It was an odd, long day. I had an advocacy planning meeting at Sabeel at 9. I had rescheduled Gilad and Eve for earlier in the week because of it. August had gone to sleep at a good time last night, and woken up early yesterday, but now was sleeping in. I had everything in the car and woke him up at 7:30, had him go to the bathroom, and then carried him out to the car in his pajamas. According to Waze our ETA was 8:53. Perfect. I had a change of clothes, but then, on the way out of town, realized I’d forgotten his shoes. Drove back and got them, and our new ETA was 9:02. No bother, as they only open at 9 and never start on time.
Well, it all went fine until 2.7km before the interchange from 6 to 1. We had listened to a few Circle Rounds on one of their compilations. Our ETA was still 9:03. Then we hit traffic. It said a 5 minute delay. But then an ambulance went by. It eventually said ETA of 10, but we were still 1.7km from the crash. August luckily had switched to his iPad and had been watching things (I think Inspector Gadget and then Sarah and Duck). Eventually though he realized we were stuck in traffic and started to get upset. I suggested opening his window and that helped, as did watching Sarah and Duck. It was looking like it might be another half hour though and I was thinking of cancelling the whole thing when suddenly traffic started moving again. They had cleared lanes. When we drove by there were at least 6 cars still waiting to be towed.
ETA jumped back to 9:45, but then we hit traffic from ANOTHER accident on 1, and it went back to 9:50 something. We basically walked in right at 10. I’d been communicating with Omar while we were stopped, and it wasn’t a big deal. They did a little review with me, but it didn’t seem like I’d missed much.
August settled in on a chair and played Minecraft, Music, and GroForest. I also took him two sweet pastries from the table. He called out at one point to tell me something he had discovered in Minecraft, but otherwise was great and stayed to himself. He also took a good break from iPad, closing it and enjoying one of the bakery treats.
The meeting was over at 12. He went to the bathroom and changed out of his pajamas and we said goodbye. We took one more bakery item with us. He had also had a good amount of banana bread and strawberries in the car and as he sat on the chair. So not just a pastry-based diet.
We drove to the science center, only to find it with balloons everywhere at absolutely no parking. And there are no public lots in the area. We spent a half hour driving around before finally finding a street that had a lot of street parking. Carly later told me that the Kerns had once given up on going because they couldn’t find a spot. August asked me to call the science center. It turned out they were open, but there was a student conference thing going on. She said it wasn’t too busy though. We had parked between the science center, and the park area that had the bird watching (we had tried to go park where we had before, but that entire street was closed off for something, I think because it is the street to the Knesset). Our backup plan was to go bird watching first, but with this news we walked to the science center.
We ended up walking through the long, skinny park to the north of the science. Really odd, as it is a neglected park in an otherwise developed part of the city. But really, as it felt more natural that way, and we only saw a single other person in there. August stopped to throw some rocks, found a nice stick, and we admired the huge concrete snake statue. I suggest he give it a pat, and he said, “How about a hit? Because I hate snakes. Except for worm snakes. They’re the best.”
We got to the science center, and it turned out to be pretty perfect. Yes, there were tons of high school students around, but they were mainly in sessions, and weren’t taking up the exhibits, so we had free run of the place, except for some tables getting in our way. And there was the added benefit of some special exhibits that went along with it. We first went downstairs where he analyzed the pixels on a tv down there, then we went up and he led the way through the mirror maze again. He played with the mirror column that he loves. He exclaimed, “My head’s like a walnut!” We went to the area with the ball machines and used the microscope thing, particularly on my sweater. I described the yarn pattern as a grill and he didn’t know what I meant, so a word of the day. He analyzed the big mechanical thing, that has all the nobs and gears, etc. that you turn to make things happen. He explained the optical illusion of the screw thing, how it appears to be appearing at one end and disappearing at the other, and he explained the motion of a piston saying, “turns it into a rotating motion like my bike…”
We went to the area where you try to fly like a dragon (standing on the pressure plate) and played with that for quite a while, then with the whirlpool. Vortex and whirlpool were both new words.
As part of the conference today there was a game set up on the floor. It projected from the ceiling, then sensed you touching the image. The guy running it got August to play. We did one word game, then several rounds of a math game. August had fun running around, solving math problems. The guy took a lot of photos of August playing it and asked if he could use them for publicity and I said yes. When the guy asked if he wanted to switch to a math game August said “Of course…Who would not love math?”
When done with that we wandered up to where there is the stomping game, which tests your reflexes. He played it a few times, getting faster, then tried to see how slow you could go. It turns out it stops and gives you a frowning face after, I think, 30 seconds. So we tried it, seeing how close we could get. Crazily, we got 29.977 seconds on our first attempt. There’s no clock running as you were doing it, so that as pretty close.
We then headed over to the shop for lunch. The best part of the day, as all of the students had a catered lunch, so we were the only customers in there. I ordered a toasted bagel sandwich for us. But he was out of tuna. Sigh. He had corn at least, and we had that with cheese and pizza sauce. August also got his usual chocolate pudding and I had a cappuccino. While we sat there we watched a Ted-Ed video about fire.https://youtu.be/YV8TT9LRBrY
August then told me about “negative fire.”
On the way out he asked for a few coins for the spiraling thing. He did that, and I think he was the one that said it looked like gravity pulling things. We then talked about how it was exactly like how mass bends gravity like a balls on a sheet and how the coins are orbiting the planet in the center. We discussed Simple Rockets, and how we try to get the right angle and velocity to stay in orbit and I modeled what happens with the different angles, using the coins.
I then suggested we go outside. He, no sweater, thought it might be too cold, but we then spent a good twenty minutes playing with the ball hanging from a rope thing. I told him about the game of tether ball (having recently told him about four square, another childhood playground game a few days ago) and we made up our own tether ball game and played and played (being silly, of course).
We got going, somewhere close to 4, after using the bathroom. As we walked through the park he told me about what he wants to do this summer: “That archeology place. I want to go to it. And I want to camp. Those are the two most things I’m excited about.” And he talked about s’mores. As we got close to the car he was taking photos with my phone when Carly called. He answered, asking “What’s up?” (I think he’s heard that from us) and had a whole conversation with her. He told her it would take “2 minutes and hour and a half” to get home. I don’t think I had told him that, but it was eerily accurate.
On the way home we started a Story Pirates but he instantly stopped it. He talked at length about creating a really powerful microscope, then had a long Brother and Sister game where they met a new girl who ended up being named Sample who had eyes that could act as microscopes and she helped the Mom and Dad with their dirt research, making it much faster. Also, she was able to solve the stuck-in-May problem, which Bar hadn’t been able to do.
Eventually he agreed to listen to Story Pirates and we listened to that the rest of the way home. Remarkably, he stayed awake the entire rest of the way. I totally expected him to conk out as it got dark and we got close to home. We were home at 5:30.
They played Minecraft together. He used “Tomorrow before that” to mean “the day after tomorrow” and still regularly uses “yesterday before that” to mean “the day before that”
We ate dinner, then read part of The Graveyard Book, then he had seconds. He was then painting with Carly, mainly mixing colors, I think. He told us that his favorite things about airports are “security, the food, and the air.” We discussed possible trips and India, where he wants to go. He was then playing piano and discovered the C Locrian scale and also C sharp major.
We got him upstairs and he had a bath. When he came out he told me, “I used my kidding tricks to delay my bath for approximately twenty minutes.” We started to read “Abu Keer and Abu Seer” in the Arabian Knights book. We then listened to Circle Round’s “The Unjust Justice”. He asked what “doling out justice” meant, so a new phrase. We had lights off at 9:30 and listened to the Dissonance album and he was asleep by 10.
Warming his hands in the Sabeel candle:
Throwing rocks:
Playing in the cylinder mirror:
Stepping game:
Floor game:
Zinnie cam: getting lunch:
Riding the ball swing:
Spinning it:
Tether ball:
Patterns on the walk back to the car:
Zinnie cam: reading to him:
Cool chords and scales:
