Carly said he was really cuddly during the night. At one point he woke up and said “Mama!” and had a big smile on his face when he saw her.
He was up just after 7. In fact, I heard him sitting up just before my alarm went off. He got up and told me I could keep sleeping. I told him my alarm was going off anyway, but he repeated it, and told me “I know mama is here.” And I was now stuffy, so I went ahead and took some more time, watching the short jaguar I-Pace race. He went down and told Carly that he’d told me to go back to sleep. They went outside and drilled holes in the mushrooms and sap, then were inside making a multimedia art project when I came down, out of glue, nails, cardboard, and the red sparkly fabric. August made the observation from their earlier stream project that the white glue turns clear when it dries, and said he predicted they would be blue to see the nails in their glue pool.
He went over and asked Siri to play music. She started to play the New Order playlist we were last listening to. He then added two songs to his Zinnie’s Songs playlist. I joked to Carly that we should tell Dr. Aviv we won’t be needing any speech therapist, as he has Siri to practice with.
He then spent a good amount of time generally playing on his own: he got his pen and drew in his music notebook, he drew a picture to put in the monster magnets box so that when we donate it sometime there will be a picture inside it for the people who get it (as I said he couldn’t draw on the box) and cut up cardboard. He then said “Back to you, Mama!” and ran over to cuddle with her.
He moved on to his iPad for the first time today. He watched some Max and Ruby, then played with his stick and Carly’s backpack while she made a pancake for him. He dressed up in his “costume” of a coat hanger. He wanted to cuddle with Carly again and I offered to cuddle instead. He wouldn’t cuddle with me, but would read. We read more of Amulet 3, and made ‘docile’ a word of the day. They were these huge flying docile eels, and he stopped the reading so that he could be one of the eels. We then got ready, and as we did so he was chanting things like “Sheila won’t share…” from his library book this week.
We drove over to what we thought was Alex’s address in Poleg. We learned today that tons of apartment buildings in Israel have the same door code. I had the address as 18, but Carly said it was 8. I thought she was correct when the door code worked and we went in. We rang the doorbell on the correct apartment, but an older woman in a towel answered the door. Oops. We walked up to building 18 and found the right apartment. He found several treasures along the way.
At Alex’s Sherry and Jeff were already there. That was everyone. August ordered people not to talk or he’d put a hole in them with his feather (one of the treasures he had found along the way). He then wandered off and found Jessepa (her teenage son) in his room and was playing with a toy dinosaur when I found him.
We ate. He had pancake and then chocolate pudding. Then pancake. And more pancake. Mainly he ate pancakes. He tried the eggs with salmon, but they couldn’t compete. I pulled August around as he lay on the floor. He got upset over not getting a second pudding at one point, but Carly took him into the bathroom and he calmed down quickly. He sat on the couch and played on his iPad with his headphones on. We got on their wi-fi and he watched a little Berenstain Bears or something, but not for long. The group started talking shop, so I lost interest (I was more interested when hearing about their lives in Ethiopia, Nepal, etc.) anyway, and we finished reading Amulet 3. Got out the art supplies, but he didn’t do much with them. We read a couple more chapters of Pinnochio with him sitting on my lap.
We got going after 12:30. He had wanted Carly to sit next to him on the way there. When she got in the back this time he politely said, “Sorry mama, but Dadas going to sit next to me.”
We were home before 1. Carly left to go to school to plan the rest of the year with Jeff. August played in the kitchen, and was using the can opener. He ran paper through it, which gave the paper a nice crimping along the edge. He ran a stick through it and said, “Im processing it.” It left little dots on the wood, and later we took a macro lens shot with it.
He then helped me make a triple batch of snickerdoodle cookies. When the dough was mixed he went and watched some Wild Kratts. He then stopped it and told me “Ready for imagining game. And it’s gonna be a crazy one.” It was all based on Wild Kratts and their Tortuga ship. I baked the first couple trays of cookies, and we of course ate a cookie each. He then formed about 16 of the cookies, calling them his experiments: vampire, snowman sitting down, candy wrapper shaped, a ladder, etc. He was then happy with how they all melted down.
Carly got home as we finished the last batch. We played GeoForest together, and he asked me “What’s driftwood?” He said he learned the word from me. I’m sure we’ve used it at the beach, but don’t know when the last time would have been that I’d said it. Carly had gone upstairs to do some more work. I’d woken up slightly stuffy and had had some mild headaches and a sore back through the day. I was now resting on the couch, and August was turning it into a game: he would be a baby animal that I’d find next to me, then he and the mama animal would eat me. Really peaceful.
We had soup for dinner, then Carly came down. He spent a lot of time grating Parmesan cheese, and also said he liked Parmesan and ate some. He then made a snack for Carly and me. It was his salty cheese recipe. He put a lot of salt on it though, so it wasn’t really edible. He then made us a drink, making up a mango juice recipe. He wanted to put frozen mango in cold “refreshing” water. Carly reminded him of “infused water” and he said, “Oh yeah, pineapple infused water. So I’m making mango infused water…and now for the surprise: a TOUCH of honey and sugar.”
We all shared his mango-infused water, then I went upstairs for a short rest. Carly came up to take a shower and he came in the bedroom and watched The Pink Panther as he sat next to me. He laughed a lot. Carly gave him a bath. He had the straw blocks in the shape of a giant pill and was having me eat it as medicine.
We went downstairs and Carly was trying to do some cleaning up. August really got into it, and wanted to recycle all of his old papers and art that were lying around. We then went upstairs and read a little Pinnochio. Carly came up and went to sleep with him around 9.
Can opener on a stick:
Cookie experiment 1:
Cookie experiment 2:
Brunch at Alex’s
Can opener marks
Cookie experiments
A pill
He and Eve’s finished research
His teeth drawings
