He came out at 7:05, asked for Mama, and got his shoes on and went outside to where she was out at the table. They were out there for several minutes, talking, and Dad came down. August came in and Carly had given him a leaf of the lettuce mix. We ended up discussing ants and bees, and the different kinds of them within a nest/hive, and then he remembered Brave Wilderness. We watched some on his iPad, watching the episode about water snakes, then parts of ones about seals and by river otters. These were cut short because he was pretending to be a seal and baby river otter. I would find them in the park on a bench. Next he was a snake.
He remembered the apple pie-like bread thing that Carly had bought for yesterday but we hadn’t opened. I got him a slice and he ate it. He said it was good but, “But not as good as I thought it would be.” He ate two more slices and said he wanted the whole thing. He then watched Smurfs (a longer episode that focused on the two boys). Mom made him a fried egg. He was initially disappointed, as he thought it was going to be scrambled eggs, but he ate the whole thing. He then wanted more of the apple thing, so I got him some, but he ignored it at first.
Instead, he was singing the “I want to sing and dance” song as he played with rubber bands and the Bob Books boxes. We did the forest story with the bird that saves me from a tree after my boss sends me in the forest to get firewood. He then typed on my iPad and changed the font to the symbols font and had fun figuring those out and making things out of them. He decided that, “When I type a message it goes to a satellite…to a machine in the ocean that’s always cleaning garbage…That’s a digital code that tells the machines stuff.” “Now, stop interrupting me, please.” The garbage went to the machine that makes things out of pollution. They then make more pollution. “It’s a circle!”
I went upstairs to take a shower. He went over with Dad, who was playing cards on the computer. When I came down he was outside with Carly, eating her peanut sauce stir fry. Which was apparently supposed to be a secret as I wasn’t allowed to be out there, and a bit later August joked about having a lot of sugar out there.
We left after 11, and on the way down I read most of The Last Giants. Lots of big words in it, but bric-a-brac was most interesting and became the word of the day. We parked at the first big park along the river and got walking. August found plenty of treasures, and got upset when we wouldn’t let him touch a dead snail. He was also holding Carly’s hand once and tripped over her foot and fell and lightly scraped his knee.
We got to the end of the river and watched the Mediterranean for a bit. August was acting like he was out of power, and putting his head down on the bike. He was then running his bike tire into the wire fence and bouncing off of it. The boardwalk has wooden hills on it, and he was coasting his bike down them. We stopped again, and he discovered there were tiny snails all over the concrete. He was then throwing them into the water for the sea creatures to eat.
We went to Greg Cafe and had a late lunch. Carly got a couscous dish and I got a potato and cheese dish. He really liked the cheese, which is a nice surprise as he usually doesn’t. He got a mango and banana smoothie and really liked it it. Which is good, because he had changed his mind and wanted pineapple instead of banana, but I had forgotten when I ordered. They had gone to the bathroom, then were over finding tiny snails. They came back to eat, then went back to the snails one more time.
We headed out around 3, but he wandered over to the sandbox area and spent a few minutes building a structure with Gramma. We then started to walk back, and stopped at Coffee Station for ice cream. He chose a dark chocolate with sprinkles, which we shared. We talked about going to the play later, and he told us, “I want to go to every play. Unless I’m sick.” He threw a couple of the sprinkles on the ground and was saying “Sprinkle died.”
We walked back to the car and were driving around 4. I read the rest of the book, then he had a story that we acted out where I was a kid and found a seal on the slide. I took it to the vet, then it ended up living in the zoo. There was then a closing on it, where I got to visit the zoo as part of a field trip and go and see the seal. He repeated this scenario with a river otter, then plankton.
We were home about 5. Carly dropped us off and then drove up to the grocery store to get more popcorn for the popcorn sales at school. He told me about someone named Frida: “Frida is someone in my class.” I said I didn’t think that was true. “I do…she has been visiting and now she’s a part of the class.” He was then a cat that he said had been injured by a hunter. He had lost an ear and an eye. Carly got back just in time to be the veterinarian. He was communicating with us in a sort of sign language. He was then several injured seals, one at a time, and she would fix him. He had the toy ladle and said,”I invented a new brain tester…” and was his head. It was a sort of reflex test, and if you had a reflex it meant your brain was okay.
Carly stayed home, but the rest of us headed to school for the play. There were snacks in the lobby, and August got a heart cookie. We went in and he sat on my lap for most of the play. Before it started I asked if he knew the rules about watching a play, and he told me you could clap when you wanted and laugh when you wanted, but otherwise had to be quiet. And preschoolers could get up to go to the bathroom. At one point he moved to his chair for about 5 minutes, but was then back in my lap. He told us before we got there that preschool hadn’t stayed for the whole thing the first time. But he sat through it just fine. Lillian was Cogsworth, and Carly had students that were Belle, Mrs. Potts, and Lefou.
After the play, August stood up for the standing ovation. Out in the lobby I let him get one more cookie, and we were going to say hi to Lillian but we lost her in the crowd.
We got home, and he was pretty sure that Carly was asleep because it was “the middle of the night.” She took him up and gave him a quick bath. We got him ready for bed and I left them right at 9 and he was soon asleep.
I want to sing and dance:
Working on his sleeping spot:
Walking along the river in Tel Aviv:
Playing with the fence:
Coasting down the hill:
Playing in the sand:
Making his kitty nest:
Kitty sign language:
Beauty and the Beast 1:
Beauty and the Beast 2:
