Got him up at 7:45. He inspected the new tissue box, then stumbled out of the room. Took a few minutes on the couch. I used the Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie figures to say hi and he grinned. He played with them a couple minutes, and told me about a world record pool he made that is four kilometers deep and had a steel wall around it, then I started reading the Minecraft graphic novel. He was skeptical because it didn’t look like Minecraft when the character goes in the game. But when we got back to it we read the whole thing. He was then telling me about something, but I missed what it was. But it had material from the sun and showed the whole solar system and involved lots of arrows.
He then watched a video on Minecraft and I exercised. I then played with him for a few minutes. I then made breakfast: oatmeal and mango for him, an egg and yogurt for me. He then showed me what he and Carly had made from Legos yesterday and added to it. I made legos too. We then went and looked at our agenda for the day and did reading time. He played with with his ponies, then we read My Little Pony. When his time was up, he snuck to my iPad; I had stopped playing at the same time, but had left the app open. He got upset when I made him stop and started to kick at me, but stopped himself and clammed on the couch.
He had some juice, then as we were getting ready we were rhyming everything we said, as per the zebra in My Little Pony. He also ended up using the padded envelope from the shaker from Cherie on his head and bonking it against the door. He told me “Dada, anger is just a fear that lives inside you.” Not sure where that is from.
He had a good case of the giggles and asked “Did you know that a sadypus is a platypus that’s always sad?” He was also using the plastic rectangle from the My Little Pony box as a frisbee.
We got walking at 12:20. August agreed to the bike right away, which was really amazing.
Over at the mall he looked at jewelry. He wants a fancy necklace now; beads don’t do it now. He led the way to Tiv Taam, where we bought some Bubble Tape. Outside the store I got him some, and as he walked back through the mall he sang “Bubble tape for the second time.” Which was both cute, and news to me. I thought he hadn’t had it before, but he had had it with Vivian.
He looked at the candy counter and found egg toy things with counterfeit My Little Pony on them. It looked exactly like them, but was called ‘My Little Horse’.
We went to the Druze stand and he got a lafa with labaneh and oil, and we got a regular one for Carly. We walked outside and he ate on the plane in the playground. It was still hot today, but just a couple degrees cooler and a bit breezy, so it was actually comfortable to sit outside in the shade. He spotted a girl with a My Little Pony shirt
He asked “People in books don’t age much, right?” He had noticed that in the Caveman Kung Fu book they actually do, and that is unusual. He told me “Here’s a theory: when the sun dies away, people will have invented a way to live without the sun.”
We walked home, then got ready with our swim stuff and drove to school. We went to the library first. He hid under a table and was spying on the librarians, then looked at the magazine table. I found a Discover magazine he was interested in. I then found a Lumberjanes chapter book that looked interesting, and he found a young adult novel called The Nebula Secret. We went back to the kid area, and I looked at the magazine. There was an article called “How to Build Aliens in the Lab” and he asked me to read it. He started making a sculpture out of the shelf bookmarks as he listened to me. Ilana came in and was curious what we were doing at one point.
I read most of the article before needing to go check out the books. I did that, then went back and we cleaned up the sculpture together. We then went to the pool. Omri and family were there, although August didn’t interact with them much at first.
Instead, he played by the stairs. When I suggested taking a foam thing out he was excited about it and let me take out two. He then spent 15 or 20 minutes trying it out and also using the vest as a kickboard instead of wearing it. He then wanted the foam pieces back in and was using it as a xylophone when Carly showed up.
We swam with her there, then Zohar invited August to have snacks with them. He went out and gorged himself on Doritos, then we ended up in the shallow pool. He threw the ball around with Zohar and Omri, then got a blue chair and put it in the water and sat on it. Eventually he had three of them and was really focused in moving them around into different shapes. He had Zohar and Jonathan using them as a fort at one point.
We stayed until the pool closed, then were home at 5:15. He brought a stick in, and was upset about taking it back outside. But eventually he made the right decision and decided he didn’t need it. He had frozen mango, then leftover lafa. He asked “Did you know stuff always tastes better if you have a friend?”
I watched videos of one year old August saying “Hi camel” and other things, then Carly played Minecraft with him. He had a hard time stopping at 30 minutes. He then earned time with me with math, counting by 2s and 3s. He wanted to use his time after just 3 minutes. So he played 3 minutes of Minecraft.
He then played with Legos and sang. He earned 11 minutes. He also told me “After I get upset good things happen…this time I did the counting thing.” Although to be clear what happened was he was only frustrated, and was able to talk to me about earning time, as opposed to just getting upset.
So he played for 11 minutes. Finally, he did math with me for 16 minutes. He was able to count by 99s, figuring out the pattern pretty well, and I wrote numbers on the iPad and he picked out the odd and even ones (he referred to the odd ones as the “ones with middles” because a few days ago he told me that odd numbers always have one in the middle, whereas even numbers do not.
We played the last of his Minecraft time. He did a good job of stopping at the end. ‘Nomad/nomadic’ were words of the day. We then read My Little Pony and had mango, then he finally had his quiche (he had been pretty full after all those Doritos and a few apple slices at the pool). We read about an upcoming drone mission to Mars, then started to read the Horrible Harry book before he decided to do a Brother game with Bar making sonic booms (like Rainbow Dash in the recent story).
We then went upstairs and he had his bath. Carly was nice and let him have Cheerios with milk, then I left them at 9:40. I was going to go running, but instead fell asleep on the couch downstairs.
His helmet:
Rectangle frisbee:
With the floaties removed:
Playing with the ball:
Chairs in the pool:
Singing and Legos:
Math time:
