He was up about 7:20. They did a lot of joking about poop. He didn’t remember where he fell asleep. Carly said she had put socks on while he slept. He said “You did it sneakily?” We were talking about something, I think how many episodes he could watch, and he decided to change the definition of a ‘couple’: “With my powers I changed a couple to 1 2 3 4 5 6.” He watched Magic School Bus while Carly took a shower.
They went to the store and I took a shower. It was closed, but August came back with an OR treasure: a rubber end of a zipper pull with the letters OR on it. They ate the popcorn crackers and broken them apart into puzzles. He called it his volume changer. The O raised his volume, and the R lowered it. They were doing poop games, and I came up with “Ms. Poophauser.” He ate a popcorn cracker and broke it into pieces and made art out of it: “Ant with a stinger and no legs.” He ate the parts of the ant until there was just a last piece: “A stinger.” Then he made “A flying statue. An Owl!” Ate a piece. “Oh! One wing got cut off.” He sat onf a chair “criss cross apple sauce” and said “It protects me from scary noises.” Finally, he complained about the crack in the wallpaper and I had the crack talking to him.
We went downstairs and were waiting for Omar and his family. Our next destination was a pool. A Korean group started to come in for something nd he was calling women by different names. He had trouble turning off ‘poop’ and had to have a couple of timeouts.
They arrived a little before 10:10. In the car we turned the air conditioner to “Blast off hair mode.” His big complaint about the car yesterday was that he was too hot. The air conditioner didn’t work all that great.
We followed them to the pool. They stopped along the way and Omar ran in and bought a couple of floaty toys. The pool was technically built in Area C, without a permit, and thus under threat of demolition. And it was filled by tapping into water that was meant for a settlement. It was a wonderful pool though, owned and designed and built by Omar’s brother-in-law, who is an artist.
August was slow to get in the water. He played on the edge of the little pool, with the toys and cups. I carried him over to the the teeter totter at one point. Later, he went over to the big pool with Carly. He sat on the edge until I got in, and got him in the pool with me for awhile. He didn’t really float much, and ended up sitting on a submerged seat for a sort of in-the-pool bar area. He sat there and announced “Hello everybody, I just want to say I peed in the pool!” And said that he’d been doing it for years. We got out and had lunch: I had a burger, and we got chicken fingers for August, and there was pizza. Plenty of food. We had beers, and earlier August and I went and got him a watermelon juice.
As if that wasn’t enough food, we had to have some Palestinian ice cream before we left. So we went and got little pre-prepared cones of ice cream. When August was done but had some cone left, he told me to “Scrap boy my cone.”
We did some good talking while there. The night before I’d asked Omar what he does for fun, but he said he works all the time, which is also his fun. His wife backed this up, telling me he is often working in the evening at home. But todayhe talked about how much he likes history and we talked about our favorite periods of history, etc. He also asked us what Israelis say about the conflict, as he only ever speaks to Israelis that are supportive of the Palestinian cause.
We left at 1:40. We followed Omar and his family to their house, then Omar got in the car with us and accompanied us to drop off the rental car. August fell asleep about 2. Not much of a wait getting through the checkpoint on the road to Jerusalem. Omar, funny man that he is, was daring me to make a political statement to the soldiers, like “End the occupation!” I told him I’d settle for “Good day” as I wanted to get home before nightfall. The soldiers actually stopped our car after at first appearing to let us through, but the only looked at our 3 passports, and didn’t ask the Palestinian for his.
We picked up the Skoda at Sabeel and returned the rental car and transferred a sleeping August to the Skoda. We drove Omar up to the Qayalida (sp) checkpoint and dropped him off there.
On the drive home he practiced his time increments. He understands from seconds to years now: “I went from seconds to minutes to hours…” He was nervous about another Ollie and Moon episode and had to skip ahead. He finished the lollipop he had started yesterday, and we got home at 4:45.
He made a concoction outside, then I hid the eggs for him. He did a funny dance with his stick.They stayed outside and I went in and did some typing. He was then pretending to be Lulu flying on a broom. Been awhile since we read that. They came in and Carly Skyped with her parents. He tied a knot in the string and pulled around the Duplo container. Carly went back outside and he had some of the Palestinian juice – Omar had given us a bottle. He then asked about organ rejection in transplants and we acted it out.
We read some Magic Tree House, then he had a pouch like the kangaroo. He wanted a fake timeout. Still with a pouch, he remembered sea horses: “Why do seahorses have thousands of babies…they’re backups?”
We ate dinner outside. He dropped his veggie burger and was upset. I took him up and gave him a bath and washed his hair. We used the hair dryer. Downstairs he wanted carrot instead of veggie burger. He clarified his amount words, asking “One is less than a couple, and a couple is less than a few. Is that right?” He was then a bunny eating his carrot. He then wanted some toast with peanut butter and honey. As I made it he said “Lets make jokes about the toast.” That is, make up gross things that would go on the toast. And he was singing “Better not wake the baby.” Finally, he wanted to experiment with the scotch tape: he knew that putting flour on the tape made it not stick to the counter. Now he wanted to try peanut butter. I put peanut butter on the tape for him and he tried it out. He concluded that it stuck better than the flour, but not as well as just the tape by itself.
Carly got him ready for bed. I left them at 9:30 and he fell asleep pretty quickly.
Lunch at the pool:
