Sunday, September 16: errands with Carly

He was up at 7:10. He went and sat outside with Carly for a few minutes. When I came down she was giving him the iPad and he started playing the Nature app, chanting “I love nature.” He actually started with the Mammals app and was showing us things. Carly joked we should get a pet sloth and he patted her arm and said, No.” In one of the nature apps he showed us an animation of the earth spinning and explained nighttime was when the sun was at a slant. He had explained this a few days ago and we thought he was actually thinking about winter, but he was talking about the slant of the sun making shadows as night fell, as he pointed to the line between day and night and said that was where the slant was.

He’s gotten into these Lego ball machine videos, and videos of dominoes falling. And then another sort of animated videos where balls race down through courses, sort of race style. Kind of cool, but also surprising that this is a genre of thing that exists. So he watched some of those, then told me “You need to start letting me choose new games…like you give me options and I get to choose.” I said I’d be happy to give him choices in the future, but he wanted to look now, but wouldn’t play until later. So we looked, and he really liked this space app called TALU Space. Ultimately it would be kind of a disappointment as it didn’t really teach anything about space, nor was it all that complicated. But it was fun. And for now he was true to his word, as we then went and played with the catapult, and took slo-mo videos of it. We were then in a time machine house that was taking me to when atoms formed. And then he was a robot kitty again.

We went upstairs and he was asking about the house across the street. He got out his treasures and dumped them out on the couch. We played with those and he wanted to hang up the little hamsa he had found in a store once and we went downstairs for tape. We hung it on the kitchen door and he asked Carly if it could be there. He played with the string from his treasure, tying it around the knobs by the sink, then just randomly started taping everything.

They left to run errands at 10:45. They went to the school, but didn’t stay there long as the air conditioner was off. They then went to the mall, where the did grocery shopping and ordered more baby blue paint for the chair. I finished all the chair that you can see, but didn’t have enough for the bottom. Well, when you fold up the chair you can see the bottom, which particularly bothered August.

I was supposed to be doing some Sabeel work, but started filling out our passport renewals for me and August. That took longer than I expected and took the entire time they were gone. At least it is done though. They returned about 1. August did more vacuuming, then he played that TALU Space app. I did some work, and they made bracelets. August glued a bolt onto each one from the little bag of bolts that Carly had found him when she did recycling the other day. He had talked to me about using the bolts for something. I had told him that there weren’t nuts to go with them, but they might be good for one of his art projects. He remembered that and had the idea to put them on the bracelets.

I came down and we read a chapter of The Scarecrow and His Servant. He was then looking at Sky Guide on his iPad. He figured out the X-ray astronomy tool and we read about the gasses of space and x-ray photography. He went and showed Carly and told her about it, then went outside with her.

Tessa was supposed to come over with her two kids after their Jewish day care. August was getting impatient. Very cool to see him excited about having kids over. He played with his hammer, then came in and watched domino videos. It turned out they weren’t coming today, as the kids were having a hard time.

He and I did Makey Makey and magnet science for quite awhile. I went for a run as Carly took him up for a bath. He had a bit of a meltdown going to do that, but calmed down, and while I was gone he used the chalkboard to teach her about constellations. He then talked about how stars are made and the big clouds of gas out in space that we can only see with X-ray telescopes, and told her about evolution, walking out on the floor and explaining that there were apes back here, then humans up here. She asked him about tides and he didn’t know about those, but he didn’t want to learn about them now.

I got back and took a shower. They were playing Candyland. He came in to use the bathroom while I took a shower and stayed in until I was done. He weighed himself (15.5 kg) and then wanted Carly to weigh herself. He told her,”Let me guide you.”

Carly then took a shower. He and I went down to get his two chocolate chips. He got one gummy worm instead. He told me we need to let him make more rules. I told him he often gets choices and I mentioned tomorrow.

Upstairs we looked at Google Maps for where we should go tomorrow. We settled on the beaches in downtown Tel Aviv that we’ve never been to. I left them 8:30 and they read a couple Skybrary books, Field Day and What a Treasure!

He wasn’t going to sleep though, and came into the office with me when he got up to get a drink or something. He wanted to lie on the Zinnie bed while I did my work and fall asleep there, then when I was done working I’d take him in to the bed with mama. He gave it a good try, spending about 15 minutes lying on the bed. He played with and cuddled with Puff for awhile.

He got up and looked at photos of Bedouins with me, which I was doing for the book. He kept talking about how they were beautiful photos. I then lay down with him on the Zinnie bed. He brain just kept going though and he found it hard to fall asleep. at one point he popped up and asked about the “safety bed” – the pullout bed under the Zinnie bed. Awhile longer and I thought he was falling asleep but he then said he wanted to watch the Smurfs tomorrow. I think he was thinking about the bed, and last year we had played with the Smurf figurines and told stories while on the Zinnie bed.

At 9:50 he wanted to go in with Carly. He said goodbye to me, but I walked him over. It still took awhile as I heard him talking, but I think he was asleep around 10.

Catapult slo-mo 1: