Tuesday, September 18: playdate and playing on the highway

He called out “No!” in his sleep at one point during the night. He woke up at 7 and went downstairs. I went down a little later and they were well into the Cam Jenson and the First Day of School Mystery. At one point August asked, “Why is she always bugging the class…cuz she’s saying ‘click’ so much?” At one point he got up and asked Carly, “Can I teach you something?” When she asked what he was going to teach he responded, “Nothing! I just wanted to trick you!” They finished the book, then he was acting out being Cam Jenson, with a photographic memory.

They played with the Makey Makey. He was talking about dividing up their time and is working on fractions: “We have a half hour. For the first quarter hour…” I was making scrambled eggs and cheese with mushrooms for breakfast and we all ate those.

They went outside to water plants. He came back in, having gotten wet, and was grumpy. We changed his clothes and dried his shoes and he went back out.

Tessa arrived with Liam and Neva about 10:20. The two kids were off, playing with the Duplos. He focused his attention on Tessa. He showed her the synth app, and he took out the three sets of Bob Books and told her, “To teach you to read we have 3 sets of Bob Books.” She started reading a book, and he told her, “You read so well.” He then explained to her how he reads slowly. He didn’t actually read, but instead sounded out his reading rhythm, like notes, to show that it was slow. She told him he’d get better with practice. Carly made a mango smoothie for everyone and they sat at the table and had that.

An ice breaker with the kids was when August wanted to bring down his treasures. He wanted to do it on his own. He went upstairs and came down holding all three of the wicker containers. He did a great job sharing all of his toys today. The kids really liked the treasures and they played with them. August gave them the bracelets that he had made them.

August wanted to make a spicy soup, so he and Liam worked together outside, pouring spices into big pot. We then put it on the stove to boil. I made some of the chocolate pancakes for them to snack on. August borrowed my phone and showed them the macro lens and did some photography and he let Liam take some photos. August and Liam did some TodoMath together. Liam liked the Tally Catch activity and would return to it later.

They all went upstairs and were playing in the cardboard box. I did some dishes. Back downstairs they had the chicken and pasta for lunch. August and Liam then played SoundRebound on the iPad. They worked together, talking, really well for ten minutes or so. August wanted to show Tessa how he could run, but she was comfortable on the couch, so Carly took August outside and took a video of him running around the yard that he then showed her. At one point Neva escaped upstairs. August went upstairs for something and found Neva playing in the box by herself. Earlier, playing with the Duplos, she had put band-aids on the animals and August had learned the word ‘plaster’. Anyway, he came back down and Took Tessa up to find her in the box. She was then Driving him crazy pretending Neva wasn’t there.

They talked about getting ready to go, but then decided on 20 minutes more. We asked August if that was okay and he thought and said, “20? That’s as long as rest time, so I can handle that.” August was rather done with playing though. He sat on my lap and we read The Word Collector. He also wanted to make a squirrel nest but the couch was in use. So a couple times he was asking things like, “When are you going to leave?” And, “Has it been 20 minutes yet?”

They headed out at 2:15. He had kind of a crash after that, asking, “Why didn’t they listen to me?” He hid behind the pillow of the couch. He was upset that they didn’t talk to him much, and in particular one moment when they briefly played hide and seek. They had all run up and hid in the bed and had locked the door behind them. By the time I had opened the door with a key, they were under the covers. August was getting hot and wanted out but they wouldn’t let him out. He let out a loud scream. He was fine after that, but kept bringing it up. Also, Liam isn’t very verbal, in part because he is bilingual. He’s generally avoided talking to us at all, refusing to answer any questions when we’ve tried to talk to him at the pool.

August took awhile to recover on the couch, then we made a squirrel nest. He wanted to watch Pink Panther in there, so he vegged for quite awhile, watching that and then inviting me down to watch animated ball race videos with him. He started to show some energy and we played the robotic squirrel game. I would find a squirrel in the park that needed a home, but then when I took them home they would each do something bad, like eat my shoulder or destroy concrete walls. He was laughing a lot. Finally, he was a cat that spoke sign language. The sign language cat went outside and was eating cats. He was then supposedly a real (non-robot) cat, but I think it ate “25 billion, 800 million books each day…thousands or soda water bottles.”

While in the squirrel nest he had asked for Cheerios, then passed the bowl back out for a refill. The next time he passed it out I gave him the rest of an apple. The next time I cut a whole apple for him. When I saw his empty bowl a bit later I at first thought I’d forgotten to actually give him the apple. But no, he had eaten an entire apple.

About 6:15 Carly went out and met up with Mikaela and they went up to the synagogue on Kibuts Gulyout for Yom Kippur. They had to sit in the women’s area, which was apparently chairs set up in the kitchen. August and I headed out for a walk a bit later, at 6:45, as the sun was going down and cars were leaving the streets. We walked along the path past the pedestrian bridge – our usual “long way” home – and through the little tunnel and up to highway 553. Along the way we realized we could really hear the birds, and now, as we got up to the big intersection at the highway, we could really hear the sounds of the crosswalk lights. Which I’ve never noticed although I run past there all the time. August was hesitant about going across the highway at first. We waited for the lights to change. Plenty of bikers out already.

We took a photo of him standing in the middle of the big intersection, then followed some bicyclists down the on-ramp onto Highway 4. We got down on the highway and took another photo of him, then turned back north onto the southbound lanes and walked back towards home. We went under the 553 bridge. I thought he’d want to be loud for the echo, but he was rather quiet. We had seen a few cars still out on the highway, but fewer and fewer. Mainly the occasional police car. We stopped along the side of the road and looked at the sky for 15 minutes or so, using the app. We could easily see Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars, and of course the moon. We looked for highway treasures along the way and he found a white plastic ball and a back rubber ring. As we got walking again he said, “I can get this now.” I asked him to explain and he meant he understood what we meant about how there wouldn’t be cars on the highway.

We looped around back onto the off ramp and then hopped the guard rail and walked across a worn trail atop a covered drainage ditch to get back to our usual path and head home. We took the rest of the long route. There’s one dark section that I’m not fond of when running, but it was nice as we could see a lot more stars.

We walked up to our park and then over to the synagogue to see what was going on. August wanted a closer view so we went in the gate and parked the bike and looked in a bit more. We were home at 8 and Carly was already there.

We had some dinner, then he was discussing what the praying was and God with carly. That ended when he finally tipped over backwards in his chair. Carly dove and tried to stop it. Definitely slowed it, but tipped over to the right. He was okay though.

He snuck to his iPad to try watching Ruby and Max. He got upset about the iPad and heading to bed. We went up and read Will I Have a Friend? Carly took a shower. I brushed his teeth and we read two stories in Nightlights and The Sneetches. Carly took over and he was asleep at 9:20.

Showing the synth to Tessa: