Category: Uncategorized

He was up at 7. We went down and read a lot of Ben Braver. He and Carly did a lot of math on the calculator and reciting patterns. We got going, pretty early for us, and headed to Tel Aviv. When we went out to the car August spotted a cloud to the south and said it looked kind of like a rain cloud, with a 40 percent chance of rain. But then he said,”I think my detection is off bcause I have sunglasses on.” Now it was only 1%. Carly drove and I read Ben Braver.

We got to their house. August was hesitant to go in, even with me holding him, because of the little dog, but he got used to it once we were in. Taya wanted to play for awhile, and showed him her bed. They have painted walls in their kitchen and living room, put up plants out on their balcony, and now have a full bed in their living room.

Taya showed us yoga pose cards and Carly and I tried them, but August wasn’t so into it. Cassie gave August a little Nutella sandwich, which he gulped down. He also had a fruit leather. We got walking. As Carly headed down first he said, “Mama, please don’t step in an ants nest with flip flops.” We were walking at 9:45. I taught August the word ‘earworm’ as Taya had been singing “Let it Go” inside.

We got to the beach, which was quite crowded, but Noah paid for umbrellas and chairs and we found a spot partially under a sun shade. Taya and August played in the sand and Cassie and I went down with buckets to get them water. August got Carly to play with the sand with him, and they were making the dripping sand castle/mountain. August was really into this for quite awhile and was just humming to himself. I occasionally went down to get him more water. Taya and the other kids (a couple other families had shown up) had chocolate bars. August didn’t notice until, while Carly was out in the water, Taya brought him one. So he had that.

We ended up down on the water. August just had me carry him out so his toes could touch at first, but he ended up in his swimsuit and wading in the water with Taya to collect seaweed. They played on the shower with Carly and Cassie and I took my turn out in the water.

August pretty quickly decided he was ready to go. He spent a few minutes playing with a plastic rope divider thing on the walkway down to the beach, then wanted to go. I got him to be patient though as we all made up our minds to go and we did all the packing up, getting toys, washing sand off of legs, etc.

We all walked to Movieing, a cafe near their house. We got a table inside. We ordered a pasta and broccoli dish, a half tuna sandwich, a cappuccino, and a grapefruit juice. First the waiter came back and said they didn’t have the grapefruit juice, then that they didn’t have pink lemonade. So I ordered lemonade. A minute later a woman delivered a pink drink and said it was grapefruit. It actually turned out to be pomegranate, but was still good, although August didn’t like it. We also got extra fries from Cassie as they ordered schnitzel and fries but only got the fries at first, so they were given extra.

We played a little Polytopia. When a couple of dogs came in the restaurant Carly had to pick him up until they left.

When done we walked back to their place and said goodbye. We drove home, and read Ben Braver most of the way.

At home we did our few minutes of Green Planet. He then played He played Toca Builders and Toca World. We read more Ben Braver but stopped with 10 pages left. He and Carly did circuits and art. Carly had the idea to do an octopus costume for him out of the rubbery things from the keyboards.

They moved to their styrofoam art, but then ended up doing lots and lots of math. They worked on division and he counted by 20s: “20, 40, 60, 80, 100, 120…” He was doing math with partial cents, getting down to hundredths of a cents. He confused Carly as they kept going: “And they each cost 1.254 cents each…”

I was working on the couch. They ate dinner, then he had pie. He had her copy yoga poses. He started with good, calm ones, but it turned more into exercises and he was giving her mastery points.

I took him out side to get his last 9 active minutes. He played with the hose. He had me be brother as he drove and there were storms that Brother was afraid of. I picked up tree things as we went.

We went inside and he read Samantha to me and we played a little Polytopia instead of getting a star. Carly was talking to her parents and they came down and he told them about Polytopia.

He got his 60 minutes and played his move, then we finished readingBen Braver. We all worked together to clean up the rug area. I made up an annoying clean up song to sing if we didn’t all clean. August thought it was funny, then kept expanding it himself, and also turned it into an eating song.

He was hyper and running around a lot. I took him upstairs and he had us play a Brother game where he found a baby chicken with a concussion (we’d played a whole long session of Brother finding a baby chick games earlier, where the farmer kept stealing the chick back and Brother worked to get more money to buy it back). The farmer stole it, then Brother eventually tricked the farmer into confessing on tape and got the chick back for good.

I gave him a bath, and he said goodnight to Carly. I read Save Your Brains! (a Plant Vs Zombies book) twice.

I sang counting songs to him, like I used to in Korea. He laughed a lot at the big numbers song, but said he remembered it. He was asleep before 10.

Playing in the sand:

Collecting seaweed:

Math with decimals:

Giving the mastery test:

Crazy eating song:

He woke up while I was still upstairs. He had come out of the office, where he and Carly slept, and huddled on the couch. I took him in on the usual bed and he fell back to sleep, and got up just before 7:30. I read Fix It, Sam and The Thank You Book (an Elephant and Piggie book). We went over and I made a funny phrase on the whiteboard for him to read. Today was ‘exploding underwear. ‘Scary goat’ was yesterday’s. We played our few minutes of Green Planet. I realized he’s learned really percentages and percentages and fractions of a circle through it.

He ate frozen mango and had oatmeal for breakfast. I read him more of Ben Braver. He then wanted to do the store game, and had me have a debit card. But the game turned into me not being able to afford anything, or he would overcharge me on the card. I’d call the police, but he would get away. We went up and started laundry, then he played on the iPad. We then finished readingDragons Beware.

We went to the floor and got out the new ink pads from Max and did rubber stamps. He watched as I did his name a few times. He then asked about the name rocks for me, etc. I got those, and he had me rubber stamps ‘Mama’ and ‘Grandpa’ before he moved on. We did some math on Khan Academy. Then, quite uncharacteristically, he tried grabbing the iPad away from me and tried to play something else, and wouldn’t put the iPad away. He got quite upset when I did take it away, particularly when I set it on top of the refrigerator. He kept doing the frantic “Dada, Dada, Dada, Dada…” which he does with Carly, but hasn’t really done with me at all. He also was telling me to get away, even as he kept slowly pushing me across the room.

But when he did start to calm down he did something very interesting: He started a 30 minute timer on his watch and said we could talk about it then. This is not a strategy that we’ve used with him, and he did it before I had said anything.

For lunch we had the pate we bought awhile ago with crackers, and then also frozen strawberries. We read moreBen Braver, then I got out a piece of paper and markers, then asked him to give a name to the thing that takes over when he’s angry. He called it the ‘Chook’. So for alone time I asked him to draw the Chook. He did that, then I asked him about it. He said it hurts him, and when I asked where he pointed to his stomach. It was the swirly feeling he talked about before. Then he said it was like a hurricane since it hurts him. On the picture, he said the blue part was the heart.

For his alone time treat he chose a jelly bean and 9 M and Ms out of a random bag up there. We then worked on big number multiplication. I taught him how to figure out how many zeroes they have, using the equation. So, for ‘trillion’ you take the ‘tri’ equals 3 and multiply it by 3, then add an extra 3.

He read Samantha andAs Big As. He put the second in his stack and is up to 14 books. We next made beds and cleaned toilets. He looked at the possible rewards on his iPad, and said he wanted to be able to get a credit card for like a thousand points. He then said, “I could find a way to pay it back. Or I could never pay it back!” He ate more frozen strawberries, and asked about the moon of Mars. I said there were actually two, and we looked up the names, Phobos and Deimos, and learned how they were twins and followed their father into war. So we talked more about the Greek/Roman gods and why there were ‘gods of’ different things.

He also asked how his watch knows his step count, and we talked about an accelerometer, a word of the day. He had even more strawberries, then we played with another item from Max: a little combination lock. He was trying to figure out what to use it on. We couldn’t figure out how to change the default combo, even though I translated the Hebrew. Just didn’t seem to work. He skied more math questions, which led to the calculator. He then counted by 50s on his own.

We took his bouncy ball outside and bounced it on the patio. He told me how his actual powers now are flying (something Ben Braver thinks he can do in the book) and infrared sight.

We packed up and got going to school. We got there early enough to return the fox book back to the library, then we sat on our bench and played a few minutes of Polytopia. Bar and her brother came along and he got his Bar hug. Carly came a few minutes after the bell rang, and we all headed to the pool. I got him changed with me. The pool was pretty busy, but he was okay with that now. Carly got him in the water, and Omri talked to the two of them for a few minutes. They left awhile after that though.

It was plenty hot for the pool, so that was nice. August is very comfortable on the kickboard, although he still insists on having his floaties on too. At some point he’ll want to make the next step. We got going, and on the way out grabbed a couple of things from the electronics disposal site: a speaker, part of a printer that we hadn’t completely taken apart before, and something else small.

They dropped me off at the house, then went to the store to get vanilla ice cream and a few other items. Carly asked him what else they should get, and he suggested milk. They were home at 5:10.

We ate dinner together (the pasta), then they made the pie. When it got to “the boring part” he came and chose 30 minutes of iPad time as a reward for his chore points. He played Robot Factory, with me for part of it. We read more Ben Braver, then he made his pie crust cookies with the leftover dough. They were mainly letters, but he also said one was a Gramma one and one was a Grampa.

He ate one of those when they were done, then we took apart the speaker. We ate pie and ice cream when it was done. It turned out quite well. I explained what it meant to “Pull off a deal” when I thought he had said that, but he’d actually said something else. We ended up discussing regular polygons and their names, and he was making up names of ones with lots and lots of sides.

Carly gave him a bath, and got him ready for bed, then I left them at 8:50. He wanted to sleep in the regular bed, as he says it is more comfortable. Carly gave it a try, but after a few minutes they switched to the office to have air conditioning.

Drawing the chook:

Explaining how to clean the toilets:

Spraying his own shoes:

Pie crust cookies:

He woke up at 6:40 and went right back to sleep. He kept until 7:40. Downstairs he cuddled on the couch, then asked for his iPad. He did his one move for his watch game. He then asked, “Here’s a challenge for you: Yesterday I goed to another place and you have to guess where.” It turned out it was Turkey. We played our 5 minutes of Green Planet, then chess, first on the board, then using the iPad app to play a full game. I made him oatmeal for breakfast. He then wanted me to make music. We made another song, and he told me the reason he wants me to make music is that he wants me to be a performer, in front of people, “when you are like 60.”

He watched some Curious George, then were going to do challenges with the modeling clay, but did more chess instead. We went upstairs to do the brother and sister robot game. We created a longer story where they fix one, but it is left behind by the other robots when they return to their planet. The bot they have has plans for a spaceship, and other alien technologies along the way. the Robot Doctor starts building the spaceship, and when he dies they continue the work (it takes years). When they finish, they take it home, back to it’s hollow egg planet and then live there.

Yet more chess, then we had schnitzel and broccoli and some of the leftovers for lunch. Shmuel surprised us with a visit. I hurriedly moved the beds so that he and another technician could take a look at the AC. The technician took a photo of the barcode. Something I’d already sent Shmuel. Shmuel had brought an old modem for August, and an old electrical engineering book. As August and I took apart more of the vacuum, getting to the motor, Shmuel brought those, then a small bag of English book. Later, he would leave a keyboard on the doorstep.

August read Who? and Cat and Mouse to me. The first went in the read-it-himself area, while Cat and Mouse was nearly there, but he decided to practice again. He surprised me with how fluently he read the last few full sentences in it though.

We now did our play dough challenges. Well, mainly he gave me things to do. That was sort of his MO today, and it got tiring. We had planned to walk to school and have a snack in the cafeteria and then go to the library. However, August decided we should drive, and got upset when I said that wasn’t the plan, or an option. So a bit of a breakdown after that. Enough that I said that going to school was no longer a possibility. He handled that pretty well, though, and eventually agreed to walk up to Snakes and Ladders Park.

While that was happening, someone came to the door looking for a רם קארי. I told him we didn’t know who that was, and eventually had to show him my ID numbers to prove they didn’t match.

We got ready to go, and that’s when August found the keyboard that Shmuel had left. We got walking at 3:05. We walked up to the park. We noticed a fence had been put in o you couldn’t cut across the grass into the park. He went to the spinning thing first. Played on that for a few minutes, then had the bar I brought as a snack. We played the escaping luggage game, but I was piloting a spaceship this time. We then played with the snakes and ladders board, turning it into a math game, adding our ways to 100. He asked what an “Infinite time loop” was (from Timepocalypse) and then sang a song about it.

He decided it was time to head home. Carly had sent a message telling us she was heading home a few minutes before that. So we would see who got home first. On the way home August talked about putting different things in infinite time loops. He had practical applications too: he could put the wheel in an infinite time loop and it was turn over and over on its own. He put other cars in infinite time loops too, which would make them crash.

We took the back path to check on the flower corn (one didn’t grow this year) and ran into Mikaela coming the other direction. She said that Shmuel had been showing her place today. We were home at 4:40, after Carly.

They took apart the keyboard, then he had me use its parts and others to build a “thingamajingjongjoo.” It was a machine that makes monkeys. Don’t know where it was from, but he asked “What’s stun mean?” A word of the day. He kept wanting me to make things, and I got him to agree to taking turns. He made a ramp.

Carly made fried rice for dinner and we ate. He then went outside with her. He then read two Bob Books to me: Cat and Mouse and Milk. He put both in his stack. I then read three Skybrary books: Oliver Otter’s Own Office, Left, Right Freda, and Lucky Beans. He then helped me do all the dishes. He and I both had an ice cream sandwich, then we were looking for his water bottle when Carly got home, after 8:30.

I took him up for his bath. He didn’t play in the sink, and just kept asking me questions. So eventually we did a quick wash. there was then a lot of talking about the planets and which had atmospheres and what sorts. August found his baht coin from Thailand and took it downstairs to give to Carly. He told her, “Mama, you’re the best.”

In bed we read a few chapters of Ben Braver. He decided he had a power: “Here’s my power: I can chew through steel walls.” It turned out he could eat anything. Carly came in and I left them at 9:40.

Spinning:

Snakes and ladders:

Infinite time loop song:

Singing for points:

He woke up at 7 and he asked me to get in bed. He fell back to sleep for 15 or 20 minutes. After he woke up and was laying on the bed, he asked if we could go down and play Green Planet. So we did, playing just one session for the day. He told Carly, “You’re a sweetheart.” I made us all a strawberry smoothie. He was doing more decimals today, telling us, “My grocery shop is 2.25 miles away.” They did calculator math, doing cents in math problems. He also showed Carly how you can repeat an operation over and over. He was counting by 56s at one point. I explained ‘multiples’ to him, so a word of the day. He counted to 2000 by 4s and asked “Aren’t I crazy?”

He was trying to pay me 100 won for something, and I explained the differences between ‘goods’ and ‘services’. He did more math with Carly, then played Gro Recycling for awhile. Carly went tot he store. He and I added to our Tabletop song. I had to explain the word ‘separately’ when referring to the loops. He then ate oatmeal and watched a couple marble race videos. We did more math with selling things. He asked of some number, “Is that a big number?” I said that is was, in my book. He thought that was a funny phrase and asked what it meant. He told me a one-minute massage was 56 cents. When I asked for a two minute massage he did the math in his head, telling me it would be a dollar twelve. He then set a timer on his watch and gave me a two minute timer, even though the money wasn’t real. He was getting more into both multiplication and division today. He told me about an ad he’s seen (and I’ve heard) on YouTube: “Now they’re the biggest cleaning the ocean company ever…ads is good! Ads is good! Dada loves ads!”

Carly was home at 11:10.I put away groceries, then August and I went up to his room. He made a game of us throwing stuffed animals back and forth. Puff’s winder broke. I finally got August dressed. We went downstairs, and the two of them had leftovers from Ishimoto for lunch while I had a hot dog. I took a shower, then they got ready and left at 12:25.

It wasn’t the smoothest trip. We had thought our time had been moved to 1. Apparently it wasn’t. When August found out he got upset and hit Gabi. He and Carly left and went to Ra’anana Park for awhile. They went back at 2, but August was a little off. He hid under a chair at one point. I think they mainly did the Monopoly thing again, and August had been talking of playing Connect 4 with her before they left.

They got back just after 3. August was eating some more food when the three Kern girls arrived. He was excited about that, but he was already off, and all three of them made him rather hyper. He got upset when Grace got him a little wet, then Carly went back down again a bit later when he was getting upset about something. We let them go early, at 4:30.

I worked for a bit more, then came down. I read the two Elephant and Piggie books. Carly then made him Swedish pancakes. As he hummed and ate he sang a song:
“It’s totally falling apart
But I can handle it
I’m gonna eat it like a sandwich.”

They then decided to watch a movie. I went upstairs and they watched part of Up. I came down. He ate frozen mango, then I made him a small oatmeal. We did more math and he gave me a one-minute massage. More multiplication. He was using the calculator to divide a dollar into different coins. He was also doing negative math, and when I came down the first thing he had shown me was how to do calculator problems into negativeland. He asked what 6 million times 6 billion was, and when I helped him with the 6 times 6 part he then got the millions times billions part faster than me, telling me it was quadrillions.

I took him up and gave him a bath. A little more of the Brother and Sister bathroom scenario. Carly took over and had him brush his teeth. I left them about 9:40.

Counting by 4s with the calculator:

Excited about three babysitters:

Mental math store game 1:

Mental math store game 2:

I had my book group meeting at 1:30 to discuss Red Leopard, Black Panther. I stayed up this time. A rather painful meeting, as only Peter Breysse and I finished the book. So there was a lot of talk about Avengers movies and Jack Reacher books, etc.

So I slept in. He was up at 7:45. I headed him downstairs, then went back to sleep for an hour. When I was getting dressed he yelled up, asking if I could bring his iPad down. Think he got lucky, and hadn’t actually heard me up. Downstairs I made him oatmeal and he watched Pink Panther. He changed the countdown to 29. he said it was less than a month, “except for February on a leap year.” The poem is already working on him.

He then made up a Brother and Sister game with a blue-billed, blue-footed, blue woodpecker. Then back to the tiny robot game. The little robot that was injured ended up being part of the Quadrillion. There were tiny robots from dozens of planets fighting for control of Earth, but humans were unaware off all of this going on because they are so tiny (a nod to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy). He was then a rabbit that digs up a tree. It turned out to be a jungle rabbit, also endangered, like the other animals that Brother and Sister have discovered (like the Blue Mook). The exterminator finds out just as he is about to blow up the yard, so they are stuck with the rabbit as well as the blue woodpecker. The family ends up with a house full of endangered animals and decides to open a zoo to raise money. Brother had been working watering plants, mowing lawns, etc. as they could no longer afford to go on their scientific expeditions.

He and Carly went outside and she was hiding things for him. He kept kicking off his shoes inside and Carly gave him a timeout. He said he would do it outside, and if he did it inside he wanted to be reminded. That worked well for the rest of the day. He slipped a couple times, but when just reminded he apologized.

I went outside with them and sat at the table and typed. August decided to go in, and we ended up opening the sliding door so he could see us. He made elf playground and hummed. I was supposed to copy it. As I did that he went and started playing GroForest. When he went to the bathroom he told me about his venom: “All the particles clog up the veins to go to the heart…Do you know how it gets between the nerves? There’s little cracks between one nerve and the next and when the signals are traveling through the venom gets in the way so the heart stops beating.” He learned about venom from Wild Kratts.

I made schnitzel and broccoli for lunch. We all sat and ate. I then read the Ben Beaver to him. ‘Stalling’ and ‘acts’ (as of a story) were words of the day. He then really wanted to play Polytopia. I said we could play later at the restaurant. Carly came down and they went outside. He then started explaining decimals to her: “20.93…twenry inches, and 9 hundredths and 3 hundredths.” He also did ones with thousandths. I don’t know how he learned that, and nor does Carly doesn’t either. He just figured it out.

Carly went to do recycling. He and I watched the recent Wintergatan videos. He had had me start to hide the kite string, with him holding the end so he could ‘find’ it when Carly got back. I went up to rest for awhile. When I came down he told me he had his 60 minutes. I asked how that could be. Carly said he had been pacing around the house basically the whole time as they talked and did math and whatever else they did.

So now I hid the kite string from him a lot. He cut that off after 10 or 15 rounds and attached a part from the projector. We were getting ready to go and I was in the kitchen doing dishes and he was swinging a cord around in the air. Carly asked him to stop, or at least move to the other end of the house. He fought it, but eventually made a good choice. Then a short little game where he was pretending to sleep on the couch and was upset with the music coming from the HomePod. He would pause it, just for me to start it again with my phone. He would be confused and upset, etc.

We left at 5 and walked up into town. We went to Sushi Ishimoto and got our ‘usual’ (second time) table right in the middle. He chose the chicken chong, and we also got the mushroom noodles. I decided to also get edamame, which he’s never had. He ate a good amount of that and also the chicken and peanuts and rice from the chicken chong. Carly and I had cappuccinos. He had me add the lemon to his water bottle. We played Polytopia until we left at 5.

On the walk up August had actually had us take a “long cut” to go through the back entrance to Snakes and Ladders. On the way back Carly chose the long cut and we took back streets down past the pine tree park.

On the way up he had sung a song about “78 trillion miles per second” and we had reminded him of his sidewalk sealant song. He said he had a new version that was better and sang that. On the walk home he started counting cats again and when we went by barking dogs in yards he commented on how he used to not like them. For dogs on the street he would cross to the other side, but is getting calmer about it. He also talked about how he is heavy enough to make a 747 stop flying. We walked the Holly block to check the garbage pile. Nothing interesting, but he got a long piece of styrofoam. Carly also pointed out a scary insect. He touched it with the styrofoam and it flew away.

We were home before 7. Carly had brought an old vacuum cleaner back from the recycling area earlier. August and I made some progress taking it apart now. We were outside, and August started playing with the hose and ran water through the tube of it, getting a lot of gunk out. August asked, “What’s a coma?” From the Ben Braver book we are reading. Inside we did more of the hiding and pulling the string game, now with a spray bottle attached to the end of it. I had fun, and he thought it was really funny, when I hid it behind him on the chair, and under the chair another time.

I took him up for his bath. He played with his coins, buying berries from me. He then developed a scenario where Brother and Sister fight over the bathroom and one of them pees their pants. Wanted it over and over. Washed him, then did more of that. He was a little upset when I was stopping, but it was time to go to bed. We finished getting him ready and I left the two of them at 9:15.

Humming and building while we’re outside:

Figuring out decimals:

Hiding the kite string game:

78 trillion miles per second song:

New sidewalk sealant song:

Hiding it right behind him:

He was up at 6:37, rather stuffy. I got in bed with him and he tried for several minutes to fall back to sleep, stretching out and curling up in different positions on the bed. Eventually he started softly humming. We went downstairs and he cuddled with Carly. They went outside for a few minutes, then came in and eventually started figuring out the Busy Day Dominoes.

He played Math Tango and Carly headed to school. He got bored of that and we played the phone game that they’d played yesterday, with him calling me to save a planet and me trying to figure out who to get to do that. I made him oatmeal, and we played Green Planet while he ate. We went upstairs and did the Brother and sister game with robots. Carly emailed, saying there might be a problem with the town’s water and that we should boil water. We went down to do that, and August got upset, I later found out that he thought it would take too long, and had his biggest meltdown for quite some time. A bit later she said it was a false alarm and it was another town.

We did more taking apart. He was trying to get the electric razor apart and poked his finger with a screwdriver. He cried about that one a bit. We got it apart though, and used the multimeter to test the batteries (dead).

We took the phones upstairs to use with a Brother and Sister game. In this version they woke up on a deserted island. The last thing they both remembered was heading to school. He said they used the telephones to communicate on the island they found themselves on. All that was his creation. So I had it be the site of an abandoned resort and the telephones still worked. A seal then helps them out, but they are more comfortable than in the other version as they have beds to sleep on, etc.

I found a scratch on the back of his hand. He said it was from earlier. That must have also been from taking things apart, but must not have hurt so much. We went back downstairs at 10:30.

He had pizza and milk for an lunch. He watched Wild Kratts and I typed. He read The Jet (which used to make him sad) and Bump! (which was hard when he first tried it, but now isn’t) to me. We added both to his stack of books he can read on his own. It is up to 9 books. He was pretty proud of that when we told Carly later.

He went to the bathroom and told me of a bad disease called “tiger pox”. It makes your face bleed. We went upstairs to make beds. That took a long time. He asked me how many Fahrenheit degrees are in a celcius degree. So I explained why it is 1.8. He asked for the explanation again. We also discussed the concept of ‘ratio’ and that was a word of the day.

Downstairs I got him to slow down enough to read the months poem that I’d written out yesterday. He then wanted to count his Israeli money. We determined he has 46 shekels, 50 agorot.

We went outside to play around. It was windy and the yard was full of the tree things so I started picking them up. August joined in and did a good job when he remembered that yardwork was one of his errands on his watch. He then played on the slide and said “I’m whackadoo” and pretended to shoot a ceramic fish from his belly button. He was being the DJ robot from Hilo. We lay on the grass and played some Polytopia, then he played more on the slide.

We then drove to school. We were to Carly’s classroom a little before 3 and it was locked. She had had a meeting of PLC leaders at Mandy’s house in the morning, then they had other PD in the afternoon. August didn’t want to change in the scary men’s room near her bathroom. We played a little more Polytopia for just a couple minutes until she showed up. She took him into the women’s bathroom to change for the pool.

On the walk over we saw Howard, and then Matt. We pointed out that they were both science teachers. August said he has meetings with them in his lab. As we walked to the pool he told us about how he still makes them wear safety suits in his lab.

The weather was warmer and pretty sunny, but not as hot as we had expected. It was fine getting in. We saw Ben Ben and his dad as well, and August said he has meetings with Ben Ben’s dad as well, even though he isn’t a scientist. Ben Ben waits in his waiting room, which can hold 10,000 people. When I got out 3o minutes later or so it had clouded over. I was going to sit and work, but August decided he wanted out a minute later. He is really swimming around the pool now, very flat and kicking hard. Need to be more convincing in getting the floaties off of him.

We drove home. He took things apart. we got the pot of ice out of the freezer for him. Carly said she was concerned about him putting his tongue right to it and August got upset and she took him upstairs. Back downstairs he let it melt a little, then was drinking from it. He really liked the cold water. He spilled on himself once and requested new clothes. I magically produced an extra set that were by the backpack.

I made us schnitzel and broccoli for dinner. We sat together and ate. Carly suggested documentary and popcorn, so we watched more of episode 2 of Our Planet together. About 20 minutes until August ran out of popcorn.

Carly went up to take a shower. He talked about a number with a 100 zeroes, so I introduced him to googol. Another word of the day. I found Wikipedia articles about different number naming systems, and we read some of the names. He made up his own scale: “On the crazy scale…ten preptecillion…a thousand zeroes…” He played GroForest and a new free reading/word app that I found. He wanted to restart GroForest so he could explore again, so we deleted it and reinstalled it. While we waited I started reading The Super Life of Ben Braver. He liked that well enough. He did some GroForest, then Carly took him up for a bath and washed his hair. Was going to trim it, but we couldn’t find the blue scissors.

I came up and put him to sleep, the first time in several days. We read a few more chapters of the book. I sang a few songs, he suddenly calmed down, and he was asleep at 9:45.

Playing with the phone:

Playing by the pool:

Reading to mama:

He used the bathroom at 6:00, but headed back to the bedroom and went back to sleep. He then woke up at 6:42. Took a few minutes on the couch, then, when I asked if I could read a Winnie-the-Pooh story he said “phone” instead. Turned out he remembered Carly texting me last night about his watch syncing. We looked at the messages, then his health stats from yesterday to make sure they’d synced. We played our 5 minutes of Green Planet, then he wanted me to add to my song from yesterday. We figured out how to connect the different music apps, so we could play the AudioKit synth into Tabletop, for example. We worked on that, but lost some additions to my song as it was glitchy, and he just played with the synth. He was playing with the arpeggios. He got music playing on the HomePod. It had misheard him though and ended up playing some random country song, which he danced to.

We went back to making songs and we finished two ‘songs’ — basically nice little loops. He showed me what he made during alone time yesterday. It was an elf building with their ship that came out of the side of it. Those Duplos were at a 90 degree angle and slotted into a hole—a new feature of his making.

We made two more songs. By the fourth I had figured out how to duplicated loops and build on them, so it was more like a start of. Song. We had some banana bred, then played chess. He asked “What does ‘promote’ mean?” A word of the day. We discussed it in terms of grocery store jobs and working up to manager. He also asked what ‘general’ and ‘military plane’ meant. His Crater is a battleship now, not a cruise ship: “It shoots explosive asteroids…that makes earthquakes.”

We played some Polytopia, and I explained why it is exciting when it is close and we discussed ‘adrenaline’.

We went outside and he ate some broccoli from the plant. He played with the hose. We have a plastic hanging pot that I was hanging in the tree for him, and he was trying to shoot the hose through it. When we were done with that we went in and I made a strawberry smoothie. We went upstairs and did a Brother and Sister robot game. They found a Florian XBA Bot. Eventually, after they were attacked by them and hurt one, they took it to the Robot Doctor, who was a mad scientist who lived in town. We had music on and he danced to an “Ocean Eyes” remix.

We went downstairs and had hot dogs and milk for lunch. he asked about how many days were in a month and I read the “30 Days Has September” poem. He asked, “What would happen if the sun ran out of gas?” I talked about how it would take six minutes before the light went away: “Then we would get chilly?” We read https://www.popsci.com/node/204957

At some point I started prepping strawberries to freeze another batch. August went and played with the Duplos on his own, without any prompting, and made a cool, very symmetrical ship, that transported an elephant. When I was done he had me copy it piece-for-piece.

We did more of the robots game. He hurt his knee climbing on the bed once, but handled it well. Downstairs he read “Hop” and “Ten Men” to me. He then had an ice cream sandwich. We had used the vacuum cleaner to vacuum up some sand on the floor by the rug. I had taken the usual attachment off of it. August now started studying the attachment and used his tweezers to pull dust and stuff out of it. He spotted a letter ‘t’ magnet in it and was trying to get it out. I was looking in and he stood up and bonked heads. He got a little upset with me for that one, but not too bad.

We got going to go to school to play with Eve and Zoe. It took us a long time to get going. He was in full distractions mode. His last thing was to get pieces to connect our two ships together, wing tip to wing tip. We walked to school. Not too hot yet. And felt good to walk again.

We got to school and to the preschool as Heather was picking up Eve. We went over to the playground and got to playing. Heather went to prepare for the art show. Zoe was asking August all sorts of math questions on the swing. She was pretty good, asking open questions too like “How do you get to 200?” He gave multiple answers, like 100+50+50 and 100+100. When the three of them were on the swing, August added up their ages and combined the three of them into a teenager since their ages equal 17.

They went over to the kitchen area there. The Korean moms brought their kids by, so the six of them played together. They had brought water that they got somewhere—I think in the preschool—to add to the soups, etc. August and Eve and I made trips to the elementary bathroom to fill up water bottles. I was actually able to read a bit as they played.

They were picked up a little after 4. August played a bit more, then we cleaned up, and walked up to the library. He talked me into playing Polytopia. Didn’t plan on playing it for so long, but it was nice sitting out on the bench, so we played until 5.

Carly had come down to pick up the hummus to deliver for the weekly donation, and also took a couple books back to the library for us. She came back a second time to drop off a bag of small electronics someone had given her, then she had walked home around 4. So it was just me and August walking home. He made music on the way. He got off the bike by the gan on Vatikim when he found a play thermometer on the ground and put it back through their fence and walked most of the way home from there. There was a party of some sort going on at the synagogue on the way, with tables set out in the patio area that has always just been there. Now we know what it is for.

We were home at 5:35. He started taking things apart, the first being the walkie talkie. He was playing with Carly and started doing “2 plus 2 is 4, 4 plus 4 is 8…” He finally struggled with 64+64. There were two ‘old’ telephones and they played with them. He would call her with things like “The planet A62 is being invaded by giant squids. Could you help it?” “…is being invaded by giant birdhouses pooping over everything.” They took one of the telephones apart. He sang a song: “I saw a tiger, then I killed it, and I ate it for lunch.” I helped him take it apart and I wrote out the poem from earlier on a big piece of paper to hang up. He was using scissors and sort of cut or pinched his finger. I picked him up and we ran it under water and he handled it well and got back to taking things apart.

Carly went to take a shower. We played Green Planet, which I had earlier agreed to do at this time. Carly made him a dinner of oatmeal and smoothie and carrots. He was trying to climb on the counter and sort of fell off when Carly tried to get him not to. Looked scarier than it was, as he was okay. I then started reading a YA novel called Jaclyn Hyde to him. He ate the oatmeal and we did more reading. He did more math in his head, and we joked about lines like “I sevened and I sevened and I got 14…” He then played with the duplicate planes.

We went upstairs and he was asking me what different fears are called. So ‘entomophobia’ was another word of the day. I read him the list at https://www.fearof.net/. He then asked about the fear of knives, which wasn’t on the list, and “What about the fear of yourself?” Which was a really interesting question. He brought up the names for groups of animals, so we looked at https://grammar.yourdictionary.com/word-lists/list-of-names-for-groups-of-animals.html. I gave him a bath. On the bed we did a real life version of the Green Planet game, with hims blasting comets/asteroids and getting points, which I wrote down. Carly came in, and I left them at 9:10.

Counting notes:

Our first song:

Dancing to a country song:

Hose through the pot:

Jumping from the bed:

Taking apart the vacuum attachment:

Math with Zoe 1:

Math with Zoe 2:

Telephone game with mama:

Telephone game with mama 2:

He was stuffy and Carly had to put him back to sleep about 6:30. He woke up at 7:20. I read “Winnie-the-Pooh and Some Bees”. I talked about our day, and he was excited about the train: “But not now. I’m going to change it to 32.” He went and changed the countdown. We played Robot Factory together, then he did the Weather app while I made oatmeal. He brought up the supernova and nuclear bomb discussion from yesterday or the day before. When I was talking about putting sugar in his oatmeal he said, think you mean poop sugar.” That led to a funny discussion of what would be the worst sugar. Candidates included poison sugar, Mercury sugar, black hole sugar, and magma sugar, among others.

He said there was “Question planet..Its full of trillions of questions cuz nobody has explored it.” He went to the bathroom. He asked “How many moon years in a Neptune year?” He then wanted to calculate the length of the year on his planet in Earth seconds 5.385887662e27. Add one Earth year every ten years as their leap year.

I made sandwiches for our lunch. I was focused on getting ready to go. He accused me of being grumpy, although I wasn’t, I was just not playing with him as much as he wanted. Still, he told me “You’re being so grumpy.” Which was a good use of his words. He then invented a little game where he gives me a book but I’m a pirate (I think this started with our pirate store game) and don’t have a need for books, as pirates don’t read and they can’t use it to start a fire on the ship. Somehow he made the pirate fall in the water and said, “Well I hope your brains is tasty to the fish.”

We left at 10 and drove to the east side of the train station at Bet Yehoshua. No parking at the station (they don’t have nearly enough parking for the commuter traffic), so we parked a few blocks away (by a playground we once played at) and walked. We walked by an orange grove, and August said he used the parts from a printer (then an airplane) to make a bunch of little science robots that were now studying everything about the orange grove. They would relay information back to his watch about the soil, how they were growing, etc.

We got to the station and bought tickets, and played Polytopia while we waited. On the train we sat upstairs. There was a boy across from him who said hi, in Hebrew. His name was Dean. When we stopped at Herzliya and they got off, August spotted the number ‘4’ on something. He said, “4. One of my favorite numbers because it starts with the ffff sound.”

We walked to the park, and found a bench in the shade. We had a snack/part of our lunch, and did little scavenger/I spy games for each other. We went over to the playground and spent a long time playing with the zip line thing. August only sat on it once, while I held him. The rest of the times he went he hung from the seat by his hands. He also watched me do it several times. He was giving me points for things, and tried to figure out 666+555. He said 1111, which is close, and impressive for trying it in his head. He was then asking how many zeroes an octillion, etc. has. We figured out he meant ‘digits’ as he was including the non-zero numbers. So ‘digits’ was a word of the day.

August was reluctant at first, but was convinced to walk around the lake to do some geocaching and see some of the park we’ve never seen before. We stopped by the snack stand to look for food, but they only had hot dogs and August wasn’t interested. He was interested in the stage area though that was set up. I think for some sort of graduation/moving up thing. August had me Shazam one song they were singing, and I heard another about being born and living and loving and Israel.

We walked around to the point that goes out into the lake and looked for the first one. We knew the cache was actually missing due to the log, but people said it was still fun to find the right spot. So we examined all of the palm trees and found the hollow parts and looked in. He talked about how he had hidden his own geocache and left a clue based on the letters painted up on the tree.

We then walked around the rest of the lake, looking for two more geocaches. I carried him much of the way and he held the phone, with the navigation on and he’d tell us how far away from the geocache we were.

We stopped on the far shore to look for another one in a hole somewhere. We looked in fence posts for a couple minutes and moved on. We circled most of the lake, then got to the planned garden area that we’ve never been to. The last one was in there. August was excited, running ahead, but then changed his mind abruptly about going in for the last one when he realized it was in the opposite direction from back to the train station.

So we headed back, stopping to fill up our water bottles. We figured out the trains this time (no extra mileage to Haifa and back for us today) and were back to Bet Yehoshua by 3. We rode upstairs again and after looking out the wind for a few minutes played Polytopia. As we walked back to the car we passed the orange grove and August said he collected the robots as they were done with their science. He asked, “What does ‘midair’ mean?” Another word of the day. I think it came from a recent variation of the Brother and Sister game: he said they were in a plane crash and fell to the ocean. So I had their plane hit by an asteroid—a likelihood that August understands is basically impossible, so he wouldn’t worry about it.

He played along the edge of the road while the car cooled. He asked me, “Do you want more Q bots for science?…Thats what I call my little robots.” On the way home he was surprised when I stopped at the strawberry stand again and went in and bought another flat of them. I figured we could have some full strawberry smoothies and freeze more.

At home he played with Tabletop on his iPad and I did the first load of strawberries. Carly did more while I was gone later. I gave August the most perfect strawberry I found and he said, “This is as good as like a lollipop.” Carly got home at 4:40.

I then left to go over to Jem’s at the mall. Ryan and Michael were there when I got there. It was just the three of us for awhile until Howard, Matt, and Jon showed up. We had a couple beers and veggie tempura there, then walked over to Agadir Burger. Finally, as I’ve never eaten there. Had the beef and lamb burger, and another beer. It was a good conversation, ranging from the candidates for head of school and other school issues, to how wives/women on the staff think about the guys nights out, to Nakba Day and Palestine, to Avengers and Game of Thrones. Actually, Matt and I had an aside about GoT as Ryan hadn’t seen the latest episode. The others discussed Avengers, which we didn’t care about. I told him my theory for the last episode. Jon and I had a respectful discussion of ‘Palestine’ as he says he only calls it ‘West Bank’ since ‘Palestine’ doesn’t officially exist. But he was intrigued by the Palestine history book and we might both read it over the summer. And Howard has also read the Jerusalem: A Biography book and raved about it to everyone.

The highlight though came at the end as Howard told his story of getting drafted into the Israeli army back in, I think it was, the 70s. He was playing semipro ball at the time for an Israeli team. They convinced him to get Israeli citizenship, telling him they could get him out of military service. They could pay him more. So he did, only to receive a letter two weeks later drafting him. The team said they’d see him in two and a half years. The IDF wanted him to either enlist long-term or do combat. He’s 6’ 8” and didn’t fancy being a target. So he got a two-week pass to leave Israel and didn’t come back for seven years. Not entirely sure why he came back, but he was caught and court martialed. The IDF was trying to figure out what to do with him. In the meantime, he blew out his knee, so basketball and his physical were shot. They found out he had a degree in pharmacy so he ended up handing out birth control pills and antibiotics to soldiers for two and a half years.

I was home at 8:40. They were reading Madeleine in bed. They came down and he had crackers and cheese. I took him up and brushed his teeth. He listed every way to equal 7 through addition. I read The Butter Battle Book. Carly came in and I left them at 9:30.

Data from his robots:

Hanging from the sliding thing:

Reading his water bottle:

I put him back to sleep at 5:45, and then again when he called down at 6:39. Didn’t last long, however, as he was back up just after 7. I read the Winnie the Pooh “Christopher Robin Gives a Party”. He then played the logic puzzle game with a knight on his iPad and I did a little work. We went over to the Duplos and I gave him a Duplos challenge to make a playground and he turned it into an animal park. We also did some math. He played the kitchen math app and I made oatmeal.

We then did another fast fuse beads design. This time, a princess. August remembered to change the countdown to ‘33’. We went upstairs to the bedroom for a brother and sister story. I used the word ‘despondent’ and that was a word of the day. We looked at the Why book, and he asked “How much does a cruise ship weigh?” We spent over an hour up there. He was asking about 1,ooo yers and we learned about the words ‘eon’ and ‘megaannum’. He made the beds, then we headed downstairs to make banana bread.

He watched the Curious Geoege Christmas special as I finished up the banana bread. We are fighting ants again as we have some tiny ones coming in through the wall by the sink. Not too bad though. We then went and finished the princess out of beads and melted it. Worked even better this time. August was looking at Apple Maps on his ipad and found the Petronas Towers. He kept asking how long it would be until we went to Mr. Gabi’s, so then he set a timer on Siri. We had some banana bread when it was ready: “Insanely good…cakey and soft…like banana cake.”

He had some more bread, and talked about the number four: “Four is a special number…you can divide 2 into 2, and divide those 2s into 1s. Other numbers can’t do that.” He was then calculating different ways to reach 100: “10 times 10…90 plus 10…60 plus 40.” I found the missing coin container with the 5 shekel coin in it. He had hidden it in his kitchen.

He read my funny phrase on the whiteboard. Today was ‘cozy pickle’ Yesterday ‘lazy’ something. He had the idea of doing a blue mook game, but then decided he wanted me to build a pyramid out of Duplos for his coins. So I did pyramids in different sizes. He kissed the 5 shekel coin and said, “I love you, 5 shekel coin.” then sang a whole song about it; “I love the number 5…” He made a little imagining scenario where we had to go save planets, after getting messages from them, but we didn’t have a shuttle and it would take months to build. But we could travel in his balls of light much faster.

We left at 1:20. We waited at the school for a few minutes for Carly. August spotter her: “I see mama!” We parked in our usual spot, and he pointed out the flowers he picks for me to put on my backpack: “They’re gorgeous. And they smell like gorgeous.”

He sat in the sitting area and watched Sarah and Duck episodes while Carly and I met with Gabi. Nothing too interesting to record. Although he said he’d gotten an odd call from the school, simply asking if he was seeing a new 5-year old. Very odd.

On the way home we went to the Moto shop and August used his chores points/coins to get a treat. It was hard for him to choose, but he ended up with the Kinder Chocolate small pack. Pricier than I expected, and I told him we might have to adjust the costs, as it worked out to be a few shekels more than what the ice cream bars cost us when we buy them at the store.

We were home at 3:35. There were two more tomatoes to pick. Carly went up to work. August was doing math in his head, and suddenly started going into the negatives. We haven’t discussed the negative number line for a long time, but Carly had done that number line with him last year, and he was now connecting it to his arithmetic skills. He read Mat Hid and Plop to me. We made mother pyramid, and did some more fast fuse beads. We need to go buy more though if we want to complete any more designs.

We went upstairs for the robot pillow throwing game (where brother finds a tiny robot, but it hurts him, and they end up trying to destroy it, but can’t). Carly came down, then they went outside and were doing math and I went upstairs to work. I heard them reading, and he played with GarageBand.

I came back down and we played a little Green Planet. We then read The Butter Battle Book and “The Strange Shirt Spot”. He had some banana bread, then some more. We went up to his bath. He He played with his toothbrush and the water, scrubbing things. He has a new head now to use for actually brushing his teeth.

I left the two of them at 9:15.

Using his tweezers:

Finding the missing coin:

End of his 5 shekel song:

Robot pillow fight:

He was up at 7:20. We watched part of the Grand Prix together. He played on his iPad, trying out the Coding Karts game. He watched some Wild Kratts. We had french toast for breakfast and discussed our week. We then started with fast fuse beads. He wanted to make the castle, which was a really big one, and we probably spent an hour doing it. We would take turns getting beads of the correct color out for each other, and occasionally he’d take a break, but he was really into it the whole time. He changed the countdown for the day we leave for the summer. He wrote a beautiful 4 in chalk.

We played a little Toca Plants. We were listening to OMD through the morning. He did some dancing to a remix of “Dresden” so I added it to his playlist. He then had some oatmeal with mango, then some nutty noodles. He was discussing the number of days there are on Pluto, so we looked up the length of the day and year on Pluto and were converting them to earth days and seconds. He then had some insanely long length of his year on My Planet and we converted it to Earth seconds.

He played a little of that logic puzzles game with the knight on his iPad while I glued the bead thing. It had mostly melted together except for one of the flags, so I was trying to find a glue that held it.

We went up and made the beds. He then read both Ten Men and Bump! He did alone time with Duplos and made a big structure for elves. He got an Oreo at the end. He was then telling me how I could earn millions of shekels by getting him parts for his machine, but it was a crazy quest like in Timepocalypse: “… go to the 1960s and get an antelope…buy 10 pounds of shaving cream…then get me 160000 clams…”

We got ready to go and headed to Poleg beach at 2:40. Along the way he asked me “What’s ‘deploy’ mean?” A word of the day.

We parked up at the top of Poleg Beach so we could get some walking and not have to pay. August wasn’t happy with this at first but then agreed. As we walked down we took the dirt road shortcut, which worked pretty well, but involved taking his bike apart and putting it back together on the other side of a divider.

The beach was nice, but windy. We found a spot under one of the shade things and played for about a half hour. Mainly we were burying his feet and he was breaking out. He decided it was too windy, and we started to get ready to go. He let me go down and wade in the water. Still rather cold.

So we made the walk back up, taking the bike apart again, and then headed to VIPizza. We ordered a large pizza, half corn and half mushrooms and olives. We each got a drink and ate a slice there before taking the rest home. We played Polytopia while we waited.

We were home at 4:40. We did building challenges with the Duplos, then Carly was home at 5:15. He was giving her challenges. We were giving him ‘points’ for his creations. He blamed my building for something, and I said something in return. He said, “I’ll take off points if you say that!” We went out side and he ran around, touching invisible animals, etc.

I went up to work at 6 and was down at 7. Carly went out to run some errands. I was giving him Duplo challenges now “tallest with 10” “widest with 12”. We also played chess on the iPad. He was having fun making it lose, and we also worked on some games together.

Carly came home, and took him up for his bath. As they went up he was telling her “Did you know I made a nuclear bomb that can explode ten more times intense than a supernova…that’s just the low setting…” She was tired so put him to sleep. I left them about 9:30.

Fast fuse beads:

Parts for his machine:

Burying his feet:

Slow gears: