He woke up right at 8, as I was about to go in and wake him up. I was sitting out on the couch upstairs, outside the room. We went downstairs. He turned on the air conditioner after a couple minutes on the couch and I got our allergy medicine and cleaned his water bottle. He wanted me to play chess on my iPad. I did that, and he took over, trying to play dumb moves so the computer would win. He hummed and he kept playing.
He ate breakfast and watched a couple plane crash videos on Bright Side. I was hesitant to let him watch them, but they turned out to be positive stories and really interesting and we watched them together. St. Elmo’s fire was the word of the day and he asked about it several times through the day.
We went upstairs for a Brother game. He said he was inspired by the video, but his inspiration was that Brother and Bar would steal from Sister using radars and stuff now. Sigh. They stole pizza, then broke into her secret fort while she was on an intergalactic mission.
He told me he had learned you should start the day by drinking a cup of water: “That’s why I only watch educational videos.”
I worked on the cardboard fort and he made a trip wire sensor thing out of the Bluetooth speaker, yarn, and toilet paper holder sculpture. We then played the Brother game where he plays with his baby sister (August) and they have a sheet cave.
We went downstairs and he asked “What’s a ‘local cave’?” ‘Local’ was the word he didn’t understand. The phrase was from one of the survival riddles videos, I think. I exercised and he watched a video. We ate crackers and meat and hummus for lunch and read volume 4 of My Little Pony, about them becoming pirates. He then had a robot suit and went in the virtual world as we got ready to go.
We headed to school and got in the pool just after 11:30. Rita showed up with Omri, Zohar, and Jonathan just as we were getting in. They came in the big pool with us. Omri and August chased me a bit and they talked some, but didn’t really play together a whole lot in the pool. Eventually, we all got out for a snack. They shared their snacks: a container full of fruit and chips. We shared our pretzels and cereal bars.
When we got out of the pool, August had shown me how he was practicing putting his tongue at the top of the mouth. Before we had left, maybe it was ‘local’, I had had a hard time figuring out a word he was saying that started with ‘l’ and we’d talked about how your tongue behaves differently for ‘w’ and ‘l’.
We headed over to the little pool after lunch. August and Omri first started doing what they did the other day, picking stuff and putting it down the hole. But then Omri had a stomach ache. Her mom took her back to the snack area and she changed and watched a video and rested. Zohar, who is in 4th grade, played with August for several minutes at the bushes. Rita and I watched Jonathan (who is starting at the preschool) in the little pool.
Then August and Zohar came and played in the little pool. I was able to read for a while. August said he was challenging himself and took off his vest and was trying to swim in the little pool. He was then jumping back and forth, making big splashes. Rita went to go swim in the big pool, and Zohar and August went with her. I stayed with Jonathan, playing with a ball and ring that were there. I practiced my Hebrew with him and helped him with English. I think the only English I’ve heard him say is “Oh my goodness”, which Omri says all the time. Sure he’ll pick it up quickly though at school. All 3 of his sisters are fluent.
At one point Juwon, who was in PKC, showed up. Omri took August over to the big pool to meet him, as August didn’t remember him.
In the little pool, Zohar, August, and I played with throwing the ball through the holes on the covering. We then ended up in a big sword fight with the noodles. Omri came and attacked me from the edge of the pool. It was basically 3 on 1. We did variations on that for a long time. We got a lot of exercise. August got hit in the head with noodles several times, and Zohar would say sorry and he would say it was okay.
They left about 3. August had me talk to a woman with two little kids. Her brother and sister-in-law are both subs at the school, although I didn’t recognize the names. He then had me talk to Juwon and his parents. That was fun, as we reminisced about Seoul. It turns out that Juwon’s dad lives in Nowon-go in Sanggye-dong and that he (Juwon’s dad) lived in Nowon-gu for 20 years. I was shocked to find I couldn’t remember the name of our subway station at first, but it came to me before I had to look it up on my phone.
We got going, and stopped at the senior lounge area (where the ping pong is) and had a snack before we drove down to Max, getting in there at 4:15.
August found mirrors sitting on the ground at a slight angle: “Do you know, if I go in this mirror I end up in the hill world, where everyone tumbles.” August spotted USB charging electric fans right away—what I thought was going to be the most difficult item for our AC system—right away. It was the spray bottle that proved difficult. We found a kitchen mister bottle, but it was glass. Finally, at the front counters they had full size plastic spray bottles with smelly stuff in them. August decided that was the sort of bottle he wanted, and we could just dump it out. In between, I realized we hadn’t discussed parameters for what we were getting, so it was slow going as he kept wanting more stuff. We got a couple funnels for him to play with and a new plastic slinky, and maybe a couple other things. I had said in advance that he could get a drink, and he chose a watermelon water. We actually got very little stuff for a trip to Max, but probably could have gotten more if we weren’t distracted by things. August also kept seeing things he thought we could send to Colin, little cheap plastic toys. Which was very nice, but we’d already found something on Amazon that was nicer.
We spent about 50 minutes there in total, and got back to the car in time for our free parking to not have expired. We had been listening to the “Afermath (Here We Go)” remixes from Andy Bell on the way down and he had me add one to his playlist. When we had stopped he had asked to listen to the same song on the way home, so we did.
We were home at 5:25. As we walked in he asked, “What’s a Jedi?” He was pretty crazy with Carly when he went in. Something she hasn’t had to deal with over the summer. They were working on the house again and there was really loud hammering and sawing noise, which August didn’t like. He ate some pasta and pesto. Carly made the cauliflower, nicely burnt, like he likes it, and while she did that we went upstairs to play a Brother game and get away from the noise. Still really loud though. We looked out the window, then he went back in the room and added pillows against the door to add “insulation.”
But when he asked me to get his water bottle and I came back in he somehow pinched his finger in the door as he closed it. He screamed really loudly and Carly came up. He didn’t get upset with us at all, which was really good. Carly cuddled with him on the bed, then she went down to check on the cauliflower. He continued to lay on the bed for several minutes. I checked on him to make sure he wasn’t falling asleep, but then he was.
I carried him downstairs and he just wanted to keep sleeping on the couch. Finally, we woke him up with the suggestions of yummy cauliflower and mango ice cream. He was incredulous when I said he had fallen asleep: “I didn’t fall asleep completely. What?”
We ate the delicious cauliflower. He wanted it even more burnt next time. I went upstairs, and Carly gave him a bath. I think they were also outside, as at some point they used my bike pump to blow up a balloon. While she was giving him a bath I heard her tell him about how she once got to paint on the walls of her apartment because it was going to be remodeled after they moved out. August made up some story about being able to take stuff apart or destroy it, and I heard him end with “It was like so fun, you know?”
We went downstairs and I made him oatmeal. He was playing with the string he has hanging up, and started running under it while flipping it over his head. Right as I started to warn him about it he ran under and missed it with his hand and clotheslined himself. It also brought the oven crashing open. He jumped up and said “It’s okay” and acted more worried about the oven. ‘Clotheslined’ was another new word for him.
We finished the second issue of the My Little Pony pirate story, then got him ready for bed and I left them at 9:40. I got a phone call a few minutes later; August was talking about how he was worried about kids destroying stuff when they came over. I assured him we could talk about it tomorrow and we wouldn’t have anyone over until he was okay with it.
His tripwire:
With Omri in the pool:
Slo-mo dive in the little pool:
Challenging himself without his vest:
Rubber chicken at Max:
Attacking the breaking light cover:
