Thursday, January 24: Skipping school for a Dada-Zinnie adventure to Haifa

We slept until a little after 7. I woke up with a really sore ankle. Has never happened before, but it went away after a few minutes. Downstairs he watched Wild Kratts and I got oatmeal for breakfast. When he went to the bathroom he asked me if hammers could break bones, like the dog bone he found in the dirt last year. He talked about metal and said that ‘amphacork’ was the strong metal from his planet. Then he was telling me about the subs he has that carry a lot of people.

His wood sculpture came apart so he re-glued it using more glue. He learned that you need to use more to make it stay together. He found little Mickey Mouse coloring book set from an airplane flight and got the markers out from it. I found a pencil case from Korea that he could put them in and he liked it and wants to use it now. I took a shower and he played a little Angry Birds. As we got ready to go he was asking a lot of questions bout knives and glue. He couldn’t find one of his shoes, and we remembered he had tied it to me using some of his pajamas last night.

We left at 9:30. He told me more about his amfihsubs. Which are actually airplanes he builds. They have printing presses on them and are for discovering things. Kind of like helicopters but more complicated. We listened to “I Want to Know” by the Thompson Twins and he requested it on repeat.

We were headed to the science center in Hadera. As we drove by the mall he spotted a couple of those blow up wavy arm guys. He hasn’t seen any for a long time, and knows them from one of the Treehosue books. We got to the science center and went in, only to find that the main museum is closed again, and actually being remodeled now.

We rolled a few coins down the vortex thing, then we went back to the car and headed north to Haifa. We were listening to an ‘Indie Songs for the Family’ playlist and the Broken Social Scene cover of “Puff the Magic Dragon” came on and he reminded me he didn’t want sleepy songs because he didn’t want to take a nap.

We parked in our usual dead end. We were in the science center before 12. No play area, and we headed straight to science after the bathroom. We went to the sound room for a few minutes, then I convinced him to go out side and have a snack. We then played around the outside portion. I lifted him in the globe for quite awhile, then he was in the spinning sun. He saw another bot walk on the walking circle thing and he tried that. He wanted to see if he was big enough to do the helicopter by himself, but he was upset to find out that it was chained up.

And then it was back down the water portion, with the different gates and pumps. At the bottom of the hill he spotted the vending machine for the first time. We got a bag of crunchy Cheetos and we sat down and he got to have those for the first time.

I convinced him to go up to the special exhibit. I had mentioned not knowing if it was open. I meant I thought it might be closed down, as it is temporary, and I didn’t want him to be disappointed if it was. But he thought I meant ‘closed’ as in for the day, and it took some convincing him that we could stay in it once we were there. There was almost no one else in there.

We did the blurry screen at the beginning, then the big head thing. More blurry screen, then we worked our way through, doing the other big head thing, the happy/sad thing, the coloring the circles and putting them on the screen, etc. There is the digital map of computer virus attacks, and he talked about how it was network connections between his labs that he has all over the world. Next, we did the Pictionary game where the computer tries to guess what you’re drawing. He was mainly silly about it, but a few times took it serious and got the computer to recognize his drawings.

Finally, we went back to the beginning and played with the blurry screen again. He got the props and asked me to use them as props and to use the area in front of the screen as my stage and put on a play. Perhaps an idea from preschool? So I did a version of Beauty and the Beast.

We headed back to the building, and this time got a strawberry banana juice from the machine and drank part of that. He decided he did want to stop at a beach on the way home, so we got going t 2:45. Outside the science center he spent some time finding peach and maroon colored rocks. We got back to the car (he was walking and having me carrying him—we’re using the bike less and less). Along the way he talked about how he has sensors that automatically count all the cats and birds that we see, and it doesn’t include duplicates.

In the car we were listening to music. He fell asleep from 3:20 to 4 when I woke him up at Hadera Stream Park. This is the stream that runs just south of the power plant. We parked on the south side. He was slow to wake up, and I carried him down to the beach. It was really windy, and we stopped to put his sweatshirt on after a minute. We got down to the beach. August said he didn’t want to play there, as it was too shelly, but I think it was mainly too windy. Because then he started following bird tracks and looking for treasures. As we were walking back along the stream, a small round thing was blowing along the ground and he followed it, and saved it before it blew into the stream.

We then followed the path up the stream as far as we could. We stopped to look at some of the sculptures, and to throw a stick in one of the fountains that flows into the river. As we looked across at the power plant he said the four smokestacks were different sizes. It was an optical illusion as they were progressively farther away from us. He found a nice piece of pumice and that was the word of the day. He said it was like soft white rock he’s found at school. He found a really big piece of it, but then left it behind when he hurt himself a little somehow.

We heard an announcement over the loudspeaker that the park was closing, and listing the cars still, including our Skoda. The signs had said open until dark, but apparently it meant sunset, which was a few minutes away (about 5:05). We got to the just before 5, not the last one, and got going at sunset.

We were home at 5:30. We had quiche for dinner, then made popcorn and read Amulet book 5. He bit his tongue. A bad one, and he spit blood-covered popcorn on the couch. He then kept running around the house, rubbing blood on his sleeves, screaming, anytime he could get away from me. I had to yell “Stop!” to get his attention. The blood slowed, and we read more of Amulet and ate more popcorn, finishing it.

He asked me, “Dada, next summer can we go to a house that has a TV? So I can watch movies?” We went upstairs and he was looking at out space heater and asked if a stick would burn if it touched it. I asked how long the stick was on there, because it wouldn’t burn if it was a quick touch. He replied,”No, it sitted on there for as long as a bird sitted on a wire.” He took a long time on the toilet, and I did some reading. We did his bath, then we skyped with Carly. She asked, “What was the best part of the day?” He said, “The best part of the day is you” and leaned over and hugged me.

Carly said that the Alex and Cherie’s flight was 9 hours late. August asked, “Did they make a joke in security?” I guess we had mentioned not making jokes to security to him at some point. I took a shower and then we discussed why we have 1 of some organs and 2 of others, which we’ve wondered about before.

In the bedroom he played with his wooden sculpture. With a straw and bracelet thing attached it has turned into a musical instrument and he made music. We put lotion on his hand and lip and had lights off before 9. He requested a visualization and we did a visualization where he was an ant getting food and taking it to the nest. We talked about how the heater regulates temperature and ‘thermostat’ was a word of the day.

It was hard to get to sleep but he really tried, rolling around a lot, and pressing his forehead and cheek against mine. He fell asleep at 9:40 while holding onto my arm.

Coin vortex: