He climbed up on the bed with my at some point and spent much of the night with me. Right at 6 he woke up. I asked if he wanted to go back to sleep and he clearly said no. He went downstairs to Carly and told her the same thing, but when she got up to get tea she turned around to find him asleep on the couch. He slept on the couch until 7:30 when he sat up for a minute. But then he lay back down and fell back to sleep. He laughed in his sleep once. I eventually went up to take a shower. He woke up about 8:50 and when I came down they were setting up the keyboard with my iPad. I skyped with my parents using Carly’s computer and he had fun showing off his lunch box.
After Skype he went outside with Carly. Carly got him crackers and peanut butter and melon. I started setting up for zucchini bread making. Had asked if we do that or the mall first today and he was adamant about baking bread. Carly was then inside and he called in “Mama! I thought you were going to teach me!”
He helped make zucchini bread. We were able to kind of multitask for the first time, with him doing much of the peeling of the zucchini while I did other ingredients. He was then able to grate the zucchini pretty well on his own.
While I finished up the pans he went over to Carly. She was feeling pretty sick, and I got him watching Max and Ruby. He was pretty stuffy today.
Carly headed up for a shower and he and I put out ant poison. He asked about the purpose of war. He was upset by the idea of childproof lids and tried giving me a punishment for it. He was hungry cranky. Inside we started to get food for lunch. They played war the card game “Dont make this a winning game.” I put his allergy pill in his water and he was excited about that. He gave me a thumbs up for allergy medicine
Carly read Sally’s Room. He asked “Why does she have so many not doing toys?” He meant dolls. He also asked “Why’s she look like a teacher?” There’s a picture near the end where he thinks she looks like a teacher.
Zucchini bread was ready so we had a couple slices. He said “Dada, this is the goodest zucchini bread we ever made cuz there’s no bits of zucchini in it.” He was looking at the Sally’s Room cover with Carly and asked “I thought apostrophe goes at the end of the word.” Then more punctuation questions: “What’s a comma?” “What’s a dash?” He helped me make more iced tea and sang “cinnamon and honey tea”
He then did a reading lesson with Carly, and told her that his words had silent letters: he said flubong has a silent ‘h’ and ion has a silent ‘b’. Both at the beginning. He made crumbs with his zucchini bread and wasn’t happy when Carly made him clean it up. He was then asking what tiny rocks would be and he said “Microrocks” when I said sand. I got an “Oh, dada.” for simply stating that fact. He was also saying “You know? You know? You know?” a lot.
August and I headed to the nursery to get a little plant and pot for his classroom (every child has one) and also potting soil and compost. He hummed the school bell as we left the house. At the plant store he wandered around looking at all the little plants. He said it was hard to choose. He chose a plant, and then a turquoise pot, which he said matched his Crocs. We found the other stuff and then headed home.
We got home and he was excited about transplanting his plant into the pot. He and Carly did that, him doing much of the work.
He and I then walked to the mall at 3:25. Went first to Tiv Taam. He saw the drinks and said we should get some for mama: “Any liquid counts!” He got her a Coke and a Sprite. We got a few other things and paid. As we were leaving he asked “Why do funny noises make kids want to play with me?” He was referring to Ella yesterday.
We stopped at the toy store. Got balloons for Carly’s event. Looked at swim goggles for August but he was adamant that he didn’t want any. Got him a frisbee with Winnie the Pooh on it.
Then down to the indoor play area. Played there about 10 minutes, with the squirrel trying to eat me. We stopped and had a snack bar thing that I’d gotten somewhere. Then into the pharmacy. He convinced me to get hi some chewy multivitamins while we looked for contact solution. Running low on cold medicine, so had to stand in line for that. There was a smaller girl, probably 2. August was standing close to her. I don’t know if he made faces at her first, but she stuck out her tongue. Very funny. We also got a couple of nut/protein bars.
We ate the protein bar one on the way out. We sat in one of the houses in the outside play area and got out our other snacks. Didn’t really play, and he sang a “What should we do?” song. We ended up leaving, and he chose the long walk home. Along the way we spotted Israeli ladybugs, snails, lizards, some new flowers, and I saw my first snake in Israel. Didn’t get a good look, but seemed reddish and was pretty long.
We were home just before 5:30. He talked about smelling popcorn, and it reminded me that yesterday he had an invention that changed what he smelled like – if he thought about ice cream he would smell like ice c ream.
Carly made him popcorn. I was in the kitchen when it started popping, and they pretended it was me, so I acted like popcorn was popping inside me. He laughed a lot.
They went outside and tried out the frisbee. Carly was teaching him how to throw it. They then set up for painting and used the white paint to paint the little table for Carly’s classroom. I sat and tried the Valencay cheese that August and I had picked out at the store and white wine while they painted.
Carly took him over to wash paint off him with the hose. He observed that paint really gets everywhere. Inside, Carly noticed a bruise on his forehead. He reenacted what happened to him with the metal water bottle. He said he was running inside the classroom and fell and hit his forehead. Later, he told me that it was before the tea party. They had picked flowers and needed people to put them in water and that’s when he ran to do it. He also told me about rest time on Friday: “Dada, the second time they made me be on my bed.” And he asked me “Why don’t we do dada/Zinnie adventures anymore?”
He asked why iherb has a weight limit. Our discussion then ranged to where a rubber band would break when you pulled on it (he then kept suggesting other materials and also theories on why things would break) and back to cinnamon sticks in the hold of a plane. Carly came in mid-discussion and said we have some weird discussions.
I took him up for a bath. He wanted a balloon, so yelled down to Carly asking for a new one. I then found the red one. He played the bladder game with the balloon being the bladder. We did that for quite awhile until I convinced him to play with bubbles instead. He said he likes being bored and we talked about the importance of boredom for creativity.
Out of his bath at 8:20. We went down and he saw Carly typing on her phone and he wanted to send messages. In Skype on his iPad then he typed messages to Cherie in mooka mook. He then told Carly what he had typed and she translated: “Hello, I love you” “How are you feeling?” “Hi” “Do you have any plants in your yard?” “How are you doing?” As she typed he said “Wait, I just seed something I want you to teach me about” It was the parentheses. Then “Wait, why are they facing different directions?” He also asked “Do dashes have powers?”
They ate some artichoke together, and he asked “Mama, why do you like it when I ask cool questions?” He was then asking her about war and Carly asked if he knew what ‘peace time’ was. Some he asked “So we have a lot of peace time, right?” “Do Palestines get into wars?” “Do they use guns or do they just say you can’t have electricity?”
He and I then read Sally’s Room. He remembered his heart sunglasses from last summer and wants them again. I took him upstai
rs and he said “I hate etcs.” That’s a line from a Smurfs comic, which we haven’t read for months.
I left them at 9:20. Carly texted me about 10 minutes later saying he was really blowing his nose. A big milestone. Must have fallen asleep soon after that.