Saturday, January 26: Taya’s birthday and the Tel Aviv beach

We got up at 6:40. The first thing he said was, “Is there no school today?” After a minute we got out of bed. He first did a very random “Moose” song and dance. He sat on the couch for a few minutes then went to the bathroom. He then asked me if it is possible to hammer nails in our walls. He told me about the “3-I-I-B…G-I-I-C” parts in his robot brain.

He got the circuit board again, and this time wanted to use a knife to break pieces off. I let him use a steak knife for a few seconds to saw the fragile pieces, then remembered the pliers had a wire cutter portion. He used them to get another small piece off, and we used the macro lens to photograph them.

He wanted to watch Wild Kratts, and yesterday we had realized there is only one season of Wild Kratts available on Netflix now. There are full episodes on Netflix, but not a ton, and I don’t like the ads. So we purchased a pack of episodes on iTunes. Which are nice, because they have the portions at the beginning and end with the real Kratt brothers. He watched the episode where they do a race to find the fastest animal and I made pancakes.

I was watching the episode with him and they explained what ‘stamina’ means. I said it was the word of the day, and he replied, “No. Not the word of the day. Wild Kratts can’t choose the word of the day.” He wore the strainer on his head as he watched.

We wrapped Taya’s present. Earlier he had drawn a “Snowman kind of character” on the inside of the paper. As I wrapped it, he decided the ends should only be partly folded, meaning the present basically had wings. He taped them solidly.

We ate pancakes and strawberries, then we opened the packages from yesterday. One was a t-shirt about reading that Cherie had bought for me. She had mentioned it on Facebook, but I’d forgotten about it. It is a nice shirt. He took a photo of me wearing it so I could send it to Carly and Cherie, and he decided it was a good bed and curled up on it on the couch.

The other package was the Final Straws, which I ordered several months ago and were supposed to come by Christmas, but the company had screwed up shipping. He really liked them, especially his, which is rainbow-colored and has a pink case. Mine is silver with a blue case. He remembered the juice from the science center and got it out of the fridge to drink with his straw. He was excited that it is long enough to use with the bottle without having to hold it up. Then, we cleaned it, and he liked the squeegee part that you pull through to clean it. I know that will be Carly’s favorite part.

I took a shower and he waited in the bathroom with me, playing around with things. We got dressed and ready to go. He said, “Isn’t it cool that I have Taya, a friend in PKB, And I’m older.” He needed to go to the bathroom and said, “With you watching…because of monsters.” He had earlier said it was scary being in the bedroom while I take a shower and that was why he had come in with me.

We left right at 10:30. We were to the mall at 11, but the entrance to the parking garage was gated shut. We drove around the big block, following another car, and found a random building to park in, south of the hospital. I didn’t think until later about how parking at the mall would have been free. And, indeed, the entrance I thought was to a hospital parking lot also leads to the mall.

We walked past the hospital and to the mall and ran into Eve and family as we were heading down to the Gymboree. This party was a big production. Probably 30+ kids, food all over, an entertainer running games with the kids, etc. It was a bit overwhelming at first. August was most attracted to the food, and he started with a sweet roll while I had a bagel with salmon. I then generally made him go treat/healthy/treat/healthy. Surprisingly, a couple times he chose to just eat a big leaf of lettuce, instead of something like a strawberry.

He was in and out of the show. Sat on my lap for much of it. Didn’t really want to participate. Couldn’t blame him. It was pretty crazy, and in a little room that was too small. When the show finished he did play around in the room a bit, especially after pizza came and we had a slice and then the cake came and we sang happy birthday. He liked sneaking into Taya’s birthday chair when she wasn’t there.

So now we went into the actual play area. Still quite chaotic, but much better. Not really up to Korean standards (the ceilings were low, for one, which made the whole thing rather claustrophobic) but still fun. He went on the slow merry-go-round thing, then did some bouncing, then threw some cubes back and forth with Eve. Zoe took him back in the bouncing area. I was able to do some reading while he played with them.

He wandered out of the play area and claimed he was bored at once. We practiced the telephone number song. We now had cupcakes and he got a goody bag from Cassie. Back in the play area he jumped with Zoe again and I played a ball throwing game, trying to hit a balloon we tied to the railing of the bouncy area, for awhile before he went back to playing with Zoe and Eve.

We went and found the bathroom, then played together in the ball pit area (after he had me show him how deep it was) and basketball. It was emptying out now as the party wound down. Taya came in and he and Taya started playing. I was able to talk to Cassie for a few minutes. She seemed sick (her voice was mostly gone) and worn out, but was heading to Belgium on the Space Camp trip tomorrow. When Cassie was leaving and trying to get Taya to go with some relatives he said, “No. I want her to be here forever and ever and ever and ever.”

A few minutes later he told me that Taya was still in the ball area. The relatives were just trying to call to her to get her out. I went and told her it was time to go and she obediently headed out. August and I then played hide and seek for a good long time. It was perfectly developmentally appropriate for him. He would never have handled looking for me for 10 or 20 seconds before. But this was just the right combination of safe and scary for him.

We were the last people there for quite awhile. It was technically open, but there was no one else there anymore. We left at 2:20 as he wanted to explore the rest of the mall. We found a gourmet chocolate stand and he talked about how he could get one some other time: “I want to come to this mall another day. Like once a week.”

We did a little Zinnie adventure as I carried him and he pointed which direction to go. It led us outside and around some sidewalks by the hospital, then we headed to the car. He stopped to examine a leaking fire pipe and discussed wanting rain boots. He spent some time chasing pigeons that weren’t too afraid of him, and found a broken lighter that he really wanted to be useful somehow.

He wanted to go to the same beach in Tel Aviv that we had been to with Carly. I drove that way. I figured it might be busy, but wasn’t prepared for what I would find. August fell asleep at 3:05, about 5 minutes before I got to the garage—the same one we had parked in with Carly. I drove around the whole place for a few minutes, then finally found a family getting in the car. But then up ahead of me I saw a car pull out. So I gave up that spot and headed up there. Only to find it wasn’t actually a spot. I parked there, and thought about chancing it. There were cars parked illegally all over the place. But the parking seemed to have calmed down, and since August was still asleep I got back in the car and kept looking. Lasted another 20 minutes or so before I gave up and paid 14 shekels for the pleasure of driving around the parking garage for more than half an hour.

And I had seen in action something I’d recently read about, where people jump out of cars and scour the parking lot looking for a spot, and then stand there saving it until their friend can show up with the car. Really disadvantages cars with only one adult in them.

Then, the side lane that you come out on was bumper to bumper, even though the Main Street was empty of traffic. It has its own light, and took another 10 minutes to make it to the light at the end of the block. But finally some good luck. I had put in directions to Poleg Beach in Netanya, but figured I’d keep my eyes open for another garage a couple blocks away. I didn’t have to do that though, as I found a spot on the street. Curb wasn’t painted. It was by a construction zone. I inspected the sign, and it appeared to say just no parking until 3pm. The family parked in front of me showed up and I asked them, and he confirmed my reading of the sign. We had found free street parking just a block from the beach.

August was waking up. It was now 4. A 55 minute nap, and he had napped 3 days in a row. I think I’ve been tiring him out. We walked to the beach and the first activity was having me bury his feet. We would move a little each time. I then suggested we walk up the beach a bit to see if we could find the playground. As we walked we saw a big flock of seagulls attracted by something on the beach by the water. August and I both thought they were big shells, but he went closer to investigate and it was rolls of bread. It turned out we were farther away from the playground than I thought, so we just picked a spot and started working on a sand sculpture.

We worked on a sculpture using our sand toys. At one point he said, “My teachers always says ‘Add more!’” We saw a couple of drones flying above the beach and they looked pretty cool. He said he wants one, and was sad when I suggested it might not be right away. He was cuddling on me and was giving me lots of raspberries on my neck and cheeks and hands today. He said he learned it from Mama.

We watched the sun go down at 5:07 and played a little more. I was a little kid getting my sculptures destroyed. We left at 5:20. He said he needed to use the bathroom so we walked a bit further north to the bathroom. On the way we practiced the phone number song and I asked him who he could ask for help here if he couldn’t find me. He thought about it for a minute and said, “Someone with kids.” That was a great answer. We talked a little more about what to do if you’re lost, and as he went to the bathroom he told me, “The lost kid area in my laboratory is like a zoo…when the parents aren’t there I can just look like them.” “I even have have a lost parent room. It has iPads to do your work on.”

From there we walked to the car and were driving at 5:45. We had interesting discussions on the way home as we drove through Tel Aviv. He asked about surgery, which had come up sometime earlier, and how all the blood doesn’t just come out of your body when they cut into you. I told him there is a really sharp knife call a scalpel and scalpel became our word of the day. We talked a bit more about that and he started talking about how he experiments on people in his lab. This led to a discussion of ethical experiments and what that means. He assured me that the only people that he kills in his lap to get their blood were people that wanted to die. He explained that they were all people who have lived full lives and are now ready to die and asked for his help so he helped them die. It was like a full argument for euthanasia, which he has never heard about before.

Earlier, we talked about his upcoming birthday and he has changed his mind. He now wants a party just like Taya’s and at the same place and with a lot of people. Carly wasn’t too excited to hear this. He talked about the cake he wanted and he said he wants stars, infinity signs, and computers on top with birthday cake icing. He wants his to be round though.

As we got closer to home he talked about having a satellite in space, and it had tubes from it to see with and they had actual eyes at the end. We ended up discussing the possibilities of alien life. Oh, and he talked about wanting to go on a bus ride again and seemed particularly fond of sitting at the bus stop, waiting for a bus. We were home at 6:35.

For dinner I made him a chicken patty and broccoli and he ate a good deal of broccoli. He went to the bathroom, and he asked, “Can I control my body?” We got into that, and it turned out he particularly was talking about babies, and he said he never wanted to have one, and he wondered if mamas just told their bodies to have a baby. I gave the briefest explanation, but he mainly focused on the DNA combining and inherited traits, and what he got from me and mama.

We made popcorn and buttered it and sat on the couch. He chose the fourth Shrek movie and we watched it together. I liked it more than I thought I would. When he finished the bowl of popcorn he said he needed another bowl as there was still a lot (an hour) of the movie left. I got him some Cheerios instead. I haven’t seen him watch a full movie, so that was interesting to see.

We skipped a shower and went upstairs before 9. He went to the bathroom and peed, but then when he sat on the bed there was a little poop. He had thought he just had gas. He said, “I hate my body.” He had said something earlier on the toilet when he had dripped some pee. I assured him it was not a big deal and we just changed the sheet.

I said we could never skip brushing his teeth, and he speculated on if there was ever a scenario where we would. I said if we were out late and he fell asleep in the carry and we just carried him up to bed we would probably just let him sleep and not brush his teeth. He said, “What about when you say you love me a ton of Qs?” I said I’d say it to him in his sleep, and told him I sometimes said things to him in his sleep, thinking at least part of his mind was at least hearing it. He said he couldn’t, and it kind of blew his mind when I talked about how his brain wasn’t fully off when he was asleep. He said that when he was asleep it was like he was dead. But then he remembered he was a robot, and concluded, “The only part of me that’s on when I sleep is a warning system.”

He wanted a visualization about pee, so he was a drop of pee, produced by a kidney and ending up being destroyed by a waste treatment plant. It took him a lot of trying to fall asleep, and he partly blamed the visualization. He said it wasn’t calming, but was too funny. He was quiet for several minutes, then asked, “What if you don’t use a sharp knife to cut you open?” He then ended up, somehow, with more, he thought, poop on his finger. I whisked him to the bathroom to wash him well. Back in bed there was another period of silence. He then said, “Dada” and put his hand on my throat before finally falling asleep at 10:05.

Opening the Final Straws: