He was up even earlier, before 6:35. Carly brought him down and he cuddled for a couple minutes, then wanted his iPad. I read Polly Porcupine’s Painting Prizes to him in Skybrary and Carly headed to work. He leaned against me with his head on my shoulder. He then played Minecraft and I exercised, then he had mango and oatmeal for breakfast. I started reading volume 5 of My Little Pony to him.
We switched to Legos. He left up the big structure we had made yesterday and started making boats. His first attempt didn’t work, then we started discussing it. ‘Pontoon’ became a word of the day. I went upstairs to get the cards for the train, but could only find one. Ended up moving around everything in the bedroom and cleaning up, but no luck. Eventually gave up. He did more floating experiments in water downstairs, then was looking at Google Maps and ended up in Bangor. As we got ready to go he asked Siri for train stations and listened to her list the closest ones. I can tell that his pronunciation has gotten better, as Siri now understands him most of the time, and he’s been able to add songs to his playlist all by himself. Siri was telling him how far away the stations were “As the crow flies” so he asked me what that meant.
We got driving at 10. Wonders of wonders, we got the second-to-last parking spot down at the train station. As we got there he told me that trees have 3 parts: the “neck” (the trunk), the “arms” (branches), and the “hands” (leaves). I asked about the roots, and he decided they were the “throats” or “underarms.”
We got our tickets and only had to wait a minute for the train. We looked out the window for a couple minutes, then he wanted to play Polytopia. He hasn’t played it in months, but the association with riding the train is strong. I had planned for us to go up to the beach south of Haifa, which you can walk to from the train station. He really doesn’t want to go to a beach though, so decided on Hayarkon Park instead. As we left the station though I saw signs pointing to “Lego Space Park”. I started following them, noticing that other families were going the same way, and eventually August caught on that something was different. I told him to look at the signs, and he figured out that one said ‘Lego’.
We got to the entrance, then realized everyone had tickets. I asked a guy where to get tickets, and he pointed back the direction we had come. We walked back that way to where the tickets were being sold for the Nick City thing, only to find out that the guy had been wrong. Eventually we ended up in the correct place. I was trying to look up on my phone how much it cost, and it said 110 shekels, quite pricey. But it turned out to be about 75 per person (about 20 dollars). More than I had planned for the day, but not horrible. And instead of doing a sit down lunch we ended up just getting a slice of pizza and popsicle. Much cheaper.
Of course, the other trade off was I had planned to have a nice leisurely lunch and couple of coffees and work on reading with him while we looked out at the Yarkon River. Instead, it was three hours of sensory overstimulation.
We got inside and wandered around to get our bearings. He had me carry him a bit. It was definitely exciting, but really missed the mark on what it could be: I thought there’d be a lot of sculptures made out of Legos. There were only 3. I thought you’d get to see the Star Wars Legos, etc. and do things with the Technic and Minecraft Legos—STEM sort of stuff. There was none of that. There were a lot of Duplos and Legos to play with, but they were the basic kinds.
Eventually, we settled down at one of the Duplo places and built a sort of house together. We wandered again, and played in the play area. Kind of like a little kids area with ball pits, etc. He developed a game where I would carry him to something with his eyes closed, then he’d be surprised by it, play for a few minutes, then want to be carried somewhere else. The most fun he had was jumping into a ball pit.
For lunch we went over to the cafe area. A zoo. He went to the bathroom and then we e got a piece of cheese pizza and went out and ate it in the entryway. He was really interested in the macaroons that the coffee counter had, but I convinced him he might not like them. He got a fruit lollipop instead, that turned out to be perfect; it was lemon at first, then had a gummi thing in it, then was a red flavor.
We went back in and did some climbing over the area where the statue of a NASA rover was, then went and waited in line to play in the pretend grocery store. He waited patiently for that (maybe 15 minutes or so), then we watched some kids dancing to a video thing. Finally, there was a “tent” thing that was a small black dome held up by an air compressor. We waited in line, just missing going in to the next show. We didn’t know what it would be. We were first in line for the next one. We took our shoes of and went in, and it was a short IMAX-sort of film about the solar system. In Hebrew, but it was still fun to watch. August lay back and used me as a pillow to look up at it.
While waiting in line for the video he had really gotten into the music and had me Shazam a couple of them and was dancing around with the velvet rope. After it, he literally just ran 8 or 10 circles around a relatively empty part of the floor.
He wasn’t interested in the laser battles thing, nor the zip line, but he said he was interested in the indoor climbing wall, but the line was too long. I told him we could find someplace else to do that some time. He decided we were done just before 2. We exited through the Lego store. I showed him the Mindstorm and Technics sets and he was interested, but he didn’t want to look around, which was nice.
We walked across the big pedestrian bridge to the park, getting there at 2. I wanted to stop in the shade and get a snack, and when he asked for his iPad and I thought that was a good relaxing activity I realized just how overstimulating the last 3 hours had been.
While we sat there he asked about ‘Lancelot’, as in My Little Pony there is a joke referring to “Sir Sleeps-a-Lot”. I told him about Arthur and Lancelot, and August explained that he was a better knight than Lancelot.
He wanted to do a geocache. We got walking. We walked into the garden area and he said it was too hot in there—this was the one that was one too much for him last time. He still wanted to find one, just not that one. There was another about the same distance away, by the cactus garden, and we went and found that. It had little trinkets in it, and he wanted to exchange something for the little butterfly. I didn’t have any of his treasures worth trading, so I let him put a shekel in instead.
From there we walked to the playground, which was on our way back to the train. Took another break there, as it was really, really hot. We talked about how something like the Lego place, being expensive, was sort of a once-a-month sort of thing. He said the next expensive thing he wanted to do was to go up in the hot air balloon (well, actually, helium) ride there in the park.
We watched it and talked about how it worked, and he rode a little rocking thing, then we got walking at 3:25. He asked “What’s lubricate mean?” At some other point he was talking about oiling machine parts. Not sure where that came from.
We just missed one train headed home, but the next one was at 4:05. A full train, so we sat on the floor at the top of the stairs and he played Polytopia. We got to the car, and got driving. I knew he was going to fall asleep, so tried to keep him awake with strawberry mints. Didn’t work, and he was asleep by the time we got to the school to pick up an iHerb box. I literally carried him in one arm to the guardhouse, then carried the box back in my other arm. He opened his eyes a bit. Back at home I carried him in and he slept on the couch.
I got changed and left and went over to Jem for guys night. A big turnout, 17 I think. I mainly talked to the middle school teacher Jeff, about music, and the new principal, also named Jeff. It turns out that this Jeff taught in Chelan for 7 years, starting in 2000. He knew many of my teachers. He had grown up in Wenatchee.
August had slept for another ten minutes after I left. I got home at 7:40, as most people were leaving after beers and appetizers at Jem, and didn’t go on to Abadie Burger for burgers.
August had some mango, and had been talking to Carly about pyrotechnics (from My Little Pony, of course). He also talked about how “I can get big air.” He had heard the phrase on something.
We read Redwall, and I gave him a bath. I went to bed with him. Thought he was totally asleep, but at 10 he asked if he’d gone to the bathroom, and wanted to go again. He probably fell asleep by 10:15.
Floating the Lego boat:
Walking through Lego Park:
Hyper while standing in line:
Doing some shopping:
Line dancing:
More dancing:
Running circles:
Better than Lancelot:
Finding the geocache:
