He woke up at 6:35 and came out. Carly got him back to sleep. She doesn’t have school today, but went in to work on her National Boards renewal. He got up at 7:25. Cuddled on the couch for more than 10 minutes, then asked for an imagining game. We spent the next hour or so on that. He was a “New blue kind of animal that’s smaller than that…and the nametag says ‘endangered.” He then game me a backstory, saying I was a kid whose parents were dead so I could go where I wanted. I was finding him in a jungle. We ended up basing his animal on a coati, but a distant cousin in Africa. So its scientific name was nadia mookima, and the common name was blue mook, but he said his individual name was Leaf. As we played we went up and then down stairs, and listened to Eno’s Music for Airports. We talked about ‘conservation status’ and searched for the chart and discussed what it all meant. I wrote a scientific paper about his species and he had me buy more equipment to expand my lab.
We then made a tent out of the pillows and chairs. He ate strawberries and had oatmeal for breakfast, then we did table time. Well, we don’t actually have a low table for table time yet, so we got the wooden cutting board and put a piece of paper over it.
First, we spent just a few minutes on writing numbers, starting with the stencils. I modeled how to write 1 to 5, then ‘5’ was the hardest number for him on Dragonbox Big Numbers so I asked him how many he wanted to practice, and he said five 5s. So he wrote those, no problem.
I then got out the pack of clay and we had fun rolling little balls of clay—an activity that uses the fingers you hold a pencil with. He caught on pretty quickly. My thought had been to then see how high we could stack them, but August also had the idea of making the tiniest balls possible. He said, “I make balls, like, oh-my-gosh small.”
We had listened to Ambient 2, and were now on Ambient 3. I went up to get our swimsuits, and when I came down he was dancing to it in the kitchen. He did that for a couple minutes then asked for electronic music. I put on Underworld’s Born Slippy single/album and he started dancing to that. He’s got all sorts of moves that I have no idea where he came up with them. By the end of the evening we’d finished listening to that as well.
I packed a lunch, but he saw the little sushi and wanted some now. So he ate a bunch of sushi and a cookie. We changed our park plans to a more nature-y place after he wanted to take the net and binoculars. So we went to the Udim Nature Reserve. I said we’re ready to go, and he said, “I haven’t washed my hands.” Points for the cleanliness, but then he got the slightest bit of water down a sleeve and went screeching out of the bathroom flailing his arms, and quickly had his shirt off. Had to get another one.
As we got in the car he asked, “Can water go through steel?” ‘Permeable’ was a word of the day. We got to Udim and parked on the street, then took his bike down a hill, past an equestrian center (August spotted the horses), then were stymied by a closed gate. The Israel National Trail was right on the other side. The gate wasn’t locked, but was big and heavy, and as I worked to open it August was afraid we were trespassing. So we turned around and went back to the car. We drove a few blocks south and parked, then walked down that we. It required heading north, crossing at a bridge, then walking south again. There were some good patches of mud that we had to push the bike through. When a car came I pushed the bike off the side into some bushes that scratched his legs a bit.
He was also getting a bit allergic, so he wasn’t too fond of the trip at this point. The path improved though, and we saw a beekeeper’s hives. We then got to the olive grove that is now a sort of picnic area, with people driving their cars to it and having barbecues. The olive trees are likely remnants of the Palestinian village that sat to the south. Today was the big election day (I don’t want to look at the results) so it was a holiday and there were a lot of people out. August stayed on the bike. I told him I felt like his butler as I served him lunch. He didn’t know what a butler was, so I explained. He that it was really funny when I mentioned butlers answering the door for you and thought I was joking. Anyway, he had remembered to tell me to bring a metal spoon and a stand for his soft-boiled egg, so after he played a little Dragonbox Numbers, I served him his egg. I had the lunch box on my knee as a table, then held the egg steady on top of it. He told me, “You’re acting like a table for tables.”
When he was done eating he saw a face on a tree, so went and took a photo of it. He poured the leftover soy sauce (from a packet) on the ground, and speculated on evaporating soy sauce, then a soy sauce rain. When he asked if that could actually I didn’t tell him the answer, and said we could make a soy sauce evaporation experiment sometime.
He started using the binoculars as we headed back, and we practiced focusing and zooming so he could do that on his own. He had it down pretty well.
We got to the car and started driving. As we headed east through town I stopped as there was a crow in the street dragging a still-living snake. And it was a big snake. I let August get out of his seat and come up to the front seat and we watched it for a minute. Really cool. Our second Israeli snake. Later, I figured out it was likely the largest snake in Israel, although a small one at that. Still, one of the largest snakes I’ve seen.
We got home, changed into our swimsuits, and all three of us (Carly had walked home awhile ago) went to the school. Before we left, August had been playing with the rolling pin and rolled it on his chest and stomach, saying, “Funny? I’m a bunch of dough.”
We got to the pool about 2:30 and stayed over an hour. It was easy to get in. August was a little nervous at first, and in fact earlier had been worried that he would sink more since he is bigger. I tried to convince him that as he’s putting on muscle he’s actually now getting less dense, so would float slightly more. It took him a few seconds in the pool to be convinced, but then was hooked. I got out first and did some reading, and he kept playing with Carly. In the pool I had made up a Grumpy Grandpa Fish voice and said things like, “They don’t call me grumpy grampa fish for nothing.” August was then copying the voice. He changed my line of “In my day, you couldn’t swing a tuna around the reef without hitting 5 or 6 six of them (sharks)” to “In my day, you couldn’t swim around the tide pool without finding a billion of them.”
As we got out he asked me why there weren’t any fish in the pool. That led to a discussion of where fish came from, and he asked, “Where’d the first fish come from?”
At home he played Dragonbox Big Numbers and I went upstairs to work. While I was up he did alone time and taped ribbons together, had a timeout for something, and they read Captain Underpants, almost finishing volume 8 or 9 or something like that. When I came down he was throwing the ball of ribbons at me and I was taking photos. He wanted to store the mess of ribbons up in his “gallery” (as he is now calling the Zinnie room, after I suggested he could show off all his art there), and when I objected he said, “What do you mean? It’s art. I call it art.” I said it was hard to argue with an artist, to which he said, “Yeah, cuz I’m an artist.”
Carly had headed upstairs now, and I got him sushi for dinner, then we shared crackers and cheese and sausage. The latest sausage is called ‘France’ and we both really liked it. He said, “I call it smokey sausage.”
We read three Skybrary books: Tessa Tiger’s Temper Tantrums, Dizzy Dog’s Dizzy Dancing, and Yoko Yak’s Yakety Yakking. Carly came down and got us moving on cleanup time. She took charge of the ribbon and we worked together pretty well, although I had to take August up for a timeout when he kept running across the floor after we told him not to because Mikaela was home.
He had requested that today be a hair washing day, so he chose a treat. As I washed him, it turned out that the treat was actually gum. He did a good job chewing it, and was excited to have gum for the first time. He went and showed Carly. As I dried his hair he told me about a gumball machine he made. “Sorry, but each gumball costs one shekel.” He also made a chemical to dissolve the gum. You could drink it and it would dissolve the gum, and it was safe. It was optional whether the chemical would come with your purchase from the machine. He asked me if I wanted him to make anything in his lab. Earlier I had asked for a 100-foot mechanical snake to slither around, and I had also asked for a huge mechanical bird, and a collapsible water park that would fit in our yard.
We got him ready for bed, and I left them at 8:50.
Rolling playdough balls:
Rolling playdough balls 2:
Dance time 1:
Dance time 2:
Tune on the way back to the car:
Riding down the path:
In the pool again:
Being Grumpy Grandpa Fish:
