A full day. Carly had middle school graduation in the evening. After school, August and I went to the grocery store, then walked to the mall and met people for ice cream. While Carly was at graduation, we did a lot of baking.
He was up at 6:05. Started to lightly kick me to wake me up, although I was already awake. He went out and Carly brought him back in. She was with him for a few minutes, then left, and he lay on the lower bed for several minutes. I went downstairs and got his vitamins for him, and he wanted to see a video on how vitamins are made. We opened YouTube and found one and I went up to take a shower. When I came down he was watching the ink video that he really likes.
He then explained the lever/catapult science experiment that he had done with Carly a couple weeks ago and got really excited about it and wanted to do it again. I cut some strips of cardboard out of a Cheerios box and he got markers for the fulcrum. There was a green marker without a lid and he wasn’t happy about it. We said we could buy new markers sometime, and he said we could take that marker with us to the store to make sure we got the same color of green.
He and Carly did the experiment. The cardboard was too bendy, so I got the metal ruler out and that worked. He and Carly taped multiple markers together so that the lever could travel farther. Worked quite well. His nose was a bit stuffy and when Carly tried to have him blow it he said “No, no, no! Let’s focus on the experiment!”
He asked if I would stay in the library and I said I might go home. He was okay when I went to Jerusalem yesterday since Carly picked him up. But now, knowing that I was picking him up, he didn’t want me to leave campus. He got kind of sad and kept repeating “Stay, stay, stay, stay.” He cuddled in lap. Sinec I am actually able to focus (and get to work faster, since I don’t have to walk) in the library, I agreed to stay there.
Carly left for school. We got ready and started walking. I mentioned that Ilana was having another party on Sunday and he said “I would love to go to another Ms. Ilana party.” We talked about parking our car at school over the summer, and August explained to me that Skoda mama would be using gas over the summer. To keep cool, I think.
He skipped the garbage cans today, but yesterday had had fun walking up Vatikim trying to drive us through every tight spot between the walls and cars or garbage cans. He was then talking about how he could make lightning bolts, and he developed the lightning bolt mystery, where he would make a lightning bolt and everyone would be confused where it came from. Scientists would try to figure it out, but they wouldn’t be able to do so. Eventually he would announce that he was the one who had made it.
We got to the top of the hill on the way to school and he declared a new landmark for the point we get to the top of the hill coming from the east. There is already a landmark (a pipe) that he chose when we come from the west. We also still often sing our “Now we’re going up the hill…now we’re at the top of the hill…now we’re going down the hill” songs that we started last August when it was so, so, so hot.
He then made up the Case of the Missing Shark and Case of the Missing Seahorse, to follow the Case of the Missing Walrus from a few days ago. Didn’t really develop the stories though. He spent the rest of the time humming a tune.
They were starting an early meeting when we arrived. He wanted me to hang around, but after just a few seconds told me I could leave by saying “Dada, pick me up after lunch.”
It was a good thing that I did, in fact, stay in the library.
11:20 they came running in to say goodbye to the library. Glad I actually stayed at the library. He just ran and said hi to me, then they continued on with their round of goodbyes, saying goodbye to Liz and Amanda, then heading out to find Ilana downstairs. They had a whole list, and he later told us that they had done a video for Dorin as she had had hand surgery.
Liz told me that Lillian brought home a picture he drew of her and signed with an ‘A’. A very 4-year old portrait, but I guess it had hair, eyes, etc. There were dots everywhere and those were the teeth.
I picked him up. He was looking at the pottery stuff. We walked up through the elementary and sw Airport Megan as we came up the stairs. She asked him what he did today and he said “Cool stuff.”
Carly had driven, and we headed to the car and to Tiv Taam at the mall to get a few things. August managed to fall asleep on the way there. When I took him out of the car he fell right back to sleep on my shoulder, so I just took a grocery bag and did the shopping with him on my shoulder. I tried to set him down at the produce once, but he looked back up at me and mumbled a couple things, then said “I want to sleep up there.” I picked him back up and he slept until the checkout line and I needed to put the groceries in the bag. I set him down and as he crouched on the floor, waking up, he asked “Did I move while I was sleeping?” I told him that I had done all the shopping while he slept. He was excited, and talked about how that made the shopping go faster.
The women at the checkout needed to borrow my Tiv Taam card for another customer. I was confused at first, but figured it out. She then taught me that the card is called mah-done, which I think literally means ‘membership’. So as we walked home from school August and I worked on putting it in our long-term memory, and also words for hill and sidewalk and tree.
So we drove back to school and dropped the car off for Carly. We were going to meet Bat-Chen for a Hebrew lesson, and she suggested the mall right as we were on our way. So we switched to the bike and walked home, practicing Hebrew along the way. He also said “I’m gonna invent something really cool for Bat Chen.” We dropped off the groceries at home, then hopped back on the bike an walked to the mall. August was singing a sort of duck song as we walked over there.
Got to the outside play area at 3:05. He was playing on the train when bat-Chen and Naomi arrived a few minutes later. He talked to Bat-Chen as he sat on top of the train, then she was asking him, in Hebrew, if he wanted ice cream. He got down and as we walked to the ice cream place he said something like “This is exciting…I don’t know what we’re doing, but she kept saying glidah a lot!” Once there he was excited by all the flavors and kept saying things like “I will share!” And was telling us what flavor we should each have. Finally, he chose two flavors: marshmallow and Oreo in a cup, and I got a cheesecake flavor and strawberry in a cone. Bat-Chen went and got a smoothie for herself and we sat down and ate.
He was very focused on the ice cream. But when he was done he wanted Bat-Chen to go with him to the play area and teach him words in Hebrew. this had been his guess on what was going to happen when I mentioned we were meeting at the mall. They played on the airplane for a bit, with him flying her to Seattle. They left by 3:50 as they had middle school graduation to prepare for. After they left, he found a candy on the ground that I wouldn’t let him eat and I explained why. He handled that by making it into the game. I would be the kid dropping the candy, then he would be a cat licking it, then another kid would want to eat it and he’d say “No no no!”
As we left he found two treasures: a green hair band and a broken paintbrush. On the way home he was asking about the tar in the cracks on the walkway, something that’s come up before. He was then talking to “cracky…you know, from our hotel room.” When he had complained about our hotel room in Ramallah because it had a crack in the wallpaper I had said that that gave it character, and had made up Cracky, the talking crack. So August talked to Cracky in all the cracks as we walked home.
Carly was in the shower, and I started getting stuf
f ready for making zucchini bread and berry brains. Realized we didn’t have zucchini, so Carly quickly drove us up to the store in town and I ran in and found it. Back at home August did a great job helping me make zucchini bread. Carly headed to graduation. He watched machine videos after we finished the bread and while I put it in the oven and prepared for berry brains. He watched on on a pulp mill, and there were other machines. He then helped me with the berry brains, and when those were done watched The Magic School Bus Rides Again.
I took him up and he wanted a quick bath, so we did a sponge bath of sorts. Back downstairs we had some zucchini bread and milk. He hadn’t drunk the water drink earlier and he explained it was because it had had a clump of milk in it. I looked and he was right – it hadn’t been cleaned well. He didn’t tell me at the time though.
We were making up a RoboZinnie has defeated… movie trailer when Carly came home at 8:40. When she came in he blasted her, then explained “I thought you were a monster. That’s why I lazer-beamed you.”
She took him up and brushed his teeth. He really wanted me to go to slee with them. But then he punched me in head as I lay next to him. He explained “Because I’m sad.” Carly said that either she or me needed to do dishes, and he let me go down. He was asleep at 9:30.
Napping in the grocery store:
Ice cream:
A hug:
