He was up just before 7. He seemed pretty awake and I took him downstairs. He spent 5 or 10 minutes on the couch before starting to talk. The first thing he talked about was he and Carly’s mineshafts in their world. We then read several poems in Vile Verses before turning to Minecraft. We played in our survival world. We ate breakfast and watched a couple videos. We found Life Noggin, and watched “What Eating Rotten Food Really Does to Your Body,” “What if a Bug Gets Stuck in Your Ear?” and “What Is It Like to Be Deaf?”
He had a Brother game where brother had “epieitis…the fear of epic stuff.” Sister was fighting the dragon in Minecraft and he was afraid of it. August then worked on his paper factory (as it now is called) using the recycled materials. The company is called Frog so he taped the wooden frog on.
We got driving to the train station, listening to “Always” on repeat. We parked in our usual spot by the park. August played by a tree with a stick, flipping it across the ditch area. He used it like a cane and said, “I’m a Grampy.” We were walking at 9:40. He asked how aerodynamics help a plane, and invented “Splashydynamics” for submarines. He spotted pointy palm leaves and said he used those to help make the pointy tips of airplane wings, and he talked about making rockets.
We just missed a train, so had a half hour on the platform to wait. We played Polytopia, of course. He was right about having to transfer, and was happy about being right. We played more Polytopia along the way. He didn’t finish the first game, and talked about how it gets boring once you know you’re going to win. A good step on the way to accepting competition, I think.
We got off the train and started walking. We looked for places along the way, but he wanted a cafe/coffee shop over pizza. We kept going. August walked much of the way, only having me carry him a couple times, mainly up the hills. We walked by the big park in town, which we hadn’t seen before. He played a minute but we kept going. At some point along the way he saw ants that he thought had killed a worm or something and said, “I see how that emergence video is right…” and talked about how one ant couldn’t have done it.
Finally, he wanted to look at Google Maps as we walked, following the directions to a place called Tails. We were there at 1:10. The woman was Russian and spoke Hebrew but now English. And they didn’t have a menu that was current, for some reason, so was trying to tell me the menu in Hebrew. I caught ‘salmon’. She snagged a woman who was on her way out and she translated. I quickly ordered a cappuccino for me and a hot chocolate for him, and I said she’d mentioned salmon. It was salmon blintzes, so we ordered that. The hot chocolate came with a bowl of marshmallows for him to add, and we loved the blintzes.
Tails is just a block from the science center, so we’d basically walked a mile to get there. We then headed to the science center. We spent a few minutes in the play area and he asked me what the periscope was called again, so a word of the day. We went up and spent our time until 3 just in the building. We never made it to the outside stuff, or to see if there is a special exhibit (I don’t think there is). They have a projector going in a room and it was showing the NASA channel. We watched the end of a show about the MAVEN Mars probe, then just some of the view from the ISS. We talked about how the projector was chopping off pixels and just zooming in on the center of the picture, as compared to the TV on the wall which showed the full thing. This seemed to click with him, as later, when we left the museum he understood my explanation of optical versus digital zoom. But that later.
First, we went up and spent some time in the dentist room. We talked about he parts of the tooth, and enamel, dentine, and pulp were words of the day. We then went to the microscope and telescope room. He talked about how we should get a microscope. Just a few days… From there we went in the planets room. Talked more about the phases of the moon and the seasons and compared our weights on different planets.
We spent some time in the magic room. He briefly sat on the chair of nails, I worked on my ability to pull the tablecloth out from under the plate, and he played with the blower that levitates the ball. He started a Brother and the bullies game over the box that you can’t lift because of a magnet, then continued that in the next room when he did the bubbles demonstration: Brother and the Bullies all got soap suds in their eyes, which made them cry.
We left right at 3, after using the bathroom. He took some photos outside and we discussed the digital versus optical zoom thing, and why I tell him he shouldn’t go past 2x zoom on my phone. We then were able to demonstrate how digital zoom cuts off pixels and makes the squares bigger: I took a photo on full digital zoom, then we took the same photo without zoom, and manually zoomed in while editing the photo and it looked the same, and he could tell how both were blurry. It was a cool ‘getting it’ moment for him.
On the way back down we stopped at the big park and played and played. He did some climbing, and we watched a cat siting right by the pond. Didn’t look comfortable, but it wasn’t leaving. We looked at the view of the harbor and the big container ship. He had a Brother game where he was stung by ants. His parents wanted to take him to the hospital, but he argued he just needed candy. His parents then argued whether that was okay. He went on the merry-go-round and two bigger boys started spinning it really fast. August was hanging his head over the edge and I was concerned it was too fast, but it turned out he really liked it.
I had to convince him to get going, as it was getting dark. We played more Polytopia on the way back (I forgot about the words cards and books I had brought) and luckily I figured out we were on an express and we switched in Hadera West as opposed to continuing on further, or we would have ended up in Tel Aviv.
We got of the train and walked to the car. On the way he talked about wanting one of the apps he’s seen advertised that analyzes your palm and tells your future. We talked about astrology and its different forms, and why people might believe fortune tellers and how they might actually be useful, even if they can’t tell the future. We decided on a sort of scientific experiment where we could see if we could get multiple palm reading apps (free ones) and see if they tell us the same or different things.
He fell asleep in the car, listening to “Always”. I carried him in. A very smooth day until he woke enough to ask for Minecraft. I had already talked about how he had had extra time playing Polytopia, but he could do one earning session at home. Now he got upset and melted at the suggestion he needed to earn time. He had had a long day, and also hadn’t eaten anything since lunch. I’d mentioned snacks a couple times, but he never wanted them, although he did point to a vending machine at the Haifa station. Unfortunately, it was as our train was pulling in, so we didn’t have time.
He did calm down and had a few good moments through the evening. Carly had given a slippery slope argument about just giving him extra time leading to shorter and shorter earning times. He picked it apart, saying “You’d never let that happen! (get to 1 minute or so). And stated, “I used my kidding antibodies to make your argument useless.” He also used his facepalming a couple times to good effect.
He was also crawling around, wrapped in his blanket as I got him some food. He said, “I’ll get back in my slug suit. It looks like a slug suit. You’re parents. You should know that. I’m a kid. I use kidding tricks.”
He sat and listened to “The Lion’s Whisker” on Circle Round and ate his yogurt and a little food. He apologized for earlier, but got upset about something again. Carly read him the Parasites book, then about bacteria. He wanted her to watched the Kurzgesatz Malaria video so they watched that. Then he was upset yet again. She went up for a shower and we read Dahl poems. He started arguing about eating veggies before having cereal and milk, but eventually settled and ate broccoli and tofu. He had a Brother game where the bullies are trampling flowers in the park and he calls Bar to stop them.
I got him upstairs and his bath went really well and he had some of the mint-flavored (they think they’ve been infused with mint from my toothpaste in the same cupboard). I brushed his teeth, and he said good night to Carly. We listened to “It Could Always Get Worse” with Jason Alexander on Circle Round and then he chose to “Dance Party” track on Ninja Focus and he fell asleep by 10:15.
The paper factory:
Stick flipping and being a grampy:
Climbing up the bonds:
Music in the planets room:
Fast on the merry go round:
