Tuesday, December 25: Christmas

Carly and August got up at 6;30. He came back in bout 15 minutes later to wake me up. He was being very cute about it, as per Carly’s instructions. We made coffee, then called my parents to Skype with them. He then started opening presents. The first was the playdough, then he grabbed Carly’s present so she opened that. It was one of the cards from an artist on that Even Yehuda arts tour and I told Carly she could take an art class. He then opened the Calder-looking thing and recognized it from Wiz Kids. He was then trying to open the play dough and asked, “Gramma and grampa, did you buy this for me? Cuz it’s hard to open.” He started to open the next one, but got distracted by collecting all of the paper so far and ripping it up to put in his tissue box. When he opened the big set of magnet blocks he hugged it, then gave them kisses over Skype and said “Star!” as he pretended to hand them a star (which is from his activity class last year).

He opened the bubble science kit and squishy sand from them, then the chess set that I bought. Up next was the box from Derek and Andrea and the kids. First out was the treats, and he ate the head of the polar bear cookie. Then came the unwrapping of the streamer ball. It had little animals and stickers and other things in it. The entire opening of the present took over 8 minutes, not including the timeout to eat the cookie. The final present was the Snaps Light science kit from Cherie and Chuck. He recognized the pieces from school.

He played with the squishy sand first as we continued to talk to my parents. Then the bubble science kit. He remembered he had a bottle of bubbles up in his closet and went and got it. Carly made Swedish pancakes and he ate all of his on the floor. We said goodbye to them, then opened the electronics kit. We started making circuits, and I taught him ‘bypass’ as the word of the day.

They kept playing with the kit while I went and took a shower. They had finished a full project with the big light thing. I then packed clothes for me and August and packed up a couple bags of food. He played some ThinkRolls, then we read Tallulah’s Tap Shoes. We finished packing (sand toys, bike, electronics kit…) and left at 11:40.

In the car he finished the polar bear cookie (he called it a cat). Then he had me acting out an odd scenario about seeing a person/robot shooting lasers on the highway. But then it turned out he was going through the data lines (on Magic School Bus he had learned not all lines are power lines) and coming out tiny at houses. He then talked about how “I put a secret lab in every house I visit.” He said he even built one where he was born. But then he claimed he had been alive nine nonillion galactic years: “So how long I’ve been alive is a crazy big number.”

We got to Cassie’s apartment, only to find someone parked in their spot. We parked behind someone else and left our phone number on the dash. Carly messaged Cassie. We unpacked a bit and tried to figure things out. Lots of remotes and switches hidden different places. August played with Taya’s Leap Pad thing and with the kitchen scale. August said, “I would hate Ramona, if she was here.” And turned that into a song with his pants down after he had gone to the bathroom. He is slow to pull up his pants now, and seems like he would walk around the house with his pants down for an hour sometimes before deciding to pull them up.

Carly learned the car belonged to a worker, and should move by 2. We went out walking at 1:20, just kind of around the block. He told us, “The animal that poops the fastest is the beaver.” 1000 times a day, he said. He started to find treasures. First a u-shaped piece of metal. Then a pen. As we circled one block his game became to write and draw on leaves and then hide them for other people to find. Or not, since he always hid them in place people wouldn’t find them. He did one, then on the second he asked me to write “From Ajay” (character in a Skybrary book) for him. For the third he asked Carly to draw “pictures of toys you’ve seen.” He then did pictures: two turtles and the internet. For the fifth he asked me to write names of toys, then it was back to Carly for trees that she had seen. When he saw it he said, “Wow. Hose are really good trees. The person that finds this one will be really happy.”

We had headed west, then circled around and back towards us to the north. Heading south we found a Swedish coffee shop/bakery called Fika. August was content in that area as there were lots of trees and leaves. I went in and got a cappuccino. August and Carly did a bunch of leaves. He said the picture he drew on the left side of one was a picture of me. I lifted him up a few time to put them in holes in trees. I got him to put one more in the open, hooking it in a loose staple on a tree that was covered with tacks and staples.

Just to the south we found a children’s store and Carly spotted rain coats. We went in and they found a space-themed coat in a 5-6 size. Big for August, but they didn’t have it in a smaller size, and we figured he could grow into it and it would last a long time. He spotted a kit for making bouncy balls though and demanded we get it. He was a bit grumpy about that for quite awhile. He hasn’t really demanded things in stores before.

We went back and checked on the car. The other hadn’t moved yet, but we had learned we had until 3:45 before the neighbors we were parked behind needed to leave. We walked over to the playground. Found little bits of sidewalk chalk and he had me write a message for “Eve June”: “Hi! I love you so much! Have a good winter break. From, August.” He then decided it could be for Taya as it was by her house. I said we could send a photo to Eve. When we were done taking photos he wanted to cross it out, but then didn’t like how his ‘X’ turned out. He wanted me to rewrite it so he could cross it out correctly, and when I refused he went and asked Carly to do it. He got distracted though by a ribbon from a balloon that was attached to the fence. He played with it, winding it through the fence and tying it: “I made something new…that’s what we do in the maker space…You reuse stuff that other people doesn’t use.”

Carly walked down by the river to read in the sun. We then played on the little merry-go-round. It turned into a time machine taking travelers back to the age of dinosaurs. I introduced the idea of the butterfly effect a la Ray Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder”. He was then destroying things in the past and causing the universe to implode, after which we would be stuck in a void that smelled like elephant butt (from Hilo). Carly had also gone back and was able to move the car.

We went back to the car and got out his bike and headed north and west to waterfront. August stopped us to look at a piece of abstract art at a gallery, then we stopped at Abulafia. We each got something. Carly a pastry with feta and spinach, August a pretzel, and me a very green piece of baklava. August hung his pretzel from his handlebar.

We stopped at some bench/stairs along the water and he played on them for a few minutes, then was at the beach at 4:10. Carly called Cassie and family. Vivian had a magic kit and was showing us magic tricks, so August wanted to do tricks for us as well. He asked me to make something and I made a racetrack-looking shape in the sand which we decorated with shells. He said, “It’s a path people walk on…it changes so the get stuck on it forever…on and on.” Kind of like our path between worlds stories. At one point he said, “Can you add more? That’s what teachers always say… That’s what Ms. Andrea says in maker space.” It turned into a game of me making shapes/art in the sand with my feet, then he was a boy destroying them.

There were three women who twice asked me to take their photos. They were having a lot of fun and clearly British. My best was not London and not Yorkshire. Turns out they were from Manchester.

We saw the sunset and left at 4:45. He kept singing “Such a complicated place” (mainly sans words). We were home at 5:15. He went to the bathroom, then we played with the light kit. Carly FaceTimed with Cherie and Chuck. We left at 6. He told us, “Smallest thing in the universe is the electronic PVC web.”

For dinner we went to a Thai restaurant called Nam. They sat us in the outside covered part. August objected, saying he didn’t like the floor (the sidewalk). He wanted to be on the wooden floor. Carly got him to agree to it. We ordered the pad see eew and curry massaman and the closest thing they had to a Thai iced tea, which turned out to be a bottle of green jasmine tea. It was good though, and came with a glass with a slice of lemon and a leaf of lemongrass in it. At the end of dinner August and I were chewing and smelling the lemongrass. We all ate well. August had fun pulling apart napkins at the end, and we took some extra napkins and toothpicks (he also had us all use a toothpick).

We stopped at the Supersell grocery store to get milk, cream, etc. August was upset he couldn’t choose something and told her, “You’re the baddest mama ever!” This is his go-to line when he is upset now, and I hear “You’re the baddest dada ever!”

Back at the house he requested music “that I would like.” I turned on KEXP to hear their Christmas coverage, including songs like Phosphorescent’s “Christmas Down Under”. August played with the hanging luggage scale they had in the kitchen, then used the Leap Pad with a Peppa Pig book about cooperation. To his credit, he didn’t like the Leap Pad ‘features’ and just wanted me to read the book. Carly FaceTimed with Derek and family again, as the kids were now up. August played with the scale some more, then we read Tallulah’s Tutu and then a chapter of Hilo 2.

We finally got him ready for bed, skipping a bath today, and I left the two of them at 9:30 (late!) and he was asleep quickly.

Christmas – first present and Carly’s present: