Category: Uncategorized

He was up once before 7 and Carly got him back to sleep. He then got up at 7:10 and then threw up at the top of the stairs. I had just sent an email to his teachers, a minute too early, saying we might be in late if he woke up feeling okay. Carly had already decided to stay home for the first half of the day as my stomach still wasn’t back to normal, hurting when I moved much.

He finished an episode of The Magic School Bus Rides Again, where they are satellites in space, then crawled down on the carpet. Carly made us toast with cinnamon and sugar, but the second he tried to eat it he threw up.

A bit later we skyped with my parents. He didn’t move much or say anything, but he was amused by their story of the squirrel that is angry at them for taking away the cushions. Carly read him The Sneetches and he spent more time on the floor. Thought he might fall asleep. She was going to start reading him Monster Party, but he threw up again, a little before 9. they then read Monster Party and Welcome to the Symphony.

He took a long nap, from about 9:30 to 12:15. When he woke up she read him Wild About Books. He said something about it being funny that the animals had to write their letters and not type. He said if he had to do that he would use his own letters: “My language use funny lines and shapes…see?” They read Picasso’s Trousers, but then he threw up again. He got quiet and still again. They next read Paddington. He went to the bathroom, but threw up again right after. I read One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, Because I Had a Teacher, and then the first page of the Children’s Illustrated Dictionary to him. Cary laughed at my suggestion that reading the dictionary aloud could be a good tradition when he is sick. But the first page was good as it had words like ‘abdomen’ and ‘ache’. He then said (via thumbs up) that he wanted to try to go back to sleep. Carly lay back down with him for awhile.

She read part of The Tapper Twins Go to War, a 6th grade book, to him. Then he threw up again, this time getting the sheet. I changed the sheets and carly went up to do laundry. I sang to him, then read Marie Curie, Puff the Magic Dragon, and the second page of the dictionary. He wanted me to read The King’s Stilts. Read about half, then they nursed and he fell asleep a little before 3:40.

He was awake at 5:10. Drank some lemonade and started talking: “I like lemon treats…just lemon drinks and lemon treats…I know lemon treats exist, right?” I went upstairs and when I came down he was talking about “The case or your missing clip.” he meant that sort of paper clip that he’s been playing with this week. He got quiet again. Carly asked if we should listen to music and he did thumbs up for yes. I put on a Milk Carton Kids album that we hadn’t heard. Eventually they did some more reading of the middle school book. 

The sun was starting to go down. I asked if he wanted me to carry him outside. He sat up and gave me a thumbs up. I took him outside for ten or fifteen minutes. It was the best part of the day. We listened to birds and smelled the flowers as I held him. I sang songs like When Johnny Comes Marching Home. Carly came out and watered the flowers.

Back inside he threw up again. Carly got herself some dinner. He wanted me to lay down next to him. We listened to Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here. Then read some of Where the Sidewalk Ends. Carly told him some stories of when she was a kid, then he said he wanted to go to bed.

We got him to the bathroom, then upstairs, where he threw up one more time. It was about a quarter to 8 when I left them. Carly came down at 8:05 with his water, saying she thought it was going to take awhile. He threw up about 8:20, then fell asleep about 8:40.

Earlier, when I was reading to him,  we heard the ice cream truck for the first time in a long time. He was sad because he couldn’t get any. Put his head down and pretended to sleep. He threw up again after 9:20.

He threw up twice during the night: one before midnight, and once after. He was then up around 7. Carly put him on the grey couch upstairs. When I got up a bit later they had just started watching Brother Bear. We went downstairs and he watched Magic School Bus. Carly left a quarter to 10 to go to the pharmacy and big Tiv Taam.

While she was gone we played with the balloon, then read Dr. Seuss. We read The King’s Stilts. He drank some orange juice and had me play a little Seuss Band. He then asked “How can you see color?” We watched a SciShow Kids video on how we can see color and then he watched a couple other SciShow Kids videos about amazing animals.

Carly was home before 11:30. She had bought a bunch of Gatorades and medicine and a pedialyte sort of thing. He requested a smoothie, so she made a strawberry and mango smoothie. He also had some of the Pedialyte. Eventually he had 5 drinks lined up on the table, including orange juice, Gatorade, and water.

I went up and took a shower. They went outside and made slime. He had a lot of fun doin that, then they came inside and he had some toast. He was humming a Seuss Band song and giggling. He was copying how I was resting my right leg on my left knee as I lay on the couch and asked how I did that. He then noy d that he didn’t have five drinks anymore. He mentioned that I was drinking a drink (Gatorade) and Carly asked if he wanted some. He chose to have blue.

We read The Sneetches and Other Stories, then moved to the iPad for more Seuss: Fox in Socks and The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins.

August had been laughing a lot through the first two books and the beginning of the last book, but then got quiet and very cuddly. When we finished he looked ready for a nap. He did some coughing but didn’t throw up. When Carly came down and asked if they should go upstairs and try to nap he gave her a thumbs up.

She took him up just after 3 and they fell asleep together. She was down sometime later, then went and woke him up about 4:30. He was sniffly and sneezy and drowsy when she brought him down. We took his temperature under his arm as he seemed warm. 37.2. She put on The Magic School Bus for him.

He turned it off after awhile. He was blowing his nose well the other day, but was resistant to it now. Carly finally got him to do it a bit. He had some toast and was humming and sniffling and eating. They then started reading The 52-Story Treehouse. He pointed out when she had read the word ‘stupid’. But then he said “I will not give you a consequence. Only dada can get a consequence.” I told him this injustice was going on the blog.

I took over reading after a few chapters. We read a few more, then he was asking about the colors and flavors of Gatorade. He then made up flavors: “Inflatable tube man flavor… I’ve heard of it. At Mulberry School.” We read The King’s Stilts again, then The Bear, the Rabbit, and the Zinniga-Zanniga.

Carly went up and got his bath ready. I held him for a few minutes. Seemed about ready to fall asleep in my arms. He had a nice bath though. Took him in and got him ready and I said goodnight at 8:20. He was asleep soon after.

He was up about 6:15 and came and cuddled next to me on the bed. He then had me carry him down to Carly. I was feeling much better. I went and took a shower. When I came down he was eating oatmeal and playing with his blue clay. He had made an arch on his own. He told me that yesterday he had made a zoo entrance. And he asked what ‘interlocked’ means. “There’s other breaking forces beside pull, push, crush…twist.”

He watched Magic School Bus and then remembered, as I mentioned preschool, I was going to leave and was worried about that. Before we left he wanted to play for a minute. He played with the magnets and made a magnet person. He then did the chant from The 52-Story Treehouse:

“Its gourmet, we’re gonna eat it for lunch! Human soup! Human soup!”

We left at 7:50. Outside he said “It smells like fertilizer out here.” He then had a stick, he said, out of his belly button that makes the smell go away.

We got to his class at 8:10. He went and played with clay. Then had to go out to get his picture taken with the other new students. He gave a good grin. Back inside he returned to the clay and I went in th nearby staff room to type (and rest). He came in a couple times to check on me, but would then go back out to the clay. He came in each time he finished a sculpture: the first was abstract, then a machine that made light, then a cookie machine that made chocolate chip and marshmallow cookies. With honey and marmalade.

When they called meeting time he knew what was coming and immediately got upset. I tried to tell him I’d just be in the adults room, where I had been before, and left him with Myriam. She brought him in to me after just a minute: “What if I need you!” Referring to Myriam he said “But somebody was trying to catch me!” So I went out and sat in the room and he went back to meeting.

They all went out to snack. Anna had some sheets to hang up for shade and I was slightly helpful in getting a desk and helping hang curtains. It was then playground time. August got right to it, running off to start playing. He and Anna and a few of the kids were playing in the car. It was a car at first, until August said it was a rocket and then it was a rocket. They were taking a rocket to Disney World. I went inside for just a minute to get my water bottle and he got upset. We talked a bit about it, back outside, and he observed “Isn’t it funny that the other people don’t have their mamas and dadas and they’re okay?” His first ‘fix’ to this problem was to make a machine that WOULD make them upset. But when I suggested that was the wrong way to go he instead invented a machine that would show photos of the mamas and dadas. Anna heard this part and talked about how they do have photos of all the families in the classroom and that he should bring in a photo of his family.

We then walked down and I helped open the sand area. He played there for 20 minutes or so. They were burying their shoes. August let me go in and get my book, but he told me to run.

The class went in for story time. Anna read Fox’s Socks. Mariam read The Book With No Pictures and August, and all the kids, were in stitches. They discussed the siren that would be ringing soon, then Anna read the book My Blue is Happy. At 11 the sirens went off. August did a good job of closing his eyes, then lay down on the floor like some of the other kids and sort of squirmed across the floor a bit for the rest of the siren.

For exploratory time he chose clay. I went over there and made letters out of clay for the kids doing clay: B for Blanka, H for Hector, O for Omri, and of course a Z for August. That inspired Hector to go get his name card and he made his whole name out of clay. August was making machines, and then a fish. He said “Let’s just make the outside. Not the bones and the immune system.” Then a cookie machine, then a light machine. Done with clay, he played with these boards where you trace letters with a magnet. The magnet pulls up little metal balls to ‘draw’ the letters. Pretty cool. He then went over to where a bunch of kids were playing with the wooden tracks and balls and cars and said “I’m gonna play with you if you like.”

They got out their mattresses and then it was lunch time. A bit early, as the 12:30 lunch thing is new since spring break. It was 12 before that, and the kids were dragging today, hungry. We went out and ate, then went back in for rest time. I had brought the Kipper book but August wasn’t too interested in reading it and Ori ended up reading it. At one point I read Whose Skin Is this? to August and Nicholas. For the video story time Myriam put on There’s an Alligator Under My Bed, a random colors video, a longer story that they didn’t finish, then a good one called Carla’s Sandwich. He sat on my lap.

They then had more playground time, and he played in the sandbox again. He wanted me to play with him a couple times, but I had a headache and was trying to stay in the shade. He and Nicholas played together. Anna brought out apple slices and was calling over to the kids to get them to come get apples. He told me “You can make me get one.” So I pushed him across the playground as he walked. Myriam asked what his favorite part of the day was. He said clay. She asked if there was anything he didn’t like: “Nope. They keep getting more gooder and more gooder.”

They all went in and she read The Book with No Pictures again. Similar laughter. The day was over and outside he got his hands dirty in the dirt while I chatted with Anna. I pointed out the progress of him letting me be in the adults room in the morning and his comfort with running off and playing on the playground. She had also seen his reaction when I left, and seemed fine with moving things slowly. I get the impression that the plan to get August independent was being pushed by Maaian and not her.

I needed some Tylenol, so August and I headed home, getting here at 3:30. Carly had driven in the morning, and now got back a little after we did. She and I talked about something involving a book she was teaching with her students and how authors give characters different motivations. August asked “Why? Why does have characters to do certain things?” Carly mentioned something about the book and people not liking other people. He said “Maybe they should reconsider, right?” He tried to play with her skirt and Carly said that that wasn’t appropriate. He told her she should wear different clothes. So we know that that argument is 4-year old logic.

They played with clay. He brought up me leaving (almost): “At preschool dada almost went away to the library.” She asked why he didn’t want me to leave and asked if he was scared. He said “So scared, I couldn’t take it.” she asked what bad thing he thought might happen. He answered “Dying.”

They went outside for awhile, then came in to get dinner. They had wraps and I had some stir fry and rice. August told Carly, who was still wearing her work clothes: “You look like a doctor…you’re wearing white. A nurse.” I stayed outside and chatted with them for awhile but was fading. Eventually I went up to rest. I came down at one point and they were watering plants in the kitchen. August was filling a bottle from the faucet, then pouring it into the cup she was using to water the plants out the window. There was a lot of recycling on the counter and he asked “Mama, can I ask what’s a dishy and what isn’t a dishy?”

I got his bath ready, and she gave him his bath. They took up some plastic dishes to play with in the bath and also played with the old soap bottle, which was a lot of fun. He was asleep by 7:50. Instead of getting better I was getting worse and had horrible stomach ache/heartburn. I threw up after awhile, around 9 or so, then cancelled my trip to Sabeel tomorrow.

I ruined August’s shot at perfect attendance by getting sick. During the night August woke up from a nightmare, telling Carly “Mama don’t lock me in the room by myself.” He couldn’t get back to sleep, and was stuffy. After awhile he climbed up with me and told me he was itchy. After ten minutes or so he climbed back down to Carly and eventually went back to sleep.

Meanwhile, I had just the slightest hint of an upset stomach before I went to bed and thought it was odd. Then during the night I woke up twice and threw up. I threw up a third time after 6 and Carly agreed to head to school late. He was up 6:37. He went downstairs and Carly got him back to sleep on the couch. Carly stayed until after 7:30. I lay on the couch and he woke up at 7:47.

He watched a lot of The Magic School Bus as I tried to rest on the couch. Got him Cheerios and water. At 9:50 he said “Dada, I need some attention.” And started crying. He calmed down and made a game of stuffing things under the blanket. I told him how I had thrown up three times and he said “The time I was sick I threw up more than three…I mean in Korea.” He then started taking care of me. He got his stool and put it on my chest and said it gave me medicine “Thst button gives you most medicine…Beep. See? It feels better already.” I took my temperature (for real) and it was fine. We drank the can of orange drink that had been left over from Jordan and I had a coke. August was being microscopic and said “I can go through things with dangerous things like sulfuric acid!” He took more care of me, but kept insisting that his shots should make me better. I told him that it didn’t really work that way. He said “I push a button on the wall and it makes magic real. See? Magic medical center.”

He convinced me to go play with Duplos and said “I remember a cushiony cushiony block think where Vivian lives.” We made a store. He was frustrated when I was doing things slowly and said I wasn’t giving him attention. I said it was just slow. He said I wasn’t giving him fast enough attention. Back on the couch we read chapter 1 of The 52-Story treehouse.

He was hungry for oatmeal so I made him some. I put it on the table for him but he was slow getting off the couch. “I’m like mama when she doesn’t know how to get up.” That is something she says.

He ate, then I lay on the couch and he let me rest while he watched two more episodes of The Magic School Bus. He was done at 1 and wanted to play. He had wanted to make another stress ball, so we looked for Carly’s tool fo making them, cut from the top of a plastic bottle. We looked all over but couldn’t find it. We ended up just playing with a balloon instead, me blowing it up and then him letting it go to fly around the room. He wanted me to go get it, but I made us switch back and forth. We read Go, Dog, Go. He requested I sing “Animal Life”. Then I got him peanut butter and apples. He ate that and we tracked Carly as she walked home using Find My iPhone. She was home before 2. After a bit they walked over to the mall and came back with Gatorade. They were back around 4. I was resting upstairs and came down after 5. They were going to head back out to take some cardboard to school for the castles her students are making. He asked “Is the students gonna have a fun time with the castles and I’m just going to be bored?” He was playing with clay and had eaten cucumber, turkey, cheese, and grapes. He then had a second dinner of oatmeal and mango.

They went to school and pharmacy. He got sad when Carly said he couldn’t touch a castle her students were making and did his really sad crying. While they were gone I watched the season finale of The Walking Dead.

Back at home, as he was having a third dinner of stir fry, he asked Carly “What director mean?” That was a reference to Magic School Bus, as he had watched the episode where they make a movie twice today. He also asked “What field trip mean?” Also a Magic School Bus reference, although could also apply to the field trip he learned about at preschool (to a farm next Thursday). He said I had read that Andy and Terry book to him, and even though I hadn’t read the words ‘idiot’ or ‘stupid’ he still gave me a consequence. We talked some more about me leaving at preschool and Carly reminded him it would be like when he was with Oma and Opa. He said “But they have NO treats!” He was playing with the clay on the dining room table. Earlier, he had wanted to mix colors and Carly had started to suggest he not do it, and he said something like “but isn’t it always better to learn?”

Carly took him up for his bath, then I came up to say goodnight. He was asleep about 8:20

He was up at 6:05. Took him downstairs and I took a shower. Carly headed to work and he watched some Magic Schoolbus until we we got ready to leave. We got walking at 7:40. I took a photo of him on the front porch for his first day of preschool. Got a photo of him adjusting his hair to the side. On the walk he noticed that the pen marks on his leg were faded (mainly from his bath). He said he called it “Pensing” although he should call it “pencilling”. He also said “It should just be preschoo” with no L.

We got to class at 8:05. He went and played at the light table. After awhile I went and sat outside, right out the window where he could see me. I saw him talking to other kids as they played at the table. He came and brought me in 8:30. Told me “I’m gonna find something new.” He did art. He made shapes, starting with eighths. And I found out about their field trip next week, to a farm. I looked at a 300 Wild Flowers of Israel book to identify the big white flower we saw yesterday. August helped, remembering it didn’t have the big petals around the outside. Something like ainswoethia, wild carrot, toothpick, or crown flower, but not exactly any of them.

We went in the forest area and he tried things on and sat on the squishy rocks. He then went upstairs in the loft and played in the kitchen area. A girl tried to go down the stairs head first on her hands and knees and he was stopping her by holding onto her ankle until one of the teachers told her it was dangerous to go down the stairs like that. Later he told me they had been playing a game where they were keeping babies from being dangerous – the girl was being a baby trying to crawl down stairs.

For morning meeting at 9:10 he was concerned he wouldn’t be able to see me. Convinced him he could, then he went to the meeting. They started by singing “Five little speckled frogs…eating the most delicious bugs.”

They went outside for a snack. The lawn had been aerated and we examined the chunks. He only ate the crackers for snack, and one bite of the white cheese. They taught him how to wash his plate and then they went to the playground.

Out on the playground he first played on the seesaw with Selma and another girl when Selma asked him. he played on the car a bit with other boys, pretending it was a police car, then wanted to go make something in the kitchen. I went down with him. PKA had come out, and a bunch of kids he knew were there: Daniel (from coding), Bar, Julia, and some of the girls from Hebrew (Maya, Ledeuh). He played in the sand my Daniel and I taught him how a sifter worked. Bar came over and started laying with him and I retreated to the other end of the playground. At one point he came all the way over and said he couldn’t see me, but I told him he now knew where I was and he ran back to Bar.

He was then playing with Bar and a big group of kids as they ran around, away from a monster, apparently. They ran over to the PKA classroom and August got me to go with. Eventually back on the playground he said he was getting bored, but then he went across to the bushes where a girl was playing with them. He was over there for several minutes, then came over to me. He played on the seesaw again with another girl. The playground had gotten busy with all three preschool classes out there.

They went inside before 11 for a story: Olive and the Big Secret. Then to music class, up in the classroom where they have Hebrew and coding classes. The teacher for that is Vicki, one of the PKA teachers. He insisted I sit in the room. He really liked the waving things and scarves. Took him to the bathroom where he was working on doing things on his own, like pulling up his underwear and shorts, then they went downstairs to a quick meeting before exploratory time. 

He went to the clay table along with Candy. He made a tea cup with Marian, then did an abstract sculpture. Then went over and looked at the kestrals and the eggs on projector. It’s actually a nesting pair on campus and a webcam is set up. Then more light table time.

Outside for lunch. I sat on the ground next to August in his chair. He said with Nicholas, Emmett, and Derin. Did a lot of talking about zoos. Nicholas told him his hair was getting long and that Nicholas had gotten a hair cut so “I don’t look like a girl.” August responded with “I have a button. Beep! I’m a girl!” I pointed out that Emmett’s bangs were just as long and that Yaya has long hair.

Then inside to rest time. He had a mattress over by the entryway. They didn’t have to nap (about 4 did), but the lights were low and there was classical music on. They got out the books so the kids could look at books. We read a book about a house by the sea and Corduroy Loves the Library and looked at a couple others. After the kids that take naps were asleep they let the others get up and they sat and watched two stories on the projector on YouTube. They are from something called Storyline Online. The second was called The Garbage Barge and was really funny. They then got ready for P.E. time at 2. Yaya had lay down on the floor again, sans mattress, and Emmett said he was pretending to sleep and was even poking him and opening his eyes. Turns out he had actually fallen asleep for a nap as well.

They went over to the P.E. time with a teacher named Dion. We’ve seen these P.E. classes quite a bit as we walk to school and I wasn’t impressed – a lot of time with kids lined up and being talked to. But I was pleasantly surprised when he started them playing games like from August’s activity class. But during the first, when they would run, then act like an animal, August ran over to me and said “Dada, he said I can’t stand like a flamingo!…Can you teach me how to stand like a flamingo?” Then there was a game where Dion was the Cookie Monster knocking sprinkles (balls) off of cookies (cones). Dion was saying he was “winning” and August didn’t like that it was a winning game. He came and told me “I hated that game.” I heard him saying that a bit later as well. Dion ended with “Boys get the balls, girls get the cones.”

They went back to the classroom and finished with storytime with Myriam. She read one book, then was going to read The Book with No Pictures, but couldn’t find it. The bus kids left, and we waited out with the other kids waiting for their parents. August was putting the holes back in the grass so it would dry out. Once the bell rang I took him over to Carly’s classroom and dropped him off with her. I went back and met with Maarian and Anna to debrief how it went. All agreed it went well, but they immediately started talking about transitioning me out of the classroom and how it is okay if he cries. So felt like a bait and switch. Agreed to try leaving during morning meeting tomorrow.

As I walked back to Carly’s classroom I saw them walking across to the cafeteria. I caught up and they went and got some blue chips as a snack. The guy at the cafeteria gave August some sort of treat. We sat out on the couches outside and ate the chips. We then dropped Carly off at her classroom. He and I stopped to play with the darts and he tested the magnets on them out on all the metal things he could find. And we looked at the art in the cabinets by the office. We stopped on a bench to eat his sandwich and discuss peanut allergies. We left the school at 4:15. He surprised me by asking out of the blue “Why in our home in Thailand when we went in the hall there was an alarm?” Pretty sure we’ve never even mentioned that alarm in the hallway since we left Thailand.

We walked home, and Carly got home just a few minutes after us. He played with slime, then with the Duplo fence pieces. He wanted me to be a baby. He was the mom. Carly was the dada. He was keeping me from taking the fence pieces; “I don’t want you to choke baby.” We discussed me leaving from preschool class for awhile tomorrow.

We had wraps for dinner outside. August didn’t want the whole wrap: “Here’
s the deal: I only want the chicken.” He asked what “the coast is clear” means. I asked where he knew that from and he said from Sisters, which we haven’t read in quite awhile. We discussed the ‘winning’ game at school, which ended in a tie. He said “When someone doesn’t like winning and there’s winning tie is the best. Why? Because someone else is winning and you’re happy they’re winning?” When Carly went inside we said “The coast is clear.” Carly came back and he whispered “the coast is not clear.”

Back inside I showed him how to use the clip thing. He asked me “Why did that girl have the powers she can’t control?” He was referring to Frozen, which I’ve told him a little about. Carly took him up for a bath, then got him ready for bed. He was pretty worn out from the long day.

It starts:

Dressing up:

Making a mug:

Sculpture:

Darts:

Looking at the art:

7:10 “Look at the machine I built…dangerous parts…” “Time for wakey!” They went downstairs and when I wet down a little later they had the globe out and were reading Thr Sneetches. They got up to get honey milk for him and he joked I was still asleep: “Can you believe dada’s still asleep?” “Can you believe dada’s still upstairs?” “Maybe he has a headache.”

He went outside with Carly and helped her take care of the plants. He was a broccoli plant with spikes all over so the moths couldn’t lay eggs on him. He got his pajama pants wet and took them off, then put his shoes on and went back outside in his underwear.

Made him oatmeal with syrup. He and Carly gave me all sorts of advice on how to make it properly. He was so excited when I put in “extra” syrup that he fell off the stool. He ate at the table and asked me about the rock climbing ropes we had seen. I looked up images of harnesses and rappelling setups and we discussed them. Carly squeezed an orange for him in the fruit press thing that Cherie had brought. They then went to make a stress ball using a balloon and flour.

They Skyped with Chuck and Cherie in Denmark as they made stress balls outside. I typed and did the blog and watched Formula 1 qualifying. They came in to get soap to experiment with making slime and freezing it. August said that seeing how long it would take to freeze would be another experiment. I took a shower. When I came down August told me about freezing the slimes. One of them froze solid. He was clingy to Carly throughout the morning, and who was looking trying to now look up slime recipes.

She started cooking the chicken and he shared some pita with me. I showed him how a piece of foil was like a parachute and he stood on his stool and dropped it. Then dropped other items to compare. He helped shake seasoning on the chicken. He wanted to touch the chicken, then we washed his hands. He tried dropping other objects but was choosing objects that were too heavy. I took apart a tissue. He noticed he could see through one part it not the other. It had two layers still. He got another tissue and took the layers apart on his own.

Carly had invented a sort of Israeli wrap, like something they had had for lunch at school. August ate some and liked it. He grabbed Carly’s grey sweatshirt and wore it as a scarf. He asked what repetitive means, then asked “Speaking of repetitive, can I watch Max and Ruby?” I said yes, but he chose to watch The Magic Schoolbus instead. I did the dishes and Carly did laundry and wrote one postcards. With Duplos he and I built a big crane, seeing how long we could make it and making a big counterweight. We then turned it into a bridge.

He was getting upset about wanting to nurse as we were getting ready to go outside. I stayed with him and he calmed down, although held on to her grey sweatshirt for a couple minutes. Got him to the bathroom and we went outside at 1. They sat on the swing. August let it leak that Carly had dumped out the cat’s water dish, which I had filled yesterday. I thought the cats had knocked it over so had already refilled it. There was some cat poop in the yard, and I cleaned it up following Carly’s specific instructions. One of the cats has been up on our patio as well as you can see footprints in the dust.

We got walking to the mall. He said we were showing Carly the way as it has been quite awhile since she’s actually walked there. We got to the outside playground at the mall and he wanted to play. He started by showing me around. Then went on the plane and he flew us to China. He asked what we should do there and I said build a wall. He had some sort of argument with Carly and said “But still enshumgedorflug.” It was his first use of his word for beyond infinity in one of their infinity arguments.

He then took Carly over to one of the houses and showed it to us. He cooked food and put ice cream on potatoes. When I said that didn’t sound good he told me “I learned that in food school.” He then took us to the second house, which had his bathroom and work area. He said “I use stomach acid in there to cool the air down.”

We went inside and he was frustrated he couldn’t get a treat at the candy stand. Got over it though and played in the inside play area, chasing me with the squirrel thing. He was then a hurt squirrel, breaking his leg: “Well in this country people drag me by the foot a lot.” “In magic land a week isn’t that long.”now you have to lay in bed 298888 million years.” “This is my lab to make surgery better.”

Carly went to the art store and got school glue and other supplies for making slime. She and I then took turns in the pharmacy. Got August some flosser things. August kept playing in the play area and Carly headed down to Tiv Taam. I convinced him to follow after a few minutes so we could help look for things for our school lunches.

We then went to the Wok and Walk restaurant outside for lunch. Got the veggie pad Thai and we shared it. We left at 3:10. On the walk he asked me something, then told me “You’re probably wrong so I’m gonna tell you my information.” Just a couple weeks ago he was telling me I know everything. Then he said “I just discovered that every country has bad things except Jordan.” He meant monsters to blast.

We were home after 3:20. He found a rubber band in the kitchen and asked “Why do I get sad when a rubber band breaks?” They went outside and started making slime. I watched him mixing some with his hands, and he randomly said something about “One year ago there was a dinosaur war.”

I went up to work. They were still doing slime at 5:50. they did a few different recipes, using things like shaving cream, glitter, and little ball things. We talked about something being high, I think we meant a pitch, and he said  “You mean like this high? Like house high?…Like up to a galaxy?”

We had dinner at 6:15. He ate the stir fry. Continuing the gamification of getting him to eat and drink healthy things, Carly was sneaking him milk against my permission. He was giggling and I said “I smell something fishy.” August assured me “The smell of something that makes you stronger is coming from off in the distance.” And he said “I put milk on the roof to see if it would get moldy.” It was dusk, and the mynah birds and Eurasian jay were going crazy, making a lot of noise. We’ve watch the birds chasing off cats and a hooded crow recently, and we found egg shells on the ground under one of our trees.

August picked up the tree things, seeing how many he could hold in one hand. He was excited there was watering the cat dish since Carly had dumped it out earlier. 

I took him up to his bath at 6:50. He told me “I learned a word called ‘Green Olive Chaser’…from Magic School Bus.” I think they were small and an olive rolled after them.  He told me about writing with pen on his leg when Carly was looking at slime recipes and didn’t notice. He asked if just a few germs could make you sick. We talked about immunities and resistance. Played with bubbles, then finished his bath.

I went into the office and he climbed on his Zinnie bed and held Merry (née Angeles) and had a dialogue with Merry about knots in Merry’s hair, ending with calling Merry “little buddy”.

He wanted me to carry him downstairs to find Carly, but downstairs he then chose me to put him to sleep. I was surprised. A month ago I wouldn’t guess he’d actually be picking me like that. Said goodnight to her there and I took him up. We read Mendel’s Accordian for the first time (got it at the book exchange). He told me that how he goes to sleep is that “Someone sings to me with the light on, then I sleep with mama.” He didn’t complain thought when I turned the light off and started putting him to sleep at 7:53. I sang Imaginary Bars, Idaho, and Animal Life. He was asleep before 8. Easy peasy.

When Carly opened the door last night to go to bed he was sitting up in bed, kind of like a zombie. Eventually laid back down. In the night he ended up on the bed and slept the rest of the night between us. He tried getting up before 6 but Carly got him back to sleep, then he woke up at 6:30. After awhile I went and got some dry Cheerios for him and his iPad. He watched the Magic School Bus on the bed, then moved out to the grey couch upstairs while Carly worked on her closet. I got up about 7:45 and August said he was done with the show. He ended up going in with Carly and helping her. They were talking like robots and he was a “delivery service” using his claws to move things.

I made him oatmeal, or started to, then helped Carly move the desk back into the big room. Cary finished up the oatmeal for him, then he was eating it and had me play the “Don’t eat any more! Don’t get any stronger!” game. He realized he finally had to go to the bathroom. Yesterday he said something about how wasn’t it amazing that sometimes he doesn’t have to go to the bathroom for three hours after he wakes up. On the toilet he said he did the “frizzily drizzily” when he woke up – that is, he messed up the back of his hair.

Carly got us in full cleaning mode this morning. She brought down some styrofoam from a box as garbage and August got really excited by it. Told him he couldn’t break it up, but he was playing with it other ways. I went outside and washed off the car luggage bag. He started scraping it on the bike tire, which ripped it up. Stopped him and had him help me clean it up. But then he wasn’t helping, and instead was waving his hands to spread it out. I put him inside on the couch as a timeout while I cleaned the rest. Carly came along and he was upset and told her I had taken the styrofoam away. They nursed, and only after which he told her he was supposed to have had a timeout on his own.

They went and did a little magnet science, then she hid eggs outside side. He likes to spin in the kitchen with me while she hides the eggs so he can catch glimpses of her. I asked if they wanted a smoothie. He came in a second later and was upset as he thought I had already made it but now he had to wait. He drank his smoothie and talked about blocking a faucet – a topic that has come up a few times since reading about faucets.

I needed to go take a shower and he wanted to watch balance beam, so he watched the London 2012 balance beam finals while I took a shower. Before I left he asked “Do you go to gymnastics with your mama and dada?” He watched it upstairs while I took a shower. They were then watching a video about the solar system when I got out. We used one of his old diapers as an experiment in the bath water to see how big it would get. He joked “Those babies really peed!… That’s the pee storage area.” The diaper burst open so we had to clean out the tub and start fresh. He then played with bubbles and asked me to make bubbles for him and when there was enough he said “Enough already!” He served me bubbles on a letter and said “This is gourmet!” He was doing a decent job of letting me wash his hair, but got really stressed out when I said I needed to rinse his hair. We talked about worry and stress, which he’d discussed with Shmuel when he said he had been dealing with a lot of stress. Got him out and went and dried his hair. He used the hair dryer a lot on his own.

Went downstairs and he ate nutty noodles outside for lunch. He and Carly went and picked their biggest carrot yet. But they didn’t taste as good as the little ones. Back inside he was playing with the foods from his kitchen: “I made an arch out of the foods in my basket but dada didn’t look at it.” He was upset it fell down before I saw it. They went and made a Duplo arch, then he and I made a structure out of Duplos. He was then with Carly on the couch and got sad that he couldn’t smell his own hair. Carly offered to cut it so he could smell his own hair, but he replied “But then my hair would be shorter…I won’t be able to pull it as much.”

He had some dry Cheerios, then was getting sad when he didn’t have as many songs on his iTunes playlist as I do. He asked Carly “Can I have more songs than dada has on his playlist?”

Carly got ready to go to the store and they left at 2:40. He was totally chill in the cart at the store, eating his dry cheerios and making sculptures out of the groceries in the cart. And he helped get the vegetables for stirfry. They were back right at 4.

He came in, excited to once again give me a consequence for reading him ‘idiot’ and ‘stupid’ in a book: “You can’t use anything electronic for 5 minutes!” He. Wanted to play with the vegetable steamer and we took it and the salad spinner outside. He poured water through, then spilled it out on the patio. He discovered the suction effect of surface tension if he put the salad spinner hole down, and that it skated on the water. I turned on the hose to give him more water on the patio, and he ended up catching water from the hose in the spinner.

He and I then left at 4:50. Carly stayed to make stirfry and have some alone time. He was quoting Vegetable Patty from The 52-Story Treehouse “mash them and smash them and…” As we got walking he asked me “Why do trains leave at a certain time?” And asked about “All aboard”. We’ve discussed that phrase a few times. He stopped to run over some kumquats. We had to backup and he talked about how it was one of the first times we backed up on his bike and we worked together.

We went and did recycling. He did one big thing of plastic that he had to use his rockets to do, then was upset there wasn’t more big stuff. We started walking to the snakes and ladders playground, but he wanted to take a longcut through our park. I let him lead us, and it turned out it was to do the zig zags through the gate parts – basically chicanes, in racing terms.

He asked me to sing “Animal Life” on the way up. A good crowd at the playground. We did a lot of playing on the car thing, wth him being the luggage that runs away. A little hopscotch and remembering our Korean numbers, then over to the climbing part. He was hanging from the ropes and kicking the bottom of the platform thing. I talked about how if he got stronger he’d be able to pull himself up onto it. We talked about pull-ups, and how I couldn’t do one either, and we decided we should both exercise to do pull-ups. He also said I should eat more broccoli and cauliflower like him to get stronger.

We went back to the car/spaceship and he had me driving us to other universes and planets. We got off to take a tour of Mercury and we walked around. He spotted things like a sock on Mercury and he said “Go figure.” He played with the drinking fountain and I pointed out a rose bush and asked if he knew what they were. He said “I ASSUME they aren’t snapdragons.” Found a ladybug and had it on his hand. Then he smelled the roses. He and Carly had been discussing the phrase ‘fresh and rosey fingered’ earlier.

We left just before 6. Took the long route home. He was spotting/beeping at colorful things, mainly blue things as he knows I like blue. As we got close to home he said “I won’t beep at the cactuses. Too sharp.” He called to Carly from the sidewalk. She answered him from inside, through the screen windows. He said it wasn’t her though: “Its the call of Cornelia…it’s a sound museum.” That’s a Magic Schoolbus reference.

We had stir fry for dinner and ate outside. Back inside they read Tallulah’s Solo. I got out the shortbread cookies that Chuck and Chere left and we had a cookie and milk. Carly got him dry cheerios but he said they were stale. Some were and some weren’t and they played ‘stale or not stale’. Carly declared “This is the best game ever.”

They then read Where the Wild Things Are. August was getting tired and it was part 7:30 so Carly started to take him upstair
s. He requested that I carry him. Upstairs he went to the bathroom and started playing in the sink and faucet with Carly’s comb. He said his word “Enshumgederflug”, which means more than infinity, and declared it “My best word ever.” He said he wanted it on the blog. From our trip to Tel Aviv: https://youtu.be/9qu8sNgD4UU?rel=0

Carly brushed his teeth and I went up at 7:55. He wanted to go to sleep in the big bed. I sang “Animal Life”, “Big Numbers Song”, “Take Me to Church”, and “Rock Me Mama”. He didn’t say a single word the whole time and fell asleep by 8:10.

He was up at 7:07. Heard him call “Dada” upstairs, like he knew mama was at work.  Went up and got him and brought him down. Eventually he watched an episode of The Magic Schoolbus. we then skyped with my parents. He wanted to watch the watermelon video of the girl who got hit – he really liked the phrase “Right in the kisser”. He watched that and some balance beam videos while we talked. I told my parents about the airwander.com website and I mistakenly said “stayover”. He corrected me: “You mean stopover.” We took care of Monkey Nice Bananas and MNB wanted his Cheerios: “I know Monkey Nice Bananas wants Cheerios, but I’m gonna put them on top of a tall coal plant.” We hung up at 9:10. He then wanted the iPad doctor game that we haven’t used in months and months – Pet Doctor Jr. and we put MNB in it and took care of her.

They weren’t down there, but he remembered Carly’s old bear and the one he got at the hospital and wanted to give them new names as he didn’t remember the old ones he gave them. He came up with Marshmallow Puffed Bear for the one from the hospital and named Carly’s Cottonball Stuffed Bear.

I asked him to get the peanut butter from the fridge and he found the chocolate pudding he’d gotten in town a couple months ago. I let him eat it. He said “Let’s not tell mama I ate this without getting my hair cut.”

We then went up and he watched Wild Kratts and I took my shower. He ate apples and peanut butter. When I was done with my shower he told me it had been pretty short because he had only eaten two and a half apple slices. Interesting insight into how a 4-year old tracks time. Sometimes he does indeed run out of cheerios and in the middle of my shower while he is watching a show and I hear him yell “Dada! I need more Cheerios!” He was then spraying me with a mixture of chemicals (he said it was 4) to get rid of skunk smell. Apparently the episode had been about skunks. He asked “What is your belly button for?…Catching dust?” I said I doubted that, and he acted out how you could lift up your shirt to catch dust with it.

In the room we had slept in he found a crack in Carly’s tissue stuffing into the window to keep out mosquitoes and he stuffed in a tissue and told me “If you ever get more mosquito bites just let me know…”

We went downstairs. I had caught one of those weird bugs earlier and he now really examined it in his bug catcher before we let it go. He told me “Dada, do you know I like living soap bubbles? It tastes like clear.” I said “Are you ready for one more Dada Zinnie adventure?” That was all I said, and we haven’t talked about our usual adventures coming to an end of sorts, but he asked “Why the last one in Israel?” We’ve been talking about starting preschool on Monday, so I don’t know if he was just being really perceptive or what. Before we left I filled up the cat dish with water and he watered some plants.

We left at 10:50. He was talking about skunks and asked if every animal has a way to scare off other animals. We talked about defense mechanisms and listed other kinds, like sloths and porcupines and turtles, that don’t scare off other animals. August then said that he had teeth that can eat steel. Before we left he confidently told me he didn’t need his iPad on the trip. He hasn’t used it in the car for quite awhile. He said he could look at things, and he spent the first 15 minutes or so giving me a running commentary of all the interesting things he could see. He remembered the sesame treat he had had from Jordan (the one we didn’t eat until he found it back here at home next to the backpack and Cherie tried as well). He talked at length about how it wasn’t really sweet but that it had an interesting taste that wasn’t just sesame and he wondered what made the interesting taste. And he discussed watering plants.

Got to the zoo at 11:50. Had a good look at elands, then we watched a zebra rolling in dirt. August asked how the animals are fed if they’re wild animals, and he noticed that the zebra poop was black and wondered why it wasn’t the color of hay: “Wait. Why is the poop black if the hay isn’t?” We parked and went into the zoo.

Skipped the playground at first and headed to the left. We got to the children’s zoo, but he said he didn’t want to go in: “it’s too smelly.” Looked at the camels (which he thought were monkey at first, they were so furry), then to the elephants. We watched the African elephant and he worried about it running out of food: “I don’t like it when things run out of things…like spaceships.” Running out of air or fuel, he said. We found this old treehouse sort of thing and climbed the stairs to it. He wondered what the thing next to it was. He said “Yeah. That’s still the question…It doesn’t look like much.” It was a stage area. Walked by the giraffes, then he was ready for a hotdog. He stopped to see the jungle cat though and we saw a zookeeper feed it a chunk of meat.

We sat in the same bench by the pond and ate our hotdog. He then wanted a smoothie, so we walked back over to the juice stand and he chose a banana and mango smoothie. We sat at a covered bench area and drank it. Saw little birds with nests up at the rooftop. Stopped at a bathroom. He was turning his head, saying he could turn his head more than other people. Not sure where that came from, but he was being like an owl, but we hadn’t seen any yet. On our way back we walked a path we hadn’t walked before and saw a vulture, then little waterfall feature that he played with. Then we actually did see owls. He said “I bet they can’t turn their heads like me!”

We found the snake and monitor lizard area. We talked about them, then he was being a guide, telling me all about the snakes and how they squeeze you to death.

We got to the playground at 2:45 and played for awhile. He found a shekel in the sand and wanted to put it in his treasure boxes at home. There was one of the tall, scary walkways that was closed and he speculated on why it was closed – part breaking, too dangerous, etc. I then found a little bow hair clip and it was a second treasure for him. He buried it as hidden treasure, then we would sail away, come back, and dig it up. He wanted to put it in his treasure boxes as well.

We headed back to the car. He fell down getting out out of the bike and scraped his left knee a bit. He wouldn’t let me see it: “Don’t look at it!” Luckily, no blood. We left at 3:10. The lion part was closed by then. He was a little sad we didn’t get to do the full outside part.

We had to stop for a little gas on the way home. As we drove he said “Is spit mainly bubbles?” He then pointed out it was the first time he’s used the word: “The first time I used ‘mainly’…Yes. I know the answer to that.” I thought stopping for gas would be quick. He stayed in the car seat and had the window open. I didn’t have a gas card so only got 4 liters to get us home. took longer to remember how to use a credit card though so August got out of the car with me. Figured it out and headed on our way.

He was falling asleep just before we got home. Listened to “Go” several times though and got him home awake. He searched for Carly and found her inside. He told her “You would like the weather outside. Come with me!” He asked us to use reverse psychology on him to get him to go to the bathroom before we left. We were being robots: “What do you mean? I emptied my bladder.” He asked “Dada, when you drink more water does that mean your spit glands make more spit?”

One of the ELL teachers at the school had arranged a little gathering at Poleg Beach. We headed down there, stopping at the gas station along the way. We got down to the beach about 5 and were the only ones there until about 5:40. August went straight to playing in the sand. I did a little reading while he and Carly played. Cherie, the organizer, and her husband and two kids arrived first
. Then the other ELL teacher, Alex, and her husband. the two boys are like 12 and 13. One of them started to bury August’s legs, and they did an awesome job of playing with August the entire rest of the time. I went up to the restaurant to get us something to eat – a chicken steak and veggies thing that was pretty good. While there, I met an Israeli guy who had lived in Lynnwood for 3 months before the rain drove him south to San Diego. And just before that I had found out that Cherie had grown up in the Okanagan Valley in Canada. Cherie had brought these big cushy red chairs that blow up with the wind and August enjoyed bouncing on.

When I got back down with the food, August was excitedly playing with the boys and talking to them a lot. They were digging a big hole, and later were throwing sand into the water. No time for eating. He ran over to me and told me he needed to go to the bathroom. As I carried him up he said “I hope those boys didn’t hear me say that…I always don’t want people to hear me say that…for funsies.” On the way back he ran across the sand and said “That mechanism allows me to walk on very squishy sand.” He spotted the boys climbing on the stacked beach chairs and wanted to go look: “I need to find out.” He called up to one of them “Be careful!” We went back to the gathering and he did an experiment, all on his own, where he spit on the dry sand, then the wet sand, and he noticed that it soaked into the dry sand better. We talked about why that could be.

We left at 7:30. He came up with a new word: “Icelogical” He said it meant wood chips. As I drove us home he asked why there were two lanes going into Even Yehuda, one for turning left and one for right, and couldn’t it be just one lane. I talked about when it gets busy and there are backups. We were home just after 8.

He had eaten some of the chicken in the car, and now ate more of the veggies. He asked “Why sometimes cars stop on the road to remember wars?” He then shared some pizza with Carly. We took him upstairs and got him ready for bed and we did some mosquito killing. Carly put him to sleep at 8:50.

Carly got him up close to 6:30. He came down and had Cheerios. Out of nowhere he said “Do you know laughkernels? When we cook them they laugh…and when we eat them they musha gusha – but in a musha gusha voice.” Carly said goodbye to her parents and headed to work. We then left right at 7.

Took pretty much exactly an hour, driving down 4. He got to ride in his booster seat and did really well, doing a lot of looking out the window. He pointed out construction cranes at one point – I think he was remembering reading about them last night. He and Cherie did Sugar Baby. Whenever we talked about something (Derek, Hank, Chuck’s beard) he would ask what we were talking about. They sang the rest of their songs, and he asked about the  Zipline Cars again. It was a sticker/logo he had seen (and I think read on his own) on the van that picked us up at the Candles Hotel after Petra.

We dropped of Chuck and Cherie. He stayed in his seat and got good kisses from them as goodbyes. I jumped out to give them hugs, then jumped quickly back in before he could get upset. Cherie had left a biscuit cookie for him to have on the way home, and told him about the nut treats left at home.

Before we got driving he asked about how we could see light if it was so fast. And then, in a robot voice, “reminder coming, reminder coming. Please find those sugary treatsint he house. Oma saved some sugary treats.” And “I show you how I put a reminder into your brain. I attach a pipe to your pipe then the reminder goes from my brain to your brain.” And “when I turn my rockets on in traffic I don’t bump into anything. It’s because of this counter weight.”

On the drive home he was asking questions about high wires. He described a trick on a high wire. I know we’ve watched a video on high wire acts before, but asked where this was coming from. He remembered: Cam Jansen and the Circus Mystery. Been quite awhile since we read that, and only once or twice. He then asked what ‘duplicate’ means. We discussed the word. Not sure where he got it. Then he made a machine that makes a person quiet. If they’re supposed to be quiet but aren’t you just point it at them and then you don’t hear them. “Dada, I gotted ear wax out of my ear to study what color it is. It’s orange.” “Dada, how does your body make earwax?”

We were home at 9:10. We went in and he went to the bathroom. He speculated on why mama could be home (maybe if the power went out at school). We found the treats and he told me “I like the ones without pistachios.” Put a few in a bag and went for a walk. We walked around the Holly block, then towards the mall, but continued on the path all the way to the road bridge over the highway. We got there just in time, before the sirens for Holocaust Remembrance Day went off. We watched everyone come to a stop and get out and stand for a minute. I recorded the first half of it, then picked August up for the rest of it.

We were home at 10:20. One of the black cats was under the swing, and spent much of the day under there. Inside, he acted out being the cat under a swing and being nervous when people came home. We watched a few videos on things he’s been asking about: first part of one of the Marble Machine update videos, then one on why light goes through glass, then one on why boys have nipples but not “nursing”.

I took a shower and he watched The Magic Schoolbus. During his bath he asked about setting fire to ships with shields (going back to that Archimedes display at Madatech – although we didn’t even see it this time at the science center). He continues to be skeptical about my explanations for why it doesn’t actually work (based on Mythbusters), We also ended up discussing armor. He played with bubbles and started to sing the Sesame Street “Rubber Ducky” song on his own.

I had seen Shmuel down in the downstairs yard before we had gone upstairs. He now called and asked if he could come in the yard. I ran down to let him in the yard, then ran back up to get August out of his bath. Got him dressed and we went and said hi to Shmuel. I went in to make coffee for us. August stayed out and got right to work pulling weeds with Shmuel and telling him things about our yard. Shmuel taught him that he could pull the green sprouts off the trees or they’ll become branches, and pointed out something that isn’t a weed, but a flower. And August pointed the cone things out to Shmuel way up in the trees. We sat and had coffee and August ate the leftover teriyaki noodles for lunch.

Shmuel left, and we went in and August did a pillow pile and we hid things. August had me play the recorder and he moved the xylophone stick in it to change the sound. He then discovered that the xylophone stick fits through the blueberry blocks. He asked about balance beams again, so we watched a YouTube video of a balance beam routine. He really liked it so we watched a couple more. Then a high wire video. We also watched videos on slingshots and catapults. The catapult videos led to a video from the Amazing Race of a woman having a watermelon come back at her and break on her head. He took the blueberries off the xylophone stick and told me they were meat he was serving to me – kebabs.

I invented the “Hugaroo”, which is like a ‘kissaroo’, but just a big hug. He asked “Does it have a pouch, like a kangaroo?” He then wanted to cuddle in my pouch like a kangaroo.

We got going to go to school and he made up a song that included “Monkey slipped and fell down…monkey swinging in the tree…” In the car I asked him to sing it again and he came up with a quite different version. We were driving at 2:20. He asked “What’s ‘errand’ mean?” He then told me it was from the Seuss story about the pants with nobody inside them.

We got to the school and went to the preschool playground for awhile. He worked on the car. He wanted tools, and I gave him things from the backpack, like a carabiner and his brush. He got on the teeter totter and said it was a machine that makes hammers: “it shoots out hammers… That’s enough hammers for one day.” He asked me “Isn’t it funny that Opa’s name is actually Chuck?” We saw Tessa for a minute and talked about having them over again sometime. Finally, he went to the other end of the playground and made blackberry pie. He asked me “Can you do an errand for me?” He often does that after learning a word, using it in his own talking.

We went into the preschool and upstairs to his class. He insisted I be in the classroom again, although right inside the door was okay. Class was about The Very Hungry Catepillar. I went over when he did the coloring part to help out.

As we left he looked at the block area and asked me “How can a teacher teach someone to build if they already know how to build?” I said they could help teach you new ways to build. He said “Yeah!” As we left, Mariam said “See you Monday, buddy!” August said “She called me buddy!”

We played in the music area. He wanted wooden things to hit the instruments with, so we were finding sticks and blocks when Carly showed up. She helped him find more things. He would then say “Let’s add that to our collection dimension.” Found several things. He ate some sandwich, and pulled the crust off and gave it to me. Carly was surprised that he doesn’t eat his crusts, but he never has. She said peeling it off was a good method, and he said “I reminded mama that when she makes sandwiches she can peel the crust off.”

Carly took the car to go to the mall to go to Tiv Taam and to get a pizza from Pizza Hut. August and I took his bike and walked up to his activity class. On the way he asked about whether we can know everything and why imaginary things don’t exist. I said I really liked how he thinks about things like this, and we came up with three possibilities regarding imaginary things. I said that maybe when you make something up for the first time (and he thought up a cat with no mouth
or fur or tail) you are making it exist; second was the idea that we could think of an infinite number of things, but even though the world contains billions of things it doesn’t contain an infinite number of things, so it was a good lesson in infinity, and finally I suggested that just because he doesn’t know of a cat with no mouth, fur, and tail that doesn’t mean that just such a cat doesn’t exist somewhere else in the universe.

At class he went and hid behind the pillows at first. Adele was the only other other kid there to start with and Sigal said she had asked about August at the last class (the one we missed because we were in Jordan). It was just the two of them as they started and played with the bear shapes they could climb through. Sigal then had them set up a bunch of cones and much of the rest of class involved carrying rings back and forth to put on the cones. The two other boys showed up (Ee-tie and La-veed, phonetically). He was getting tired, and Sigal commented on it. She set up the final course and August went the wrong way on something and told me “I was getting confused.” Near the end he was climbing through the bear things and fell over. He lay there for a few seconds, pretending to sleep, until Sigal picked it up off of him. He got up and went back to playing. At the end of class he was then looking in the mirror and it turned out he had a bit of a bruise on his forehead. Later, he told me and Carly that he had been pretending he had a brain bruise and had shut off – that is, that he had had a concussion. I had taught him about concussions earlier.

We went out and found Carly in the car. He asked her “Are you gonna drive this puppy?” He was very happy to find out that Carly had already gotten a pizza and taken it home. When I had told him we’d have pizza at home he thought we had to go and order it and wait for it and then wait even longer until we got home.

We went home and ate pizza outside. He told Carly what Shmuel had taught him about picking the green things and the weed that was actually a flower. Carly got him milk and he blew bubbles in it. He gave Carly a “hug kiss” and then told Carly “Lets take care of the plants.” “I learned something about these flowers.” A bit later he wanted to do kaleidoscope cards on the swing with her.

He came inside a bit later with a blue plastic piece that he’d found out in the yard. He wanted to put it in his new treasure boxes: “The first time I have my own treasure collection where there’s a treasure I can put in there…yeah for treasure!” Put his other treasures in the boxes as well: his Korean coins, bracelets, Q robot, etc.

Upstairs we made the beds. He likes when Carly does a thunderstorm with the sheet. Carly asked to cut his hair and he said “One time when dada cutted my hair he snipped off some skin. Right, dada?” She even offered him chocolate and he refused.

I was going to try to put him to bed, as he liked the idea of falling asleep on the big bed. Carly said goodnight and left. He requested the “Nonsense song”, which is Shearwater’s “Animal Life’ (one of the songs of sung to him hundreds of times when putting him to sleep, but just recently started singing again. He then got excited and told me “that’s where I heard ‘balance beam’!” And he asked “What’s ‘anodyne’ mean?” (Another word in the song) He asked me “With Oma not here how can I musha gusha?” And he asked what ‘agree’ means. I explained and we ended up practicing “we disagree” sentences. He asked me “What’s the name of that person that can loosen their arm and take the bracelet off?” He said I had told him, and the closest thing I came up with was ‘prosthetics’ and he said that was it. That was an interesting way for him to remember that.

He said he had changed his mind and wanted mama, but I suggested I just sing a few songs first. I sang Rock Me Mama, Animal Life, and Take Me to Church. He was asleep by 8:15, tucked into the big bed. Pleasantly surprised he fell asleep without any sort of fuss.

He was up at 7:30. He went outside with Carly and I went up to take a shower. I came down to August eating oatmeal and really excited about giving me a consequence: “Your consequence is not reading any books at all” “Mama, we really need to give dada his consequence.” Turned out there was no reason to give me a consequence; he just wanted to. Carly got him dressed and got out some pants that she remembered as being too big last time she tried them. They fit, but were now on the tight side. We went downstairs where Cherie was and she mentioned being from the 50s. I don’t think he really has much of a grasp of years, much less decades, but he caught on to what that meant and asked “How old ARe you?” They discussed generations, then he was a being a baby. They did “Spidey spidey boop” – something that Carly did with him as a baby and Cherie used to do to them. 

He was acting like a baby after that, then asked me “What’s balance beam mean?” He said “I think…” When he didn’t continue I asked “I think what?” He said “I think…that’s all you get.” We then discussed the difference between a high wire and a balance beam. He also made up a “swuggly bug” song.

We got ready to go and I told him to go put on his shoes. He then went to his shoes and told himself “I have five seconds to put my shoes on. Five, four, three…” We left right at 9.

Once we got going he asked “Do you have any Oma treats?” She had something and was trying to get him to guess what it was. She asked “Can you think of something yummy that starts with ‘rice’?” He thought about it and shouted “Rice cream!” Nice one. But it was rice crackers. We listened to Story Pirates for the first time since Chuck and Cherie have been here. Episodes 15 and 16, mainly. August and Cherie sang “Where is Thumbkin” and he’s really getting into the words of it. I got a video of them doing the Sugar Baby song together earlier in the trip, but should have gotten videos of the other songs, like the Thumbkin one, as well.

We got to Haifa and bumbled around a bit finding parking. Found an old, tight, underground lot. The guy wanted us to back in, so Chuck switched with Carly and he did it. We walked up to the science center, and Carly kept walking, up to a coffee shop to have some alone time. The Tea Pool Cafe, I think.

We were in the science center by 10:40. Stopped at the bathrooms, then August chose to head up to the science stuff. No play area. First to the da Vinci room. He started by going to the sets of gears and giving them a very complete explanation of how the sets of gears work and how they are for going different spends in a car. He explained other thing as well, and we were remembering the names of the gears from The Way Things Work. And he noticed that the ball bearings were turning more slowly than the stick he was turning. Out in the hall he demonstrated the lift thing, then we headed over to the sound room. Played around in there, then went up to the puzzle area. I solved two of the wooden puzzles that I hadn’t solved before. Back down in the sound room the three of them spent a lot of time watching the binary counting machine.

We wandered down the hall and looked at the birds for a few minutes, then across into the power plant area. August and I did the pedaling while Chuck and Cherie wandered around the rest of the room. August then wanted to show them the video screen with a delay. We played with that for a bit, then went upstairs, past the most out-of-control class of students we’ve seen there. August led us to the room with the planets in it. He sat in the phases of the moon seat that spins around and we discussed the different phases. Wandered around looking at other stuff and seeing how much he would weigh on other planets.

Then on to the magic room. Sadly, the beach ball was missing. He and I went to check to see if there was an extra me in the other room with the floating ball thing, but there wasn’t. Cherie lay on the bed of nails and August got to turn it on. Into the chemistry room to play with the big bubbles, then briefly to the dental room to brush the big teeth, then we finished up in the dark room, where August went straight to the one that you spin to see the picture projected on it. He is no longer afraid of that room – he ran right in and wasn’t bothered that I got stuck holding the door for a bunch of people. We also spent a few minutes looking at the bubbles form and catch each other in the tube of thick liquid.

We went outside and found Carly sitting on a bench, reading. We walked to the car, then I drove us down to the German Colony area where I lucked out finding a parking spot on the street. We walked up to the restaurant Douzan, mentioned in the Palestinian guidebook. Sat outside. Carly and I ordered a couple of the Arab dishes, while Chuck and Cherie got two of the salads. August mainly ate the teriyaki salad that had noodles and chicken. He was hungry when we got there so Carly was letting him ‘sneak’ apple slices under the table. He thought it was hilarious to let me catch him. Think he bonked his head or something and Carly tried to kiss it. He told her “Kisses don’t magically make this better.”

He had a religious discussion with Carly and Cherie, which started when he asked “Can you teach me something about Muslims?” She talked about Ramadan, which led him to ask “What brings you closer to God than fasting?” And then “How do you get to God.”

We left at 2:20 and walked down the hill, towards the port. He was discussing religion with Carly as we walked. She taught him the term ‘agnostic’. We saw the cranes at the port, then turned right and saw all the birds flying around the huge building. Circled around to where the car was and I drove us up to the lookout point over the Baha’i Gardens. On the way up “Rocket Man” came on and August asked for the volume up. Walked up a couple blocks to get there. We spotted some cooling towers and a guy heard us and said they were for a refinery.

We walked across the street and up to the Louis Promenade park area. There’s a playground and we played there for about a half hour. He mainly played with Carly. He was a baby-talking spider on one thing and they spent the most time on one of those big logs suspended by ropes that swings back and forth. There was a big rope sort of structure but the ropes were rather loose, meaning it was harder to climb. August wanted to play on it but thought it was too hard: “Mama, they should have made that easier.” They sat together and she said he was as cute as something. He got cuter by saying “No, I’m as cute as one little bit of light.” And he put his head on Carly.

Stopped at the bathroom, then we walked back to the car about 4. On the drive back we listened to more Story Pirates, then read Seuss on his iPad: You’re Only Old Once, Oh, the Places you’ll Go, and The Zax. When we got home Chuck said “Let’s go straight to bed.” August responded with “Oh, Opa.”

We were home by 5:30. Carly went upstairs with a little headache. August said “Dada, I’ll invent a way for sound to go upstairs to the bedroom mama is in.” We watched the Magic Treehouse Lost in Space episode together. He ate nutty noodles for dinner using the stool as a table again. Cherie used her reverse psychology one more time: “Dont eat that cauliflower!” We got dinner, and August came to Carly and asked “Mama, do you want to go outside? It’s so beautiful out there…fresh and rosy fingered.” We ate outside, and August went down the slide several times, playing with and taking instructions from Chuck.

After dinner he played GarageBand with Cherie again. He went to the bathroom and decided it was time for us to read The Way Things Work. And he had some Cheerios. We read about pullies, cranes, screws, escalators, elevators, screws, faucets, and drills. Carly took him up at 8. He and Cherie did “Where is Thumbkin” again. Had a good goodnight to
Oma and Opa, then in the bedroom was joking about “I love the name Poop Poop” He brought the name up a few times today – it was a name the boy in his coding class called himself yesterday before class. And I pointed out that August liked to change his name too (right before that, going up the stairs, August had told me he had a screen on him where he could change his name). I left them at 8:30 and they fell asleep together.