Category: Uncategorized

He called out “No!” in his sleep at one point during the night. He woke up at 7 and went downstairs. I went down a little later and they were well into the Cam Jenson and the First Day of School Mystery. At one point August asked, “Why is she always bugging the class…cuz she’s saying ‘click’ so much?” At one point he got up and asked Carly, “Can I teach you something?” When she asked what he was going to teach he responded, “Nothing! I just wanted to trick you!” They finished the book, then he was acting out being Cam Jenson, with a photographic memory.

They played with the Makey Makey. He was talking about dividing up their time and is working on fractions: “We have a half hour. For the first quarter hour…” I was making scrambled eggs and cheese with mushrooms for breakfast and we all ate those.

They went outside to water plants. He came back in, having gotten wet, and was grumpy. We changed his clothes and dried his shoes and he went back out.

Tessa arrived with Liam and Neva about 10:20. The two kids were off, playing with the Duplos. He focused his attention on Tessa. He showed her the synth app, and he took out the three sets of Bob Books and told her, “To teach you to read we have 3 sets of Bob Books.” She started reading a book, and he told her, “You read so well.” He then explained to her how he reads slowly. He didn’t actually read, but instead sounded out his reading rhythm, like notes, to show that it was slow. She told him he’d get better with practice. Carly made a mango smoothie for everyone and they sat at the table and had that.

An ice breaker with the kids was when August wanted to bring down his treasures. He wanted to do it on his own. He went upstairs and came down holding all three of the wicker containers. He did a great job sharing all of his toys today. The kids really liked the treasures and they played with them. August gave them the bracelets that he had made them.

August wanted to make a spicy soup, so he and Liam worked together outside, pouring spices into big pot. We then put it on the stove to boil. I made some of the chocolate pancakes for them to snack on. August borrowed my phone and showed them the macro lens and did some photography and he let Liam take some photos. August and Liam did some TodoMath together. Liam liked the Tally Catch activity and would return to it later.

They all went upstairs and were playing in the cardboard box. I did some dishes. Back downstairs they had the chicken and pasta for lunch. August and Liam then played SoundRebound on the iPad. They worked together, talking, really well for ten minutes or so. August wanted to show Tessa how he could run, but she was comfortable on the couch, so Carly took August outside and took a video of him running around the yard that he then showed her. At one point Neva escaped upstairs. August went upstairs for something and found Neva playing in the box by herself. Earlier, playing with the Duplos, she had put band-aids on the animals and August had learned the word ‘plaster’. Anyway, he came back down and Took Tessa up to find her in the box. She was then Driving him crazy pretending Neva wasn’t there.

They talked about getting ready to go, but then decided on 20 minutes more. We asked August if that was okay and he thought and said, “20? That’s as long as rest time, so I can handle that.” August was rather done with playing though. He sat on my lap and we read The Word Collector. He also wanted to make a squirrel nest but the couch was in use. So a couple times he was asking things like, “When are you going to leave?” And, “Has it been 20 minutes yet?”

They headed out at 2:15. He had kind of a crash after that, asking, “Why didn’t they listen to me?” He hid behind the pillow of the couch. He was upset that they didn’t talk to him much, and in particular one moment when they briefly played hide and seek. They had all run up and hid in the bed and had locked the door behind them. By the time I had opened the door with a key, they were under the covers. August was getting hot and wanted out but they wouldn’t let him out. He let out a loud scream. He was fine after that, but kept bringing it up. Also, Liam isn’t very verbal, in part because he is bilingual. He’s generally avoided talking to us at all, refusing to answer any questions when we’ve tried to talk to him at the pool.

August took awhile to recover on the couch, then we made a squirrel nest. He wanted to watch Pink Panther in there, so he vegged for quite awhile, watching that and then inviting me down to watch animated ball race videos with him. He started to show some energy and we played the robotic squirrel game. I would find a squirrel in the park that needed a home, but then when I took them home they would each do something bad, like eat my shoulder or destroy concrete walls. He was laughing a lot. Finally, he was a cat that spoke sign language. The sign language cat went outside and was eating cats. He was then supposedly a real (non-robot) cat, but I think it ate “25 billion, 800 million books each day…thousands or soda water bottles.”

While in the squirrel nest he had asked for Cheerios, then passed the bowl back out for a refill. The next time he passed it out I gave him the rest of an apple. The next time I cut a whole apple for him. When I saw his empty bowl a bit later I at first thought I’d forgotten to actually give him the apple. But no, he had eaten an entire apple.

About 6:15 Carly went out and met up with Mikaela and they went up to the synagogue on Kibuts Gulyout for Yom Kippur. They had to sit in the women’s area, which was apparently chairs set up in the kitchen. August and I headed out for a walk a bit later, at 6:45, as the sun was going down and cars were leaving the streets. We walked along the path past the pedestrian bridge – our usual “long way” home – and through the little tunnel and up to highway 553. Along the way we realized we could really hear the birds, and now, as we got up to the big intersection at the highway, we could really hear the sounds of the crosswalk lights. Which I’ve never noticed although I run past there all the time. August was hesitant about going across the highway at first. We waited for the lights to change. Plenty of bikers out already.

We took a photo of him standing in the middle of the big intersection, then followed some bicyclists down the on-ramp onto Highway 4. We got down on the highway and took another photo of him, then turned back north onto the southbound lanes and walked back towards home. We went under the 553 bridge. I thought he’d want to be loud for the echo, but he was rather quiet. We had seen a few cars still out on the highway, but fewer and fewer. Mainly the occasional police car. We stopped along the side of the road and looked at the sky for 15 minutes or so, using the app. We could easily see Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars, and of course the moon. We looked for highway treasures along the way and he found a white plastic ball and a back rubber ring. As we got walking again he said, “I can get this now.” I asked him to explain and he meant he understood what we meant about how there wouldn’t be cars on the highway.

We looped around back onto the off ramp and then hopped the guard rail and walked across a worn trail atop a covered drainage ditch to get back to our usual path and head home. We took the rest of the long route. There’s one dark section that I’m not fond of when running, but it was nice as we could see a lot more stars.

We walked up to our park and then over to the synagogue to see what was going on. August wanted a closer view so we went in the gate and parked the bike and looked in a bit more. We were home at 8 and Carly was already there.

We had some dinner, then he was discussing what the praying was and God with carly. That ended when he finally tipped over backwards in his chair. Carly dove and tried to stop it. Definitely slowed it, but tipped over to the right. He was okay though.

He snuck to his iPad to try watching Ruby and Max. He got upset about the iPad and heading to bed. We went up and read Will I Have a Friend? Carly took a shower. I brushed his teeth and we read two stories in Nightlights and The Sneetches. Carly took over and he was asleep at 9:20.

Showing the synth to Tessa:

Spicy soup with Liam:

TodoMath:

Sound Rebound with Liam:

Running video:

Sign language squirrel:

Watching people on the highway:

Walking across the highway:

Riding the onramp to Highway 4:

Not being loud under the bridge:

Smoothies

Sharing treasures

Lunch

SoundRebound

Standing in the intersection

On Highway 4

Highway treasures

Down the highway

He woke up at 7:30. He watched Smurfs for awhile while I did some work. He told me “When I’m a grown-up, I think I’ll make a lot of rules.” He then wanted to play with the Makey Makey. We did an art app, a pizza one, and others. I was looking for a sort of set of projects to do with the Makey Makey to actually learn things, but he was impatient so we settled for the little apps. He took a macro photo of the Makey Makey and a burst photo of me moving around, then we got going.

We had planned on Tel Aviv, but when we got going he said he wanted the shorter drive. I didn’t have a compelling argument for Tel Aviv, so we switched to Netanya. He wanted to make sure it was the protected beach though so there’d be less waves. As we drove down he said he thought I was going the wrong way.

We parked at the beach (only cost 15 shekels) at 11. As we got out of the car he told me about a computer currency that was on iPads and computers. It was like he knew about Bitcoins. As we walked to the beach he spotted a place with slurpee drinks. We got a strawberry one and sat at a shaded table and drank it. He asked me, “Do you know why sugar dissolves?” And then explained why sugar dissolves. He stood up and was using his arms to show the bonds breaking. Don’t know if he has learned about that one somewhere or just thought it through. He then invented a machine to make things less liquidy.

We got down to the water and put on sunscreen. He started to wade right in. Near the shore he commented on all the “microgarbage.” We spent the next hour or so in the water, going far enough out that the water was calm, but he could stand if he wanted to. A guy, British, I think, came over and warned me about burning the top of my head heatstroke. He said he’d been playing at that beach last year with his grandkids and had that problem and just wanted to warn me. He was quite nice. We saw several small fish. The largest was about 5 inches long. And it kept nibbling at my feet. Which was quite annoying, although I told August it was just tickling a bit. He did his wave tickets thing again, and we headed in from the water about 12:20.

As soon as we were on the shore he was fussy about being wet and said his neck was itchy. We’d gotten hit by a big (for that spot) wave on our way in and it had splashed his face and neck and he blamed that (and me) for his itchy neck. We had discussed the waves, and he reminded me he knew all about breakers and waves and it getting calmer past the breakers from reading that Magic Tree House book set in Hawaii. He kept quoting from the book: “’I’m paddling out to catch big waves!’ said Nava.”

So he wanted to be changed right away. Changed him into his dry clothes, then he played with a shovel in the sand. He had me write words in the sand and he erased them with water as fast as possible. He got soaked doing that, so changed into his backup shirt as we left. We stopped and rinsed off our feet, then walked over to the beach elevator that took us to the top of the cliff. I realized we should have stopped at the car and dropped off our beach stuff and gotten his bike, but he said he could just keep walking.

We walked a few blocks north, him walking all the way, to the Rhythm Cafe that we’ve been to before. We got a green mojito smoothie, a cappuccino, and shakshuka. The shakshuka was too spicy for him. I thought he could eat the egg, but I didn’t think about how they had put black pepper on top of it and I gave him a bite. He then refused any more even after I took the top of the egg off. He liked the bread though and ate a small loaf of that and drank the smoothie. I felt a little bad and let him watch the Curious George Christmas on his iPad.

We left about 2. On the way back we stopped in the park and he took some photos. When we had left the cafe he talked about a green cloud, and when the cloud rains on you it tires you out. After he took some photos he said, “Remember the green cloud?” It kept raining on him and he was acting more and more tired. Think he really was a bit worn out. we spotted a cat and he said it was #82, but I later figured out it is #88 or so. He now blamed me for green cloud. He explained how I had accidentally cast a spell that made it.

In the car he watched the rest of the Curious George show, which kept him awake. It was just after 3 so we stopped at the school. We parked in the parking lot for a few minutes, but Carly was in a meeting so we headed home.

We were home at 3:30. We did more Makey Makey, and were listening to Public Enemy for our albums countdown. He heard the word ‘terminator’ and said “Terminate! Word of the day!”

There was a knock on the door. It was our new neighbor from across the street. They were actually trying to reach Mikaela as, for some reason, they need access to a pole in her yard to hook up internet. I did a phone number exchange for them and we chatted for a minute. The woman’s name is Yael, while her husband is Gil. Three kids, two of which are 8 and twins. Aton and I forgot the girl’s name. Then a 2 ½ year old named Abigail.

He did Dragonbox Big Numbers, then made up a song with some good rhyming: “Trunks is trunky, bumps is bumpy, skunks is skunky.” He wiped himself in the bathroom so got a piece of mall candy. Carly started the bribery but it is working. He ate some dinner, and talked about about the chewing and liquids in his mouth: “It makes a liquidy substance.” We read one Skybrary book, What a Treasure! We made a squirrel nest, then Carly got home, close to 6.

I went up to do some work and they continued the squirrel nest. He came up to say hi and she started his bath and washed him. I asked about washing his hair. He said something like, “I supposed we could give it a try.” He talked about the lollipops and how we should buy more butterscotch ones. He sang a song that went “Do fish know it is Christmas?” From Curious George.

Downstairs, Carly cut his hair. She told him he needed to be more still so he said, “Okay. I promise I’ll be really frozen.” In Skybrary we read What Does it Mean to be Green? and the Gertie Gorilla book. And a math adventure book called What’s Next, Nina? about a bead necklace that breaks.

Carly took over reading it and I went for a late run at 8:55. He was asleep sometime after 9.

While we have a strawberry slurpee:

On the beach 1:

On the beach 2:

Elephant song and squirrel nest:

Sitting cashews at mama:

Looking mischievous already

Slurpee

Wet again

Looking out the elevator

Mojito smoothie

Resting on the bench

Taking a break when he’s been rained on by the green cloud

Squirrel nest

He was up at 7:10. He went and sat outside with Carly for a few minutes. When I came down she was giving him the iPad and he started playing the Nature app, chanting “I love nature.” He actually started with the Mammals app and was showing us things. Carly joked we should get a pet sloth and he patted her arm and said, No.” In one of the nature apps he showed us an animation of the earth spinning and explained nighttime was when the sun was at a slant. He had explained this a few days ago and we thought he was actually thinking about winter, but he was talking about the slant of the sun making shadows as night fell, as he pointed to the line between day and night and said that was where the slant was.

He’s gotten into these Lego ball machine videos, and videos of dominoes falling. And then another sort of animated videos where balls race down through courses, sort of race style. Kind of cool, but also surprising that this is a genre of thing that exists. So he watched some of those, then told me “You need to start letting me choose new games…like you give me options and I get to choose.” I said I’d be happy to give him choices in the future, but he wanted to look now, but wouldn’t play until later. So we looked, and he really liked this space app called TALU Space. Ultimately it would be kind of a disappointment as it didn’t really teach anything about space, nor was it all that complicated. But it was fun. And for now he was true to his word, as we then went and played with the catapult, and took slo-mo videos of it. We were then in a time machine house that was taking me to when atoms formed. And then he was a robot kitty again.

We went upstairs and he was asking about the house across the street. He got out his treasures and dumped them out on the couch. We played with those and he wanted to hang up the little hamsa he had found in a store once and we went downstairs for tape. We hung it on the kitchen door and he asked Carly if it could be there. He played with the string from his treasure, tying it around the knobs by the sink, then just randomly started taping everything.

They left to run errands at 10:45. They went to the school, but didn’t stay there long as the air conditioner was off. They then went to the mall, where the did grocery shopping and ordered more baby blue paint for the chair. I finished all the chair that you can see, but didn’t have enough for the bottom. Well, when you fold up the chair you can see the bottom, which particularly bothered August.

I was supposed to be doing some Sabeel work, but started filling out our passport renewals for me and August. That took longer than I expected and took the entire time they were gone. At least it is done though. They returned about 1. August did more vacuuming, then he played that TALU Space app. I did some work, and they made bracelets. August glued a bolt onto each one from the little bag of bolts that Carly had found him when she did recycling the other day. He had talked to me about using the bolts for something. I had told him that there weren’t nuts to go with them, but they might be good for one of his art projects. He remembered that and had the idea to put them on the bracelets.

I came down and we read a chapter of The Scarecrow and His Servant. He was then looking at Sky Guide on his iPad. He figured out the X-ray astronomy tool and we read about the gasses of space and x-ray photography. He went and showed Carly and told her about it, then went outside with her.

Tessa was supposed to come over with her two kids after their Jewish day care. August was getting impatient. Very cool to see him excited about having kids over. He played with his hammer, then came in and watched domino videos. It turned out they weren’t coming today, as the kids were having a hard time.

He and I did Makey Makey and magnet science for quite awhile. I went for a run as Carly took him up for a bath. He had a bit of a meltdown going to do that, but calmed down, and while I was gone he used the chalkboard to teach her about constellations. He then talked about how stars are made and the big clouds of gas out in space that we can only see with X-ray telescopes, and told her about evolution, walking out on the floor and explaining that there were apes back here, then humans up here. She asked him about tides and he didn’t know about those, but he didn’t want to learn about them now.

I got back and took a shower. They were playing Candyland. He came in to use the bathroom while I took a shower and stayed in until I was done. He weighed himself (15.5 kg) and then wanted Carly to weigh herself. He told her,”Let me guide you.”

Carly then took a shower. He and I went down to get his two chocolate chips. He got one gummy worm instead. He told me we need to let him make more rules. I told him he often gets choices and I mentioned tomorrow.

Upstairs we looked at Google Maps for where we should go tomorrow. We settled on the beaches in downtown Tel Aviv that we’ve never been to. I left them 8:30 and they read a couple Skybrary books, Field Day and What a Treasure!

He wasn’t going to sleep though, and came into the office with me when he got up to get a drink or something. He wanted to lie on the Zinnie bed while I did my work and fall asleep there, then when I was done working I’d take him in to the bed with mama. He gave it a good try, spending about 15 minutes lying on the bed. He played with and cuddled with Puff for awhile.

He got up and looked at photos of Bedouins with me, which I was doing for the book. He kept talking about how they were beautiful photos. I then lay down with him on the Zinnie bed. He brain just kept going though and he found it hard to fall asleep. at one point he popped up and asked about the “safety bed” – the pullout bed under the Zinnie bed. Awhile longer and I thought he was falling asleep but he then said he wanted to watch the Smurfs tomorrow. I think he was thinking about the bed, and last year we had played with the Smurf figurines and told stories while on the Zinnie bed.

At 9:50 he wanted to go in with Carly. He said goodbye to me, but I walked him over. It still took awhile as I heard him talking, but I think he was asleep around 10.

Catapult slo-mo 1:

Catapult slo-mo 2:

Sound wave experiment:

Jump rope:

Silly selfie video:

Dada dancing time lapse:

Sneeze slo-mo:

Mama slo-mo:

Recording sounds outside:

Shapes drawing

Treasures

Vacuuming

Bracelets with bolts

Makey Makey

Magnet fishing

Candy Land

I was sleeping in the other bedroom because of my book group meeting and heard August get up at 7:25. I was up at 8 and when I went down he ignored me and was watching videos on how machines work. I got him cornbread and his vitamins for breakfast, and after he watched a few Pink Panthers we read a few chapters of Magic Tree House #29. He had sung a full song about how you make a s’more out of the gummy vitamins and the chocolate vitamin in the middle. Got sort of a version of it on video, but the original was much more involved. He then asked where Carly was and he noticed the kitchen door wasn’t entirely shut. He asked her if he could come outside with her and she said yes, so he went and got his shoes and headed outside.

They looked at plants. Carly found one that had some sort of bugs all over it. He played with the pedals on my bicycle and also with his swing and string setup. Back inside he played a time machine house game, where I pushed buttons on the wall that accidentally took us farther and farther back in time, with him describing each time period. He ended up being a baby from all the time travel. We watched the video of him sleeping on his first day after being born.

Carly headed to the store. He was being born from a womb of pillows while I read. We finished Magic Tree House #29. The word of the day was ‘cauldron’. As a result of that we played the magic water game: “you’re someone getting the magic water and then it all drains…I drinked the entire cauldron.” He was hungry, so I cut corn off a cob and cut up a hotdog and served those together. He really liked that. We went upstairs and I took a shower and he watched Max and Ruby. He found a flashlight and took it apart and put it back together: “It’s like I’m doing maker space at home.”

My old laptop, which generally stays up on the desk, has been having the fan on basically all the time and started to shut off on its own. I brought it down and August helped me take off the bottom of it and get dust out. We used to vacuum cleaner to clean it really well. He used the macro lens to take photos of the inside of the computer.

Carly got home. Put away groceries, then I went up and did some laundry. The vacuum cleaner was out, and August did some vacuuming. Downstairs he played some Dragonbox Little Numbers, then they made a bracelet for Mikaela. A bead rolled under the couch and we spotted it with the flashlight, then he used the brown tube he has upstairs to reach it and get it out. He talked about how he sometimes gets the crusty bits from his eyes: “I get some out of it every once in a while.”

He and I went upstairs in the bedroom so he could take photos up there. He did a video and sang a song about dinosaurs 25 billion years ago that didn’t drink water. Very random. I taught him the difference between slow motion videos and time lapse and we tried both of those out with him dancing and swinging his hair and pretending to sneeze.

Downstairs a bead went under the couch again and this time it was further back. August and I had to move the couch out and he was able to squeeze back and get it. He found the 2kg weight and exercised with it, making Carly nervous. He made up a bunch of exercises and was my personal trainer, having me do each of them.

We went for a walk at 4:45. He took his stuff-touching stick with him. He found a really cool 3-sided comb and claimed it as a treasure. More cat counting, up to 87. We walked down a street to the south of us and he laughed when he spotted the big Israeli flag. Think he was surprised by it as we haven’t walked that way since being back. I talked about how I could see four planets in the sky at night and used the phrase ‘naked eye’, which was new to him. On the way back he spotted a garbage corner and got off to find treasures. I told him a maximum of three small things. He found a green plastic thing, a green block, and a firetruck piece from a wooden puzzle. I then spotted a Duplo-sort of person and let him have it. He really liked it, except a couple blocks later he poked a wall with the stick and it broke. He burst out crying. I was afraid he had been poked with it, but no, he was just sad the stick broke. He blamed it on me: “You let me get too many treasures and I couldn’t see…”

He calmed down and we stopped at the small park. He first was trying to get seeds to go down a tube in the ground. It was a machine that would teleport them around the world. He didn’t like that they were stopping where he could see them though. He wanted them to go deep into the ground. I told him he probably just had to shake the tube. He didn’t believe me, but when I showed him he said, “Oh yes, you’re right.” We took a bunch of the seed things to the top of the slide and he was dropping them down, saying “Incoming!” He was also saying “Gravity, man, gravity.” Which I eventually figured out is from one of the robots in StoryBots. We did slo-mo videos of the seeds rolling down the slide and of him dancing. And a time lapse of him dancing slowly. Looked like ballet. We did both kinds of videos of him on the swing and then merry-go-round. He had me spin him on the merry-go-round a lot, but then said he wasn’t feeling well. He blamed this on me as well. I carried him over and he lay on the bench for a few minutes. We headed home at 6:15.

At home I went for a run. Carly washed the car and August watched Max and Ruby. I came back and took a quick shower. He had been decorating a card for Mikaela (he covered it in 1s and 0s and was using a lot of colors in it, but said it wasn’t anything, just decorations) and when I came down they were delivering the bracelet and card to her by lowering them on a string from our kitchen window.

I got August’s bath ready and watched a Max and Ruby with him. Gave him a rather quick bath, then he ate noodles and chicken. We read another chapter of The Scarecrow and his Servant. He said good night to Carly and we headed upstairs. We brushed teeth and he picked up Will I Have a Friend? and read the first page all by himself without any prompting from me. He started on the second page then stopped and told me to read the rest. Around 9 we had lights off and were trying to go to sleep. I sang Street Songs, like “I Don’t Want to Live on the Moon” and others. He took a long time to go to sleep. He was finally asleep at 9:50.

Vitamin s’more song:

Vacuuming:

His dinosaur song:

Slo-mo 1:

Slo-mo 2:

Slo-mo 3:

Slo-mo 4:

Time lapse 1:

Time lapse 2:

Being my personal trainer:

Looking for treasure:

Seed slo-mo 2:

Dancing time lapse 1:

Dancing slo-mo 1:

Merry-go-round slo-mo:

Merry-go-round time lapse:

Swing slo-mo:

Swing time lapse:

The present for Mikaela:

Another little treasure he found

I woke him up about 7:15. He watched a YouTube video on how car batteries are recycled a couple times. We ate cornbread and apples for breakfast and got going. Walking about 7:40. I said we were golden as I reviewed if we had everything. He asked what that meant and declared ‘golden’ the word of the day. He then joked that “polluting is golden” because he claims to like polluting. We also discussed ‘optics’ some more on the walk to school as he asked how binoculars work. We had had a similar discussing yesterday for the day before.

At school we walked over to the middle school office area and dropped off hummus for the Gaia Jr. club. They collect food for a family in need. He handed it to Grace and another student gave him a sticker, which he put on me.

Down at the preschool we reviewed the schedule with Andrea. Music today, with Mini as Myriam is gone. No mention of a nature walk, although August was ready with his brown shirt in case there was. He was getting upset, saying there should only be 4 things before lunch, not 5. I talked about how the number of things doesn’t matter, and gave examples of eating snack for 4 hours if that was only one thing, and doing things for only 5 seconds at a time if there were a thousand things. I was making him laugh with this but there were still some tears as I handed him to Andrea.

He came running out at 3. He needed to use the bathroom so we went back inside. He spotted that there was one piece of cake left from tea party and asked Andrea if he could have it. she said it was for a visitor after school. He was disappointed and I picked him up. We were talking to Andrea, and he took my hat and tossed it at her. He also asked her for the recipe.

He had had a great day. Raising his hand and participating, doing challenges with chairs outside, and helping with the big birthday board that Andrea was making, doing a lot of cutting. Out on the bench he would talking about using scissors to cut out things for it: “They letted me do people and the months…Not just hanging around like before. They’re keeping me busy like I’m helping them.” And later he would tell me they had a fire and earthquake drill and had sat out on the grass by the playground. They had also had music with Mini. I asked if there had been instruments involved and he said he just did a lot of singing.

Carly arrived as he was doing Cheerio sculptures, putting Cheerios on the plants next to the PKB bench. He knocked the container of Cheerios over and they all went on the ground Nd we had to pick them up. Then we saw Marion outside. August went to ask her about the cake and she let him have the last piece. She joked that he shouldn’t tell Andrea, so he climbed in a cubby and ate the rest of it. He then asked for the recipe:

Half cup yogurt

Cup of sugar

Cup flour

3 eggs

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 cup oil

180 c for 30 to 35 minutes

He found a stick and was using it to touch dirty things. Carly said something and he told her, “I love your silliness.” As we left the school he was hitting things with it to make sound and it broke. He wasn’t happy about that, and I told him we had more sticks at home. On the walk we talked about the afterschool classes. He had shown interest in Hebrew, but now was less excited by it: “I said I MIGHT want to…’ But instead he was really excited about doing dance with Ms. Amelia, as long as it was just one day a week. I looked at home and it is on Wednesdays. I had planned on Wednesday for our skipping school days, when we get to 5-day weeks, so will have to come up with another plan for that. But it is really cool that he’s excited about the dance class.

On the walk home he talked about taking more photos in burst mode, which he’d been doing hundreds of yesterday. I told him that wasn’t what it was for and he needed to not take photos that way. He explained, “What happened was I discovered it and my brain said ‘This would be a good way to take pictures.’” We spent the last few minutes discussing the speed of light and other things.

We were home at 4:10. He had us play a game where he was 3000db loud. We then went outside to the string on the swing and his metal thing. He and I then went across the street to look at the cactus area and touch them with a stick. I think we counted 8 or 9 different kids of succulents. He also used his stick to touch things in the garbage area.

Back in the house he and I played with Cubetto. He set up challenges for me.

He had some dinner and played math apps on the couch. Carly took him up for a bath. I heard him talking: “They needed a good cutter…Im a really good cutter. I cutted like 23 strips of paper.” “I’m a student that helps the teachers…not anything else, except anthropologist.”

He did really well with washing his hair, then she trimmed his hair. He got a butterscotch lollipop – the first time he’s had butterscotch and he really liked it.

We read some of Magic Tree House #29. We called Carly ‘uncouth’ again and I declared that another word of the day. August asked why he could see through his hand as he looked up at the light. We all experimented with the hand/eyes thing.

Carly took him up to brush his teeth. I came up to say goodnight and left at 8:50. They were going to read Will I have a Friend? and then go to sleep.

Silly on the bench:

Making a Cheerios sculpture:

Using a stick to touch gross and far things:

Making a noise with his stick and breaking it:

Pulling the swing:

Hitting the lamp post to make sound:

Zombie August

Sticker on my shirt

Making his Cheerio sculpture

Hiding from Andrea as he eats cake

Touching with his stick

Touching a cactus

All the plants

Cubetto

Soon thisisourblog.net will be moving from Squarespace to a WordPress install. Thisisourblog.net should point to the new site, although there might be a few hours or a day of nothing working. At first, none of these old posts will be there. This site will still be available at http://thisisourblog.squarespace.com until everything gets transferred over.

Why? It will be much faster for me to publish posts as Squarespace makes attaching images and videos very slow. Also, it is cheaper. So hurray for that.

He was up at 6:55. He lay on the bed for 5 minutes before we headed downstairs. Watched a couple Pink Panthers, then we got going. Thinks went easily enough at school. He didn’t request a book. I almost made it out as he was standing along the wall with the things attached to it as musical instruments. He came over to me on the stairs though, but I was able to leave right at 8. He was choosing to sit at the bottom of the steps as I left, and I’m not sure how happy Marion was with that, but he was content enough.

They were supposed to have music time with Myriam after snack, but I’m not sure if that happened. He was noncommittal about it. I also didn’t stay too long at lunch. He forgot to bring out his lunch again, so I went back in with him to get it. Eve was sitting on the floor, sad. I asked what was wrong and she said Hector had cut in front of her at the front of the line. I introduced who I was and said I couldn’t do anything specifically about that, but that she could come out with August and I and eat lunch. That helped, and she came out with us and sat next to August. She then shared a cookie with us. When we talked about it later with Carly August said something like “She was doing friends with us?”

Didn’t have to stay too long and August let me go. They had tea party after rest time. He continues to have little treasures that he’s found during the day. I put them in my glasses case and put him in the little cloth basket in one of his treasure chests.

When I picked him up Marion told me to take his sheet home as well. He doesn’t use it, and she said it was too big. August had me go back out so he could run to me. Back inside we read the messages on his plant from Carly. He sand the Pink Panther song and had Andrea turn his volume down. He said something about “A funny cookie”, but I’m not sure exactly what. Maybe the cookie that Eve gave us. Or the ones he made at home.

We went out and ate on the bench. Carly came and met us and we walked home together.

At home he played Bandimal with Carly. He played the Wheels on the Bus app. I called it basically an interactive book, and after he asked ‘interactive’ became the word of the day. He played Monster Physics and I made pizza. We started reading Magic Tree House #26. The power went out after a few minutes. We went to check the electrical box, and I went next door and confirmed with David that it wasn’t just us. August had fun looking at the wires.

We stayed outside for awhile. I got him to do some challenges, we looked at how the gears work on my bike, and he made a dirt mixture. We went back inside and read more of the book. I started his bath and Carly made him a mango smoothie that he got to have before his bath. But first he also had ice cream outside. He came in and told me, “I’m an anthropologist because I watch people and I’m an archeologist cuz I find things.” He went to the chalkboard with Carly and she wrote down his observations from school: “They were playing kitchen really nicely.”

He did some typing of things to Korea Megan, then Carly took him upstairs to his bath. There was some yelling, but he came back down in a good mood. He had requested that he wear his brown shirt each Friday for their nature walks at school, as it has nature stuff on it. They wrote out a sentence about what he saw on the walk today. It was about seeing pomegranates in a bin. They then disappeared upstairs again. I brushed his teeth, then Carly was tired so went to sleep with him. I left them at 8:45.

Lunch with Eve:

Messages from mama:

I managed to wake him up at 7:10. He turned to me and said, “Well you have a different schedule than me. I sleep for ten hours. I just slept for ten hours. You sleep for 12 hours. So you need to sleep for two more hours, okay?”

He watched a single Pink Panther then we got going. On the way to school he asked “What’s caterpillar mean?” He then suggested it had something to do with eating leaves, like in another language. I said I’d have to look at the etymology of the word. We ended up discussing that word more, and made ‘etymology’ a word of the day.

As we parked the bike we saw a woman, her name is something like Orit, getting of the red Vespa scooter that we’ve seen before. She’s the one that calls August “Roger” from when they joked about his name, maybe in the pool. She said she had another helmet and offered to take him for a ride sometime.

I was able to leave at 8:06. We’d already established that I’d do a lunch check-in, then stay at the library until the end of the day, but he still wasn’t letting me leave. But it turned out he just wanted to make sure I’d be on the same bench when he was done with the day, then he was fine. He was watching Yaya at with the ball path pieces, doing a challenge from Marion to use all the pieces up, but said he wasn’t going to help.

I biked home, then biked back and was sitting on the bench when they came out for lunch at 12:35. He seemed a bit upset, but had a bookmark that he had found. It was slightly ripped and he asked if we could tape it. That may have been all he was upset about. Got him eating lunch, and of course he was done eating as soon as I started to get up to leave. Took awhile to leave, but he got into “feeding” the garbage can, picking up some garbage that was by Yaya and Bibo’s feet. Andrea came over and talked to him, and I was able to leave at 1:05.

I went to the library, then was sitting on the bench when he walked by with Anna and Marion from the garden. He didn’t see me, and I hid around a corner until he was inside. They got ready to leave and he came out at 2:55. He was such a happy boy. He had done gardening with Anna and Marion and helped “say goodbye” (harvest) to a plant. He didn’t know what it was, but said it had funny pods on it. He told Carly about it in a video. It had taken so long that he said he didn’t have time to go to makerspace. He took me over to show me where they had taken out the plant.

We went inside to get his stuff and he said a nice goodbye to Mini and gave her a hug. As he went to the bathroom he was issue ‘tickets’ like in StoryBots and I asked what the scariest animal was. The answer included “tigers, giraffes, Hippos, cuz of their muddy, scary face…cheetahs. and I think that is all.”

We ate on bench: bar, apple, Cheerios, egg. As he ate Cheerios he asked why Cheerios are so good and decided it was “Cuz I can taste the flouriness that it’s made of…I love it.”

Anna saw us and brought out the fennel they had harvested. That was the plant. We chewed some for the licorice taste. After she left he randomly asked, “Can you believe it taked Oma and opa months to get somewhere?” He asked if we could make pie sometime and so now he is really excited about baking an apple pie this weekend and sharing it with the Kerns. He had initially said he wanted to bring it to his class, but when I said I didn’t know if the teachers would want for snack he changed his mind. Really liked the idea of the Kerns though.

He wanted his iPad and played Reading4Kids for a few minutes, then we left at 4:10. As I packed up, he found 3 pushpins on the windowsill-like edge where they have the bulletin boards behind glass, next to the bench. He wanted to deliver them as “treasures” or “gifts” to mama so she could use them. We headed that way. In the center of the library building he stomped to make echoing noises. Tom was coming out of a room and made noises with him for a few seconds. They had fun.

He delivered the pushpins to Carly, then we went out to play with darts. I was going to walk home with him, but when he figured out that Carly was going to drive he wanted us to go with her. He said he didn’t have enough energy to pedal. He then proceeded to run all over the place as we headed to the car.

In the car he invented a grinder that grinds leaves and berries to make juice.

At home he watched the Pink Phink episode of The Pink Panther. I went up to do some work. Took longer than I expected, but less than an hour. He had curry, then some peanut butter crackers. He read Bob Books for Carly and had a lollipop. They were doing big numbers on the chalkboard when I came back down.

Carly then headed to the preschool curriculum night. He watched the ‘How many kinds of animals are there?’ StoryBots episode. I realized his tickets game comes from the Fun Facts. We decided another word of the day was ‘taxonomy’. He then invented a counting small things game, where he gave me the ability to see small things like atoms. He was then asking about the speed of light. He found part a part of a granola bar that Carly had left on the table and was excited about eating the rest of that. He told me, “A camel can walk in the desert for 45 hours without a single sip of water…I just know it.”

We did the science experiment he had wanted to do earlier with Carly, one of his design: water, with oil on it, then coffee poured on top. Nothing incredibly different, but the oil on top ended up all uneven and fun to look at. Out of nowhere he asked, “Remember the jewels we found at the airport? That you can’t take on airplanes?” He was referring to the display of illegal imports we had seen, in Newark, I think. We discussed ivory and why it is illegal. And looked up pictures of things out of ivory and piano keys. He said he didn’t want any ivory. And he learned that the black keys are made out of ebony.

I took him up and washed his hair. He wanted his haircut so it wouldn’t go in his mouth. Seemed like he knew he shouldn’t chew on it but didn’t want the temptation. It’s getting long enough to pus behind his ears, so a little problematic to cut it. But we blowdried his hair and then I trimmed his bangs just a little so they wouldn’t reach his mouth. Before I started he explained to me how I could cut his hair without getting close to his skin. He watched a Pink Panther superhero episode. He used the little mirror on his brush and said, “See the white around my eyes? What is it for?” He said it looked like an egg.

He had me measure his height on the growth chart and asked why we do it. I talked about curiosity and also how there can be developmental problems. We ended up talking about malnutrition.

We went in to bed. His hair was still a little damp, so he put a book on his (well, my) pillow and lay on that. He doesn’t like the feeling of wet hair on a pillow. I told a story based on ‘The boy who cried wolf’ called ‘The Zinnie who cried cat’. Instead of just one animal it had a lizard, cockroach, and cat. At the end they all run around the house and August gets really allergic.

Carly came home as I was telling the story. He wanted the rest of the story but then knew it was mama’s turn to put him to sleep, so she came in and he was asleep by 9:05.

Treasures: 

Carly was driving to work so stayed later. She woke him up about 6:45. August told her all about another planet with humans. They can’t use soap so they take longer baths. They don’t have the material for toilets so either holes in the ground. And they have cats that you aren’t allergic to.

He watched the StoryBots episode about how computers work (Snoop Dogg is the special guest) and I got his lunch ready. We were walking just after 7:30.

I was able to leave him at 8:20. There were a couple of sobs as I did so though. But by the time I was up on the sidewalk I listened and I didn’t hear anything, and Marion was talking to Andrea, so he must have been okay.

We had read a chapter of Magic Tree House and then August and I were talking about how long check-ins needed to last (he brought it up and said that he didn’t think they should stop until kindergarten). Hector came over and asked why August wasn’t playing. I tried to get August to answer him, and August said he’d tell me and I could tell Hector. It was his explanation that he was thinking about how to play with the kids. Of course, by then Hector had moved on. And my attempt to talk to him about things he could do went nowhere. he did say he built a machine out of the window blocks yesterday. But he didn’t like any of the outside things to do. I thought he would like the painting with chalk in water on the bricks, but he said he could paint at home. He was picking the old glue off of the art pieces made out of bottle caps glued on wood and enjoying that, at least.

Instead of audiobooks I listened to Cloud Cult’s Feel Good Ghosts on the way home.

Well, I am sitting on the bench outside PKA. We will see how this goes. I arrived after they came out for lunch today. Also, he had dropped a couple of treasures he had found and was mourning their loss, so he was crying when I got here.

He calmed down and ate, but as I made talk at the table I said that Playball was after rest time. Ms. Mini said he was on vacation. So, the not knowing what was happening next really bothered him. We sat on the bench and his teachers finally got back before 1:15. We found out they were just going to have more exploratory time. But August said, “Rest time is the problem!”

As the teachers took them in for rest time August was insisting I had a choice between taking him home, or staying with him. “So what is your choice?” When I said I’d stay until he calmed down, he took that to mean I’d stay here. He instantly calmed down and went in for rest time, telling me to do my work on the bench.

So I hung around school. Didn’t have my iPad to work, but listened to an audiobook and finished it, wrote some emails, and walked around a bit.

When he spotted me after school, about 2:50, he came running, very excited. I had moved over to the bench in the covered are through the elementary school. He had done fine for the rest of the day. Andrea said that when he got restless on his mat she brought him his timer and he was fine. The kids that weren’t napping went into the art room and made things out of natural materials: sticks and rocks and things. He told me a little about it and it sounded like he had fun.

Andrea asked to meet with us. I suggested right now, with August there. She was waiting for Marion to come back from the busses. August and I, and Candy, started to read a book about patterns in nature. But then the announcement for the all-staff meeting came on and there wasn’t going to be time. August and I moved out to the PKA bench and he ate his after-school meal while I read the rest of Magic Tree House #25. We dropped the book off at the library and then headed home.

On the way home I sang a couple Sesame Street songs for the first time in quite awhile: “What’s the name of that song?” And “We all sing with the same voice”. He then told me I and everyone else was wrong about the metric system. He claimed that the centimeter was the longest unit of measurement. I had apparently fed him some magic for for dinner last year that let him know this.

We were home before 4. He demanded, “I’ll play on my iPad and you’ll make me some water drink. Okay, dada?” We did a few things on the iPad and Carly got home. I went upstairs and did about an hour of work. When I came down she was making him a smoothie.

They read I See Kitty and a Bob Book. Carly offered him a lollipop if he helped her read, and suddenly he was reading everything. They did a second Bob Book. He chose cherry, and said “It tastes just like medicine.” I saw pigeon right outside our kitchen window, in the dirt of the planter box, and August named it “Porken”. He then sang part of the “Goodbye everybody, have a superduper day” song from school. We read Go Dog Go together. For much of it he red one page and I’d read the next. In Skybrary we read the  Jeremy Jackrabbit book. Words of the day are journey and jittery. Carly made popcorn and he had much of the bowl and we read another Skybrary book – the Gorilla book from the same series.

He brought the piano up on the couch with my help and made up songs on it, gradually taking all the keys out. I then took him up to his bath. That was going fine until he wanted to drink out of Carly’s spray bottle. I told him he couldn’t put it in the bath water, but then I stopped him when he tried to. He had a meltdown over that and that ended with Carly about to put him to sleep and I said good night. But he argued we hadn’t brushed his teeth. So I brushed his teeth. We discussed his stopwatch and how long to 1000 hours

He wanted a story, and gave a premise of a story. The three of us re on a walk and he plays in some trees and finds a door and we go through it and a bunch of other doors and we find a bunch of gold. It was put there by a kind person who ends up sharing the gold with us. He wanted the light on during story telling, so I brought the lamp in and plugged it in. I then told a full version of his story.

I then sang songs and he was going to sleep. He was facing away from me, then suddenly rolled over once and asked, “Dada. That bead that I founded: do you think we could paint it with blank paint?”. I said yes and he immediately rolled back over. He rolled back towards me one more time, putting his hand on my watch. He was clearly asleep a few minutes later, about 8:45.