maked-ed.” Speaking of the Big Bang, he asked “Now wait, where did that bubble come from?…everything comes from something.”
They went out and did some spray painting of one of the little tables she got. I discussed plans for the next couple of days with Chuck and Cherie. They came in and he went to the bathroom and Carly washed her hands. He realized she hadn’t used soap on his hands so he washed his hands in the kitchen sink. He saw Chuck and Cherie playing cribbage and said he had played that game with Oma earlier. It had a winner “but that’s okay cuz I winned-ed”. He whispered the end of it. He watched them play and gave away Cherie’s cards. Chuck wanted to out his shirt on but August said “I survived the cold.” Chuck called him “one tough cookie” and August liked that phrase. He watched two full games of cribbage- Chuck won the first, Cherie the second. At one point he took some Oma hairs outside and left them for the birds – they had talked earlier about how birds like to use things like that for ther nests.
At some point the rest of us all ate dinner, kind of at our own times. August didn’t really have much in the evening after his apple and peanut butter consumption.
He and I then read about gears and cams and cranks in the How Things Work book. He was really into it. We read They Saw a Cat, then the first story in the Peppa Pig collection.
We took him up at 7:50 and I left them at 8:05. He wasn’t calming down though so I went up at 8:35. We sang songs – his favorite today was “Animal Life” and he requested it a couple times. Haven’t sung it recently. He said”Let’s not tell mama I was talking a lot.” At one point I talked about how tomorrow we were going to take Oma and Opa on a Dada and Zinnie adventure. That got his attention and his eyes lit up: “A big dada Zinnie adventure?” He was getting quite tired and about ready to sleep, but needed to go to the bathroom. He went and did that, then I switched with Carly and she put him to sleep.I left them at 9:20. I still heard them at 9:30, but I think he was asleep soon after that.