He slept all the way to 8:20. I went up and he was sitting on the couch, drinking from his water bottle. I carried him down and he cuddled on Carly and ate pita toast with her. I read over half of Timepocalypse, then when I got up to get him some more frozen mango he started watching a Wild Kratts about coral. Then about the subnivean zone.
He then wanted to play a Brother and Sister game based on that. He was shivering, or pretending to shiver, as I took him up. We went upstairs, and he came up with a scenario (from the show) where Brother dug in the snow and exposed a family of meadow voles, making them cold. That’s why he was shivering. He told me about how they have groups of babies. I taught him ‘litter’, so that was a word of the day. He did lots of sneezing through the morning. Brother and Sister took the voles home and made a nest for them and put them in the closet of their lab so they could finish hibernating in there and be safe from all the other animals.
We played several variations of that, then went downstairs to take things apart. We were listening to Patti Smith and Soundwalk Collective. As we took things apart, he was Tigey. All his story. I found him out in the woods and took him home. Parents were at a conference and Sister was at a scouts meeting. I taught him to use a screwdriver. He hid Tigey from sister and took the tiger for show and tell the next day.
Carly got him spaghetti and broccoli for lunch, and I went up to do some work. He read Before and After and Willy’s Wish to Carly and made the beds. I let him choose a new civilization on Polytopia for his two stars.
We got going and left at 1:20. He was talking about multiple universes and everything and told us, “There’s something called the multispace with a photomile between them: 6.2 trillion miles.” We just chatted and looked out windows for awhile. He pointed out the SAP building. We had discussed it in advance and I said we’d play Polytopia at the restaurant. But he asked if he could play in the car and when I said no he got upset. He was then quiet and fell asleep at 2:20.
He slept for 20 minutes or so, until we parked in Abu Ghosh. Carly had to squeeze the car through some narrow streets. I carried him and we walked around for a couple minutes. We saw an old broken car down below us and August liked that, then we walked back by the Benedictine Abbey and found that it opened at 2:30.
We chose the Old City Restaurant & Houmus House and found a table. We ordered hummus with eggs, labaneh, and schnitzel and fries. And I got a tea with sage. August and I played Polytopia. We took our time, and when we were done we got a big container of hummus to take to the party then walked over and looked around in the abbey, and August and I went and looked at the broken car again.
We then drove on to Marc’s place, north of Sabeel, for his party. August was a little nervous, but the gathering was outside and that helped. At that point Andraous was there, as well as a couple from Sweden. Carly and August got out his iPad and played Magnus Chess, which I think they’d played earlier as well.
They were playing that when the pastor of St. Andrew’s showed up with his family and three kids. The youngest, David, I knew was 5 (Marc had told me about them), but it turned out David was just 11 days older than August. He watched August and Carly playing, but was quiet, and wouldn’t really join in to play until Carly suggested a change to Toca Food. David, and also his older brother Joseph, knew the game and really got into it with August. August did a great job sharing the iPad with David as they fed the monsters food and tried to give them foods that would make them breathe fire. August was using his watch to set timers, as supposedly they had to cook the foods for a certain number of minutes (they tried 5, 10, and 15, I think) in order for it to work.
We shared some lemonade with mint with August, and Carly and I had a Taybeh beer. Andraous was manning the barbecue and there were burgers, but we were pretty full and didn’t eat a whole lot. We did try the barbecued halloumi cheese though, which was really good. And later there was vanilla and caramel ice cream, and August had some of that, and some watermelon. The kids did spend a lot of time on the iPad, but August did a lot of talking to David, and they also wandered around a bit. August wouldn’t participate in the hide and seek, but he was amused by it, and he also threw some rocks around. When Joseph and their older sister were fighting with sticks, August said, “Nice swordfighting technique.”
Omar and Heba finally showed up, and were there about 20 minutes before we left. They didn’t bring the kids though as Nasir has been sick and they think that Ghada just got it as well. But it was good to talk to them for a few minutes. Nasir is almost 6 months.
We left just before 7. August was telling us about the multiverse again and told us that the ‘quoltispace’ is even bigger, and is 4 quadrillion years old. He and I played Infinite Arcade in the car and then I read Monsters Beware. We were home about 8.
He did a little taking things apart by himself and Carly made a smoothie. He did his turn on his watch game, then he asked me to read Bob Books to him: Dress Up andWilly’s Wish. We did the Brother and Sister vole game, then Carly gave him a bath. He had Cheerios, and I mentioned how, after all the talk of really, really big numbers, that the actual universe doesn’t seem that old to me now, at 13.77 billion years old. Carly agreed. August said he had figured out it was really 13.78 billion years old.
I left them about 9:20. Carly was exhausted and basically trying to bribe him to let her sleep. He was waking her up to ask her to sing and she’d fall back to sleep. Don’t think it took him too long though.
At the party 1:
At the party 2:
At the party 3:
At the party 4:
