Friday, November 9: A better day for August, Get to Know You Day, and Tel Aviv

He woke up at 5:35. I saw him get up, pick the lamp off the floor and set it on the end of the bed, turn it on, turn it off, put it back down on the ground, then look out the window. He was trying to decide if it was time to wake up. He decided it was, then went down to Carly, closing the door after himself.

He watched Smurfs, then Llama Llama. He went to the bathroom and asked me, “Did you know that bees have tiny lungs?” He then invented a machine to look at them. He had watched a Llama Llama about planning for Mother’s Day, and was inspired to have a pancake. He agreed to help me make them. He tried to request some song on Siri and ended up with a song called, I think, “Amigo Ghost Town”. He liked it and added it to his playlist. He helped make the pancake batter. We talked about how it would be fun to plan Mother’s Day. And yesterday he told me he wants to plan our days more, like he used to.

As we got ready to go he sat on the couch and looked at Giants Beware! on his own. I asked if he wanted to take it to school to look at sometime, and he said no, but I took it anyway.

Dad walked with us this morning. On the way August found several treasures, including a broken light bulb and a big set of broken plastic straw building pieces that sort of formed a pyramid shape. He said this was a sort of sensor, and used it through a hole in a wall to spy on a family. He said he could tell the kids there like pancakes and the yard was full of poop. As we got close to school he found a zip tie that he said looked like a Hebrew letter, a dalet.

As we parked the bike we sort of met Bar and Ben’s new golden retriever puppy and talked to Ben about it a bit. We walked the hummus over and August handed it to Lillian, and he asked what the big jar with money in it was for. It was for the “No tushy left behind” fundraiser. Dad and I both gave him some coins to put in. We then walked to his classroom. He took the bucket of bottle caps in to give to his teachers. They were in the middle of dividing up the group for something and when Dad and I left after waiting for a couple minutes (as August reminded us) I saw him still kind of wandering around the room holding the bucket. So I was a little worried about him.

Dad and I drove the car home and after a little while at home the three of us headed to the Binyamin art market in Tel Aviv. We parked by the big synagogue and walked north, finding the kombucha shop that sells metal straws along the way. Didn’t open until noon though, so we would come back later. We walked up into the market and spent the next hour and a half looking through it. For a few minutes we dipped over into the flea market area, more crowded, so they could get some of the eye magnets. My parents were successful at shopping, getting a total of, I think, 6 gifts that fit in a small bag.

We thought about going to the Druze place August and I had been, but their seating area was smaller and full. We walked to the kombucha place and I got a pack with two metal straws and a bottle of pineapple mint to try with August later. From there my mom remembered she wanted to return to a stand near the beginning of the market with metal jewelry. We walked back there and she got a necklace. Next, we tried to go to Port Said for lunch, but were sat in front of a big speaker surrounded by smokers. We left, and were hurriedly looking for another place to eat. We found a bar called Shpagat with nice seating looking out on the seat. They had a small food menu that looked good. So we ate there and dad and I got drinks. Our waiter was skipping around to dance music and I realized Carly, August and I would have to come back here as they would like it.

We headed back, taking a convoluted but interesting route through Tel Aviv to get on 20, and got to school comfortably in time to pick up August. Marion was gone today, so Vicki had done a lot of filling in. I first talked to August and he said he had a better day, but that he needed to give Vicki a punishment as she wouldn’t let him play with a stick that Nicholas had played with at lunch. I talked to Andrea and she did say that things had gone much better with her.

August went in the makerspace room with Candy and played with some play dough. He took a photo of his creation. He also had a watercolor painting that he had done to take home.

We headed over to Carly’s room and helped her clean up. August helped eat some of the leftover pizza (he had also eaten all of his lunch—he’s suddenly eating a bunch more) and kicked around balloons and helped pop them. We packed everything up and folded some things, then all headed to the car. Carly’s Get to Know You Day had gone quite well.

In the car, August was singing an “All I have to do is break you” song—which had some more words at the beginning and was about the broken plastic thing he was playing with. As we got close to home he was moving it too close to Carly. And when she stopped him he got upset, and at the house Carly had to take him upstairs as he was having a meltdown (although afterwards he claimed to me that it wasn’t a meltdown).

Back downstairs he built with the Legos with Gramma and Grampa, building a ship and a house. He wanted to float the boat in the bath so I filled that up. He floated the ship, then wanted to get other Legos as sea creatures. We went back down, built some sea creatures, and took them back up. Once they were in the bath, August took off his clothes and climbed in the bath as well. The first tub bath he’s taken in awhile. He had taped a piece to the side of the ship as scientific sensors to study the ocean, but it came off in the water. I went and got more Legos and made a rig off the back of the ship. He played in the bath, making storms to damage the ship, and Gramma came up to hang out with him.

He got out, and we put on his heavier snowman pajamas. He wanted me to take a photo of him being cute. August took the phone and took a bunch of photos around the house. And he told me “I invented a machine that will let you climb the tallest mountain in the territory.” And he said ‘Roman’ was the word of the day, then in discussing that we added ‘civilization’.

Downstairs he had more pizza for dinner, then a bowl of broccoli, shrimp, and rice. He said, “Hey. That was yummy.” I commented on him eating more and he said, “I like food again.” He and I then shared the kombucha, using the metal straws, and I was surprised to find how much he liked it, because it was both fizzy and sour—things he generally doesn’t like: “I love it…I love the sourness…It gives me lots of energy. I changed myself to run on sour. I run on soury.” And he liked the fizzy. He was disappointed to find out that kombucha actually has less caffeine in it than the tea it is made from. He said he wanted some coffee now.

Mom and Dad started putting together the Peter Rabbit puzzle. I helped, and August did a little, but he wasn’t too fond of the idea.

He said good night to them, then we went upstairs and did the story dice. A story called “Another Pirate Escape”. We brushed his teeth, then he was talking about teleporting things to Lydia to change her. He played a little of the tea game with Carly, then said good night. We went in and did a preschool game. He was really tired and wanted me to think of the preschool game. I told a story about a school with thousands of rules enforced by robots, then he destroyed them with an EMP. He fell asleep around 9:15.

Even if it would song: