He was up at 6:40. I tried to run up and put him back to sleep, but he was awake. I took him down and he cuddled with Carly on the couch for a minute. Carly headed to work and he watched Pink Panther. We had oatmeal for breakfast and he played a little Gro Forest. He was impatient to get going, and we packed up and everything and left the house at 8:18. As we walked out he said, “I sense there’s a little dew in the air.”
The parking lot at the train station was already packed with commuter traffic. Clearly not big enough. We parked in our now usual spot and walked. He said he released robots again. There was a blue team and pink team. One studied soy beans, one studied pine trees.
The trains went smoothly, and we didn’t have to wait more than 10 minutes for any transfer. We rode it down to HaHagana, then transferred to the airport, then took the new train to Jerusalem. Along the way we played Polytopia on the platforms, read Ben Braver, and looked out the windows. The train to Jerusalem is interesting as there are a total of 5 tunnels and some good views.
The whole trip took about an hour and a half. We got off, found the #16 bus and hopped on. Found out we needed to buy a bus card. The card and trip were 10.90, so not a big deal. Got off and walked to HaMesila Park, only to realize that said park is a 2km long old railway line converted to a trail. We were trying to find the chalk festival that was in part of it. I went back to the description and it said it was at reading station. So August and I googled that and ended up walking a kilometer to the south end. Along the way August climbed onto a sign along the trail and pretended to nap. There was a playground and reading station (a free library place, apparently), but no people.
It was now 11:45. August looked at a big book of photos, then found an old paintbrush. He was banging it on things, making different sounds, and said that each sound attracted a different animal. He that that this was actually his power. When I said that and eating everything, he told me he’d just been lying to me the whole time, and when I said I’d thought I’d seen him eating crazy stuff he said it had just been a dream.
I found a copy of Sylvain Cypel’s Walled: Israeli Society at an Impasse and A Wrinkle in Time. I figured out that there was another reading station at the north end of the park, about 1.5 km back the way we had come. But he was done looking, and I agreed.
We started walking back towards a bus stop. Along the way we stopped at a drinking fountain and refilled, then we found a Big Apple Pizza and had lunch. He had a slice of cheese and I had olive. We shared what we thought was a bottle of lemonade, but turned out to be grapefruit, and we enjoyed that. He saw a machine full of bouncy balls, and, after making sure I had enough to buy another bus card for our ride back (we had no idea where to refill the first one), I gave him five shekels to get one. He got a yellow ball.
We walked up to the bus stop and had a few minutes to sit on the ground and play Polytopia. We bought a new card on the 14 bus and we rode it 20 minutes to the stop near the science center. August was very excited when I gave him one of the bus cards to keep. It was something, like a debit card, that he could really (potentially) put real money on.
It was just a couple minute walk to the science center. We went in and it was packed with school groups. As I guessed, however, it cleared out in about 10 minutes. August asked for money for the vortex thing. I gave him a 10 agorot, and he threw it right in the center, which we both thought was quite funny. While it was busy we sat and played his turn on his watch game for getting his 60 minute goal for the day. He then had me carry him through the hall of mirror things. We looked at optical illusions, including a couple we hadn’t really looked at before.
While it was still busy we had walked over to the big iron ball lay machine. He told me to go play by myself and he would just watch. He was pretty amused by that. We went back after it cleared out and spent most of our time there. We did the ball thing, him cracking loads of balls up to the top with the lift, and then played with the scale, with me lifting him and him lifting the backpack. Finally, he figured out what each handle did on the gear machine.
The other thing that we focused on was a new step challenge thing, where you step on colored lights as fast as possible. Reflexes and all of that. We spent 10 minutes or so on that.
He was finished, so we headed out. Last night, August said he was okay with walking back to the train station if it was 1.6km (the walk from here to school) or less. Google said it was 1.7km, but I pointed out that Google seemed to miss a shortcut. Now, he said he preferred to take a bus. Again, we had cards but no money on them, and the nearest bus stop was a 7 minute walk in the direction we were going anyway. So we got walking. August started a game of I Spy along the way. Also, he spotted a little column thing and said it looked like the 5 shekel coin.
The street I thought was a shortcut was, indeed, a shortcut. It was a road that went through a bus area. You couldn’t drive through, it looked like, but walking seemed fine. I carried him most of the time. He was still getting pretty hot and sweaty by the time we got there, but didn’t complain at all.
We bought tickets and put them on our transit card this time. Think it saves us a shekel as opposed to paper tickets. We went in and took the long, long sets of escalators down (on the way in we could only find elevators up). We missed the 3:00 train by seconds. Which was fine, as we were in no hurry to get home. We went back and August went to the bathroom (he had last gone when we arrived at the station—I later realized I hadn’t gone all day. Which means we should be drinking more water, but we refilled our water bottles through the day and drank from drinking fountains a cope of times. It was a sweaty day), then I got him a small bag of the Bamba (the puffed peanut-flavored snack) for him.
We got upstairs seats on the 3:30 train. More Ben Braver, some Dragons Beware, Polytopia, and looking out the window and we retraced our route through three trains to Bet Yehoshua. We had upstairs seats on all of the trains except for the ones between downtown and the airport, which are only one-story trains. We ate some more snacks and Cheerios, and every time we went in a tunnel he would ask “Hey, who turned the lights out?” At one point he randomly asked “Does Ruby actually not have an iPad?”
At Bet Yehoshua we followed the crowds and went out the west side, then realized we were parked on the west. My card let us back in the gate, but not out the other side. An attendant let us out the wheelchair gate though. We walked back to the car (August recalled his science robots as we did so) and we were home before 5:30. August had almost fallen asleep on the short car ride back.
I took him in and he cuddled with Carly. They then worked on a circuit. He said he was going to test how she dealt with failure by having her child a circuit with the broken capacitor. They went outside, and I started making a pasta dish. I made a version just for August with pesto and broccoli, and prepped the rest of the veggies to finish a version for me and Carly tomorrow, as we ate other things.
Back inside he heard the ice cream truck, then asked Carly to go try to catch it but fail. Really dealing with this idea of it being okay to fail, as that’s why he stopped even asking for the ice cream truck, as he was afraid that we wouldn’t catch it and he’d get upset. August asked me something about the circuit set, and I made a joke about doing a ‘circuit’ of the house, and explained that meant to go around something. A word of the day.
Carly went upstairs. He wanted to earn an ice cream sandwich, but needed 3 coins. He made the beds, then we read Bob Books. I told him about how he’d actually hadn’t read to Carly the previous night. He agreed to read extra today. He read 5 books to me: The Trip, which he added to his ‘read’ pile, then Sun Sets, Samantha, The Swimmers, and As Big As.
He got his ice cream sandwich and I did dishes. He then did more circuits with Carly, making one with a light. He then turned off all the lights, then thought it was hilarious to close me in the bathroom with the circuit set. Upstairs we discussed birthday plans on the bed and he flopped on it. He tickled himself with his toothbrush a lot. We read Lucky Beans. Carly came in about 9:20 and I left them.
Playing on the train:
Insanely long leg:
Summoning animals with a paint brush:
Stepping game:
Circuit set in the dark:
