Category: Uncategorized

He was up at 6:40. Nice and quiet. Downstairs he lay in the sun on the couch for a bit before asking for peanut butter toast. He had two slices and watched Max and Ruby. We got going, and had a good conversation reviewing all the sense beyond the basic 5. We got going at 7:40. The garbage truck pulled up as we left and the guy said “Boker tov!’ to us. We watched them for our block, then got going on our lovely walk to school. He ate the pack of gummy bears along the way and compared them to the gummy worms he’s had in the past.

He settled down at the clay table and decided to make a machine. I had told him I was going to work, and I talked to Anna and she said it was a good time to try me leaving. He, of course, did not react well to learning that I was going to return the library books and work in the library. At one point he escaped from me and started running to the library on his own. I caught him, then he, Anna, and I sat on the bench and talked. He calmed down a bit, enough to talk, but was still quite upset. He did a lot of talking, which was good as he could talk through his feelings. Highlights: “What if something happens to me?” “What if I don’t get any food?” “But I have fun with you!” “But it’s going to be so much fun!” (Going to the library, that is) “Why aren’t you holding me tight?”

I went to the library, and within 3 minutes Maaian called to tell me that he had already stopped screaming and was sitting with Anna outside, still screaming, but having a conversation. And while I was on the phone Sheri, the elementary principal, came to check to make sure that I was doing okay. Maaian called a couple minutes later, after I had texted asking if I should stay away longer than 9, and suggested I just go home. felt that was a bit much, so told her that I’d stay at school and come back for lunch unless they called me to come back earlier. I had a feeling that he’d be aware enough to know that we had said I’d be coming back and start to get upset at some point when I wasn’t. Also, my lunch and snacks and backpack were still down there, so I had to get them somehow.

Maaian called back at 9:20 saying he was still doing well, but that he is really logical and kept remembering that I had said I’d be back soon. exactly what I thought would happen. So Anna told him I’d be back at snack time. Maaian suggested I then take him home for the rest of the day. I didn’t really get the logic of that, but went along with it. We’d be back at 3:20 to meet with them.

I went back at 9:45. He was sitting at the clay table with Anna and Nikolas, playing with clay. Anna had told us about a book of machines and things made out of wood. They had used that as inspiration and were making a bridge over a stream. Nikolas had made a river otter in their stream and Anna had made some fish. They explained it to me and then I let them keep engineering their bridge. I heard her say “okie dokie” and he liked it: “I like okie dokie!” They found a black hair and joked about hair and wondered whose it was. They went and looked at the photos to decide whose it might be. He decided it could be Omri’s. He was laughing hysterically as they joked about it and ended up talking about how they needed to interview people to figure out who it came from. Hector suggested that someone had snuck in and put it in the clay intentionally. I would later compare that idea to August’s idea that David was sneaking into our house and chewing gum. Anna suggested they keep the stream scene intact and he could find materials for a bridge and brings them: “What if it has sharp edges?” When Anna didn’t quite understand him he rephrased it: “Would you allow it if it has sharp edges?”

They talked about the water cooler and how there was a red one for hot but it didn’t work. He said maybe it was to trick kids. He then told her how all of his rockets, etc. are invisible to trick people since we don’t think they’re real but they actually are. Anna talked about how they put the scissors up high to keep them safe “because we love all the kids.” August said “And me? Yeah!”

August told her that he makes up words at home: “I have a fair amount of names.” He then went on a long explanation of ‘Flubong’, although she probably lost the thread to how it related to how he makes up words since he didn’t tell it was called flubong for a few minutes. He then told her about the Untouchifafier.

We didn’t end up leaving until 10:20, after he decided not to go to music class. As we walked he asked “Was it amazing I only got sad a couple times?” We went to the library and he was excited about checking out books. We found a Jack Perlutsky book of poems called What a Day at School it Was! (Seemed appropriate), The 78-Story Treehouse, and Magic Treehouse #16. We went and sat in the bean bags and he said “I can’t wait to read that book.” We read the full poetry book and he did a lot of laughing in it and asked a lot of questions. He then wanted The 78-Story Treehouse and started singing a “78 has so much stuff to see” song. We read a chapter of it before he got hungry.

We left 11:20 and had a snack – za’atar bread and spaghetti and Cheerios. Je was asking me about “The space station things” that he sees on houses and I figured out he meant satellite dishes. We talked about how they worked. we had left his water bottle at the preschool, so we went back there and grabbed it. While we were there Marion grabbed the computer and showed us that the baby kestrals had hatched.

We left the school at 11:50. He was okay with leaving the bike in the bike rack. He said it would be safe there. A big difference from when he was afraid to let it out of his sight at parks. We drove down to the Ir Yamin mall. We were looking for a swimsuit for me and a baseball hat for him. We found me a swimsuit at Fox. He chose a red one because he said “It looks like lava.” I agreed on it and tried it on. In the changing room he really examined and styled his hair in the mirror. We bought it, the went and got a smoothie at Rebar. He chose the FreeBerry because it had cinnamon in it.

He started telling me about when I was gone: “…did morning meeting. Well, I didn’t really listen or anything.” He lay down on the floor a few times and slept. Anna would later talk about how this was a strategy that he used to calm down. I would also find out, between him and her, that she had helped him go to the bathroom over in the PKA bathroom and they had gone for a walk to the garden and looked over to see the building that I was in. We were done at 1. He squeezed the styrofoam cup with his hand after I asked him to. We talked about a consequence and he calmed down, etc. I told him to “Keep that in your head” when thinking about impulses. But as we were walking away he said “I won’t keep that in my head. Throw it away in my head.”

We looked at a few shops for a baseball cap for him. Not a lot of stores with kids hats. He started singing Bjork’s “Earth Intruders” and then wanted to play “Let’s destroy the Earth!” So we pretended to blast things as we went through a store. He tried on a couple hats in one store. he really liked the pink baseball hat, but both were tight on him already and wouldn’t last long. And I didn’t like the pink.

We left at 1:25. We listened to “Earth Intruders” and then David Byrne. He fell asleep just before home, at 1:43. I was getting him out just three minutes later, but then he was falling back to sleep on the couch. It was 1:58 by the time he was fully awake and talking. We made some water drink and shared it, and he had some peanut butter sandwich. He kept coughing out bites today. In part it seemed to be because he just kept talking and would forget to swallow. He talked about his trip to PKC and the nature reserve yesterday and asked “How in the world did they let us go to another class?”

We drove back to school after getting swimsuits and finding his towel. As
we walked from the car he told me “I just finished a machine I’ve been working on all my life. The EVERYTHING MACHINE! It allows you to do everything at once.”

Outside the library I saw Shay sitting in his cab 13839. The first time we’ve spotted him outside our street, and it is the day after he moved out. It was just at 3 o’clock and he was waiting to pick someone up. Don’t think he saw us.

We first went to Carly’s classroom, then we all walked over the preschool. He had a lot of fun showing Carly around the room and showing her the teacups. I took him to the bathroom, then we went up to the meeting. He almost played with the blocks on his own outside the office, but didn’t like the door closed. he chose to watch Sarah and Duck on the floor using his headphones. The meeting went okay – we at least have a plan for the week and know where everyone stands. But our big takeaway was that Maaian, the preschool director, thinks that 40 minutes of volunteering a week is a lot/adequate. As Carly pointed out, that sounds like any public school anywhere and isn’t consistent with what she had told us in email, in person, and is in their preschool handbook and philosophy, which talks about “daily basis” and “as much as the parent’s schedule allows” etc. Big disconnect.

For the last few minutes, after 3 or 4 Sarah and Ducks, Carly went out with August and they build with the blocks. August showed me what the had made when I came out.

Carly went to do some work and August and I went to the pool. He was mainly excited about the towel from Oma: “I’m lucky I have this towel.” In the pool he at first wasn’t impressed that I had forgotten the floaties. But I told him I didn’t mean to bring them. I carried him in the pool a bit and he asked his worried questions. After a few minutes he went over to the steps and played there in the water, mainly splashing water out to be filtered, and I did some swimming.

We got to Carly’s classroom at 5. He had some more za’atar bread. More spitting out and talking to him about swallowing more often. Up to spit up #6. He told Carly “I took your students castle with my untouchifier.” We left at 5:25.

At home he had cauliflower and potatoes for dinner outside. There were a couple more bites spit out. We then shared a pineapple yougurt. They played outside and I did dishes. Carly took him up to a bath. I came up after awhile and he was splashing bubbles outside the bath: “It’s like bubble town but outside the bath!” He asked me “What’s an artifact?” Also, one of his new words is ‘rare’ and he used it several times today.

Downstairs he had yet another invention today: magic plant that only needs air. He asked me (of this and the everything machine): “Do you consider those to be my two greatest inventions in my life?” We talked about some of his other inventions, like his Mooka Mook language. He decided “Enshumgedorflug is the best, best, best, best one.” And he said “English is kind of a crazy language. Why?” We talked about that, and I mentioned loan words, like hummus. He said “Speaking of hummus, can I have some?” We had crackers and hummus. I was surprised with how much hummus he ate.

I told him to tell Carly about his everything machine and he sold it to her: “The everything machine. It does everything ever invented all at once!” He then asked me “Dada, when you do projects do you get to keep them?” he was talking about his stream and bridge project at school and wondering if he could keep it. I said he probably could. A couple times today he pretended to be Candy and asked me “Can you make my name Candy and call me Candy?” We then had a discussion of ‘fair’ “Can you give me an example?” He talked about the helpers in yoga and said “But I never get to be a helper!” He talked to Carly about being her helped and we reminded him about all the things he helps with, like watering and planting (they had transplanted a tomato plant when they were outside).

Carly took him up. Left them 8:30. He told her something like “I want to tell you something that really happened. Dada left me.” When she asked him more about his feelings though he talked about how he had eaten an orange peel at the kindergarten, then had eaten the kindergarteners. Me up after 8:50 to sing songs. He was eventually ready for Carly. I got her, and he was asleep about 9:30.

While I was gone: 

During our meeting: 

Cozy quick-drying towel: 

He was waking up around 6. Then got up around 6:30. When I got up they were sitting outside eating toast with peanut butter and playing Namoo. They were looking up what process proteins do. A bit later she was teaching him how light makes colors. I found the beads he had found in the mall play area and brought them out to him. He played with them on the table: “No escaping beady! No beadies escaping in this land!” When he was done he put them in the outside treasure bowl. When he finished his toast he left one bite, as usual: “I’m full. I just leave-taking one bite of crust.”

He brushed off the green plant table with a paintbrush. He and I went inside and read some of the Zita book and Monster Party. He then wanted to play with Duplos. We built a pyramid and it was dedicated to an ancient Egyptian zookeeper. Then we had a nice archeologist open it and study all the stuff and create a museum exhibit out of it. Two more pyramids followed: one dedicated to the harvest, and another the burial place of a farmer. Carly had taken a shower, then we switched and I went up.

We left at 10:30. I drove and we picked up Robin, a teacher at a school in north Even Yehuda, at a bus stop near Kefar Sava. We were going to meet with Fatin, the Palestinian woman Carly knows in Tira, and a teacher there so they could plan their event bringing together students from the three schools.

We met the other teacher at the gas station in Tira and she took us to the Alef middle school in Tira where they were having a Palestinian Folk Day. People were wearing traditional clothing, there was food, music, etc. She showed us around and introduced us to the principal and a sheik. Then took us out and gave us some food: some really, really sweet things that August liked but even he eventually said they were too sweet, and za’atar bread, which August really loved. We then went inside to see a music performance. There was a woman playing a drum and a guy playing oud. We all stayed in and watched for awhile, then they all left to go to the office and have their meeting and August and I stayed for a few more minutes. He enjoyed it, but it was really loud, and eventually he realized mama had left. There was a woman that had said she wanted a photo with him – she had joked with him that they had the same eye color (hers were brown) – but she chose the wrong moment to approach him as we left the building and he wasn’t in the mood for a photo.

We listened to the music from outside and was fine, then he started drawing a lot of attention from middle school girls, who were coming up and touching his hair and cheeks and tickling him. It got worse as the performance was over and we were suddenly in a sea of middle school students. My first advice to him was bad advice – I told him to tickle back. Bad, bad advice, as then they tickled him more. I had been holding him, and actually lost him as he slid out of my arms and to the ground, where he was scooped up by a couple of girls. I got him back, and my next piece of advice worked much better. I told him to do high fives. The teacher who had liked his eyes also intervened and helped get the girls to give him some space. It also made me realize that my 5 or 6 words of Arabic are pretty inadequate.

Once he was high-fiving he had a lot of fun with it, and was even smiling a lot when they touched his hair or cheeks. He admitted he liked the attention. After a few minutes he remembered mama and we went exploring, sort of looking for her. We went in the school a little, then I asked if we should do more exploring: “Yeah! Exploring!” There was more music, outside now, and we watched it. when Carly and the rest came out he told her “We were listening to new Palestinian and Arab music! It was really good!’

We got in our cars and they led us across town to Fatin’s house. She got us coffee, and him orange juice. We sat in the living room with them for awhile, and he also tried a walnut. We then looked around the house at all the knickknacks. She had lived in Nigeria and had a lot of giraffes and elephants around. He then spotted a snow globe with the Eiffel Tower and said “Maybe she lived in Paris!” But then we kept looking at the knickknacks in that area and realized they were from several different countries. I asked him to revisit his hypothesis and he revised it, saying she had probably just been to those places.

I had the iPad but he wasn’t too interested. So we went outside, where she has a really nice yard with all sorts of plants. He said “I bought a lot of chickens for the people who live in this house too!” So they could have a poop yard. He found some balls and we kicked them back and forth, then we looked at plants, touching some cacti and aloes. They were done just after 1 and he used the bathroom then we got going.

We dropped Robin off and got home at 1:40. Carly went upstairs to rest. I was getting tired of making Duplo pyramids, so we made a Greek temple instead for the archeologist. We read Wecome to the Symphony and I put the dining room table ends up as we don’t really need that much table. We’ see how that feels. He had fun copying Carly again, and had done it earlier in the day. They went outside and played and took care of the yard. She made him a super stick by taping together two sticks so he could better reach the tree branches to hit them.

Inside he was taking bits off the broken ball. We talked about impulses and thinking about them, as he was putting the pieces under the couch. He then wanted to practice it, and practiced having the impulse to throw a book, but then deciding that it wasn’t a good idea.

Our next event of the day was International Day at WBAIS. We left at  3:30.  We went in and got right to the countries and treats. Spain (a potato thing), Switzerland (August said “The cheese smells like poop.” But he liked the chocolate.), Germany (a pack of gummy bears for later: “I remember way back in Korea we had gummy worms.”), India (some savory things for once). He spotted Ms. Vicky (his music teacher) and was really, really excited. That was really cool to see. He’s only had class with her twice and seen her briefly one or two other times. Puerto Rico, Panama. There was more chocolate in here and some cookies, one of which, he said, the frosting tasted like marshmallow. We saw Gaby, and he excitedly told her that he’d had treats.

We walked across to the other side: Japan, Kazakhstan (more chocolate), Czeck Republic. In a few places he got treats in wrappers and we convinced him to let us save them for later. I commented that we hadn’t seen anyone in his class, then we spotted Omri. He liked that and we went over and said hi.

We lasted about an hour, then headed home. But first, there were boxes to pick up. An iHerb order and an Omazon box.

We got home and opened the iHerb box. Vitamins weren’t too exciting, but as he explained to Carly: “But then I was so excited about the water mix dada gotted!” We made some and shared it. Then the package from Oma: tons and tons of plastic eggs. I filled 8 of them with random objects (rubber bands, keys, coins, a tissue, Carly’s wristband from the fair, etc.) and hid them outside. He went out and found a couple, then said “I think I got to the point I need a hint.”

Shmuel came and said that Shay was supposed to be moving out any minute, so out of an over abundance of caution, August and I took our egg hiding inside. Hid them once and he found them. Then he was playing with them on the coffee table and ‘hugging’ all of them. I added two more to the mix, and he saw what I had put in them as they came apart in his hugs. He said “You shouldn’t have put them close to the hugaroo machine, right?” Then had a “Don’t put them close to th hugaroo machine” chant.

He ate some potatoes, then there was some of the sausage for him, which he seemed to decide he didn’t like without trying. He was having the start of a meltdown as he was still hungry. he said “You know I don’
t like it, mama. Don’t force me to eat it anymore.” Carly suggested to me that these fairs weren’t worth the meltdowns afterwards.

I got him up to his bath. We watched some of the Formula E race. He then did a good job letting me wash his hair. He started to get upset when I started to wash it, but then let me do the rest. We went and used the hairdryer, then he told me “I want some naked time.”

The cauliflower was ready, so he ate a bunch of that and some potatoes. He assured me though that “I’m just staring at the potatoes.” Carly went up to a shower. When I was slow to get up, he said “Or did you forget to get up?” Which is something that Carly says about herself sometimes.

He ate a bunch more and had milk and we watched the race. Lots of talk about energy and batteries and regeneration. Also, we talked about Paris and the Eiffel Tower, which he had seen in a snow globe at Fatin’s house. “I spotted the Eiffel Tower!” He noticed the flag of Switzerland next to the driver’s name. He had gotten a sticker of the Swiss flag and we put it on my shirt and I was still wearing it. The drivers name is Rosinquist, and August liked it and kept repeating: “Rosinquist!”

Requested the “I Can Dance” song. We listened to that and he hummed and danced in his chair. I then took him upstairs after 8:10. She got him ready and called me up. We had a nice little conversation after he asked what’s your brain for? I left them at 8:25 and she put him to sleep on the big bed so he could sleep with me. He was asleep just after 8:30.

And did I mention, Shay moved out!

Za’atar bread: 

International Day:

Flowers:

He was up at 7:10. He sat on the bed and watched Max and Ruby and I fed him piece after piece of toast with peanut butter and honey. We then had a long Skype call with my parents. First upstairs on the sofa bed, then moving downstairs. Upstairs he played with the pink clay, which worked well except when he put it on his head like a kippah and then I realized he’d need his hair washed. Downstairs he tried himself up with string. They asked if he had played piano recent and he said no, so he would now and he want and played an improv with them. When we were done Carly had just taken the black chair out in the yard and I tried to keep him in for a bit. But he went out, telling me “You can read The 52-Story Treehouse by yourself.”

I made slime with August for the first time. Carly wanted to be able to take breaks and also work on the yard. So that was fun. As we did that we saw Jack and Celeste stop. Celeste delivered their key to Holly so she could walk the dog and Jack looked at a bird. We said hi.

August then made up a wonderful song about how he likes to eat contact solution. Not much to say about that.

I went and took a shower. Back downstairs he was asking me about school and had insightful questions about it getting harder: “Why if you read a book that’s too hard you don’t like it?” “Is that why school gets harder and harder?” “Why?” I gave him an example of a math problem that would be too hard for him. He immediately wanted to know “What’s prime mean?” “What’s division mean?” So we got the blueberries out and were doing division. After a few minutes he was doing some basic division problems with them.

I told him that with preschool we haven’t been doing much music recently and we should go up and change the strings on the mandolin, changing all 8 of them. We did that and listened to Simon & Garfunkel. He was making bridges with the old strings and then heard “Bridge over Troubled Water” and said “Hey! I’m making a bridge!”

To trim the strings I sent him downstairs to get the pliers with the wire cutters. I reminded him how he had had the idea to use them when we were fixing the cabinet door with toothpicks. He was excited to be reminded of his good idea and went down and told Carly and she was able to find the pliers. He then cut up several toothpicks. I then took him upstairs and he helped me cut the strings. He then helped me tune, and was himself a machine running a tuner.

He went downstairs and told Carly what he was, then they played with Duplos. They made a volcano and it had things inside of it. They were then playing with the foamy blue clay. He was hungry so had more oatmeal. I was sitting on the couch playing with the mandolin. He pretended I wasn’t there: “Mama, where’s dada? I think we should call dada on his phone.” “Dada, are you in Jordan?” Then: “Mama, my name is Selma.” “When I split into Selma there is also cake mix” “chocolate cake…with blueberries!” He remembered what kind of cake she had for her birthday that one day we visited the preschool.

He and I then read Go, Dog, Go, then we got ready and left at 2:25. I drove us to school. We went to Carly’s room and she printed out some things. He played in the classroom for a couple minutes. We then drove home and dropped Carly off and the two of us continued on to the grocery store. We drove to the little Tiv Taam. He explained how he got sound through the speakers and how all of his parts are invisible – his monsters blasters, etc.

Things went well at Tiv Taam until we were about done. He had been stacking all the groceries behind him in the cart, but then had the idea of squishing them with his whole body, then when he wouldn’t stop I had to forcefully hold him up to stop squishing them. He didn’t like that, and I had to pull him out of the cart. We ended up with a squished loaf of bread and three split bananas. Could have been worse. As we were talking and I was explaining he needed to apologize, he said “Oh dada” When I asked why he had said that he said “Mama told me to say oh dada to everything.” Carly got in trouble for that one.

We put the groceries in the car and went to the outdoor playground, at 4:05, which was very busy. But he claimed otherwise: “It’s not busy, silly.” He then claimed to only count 5 other kids. He stood around for a minute deciding what to do, then asked if I had any of the nut treats. When I said no he let out a yell of frustration and grabbed my legs and head-butted me, unfortunately right in the crotch. We left and headed to the car.

We got home at 4:20, and with Carly he continued to have a meltdown. He kept saying “Can you do something nice for me?” We got him calmed down and made dinner. Carly made dinner, and I had gotten some new veggie burgers and found hamburger buns at the store so I made one of those. Good food, and a lot of it, made August feel much better. He said “The sauce makes it perfect”. And he ate several bites of the burger patty and some of my mushrooms.

When he was done eating he went to the top of his slide and sat there and swung his stick around. He was warning us to “Be careful!” He asked “Where did I hear ‘impulse’?” I had used it to explain to him recently how following through on his impulses after we say no to something is what’s been getting him in trouble. He set his stick on the bars and said “That’s a pretty slippery material, ey?” He then sang a “I like impulses” song. He then moved on to the Thumbkin song, singing “Where is pointer? Where is pointer?…” He slid down the slide with his stick and got his shorts wet: He had sprayed off his slide earlier to clean it.

We went inside and he was hungry so ate several mushrooms. He was then swinging around one of those old splat balls and it burst open over his kitchen. He was still hungry and I got him spaghetti and put it on the table. I asked “Did you see your spaghetti?” He replied “No! U was having too much fun doing other stuff.”

They then skyped with Chuck and Cherie. He then asked me “Why is the Earth tilted?” So we looked that up and talked about early planets bumping into each other. Then there was a skype call with Vivian.

I took him up for a bath. He was impatient to get in, so we stopped it really shallow. He measured it this way: “It’s like a couple toilet papers deep.”

Afterwards he was still hungry and asked for peanut butter and crackers. When I got it for him he asked where the toast was. I said he had asked for crackers. He said “Toast too, please.” He just got crackers.

On the couch he was singing “Head, shouldera, knees, and toes.” He then asked “Dada, what’s a reinforced celery door?” Which is from The 52-Story Treehouse. And led to a discussion of ‘reinforced’.

A couple times today he started copying Carly, everything she says, which frankly is really funny. She was complaining about my book club and said “I hate this book club.” He was copying her and had fun repeating that one.

I took him up and he did a good job flossing his own teeth. we brushed them, then Carly came up and I left them at 8:30 and he was soon asleep.

Clay on his head: 

Slime with me: 

Comfy: 

Rain: 

He woke up before 6 but fell back to sleep until 6:40. Downstairs he was having a tough time until we got some oatmeal in him. He was upset that Carly’s bag of Cheerios was bigger than his and she got two yogurts. He watcher the Magic Schoolbus but then we had to take a timeout when he was trying to squish his vitamin and hit me when I stopped him. He apologized and I then got him toast with peanut butter and honey and he watched some more. Carly helped make his lunch then took the car to work.

We left right at 8. He spent the first half of the walk talking about all the things he could eat: cars, the highway, steel. He did a great job steering, navigating Vatikim as there was a ton of cars on the narrow road going both directions. He would know which way the cars were going to go and turn to the side. I complimented him on his steering. He asked what the weakest thing was and we talked about surface tension. He made up the word ‘flubond’, which either means no surface tension, or a liquid with no surface tension.

At school they had a cool set of K’nex sort of wooden building blocks out. I tried to get him to build with the other kids and I went in the break room. Maaian asked me to help change the tub on the water cooler, and he liked seeing that done finally. He played a little out with the blocks and came in and showed me a couple of things with solar panels. But then he insisted I got out with him. I explained how I was tired and getting over being sick and he tried to generate power for me. When I said it wasn’t working he said “But my generator’s not working?” in a sad voice.

Carly called and told me that she was feeling dainty “Oh-no! What if she throws up befor she gets home…But what if she throws up and it gets all over her clothes because she doesn’t have a bowl?”

I went out with him. He wanted to cut with scissors. At first he refused to try using one hand, saying both hands was the most fun. But I cut some shapes and we discussed them, then he suddenly figured out how to do that on his own. He did a bunch of cutting, then wanted me to cut more shapes. I did more shapes and we started talking about lines of symmetry. We used these cool blocks on the table to yeah rectangle versus parallelogram and square versus rhombus. We folded up a square of paper and drew the lines of symmetry. He realized he could keep folding the triangles and make more lines of symmetry. A group was making bread and he heard something about scoops. He said “Everyone’s going to do two scoops, but not me, cuz we’re having too much fun.”

At 9:30 they had morning meeting. He said “Morning meeting is the worst part!” but he sat through the whole thing for the first time this week. He hasn’t liked it since I tried to leave last week. Then the bathroom and out to snack. He washed his plate and everything while I sat and read. They were then looking for volunteers to go with the PKC class to the nature reserve on campus. August went up with Omri, Candy, and Blanka. We had some time in the upstairs classroom before we left. He sat down with Ms. Seychen and learned how to put beads on a string. He was really into it.

We then walked over to the nature reserve. August didn’t like standing in lines on the way over. There we saw tadpoles and August liked exploring the little paths. He played in the yurt for a bit, then we went and explored more, finding flowers and snails and a bee. He and Blanka climbed on the old tires that lined the path. He asked me what “Draw from” means. I explained, then he said “So the spit glands draw from the water you drink to make spit?”

We were there for 30 or 40 minutes, then headed back to class, joining back up with PKB. He went outside with Marion and helped water flowers using a cup and a bucket of water. He then went in and played with the block things with Blanka. At one point she handed him something and said “I made it for you.” I watched for a few minutes then I went and typed. August came in in a couple minutes and said “okay” then ran back out to play. Such a relief. A couple minutes later he came in and asked “Is anything ever going to happen to me?” Then he asked what the schedule was, before deciding he could go and play some more. Didn’t really happen though, as then Nicholas came in the room. I had to go back out with both of them.

They had a brief meeting where Anna talked about the tea party, which was going to be early today. The kids were in charge. Three or four of them did most of the work of picking things for the tea, getting out the mugs, organizing chairs. August took out a chair but then didn’t know what to do so he sat there waiting. He was hungry for bread and honey but did a decent job of waiting until the tea was ready. He got a second big piece of the bread and honey when Nicholas didn’t eat his.

Lunch was immediately after, so not surprisingly he didn’t eat a lot. Blanka got him his water bottle. I went inside to get something and August came in. Blanka came in too and they played with the blocks up on the table this time.  No rest time today. They just watched the video story about the bear and the bees. August ate his Cheerios during that.

Then it was over to the auditorium for Peter and the Wolf. I sat between him and Nicholas. As the auditorium filled up with the elementary school, August said “We’re all working together to make as much noise as we can!” On stage August noticed that the wolf was lit in red and the other animals were lit with yellow. We talked about the symbolic meaning of the colors. Later, during the performance, he noticed that the lights on the players turned red when it was the wolf’s music. The program was designed for elementary students, so pretty entertaining. The conductor demonstrated what a conductor can do and how the instruments sound. August was excited to recognize the first piece, the William Tell Overture. They played a Western-themed piece that I should know the name of, then Peter and the Wolf. August needed to go to the bathroom in the middle so I took him. He had gone right before we had left the preschool too.

We went back and made it to the end. It was really cool to see some of the students, like Omri and Ori and August, really getting into the music. Others were getting squirmy or tired (like Yaya, who clearly wanted to fall asleep). As we headed back to the classroom they realized that Emmitt was missing. He had been with Maaian, so they figured she had taken him, but August and I went back to look, just in case. August had fun looking, and joked “I’m not Emmitt, right?”

As we walked back he talked more about his substance with no surface tension: “Do you know what flubong is used for?…Its really clumpy stuff…you make houses out of it.”

They went out on the playground. He played on the seesaw and did some cooking. Inside they did a couple of songs and I read a poem by Jack Perlutsky about flying without a plane for Poem in Your Pocket Day (a day late, but the preschoolers didn’t know this).

I did the dishes as the other kids left. August ate some of his snack mix and wandered around. He also helped me look through cupboards to figure out where things went. He came over to me and said he had been reading the names on the mugs. I went over and he showed me. He read Selma, Hector, and Juyeok. Despite not really seeing the names in other places.

He wanted to play on the big playground so we went there. He was imagining at first: “Under my shirt…Magnetic blades that can stick to any material, including burning magma and burning fire…” Selma was there, and Sophia from PKC. He turned into Selma, then the three of them were pretending to be each other. They then played hide and seek, and August counted and found them a few times. Sophia was funny as she was the main one that wanted to play, but just kept spinning on the spinny thing, saying we couldn’t see her because she was spinning.

When they left so did we. We went
to the car. August asked if he could rip the tag on his vest and I said no. He ripped it anyway. I threatened a timeout at home and he got upset. We sat and talked about that. We left after 4:10. He wanted Story Pirates so we started episode 17. He asked “Is barf real?” Somehow we ended up talking about doctors getting sick and he was surprised: “Huh? Doctors get sick?…But they wear those special clothes.”

At home we checked on Carly, who was feeling better. He played with the old slime, out at the table. As he started playing with it he chanted “yes, yes, yes”. We then spotted several parakeets in the bushes across the road. He talked more about flubong: “very coisonous…only birds can eat it.” He did some sweeping with the broom, then he found a slug and picked it right up and Carly how they breathe.

He had a piece of cinnamon sugar toast to hold him over until dinner. I got him a plate of cauliflower and a corn schnitzel, cut up and with his pesto veganaise to dip it in. He started to eat and said it was really good. I was happy, as he hadn’t eaten the schnitzel when we first got it. But it turned out he meant the cauliflower. He ate all of it, then all of mine. When he tried the schnitzel he choked on the first bite. So still no schnitzel for him. but then he also ate Carly’s quesadilla.

David brought over a 4-month old baby to show us – his granddaughter. So cute. He noticed mosquito bites on August and said he’d give us a bug zapper. He doesn’t like them but his wife has several of them. He came back a few minutes later and told us to keep it. Very funny.

Carly took him up to his bath and I did dishes. She started cleaning though and eventually had to go lie down. I took over the bath. He was talking more about flubong and about how there is so much of it in the world. He also said that it can’t go through liquids, but it can soak through solids. So if you pour it on the ground it will keep going until it hits the water table. He asked a few times today what “super stumpers” are. It was from a gameshow thing on The Magic Schoolbus. I ended up asking him random trivia questions. He was asleep by 8:10.

Tea party: 

Bread and tea cup: 

Ready for the concert: 

What happens when I leave Carly in charge for a minute: 

Slime: 

He was up just before 7:20. I had gotten lunch and field trip supplies ready already, then jumped in the shower while he was with Carly. We were driving to school today so we could drive to his field trip and because of activity class in the afternoon.

On the way he asked if oil had to be changed like in a car. Don’t know where this came from. Then about how it was done. We also listened to “Go” so he could show me the part at the end that he’d been humming.

We got to his class in time for the pre-field trip meeting. Then walked out with them to the bus before heading to our car. We listened to his playlist for awhile, but then he said he wanted to listen to new songs. The farm is called Halbrecht Farm Food Garden. Took about 25 minutes to get there, a bit north of Netanya.

We parked and walked in and found his class. They were sitting down for their morning snack. I met a dad, Hershel, of a boy in PKC named Ryan. And then I spotted Selma’s dad, Sergio. He was wearing the same Osprey child-carrier backpack that I carried August in. He had his two-year old son in it. That was fun to see. August and I went over and reminisced about the backpack and August told him how he didn’t like the rain cover.

Then the three classes each went to a different station. We did beekeeping first. The guy was pretty good and did a decent job of keeping the attention of 4-year olds. He showed us a honeycomb from a hive that was right there. August sat on my lap. At the end the guy asked if they had any questions. August shouted “How do the bees get the nectar out of the flowers?” But he didn’t hear and then wrapped up the session. August speculated that the bees go IN the flowers, as opposed to butterflies that have their long tubes.

Next up was the animals. No lecture here. she just took them to a wheelbarrow of food and had then start feeding the sheep and goats, then feeding the bunnies and guinea pigs. I didn’t know how August would react to this, as he had gone last year from liking to feed the sheep to just wanting me to feed them because he didn’t want to get bit. But he got right to it. She then took us over to the chickens and they went in and saw where they roosted, then were throwing feed around for the chickens. A rather chaotic scene, with 15 preschoolers in a chicken coop. I had a chicken eat out of my hand, and August followed suit. She then took us over to the baby chickens and they all got to pet a baby chick. He said it felt “soft and silky”.

They then had a few minutes to play at the playground. He first was digging with a rake, then I found a shovel. He and Blanka were filling up a wheelbarrow together, then she wanted the shovel and he let her take it.

Our last activity was picking things in the garden. They all got paper bags and the woman led them into the garden where she showed them several plants and let them pick it. The first was lavender (he loved smelling it), then there was lemongrass, which she said was a lemon popsicle, then lemon geranium, which he says “smells beautiful”. Finally, there was dino kale and she had them all take bits and roar. Along the way he also picked a small tomato “for mama” and was asking what other greens we could pick for her. We got some beet greens right at the end.

We were surprised to find that there was no bread making. That had been the part August was most excited about. It turns out there had been some miscommunication and it wasn’t in the contract, although we later found out it was in emails. Anyway, we headed back. On the way we saw the bus pull over for some reason. So August and I took advantage and stopped at the strawberry stand to get strawberries as well.

We got to the school just as they were going in. They read Paper Bag Princess for storytime, then talked about what they liked on the field trip. He said “I liked-ed feeding all the animals!”

For lunch he sat at a table with Omri and Reia and we did some Hebrew with Omri. August was then doing magic, turning me into things. Candy then came around sharing a bag of chocolate treats with everyone.

During rest time I read Corduroy, If Rocks Could Sing, and Tin Forest. Afterwards they watched videos about bees, including one from SciShow Kids. They then watched videos of the story/song Driving My Tractor, and the songs Over by the Meadow, Knick Knack (from Barefoot).

They all got their backpacks and then headed up to yoga class. They were airplanes as they walked up there, which August really liked. Emmett got hurt right before he went into the yoga class. It would have been Carly’s teaching nightmare if she were in the same situation as the yoga teacher is actually Emmett’s mom. So he was upset and climbing in her lap and climbing over her while she was trying to teach yoga to preschoolers. She did really well though. They each got on a mat and she read a book with poses in it. One involved tickling yourself and he was really honestly being tickled by himself and laughing. They then played a game where they passed a ball around using just their feet. And finished with a fun “Bootcamp Yoga” song.

I’d been feeling like I had allergies since last night, but it was getting worse. In the library we sat outside the entry and had a Tic-Tac break. He had fun sneaking a few. We then went in and I read one chapter of Magic Treehouse #15 to him but I was so stuffy. We went out for a snack break. He asked “What’s a ‘bummer’ mean?” Anna had said it when she was talking about how they didn’t get to make bread. We went back in the library and I managed to read the last couple chapters of the book.

We went out to head to activity class. Rain was threatening and there was supposed to be a thunderstorm. So we drove the car up to the park which is just a block from the studio. He played at the park for a few minutes, sitting in the round thing. He had asked what “radar” is (from a Sarah and Duck episode) and was now a radar himself.

We went up to activity class. Adele was excited to see him again. Class started well, but after about 15 minutes August said he was done. Too tired. It had been a long day. We left class at 5:05. He played with the little toys for a few minutes before we decided for sure to leave. August and I had a fun Hebrew moment when we heard Etai’s mom saying “bakbook” to him, which we both recognized as ‘water bottle’ – we had learned it in our lesson on Monday, then reviewed it with Omri earlier.

Raining a bit when we left, so coats on and umbrella up. On the way I realized I had left my water bottle in the studio. We drove there and then ran in to get it. August, the boy who refuses to use any water bottle except his one favorite one, kept telling me “but you have other water bottles.”

We left again and were home at 5:45. He told her about the tomato he got her: “A nice, cute red one.” “And beet greens!” Carly made a smoothie, which I had told him we could have. He bumped into her in the bathroom and said, falsely, “It was your fault.” He drank his smoothie and asked me questions until I went upstairs.

I slept. Carly managed to clean the kitchen, then brought August up for his bath. There was a lot of crying about that, then more when she tried to get him to sleep in the other room where she had been sleeping. They came into the regular bedroom to help him calm down. I woke up enough to tell what was going on, but that was about it. He calmed down but wasn’t going to sleep. He went downstairs and had dry cheerios. I got up and came down. He finished the Cheerios and wanted more, but insisted on something with sugar. This ended with him crying “I’m not tired!” repeatedly. I eventually picked him up and he was able to calm down. Upstairs we hunted for mosquitoes, killing one, and I left them about 8:40 and he was soon asleep.

Yoga class:

August slept the entire night in the big bed with me. Generally sideways, curled or stretched on top of the cover. Four times he sort of got up and asked for Mama. The first time he stood up and started walking across the bed, tripping on me ad falling on my stomach. He then lay back down and fell asleep. I repayed him a few minutes later when he said something and I started to roll towards him, not knowing he was sitting up. I elbowed him in the forehead. He put his hands on his forehead, curled up on his knees with his face on the floor, and fell right back to sleep. Twice more he said “Mama” but I just told him to lay back down and he did.

He woke up right after me at 6:40. Carly was feeling well enough that he could hang out with her. he played the Earth app and later watched Sarah and Duck. He thought he deserved cinnamon sugar toast as a treat for sleeping through the night with me, so I brought him a piece, then a second.

Before we left he was doing a funny “googey-goo’ dance and song. Carly didn’t want her picture taken so she pulled the covers up. He hid under it with her and sang his song. After he did the dance for me out on the floor I suggested he show it to his teachers. He said “I don’t know. Pretty baby-like.” And “Well I call it the baby dance.”

We left at 8. we saw a black and white cat by the gate and I talked about how I heard a cat fight last night and he asked why they would fight. He suggested “Maybe cats just don’t like sharing. Like me, right?” On the way to school he had me ask his machine inside him more questions, like how many seeds there are in Israel, how much garbage is dropped on the ground.

We got to school

Tech department and the “That was easy” button. In the classroom he started building with the colored stick blocks, then there was lightning and thunder. They all went out, and Marion made mint tea with mint from the garden. August insisted on a straw so we got the one from his water bottle. We sat outside for 15 minutes or so watching the rain and having tea. Back inside August went back to the sticks and Selma and Hanako joined him.

During morning meeting they read the birthday book that Candy had brought. They were talking about museums and August said “I know museums. They have OLD things from the PAST.”

They had snack inside due to the rain. There was pizza bread that PKA made. August insisted on eating his with a fork, although it was hardly necessary. He saved the rest of it for lunch.

After lunch they went to the small playground and got out the toys. He wanted me to spot him on the hoppity horse and . Ended up playing with the ramp thing and putting random things down it. Then switched back to the big playground. He played on the teeter-totter with a teacher and kids, then we pushed kids on the round swing together. He wasn’t happy about my phone call with Seth, which only lasted about 5 minutes, and started hitting my chair with a big piece of wood.

Then, Nicholas found some slugs and we looked at them with him. Marion came over and was teaching them about slugs and picked one up and showed them how slugs breathe through a hole on the side of their body. August ended up holding the slug. He then was picking blueberries and playing kitchen with Reia. I was able to sit and read The Paper Bag Princess with Selma, who asked me to read it.

They then went in and Marion read a story. Then did a little art. A few flowers had been set on the table as inspiration and I suggested to August that he could draw a flower. He got the idea of drawing the shapes of them, and he drew a couple in his notebook that they have for him, changing the colors to be purple and red flowers. Reia then came over and wanted to use scissors. She started cutting up her notebook and I got them scrap paper to use instead. August said, in his Waze voice, “Careful, sharp scissors reported ahead.”

The class then sat around the whiteboard with Anna and talked about beekeepers and their trip tomorrow. Marion then had everyone trying the ricotta cheese that she and some of the other kids had made yesterday.

August started talking about the slug and said “Why was that slug totally adorable?” Then, reading my mind, he said “Could you say ‘only August could think a slug is adorable’.” Maaian then took the 5 kids that have joined the class since the beginning of the year out and took another photo for the yearbook. He tried to do a silly face at first.

For lunch he ate the rest of the pizza bread and insisted on a fork again. He was then eating grapes, but told me it was “solid purple air…it grows on chains. So it’s not grapes. Purple biological air.” At the end of lunch Blanka took grass and was putting it on her hair so August started doing it to himself.

Then in for rest time. He told me “You should turn my volume and movement settings down.” I read Seven Little Mice Go to School, poems, Max the Brave, and Chimp & Bunny, to August and other kids. The video story was a book about Joshua Bell, a violinist, called The Man with the Violin. Then one that was Marsupial something, then Little Oink. He and Reia were then looking out at the playground and pointing at it, and he followed her around, playing.

Outside at 2 he played on the seesaw with Reia and others. We then helped push kids on the round swing. He wanted to go over to the kitchen but he didn’t like a blueberry making his hand dirty. He went to try to do clay but they hadn’t put extra out. He ran up to me and said he was tired. Picked him up and he probably his head on my shoulder for a couple months. I asked if it was because there wasn’t clay and he said “No, I’m just tired.” Ori spotted a ladybug so they watched it crawl through the grass.

They called them over for a second snack of apple and strawberries. He ate several pieces of apple. Then, a little progress as he went outside on his own while I put books away.

After school he went to the bathroom and asked me “What does metamorphasize mean?” We walked home and I sang Cada Semilla for the first time in a long time. We were home by 3:30. He was hungry so I got him an enchilada. He started eating it and said “I’ll get you, cheese.” He then got frustrated trying to get it on his fork without it falling off the plate.

We were then talking about our real dinner, going over to the mall for pizza. He said “Let’s do that after we check in Mama.” We went up to check on her and the first thing he said about the slug was “I got yellow slime on my hand.” Not what she had wanted to hear. She had had to turn on her show when she heard us talking about food downstairs. He then did more of his funny dance from this morning. And he asked me “How are things elastic?”

We left at 4:20 and went to the mall. He wanted pizza first. We got one slice of cheese and one with onions. Their two slice options. And a watermelon juice. He liked the garlic powder mix and the oregano. And then it happened: he wanted a second piece. He is no longer a one slice of pizza date. So we got another slice of cheese and refilled the watermelon juice.

Carly texted, asking if she should pick us up. At the same moment, August pointed up at the skylights and asked “Do you think it’s pouring outside?”

We played in the indoor play area, playing the pattern colors game where he runs from one color to another. And he had an invention: “I have the unsickininator…I’m as sick as mama.” That last sentence surprised me because it seemed backwards in a couple ways. We worked on handstands, then he was doing bigger and bigger forward rolls, copying another kid. He called it an “Unstoppable forward roll”. Finally, there was a little kid running around going “Whoooaaa!” August didn’t understand at first until I said he was just having fun. So then August ran around like that as well.

I eventually pulled him away and we went to Tiv Taam. Just picked out yogurt flavors he would like
(strawberry cheesecake, strawberry, and peach) and got a loaf of bread. I was looking for snack things that might work for lunch and found sweet potato chips, then he spotted the rice cracker mix that he ate with Cherie so we got that. When we were leaving at 6 it was raining, but just slightly. We put on our coats and made it home okay. No need to get picked up.

At home he went upstairs with me to take the lint out of the dryer, which he really likes to do. We then said hi to Carly, who was still laying in bed. We went and filled his bath. He said “Let’s get in my bath.” Which really struck home how much his opinion of baths has changed. He played with the bar of soap and had a good bath. Asked lots and lots of questions. He was still sitting in the bath after the water was all out.

He went in to Carly for a bit. He wanted her to keep taking sips of her drink to stay hydrated. She mentioned cutting his hair and he said “But I LIKE long hair.” She asked why and he said “Because it’s so beautiful.”

Downstairs we talked about something and he said “Well even I can do that with my everything breathing lungs…even pollution…and I can breathe up smoke.” I let him try a sweet potato chip. He said he liked it, then immediately bit his tongue. Then declared “I’m not gonna eat potato chips anymore.” He recovered enough to drink some honey milk.

Went upstairs and got him ready for bed and we read two chapters of the Magic Treehouse book. He asked if their country (Ireland) is still dangerous and we talked about how things have changed. He asked if any other countries weren’t safe and we talked about the war in Syria. Also, I had bent a page as a bookmark. He saw the bent page on the library book and didn’t like it at all. I had to go get a bookmark to mark our new page.

Carly was feeling just well enough to put him to sleep, so I left them at 7:50. He fell asleep soon after that. Carly later moved back to the other room to sleep on the sofa bed again.

What a night. Carly went to bed okay, but got sick like I had been. 

It was a rough morning getting out of the house with so little sleep. And August was not understanding at first when he couldn’t nurse and be with mama. But it was clearly the best thing to get him out of the house so she could rest. We left at 8. He was asking me questions about how hair gel works and mohawks. From Carly’s middle school books. He was a Google Earth machine and more “what colors…what things feel like…what materials they are made out of…” On our walk he had system that could count how many garbage cans there were in the world, etc. Basically, it was a super Google, able to answer any question I could think of. And we talked about particles.

We forgot to put his bike at the rack and parked it behind the preschool building instead. We got there at 8:30. He did a series of watercolor paintings, more sure of his technique now: “Yeah! It’s so ABSTRACT colors!” One of the kids brought over a bird book and we read it a couple times. He was really not into morning meeting today, and basically sat on my lap the whole time: “I can’t do it!” “Can we not do preschool today?”

They went out for snack. He mainly ate just bread, but I was  able to get him to eat a tiny bit of carrot. On the playground there was a lot of chasing going on and he didn’t like it. So he sat with me. Near the end he wanted to go over to the kitchen area and sweep like he saw someone else doing, but then he was sad because he thought they were almost done and there wouldn’t be anything for him to sweep.

Went up to the movement class. Another mysterious transition and new class for him. Think he’ll get much more comfortable when he knows the classes and teachers and schedule. But got him in the circle after a bit, and with Mariam’s help. He was intrigued by the big bag that the teacher had. They did some creative visualizing, and he said when they share he said “I see magical flowers that don’t need air or water or nutrients!” She then brought out the monster puppet, Leonard. A big blue puppet. August really liked it and liked shaking its hand, but didn’t want a hug, opting for a high-five. When the teacher asked where he was from he said “South America!” Don’t know if he was just being creative (he does like South America) or if he was combining South Korea with America.

After that they went down to the regular playground. But they quickly shifted PKB to the smaller play area at the other end of the building. They opened the storage sheds and got out all sorts of toys. August was excited about that. There were those hippity hop things, cup stilts, and best of all the tubes and balls that attach to the magnet board on the wall. He tried the other things, but mainly played with those. Jiyeok ended up playing with him and they played together really well, changing the paths, and handing balls to each other. This after August first accused him of not sharing. Very fun to see.

They went inside and read a Kevin Henkes book called Birds. Then out to lunch. He didn’t eat much of his sandwich. Convinced him to eat a good number of grapes with the reverse psychology thing. He was telling me “Just chewing air!” During rest time I read Corduroy Goed to School. A discussion came up of good things to eat, as August ate his dry Cheerios. He argued “nope. Eating Cheerioes is the best in the Earth ever.” We read some New Kid on the Block, the Jack Perlutsky poetry collection I brought to school for Poem in Your Pocket Day on Friday. Took August in to the bathroom and he had some difficulty with the soap machine: “What’s wrong with that soap machine? Do your job!” for video story time they watched Carla’s Sandwich again and I Need My Monster.

Then kind of a crazy time before Candy’s birthday party. They did the meeting part of the birthday celebration. August wasn’t too into it and moved his photo to the ‘gone’ column to be home with mama. But they danced to the “I Can Dance” song, which we had heard at Selma’s party and I just bought a few days ago, and he got into that. And of course he was into the snacks. Namely the two kinds of cookies and then the cake. He was still going and managed a bite of my cake as well.

We then went out on the playground. I was pushing Blanka and a couple of other kids on the swing. She is quiet, but when I mentioned something being awesome she smiled and said “Awesome.” Derin was also on the swing and telling me a constant, unending story about a rocket, while meanwhile August, on the ground, was trying to get my attention by talking about seeing. Derin interrupted his own story to say “Hes talking a lot.” The funniest moment of the day.

After school we went up to coding class. They did some coloring, which seemed rather pointless, then played on iPads. The class doesn’t seem too necessary now, but we’ll keep it up until the end of the year. After class he was out looking at the block area and accidentally knocked over a tower. he got sad/scared he was in trouble and said “It’s okay.”

We talked about Carly being sick and how we wanted to give her rest time. He suggested we go to the big playground. Went there and played for 20 or 30 minutes. I was tired, and he said “I’m lucky I’m not tired.” And “Why are you yawning?” For several weeks now whenever he makes up a large number it always ends with 888. He was running a store and said “Shopkeeper…on the dirty floor. It hasn’t been cleaned for a year. I keep calling and calling but nobody comes.” I bought ice cream from his shop (on the slide0 and he said “I remember the time we had ice cream with Gramma and grampa…in a cone…Gramma let me have some of hers.” That was in Chelan. And we talked about what ‘available’ and ‘unavailable’ mean.

We got walking at 4:40. He claimed “I’m the unstoppable litter boy.” And “I can make so much wind with my turbine I can knock over the universe.” He was then humming the “I Can Dance” song. He wanted to stop at our playground to give her more time to rest. But I wanted to check on her so we kept going and were home after 5. Checked on her and made a short grocery list: Gatorade, Sprite, tissues, water bottles. He convinced me to go to the playground before the store. “How do I have so much energy? I could walk to the mall!”

We needed to go to the big Tiv Taam though, so after playing at the playground for a bit we were driving at 5:25. “Love You to the Sky” came on and he got excited: “Thats what it’s from!” It’s his two-times mystery song. He also talked about electricity after talking about the water cycle: “I have an electricity cycle in me. I keep using it over and over.”

We got to Tiv Taam and parked. He did a great job crossing the parking lot. He wanted to play at the playground, so we did for a bit. Playground #3 on the afternoon. A little kid kept giving him chips. He then played the prize game on the rocking thing. I was coming up with prizes, but ran out of ideas. He said “200 penises?” I asked why, and he said “Just if one pops off.”

We did our shopping and he did a great job helping. Got everything on our list and a few other things. Lots of traffic on the way home. We talked about our plans for home. We were home at 6:50. When he went to see Carly he asked “What color is your throw up?” We went downstairs and he started talking about Nicholas:”Why’s he sneak around a lot?” I had promised August a popsicle since we ran out of time to go get pizza. We discussed why Nicholas had problems sometimes and discussed introverts and extroverts. August says he is an extrovert. August then switched to archeology: “Does the ground ever run out of things for people to discover?” For healthier fare he started with a spoonful of peanut butter. But then he almost gagged on it. He was done with eating. So a popsicle was basically his dinner. He didn’t mind talking about it thoug
h: “Can you make peanut butter for me by chewing peanuts?”

Carly told me how she had talked to him about ‘nausea’ and ‘chills’ – two new words for him that probably could have used when he was sick but couldn’t communicate how he feels. I gave him a bath and he played with the “soap machine” (the old soap bottle with a little soap in it to make bubbles).

I tried to get him honey milk but he was upset about Carly being sick. She said she was feeling a bit better and tried to put him to sleep. Before she came in though he was worried: “What will I do if you and mama are both sick?” She came in and I left them at 8:20. She told him “I missed you.” He replied “Does that mean it is good that I’m here?”

He didn’t fall asleep though and I was up at 8:35. He was hungry (no surprise) and ate some Cheerios and apple. I sang him two songs (Imaginary Bars and Idaho) and he was asleep on the big bed just after 9.

He was up at 6:10. Watched Sarah and Duck, and he had me do some Duplo inventions  before we left. He was hesitant about going and asked “Can we go to preschool just some of the time?” We left at 7:50. He had us stop along the way to watch bees on some interesting flowers. Took a photo of the flowers so we could try to identify them later.

Got to preschool and he was undecided what to at first. Nicholas came over to him and told him some sort of secret. Still trying to decide what to do he told me it was my choice. He wanted to play with clay but they were doing one person at a time.

We experimented with the different train/car/boats and putting them down the ramp. We did a long ramp piece at first, then a shorter triangle piece. He noticed how when it was steep they would hit and fall over.

For morning meeting he stuck close to me. They were introducing a new song, and it turned out to me Do-Re-Mi and he started singing along to the words as he knows them. One of the kids suggested the Daddy Finger song, which they didn’t know. August recognized the tune from Cherie and started singing “Where is Thumbkin”. We went out for snack and August sat on a chair full of water from the rain. Dried it off and changed him into his red shorts. Ate a good snack of corn and pickles. He was being clingy and I couldn’t go get my book without him getting upset.

Out on the playground he played on the car, then was dropping a trio of leaves (a tool) and noticed that it acted like a parachute and also spun “Why do you think they do that?” He then went over and played at the kitchen area.

Next was music class. He liked that and got well involved, particularly with Wheels on the Bus. They also listened to parts of Peter and the Wolf, which the high school band is performing later. He kept coming over to me, saying he was tired, but kept going back.

They went back to the playground 11. He played in the bushes by himself, then showed Bar the blueberries then went and cooked with them.

Inside one of the teachers read If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, then they planned the party tomorrow for Candy’s party. August sat in the circle this time but said “I don’t like you being so far away.” I was about six feet away in a chair. After that he used watercolor to paint a card for Candy’s birthday. His first time really with watercolors and he was frustrated with the watery colors at first so I got a paper towel and taught him how to dry his brush.

He got his laminated attendance photo and we looked at all of them. He said “Nicholas is funny.” Got out the mattresses, then went out for lunch. He had some of the noodle thing but of course sort of choked on a bite. Luckily didn’t throw up. Ended up mainly eating Cheerios and apple.

He was tired and at rest time he actually rested a fair amount. He found he could climb into a cubby (he insists we call them “boxes” instead for some reason) and curl up in there. I read the book Max the Brave and he ate Cheerios as he rested. Then read Seven Little Mice Go to School. For video storytime they watched Me and My Cat, which was really funny, and then Rent Party Jazz, which was really good but didn’t hold their attention too well.

They went down to Playball with Dion. He started playing at first and I made my big mistake. I went the short distance to the classroom to get my iPad. He got upset when he noticed I was gone, then didn’t do anymore of the Playball class. Back inside Mariam read Giraffes Can’t Dance. It was time to go home. He wanted to fill his water bottle and the water cooler ran out. He wondered where they fill it up from so we went out and asked Anna to solve the mystery. I talked to her about the field trip on Thursday and they said I could chaperone.

After 3 we went across to Bat-Chen and had our first Hebrew lesson in quite awhile. She read a coupe books to him and they played ball. And watched a good song on YouTube, השפן הקטן – שירים לילדים קטנים

She also gave him some chocolate twice during the lesson, so he’ll always enjoy going to Hebrew lessons. We went up to the library and he played with the stuffed animals a bit. We stopped at the bathroom by the library and he was slamming the door to the pipe area shut. I asked him to stop but then had to threaten a consequence. He was upset about the idea of a timeout on his own when Carly called. I was assuring him he hadn’t gotten that consequence yet.

Carly came over and we walked home together. He steered just fine, as usual, until we got to our park, at which point he was running into posts and being a magnet, attaching to them. Home at 4:40. Carly had brought home a package from Cherie. He said “Oma never sent me a present before, right?” We reminded him of the magnet set. It was a cook quick-drying towel. They decided to do an experiment, getting it wet and putting it outside. August chose to use a hand towel as the comparison and they got that wet and put them both outside.

Inside he told her “Nurse first since I’m so cute.” Before his bath, that was. He said “Oma lets me do a bubble bath on the floor.” Carly pointed out it was only pretend.

Carly gave him his bath and washed his hair. Brave of her. We used the hairdryer to dry it, then he and I hung out together on the couch for a minute. He claimed that Cherie had given him a real bath while she was here. Don’t think that actually happened, although she may have hung out with him while he played in his bath.

We had dinner, and as he sat at the table he ate some cabbage. He got it stuck or something and gagged and threw up. He was shocked himself: “Why’d I do that? I’m not sick.”

Played with Duplos for awhile, then was hungry again. Carly made him oatmeal and mangoes. He tried to convince me there was no sugar: “Just sand in this oatmeal…just mixtures of sand in the honey bottle.” He was talking about his cubby at school, which he insists is a box, and said “Cubby…eh, box.” I said I caught him calling it a cubby. He said “You didn’t hear that! I put your headphones on.” He ate his oatmeal and asked about asteroids, meteors, and meteorites.

Carly took him upstairs. He played with the water and spray bottle in the sink and hummed “Animal Life”. He then decided to give me a consequence, because why not?

I took him in and flossed his teeth and brushed them. We then read the first 4 or so chapters of the Magic Treehouse book(#15, I think). He got hungry after a chapter and I got him some Cheerios. The tag on the shirt was then bothering him so I got scissors. Carly switched about 8 and he was asleep after 8:15.

He was twirling his hair today quite a bit, to the extent that when we headed home I noticed a sort of braid from where he had been twirling it.

Music class – Wheels on the Bus: 

Pretty cool: Light table ramp: Hebrew lesson: Checking on the towel drying experiment: 

Giving me a consequence and humming Animal Life: 

Sometime around 4 he woke up with Carly and wasn’t going back to sleep. He climbed up on the bed and lay next to me sometime before 4:30. He did a great job of laying with his head on the pillow, silent and still for quite awhile. Eventually he went down with Carly again for awhile, then back up with me. He then started saying he was hungry. Eventually, I went down and got some Cheerios and his water bottle. He sat down next to Carly and ate them, then set both up on the bed and finished them next to me. He was laying down and I really thought he’d go back to sleep. We had him get back down on the lower bed again as there wasn’t a mattress protector on the big bed. But after awhile he started talking more. At one point he kept asking Carly to go take a shower.

Eventually, about 6, Carly got up with him. He had enchilada (sans red sauce) and they went out in the “fresh and rosy fingered” morning and took care of the yard. I think they were out there a good 20 to 30 minutes. I had gotten up and had tea, then they came in about 7:20. He went to the bathroom and washed his hands, then we played with the Duplos, adding to our last alligator cage.

We switched to an alligator tower, but apparently the alligators just kept jumping off the tower and dying. August got up and ran over to Carly saying “You didn’t let me nurse much last night.” Carly was a bit incredulous. Carly went and made a sandwich, and August wanted me to make a pretend cake. Chocolate and bubble gum. I said I chewed the gum to soften it for the cake. Our cakes got sillier from that point.

Back to Duplos. We trapped the alligator under the overturned Duplo container, then were playing with the animals on it. August talked about how he had put the animals in the box things with Opa and that Opa had really liked it. He went over to Carly again and was a cat that she wasn’t allergic to (earlier he had asked what dander was). He now said he had to tails; “One out my back and one out my head.”

I went upstairs and took a shower. When I came down they were outside making blue slime. I did the rest of the dishes from last night and cleaned the kitchen. I went out and sat at the table. August noted I had come out and said “We’re having a pretty good time!” He also said “That’s really satisfying!” a couple times. Carly pointed out the nice clouds today and he said but they were just white. He pointed to one that he said had some pink. He talked about how he could see like every animal: “like unicorns, and dogs…” Then a special vision: “I call it high-tech vision…It just makes you see things in different colors. Like clouds in blue, and fences in pink.”

They had made two batches and August asked to make more. She said this was enough for now: “Mama, this is NOT it for now cuz I love making slime.”

They finished up and went inside. She got him cleaned up and changed. I did the dishes and washed the table. Upstairs I heard him say “The more I walk, the smarter I get…even the more I MOVE, the smarter I get.” This was as he went into the bathroom, so he included when he shook his penis.

We got going and left at 10:30. “Why does each flower have a different number of petals?” “Why doesn’t some highways have a speed limit?…Wait, can you go as slow as you want?”

We stopped at the outside play area. Carly went in to shop. I played with him and he had me pilot the airplane. We flew different places and August said “I’m gonna do a stopover.” There was a toddler around and it walked towards August a few times. August was being afraid of it: “What if that baby gets me? WHAT if he thinks I’m a baby toy? How can I show him I’m not a toy?” He saw Rebar and wanted a smoothie. I said no as I was planning to make one when we got home. He said “I bet mama will say yes.” But then right away “Uh-oh, she might say no.” We ended up in one of the houses and were there when Carly got back. He had wanted to play with her at the indoor area, but it was being used by a group. She played with him outside and they did the running game where she tells him what to touch next. She said herself once and he came running to her. It reminded her of when he used to run to her like that when she came home from work in Korea.

We walked home. I noticed that almost all of the maybe-wild carrot flowers were covered with these little black beetles. He had been tired at the mall, and was yawning and rubbing his eyes at home, so Carly took him upstairs. No nap though, and after awhile they came down and I made a banana and peanut butter smoothie. August and I had fun joking, telling Carly it wasn’t going to be very good but then whispering to each other how good it was going to be. He drank his smoothie and said “Mama, teach me something.” She asked what he wanted to learn. He thought and said “Why things are brittle. Leonardo da Vinci pictures.” They looked at a lot of da Vinci stuff, then went outside to pick dead leaves of the plant. To Carly he said “You said ‘stupid’ is a bad word, so that means you said ‘stupid’, right?”

Back inside Carly was tired but he was hyper. He went to the bathroom. To win arguments now he says”But still, enshumgedorflug.” His word for a number bigger than infinity. He’s been saying this quite a bit.

I got him to head out with me and we got to the playground before 1:40. He looked ready to sleep at any moment and went and curled up on the shaky platform thing. He let me do a little recycling, as far as the cardboard. I tried to go to plastic but only got a few things in before he called me back. He perked up a bit and we did pull-ups and “swing-ups”, which is when he hangs by his arms and swings his legs up. He tried to sit on a turning thing and almost fell off when it turned. He said “Stupid spinny thing” I said “You can’t say that. Your name isn’t Andy or Terry.” He then said “I can change my name!…Boop!…I have everything Andy and Terry have…a Punch and Judy puppet show…” And when I said you also had to be in a book he said he had a machine that would make him into a book.

We lay together in the round swing and he had me go buy things from the spider store. We then went to do plastic recycling. He was too tired to do any of it, and instead lay down on the sidewalk for a couple minutes. He then got up and put leaves over some ant holes to confuse the ants.

We got home and he was hungry and said he wanted some of the cauliflower and cabbage that Carly had made. We went outside, but he decided he didn’t want to eat it. Carly had also made a package of mushroom noodle thing and got him some of that instead.

I took him upstairs and he played with the squirt bottle in the sink and I gave him a sponge bath while he did that and put clean pajamas on him. We then played with the guitar and garage band. I was doing chord progressions and he would strum.

We went downstairs about 4 and he and Carly played with the slime. They then skyped with Vivian to show her the slime. And Carly had a really full conversation with Vivian about school. Vivian told her about math class and how they are now doing shapes, and she told her about how Colin is starting swim lessons. We saw a glimpse of what is probably to come this summer as August was being really competitive with her. When she told him his answer to a math problem was wrong he argued with her, and when she told us that the tooth fairy is real August categorically disagreed, repeating “Nope”. He said the same thing about Santa Claus. Vivian was funny though when she told us that they had seen the tooth fairy at a fair or something and Jeff was convinced. In more arguing mode August said he changed his age to 7 so he’d be older than Vivian. After the call we talked to him about how he needs to not be so competitive with her this summer.

He asked why people can have peanut allergic reactions so we watched a SciShow video on allergies, then several SciShow Kids videos on space top
ics (galaxies, dwarf planets) and also eyebrows and why do floods happen. He finally ate some peanut butter and honey sandwich and drank about half of the leftover smoothie from earlier. Carly took him upstairs and got him ready. I said goodnight at 8:25 and he was asleep by 8:30.

He woke up a few times through the night, but overall got a lot of sleep. He dry heaved at 6, then woke up closer to 7 and then around 7:40, each time Carly getting him back to sleep. At 8:25 we heard him turn the fan off in the bedroom, then he called “Dada!” Carly went up and got him. Downstairs he curled up on the rug, but when I asked if he was better, the same, or worse than yesterday he clearly gave the thumbs up for better. He stayed on the bed, lying down and quiet, with Carly getting him to drink some Gatorade. At 9:30 he was perking up. Carly got him one of the last of the shortbread cookies and he was sitting up, joking “Let’s tell dada nothing’s going on over here.” When he was done he said “Crumbs of air here.” And he made a machine that turned daytime into nighttime. He was looking better as he sat and looked out the window as Carly went out to enjoy the wind.

After a bit I went upstairs to take a shower. When I came back down, about 10:30, he was asleep. He slept all the way until 1:05 when he woke up, sat up, and called “Mama!” She came over and he lay back down, but when she asked how it was going he whispered “Good.” He was looking at her buttons and asked “Can you teach me how to buckle those buttons?” He ate a little chocolate after having some water. When I said I smelled something he hid his hand, then they joked they were just eating carrots. Muddy carrots. Small muddy carrots.

Carly then made him toast with honey and she popped popcorn. He said it was carrot toast and popped carrots. I read him Tigger Comes to the Forest, some poems, the piglet Does a Very Grand Thing. He ate the rest of the popcorn and wanted more. “Dada, I have a Nink…It eats ink and leaves for breakfast.” Seuss reference there. Carly popped more and I read more of the story. Finished it and read some more poems and then the story An Enchanted Place. We paused as Carly started making a list and he wanted za’atar on the popcorn. He found an ant over on the rug. We shared a pita and hummus and Carly headed to the store. He was back to normal talking speed, talking about there being nine nonnillion species of ants, appliances that need 220 volts, and flowers that smell like lemon and keep the ants away.

He asked how many senses there are so we went to YouTube. We watched a Dr. Binocs video about senses, then SciShow Kids videos on archeology and paleontology and dinosaurs. He then said he was tired and paused it. He lay on the couch for awhile but then decided he wanted to watch Sarah and Duck. He asked if we could buy another season and I agreed as we hadn’t bought one when we talked about it on the Jordan trip. We bought season 3 and he watched about 5 of them before Carly got home about 4:50. I put the groceries at while she played with August. She got started making enchiladas and August and I played with Duplos. I would make a “cool invention” but it would tip over or something and he would fix it for me.

We made several cages for the alligator, who kept chomping. He said he was tired, and a bit after six I got his bath started. We went upstairs and he went to the bathroom. But when he was done he said “Dada, I’m tired…Can we skip a bath?” I got him to do a most basic bath with him standing on the floor. Took him in to the grey couch bed upstairs to get his pajamas on. He started humming one of his old mystery songs and neither of us could remember if we ever solved it and figured out what the song was.

Downstairs we finished reading the An Enchanted Place story which turned out to be very timely with August starting school. We started Rabbit Has a Busy Day. He kept saying he was hungry but rejected everything. Carly was getting closer with the spinach enchiladas. She got some for him but it was too spicy for him. So she made some without the spicy sauce and just the cheese part. He ate some of that, then I took him upstairs to brush his teeth for bed. We did that, but then he said he was still hungry. Got him some of the cheese and spinach mixture and he ate that, then we brushed his teeth one more time.

Carly came up and he was asleep around 7:40.