At 3:30 or so I heard him laughing. A few minutes later he called me in. He said, “I had a dream and I woke up.” I asked if it was a bad dream and he said, “No.” He was awake enough to that a couple minutes later he asked me to switch the unit to fan mode for more noise.
At 5:53 he woke up again, and came out and said, “I need to go to the bathroom.” Carly took him, then put him back to sleep on the big bed. He was up again at 7:20. He watched part of the Aub Dhabi Grand Prix (last race of the season) with me, then told me about how he saved his battery power to win a race. Then a board game he designed like the one he plays with Gabi (which is about an elephant and cat going on straight paths) but in his version it is two race cars. He then watched stick man Minecraft videos while I finished the race.
He ate one of the savory pastries, then had strawberries, then a sweet pastry when he stopped his YouTube watching really well. We had a Brother game where Sister had used all of his iPad time. Then some project where Bar was having Brother get DNA from animals. I had downloaded a couple of My Little Pony episodes for him to watch at the licensing office later. He suddenly wanted to watch one and got upset when I said he couldn’t right now. Very quick, but also over it very quickly.
Then a Brother game with a new girl he named Polemisis. She was really good at painting and Brother got jealous. August then wanted to paint, and fit in a quick painting before we left.
We left at 9:20. We were going up to the licensing office in Hadera, as the Netanya office seemed closed or full fo the next few days (I’m liking the scheduling app). August was seeing things in the clouds, like a hurt dolphin and a dragon, before we left. He asked, “What’s a noob?” Not sure where he heard that.
Lots more Story Pirates today. Catching up on season 2. We found parking in the mall lot okay, went up, and found the licensing office just in time for our 10:10 appointment. I did the number machine myself for the first time, then was up right away. August had barely started watching My Little Pony. Sadly, that was the end of everything going smoothly. The woman informed me I needed Carly’s original passport. I had brought mine, and had a copy of her’s, but since her name is on the registration I needed te original. So I went back and let August watch a few more minutes while I set up another appointment, this time on Thursday morning at the Netanya branch.
We started to walk to the exit. He spotted one of those little mall play areas, but with nothing in it. We stopped to play though. We worked on proper form for his forward rolls, then had a Brother game where he was used to living in the jungle, then on a trip back home they go to the mall and he gets overwhelmed by all the people and noise. August was also jumping of the edge of the play area.
When he was done with that we exited the mall and crossed the street to the park. There was an old piece of machinery that we looked at and speculated about, then he had Brother getting his hand stuck in a machine in Bar’s lab. We walked north through the park. We stopped to look at the fish in the ponds, and he speculated that the stone towers of a memorial were ancient ruins.
We crossed the street and went in a cafe (קפה טוב חדרה) for lunch. The woman that seated us didn’t speak English. I requested a Hebrew menu and we did okay, but it was nice when she brought back a woman who speaks English, as we were able to make sure we could get shakshuka that wasn’t spicy. August got a hot chocolate as they didn’t have smoothies. While we waited, we looked up answers to August’s question from the park: Why do fish die so fast? We then read a little of The 117-Story Treehouse. We were then doing Brother games and he was laughing and laughing. The most fun ones nowadays are ones where Brother is doing things that annoy Bar or Myna and August gets to act all faux outraged as one of them.
We walked back to our car, figured out how to pay (one of the machines wasn’t working) and got going. Well, a few feet. Leaving the parking lot was nearly impossible. There was a line of barely-moving cars, one closed exit, and lots of cars trying park and squeeze through and push in. And honking. Lots of pointless honking. We were listening to Story Pirates though to pass the time and August was calm through it all, which was apparently much different from when he and Carly were stuck at Tiv Taam on Friday and he was getting frustrated.
We drove over to the Madatech Science Center. No external signs of construction, and there were recent reviews on Google Maps that didn’t mention it being closed. But it was. The security guard said for a few more months and to check the website. The website that has never had any mention of the closure.
August needed the bathroom so peed in the dirt around the corner. He then spent a few minutes studying ant nests before we got back in the car. I had thought that the beach and riding his bike would be a good back up. However, before we went, afraid this might happen, we had talked backup plans and he wanted another science center and I had mentioned Planetanya. I now double checked, and it didn’t open until 4 today. He didn’t want the beach instead though, but just wanted to head home.
So we did. I had the idea of going to Ikea though and he agreed to that. I had let him watch more of his My Little Pony episodes now, and when we parked at Ikea he was still watching the second episode (6 of season 4). We sat in the car and let him finish and I did Duolingo.
On our way in and walk around Ikea he talked about his evacuation machines (these have come up in Brother games) that sense something bad and then force everyone to evacuate and then usually end up destroying the building. We talked about machine learning (he had asked if computers can learn or think) and how computers might learn how to sense an actual emergency and not just the sounds of a kid screaming or people screaming at a concert. He explained how he had taught a robot to think by taking the learning part of a human brain out of a dead person, then replicating it part by part in a robot brain. He then decided he wouldn’t need a dead brain and could scan the brains of living people. All of this was through his own thinking.
He sang, “Satellite radio, it’s the only way to go”, which is from a song he’s dead to his playlist (from the Sand Rubies, I think). We were only looking for Christmas lights, and a lamp cover for his room upstairs, where the plastic cover on the ceiling light broke. No luck on Christmas lights. We then walked through the whole store. He stopped for a few things, and we played the x-ray technician game at the desk chair area again.
We looked at the lamp shade area. We found the expanding sphere ones like they had at the place in Greece. We were looking for something that looked like a sun, as it is the center of his solar system on the ceiling. It was 195 shekels: not much, but more expensive than the paper ones. And he wanted the one with yellow pieces on the inside, as he said it looked more like a sun, but they only had the white and silver ones in stock. He said not to bother with it now, so we didn’t get one.
What we did do was each get an ice cream at the end. We sat at the little table and played the color mixing game. I then found a free app that let us mix colors and he enjoyed that. Brother was choosing colors, and choosing colors that looked like they were from Minecraft.
We headed home, getting here at 3:35. We did more more Brother having to pee games. Dreams and what not. He did alone time and I exercised. He ate carrot and strawberries. We played Minecraft and he built an elytraing challenge for me and had me do it in survival. He then did 15 minutes more of alone time as I made a smoothie. He then watched robot races (we were looking for humanoid robot races, but didn’t find much) and battles. Carly got home during that.
He had corn on the cob. He then asked Carly to paint Lady Bird Johnson. He hasn’t liked the changes. Carly give her purple hair, then was painting her bald. She was teaching him surreal. He was doing a painting as well and initially called it “The face that has no meaning.” He was then calling it “The sandwich that has no meaning.”
I read parts of the new Discover Magazine issue to him, then Carly read Myna to him before going to take a shower. We did a brother game, where he was back from his time paradox when he was going to high school. They were in the jungle again, and realized they had forgotten the pacifiers for Baby Sister and Brother. They were upset, and Dad eventually determines it is worth it to use Bar’s very-polluting teleportation machine to go get them. He got back just to find out they didn’t need them, and were upset about something else. Bar then gave him a huge bill for use of the machine.
August ate some of the noodle dish for dinner 2, then we listened to the rest of the Story Pirates episode. He then ate three bowls of cheerios and strawberries. Carly came back down and I was talking to her. He was listening and jumping off the chair. He then got the keyboard out and mostly set up all on his own, without asking us. He did need my help to get it connected, but it was cool to see him taking the initiative. He play for a while, then had me doing a Brother game with him. He was Bar, and I was Brother. He was laughing hysterically when Brother was interrupting Bar, who was playing music to put Baby Sister and Baby Brother to sleep. That would lead to them waking up.
He had been talking about something in GarageBand that we’d found, and finally I remembered the Live Loops. He played with those, making a song. I got him upstairs, and Carly gave him a bath while I went for a run. When I got back she was reading him a Myna book. I took a shower, then took over, as he was still awake. He didn’t want her to leave at first, but then said she could if she did the “Spidey spidey boop” thing to him once. She did that, then said good night. Fell asleep at 10 to Brian Eno and Billy Budd’s The Pearl.
His race car board game:
Painting dots:
Jumping slo-mos:
Testing out Ikea beds:
X-ray technician game:
