I was up at 6:30. Carly came in a couple minutes later to say she was going to work, and a couple minutes after that August got up and took a big jump off the bed and headed towards the door. I said “ZZ” and he swerved, lay down next to me, and fell right back to sleep. At 7:48 the reverse happens, as I was now sitting on the bed, working. He got up, I called to him, he came up and climbed over me, and went back to sleep again. Just before 8 he got up to go to the bathroom.
We went downstairs and finished issue one of My Little Pony. We got breakfast (oatmeal and mango) and started a second. He then wanted to play with the keyboard.
We took it to the bedroom and he played with it in the dark after we closed the window and turned off the light. He couldn’t think of how to use it in a Brother game so he changed his mind.
He played with the toilet paper holder sculpture and sang about how it produces four things that are important to living, but didn’t say what the four things are. We worked on the fort a bit, using tape to close the boxes and then taping the boxes together to make a wall.
We went downstairs and he wanted the fizzy water. It was pretty flat though. He put some in freezer to see what would happen. He made the table magnetic, then used his mouthwash. He then went outside to drink from the hose. Back inside he wanted to use his iPad time and he watched Dr. Binocs on diarrhea and hiccups, and then episode 7 of Berenstain Bears.
He helped a little with putting the box from Ikea together. Then we finally got going to the mall. We drove over. I had given him the same candy option for getting my hair cut. What I hadn’t anticipated was the barber being closed. He still wanted something from the candy stand. Luckily, I found the bins of 1 shekel candies and let him get two of them. They were tiny, but he was excited: “I get TWO bars!”
We went to Tiv Taam to get some grocery shopping. He chose dried apricots as a snack for when the girls and Natalie came over later. He did great in the grocery store but was enjoying it too much. I had to keep hurrying him as he was playing around. We finally paid and hurried back. He had wanted to eat a yogurt right away, but it was already 12:40 so I let him eat it in the car. He was a little disappointed in it. It had honey, along with nuts and stuff, on the side, so he expected it to taste more like honey.
We were home at 12:50. He found a seed on the ground and wanted to plant it. He got a little pot, we filled it with soil, and he planted and watered it. I was then putting away groceries and getting snacks ready. We hadn’t had lunch either. He was playing with his balloon with rice in it and he threw it at the floor. It popped, sending rice everywhere. It was pretty dramatic.
Natalie, Corinne, and Elise got here a little after 1. They had brought cookies from Gutale and we added them to the table. August didn’t take any time in warming to them and showing them around. He liked being the center of attention. We sat at the table and had the snacks. I was talking to them so wasn’t watching August, but I think he snuck several cookies—he wouldn’t tell me later how many he had had.
Eventually, August took the girls outside to show them something, I think about the plants. They went in the Zinnie house and sat on the bench. Which turned out to be really, really, dusty. We hadn’t been in it since getting back. They then played with the hose and Corinne got upset when Elise sprayed her. I wasn’t keeping track of who got upset, but August was.
Back inside they went upstairs and August explained the rooms and sleeping arrangements. They found the cupboard in his art kitchen with yarn, and started unrolling it, seeing how far it would go. After they stretched that all through the house and outside they got another color and tied it on and kept going. Four colors in total, all three of them working together.
Elise had brought a small spray bottle as a mister. August wanted his, but we couldn’t find the lid to his. He found the bottle of tea tree oil though, and we dumped it into another container to save it. I washed the bottle a couple times, with soap, but it still came out smelling pretty strong, as you can’t get in the tube. August and Elise had fun spraying all over though to run water through it, including misting me as I walked down the stairs. Elise and August also worked together making a table for the cardboard house out of the Apple computer/iPad boxes. Corinne walked up and picked it up by the pedestal piece and it came untaped. Elise now got upset and August pointed out that they had both been upset once.
We all cleaned up together. August didn’t help with the yarn, but then Corinne spilled couscous or something on the floor as she was trying to get some to put in a balloon. August chose to do the vacuuming as his contribution. We got all the yarn rolled back up, and it was rolled much tighter now. They left at 3:36.
August was immediately bored, so we played a couple levels of the new Inventioneers game I had put on his iPad. Like monster physics, sort of, where you’re given certain pieces and try to figure out how to use them so that an object ends up where it’s supposed to go.
He ate a bunch of the pate he had chosen at the store and crackers. He spilled water drink on himself and had to change shirts. He asked “What’s ‘time critical’?” So a word of the day. We read more My Little Pony, finishing 2 and starting 3. He vacuumed the rice from the balloon from earlier, and I made spaghetti. He wasn’t entirely happy with me being busy in the kitchen.
Carly got home around 5:30. We ate, and he wouldn’t tell Carly what was in his cup (vanilla soymilk) and we had fun pretending it was different things, like beetle juice. He then invented eye/face dances and asked me to take videos of him. He was a little disappointed though as he felt that his eyes were moving around more than they actually were.
He and Carly went out to water plants. He went to show her which ones he and Elise had watered earlier. My inside he was flipping over one of his new Minnie Mouse shoes and realized it always lands right side up. He sang a “High technology” song that was really cool, then wanted his “transporter”—the zipper pull he had found at the school, then left in the classroom. They had found it in her classroom the following day, but lost it again that same day. I distracted him by suggesting the disk of titanium that Jeff had given him.
We went upstairs and played a Brother game. Bar had the titanium for making a virtual globe to track anything, something else that made portals, infrared glasses, and magnetic shoes that we never used. Brother used the globe to find more Blue Mooka. It turns out they live in Antarctica, so the one they found in South America was lost. They then went to South America to study them in their natural habitat, taking their parents along. August asked about how thick and old the ice was, and he ended up studying the pictures/charts at https://lima.nasa.gov/antarctica/ There was also a story about rescuing the mother when she was lost. She was in the sun and they got attacked by aliens.
We went down to see if Carly was ready to go get our anniversary ice cream. August used a small balloon as a squeeze toy and said “I’m the reuse person!” We left at 7:10 and drove up into town and went to the new place. August got a scoop of the graham cracker kind and a scoop of cookies and cream. Carly and I shared a scoop of the cookies and the strawberry cream. We ate sitting up at the counter and took an anniversary ice cream selfie, which I don’t think we’ve done since Korea.
We went downstairs to the grocery store but the bananas were really green, so we walked down to the new fruit and veggie market and got bananas and broccoli there. The bananas were for making banana bread tomorrow.
Back at home August took Carly aside and told her he still didn’t like the iPad time limits. A good conversation overall, although he got upset when I ‘overheard’ (I was in the kitchen doing dishes) part of it when I wasn’t supposed to). I eventually joined the conversation. Mainly he is worried about not being able to watch the last couple minutes of an episode, so we made some assurances about that, and he made the rule that he could only watch the end when time run out if there was a couple minutes left, not if he’d just started something. When he was allowed to get his iPad to watch one educational video now he kissed it, but then said “You’re all my best friends.” Earlier, when we got home, he had said that mama was his best friend because Home had said you could only have one best friend. Carly watched the Bright Side First Aid Myths video with him as I finished the dishes, then she took him up for a quick bath.
He was still hungry, so Carly made him oatmeal. While he ate that I read My Little Ponies #3. We brushed his teeth, he said good night to Carly, and I finished the last couple pages in bed. Lights out at 9:35. Trying to inch it earlier. He wanted me to talk about times I had been sick or hurt. I told him about food poisoning in Vietnam. He already told him about falling off my bike. He kept talking, full of all sorts of ideas, as I tried to tell him stories. He insisted that Mama tells him two stories, so then I told him about being sick and (I think) Mom and Dee surprising me with a Garfield stuffed animal. When discussing food poisoning he talked about how he cooks in his lab and uses microscopes and things to make sure there is no germs. And he told me thatUV lights kill germs. That reminded me of the cupboards of metal cups in Korea that they had everywhere. He was asleep by 10:10.
Singing as he plays with the ribbons:
Keyboard in the dark:
Singing as he plays with the ribbons 2:
Yarn through the house:
Singing as he plays with the ribbons 3:
Playing with the mister:
Eyeball dance 1:
Eyeball dance 2:
