He slept soundly. I went up and woke him up at 8. He cuddled with Carly on the couch. After a bit he asked to do Minecraft, asking Carly, “Can I make beautiful houses with you?” Carly reminded him that he was going to teach her about survival mode, so they did that. He and I had cereal and strawberries for breakfast. I started putting up our new Christmas lights. He watched for a while, then went out in the yard with Carly. They came back in as I was putting the third strip of lights on the stairway. Carly had put up his stocking on his art kitchen. I told Carly we had fulfilled our obligation to raise our child with the Judeo-Christian values and traditions we were raised with.
August was doing alone time, listening to my Christmas playlist, and playing under the table, at Carly’s feet. She and I were obliquely discussing what to put in his stocking and wrapping presents. When we were joke arguing about whether the pillow over in the red chairs (the pillowcase Cassie got from Turkey) goes with the chairs and wall hanging (it doesn’t, for the record) August told us to stop arguing and claimed we weren’t parenting. He also asked me to give him some kidding trick antibodies, which he said would overcome parenting tricks. I told him that would be like the human body telling a virus how to get past the antibodies. When his 15 minutes was up he told us he was giving us an early Christmas present of 5 extra minutes and set another timer.
When he was done with that he wanted to play more Minecraft with Carly in their Mushroom Island survival world. She was finishing up messaging Glecy and Tori about meeting Nena last night. They played, and Carly mentioned being claustrophobic in a cave and he asked what claustrophobic means.
After they finished, I finished reading A Pizza the Size of the Sun. We’ll have to check out another Prelusky book before winter break. He then had us play Sister and Myna games, where they met on the server, then Sister thought that Myna was a cat, both in real life and on Minecraft, but then she woke up to find it was just a dream and Tigey was sleeping on her. Brother was upset that Sister was playing Minecraft, but he couldn’t as he was only 2.
August then colored on his iPad, coloring more of his living room picture. He ate two bowls of oatmeal, then they got ready to go and left at 12:30. They went to Gabi’s. All I know is it went fine, as August wouldn’t give me any details when I asked later. Kind of grey today, so they decided to just walk to a cafe. Carly found a place on Google Maps a couple blocks away and they walked. It turned out to be a waffle place, and when she got the menu it was complete dessert waffles. They got one that ended up being piled high with dulce de leche and whipped cream. Carly was reminding him this was a mistake and wasn’t going to be a weekly thing and he told her she was being too dramatic.
While they were gone I did some work and was then wrapping the presents from Cherie and Chuck and watching a documentary about Palestine when they got back. He did his alone time, then came up to get me. He helped carry the presents downstairs.
We played Minecraft in our original survival world. We haven’t played that in several weeks, and it is kind of fun to see how much more we know about the game now. We were working on organizing things and crafting stuff we need, and enchanting some of our items. Efficiency and looting were words that came from that.
We then did educational videos. We watched part of the first Crash Course: Mythology video, then he remembered CGP Grey videos. He watched “‘Indian’ or ‘Native American’?” and “The Rules for Rulers”. The latter in particular was pretty complex (and cynical) for him, but he watched the whole thing. He has been exposed to the concept of leaders and their failings through some of the myths we’ve listened to and read recently.
I was watching with him and making word lists on the back of our phonics cards (transposing the lists we brainstormed on paper) and he brainstormed more words. Then he had the idea of brainstorming space words and we did that in our notebook on the iPad. He asked Carly to print out more pages of words he could read. He then did art in his art notebook on the iPad.
Meanwhile, Carly had skyped with Glecy and had also made corn, tofu, and broccoli for August. He ate, then she called her parents. August was getting silly with them, and eventually I read The Last Kids on Earth to him so Carly could talk to them. August had more couscous and played GarageBand for a while. He then had a series of Sister stories before Brother was born. She was 5 and had mice as pets but didn’t really like them and wanted a cat or dog. Her parents, who had just finished grad school, and were about to have Brother, were looking for jobs and didn’t have money for a pet. Eventually, they got job offers, but it involved moving to the research station in the Amazon for much of the year. Brother was born, and a month later they moved to the research station. Sister still wanted a cat, and met Greena, who helped her convince her parents to get a cat so they could do research on how the presence of a cat in an area affected the bird population and thus the soil in the area.
We read My Little Pony #26 (I think, with Discord and Fluttershy). I then went for a run, and Carly gave him a bath. When I got back they had the globe out and they were learning about Joesphine and Jan Michael, the kids that we support. He was really interested in learning about Josephine’s life and Zambia. He made connection to vaccines and more people must die. “She doesn’t get to play Phineas Rage!?” She likes science like him and painting, as well. They were talking about Jan as I went up to take a shower. When I came down he was drawing a picture for them.
He had a tough time going upstairs, but I finally got him up. I brushed his teeth and we listened to the Circle Round story “The Barber’s Secret”. Prompted by the story, we talked about doing nice things for people. Like doing the art for Jan, sending Glecy a video, and making a song for Minke. I reminded him he had mentioned making cookies for people at school, and we decided to do that this week. He had a question to research tomorrow: “How do kaleidoscopes work?” I had put his kaleidoscope upstairs in his room and he was looking through it. We did a short Brother game, then listened to Beethoven’s First and he fell asleep by 10:35 again.
Another full night of sleep. The only time I heard from him was when he really laughed in his sleep once. He was then up at 7:40. I went up to turn off the heater and straighten the couch. I told him Mama was downstairs and he was cuddling with her when I came down. He requested Minecraft, but we got into a debate over who would read for him first, and Carly ended up reading him some Clementine.
We all went outside for a few minutes to look at the plants and enjoy the sunshine. We then played Minecraft. We got back to our Mesa Survival world. It’s the most we’ve got into the survival aspect, and we are planting all sorts of crops and taming animals. We found a village and are making plans for trading and working up to the Normal level.
I made us cereal and strawberry for breakfast. Carly and August were drumming rhythms on the table. Carly headed outside to enjoy the sunshine. I put on the Sesame Street Christmas album. August pounded out how rhythms on the table to the music, then he moved to the couch and got his drums out and kept drumming along. I joined him on the xylophone. I liked the Bert and Ernie version of “A Christmas Story”.
They were then going to go outside and paint. Carly took a while upstairs and came down with some presents: August opened them; they were the paints from Oma and Opa. August was excited about the big bottles of white and all of the colors. He was giving them color names. They then went outside and painted. He was mostly mixing colors.
He came in and ate two bowls of the pad thai. He liked the sprouts and the broccoli from the pad see eu. He said he had lied to Mama telling her he liked all of the other dish. He ate those and we played a Brother game where he tried to cook pad thai and brownies on his own. His pad thai ended up too spicy and the brownies burned, and he got burnt a lot.
He then was ready for alone time and did 15 minutes of alone time, doing more drumming. We played Minecraft and that went well, but he had a really hard time stopping after 30 minutes. He started hitting me, then I got him to stay on the couch. He eventually got up and got his iPad. I told him he could only use it for setting a timer for his time in, if he wanted. He apparently set it for 30 or 40 minutes, and after ten minutes or so when Carly tried to talk to him he told her he wasn’t talking to anyone for 30 minutes.
I was cleaning up and working on stuff, and eventually he came over to me at the table and talked to me. I asked him about the timer he set and he admitted, “I was hoping some of it could count as alone time.” We talked, and negotiated, for a long time. He couldn’t really remember why he got upset, and he told me he’d try to end calmly if I’d play with him for his next 30 minutes. He did a few more minutes of alone time, then we played 30 minutes more. He did indeed put his iPad away just fine when we were done.
He then had Brother games. We did some old ones, like Brother cutting his feet and going in the Dead Sea (with the twist of Bar dropping tons of fresh water on him), having dried skin (Bar used a claw to pick him up and wash him in a tub of petroleum jelly), etc. He and I had some pita with tahini (he was skeptical about the tahini at first but tried it and liked it). I got him to get dressed. Carly had found a pair of crocs over across the street that were his size. He tried them and they are going to be his going-into-the-yard shoes. They left for a walk at 3:05.
They walked in a circle (August pointed out it was actually a square) and were back about 3:30. He ate some lunch (broccoli and couscous). As we got going, he asked me, “Were you alive in the industrial evolution?” He then told us he had a new simile: “a country’s military is like its immune system.”
We were driving at 4:10. Carly drove. We listened to the Circle Round story “The Magic Paintbrush”. Then I read from _A Pizza the Size of the Sun. Indelible was a word of the day. We then put music on. It was a new album I’d seen, called I Love Rainy Days by Daniel Tashian. He asked me to put the first song on his playlist. Then a couple minutes later I looked over to find him falling asleep. I suggested things to wake him up, but then asked if I should just let him rest. He said to let him rest, so I did. I figured it best for him to be rested for the party.
I had asked Omar and Marc for leads on places to buy Christmas lights and paper. Omar told us about a book store called Saba. We parked, woke up August, and first found the Hana book store. We got three rolls of wrapping paper there, and the guy directed us to the Saba store a 100 meters farther south. There, we got two strings of lights, and Carly got August a stocking. The idea of a stocking was new to him, and pretty exciting.
We went back to the car and headed to the center for dinner. Omar had said we should come early, at 6, and as we headed there, a couple minutes away, I said, “We have impeccable timing.” He asked what impeccable meant. Traffic was crazy though, and by the time we parked and walked in a sort of half circle it was a little after 6 when we found the place. We found a poster, and then Androus came in, so we knew we were in the right place.
We went down to the hall and found Marc and Lydia, then Omar and Heba and Ghada. Ghada had broken her arm just falling out of bed about a month ago and had to have surgery. Sounded very much like my break. It had happened while Omar was in the Netherlands.
Timing was kind of funny. Omar had told me it started at 6:30. Poster said 7. Reality was it was sometime after that. There was a musical group getting ready to perform, and August and I looked at their instruments and he did some dancing while they tuned their instruments. We ended up sitting at a table in the back right. Also at our table were Marc and Annette (we met them at Marc’s birthday, but the rest of her family wasn’t here), a woman named Nema (sp?) who was from the Phillipines and Toronto sat across from August, and a guy named Peter sat across from me. He is a reporter for the Daily News, and used to be with the Daily Telegraph. He is in the West Bank writing an article about the Christian community here. Andraous and his wife were down at the end. And Omar and Ghada were with us on and off. As he was getting more comfortable, at one point August sang a couple songs/tunes for them.
There were some prayers in Arabic and Aramaic at the beginning. There was a first course of salads and pita and hummus, etc. Peter was pouring the wine. August had orange drink and seconds and thirds. We doled it out in little bits, and that strung him along for quite a while. Sometime after 9 we were still waiting for the main course. I took August up to where Ghada was running down a little ramp. The sort of played together a bit. She was being shy though, but smiling at us a lot.
August really wanted to hold out for dessert. Carly took him out of the hall and read some Clementine to him early on, then I took him out another time and he sat and watched Brainchild. Carly and I switched off. He did it, and some time around 10 dessert (the fried sweet cheese stuff, which was delicious) came. August ate one of his, and offered me the second. Carly had found out that Nena knows Jeff and Tori, who now live in Thailand, after being with us in Korea for 4 years. She is friends with Tori’s mom (who is also from the Philippines and lives in Toronto). Carly offered to give her a ride back to where she was staying in Old Jerusalem.
I drove on the way back. It took about half an hour to get to the place she was staying. It involved driving through the Lion Gate into Old Jerusalem (just north of the Dome of the Rock) and a few hundred meters up this crazy one-lane street, with cars squeezing by in the other direction. We dropped her off, then had to pull off turning around with the use of a little side street.
August had lasted, looking out the window, until we dropped her off, then fell asleep some time around 11. I got us home just after midnight. I carried him up to bed. When we had started driving he had asked us to just carry him up when we got home so he wouldn’t have to go back to sleep. He was just aware enough to sit up so I could take his vest off, then he curled up on his stomach, legs pulled up, and was soundly asleep.
He slept through the night again! And I realized I hadn’t turned the heat back on last night, after he requested the fan mode when he was falling asleep. He looked nice and cozy with his furry blanket, but I turned it on when I got up, although reduced it to 24 degrees.
I got him up at 7:45. He was totally cuddled in his blanket, the soft purple one from Max, which has now become his. We read half of a Dahl poem about the tortoise and the hare, then played Minecraft. When it was done we had cereal and strawberries for breakfast and he had us play Brother games involving Minecraft. He had a scenario where Brother added one more horse and it crashed the server. When I had Sister or someone ask, “Why’s the server so slow?” He laughed and spit out his cereal.
We finished Dahl’s “Tortoise and Hare” and he then remembered to change to countdown to 12. We were then Brother and Myna the cat. I suggested a Circle Round story so we listened to “The Drum” and he drew a picture in Procreate, starting with just a blank canvas. He had the idea of turning a photo into lines, so I downloaded Inkwork and we took a photo of the living room and he put it in Peocreate and colored it.
He liked the idea of quesadilla for lunch, and as we ate he requested an educational video and we watched a Smarter Every Day video on golf balls. He loved that, and we learned about elastic deformation, plastic deformation, and failure. August excitedly told me about a golf ball he shot in space. We then watched a Mark Roper video about planting 20,000,000 trees. August learned about how the mass of a tree comes from the air, and when talking about using drones to plant trees the video taught us the word biomimicry.
I got him upstair to change. He had another Brother game where Brother took Baby Ssister for show and tell. Bar took them on crazy field trips and showed the class a time loop machine. And Bar brought a bullet ant colony to the class.
We got going to the mall. Before we went out he said we needed to drive as he doesn’t trust the forecast in the rainy season (valid point). But I got him in the yard for a few minutes, then when we got walking he was telling me about something and just kept walking. We got to the base of the stairs on the bridge before he said “Wait, why are we walking?” But then he chose to walk the ramp route, saying he liked the path. Once on the bridge I carried him; the wind was bothering him and he put his head down on my shoulder. His eyes were also seeming to be a bit itchy earlier. Could be allergies, and we’ll start on the allergy medicine again, but we also learned later from Carly that the pollution was really high today. August commented on how hazy/foggy it looked, and it could have just been all the dust in the air.
As we got to the mall August pointed out a dead cat a few feet from the parking lot. We talked about that, and he handled it well. The mall was really busy, and I wondered why I had thought I’d be able to get my hair cut. First, we stopped at the candy stand (we’d also discussed the Arcaffe to get another donut, but he decided to go with the candy stand) and he chose two red licorice rolls. It was a total of 3 shekels. He then told me one was for me. I told him that was very nice. I had a little, and let him eat the rest of it.
And then the luck; at the barber the guy told me I could wait. There was just the guy he was finishing up, and a woman waiting. She was taking up the entire bench with her and her stuff, so August and I sat down outside the doorway and he finished his treat and we did a Brother game where he gets a robot from Bar to program himself. I was in quick enough. The woman working there filled August’s water bottle for him, and he watched while I got my hair cut. When it was done August told me I looked like a librarian or teacher or professor or principal.
He had suggested we got something at the druze place again. I said we were going to Giraffe today, but that would be a good idea next week with Carly so she could have a fresh sandwich from there. But then I remembered the dolma. August didn’t know what I was talking about. She was out of them, but the Israeli place next to her did. We bought a container, then went to walk outside to sit and eat some. I remembered the shoe store though and we stopped to look at rain boots. Being Friday, and the beginning of the rainy season, everyone else was doing the same. They had August’s sizes in the rocket rain boots, and he tried the 29s, 31s, and 30s. The 31s were too big, then he had the idea of trying a 29 on one foot and a 30 on the other. A great idea. He chose the 30s. We had to wait several minutes inside the busy store to pay. August sat on a store chair and looked at baby shoes. He said, “It’s hard to imagine feet that small.”
We then went outside and sat on the bench and ate some dolma. He ate a bunch, then said we should go in on the airplane, and he ate some more. We then went to Giraffe. We got the menu and I found the pad see eu that Carly had mentioned wanting and we also got shrimp pad thai. They have lime-infused water and August wanted some. We used one of our straws. We went outside and drank that and read The Last Kids on Earth and he ate more of the dolma.
When the food was ready it came in a big plastic bag. We had done our best to refuse plastic on this trip but still ended up with tons. We headed out the back of the mall and home. We said goodbye to the dead cat. He had me carry him again over the bridge so he could put down his head.
At the house he put on his boots and coat to try them out walking around the yard. We then did 15 minutes of Minecraft (what he had left) and read more of The Last Kids on Earth. We had chocolate milk, then we did a Brother game with each of them having a bad dream, then needing to pee. Sisters Minecraft worlds were missing, as were her backups, their Mom’s research materials and notes were missing, and Brother’s involved painting the castle that Bar and Sister were making in Minecraft with every color imaginable, only to find it didn’t end or something like that.
We were then trying to use Hooked on Phonics, but the internet was reeeaaaallllly sssllllooowww and has been recently. I did speed tests on it, and August loved doing the speed tests over and over, seeing the exact numbers he would get for the upload and download speeds.
Carly got home, and we used the cellular connection on her phone to download the Hooked on Phonics files. We found August’s sweet spot, around level 13 or 14 of the app. He found the word activities quite easy, involving SH and CH and the such, but said the reading activities with sentences were hard.
I was tired and rested on the couch for a few minutes, then had dinner. They started painting, and August was saying/practicing “yellow” and doing pretty well. He’s moving on to the medial L sounds. I went for a run. They did art and were reading Clementine when I got back.
I showered and switched with Carly. He and I left a skype video for my parents then sent messages to Vivian on Wizard School. He sent her a lovely video, and did some art. My parents were then on and we skyped with them for about half an hour. Dad had just had an MRI on his knee today. Paul studying a lot. Bunco party the night before and they left with the Frangos they came with.
We said goodbye, then did a Brother game and he ate crackers and pate. Carly took him up to a bath. Don’t know what assassination attempt they discussed tonight. I had promised him a full Brother and Sister game after his bath, so we went in his room and did the Tigey/Cheetey/and Tigey-ey story line. We distinguished that they would have different origins: Tigey was found alone, Cheetey was caught in a trap, and Tigey-ey initally attacked them.
Instead of fighting the Cheerios every night I’ve decided to embrace it, as he seems to do most of his eating in the evening. So I had brought up a full bowl of them for him. August asked two questions for us to look up later: Why do you get allergies? and Why do Cheerios go stale? We listened to the Circle Round story “Three Wishes”. August pretty randomly asked, “Could you estimate how many punctuation marks you have used in your life?” We listened to Beethoven’s First Symphony (his request) and he was asleep by 9:35, a full 50 minutes to an hour earlier than he has been doing.
He got up to go to the bathroom in the dark. I went with him and got him back to bed, and when I got back to my bed it was 5:30. I thought it was a good hour earlier. So then Carly was getting up a few minutes later, then my alarm going off. But he’s doing a great job sleeping in his bed, after not calling out to me at all the previous night as well. So the next step is probably just walking him back to his bed when he does get up and seeing if he’ll go back to sleep on his own so I can return to the couch. Then at some point maybe I can move back to the big bedroom, and just keep both doors open. Kind of the wrong time of year to do that though.
He went up to wake him up at 7:50. He sat up and flopped back down a couple of different ways before getting up. We went downstairs and I started to read Presto & Zesto in Limboland. But he then remembered his countdown. He went and changed it to 13, then I read a few Prelutsky poems. We then played Minecraft.
Cereal and strawberries for breakfast. We watched a video about updates coming to Minecraft. That led to a Brother game of him living in the nether (because the update is about improvements to the nether) and Myna turning into a cat. I paused the game so we could get ready for Gilad and Lauren coming over. He had a funny saying in the mirror as he got dressed: “Mesh me smoosh smoosh.” He put his shirt on backwards but wanted to keep it that way: “That’s my argument: comfy.” He played “Yankee Doodle on the toy piano: “I think I’ve mastered ‘Yankee Doodle’.” “You said the chorus was downright super hard.” And he requested pineapple upside down cake for his birthday.
August then typed on my iPad in Pages as I did some cleaning and set up MEL Chemistry on his iPad for experiments. I also tried cancelling the Christmas lights, as I couldn’t figure out if they were for 220V. No luck, even though it was hours before the status of the lights changed to ‘shipping’, so I think we bought lights we can’t use.
Gilad and Lauren showed up. August said hi, but initially walked around and said, “I’m bored.” I suggested they start with Legos and they did. They made an abstract city sort of thing and August showed me a few times. I suggested he had been inspired by his building in Minecraft, which is often things on pillars up in the air, and he agreed with me, and repeated that a couple times.
We then, at August’s suggestion, got out the keyboard and they played in GarageBand. Lauren was really interested in it, and how Gilad could put on headphones and play with music as much as he wanted. It is difficult right now with a piano right in the middle of their apartment, and his dad working from home and other siblings around.
Finally, we did one of the Egyptian Night experiments from MEL Chemistry. It was simple: sprinkling iron dust on candles. They loved it, and it brought up questions about how fireworks work and the different colors, which we’ll be able to research later. Along the way they had shared a container of homemade cashew crackers that were really really good. August asked her in detail how they were made. We also cut up strawberries.
She got a call from her husband saying their oldest son was sick and needed to be picked up at school. She called him and had to convince him to leave school; he’s been soldiering through for a few days, and was worried about what his teachers would think. They left about 12:30.
August and I did timelapse photos of candles. We set up a new one and propped up the phone and did a timelapse of its entire burn. Meanwhile, August wrote a few sentences in Free Speech. Not a long reading time today, but okay, and at his request. He then requested Circle Round and we listened to “The Magic Cloth” and he colored on his picture and I exercised. When he finished his picture, he walked around the room in sort of his usual circles, listening to the rest of the story.
We played 30 minutes of Minecraft. We exited the nether this morning, which put us a long way away from ‘home’ in the regular world, and were now working our way home. We were then cleaning up before going to get Eve. I was putting the MEL Chemistry set away as he didn’t want to do an experiment with her today and one of the class containers slipped and broke on the floor. He handled it pretty well, just asking for another. Think the small ones at Max or Ikea are the same size.
As we left he had a Brother game with him practicing kidding tricks. He gave Brother a level 7 test, trying to get Christmas presents early. He really wanted me to have Brother figure this one out and overcome the arguments of his parents; I didn’t really want this to succeed, lest August then expect the same arguments to work on us. So I had him succeed in convincing them to let him open one present early, specifically one that his siblings could also play with. August then said the gift Brother opened was a present from Bar: “It’s a Polytopia board game.” The video this morning mentioned a board game about Minecraft, so I think that’s where that idea came from.
There were crazy winds as we left at 2:30, and the sound of thunder off in the distance. About half a block from the house we felt the first drops, then it quickly started pouring. We were lucky to have gotten out of the house, but then there was another problem: getting August out of the car at the school. I was contacting both Heather and Carly, about holding onto Eve for a few minutes or bringing her out, but then the rain stopped enough to get August out of the car in his raincoat. It was still quite stressful for him, and he insisted I also have the umbrella up as it started to rain a bit. We made it to the school, then I had to hold him for a few minutes.
When we went down the stairs he saw Natalie. We talked to her for a couple minutes about how quickly she had grabbed all of their rain gear before jumping in the car to come to school. He finally felt better as we waited for Eve to come out. She came out, and as we talked about the rain and our plans headed to the library. I then realized we hadn’t checked in with Heather and Zoe and circled back around to the elementary school and found them. Zoe looked a bit upset, and I think it was because she thought we had left. On the way back from the library Eve said that Zoe didn’t have a ukulele lesson today and had wanted to come with us.
So we happily took Zoe, and all four of us went to the library. I returned a few books and found the Nicola Davies book What’s Eating You? about parasites and checked it out. Heather had brought bags of snack mix to them in the library, so we left and headed home so they could eat those.
The rain had stopped so no issues. The kids were great until we got in the house. Eve immediately went to the chalkboard, before I was even really in the house, and erased it. It was August’s Christmas countdown and he got upset and pushed Eve. I separated him, and I talked to him and Zoe did a wonderful job talking to Eve. I heard her tell Eve how she needed to ask before doing things like that, and that she could apologize for it before August apologized. It took August a couple minutes to cool down, but it was all sped up by me offering everyone chocolate milk. There was a little further negotiations over who got the last of the banana milk in theirs, but then they all drank their milk and Eve and August said sorry to each other and everything was fine after that.
First, they played with the musical instruments, sort of playing a keyless version of “Jingle Bells” together. They also hooked up the keyboard and did a good job of sharing that; that got played on and off for the rest of the playdate. Eve and August then taped me into the black chair, which allowed me to rest and be still, then August, and Zoe a bit, were taping Eve in. It was uncomfortable for her arms, so they mainly taped in her feet and were talking about them as if they were entities of their own, calling them “leggies.” August said, “Who’s the boss now, leggies?” I put out crackers and cheese and they ate several of those. Later, about 5, Eve was hungry and she and Zoe both had a peach yogurt, and August requested crackers and pate. I realized that August had never had lunch; while we had played Minecraft I had heated leftover fishsticks for myself. He had said he would eat the leftover salmon, but that he wasn’t hungry at that time. I told him to tell me when he was hungry, and he never did.
Carly had gotten home around 4:30. She was still getting over a headache that had been affecting her since yesterday, I think, but thought it was near the end. She went upstairs. August called one of us queen, and asked, “What do you need, my Majesty?”
They were then playing with all of the mixed up play dough. Zoe asked August “Do you know what an asteroid is?” He replied, “A big space rock in space that sometimes collides with a planet or a comet or an asteroid or a black hole…or anything in space.” There was also a play dough lasagna made, and they were putting Lego people in balls of play dough.
About 5:10 August and Eve started potions. Heather got here at 5:30 and probably stayed about 15 minutes to chat and let the girls clean up. We talked about winter break plans and she told us about a castle in northern Israel that you can stay close to and is supposed to be really nice. We looked it up and it is 2 hours away.
They left, then Carly went to the store for a few things, and August and I played the rest of his Minecraft time (he had earned it all earlier, but agreed to save half of it until the evening). Carly got home as we were finishing up. We then had a Sister and Myna playing Minecraft game. And we listened to “Always”; he had started figuring out on his own how to play the melody earlier while playing with Eve.
I got him nutty noodles and he ate firsts and seconds. He then offered to come up with a parenting trick for Carly. When she asked for a way to get him upstairs he passed and wouldn’t address that one. Traveling came up, and he wanted to go to another country (he asked for Athens again). When I mentioned Germany he thought it sounded like a bad country. I think this was because we had talked about World War II yesterday or the other day (we were on errands walking around somewhere). So we talked more about it now, and how all the Nazis were put in jail and it is a different country now. He’s brought up World War II and I a couple times, asking who was on each side a couple times, and which was the most intense war and why.
We then read much of the What’s Eating You? book. Carly took a photo of the page about how people choose mates that smell good to them because they have complementary parts of immune systems to use as an interesting fact for her homeroom. He wanted specifically things about the immune system. He then went and hung out with Carly in the red chairs while I looked for another book on the immune system.
He used her phone to take photos and slo-mos of the fan. He then left it pointing at the ceiling for a timelapse. I didn’t realize it was there, and he got some good timelapse of my elbow. He ate a couple pickles, and shared some pita and hummus with me. I checked out a DK book on the human body and we read the pages on the immune pages, then pages about other topics. Pathogen, superbug, and glossary were all words of the day from that (there were other words through the day that I forgot to write down; there usually are, but today it seems like I was forgetting to write down a lot of them, including one Carly had just taught him as they sat in the red chair).
Cassie called on FaceTime. August ran over to Carly at the red chairs, and the first thing Colin said was “Poop!” So I’m not sure who is entertaining whom with the poop talk; seems a pretty two-way street. They were all back in Pennsylvania now. Vivian and Colin had each gotten a (presumably small) Christmas tree of their own so they could each decorate one. They saw August’s presents and Colin wanted August to open them. Cassie was impressed we could have them out like that. August said, “Could you ask Tia Cassie if she can teach me all about the immune system because she knows everything and I really want to know about the immune system.” When she was struggling to remember something for him I said he should tell her something. And he told her about how fevers are good for the body. She agreed and talked about how sometimes doctors tell you not to take fever-reducing medicine. She joked that she takes it anyway, and they discussed whether you should or not. I think August was teling her you should listen to the doctor.
While they were talking he came and whispered to me that he hadn’t watched educational videos today. Watched Ted-Ed and Kurzgesagt videos about the immune system.
August succeeded in wearing his shirt backwards all day. After Skype, he and I had a Brother game where he was an axolotl, after we had seen a picture of a stuffed one at the end of the video. Brother was using the scuba gear that Bar had given him and found it.
We then headed upstairs. August had been talking about his kidding tricks website, and was typing with his hands in the air, adding information to the website. As we went up, he was using his ‘tricks’. I caught him at one, as he started to tell Carly an interesting fact about axolotls or something to delay her.
Upstairs, Carly gave him a bath. I heard her reading to him about Garfield being shot and his infection and how people blamed the plumbing/fumes in the White House, and not the open wound that doctors kept digging around in with their fingers for his death. And it how it was because they didn’t understand germs yet. I think it was from a PBS article or something.
They brushed his teeth and he flossed seven of his teeth. He made sure she was reusing his floss stick, and talked about how he was saving plastic. We talked more about that, and how we reuse water bottles and don’t buy plastic bottles. He remembered the bottles of water that were waiting for us when we moved in and how he liked them. He remembered them because they had colorful tops. I don’t really remember, but Carly does. That led to a discussion of his favorite colors. We remembered his list, and he now added gold to purple, pink, peach, lavender, violet, and ultraviolet. I think because he likes the gold stuff in Minecraft.
We weren’t in bed until after 9:30. We read a couple chapters of The 117-Story Treehouse. We had brought Cheerios up with us, but he now finished them and requested more at 10 again. We listened to a Circle Round story called “The Owner of the Sun”. I was basically asleep at the end of it, but he then said he should go to the bathroom, so we did that. Back in the room we listened to the Tallis Scholars and he was finally asleep a little after 10:30.
He was up at 7:50. Downstairs he first insisted on Minecraft, but I said I wanted to read funny poems first. I started making up my own and he helped me come up with:
Spaghetti in my pants
That’s how I tart my day
Spaghetti in my pants
I like my pants that way
Spaghetti in my pants
It really is quite squishy
Spaghetti in my pants
My mom thinks that is fishy
Spaghetti in my pants
You might think that sounds bad
But with spaghetti in my pants
I know I won’t feel sad
I read a few poems in A Pizza the Size of the Sun, then we did Minecraft. It was the new 1.14 update, which now has bees. So we did some more TNT fun, then started playing with the bees. August really liked making and taking care of the bees. He made an impromptu little poem that went “I’m happy to regurgitate everything I hear and everything you say
I’m happy to regurgitate every day”
We were supposed to have just enough time to finish, eat breakfast, then go to the bank before going to Shani’s. When it seemed like his iPad time was going long, as he ate his oatmeal, I realized that I had had to turn of the screen time limits on his iPad last night to update the phone I’m using and I’d forgot to turn it back on. And he had in fact had extra time this morning. He reluctantly stopped playing right away, and we got going.
The parking lot in town was crazy, as was all of downtown. We parked in our usual backup spot and went to the bank, paying Gabi and getting cash for Shani.
At her house he saw the new stretchy swing and checked it out. He noted its smell. Shani said she had talked to Gabi more at length, although she only said he said he was doing well. He ran to see the schedule. First was the swing. Trying to get into the swing was a challenge. He loved spinning and swinging in it.
He requested the sensory overload video he had watched with her a few weeks ago. She then got him to crawl through the hole swing, which was pretty stressful for him, but he made it. Seems like something that would have been easier for him if he’d seen someone do it first.
We watched the video on my phone. She thought it was interesting that he’s requested it in the swing. She seemed to think that the video was difficult for him to watch, and that watching it in the swing was helping him process it. I think she was overstretching, as he has never been bothered by watching any video. He simply remembered the video because this was where he watched it before.
They then went and did some drawing. He held a pencil “wrong” a couple times and she took note. He drew a house and grass.
He sang “Always” for her in the swing. He was really loud for her too and she was trying to get him to be quieter. She was giving him numbers with her fingers to indicate his volume on a scale of ten. She got preachy about needing to be able to regulate his volume around other people.
She was trying to challenge him on the swing. He was getting a little grumpy with her, and also told her she had a lot of rules. He said he did challenge himself, and when she asked for an example he said: “homeschool is a challenge…reading”
Listening to Story Pirates, we headed to the bigger Max, north of Even Yehuda. We stopped to get gas. I had to log into Dropbox on the phone to get my old passport number. August sang tunes and stood by the pump pretty patiently, although later when I told Carly he said he hadn’t felt patient.
Max was a disappointment. They have more stuff there, including clothes, but there were no lights in their Christmas decorations. They were also seemingly out of wrapping paper (there was one beat up tube of pink paper left). They did, however, have rolls of what appeared to be shimmery stuff, so we got a couple rolls, along with a roll of thick fancy ribbon. He chose the blue and white one with trees on it, rejecting the one with stockings on it because “Santa isn’t real.” He got a small can of Schweppe’s strawberry. As he started drinking it back in the car he had a short Brother game when we got in the car. Brother was having fizzy water for the first time and it burned his throat.
We listened to Story Pirates and when we got home we kept listening to Story Pirates inside (the time loop episode again). We kept listening while I cooked salmon and we wrapped the present for Carly. He had a bowl of canned corn while he waited. He ate all of that, then devoured his salmon. We then listened to the crossover episode again, and he asked if we could listen to more Circle Round. He listened to “Nilsa and the Troll”.
It was really interesting to see how focused he was on the stories. When we were wrapping the present, starting with green and blue construction paper, he wasn’t saying anything and I thought he didn’t like how we were wrapping it. I asked, and he perked up, saying, “I love it!” He was quiet because he was listening intently. He added plenty of tape to the present. But the wrapping paper stuff turned out to be…just clear plastic. Such a waste. I can’t believe they’re selling just rolls of plastic. Aargh.
He heard Circle Round mention a coloring book. I said we could download their sheets and print them. He said we could just color them on the iPad. I set it up so he could color the picture from Nilsa in Procreate. He loved it and I counted that as alone time while I exercised.
We then did 30 minutes of Minecraft and bees. He was getting frustrated when he had to turn it off, so I successfully turned that into wrestling onto the couch. He was a bit hyper after that and with the microphone thing I had found in a drawer (I had also found the bouncy balls and he’d played with those and wrapped one in the mixed up play dough as well).
He kept coloring and coloring as I did some clean up. He said things like, “Circle Round was right, this is cool.” “I could do this coloring page for hours!” He also said that it was a lot better to color on there than on paper and talked about how much he could get done by the time Carly was home.
We worked on BR as he colored. He came up with words like brim and brew. It was interesting though that he thought “My hat brew away” was correct. When I said “blew away” he thought I was talking about the color. Even after this explanation, a few minutes later he argued he was correct. He was excited by both learning how to zoom in and how to use the color picker to choose a color he had used before” “It’s so easy now!’ He had earlier said he wouldn’t do the trolls fingers or more of the girl, but then when he learned to zoom he could, and he could use the same color as before.
His eyes were tired and he was rubbing them and he agreed it was time for a break. We finished BR and then I was the gym teacher making him exercise. He did jumping jacks, getting them completely correct for the first time, I think, then I was having him jump on the couch. I was doing bad jumps on the couch and having him show me and explain how to do it.
We did 30 more minutes of Minecraft. For educational videos he watched Kurzgesatz videos on “What is a Thing?” and “What is Life?” and “How Bacteria Rule Your Life” . It was hard for him to stop after that, but I started to read Ivy + Bean Break the Fossil Record and he got interested. That lasted until there was a mention of someone walking more than 800 miles on his hands, and August asked if that was real. I looked it up, and only found that there is a world record for walking 3.2 miles or so at one time. We didn’t go back to the book, as he was hungry. He had already had a little bit of Cheerios, then some strawberries. I heated some nutty noodles for him.
Carly got home. I was doing dishes. August came over to me and said, “Mama’s home.” I asked if he had said hi, and he said he hadn’t. So I told him to go say hi. While August ate I played a Brother game with him, where Brother had put way too many rainbow-related items in the atomizer (Bar had just said “the things in the rainbow sock”).
We had placed Carly’s present up with the others, and I had asked him if he was going to point it out to Carly, or whether we should wait and see how long it took for her to notice it. He chose the latter. But now, she wasn’t noticing it, so August was pretty clever. He went and asked her questions about the present behind it and she finally saw it.
He updated the countdown to 14. He then showed her the coloring, and told her about the podcast. Did more coloring on the couch. He then did color mixing while Carly did some painting. She then went upstairs for a shower and he did a little more coloring, and asked for a Circle Round story. We listened to “The Banker’s Riddles”.
I was spending money: Carly wanted an electric toothbrush, and on Amazon I ordered two strings of Christmas lights, painting canvases for Carly, a couple plug adapters, and a book on Poop by Nicola Davies for August. The book got added because we were a whole 4 cents short of free shipping.
He had more pate and carrots and we took them upstairs. We then did a Brother game where he is no longer allowed to use the atomizer, and instead was working with the animals. The robots predicted he would cause damage and get hurt, and they were right.
August washed himself in the shower for a long time. Did a great job, and asked me to wash his face for him. He asked me to turn it even colder when he was rinsing himself and said, “I think for Mama this would already be freezing.” “Mama would hate it, but I love it.” He then played in the sink. We were listening to the Music of Circle Round, as I bought the album on iTunes. Each song/story features a different instrument. He described instruments he made. One with rubber bands, one with lots of machinery. He told Carly about one with bamboo sticks to hit drums.
I took a shower and she read Junie B. Jones. As I took him to bed he told me about building a wall all the way around the world at the equator, with huge gates in it. No idea where that idea came from. He carried all of the couch pillows in on his beds and stacked them on. He immediately put petroleum jelly on his hands; he’s really gotten good at that. We read some Perlutsky poems and unorthodox was a word of the day. We listened to a Circle Round story called “Fiona and the Fairies”.
He had had crackers and pate and carrots before coming up, then brought seconds with him when he came upstairs. But now, right as I thought he was falling asleep, at 10 he insisted he was hungry. We got him a very small bowl of Cheerios. We listened to music of Circle Round, and he was asleep by 10:30.
He called down the stairs before Carly even had the door closed, right at 6:45. I ran up and got him back to sleep pretty quickly. I then went back up at 8:05 to wake him up and met him as he opened the door to come out. Don’t know when that has happened before. We read from the Perlutsky book then he went to the bathroom. As he washed his hands he told me we should launch rockets from the moon to explore space because there is less gravity.
We read more of A Pizza in the Sun. A lot of laughter, particularly about “I Think My Computer Is Crazy.” A new word was ingest, from the last one we read. We then played Minecraft and he played with TNT. He requested waterfall noises on Siri and we listened to those all morning.
He had a breakfast of French toast and we did Brother games of him buying potions and enchantments. He was singing “Chickens, chickens, chickens, all through the town…” Which he says is something that I made up when I had Brother putting chickens everywhere.
He also sang a song he said was based on Minke’s lesson, then had me accompany him on songs, first with drums, then the recorder. Then we hooked up the keyboard. He played, then wanted the app with chords and played with chords in Piano Companion.
My goal of getting to the iDigital store in the morning was fading, so I had to hurry him a bit to get going. We’d actually been almost out the door when he decided he wanted to do music. But first, we had to search for one of his red shoes. It was in the bathroom. As we left he was humming “Always” and said he wants to learn that on the piano.
We listened to Story Pirates, finishing the Thanksgiving episode and listening to the latest, on our way down to the Ramat Aviv Mall to go to the iDigital store to get my phone fixed. We spotted donuts at an Arcaffe stand as we walked through the mall and he pointed out the kind that looked like the kind he had the other day. At the iDigital store he sat on a stool and played music on the Piano Companion app, then did “satellite work” on the graphing calculator. It went pretty quickly for me. I had come to this mall, hoping that they had a full service center at this location (the guy at the local iDigital had told us that once) but it still ended up going in an envelope to go to another facility. And will take five days. Sigh. When I was done, August told me the problem he was working on and said, “That’s approximately half of the gravitational pull of a medium-sized black hole.”
We walked back and each got a donut. He got one with white chocolate balls covering it, and I got one with a dob of caramel on the top, and it turned out to be filled with it as well. His had the white filling, and he loved it. We walked a bit and found a bench by some plants and ate them. We then discussed a Christmas present for Carly.
With that in mind, and the weather being nice now, we drove over to the waterfront, parking by the power station. Surprisingly busy though, and we parked even farther away, at a free parking lot. August rode his bike. He enjoyed riding around in a couple of big puddles, and said he liked the waves. I was helping push him on the brick sidewalks, and realized he kept stopping his pedaling. He was running a Brother game on the way. Bar had a simulation room (based on the Story Pirates episode) and Brother got to use it. First he was just using it to play Minecraft, like usual, then was doing other things. He then had a story where Brother was having an ice cream dream and was woken up, then arguing and fighting with his parents, wanting ice cream in the morning. August was calling Brother’s arguments his “kidding tricks” and the responses from the parents the “antibodies.”
When we got to the boardwalk we stopped on a stone bench for a few minutes. We kept playing the Brother games and we watched a guy stencil the slippery signs. There was also the smell of electrical work, and August remembered the electrical fire at school.
We got going and he rode on the boardwalk, going down the short hills a few times. Bar was using the simulator to test Brother’s argument/negotiation skills, going to higher levels. I was actually trying to make them as useful as possible, showing Brother compromise and agree with reason.
We finally went into the book store (the one attached to the Greg Cafe that we’ve gone to on his birthday outings and where we ate lunch with Chuck and Cherie) and August had fun riffling the corners of the pages of books. We found the English section, where they have leather-bound children’s books. We found a leather-bound copy of Swiss Family Robinson and a book of mythology in a slipcase. The idea was that they were books that were gifts for Carly, but also for August, as she could read them to him.
Back outside he had Brother getting in an argument with Baby Sister over a toy and figuring out how to get a tiger toy she was playing with (he found another toy she would like and offered to trade). He then was arguing with his parents, saying he wanted a new bike and not just Sister’s old bike. He lost that one, and August was providing some of the parent arguments. August was also taking photos and set the phone against a pole to get a cool time-lapse of people on the boardwalk and of the clouds. He then had us move to another bench area to do a “special Brother and Sister game” and we’d do “around Christmas.” An idea he started yesterday, although I’m not sure what makes them special. In it, he had Myna taking 50 years to create something. It was a “moving model of the earth charging over time…climate change and everything…” Sister had been wondering why Myna was so busy. In the meantime, Sister had made a complete fantasy spherical world in Minecraft. Bar then came along and had a machine that made things from the real world into Minecraft. So she helped Sister add to her world, for example, scanning a photo of minerals to add all sorts of minerals throughout the world, and scanning all the mythology of the world to add mythology, but with a changer option that would change everything slightly. They did the same with archeological ruins.
We were back to the car at 2:05. There was a cat that was meowing to us a lot. August said it was hurt, and it turned out it had white paint over it, like it had rolled on one of those signs we saw the guy painting. It did have a bald area on one leg where it had been trying to like the paint off.
We listened to more Story Pirates and were home by 2:50. He flew a paper airplane outside. He came in and told me, “Did you know I’m famous? For making a chocolate chip Eiffel Tower.” He had some banana milk. As he started drinking he said, “I knew it was worth doing that argument with mama to get this.” He had nutty noodles and seconds for lunch.
He did 15 minutes of alone time, then we did 30 minutes of Minecraft. It was now a little after 4 and we headed to school. We had to pick up packages, and we also wanted to check out a book of paper airplanes. We went to Carly’s classroom and she said we had perfect timing, as she was just finishing. We went to the library while she packed up and she met us there. We got one paper airplane book, and Carly asked if he would like a book about the body and we checked out a book on muscles. She had also checked out several books earlier with Liz’s help: Clementine, Junie B. Jones, Horrid Henry, Ivy & Bean, and Dahl’s The Magic Finger.
As we got home he said he wanted to watch a documentary right away, then educational videos as well. We wanted to eat dinner first and he got upset, blocking us from opening the gate. Carly and I were carrying a bunch of stuff and just wanted to go in the house. Finally got him in and he curled on the couch, then talked to me. We decided on one video about dreams (Ted-Ed) then 30 minutes of documentary later instead of his 15 earning/30 Minecraft he still had left for the day.
So we watched the Ted-Ed video together, then he had a little couscous and broccoli. Skipped the zucchini. He decided to show Carly the Simple Rockets app instead of watching a documentary. I helped him show her. He then read several Rivet books to Carly, although only in levels 1 and 2. She read him Julie B. Jones (the second book, where her brother is born–I’ve read it before, I think when I was tutoring Christina Bekris many years ago). He was hungry for popcorn and agreed to eat more carrot and broccoli. He did that, and we ate popcorn and did Brother games. It was a backstory with sister when Bother is born (turns out she is 6 years older, as I thought she was younger, but then he said she is the age of Jill, who is in 6th grade) and she didn’t want a sibling. We then moved from that to Brother in Minecraft. He was taming a fox, then trying to get a bat by building an upside down house in a cave around it.
He was still hungry so had hummus and crackers and carrot and strawberries. A few pomegranate seeds earlier as well. He finished all of that and asked for a couple more crackers for the hummus. It seems like he barely eats all day until 3 or so, then just eats constantly in the evening. We listened to and watched James song and video for “Better than That”. He then got upset when I said it was time for a bath and he said he wanted an educational video.
But we got him upstairs, and Carly gave him a bath. He was loudly singing the notes to “Always”. She read more to him (Julie B. Or Clementine, I think) and I took over sometime after 9, after she brushed his teeth and had him floss. We went straight to Ninja Focus. He had been singing songs for Carly, and now told me about his famous songs and sang a couple for me. He’s really developing a sense of tune. He was then singing a song, with words, about Ninja Focus as I looked up the password for it.
In Ninja Focus we listened to a couple of the bedtime sort of stories. He wasn’t calming down well though. He kept sitting up and looking at the screen, even though there wasn’t really anything to look at. When he was lying down he was kicking a foot against the pillow. When a story was over and I turned it to an instrumental bedtime song, he said he would show me a “Dance Party” song. I said we weren’t turning on the screen anymore and he got upset and hit me. I started to get up and made the mistake of saying that if he was hitting me he could go to sleep on his own. He started wailing, and curled up with me on the lower bed, but kind of upside down, with his head by my knees, and pulling the soft blanket around his head. I thought he’d go to sleep like that, but when he was still not asleep after several minutes I asked if he could move up on his bed. He did, but lay down upside down, with his feet on the pillow. He still took another ten minutes or so, as he kept dropping his foot on the pillow. I think it was a little after 10:30 before he finally fell asleep.
So the phone issue dragged on all day. I finally got the laptop to attempt to restore it, but it would quit right away. Did all the updates on the laptop and still know luck. It was giving me a USB error, and I realized that I hadn’t been able to restore the last thing, August’s old iPad, that was having troubles with this same computer. So, I thought it might be the laptop. So I tried the 10-year old laptop upstairs in the afternoon. It was getting further, but still no luck. Finally, Carly brought home her laptop from school. I gave up after it was getting just as far, but returning an error related to a touch ID button, and my phone has no touch ID button. So, it will be a trip to the service center tomorrow. Carly let me use her phone in the meantime.
He was up at 7:10. Carly said he had been pushing her out of bed, talking in his sleep a lot, and rolling around. I was dealing with my phone suddenly deciding to be full and then not start last night. So when he asked to play Minecraft straight away I agreed. We built a giant slug, as per his page marking last night. We then did a little mining. He also updated the Christmas countdown to 16.
He chose nutty noodles for breakfast. I had cereal and strawberries. We played Brother and Sister games. He added “Oh my gosh, Brother. Oh my gosh.” Started in Minecraft, but moved to Brother peeing stories, which get very repetitive quite quickly.
We then did music time. Short, but recorded a couple of videos for our project for Mr. Minke. We then played Simple Rocket 2 for a long time. It’s right on the edge of between just being for fun or being really educational. But, I was able to talk about things related to orbits, like geostationary and escape velocity. We then made connections by watching a space shuttle launch again and watching a Bright Side called “Why Space Shuttles Take Off Only Vertically”. He ate a piece of french toast for breakfast. He then told me a bunch of ideas for machines to get people into space. He had the Family taking their car in one and forgetting their space suits.
For word time he chose DR. We watched the Preschool Prep video on it, and then made a list of words. This time I also got him practicing writing it. We then did more playing instruments. He had me playing London Bridge on the piano and he’d change the sounds every few notes.
There’s still one small poster on the wall from when we had a calm area over there for him. We discussed it, then he wanted to see the bigger posters. They were upstairs, so we went up and found them and discussed the one with all the emotions on it and calming strategies. We talked about the ones he does well (like closing his eyes) and might like to try (he chose doing art). He then wanted to make me angry so that I could practice the calming strategies. Of course, trying to make someone angry and telling them that is what you are doing is actually pretty funny, but I pretended, and suggested listening to music.
Back downstairs we did more music for Minke, including singing songs this time. I finally got him to do alone time. He did art. He started by drawing things out of the dictionary that he had marked, but then made a chart of three circles that showed the three states of matter: a straight line was a solid, the curved line was a liquid (to show surface tension), and the wavy line was a gas to show them floating everywhere.
It started raining really hard and we watched. He had me do slo-mos of the rain. He declared today the start of the rainy season. In Minecraft we put the riptide enchantment on tridents, which allows you to basically fly through the water, and through the air when it is raining. We had fun doing that.
We had to go pick up Carly and take her to her dentist appointment. It was raining a little so he wore his rain coat. We picked her up in front of the school, listening to a Thanksgiving episode of Story Pirates (on Carly’s phone, which she had left with me). While we waited he asked, “What’s pride?” and “What’s better done than said mean?”
We dropped Carly off at the dentist. August had wanted to watch, but when she said she’d walk home and we didn’t have to wait he was fine with going. At the house we sat in the car so he could listen to more of the episode. We were home at 3:10, and when we went inside it started to rain. I heard it first and told August to hurry to the porch. Then after a couple seconds it let loose.
He asked, “What’s_ live_ mean?” As in, “The Story Pirates Creators Club is now live!” We did a long story line of brother rescuing two cheetahs. Similar, but different from the jaguars one. Almost caught by Greena but convinced her his cave held a present for her. Myna started mining nearby to get iron for pick axes and it was a crossover with Minecraft that had him questioning what was real.
He did his second alone time. He was singing pretty loudly as he did some art. He was interrupted when he spotted a spider. I had been upstairs dealing with the phone/computer and came down to help him catch it. He talked about how it was the ordinary kind of house spider here in Israel.
Carly got home. He did Minecraft with her, then me. He did a great job stopping. We did a Brother and Sister game where Dad plays Minecraft. He was trying to build up to aliens. August was laughing hilariously. First Dad fell off his pillar and had to start again. He was then knocked off by the space station, then it happened again. Finally, he got to other planets and Bar realized she hadn’t turned on the ‘aliens’ option.
August and Carly then painted. He analyzed her Lady Bird Johnson and told her, “Maybe you overdoed the funniness…just a bit.” They painted. I messed with iPhone stuff. He mainly did his color mixing, which he loved, but he later also showed me where she had let him use her tiny paintbrush to paint a little on the cheek.
He quoted the poem from I’m Really No Good at Rhyming that ends “And on it’s sister island everyone’s named Rory…but that’s another story.” He then asked why the author didn’t write that story. I suggested he might write it in his second book. August said we needed to stay in Israel until that book came out. “I need that book!” I assured him we could get it in any country we lived in, if it ever happened.
He was then arguing for more Simple Rockets time. He was really quite convincing. I tried to use humor and he shut down my volume using an invisible nob. He then wanted to argue with Carly. They argued about the best food.
We decided on watching more documentaries. He ate a couple bowls of nutty noodles and watched the last 10 or so minutes of the first episode of The Body, then watched the second episode as I sat next to him and typed. He learned all about arthritis and osteoporosis. Carly joked we were all drinking milk, and he actually wanted some. He stopped the video at one point to tell me about his machine “the undoer”, which takes apart people (from wars) and reuses those body materials to make babies. When I must have given him an interesting look he said, “What?” and compared it to reusing plastic bottles to make new ones.
He again stopped the video with a few minutes left, but only about 5 this time. He was totally in thinking mode, but focused on space stuff, not the anatomy stuff he’d just been watching. He taught Carly the phrase escape velocity. I mentioned a book I had read (2312) where they had hollowed out asteroids and turned them into cities: “I read that book and it inspired me to do something real, not just in a science fiction book…” He said he connected five space shuttles together and went to asteroids. They separated and went to different ones and used the materials to build a black hole bomb. Apparently that is from a Kurzgesagt video. “I’m going to a new state of humanity.” It was all about creating enough resources so that humans could move to other stars before the sun burns out.
I lay down on the rug and he played with my head on the floor, which got him laughing, and he was going crazy with Minecraft references. Before we went upstairs he told Carly, “I saw something that isn’t good in your painting: Symmetry. You need more symmetry.” “And don’t overdo the yellow!” He wanted her to work on it while we were upstairs.
He was really giggly and funny and said, “I’m in funny mode.” We wrestled on the couch, which we haven’t really done recently. He was chanting “That’s a silly thing to do, that’s a silly thing to say” which is from years ago, and I think I mentioned it earlier in the day.
Bar invented an “infinite treats machine” and Myna and Brother went crazy eating treats. Carly came up a little after 8 to give him his bath. He was a little reluctant to go take a bath, but he was starting to fade just a little (he had turned the heater to fan mode a while ago) and he just lay across the top of me for a couple minutes then called out to Carly and went out to her on his own. She gave him a bath. He was talking about how he still doesn’t like Uncle Paul’s car, and how he is upset with Nava for the whole poop incident.
When they were done she read him more of Timmy Failure. He and I had read a few chapters of it but then kind of forgotten about it. She said she had started reading it to him yesterday and he was laughing a lot. I had him show her what he noticed earlier about the new pillow case we had bought: it was missing one of its red dots. Timmy Failure was a bit too difficult for August (the jokes are pretty complex) so Carly was looking at reading levels and decided to try Clementine again. They read the free sample of the first book.
He said good night and I took him in to bed. Preschool came up some how and we discussed his negative views of preschool and teachers he hated. Of one of the nicer teachers, he still said “She’s on the list,” although he didn’t say where on it. We read a few Perlusky poems, then “The Porcupine” from Dahl. He had me repeat it.
We turned off the lights and listened to Beethoven’s Fifth. He told me the parts he liked from it. He popped up a couple times and talked about a video about polluted water and asked why they didn’t use waste water treatment plants. He popped up a minute later and was telling me about some filter machine he had made. I was half asleep, but I remember something about “poop molecules can’t fit through” He was asleep by 10.
Carly learned today that Brian is leaving as the middle school principal. He’s taken a job with Search Associates.
Not quite as smooth of a night. There was seemingly a party out on the street at 4am, which woke up both Carly and myself. August popped out of bed at 6:25. He went right back to sleep. So that technically ends the sting of sleeping through the night (I think it was 4), but he made it most of the way to morning.
He then slept until 8:12. I know that exactly as I looked at the clock and said, “Ah! It’s 8:12!” I jumped up to go wake him up, but then immediately heard him call down. He came down and played Minecraft with Carly, then ate a quesadilla. Carly read passages to him from a middle school book she is reading that is about fast food, etc.
He had a Brother game where he was getting bitten by scorpions. He then told me, “Dada, I need my science tific calculator. I need to figure out 70 million divided by 2.” “I made 70,000,000 pizzas in my lab, and half were for myself…” He was making story problems for himself. We did more problems and Carly got him ready to go. They left at 9:45.
They went up to town to do some small town shopping: the produce stand, a treat from the bakery, peanut butter from the health food store, and a few things from the small grocery store.
They got back at 11:05. He sat next to me and the sun came out, “Sun! Eh, I’m not mama. Anyway, it was probably just a cloud…” He told me about the bakery:
“We got a ‘special occasion donut’…they have it each year…fluffy bread with fake sugar on it and strawberry in the middle…” It was a Hanukkah donut. He asked Carly if he could have the savory pastry. She was talking to David about something. He was then jumping on the couch from a new angle, leaping over the folded-up blanket.
We did some Simple Rockets, then I got him to walk up to the park with me. We were going to fly paper airplanes for a few minutes, then go back and do more Simple Rockets. But he liked flying the paper airplanes so much that he decided that we could just do that as long as possible. We both tried each of the airplanes, and he decided he liked the long dart version the best. He was throwing it from the top of the ship and getting some good distance on it. Once, it went into the lawn bowling area. He was oaky with it being lost, but I walked around through the gate and got it. I had to assure him that it was okay, and not illegal.
We headed back to the house, he had some soup and seconds, then he and Carly headed to Mr. Gabi’s. August took the paper airplanes and showed them to Gabi and said they played with the army. They used play dough to make a landing pad for the helicopters.
From there they went to Herzliya Park and the big playground. No bike this time, as it wasn’t in the car and there was a good chance it would rain. But it was dray at the time, and they played on the big play structure. Carly wanted to go on the big slide but found it was closed. It has been closed off the last couple times we have been there. They went down a medium-sized slide. August grumbled about it, but went down one himself. I noted later that August has still gone down two bigger slides than Carly: this big slide once, and the big one in Korea that Carly never did.
They then went to the play area in the mall. Carly sent me photos of playing in a ball pit and launching balls from one of those air launchers, which totally reminded both of us of Korea. There was also a big area full of balloons that they played in.
They were back around 5:15. He did alone time. When he went to the bathroom he asked how banks work. We talked about loans and interest and credit card fees. Back to alone time he marked pages in the Visual Dictionary. Gastropod was a word of the day. He was marking things to make in Minecraft. Carly hadn’t gotten everything she needed at the store, so I walked over to Tiv Taam. August but with Carly, but didn’t try to do a gastropod as he said he didn’t think she knew how to do it. When I got back he was playing with the stopwatch on his iPad.
He ate nutty noodles for dinner. Three bowls. He asked about how allergies work, so we watched a couple about allergies, including the It’s Okay to Be Smart video on allergies. He then watched the Kurzgesagt video on “An antidote to dissatisfaction”. Gratitude was what that was about, and he was really interested in it.
I bought a year subscription to Curiosity Stream for 20 dollars, and we now did a documentary and popcorn. He chose one on the systems in the human body. He watched about 30 minutes of it. There were good thunderstorms during it, and we opened the door to watch the rain. He stopped the video before the end, and told me about his DNA bank machine and how “It’s as strong as human evolution…” We moved to Brother stories, and did the one where he finds twin jaguars in the jungle and tries to build an enclosure for them without Greena knowing.
I got him upstairs and he went to the bathroom. There was a new box of tissues and he was asking questions about it, then kept asking “Why?” to be funny. Carly said he’d been doing it in the car as well, and it reminded her of three-year old August. He had also fallen asleep in the car on the way home.
I gave him a bath, and he sang a cool version of “Walking in the Park”. We did the Brother and the first tiger story (where they get a tiger from the animal shelter) and in mishearing something he said I thought he said sheaf. He asked, “What’s a sheaf?” So another new word.
He asked about the next verse of “Yankee Doodle Dandy” so I looked that up and we were singing it over and over so that he could learn it. From there he wanted me to sing “London Bridge” but I couldn’t remember the words well enough so he wanted to hear a version. We listened to a few versions and added them to our iTunes library. I brushed his teeth and had Carly come up to say good night. He decided he wanted to sleep with Carly, so they went in the big bed. I left them just before 10.
And soon after that my phone, which is the biggest one and has never mentioned it was running out of space, told me it was out of space. I tried deleting things and offloading them. It didn’t seem to be working, so I shut it down and turned it back on. And it wouldn’t start back up. I started a download to restore it from the laptop, but it wasn’t done before I went to bed. So this is annoying.
Paper airplanes in the park 1:
Paper airplanes in the park 2:
Carly exercising:
August’s view of walking in the park:
Balloon fun:
DNA banks and seed banks:
His version of walking in the park:
His photo of the painting he likes in the waiting room at Mr. Gabi’s.
He slept until 7:30. I brought him down and he was groggy on the couch. Asked for Minecraft right away and was a bit grumpy when I said reading first. Carly came in and he cuddled with her. He played Minecraft with her, and started building one of our red chairs in Minecraft. I think there were a couple other things he did, like the cloth drawer thing we keep art supplies in. I made French toast for breakfast. He wanted berries on one of his, and helped mash the frozen berries after I heated them. He also had strawberry yogurt on them. Liked that, but not so much the berries.
We played through the Brother and new Baby Sister storyline, then got going to school for the Artisan Fair. Carly was staying home to work. Carly had replaced the dining room chairs inside, and placed the white ones outside to take over to the junk area. August asked if he could finally bite one. Apparently that has always been a temptation. I let him bite one.
He took a photo of his bite, then was the photographer at the Artisan Fair. He took tons, and also videos. He was changing the color settings and said, “With vivid warm it looks like we live in a more savannah country.” We did a loop of the fair and found Natalie working at the food stand, which was raising money for the gala and the charity it supports. We talked to her, and bought a chocolate muffin for August. We kept walking and went down by the preschool and looked at the gardens and the chickens, which are all grown up now, it seems. He played on the playground and took more photos and videos. I particularly liked his video of the spinning thing, and of me relaxing on the bench.
Eventually we went back up and looked at pillow cases and things at the Women in Hebron stand. We went back to the food stand and got a couple savory treats (one for each of us), two sweets (a chocolate ball thing for him, and a chocolate muffin to take to Carly, and two drinks (cappuccino for me, and a hot chocolate for me). We went down and sat at the top of the amphitheater and ate. Matt Kern came along and we talked to him for a few minutes. We talked about the number of cells in our body and related facts.
August loved the food, but didn’t think the hot chocolate was all the sweet. I told him it was because he had just eaten his very chocolate-y thing. As compared to my coffee it was really sweet. He also asked, “Why when you eat an orange and then you eat an Oreo the orange is really sour?”
We went back to the Women in Hebron stand. I was going to get two pillow cases and a pencil case, but they were more expensive than I thought and I had less cash than I thought I had. So I just got one for the pillow case upstairs. I suggested trying to find Corinne and Elise and he liked that idea. We found them with Natalie and Ben, and they went down to the playground with us. They didn’t play together much, in part because they started a hide and seek game with other kids and August had no interest in that. We got going, but then hung out by the elementary school for several more minutes as he took more photos, including me in a thinker pose.
We left at 1. It had been three hours. We noticed winged ants on the windows of our car. He added a couple “Complainer” remixes to his playlist, and sang “Every cloud is rainable / Every song is beautiful…”
At home we went right back out with his bug catcher so he could find insects. We went across the street, along the cacti, and ended up finding a bunch of ants. He started gathering some, and was surprised when one of the ground ants attacked one of the winged ants. The kids from across the street and another boy came by on their bikes and we let them look at the ants and they helped catch a bunch more. Eventually we headed home and he showed them to Carly. We didn’t keep them for a long time, but I think the two winged ones were dead by the time we let them go.
He introduced a new Brother story by starting, “‘Hey Brother,’ says Bar.” She gave him the choice of infinite Minecraft time or infinite YouTube time. I initially had him choose Minecraft, no contest, but August wanted him to be agonized by the choice. He then had Brother trying to cuddle with cute animals in Minecraft, but then accidentally hurting them and getting attacked by the animals.
I opened the box with presents from Dee and put them up. We haven’t had presents out in advance before, but I thought it would be a good experiment/practice for him. August reminded me, “Santa isn’t real.”
He did alone time, then we played in the mesa in Minecraft. He did painting with Carly. He mainly likes to watch her, and he enjoys mixing colors. He then helped Carly make paintings that she was going to use for cards for her students. He had the idea of setting up a timelapse of this, which turned out really well. He ate meat and potatoes and beets and chocolate milk for dinner. He asked me, “Could you tell me more about the people with the fascist groove?” And I told him more about East Germany.
He asked for a sliced apple. I did that, and we played Simple Rocket 2. I didn’t know if it would be too complicated, and it does have a steep learning curve, and I think we’ll be able to enjoy it together; once I get the hang of it. Basically, you build rockets and other space vehicles and try to make them work. He really liked it, and got upset when we stopped. But he then told me to think of the closest thing to what he wants to do that I would allow. That was a great idea. I thought of making paper airplanes.
He loved that. We spent the next half hour throwing my two main designs (well, the two I remember) around. We did a little Brother game, then Carly read a book to him. It is about a boy in a wheelchair. Handicapped was a new word for him. The narrator mentions the ‘fact’ that elephants are the only mammal that can’t jump. I immediately wondered about hippos and rhinos, so we looked it up. Turns out it is a common myth, and there are also others: like the sloth, for example (and probably koalas?).
I went for a run. When I came back they were still reading the I Funny TV: A Middle School Story book that she had started with him today. I took a shower, then gave August his bath and brushed his teeth. We said good night to Carly and went in to bed. We watched a little of the Nutcracker, then he wanted to go back to the beginning with the part with all the kids. He particularly liked that part. We did a lot of talking about it. He had me read some of the Roald Dahl poems while we kept it playing. We did one Ninja Focus track, then he fell asleep to Zoe Keating cello music, by 10:05.
