Author: Ryan/Dada

He woke up enough at 3-something for me to have to get in bed with him. I was then awake when he got up at 7:05. He went to the bathroom and we went downstairs together. He cuddled with Carly on the couch for several minutes, then they went outside to check the tomatoes. I made pancakes, and we all ate pancakes and strawberries for breakfast. August then sat at the table making up music. He stacked up all the magnet blocks, then played with them with Carly. They were making planets out of them. August made a planet that moves around on wheels.

They then did an art project with a cardboard box and glue and string and the tile-like things from Max. Carly got cotton swabs for the glue, and got extra, so August of course asked her why, which she had predicted he would do. He was then making fun of her for getting extra: “There’s a cotton swab emergency!” I said I didn’t know where he learned such behavior, and blamed it on the cartoons these days. I then joked about how cartoons when we were kids were wholesome. August asked what ‘wholesome’ meant. So a word of the day. And he presented his really soft yarn, which he’d chosen at Max, but hadn’t yet used, to Carly and told her she could have it.

We played Hey, that’s My Fish! We then sorted the Bob Books so he could choose them in order and he read Ten Men. It is interesting, because all of the books he has already mastered (he has 4) are from the ‘Sight Words’ set, while this was from Set 3. He does seem to learn the sight words more easily than a book like this, which has a lot of rhyming words that look similar (like tent, went, and sent).

He then wanted to do the balloon egg drop again. He wandered off as I made it, so didn’t really help. They then watched as I tossed it out the window. This time, we moved it to the grass and popped the balloons one at a time. The egg was just fine. Success!

Inside he started to do big addition on his own: “30 plus 30 is 60, 60 plus 60 is 120, 120 plus 120 is 240, 220 plus 220 is 440, 440 plus 440 is 880.” We read the Elephant and Piggie book Let’s Go for a Drive with him doing a few words. He asked me to wrap a present for him. I agreed and figured I’d wrap one of the Max art supplies. He liked my wrapping job (in the foamy stuff he’d gotten at the junk pile) but wasn’t impressed with the gift itself. It was the colorful popsicle sticks, notched so you can build with them. I built a little, but he decided he’d use one to make a mango popsicle. We thawed mango pieces a little so we could stick them on, and he’d eat them. He wanted it really hard, so we put one in the freezer, and he set timers on his watch to remind us to take it out.

We ate some pita and hummus. He put pieces of the soft yarn (he had wondered how they make it so soft) between my ears and glasses and said that I look like a poodle. He wasn’t quite sure what a poodle was though, so we looked at photos of them.

He had caught what looked like a sort of small cockroach outside earlier, and it was moving around.

We read Gaston, as the talk of poodles had reminded me of it. We realized that we know 3 characters named Gaston, as he thought I was talking about Dragons Beware. And of course there’s also Beauty and the Beast.

We then read parts of the DK Space Travel book. He’s never really been into nonfiction books, but he responded positively to this, and they’re only 99 cents. So we also bought Solar System and Energy and will probably buy a bunch more. We watched a few videos of rocket launches and discussed the size of the space station.

I then went up to work. He was helpful with Carly. He did dishes for a point and watered plants. Carly made sushi for lunch, and he helped bring everything up to me.

They then walked to the mall to get a healthy snack. Aroma was closed, so they went to the other cafe near it, which we’ve never been to, and had lemonade. As they were leaving, I was taking a break from sitting at my desk to rearrange the office. I switched the wardrobe and the chair, so that when you walk in you now see the chair and not the side of the wardrobe. It looks nicer, and now Carly doesn’t have to look at my back when we’re both working in there.

They also went to Tiv Taam and got toothpicks, which I had suggested. August keeps remembering we don’t have toothpicks. They were back at 3:20. They were in the yard for awhile so I kept working. They came in, but then were back outside for quite some time. They had toast, and August yelled up from the yard through the window to ask if they could use the bread we had chosen for hot dog buns for toast. They also looked at the new Energy book and learned about heat.

I came down and August and I shared some tonic water. He was counting by 11s and doing other math problems. He went to the bathroom and I watched some videos of him at Children’s Grand Park. I had randomly remembered the day we had bought a spray bottle at Daiso and played with it. Thanks to locations, I was able to find it easily and we watched some videos from around that time.

He’s been playing a game with Carly where he rushes to the bathroom before her. Sort of a reverse psychology thing to get him to go to the bathroom when we need to go somewhere. Carly told him it wasn’t a game though that he could play with other people when there was just one bathroom, thinking forward to this summer, particularly with Vivian. He said it was okay though as he had put Vivian to sleep for a few years. When I said that didn’t seem desirable as then he couldn’t play with her, he first asked what ‘desirable’ meant, then agreed to wake her up.

He then put all of his coins in two plastic bags and gave one to me. We were then pirates stealing money from each other. Which was mainly him stealing from me. I gave up being a private and stated a pirate supply store. He used his money to buy things like parrots, rope, figureheads, etc. from me. a twist to the game was that I was still a pirate so I’d try to cheat him on his change, and he had to double check it to make sure I got it correct.

Carly had gone up to rest, but eventually he wanted to go to her. She said he could come up so he was with her for a few minutes. I then came up. He told me “You’re a poodle. An extra disturbing poodle.” Even though I didn’t have the yarn on me anymore. We wrestled and he did math and we started a brother and sister whale story.

I remembered I was going to make the sesame ginger dish for dinner. We went downstairs and I did that. He went outside with Carly to do a photo scavenger hunt out on the street. He found about 20 things and got 22 million points or so. For a lemon he had taken a photo of a broken one, but then said he could have taken a photo of an “intact” lemon.

The dish, mushrooms and broccoli in a ginger sesame sauce over egg noodles, turned out quite well. August either really liked it, or didn’t. He didn’t eat a lot, and said he tasted the pepper. He drank a lot of milk though, and said he liked the mushrooms, which he hasn’t liked for weeks and weeks.

He did some tracing of our words of the day on the iPad, then we read more of Amulet #7. He went upstairs to Carly for a bath. He told her about how boys are tougher, and she talked to him about stereotypes (a new word) and how ‘tough’ isn’t really important.

Carly actually decided to put him to sleep, so I gave him a bath. We then read two of My Very Own Fairy Stories. We brushed his teeth, and he found a 5 shekel coin in Carly’s little treasure box. He claimed it as his own. He wouldn’t part with it downstairs, but he handled it well and didn’t get upset and we agreed we could make a plan for earning it tomorrow.

Back upstairs I read “Too Many Daves” and “Pale Green Pants” from The Sneetches. Carly came in and I left them at 9:35.

Checking the egg drop:

Unimpressed by the gift:

Addition:

Checking my change giving:

Toothbrush music:

Counting songs 1:

Counting songs 2:

Counting songs 3:

He called me up at 7:15. I came in the bedroom and he sat on the pillow on the lower bed. I sat on the bed and put the blanket around me, and he crawled in my lap. He then lay down on the pillow and rested. Thought he might go back to sleep. Instead, he asked, “Could you carry me?”

Downstairs we played with the money truck—the truck he designed yesterday with the magnet blocks and taught me and Carly how to make. It holds all of his coins. We then read the Elephant and Piggie book Are You Ready to Play Outside? and part of Timepocalypse. He then had a store where he exchanged different currencies. He said it was a “a going to other countries store.” He played a little of his train game and started watching something but then pancakes were ready. He ate two of my cinnamon pancakes, but had wanted Swedish pancakes.

Over on the white board he read my funny phrases out of the letter magnets: ‘smelly tooth’ and ‘mad donut’. I was still adding to the latter when he started to steal letters. We played with the magnet blocks and he wanted to build the big thing in the photo. It turned out we’d need at least two sets to do so, but we did a reasonable approximation. That ended with him knocking it over.

He then headed outside. He then showed me the “arcade” game he’d made with a string and broom under the slide. You had to pull the broom to you without it falling off and you got two lives. We did that, then he went in and got more string and added it. He kept adding more and more. He made another game where he tied a flower pot to a string and it hung from a stick suspended between the slide and fence and you were supposed to swing it back and forth without hitting the slide. He had me tie the end of one string to a branch of the tree. He spent quite awhile on it.

We went inside and he played with a circuit set. He did an entire project on his own, although he kept asking me if each piece was right. He just needed some confirmation, as I didn’t have to correct him at all. The final project didn’t quite work as it was supposed to, however, as he had had to substitute a capacitor for the one that was broken. He was okay with that, then proceeded to add every piece that is three dots long to it. He then hooked our two iPads together with the audio cord, then we watched a StoryBots video of songs about space (https://youtu.be/n1MaZRxWhbE)

He watched Smurfs, then finally went to the bathroom at 11:30. Shmuel called to talk about the air conditioner. We then played a Brother and Sister tiger game after he found the neck pillow. We played with the coin car again. For some reason the Peg + Cat 1 to 20 song was stuck in my head, so I was singing it, but intentionally messed up the words. That was driving August crazy and he’d say “No!’ and sing it correctly.

He made the beds and then read What Is That? for his chores. He then had oatmeal for lunch and I had cereal. He then asked about bank robberies, which led to asking about how wars start, which then changed to asking if the Titanic was real. And we looked up how many people it held and how many the biggest ships now hold. He said he had a huge cruise ship called the Crater, and asked what a ‘crater’ is and how they are made. So we discussed the possibilities.

We got ready to go and left at 1:30. He asked “Do tigers not liked to be shaved?” He said he had learned it from StoryBots. We listened to Odesza on the way, and it took awhile: traffic on the way there, then the west side parking lot was gated with guards, I thought for an event. We drove all the way around to the east side of the park and parked, only to find that the first two entrances were zip tied shut. Luckily, there was a third one close to the playground that had a guard on it, and we were let in. I assume it is just heightened security due to the Independence Day holiday. Mostly seemed for show, however, as all a terrorist would need to get to the crowded playground was a pair of scissors. We were finally in the park at 2:20.

We went to our usual game there of buying things for a spiderweb house. We would run back and forth between the spiderweb and the different ‘store’ areas. We would then rest in the spider web. There was sticky black stuff coming off of the posts and he stuck the fingers of my hand together with bits of it, then operated to fix my hand. I then did it to him. I pushed him on the round thing a couple times, once with a smaller kid who also got on. He went on the rocking toys, and asked to go to the bathroom. We had seen kids spraying each other with silly string, and coming out of the bathroom August found the cans scattered on the ground. When we had a snack he took the bar and divided it into nicely equal halves, singing a song about making the bar halves even as he did so.

We headed out, but stopped at the exercise equipment for a few minutes. When he wanted the elliptical I was on I made him ask politely and wait. He then wanted me to do the same with him.

We left at 3:30. He was shrieking when he posted a little dog between us and the car. As we got to the car (we got past the dog with me holding him0 he said, “Did you know I made a Dion ship?” “As tall as a skyscraper.” He said it was Dion shaped, but a ship inside. I seem to remember him making something else in the shape of Dion before.

We drove over to Tiv Taam. Good sign that the parking lot had lots of space in it, bad sign that there weren’t any carts out front. We had lucked out and gotten a cart by the car that someone had left in the parking lot. It was really busy inside. August handled it well, and it was probably an hour between when we got there and when we were able to leave. August did great, and as we circled back by the bulk Russian candies, I let him choose one. He had a lot of choices, and ended up choosing one that he said was pure chocolate.

We headed home and got here by 5:30. We stopped at the strawberry stand and got a couple boxes. They’re still going strong, although the season should be over soon. He went outside with Carly and I made dinner and put away groceries. Inside he read The Old Truck, What Is That?, and another book to Carly. We had our schnitzel and broccoli for dinner.

I delivered a strawberry as he made a ship out of magnet blocks for Carly at the table. We then finished reading Timepocalypse. Carly tried to read Dogman to him (they’d read a bit earlier) but he was being squirmy on the couch. He finally settled down and they did some reading. I went upstairs to rest for a few minutes. As I was coming down, I heard them talking about coming up, and heard him say he wanted Carly to carry him so he could be scared on the stairs. I turned the lights off, before they had started, but it startled them and he did a lot of screaming. I took hm upstairs and we wrestled and started the Brother and Sister game over again.

In the bathroom he asked, “what’s a deserted island?” So deserted was a word of the day. He made another drain fly potion and talked about how it was spreading away from our house. We washed him and he brushed his teeth. I read Paddington Bear and the Grand Tour and Carly came in and I left them at 9:15.

I think I forgot to mention that a day or two ago, in response to him asking about the disco dancing in Timepocalypse, we had watched some videos on YouTube. That led to watching John Travolta dancing in both Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction. His first Quentin Tarantino film.

His outdoor arcade game 1:

His outdoor arcade game 2:

New version of his game:

Some silliness:

He was up just before 7. He watched a little Wild Kratts. He went to the bathroom, then sang a “Inside Underpants” song as he put his pants on. The tune was influenced by “Let it Go”. He then talked about his animal called ‘typhos’. He invented them a few days ago. They are “light blue, shine, rare…blue stripes.” Endangered becuase “it’s dying out because of other predators and stuff.” He ate oatmeal, then we went did table time. We watched the rest of the egg drop video. He now decided our whole contraption and egg could only weigh 80 grams. We haven’t yet protected an egg and he’s making it harder and harder.

This time, we used balloons and blew up a bunch and taped them around the egg, which was wrapped in a plastic bag because we’d realized that neither scotch tape, masking tape, nor duct tape would stick to an egg. It weighed in at 81 grams. August was reluctant to let it pass. He’d make a good racing scrutineer. He dropped the bundle from the slide and it survived, no problem. He then wanted it dropped from the office. I dropped it out, and it sounded like it landed really lightly. However, when we ran down to check and August started to pull the balloons apart, 4 or 5 popped simultaneously, since they were all taped together, and it caused a chain reaction. The egg was cracked when we got to it, but I think it cracked when the balloons broke and it hit the ground.

Back up in the bedroom he started talking about, and calculating, conversions between different currencies. He was also adding by hundreds in his head “3 dollars would be 1,200 agorot…7 agorot would be 2,800 agorot.” He got most of them, with little help. We opened the window completely so he could look out, and I reminded him to be safe. He said, “Can i climb out of here? I have before…I did some very dangerous things. Like jumped on the Zinnie house, and climbing to the top of our house.” Then it was a skyscraper, then up in the clouds: “eated some cloudiness.”

We started the Brother and Sister Seal/Whale again, and played until they are floating to a new island. We went downstairs so I could make tea. We played a little Hey, that’s My Fish! He read The Sled and we both read the Elephant and Piggie book Are You Ready to Play Outside?

We went back upstairs and added to the game. ‘Ration’ was a word of the day. And something else from the game. Downstairs he watched the computer play Hey, that’s My Fish! He asked, “Isn’t 17 a lovely number? It’s a girl number. Becuase it’s pink.” 4 is green. 7 is pink. 1 is pink.

He had the last of the noodles and broccoli and cheese sauce, and I had soup. We did the word search together in Camping with Grandpa.

We got ready to go, and walked over to the mall. He was a little disappointed when we didn’t go to the fancy ice cream place there. A miscommunication: I’ve always called it ‘ice cream at home’ and thought I’d explained that when he earned that reward we would go get a container of ice cream and bring it home. Anyway, he started to get upset and thought about hitting me, but he handled it well and we went in to Tiv Taam and got a box of ice cream sandwiches. I let him buy them, using the card and signing, then he ate on on our walk back. He said it was “insanely good”, but then also said it wasn’t quite as good as the fancy ice cream place.

At home he did alone time and read the three Bob Books to himself that he knows he can do. He had some time left, so went and played with the magnet blocks. We then drove to school at 2.

Carly had arranged to use Ayal’s room and we met with Marka. August sat on Carly’s lap and watched Wild Kratts with headphones on. Basically, Marka and Julie have decided it is best to drag our feet and do as little as possible and wait until Shary and Mike are gone at the end of the school year, and deal with the new team.

Carly went back to work (she had a meeting) and August and I went to play with Eve and Zoe, who were being watched by a high schooler after school. Candy gave August his rock from school with his name on it. They went on the swing first. Zoe was pushing and got knocked over by the swing. Natalie took her to the nurse. August told Eve about his watch, then the two of them moved over to the kitchen area and had a great time together. They made birthday stuff for me: cake, muffins, stew. They were doing awesome. They were talking about big numbers and August checked with me: “2000 million. That would be two billion, right?”

Zoe was back, but playing by herself, and then we all moved to the big playground, stopping at the bathrooms on the way. August and Eve climbed on ladders and bars thing, and were now discussing light speed. Their parents came and they left at 4. August kept playing. As he climbed up the spiral ladder he sang a “Saying goodbye to the ground” song. He then spun on the spinning thing like it was no big deal—I can’t remember if he’s actually done it before, and started having me hide so he could find him. We played several rounds (he never wanted to hide) and there was a lot of laughter involved. One time I just stood right behind him, hoping he’d walk the other direction and I could hide behind the pole he was standing against. When he found me he laughed hysterically.

Eventually we headed home. We played with the magnetic blocks, and ate pita and hummus and carrots as a sort of dinner. Carly got home at 5:30. He and I read some Skybrary books: Tessa Tiger’s temper Tantrums, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Sammy Skunk’s Super Sniffer, and The Quest to Digest.

We had some soup for more dinner, then they weren’t outside. He thought about picking up tree things for a point, but didn’t do it. They came in and played with the magnet blocks. Carly went upstairs and I played with him. It turned into the annoying Joseph game, over and over, so I got Carly to take him up to his bath.

He made a potion to kill drain flies. As I came up I heard him say, “Did you know you’re the best mama ever? And dada’s the best dada ever?” I was up just after 9. He was discussing his watch, and his ‘application data’: “You should search for my application data.” He asked for stories from when I was 19 or so and I told him about running start and living alone in Seattle.

I sang “We all sing with the same voice”, “Ladybug Picnic”, and “Fake Plastic Trees” and he was asleep at 9:30.

Underpants song:

Egg drop #3:

Egg drop #4:

Popping balloons:

Reading to himself during alone time:

Telling Eve about his watch:

Discussing traveling the speed of light:

He was up at 7:05. We read Plants Versus Zombies. We read a few pages of that, then he changed his mind again and wanted to watch Wild Kratts. He watched the musk ox episode, then went to the bathroom. He talked about doing his chores and seeing coins and saving them, even if he didn’t know what specifically he wanted.

He wanted to make the beds. We went up and did that. While we did that he asked, “Do you like head butting?” He was thinking of the oxen. Back downstairs he remembered that new train iPad game and played it. We played a little Toca Store, then we were playing the store game with all of his different coins. He had oatmeal and mango for breakfast and we read more of Hilo #5. He asked for seconds. He told me about a “Bullet bug…it runs so fast it’s blind…at least as fast as a car…it can run for a half hour…”

For an activity we started to watch a video about egg drop strategies and ‘kinetic energy’ was a word of the day. To start our egg drop, August listed out all the rules (the video had mentioned that different competitions have different rules). He clearly laid them out, and I wrote them down, including no parachutes, the contraption could only weigh as much as an egg (he got the scale and measured), and listed what materials could be used. We then worked on our first egg drop idea: an egg in a plastic bag with popcorn. Which is a great idea. However, he was stingy on the popcorn as he wanted to eat as much if it as possible. He dropped the egg from the chair onto the patio and it cracked. Back inside, instead of working on a second one, he wanted to eat popcorn. So we ate popcorn and read Plants Versus Zombies. ‘Artifact’ was another word of the day. We finished Timepocalypse and he wanted to start it again. We read some of it, then he changed his mind and wanted the other one.

August then read the Bob Book The Sled to me, quite easily. We went outside to check out the wind. Shmuel called, and said the technician could come today. There was lots more discussion of coins. We talked about going up to get more styrofoam from the junk area when he decided it would be good for the egg drop. He got distracted with his top toy from McDonald’s when he realized it had three-sided screws and we could take it apart with our new tool set. “I’m a genius, right? I figured out that thingie is in there…” The screws came out, but it was still glued together. So we took it outside and took a hammer to it. I was able to crack apart the pieces at the seam so we could put it back together. We found the gyroscope inside and played with it. Put the toy back together, but it wasn’t quite as good as it was loose. Still, a start of putting things back together.

He had noodles and broccoli for lunch, then we went upstairs to move the beds. We played Math Tango on the bed. I tried to get him to change his clothes, but he decided to dress as Captain Underpants. He had his pajama shirt around his neck as his cape, then wanted another pajama shirt for his pants. He then used his cheap telescope (from Korea) to look out the window in his room. We went outside to get his better one, and the technician called and said he would be here in ten minutes. Inside, we started to change August, but first he danced naked to “Dont Hold Back”.

Got him dressed, and the technician showed up. We went upstairs and August watched him. He recognized that one of the tools was a multimeter. When I pointed out the AC didn’t even do anything when I pressed the button on the unit, the guy asked “Why?” I wanted to say, “That’s why you’re here, buddy” but held my tongue. He looked at it for awhile, then said he’d have to come back another day with a circuit board for it. At least it was a start.

Downstairs, August wanted to take apart his music box. We realized we could take it apart to see how it works, then likely put it back together. We were totally successful on this one, so we saw how a screw rod turns the gear to turn it, and when we put it back together we realized we had to adjust the notes piece to be the perfect length away from the cylinder so that the notes play. His last taking apart experiment couldn’t be put back together: He wanted to cut open his squishy thing to see if it had a liquid in it. He was pretty sure it didn’t. So I let him cut it open and he was surprised to find it was just air. He then used the parts of it to shoot them across the room like rubber bands. I took a slo-mo video.

We then decided to exercise at home. He joined me a little, although mainly by climbing on my back to make things harder. Upstairs, we read Creepy Pair of Underwear again and decided to hold on to it since he likes it so much.

We then drove to school. I also took our swim stuff, as it was supposed to be hot today (the forecast said up to 35 at one point). That turned out to be good, as Andrea said she knew nothing about August being in the class, even though I had filled out the registration form a week ago. And of course Vicky is out of town this week. August was totally fine with it though. He wrote on the white board (they had been watching the baby owl cam) with Candy, then wanted to go swimming.

We went and changed and went to the pool. August was concerned that it might rain, but he went in anyway. It was quite cloudy and windy. It may have been in the high-20s, but no where close to being what was forecast. With a heated pool though it was just fine. In the pool he was steering me like a boat, so I started to teach him port and starboard, bow and stern. He got out of the pool first, and stood there, looking at the water dripping from him: “My faucets are really good today.” That’s what he always calls the dripping water. I was impressed, as he stood there, no problem, despite the wind. I was chilly when I got out. We were out at 4.

Carly had a meeting until 4:30, so we headed home. He asked, “What’s ‘crossing the line’ mean?” Not sure where he picked that one up. We made a smoothie, then did egg drop #2. We walked up to the junk area and got a small piece of styrofoam (someone had dumped a big pile of it, and now pieces were blown all over the street). We made it into a box, with the egg wrapped in some packaging material inside. We glued it together with hot glue, then taped the lid on. He dropped this one from the top of the slide. I really thought this one worked, but it was also cracker.

Carly got home. He wanted to make a soup with the raw egg. That started inside but we had him move outside. He was hyper, so I wrestled with him. We ate dinner, and he told Carly, “Are there any dishes to do? I’d be happy to help.” They ended up playing with Duplos and making a big base for a tower. I took over, and Carly headed for a late doctor appointment. He and I kept doing Duplos, making it touch the ceiling.

He was sad when Carly left, so we had hot chocolate. We then went upstairs, with the lights off, so he could be scared. On the bed he started a dance contest, like in Plants Versus Zombies, and had the prize be the shekels we have in a drawer up there. He had a lollipop while I washed his hair. Carly got home at 8:25.

We discussed his “photamiles”—a very big unit of distance: “a peregrine falcon can go a septillionth of a photamile an hour.” His galaxy is 27 photamiles around. He remembered Carly’s adding reminder: “I ate and I ate and I got sixteen!” I read Creepy Pair of Underwear He voluntarily read a few lines of it. He also talked about a huge satellite that he has that studies the universe. He described new frequencies of light that it could detect. Carly came in, and I left them about 9:30.

Drawing an eggman:

Egg drop 1:

Trying to break open the top:

Top slo-mo:

Stretchy thing slo-mo:

Taunting a dog:

Egg drop 2:

Seeing how it went:

Dance contest:

Discussing his light frequencies:

He and I were up just before 7:30. We went down together and he lay on the couch for a couple minutes, then went outside to find Carly. She tried to read The One and Only Ivan to him but that one was rejected. So she read more of the Fox book.

He watched a couple things, ending with the rain episode of StoryBots. At one point he turned to me and said, “Dada, you know that wind-powered car? You did it totally wrong…” That was something he talked about last night. It was a kit involving iron rods and other things that I could put together.

Lots of cleaning and deciding what to keep or throw away. He collects a lot, but also throws stuff away pretty easily. He vacuumed for a digital coin. For reading we said he knew The Old Truck well enough that he should read a different book to us. He took it and sat on the couch and read it out loud all to himself. The first time he has ever read anything just for himself. He then read Frog Sat to me and had no problem with it. I suggested we put them over in his calm area, and that he now had books he could read to himself during alone time. He eventually was excited by the idea and said that when he had 5 or 6 books that he could read for an entire alone time.

We then went upstairs and he helped me make the beds. As we went back downstairs he told us, “I like how you set up the star thing…I get more control of myself…to do the chores.” We got him changed and he and Carly were about to do recycling, when Jill and Grace showed up at our gate at 10:30. Carly had been texting Gabby about babysitting, but she said she had a paper to write, but her sisters could do it. A time hadn’t been set, but here they were.

We were surprised, but took advantage. They stayed from 10:30 to 12:15. They did origami with him (making him ninja stars), played Candy Land, and played store by making paper money and he sold hamburgers. They went outside and played in the Zinnie house. Inside they played GarageBand and Dragonbox Big Numbers and Endless Arcade on the iPad. He had made them an arcade level that they were trying to play when I went down.

Carly and I were able to work upstairs the full time. We had soup for lunch—we had realized that August had only eaten banana bread this morning—and we read part of Hilo 5. He and Carly then went to do recycling. He got his coin for that, and we planned to go get a Rebar smoothie with it later.

The two of them then drove to Gaby’s for their 2pm appointment. They played Connect 4 and August made up something called ‘health points’ (from Endless Arcade?) that Carly never fully understood. They then played Monopoly, and he turned it into a building game. Carly was the boss and he was the worker building buildings. He then sort of became the owner of the town, buying things like a power plant, school, and grocery store. He liked how Gaby wrote things down. On the way home they stopped at the school to drop off printer parts.

He was kind of hyper at home. He ate thawed mango, then oatmeal. He asked for the difference between light year and a galactic year. I tried to explain how they are different types of measurement (distance and time, respectively). He asked what does “not particularly” mean?

He wanted to make paper money, like the Kerns had done. So we cut bills and coins while listening to Death Cab remixes. He said he made the really electronic one and got “1800 shekels for this…it’s crazy, right?” Making music, “That’s one of my jobs, man.” He wrote the numbers on all the coins and bills. And there was a lot of them. We then used the new money so I could buy things from his store. He had me play chess against myself. He almost decided to not go to the mall today, as he wanted to use the car to go to the Poleg Mall sometime and get a smoothie at that rebar. But eventually he decided the walk was worth it.

He was outside with Carly for awhile, then we were walking at 5:45. He saw an ant carrying something interesting and took it from the ant. He told us, “I ant stealed.” He did a lot of running on the way there, and we stopped to look at the poop flowers. It was hard to convince him that it wasn’t actually beetle poop in the middle of them. Since we didn’t have the bike we could take the shortcut on the other end.

We got a chocolate hazelnut smoothie, large so that he and I could share it. Carly didn’t want any. They looked at the plant shop while I ordered. He saw a big dog and screamed and took off running, way past the playground. We sat on a bench by the playground and drank the smoothie.

He went in on the playground, to the airplane, with Carly for a few minutes. We were then walking back at 6:30. He told us that a “megamile” is 1000 miles. He was annoyed to learn that a ton is 2000 pounds. He’s said a few times that it should be a 1000 pounds. He understands the simplicity of the metric system.

Right across the street he found a metal rod thing with some electronics on it. Maybe some sort of light controller. We took it apart inside. The circuit board in it is pretty cool. He and Carly then painted on the big sheet of styrofoam he’d brought back from recycling earlier. He was then outside watering plants with her.

For dinner we ate pasta and broccoli. We discussed all of his various coins, and ‘denomination’ was a word of the day. He then played the shopping game with Carly.

Carly took him up and gave him a bath. I heard him singing a long song about people taking some sort of trip. I went up, and we read Plants Versus Zombies Timepocalypse. At some point he told me about some machine he made that allowed you to extract someone’s DNA and then it would turn you into a clone of that person. I questioned how this would work, as it seemed to also give you their memories. I didn’t get a good explanation of how it would work. He asked me, “Are there superheros in this world?” He had a look on his face like he knew the answer was no, but he was a little hopeful they were real. When I said they weren’t, he said, “If you were being attacked by a bad guy you’d pick a hair off…put it in the DNA extractor…to fight it off…but I use it to be scientific.”

We had planned to have me put him to sleep. Carly was tired though and came in around 9:30 and I left them a few minutes later.

Reading to himself for the first time:

Writing numbers for the money:

Running a challenge:

Discussing Plants Versus Zombies:

His story song:

He was up at 7:55. He ran to Carly, then they cuddled on the couch. Carly asked if he wanted to read the fox book. He asked if books were older than his iPad. In clarifying whether he meant books in general, or that specific book, I said that books had been around for hundreds of years. He said, “You mean centuries.”

He watched Smurfs for awhile, then went outside with Carly for awhile. When they came back in he said he had a trisopod, which was a kind of bone, and they took his waterslide down to his lab to study it. They also watched a little of some insect show, which I think started outside.

Carly headed to the store. We went upstairs to wrestle and play a brother and sister game. He asked, “What do whales eat?” We learned it was copepods and krill and watched a video of krill. He then made up ‘septopods’ which are like octopi or something but have seven legs. We played a whale version of the brother in sister game in which the whale saves them when they are blown overboard, then they first build the raft to visit the whale as it swam around the bay.

Finally got him dressed, and Carly got back. I took a shower, then worked. They played in the Zinnie house, had watermelon juice, and made corn. August was doing lots of singing. He played the penguin game, and I heard him ask Carly what ‘tee ball’ is. That was from me telling him about playing baseball as a kid.

I went down at 2:10. He was playing by himself off and on, Carly said. They played the store game or something, and August gave Carly change, saying, “I panned for a shekel worth of gold.”

I then took him to Candy’s birthday party. Candy had also gone to Toys R Us on her shopping trip and gotten her a present: an odd doll set with a giraffe. I should have taken a photo. It was perfect, as August hates dolls, so he wasn’t jealous of it. He had helped wrap it, then Carly made a big bow for it. August was jealous of the bow, however, so she was making a big one for August to hang on the wall when we left.

The birthday party was at a gan in Tel Yitzhak. Carly made the right choice in not going: it was a zoo of an Israeli birthday party. It was Frozen-themed, with a two-person hosting team that ran a show/games thing that lasted over an hour and was still going when we left, over 20 kids, and a team of caterers. It was all inside and incredibly loud. So even though there were other parents, like Heather, there, I didn’t really talk to anyone, nor were kids really interacting with each other. There was ton of food though: I focused on the pizza and sushi, and August focused on the treats. I cut him off at one point, but I think he ended up with at least 8. And we left before they actually did cake.

We got there at 2:30 and left at 4. August found two helium balloons with one tied to the other one soon after we got there and asked me to tie them around his finger. We later switched them to being tied around his water bottle. The show consisted of games, dancing, and magic tricks, with one person dressed as Elsa, and another dressed as Olaf. I noticed that the kids were calling the movie ‘Elsa’ instead of ‘Frozen’, and that later in the day August would do it. August asked me to Shazam a few of the songs, in particular a dance remix of “Let it Go”.

When we left I lamented how it was a beautiful day and the party was right next to this really nice playground (which was open this time—the one time we came by before it was closed) and the party was all inside. August didn’t want to go to the playground though.

We listened to the “Let it Go” remixes on the way home. August made the mistake of opening his window and the balloons were almost sucked out. The first one escaped, but he grabbed the second and pulled them back in. At home, 4:15, August called Carly outside and released the balloons (something he’s wanted to do for a long time). They got stuck in our tree. I was able to reach them with his long stick, and they immediately hit the power lines, then walked down the lines to the pole across the street, thanks to the wind. Later, we heard one of them pop.

Carly was making soup, so August made one too, starting with bouillon cubes. He read The Old Truck to Carly and was excited he did it almost perfectly on his own. He also watered plants to earn a coin. Carly skyped with Cherie. August and I went outside so he could touch invisible things. He was then playing with his stick and accidentally hit me on the head.

Carly and I switched and I went upstairs to work. He finished his 60 minutes. He was playing Math Tango when I came down. He went to the bathroom, and when he washed his hands but didn’t put soap on his hands he said, “My bad.”

Carly made a smoothie. She and I were doing a lot of boring summer talk and he asked what the phrase ‘set in stone’ meant. A word of the day. We played with the magnet blocks and listened to “Let it Go” remixes. He told me, “My remix is one of the best Elsa remixes EVER.”

We went upstairs and I read Creepy Pair of Underwear. We brushed his teeth and he told me about “Concrete echolocation…it can knock down concrete and iron and stuff.” Carly came in and I left them around 9:30.

Explaining septopods:

Birthday party 1:

Birthday party 2:

Birthday party 3:

Releasing the balloon:

Balloons on the wire: