He was up at 8:35. We went downstairs and he went out to cuddle with Carly for a minute. We then Skyped with my parents and Paul to say happy birthday to him. He had gotten the books, so the next-day shipping worked. August played a little piano for them when they asked, then started on Minecraft. I played a little with him after hanging up and he was building abstract sculptures in the sky.
I made us fried eggs for breakfast and we ate those with grapes. Carly came in and he asked to do math. They tried temperature conversion. He did a solve for X problem, and discussed squares and square roots and did a few more problems. Carly was going to vacuum and I was trying to get him to take recycling with me, but he opposed both plans. I took the recycling, then he and I went upstairs and he played xylophone and wrestled, being snakes, etc. We had a game of pretending to throw a baseball in the air and it falling down on one of us, making up couplets like, “I threw the ball into the air / where it lands I do not care” and “I threw a ball into the sky / it fell down and hit your eye”.
Carly was cleaning when we came down, cleaning papers out of the drawer things and what not. He just did a silent alone time, then we played Minecraft. Carly made chicken sandwich lunches. We then wrestled on the couch. Carly drove to school to see if there was anything August could take apart. No luck on that, and she had to argue with the security guard about putting on his mask before taking her temperature. August was scared by a mosquito in the bathroom, and ran upstairs to finish up.
In cleaning up Carly found August’s papers from his reading group at preschool, and he read one of the booklet things to me, declaring it much too easy now. He said, “They were from one of my least favorite people in my life.” He then did some Math Tango and Carly got home. I did some cleaning and helped him with math, and we did more wrestling.
He and I then went for a walk. He spotted a dead bug, then we did the colors game, walking on the lines of bricks on the way home. I was narrating and singing our color choices for him. We stopped by the corn flower and he had his bar and I read the first chapter of Beasts of Olympus: Beast Keeper, the first book in the series.
We got home, and he had a plate of frozen mango. The whole plate slipped out of his hands and fell on the floor. He picked it back up and kept eating. Carly had expected to see mango all over the floor, but he said, “What? It’s frozen.”
I went up to do some work as they were taking apart the old telephone that I’d found in the toy box. They also played with the straw things, which I’d brought down from upstairs. Much to Carly’s annoyance, he wouldn’t actually play with them, but came up with a leveling-up system, whereby as Carly built stuff on her own it would level him up from August 1.0 to 2.0, and on and on until 5.0. At the first level he would just hand her straws, at two he would do straws and connectors, and by 5.0 he would design things on his own. She only got up to 2.0. She told him, “I’m 41 years old! I don’t need to be playing by myself!”
Vivian, Colin, and August started Minecraft early and were playing when I came down at 5:50. I went for a run. When I ran across the cloud bridge there were only 3 or 4 protesters. By the time I came back from Bnei Dror the bridge was absolutely packed, as was the sidewalk on the highway bridge to the south, and lots of people were still walking up, and some were lining the highway. It is the fourth week of these protests against Netanyahu, and it is the largest yet.
I got back in time to see his huge piston machines. I went up to take a shower, and he used 5 stars to play Dragonbox Numbers. He asked Carly, “Why does Colin copy me and Vivian?” She pointed out how he likes to learn by copying people, and I added, “August: you are Colin’s MumboJumbo.” To which he replied, “Oh, I never thought of it that way.”
Colin and company called back. Carly and August took them outside to see the plants. August did NOT want to go for a walk. He was then hungry, and joked he would kill me if i didn’t get food. We weren’t happy with that one, and got it worked out. He had to whisper his sorry. I got him a banana, and he ate the whole thing in about 5 seconds. He then did a ‘Banana’s done’ dance I caught the end on camera, and asked for “More”. He replied, “No. The banana’s done.”
We were outside for a while and he told Carly, “One time on Siri I asked for pictures of a sneaky kid, and they actually came up.” Back inside she gave him his frozen mango from earlier. The earlier fork was now frozen to the plate, so August got a new fork to pry up the old fork. I was texting with my friend Peter, and August took a break from his mango to walk up to me and say, “Here’s the problem with nuclear bombs: if you attack someone with them you’ll die too.”
He wanted to play cribbage with my mom, so we headed upstairs. But Colin called, and he ended up just hanging out and chatting with him for a long time. Vivian came and chatted with him for a while, and asked if he’d been practicing his ninja skills. He told her he hadn’t and that, “Well, it’s fun. I just don’t know what’s the purpose of it.” She replied, “It’s just fun. I want to be a ninja when I grow up.” He heard that, but said, “Okay, but there’s not enough empires for you to join now.” Vivian was then trying to make her face red, and August told her, “The way to make it purple is to get angry. Really angry.” He chatted with Colin more, and had me get his tractor to show August. They discussed that a lot, and August got me to agree that if we saw any tractors here in Israel we would get one for August. And also that we’d take the green one to him. August also listened to “Dog King: Dog Days of Summer”
When they were done we called my parents. Talked for a few minutes, then they played cribbage. It was a back and forth game, with August getting a huge first hand, but her coming back with a huge hand at the end.
When they were done Carly gave him a bath. I went down to get crackers, but then he was being mean (taking things too far, starting with turning off the lights on her, I think) to her. I left the crackers downstairs. I went back up and we went to bed. He listened to “The Elephant’s Dilemma.” About ten minutes in he asked about the crackers, and had a meltdown when I said I’d left them downstairs. He didn’t let me explain that I needed to make sure he’d apologized to Carly first.
We ended up out on the couch, talking to Carly too. We went back in and he listened to one more story, then I put on the new instrumental Yo La Tengo EP and he was asleep about 12:10.
You left the gamey gamey song:
Playing MC with Viv:
Today’s protest:
Rolling on the bed:
Just chatting with the cousins:
