I started waking him up at 7:35. It was hard for him to wake up. I sat next to him, and at one point he opened his eyes a bit and said “Hi,” then curled back up again. That had happened the other night when I was sleeping with him, and Carly made some noise as she came into the room. He had half sat up, said “Hi,” then curled up against my back. I finally got him up at 8. He asked, “Where’s Mama?” Shortly thereafter he said, “Dada, we should make our own notebook.”
We went downstairs and started Minecraft right away. I got him oatmeal ready during it and he ate right after. As we got ready to go he told me about the “Deathascope,” which flings things in the air and shoots lasers at them. He went and added a few pieces to a Lego creation he had made with Carly yesterday, using the bodies and heads of the Lego people and said “Since I see-ed my Lego creation I’m stuck into Legos.”
As we left he remembered the video we watched of how scientists used the material in diapers to actually expand pieces of mice brains so that they are easier to study. He said he had made tiny robots to studied the brains so they don’t have to do that.
As we drove to Ra’anana Park, just a bit late, and I had told Lauren, we saw them trimming the palm trees, and also saw people stopping to pick up the extra leaves for their structures for Sukkot. As we got out of the car he told me he had invented the “Cheapest and funniest translator.” The problem is that it doesn’t work well and gives nonsense answers. It is mainly used for cheering up babies.
We beat Lauren and Gilad by a couple minutes. August found a little kid ball by the pond, and I guessed it was from the woman pushing two kids in a stroller, walking nearby. It was, and we returned it. When Gilad ran up he immediately asked about Minecraft. And said, “I’ve been waiting to ask about Minecraft!”
We started to walk over to the big playground. It was busy in the park today. Israeli schools still have school, but it seems like there was an Arab Israeli school or two doing a park day. We got to the big play structure, and August and Gilad wandered around a little. August complained about it being busy and didn’t know what to do.
We ended up walking back towards the small playground, but it was busy too. Gilad went on the music thing. August wanted to find things to build with. We found an ant nest, with the ants trying to pull in a small feather. August wanted to destroy it and when I said I was watching it he got upset and eventually hit it with a stick.
He was really grumpy, and said something like, “I’m cancelling this play date.” Or officially cancelling or something like that.
Luckily, the school group left the covered playground and he and Gilad finally started playing together with the airplane game. We were playing there as some guy came along with a leaf blower and asked us to move. We walked up to the concrete maze sort of area. Played for a few minutes, then Gilad had a snack and August had cheese crackers. August was wanting his bike, so I left him with Lauren, and hurried back to the car and got his bike and helmet and brought it back.
He rode around the concrete area a little, then down the hill towards the play area. We stopped at the bench area and he and Gilad rode and ran back and forth a bit, then were a distance away from us, talking about Minecraft add-ons.
We had given them August’s username for Minecraft. Lauren was going to send us a message when they invited us. We got going and he rode his bike most of the way back, although I walked it down the big hill to the pond.
We drove over to the Domino Pizza in Ra’anana this time (not the U.S. chain). We got a couple cheese slices and drinks and sat outside. They invited us to a world and we tried to ply from the pizza place, but it wouldn’t let us connect to their world.
We drove home, August made a world, and we invited Gilad to it. It worked this time, and we spent about an hour playing with him. I helped type some messages to him. I played with them for much of the time, building a house in a cliff. I gave August 15 more minutes at the end. We said goodbye, and wished them a good camping trip. Lauren said that Gilad’s older brother was helping him, making suggestions like to not explode TNT by the house. I told her how, when Gilad made a big tower, August wanted me to ask him if August could cover it with water. Before I could ask, Gilad started to add water himself.
August handled getting off well, then we read My Little Pony: Friends Forever volume 8. He kept postponing a bike ride, finding other things to do first. We did a Brother game where he tried to be an inventor like Bar. At one point he made self-aware robots: “I don’t program them. I made them to think for themselves.” He then asked to watch a video about how chocolate is made (https://youtu.be/ZtMfiWDQHT8 andhttps://youtu.be/zJdeQABAc_w
) We watched a couple. Cacao was a word of the day.
I then took him up to the park to ride his bike. He did that for a few minutes, then decided we could go back to the house and switch to the big bike and trailer. Can’t ride on the streets so easily now, so we headed over to the trails, being careful with the sharp corners getting there. We rode all the way down to the old highway, then partly down it before turning around and coming back. Our biggest ride yet.
We were back by 4:50. We then looked at apple dessert recipes, and he decided on a classic apple pie. I was making him chocolate pancakes for dinner. He invented “fruitables” for things that are between fruits and vegetables.
When he needed to go to the bathroom he still wants one of us to come sit outside the bathroom. Today I told him that most people prefer to go to the bathroom in private. He said, “I don’t believe in privacy like that.” Then he added, “You know difference makes everyone special.”
With Carly he did the activity he’d been wanting to do earlier: melting chocolate and then making shapes out of it. We read more of My Little Pony, then he ate the chocolate when it had hardened. Then more Brother games, where he found a cat, then a lynx which ate all the fish.
We watched a few SciShow Kids videos. First a couple about using temperature sensitive paper, with Hank Green in them (https://youtu.be/YkuBX4UC1TE). Thermochromism was another new word. Then he chose a Bright Side video about the end of the universe:https://youtu.be/4qndOMjlThc
. Then back to Brother games: “It’s three days in the future, and Bar invents total high tech chaos…” It involved turning animals into cyborgs, life on Mars, etc.
Before we went upstairs August was playing with his light for the invisible ink (the one he’d gotten from Andrea this summer). He realized the light looked purple on some surfaces, and blue on something else. I didn’t have an explanation for that. He made up a nonsense poem that went something like:
You see you see the peak of the beak
Peak of the beak on the pumpkin beak
Carly gave him a bath. I then played a Brother game with him on the bed, where they were fighting over baby sister.
I went for a run. They watched some video that Carly had about education or child development. He told her, “I think I learn differently. Because I mainly learn from dada.” “At preschool they mainly played with toys and that was boring. That’s why I watched.” Talked about being bad because he hit and he wasn’t forgiven. Gave her a thumbs in the middle for talking to Andrea again. She then put him to sleep.
Ants with a feather:
Biking in Ra’anana 1:
Biking in Ra’anana 2:
Laughing on the couch:
Pistachio shelling machine:
Riding at our park:
Eating melted chocolate:
Eating his frozen chocolate:
Lego bodies sculpture:
Uff song and Legos:
His creations with Gilad