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Carly and August got up at 6;30. He came back in bout 15 minutes later to wake me up. He was being very cute about it, as per Carly’s instructions. We made coffee, then called my parents to Skype with them. He then started opening presents. The first was the playdough, then he grabbed Carly’s present so she opened that. It was one of the cards from an artist on that Even Yehuda arts tour and I told Carly she could take an art class. He then opened the Calder-looking thing and recognized it from Wiz Kids. He was then trying to open the play dough and asked, “Gramma and grampa, did you buy this for me? Cuz it’s hard to open.” He started to open the next one, but got distracted by collecting all of the paper so far and ripping it up to put in his tissue box. When he opened the big set of magnet blocks he hugged it, then gave them kisses over Skype and said “Star!” as he pretended to hand them a star (which is from his activity class last year).

He opened the bubble science kit and squishy sand from them, then the chess set that I bought. Up next was the box from Derek and Andrea and the kids. First out was the treats, and he ate the head of the polar bear cookie. Then came the unwrapping of the streamer ball. It had little animals and stickers and other things in it. The entire opening of the present took over 8 minutes, not including the timeout to eat the cookie. The final present was the Snaps Light science kit from Cherie and Chuck. He recognized the pieces from school.

He played with the squishy sand first as we continued to talk to my parents. Then the bubble science kit. He remembered he had a bottle of bubbles up in his closet and went and got it. Carly made Swedish pancakes and he ate all of his on the floor. We said goodbye to them, then opened the electronics kit. We started making circuits, and I taught him ‘bypass’ as the word of the day.

They kept playing with the kit while I went and took a shower. They had finished a full project with the big light thing. I then packed clothes for me and August and packed up a couple bags of food. He played some ThinkRolls, then we read Tallulah’s Tap Shoes. We finished packing (sand toys, bike, electronics kit…) and left at 11:40.

In the car he finished the polar bear cookie (he called it a cat). Then he had me acting out an odd scenario about seeing a person/robot shooting lasers on the highway. But then it turned out he was going through the data lines (on Magic School Bus he had learned not all lines are power lines) and coming out tiny at houses. He then talked about how “I put a secret lab in every house I visit.” He said he even built one where he was born. But then he claimed he had been alive nine nonillion galactic years: “So how long I’ve been alive is a crazy big number.”

We got to Cassie’s apartment, only to find someone parked in their spot. We parked behind someone else and left our phone number on the dash. Carly messaged Cassie. We unpacked a bit and tried to figure things out. Lots of remotes and switches hidden different places. August played with Taya’s Leap Pad thing and with the kitchen scale. August said, “I would hate Ramona, if she was here.” And turned that into a song with his pants down after he had gone to the bathroom. He is slow to pull up his pants now, and seems like he would walk around the house with his pants down for an hour sometimes before deciding to pull them up.

Carly learned the car belonged to a worker, and should move by 2. We went out walking at 1:20, just kind of around the block. He told us, “The animal that poops the fastest is the beaver.” 1000 times a day, he said. He started to find treasures. First a u-shaped piece of metal. Then a pen. As we circled one block his game became to write and draw on leaves and then hide them for other people to find. Or not, since he always hid them in place people wouldn’t find them. He did one, then on the second he asked me to write “From Ajay” (character in a Skybrary book) for him. For the third he asked Carly to draw “pictures of toys you’ve seen.” He then did pictures: two turtles and the internet. For the fifth he asked me to write names of toys, then it was back to Carly for trees that she had seen. When he saw it he said, “Wow. Hose are really good trees. The person that finds this one will be really happy.”

We had headed west, then circled around and back towards us to the north. Heading south we found a Swedish coffee shop/bakery called Fika. August was content in that area as there were lots of trees and leaves. I went in and got a cappuccino. August and Carly did a bunch of leaves. He said the picture he drew on the left side of one was a picture of me. I lifted him up a few time to put them in holes in trees. I got him to put one more in the open, hooking it in a loose staple on a tree that was covered with tacks and staples.

Just to the south we found a children’s store and Carly spotted rain coats. We went in and they found a space-themed coat in a 5-6 size. Big for August, but they didn’t have it in a smaller size, and we figured he could grow into it and it would last a long time. He spotted a kit for making bouncy balls though and demanded we get it. He was a bit grumpy about that for quite awhile. He hasn’t really demanded things in stores before.

We went back and checked on the car. The other hadn’t moved yet, but we had learned we had until 3:45 before the neighbors we were parked behind needed to leave. We walked over to the playground. Found little bits of sidewalk chalk and he had me write a message for “Eve June”: “Hi! I love you so much! Have a good winter break. From, August.” He then decided it could be for Taya as it was by her house. I said we could send a photo to Eve. When we were done taking photos he wanted to cross it out, but then didn’t like how his ‘X’ turned out. He wanted me to rewrite it so he could cross it out correctly, and when I refused he went and asked Carly to do it. He got distracted though by a ribbon from a balloon that was attached to the fence. He played with it, winding it through the fence and tying it: “I made something new…that’s what we do in the maker space…You reuse stuff that other people doesn’t use.”

Carly walked down by the river to read in the sun. We then played on the little merry-go-round. It turned into a time machine taking travelers back to the age of dinosaurs. I introduced the idea of the butterfly effect a la Ray Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder”. He was then destroying things in the past and causing the universe to implode, after which we would be stuck in a void that smelled like elephant butt (from Hilo). Carly had also gone back and was able to move the car.

We went back to the car and got out his bike and headed north and west to waterfront. August stopped us to look at a piece of abstract art at a gallery, then we stopped at Abulafia. We each got something. Carly a pastry with feta and spinach, August a pretzel, and me a very green piece of baklava. August hung his pretzel from his handlebar.

We stopped at some bench/stairs along the water and he played on them for a few minutes, then was at the beach at 4:10. Carly called Cassie and family. Vivian had a magic kit and was showing us magic tricks, so August wanted to do tricks for us as well. He asked me to make something and I made a racetrack-looking shape in the sand which we decorated with shells. He said, “It’s a path people walk on…it changes so the get stuck on it forever…on and on.” Kind of like our path between worlds stories. At one point he said, “Can you add more? That’s what teachers always say… That’s what Ms. Andrea says in maker space.” It turned into a game of me making shapes/art in the sand with my feet, then he was a boy destroying them.

There were three women who twice asked me to take their photos. They were having a lot of fun and clearly British. My best was not London and not Yorkshire. Turns out they were from Manchester.

We saw the sunset and left at 4:45. He kept singing “Such a complicated place” (mainly sans words). We were home at 5:15. He went to the bathroom, then we played with the light kit. Carly FaceTimed with Cherie and Chuck. We left at 6. He told us, “Smallest thing in the universe is the electronic PVC web.”

For dinner we went to a Thai restaurant called Nam. They sat us in the outside covered part. August objected, saying he didn’t like the floor (the sidewalk). He wanted to be on the wooden floor. Carly got him to agree to it. We ordered the pad see eew and curry massaman and the closest thing they had to a Thai iced tea, which turned out to be a bottle of green jasmine tea. It was good though, and came with a glass with a slice of lemon and a leaf of lemongrass in it. At the end of dinner August and I were chewing and smelling the lemongrass. We all ate well. August had fun pulling apart napkins at the end, and we took some extra napkins and toothpicks (he also had us all use a toothpick).

We stopped at the Supersell grocery store to get milk, cream, etc. August was upset he couldn’t choose something and told her, “You’re the baddest mama ever!” This is his go-to line when he is upset now, and I hear “You’re the baddest dada ever!”

Back at the house he requested music “that I would like.” I turned on KEXP to hear their Christmas coverage, including songs like Phosphorescent’s “Christmas Down Under”. August played with the hanging luggage scale they had in the kitchen, then used the Leap Pad with a Peppa Pig book about cooperation. To his credit, he didn’t like the Leap Pad ‘features’ and just wanted me to read the book. Carly FaceTimed with Derek and family again, as the kids were now up. August played with the scale some more, then we read Tallulah’s Tutu and then a chapter of Hilo 2.

We finally got him ready for bed, skipping a bath today, and I left the two of them at 9:30 (late!) and he was asleep quickly.

Christmas – first present and Carly’s present:

Saving the wrapping paper:

More presents – giving stars:

Gift from us:

Gift from Thatcher and Kayla, part 2:

Gift from Oma and Opa:

Gift from Thatcher and Kayla, part 1:

Streamer fun:

Leaf writing:

Instructions from the time machine:

That’s me on the left

New raincoat and the bouncy ball he wanted

Time machine

Thai food for Christmas dinner

Our Tel Aviv home

He got up to go to the bathroom sometime before 6. I took him. Sitting on the toilet he said, “My headphones.” We went back in to bed and he was quiet for quite awhile. But at some point he climbed over me and went down with Carly. They lay there for awhile, but eventually got up and went downstairs a little before 6. I fell back to sleep and got up just after 7. He watched Wild Kratts about seahorses and dolphins. He then wanted to be dolphins and Carly had dolphin names for each of them.

When I came down he had been drilling holes in a cardboard box and drawing his inventions on it outside. He brought the box in and said one invention was related to sound and he was going to install it on himself. He wanted to drill holes in the box inside, which we allowed for a minute, but then he started drilling in the greensand. We made him take that outside, which he did for awhile. Carly made him oatmeal, and he came back in when he was hungry. They watched a Brain Pop video on the British Empire.

He went outside with her again. Came in and tried to request “Such a complicated place” to Siri. The song is actually called “Beautiful” by Jon Auer. I requested it for him. He paused it after awhile though, and went outside to sing it, as he said I couldn’t hear him sing.

He came back in and played ThinkRolls. Carly came in and they were seahorses (after Wild Kratts in the morning). I went upstairs for a shower. When I came down I found the pillows a mess on the couch and that he had filled the cardboard box with books from the shelves. Carly went upstairs to get ready to go. He dragged his shoe around on a string of the bracelet string. He had a game where he controlled me by pointing the shoes in different directions.

At we got going, Carly told me the key wouldn’t come out of our wonky lock again. But it turned out to be good news: the lock is suddenly back to the way it is supposed to be and will retract fully, then you can take it out. We joked about what could be causing it to behave like that, and August suggested “Maybe there’s a dead cockroach in there.” We liked that hypothesis.

I sat next to him. We tried reading The Goblin’s Puzzle but he wasn’t in to it. Not enough pictures, he said. We switched to the second Shivers book and read a good chunk of that. As we got close he said he was done, then tried closing his eyes. Luckily, he stayed awake until we got there.

We parked in our usual spot at the dead end and walked to the science center. Paid (perhaps the last time before we also have to pay for August) and were playing at noon. We went to the play area for a minute, and August said, “Let’s play birdie here like we used to.” He had a nest in the dodecahedron. Carly came back and he was ready to head to the science. We started in the sound room. I was going to sit and read, then I remembered that the special exhibit closes at 1. So we went over there.

It was the one that August and I had been to last time. Much less crowded, so we were able to go straight to the fun things: the big screen that blurs your motion, the screens that project your face really big, the maze. Then there is the wall that judges how happy or sad your face is. We played around with that. If your mouth is open to show teeth it thinks you are happier. The scene was different where you draw a picture then scan it and it shows up. August colored the picture of a cat. Then into that dark room with the ‘Gravity’ video thing. Only a few minutes this time. Last time had been a half hour or more.

We played around with a voice thing where you try to make it sound scary, etc. Then he went to the area where you can talk to a stranger in the same room. He mainly liked grabbing the mic and singing really loudly. Carly was sitting by the mirror that tries to tell how old you are. August went and put on a rainbow wig and a couple hats and we played with the mirror.

August was hungry, so we went out and sat on the Pi bench. On the way he was an echo machine and explained how he makes a sound wave with his vocal cords. He then wandered over and played with the pulleys that pull up the ships.

He wanted to head inside so I went with him and let Carly read. We went into the da Vinci exhibit. He played with a bunch of the machines. At each he pretended to be a different kind of craftsman and I was his customer. It started with the lathe, where he would carve table and chair legs for me. But he was also a blacksmith making horseshoes, someone making cloth and thread, and a person driving fenceposts for me.

We went upstairs and down to the chemistry room, where we were playing with the bubbles when Carly found us. She took over and I went and sat on a bench and read. They looked around upstairs for awhile and went to the bathroom. August had them act out a town council where people gave bad ideas, like in Berenstain Bears. We left at 2:30 when he was ready to head to the cafe. I asked if he had had enough science for the day. He said yes, but then he clarified that he had had enough science center, “But I’m constantly figuring out more science.” And mentioned his brain and in his lab.

We walked up to the Tea Pool Cafe. Carly had. Gone here when we were at the science center with her parents. She just had coffee though. August was loud at first. Carly tried playing with him using the checkers and backgammon board that was there. We joked about how his teachers have done a good job of teaching about mistakes, and now they need to teach that it is okay to lose at games as well. I then read Shivers 2 to him while we waited. We ordered a shakshuka with goat cheese, a pizza sandwich thing, and tahini with veggies. I mentioned we didn’t have a word of the day and he randomly chose ‘transmit’ as the word of the day. So we discussed what it meant, as well as a transmission (and in a car). Carly took him to the bathroom and while he was in there he was singing the whole time—using only poop words, as he would point out to me.

We left at 4:15 and walked the slightly artsy street back to our car. Right by the car he saw some art on a wall and asked me to take a photo of it. I took a photo of it with him in the frame and showed him. He said, “Oh, thank you…I like the angleness of it.”

On the way home he threatened to fall asleep. I opened the Cat and the Hat TV show, which I had downloaded for him on Netflix but he had never watched. He really liked it and was laughing a lot. Made it home.

I went up and wrapped some of his presents. Carly gave him a bath, then we let him open his reindeer pajamas from Cherie. All of the kids got the same pajamas. August was excited and immediately asked to wear them to bed. He then found an empty tissue box and turned it into “storage for beautiful paper to use in my art project.”

We finished reading Shivers 2, then read Pete the Cat Saves Christmas, then a new book we have on the iPad called The Bad Seed. He had me repeat it, then we read Tallulah’s Solo and Tallulah’s Tap Shoes. I brushed his teeth and Carly came in. I left them at 8:20 and went for a walk.

Drilling the greensand:

Shoe on a string:

The screen:

Giant echoy August head:

Scary face collage with August:

In the Gravity art installation:

Talking to a stranger through the mics:

His echoes:

Being a woodworker:

Funny movements with Carly:

First present on Christmas Eve. Ugh. YouTube has decided that videos of August without a shirt are forbidden:

He was up at 6:36. He came over and told me to go back to sleep. When I came down an hour later they were making a big envelope. It was to hang on the wall so that August could put things in it. He decorated it (he said the figure at the top was a kind of snowman) and hung it up. He then dictated a message to Carly that was the instructions about how people could take something out of the envelope.

I started baking the bread, having prepared the loaves last night, and she went outside to work, dictating comments on students papers. August said he was going to have me write down a poem, but then changed his mind and wanted me to write a story called The Superhero of Wonders. I asked him for help along the way. It was about a superhero that then needs help on homework and fixing the internet when it stops working. He had me do a second story called The Bad Pirate and the Good Little Girl. It was about a girl that is captured by pirates, but then they return her when she is too much work. It was around this time, either with the story, or with August having winter break off from school, that I mentioned “getting an education.” August asked what I meant, and ‘education’ became the word of the day.

The first loaf was done and we ate some. August wanted some on a plate as a snack while he watched something, and he watched the Wild Kratts episode about turkeys.

He went outside and was painting glue on paper and putting things on it–something he says he learned in Ms. Dorene’s class. I went and took a shower. He was outside when I came down. He’s done more art and was playing in the dirt. He brought a greenish rock in for me. He asked what it was, and best I could figure was it was some sort of greensand.

He asked for a new game. I agreed, hoping it would distract him from just watching shows on his iPad. We settled on the logic/puzzle game ThinkRolls: Kings & Queens and then all ate some lunch together (he had nutty noodles while I had sandwiches made with the fresh bread), then he played some more ThinkRolls.

We got ready to go and left at 12:45. He sang a nice tune but I didn’t get a video of it, although I think he was singing the same tune later and I did. He played a little more ThinkRolls, then handed it to me and said he was done. And then closed his eyes. Luckily, we were close to the car service place (גגג) and he made it. I went in and finally got someone to talk to us. They were busy now, and basically said that getting an oil change is a drop-it-off-for-two-hours thing. So we got the guy’s number and can make a reservation whenever we want, but might try to find an easier place to get our oil changed.

We headed over to the Kfar Saba Mall. He was humming the tune he sang on the bike the other day. We spent a lot of time at the Hoodies store. Carly and I both got sweatpants and sweatshirts in the 2+2 deal. August had fun touching the soft clothes, then plying with big rubber bands he found, putting one around his head. Eventually he was getting hyper while I finished trying things on.

They went down and got a snack at the Greg Cafe. I met up with them and sat with them for a minute, then realized we were by the pharmacy and went in and got a few things we’ve been needing (mouthwash for August, toothpaste, etc.) He was getting hyper, and Carly brought him in to me. She sat and read and he and I wandered around a bit. We looked at the fish in the pond and he found one small rock to throw into the pond. He also found a receipt and carried it around like a treasure until we left.

We headed home. August had kept asking about going to the sand pile. We drove home, went to the bathroom, then he and I left at 3:20 and walked up to the sand pile. Just a couple houses up he found a pair of black in-ear headphones. Perhaps his most exciting treasure yet. He pretended to plug them into his bike and listen to things, like the Chemical Brothers, on the walk up to the sand pile.

We got to the sand pile to find that a digger had taken a big chunk out of the sand pile. August wasn’t happy about that, but quickly got over it. The space the digger left was kind of like a room, with three walls. We decorated one wall in particular with the electrical box things and bricks and pieces of metal. We played the poor game, and he combined it with the Hilo game, where a robot is born out of the tube of liquid. August then started transplanting plants to the edge of the sand along the tops of the walls.

Awhile after the sun had gone behind the buildings, a little after 4:30, he decided to head home. We took a slight long cut down a hole on a dirt path down a street we’d never been on before that came out close to the Snakes and Ladders playground. We smelled a smoky smell, and August, who was ‘listening’ to things on his headphones, said, “I should listen to a chicken getting roasted…yep, a chicken getting barbecued.”

We were home before 5. He ran in and excitedly told mama about the headphones. He explained what features they have that make them louder than the other headphones (“So it’s a different kind”). His headphones are indeed volume limited ones, and I think maybe he’s realized that, although not that it’s intentional.

August wanted to try them out on Carly’s computer, but she let him watch StoryBots on her phone instead. I realized he had out smarted us because he had reached the time limit on his iPad for watching shows, and was trying to watch on a different device.

I changed into my new sweatpants and sweatshirt and went out for a run. Worked well, and I didn’t really get too hot after 25 minutes. My ears were getting a bit cold and achy, but not too bad. I took a shower and when I came down they were making “wind testers”. He drew an abstract picture on one side and a flower with roots on the other. Carly took a shower and I made another wind tester with August. He decorated one side, then suggested I trace what was on my phone on the other side.

I went up and did a little work, and she gave him a bath and got him ready for bed. He came in and asked if I’d put him to sleep It was just after 8. She started to head downstairs, and August said he wanted to donate his stuffed animals, as he’s too big for them now. I asked why, and Carly, heading down the stairs, heard him and said, shocked, “You can’t get rid of your stuffed animals!” He started doing his tired crying and said, “Well I’ll keep them” Carly came and he cuddled with her for a couple minutes. Still crying, I picked him up and took him in to the bed, about 8:15. It took a few more minutes for him to calm down. He now said he didn’t want to get rid of them, and he wanted me to leave them right where they were on the bookshelves in the office.

He requested an August and Teegan story and I told him one where they discovered a pink world. He was curled up and I thought going to sleep, so I wrapped it up. Too early, as he was still awake. I sang some normal songs, he took off his socks, I sang a couple of Sesame Street songs, and then Stars’ “Barricade” and Twilight Sad’s “It Never Was the Same”. Then just quiet for about ten minutes before he was finally asleep about 8:45.

Fish at the mall:

Singing a tune in the car:

Attacking the swing with his settings:

Working on his sand pile house:

Watching with his new earbuds:

The gift envelope, and then a story we wrote for it

Using the headphones he found

Smaller sand pile

Decorating the wall

Transplanting plants

At 6:10 he woke me up, saying “I peed my pants.” It was just a drop, s he had caught himself. Carly took him in to the bathroom, then they came back. he lay next to me for while, trying to go back to sleep, then went down with Carly. Eventually they got up and went downstairs.

I slept until my alarm at 7:30 and went down. He was finishing a bowl of oatmeal. And they had read The Book that Eats People. August asked for a permanent pen and wrote on a few things, then he wanted me to write down the words of a song he would sing. It went “I miss you so much…” When he was done he asked, “Did I write a whole poem?” He added some more, then excitedly took it up to Carly to show her. She then hung it up upstairs. He came down and got four rings of masking tape from me to hang it up.

We Skyped with my parents for awhile. They showed us all of the Christmas decorations hanging up around the house.

After that he was back to art and wanting to make stuff for Mikaela. He asked to use something for his art and I said it was good for his multimedia projects. He asked what that meant and he said ‘multimedia’ was the word of the day.

We ended up sending two snickerdoodle cookies, and random recycling and his yellow rope to Mikaela. His original idea was to just send down recycling as a kind of joke. He did some art. He hung a couple pictures up on the wall that’s in front of you and to the left when you come in the front door, and decided he wanted to take down the art in the bathroom. Carly headed to the store.

He watched a Halloween Max and Ruby and that made him remember his big lollipop from Eve’s party. He got that and was licking it, and we read Amulet 4 again, starting where she goes to the test, and read much of it.

Carly got home, and I went up to a shower. When I came down he was outside tying up plants again. Inside, he hung one of the grocery bags around his neck and was collecting ‘garbage’ in it. He then delivered it to me, the garbage truck, and we dumped it into a pile that was the dump.

He talked again about wanting a Dada-Zinnie adventure. Carly had talked about going for a walk today, so we were all getting ready to go. But when August said he wanted it to be just me and him she didn’t object and stayed behind to work and make nutty noodles. We left just after 1. We stopped at our park as he wanted a snack. Realized we had forgotten the snack bag so went back and got it.

We then walked up to the Snakes and Ladders Park, stopping twice along the way. Once was to play with a branch with thorns on it, and another to pick up one of those ubiquitous Areon X air fresheners. Marc and I had discussed how all the cars have the exact same air freshener and asked Omar about it. Omar just said they’re everywhere, as if he didn’t understand why we thought that was odd. So I sent a photo of August holding this one to Marc, who is back in Scotland for Christmas. He was quite amused.

At the Snakes and Ladders Playground we first sat and ate more snack. He then wanted to play Drops, so we did ‘Fruits’ as we sat on the little rocking thing. I pointed out an ant carrying a big piece of food. August was wanting to mess around/pretend to squish the ants so I laid down a zero-tolerance policy on bothering the ants. He left them alone after that. He pushed it a little though, as we then went over to the spiderweb climbing area. He told me a joke like, “Why did the ant cross the road?” He then asked if that was okay, as I had said he couldn’t joke about the ants. I clarified that he couldn’t joke about hurting them. I then told a joke he really liked: How many ants does it take to change a light bulb? Aaaaagh There’s ants all over our house! He told several variations on the idea.

He then wanted to play “A imagining game”. He had me step on something that turned you into light and teleported you somewhere else. It ended up teleporting me to his own universe, to a planet that all the robots come from. He took me to his laboratory (the exercise equipment) and showed me how things work. He asked if I wanted to live on his planet and I said yes. So he then teleported my parents here as well. One machine gave us immunizations to protect against alien diseases. Eventually, he turned us all into robots as well. That was so that we could eat the seeds from the trees, which is what robots eat on his planet. We smashed some of the soft seed pods in the exercise equipment.

He needed to go to the bathroom, and we decided to walk up into town. We found the bathrooms at the new mall, then continued on towards the park at the library. He was now calling me “robot student” and teaching me things. We stopped at where Malkin, the coffee shop, used to be. They are remodeling it into something, and August found chunks of sheetrock that he played with. He told me that that’s the other thing that robots eat. We continued on, but stopped in front of the toy store when he saw a stump. He said, “Robot students” and taught me how to use my arm scanner and then how to shoot lasers out of my my hands.

We made it to the playground by the library at 2:45. He taught me more lessons: that sometimes robots eat bits of the puzzle bark on the pine trees. But that makes them sick and when a robot is sick it actually gets hungrier. He also taught me how to use my growing growing and shrinking power. We went to the merry-go-round. We used it as a Magic School Bus again and journeyed into the planet, first into the layers, but then he decided his planet was hollow. I told him that people used to speculate that the earth was hollow, and told him we should read Journey to the Center of the Earth sometime. He then invented a game where we just threw pine needles at each other, then he was tossing a rock around for me to find and retrieve, but basically it was fetch. Of course, he ended up putting them in the puddle at the base of the slide.

We headed home about 3:10. We stopped at Malkin again for more sheet rock, then we both contemplated going to the cafe in the new mall, but decided against it. We agreed we’d probably be eating out a lot in Tel Aviv.

He stopped on the side of the sidewalk to show me another robot power, which he had mentioned earlier: playing leaves like a musical instrument. He also showed me laser eye power. As he did that, I remembered that my parents had seen a pile of some sort of electronic part on the road over towards the highway.

We walked that direction, and stopped to pick some kumquats at a tree. We found a sand pile and August started playing in it. He asked, “Can we play ‘poor people’?” I don’t know where that idea came from, although later I asked at home and he said he was thinking of the photo of Josephine. His game mainly involved decorating the sand pile as our house, using rocks and garbage and bits of brick and tile. We also found the things that my parents had mentioned, like telephone cord boxes for inside houses. It would then be nighttime and he’d pretend to sleep, with me next to him. He would actually lie down on the sand, but I wouldn’t. When I said it rained one night we went across the street and up to the playground by the apartment buildings.

There, he asked me “Can you do a poor voice?” I had noticed that he’d been talking in a slightly sad voice, and that’s what he wanted me to do. He also found another treasure, part of a wind-up car. He wanted to go back to “our sand home” and said, “I really like playing. Sorry.” There, we studied the ant nest in among the bricks a bit more. Taking out the bricks had disturbed them and they were all over the place. I was now going to work during the day, which involved me sitting on the curb and reading Beowulf. He called me over once to see something, then told me “Go and do your work. Get money.”

We headed home when the sun dropped below the buildings. We were home by 4:40. The nutty noodles were done and he ate two bowls, then had a snickerdoodle. They did art and I started making dough for sourdough bread. August was letting her decided what to do with the art: “You’re in control.” Then he started calling her ‘boss’, and started every sentence with “Hey boss…” We also got August on video quickly saying his favorite colors: pink, purple, peach, lavender, silver.

Carly made popcorn, but then went upstairs to FaceTime with her parents when they called. We finished the popcorn, adding salt. August was insistent that we also put more oil on it, so we made a separate bowl for him and me and made what I told him was more of a movie theater style popcorn. Nice and greasy. I took Carly’s up to her.

We did more poor game, and August built a wall of stuff on the edge of our sand house (the kitchen rug). She took him up and gave him a bath. She then took a shower and I came up and read. We finished reading Amulet 4 and then read The Whingdingdilly, another Bill Peet book that I vaguely remember from when I was a kid. I left them at 8:20, and he was asleep by 8:30. He had told me, “She doesn’t like our routine.” Because he manages to stay up longer with me.

At some point during the day, probably when Carly was at the store, we were listening to my Sad Holidays playlist. I then found a Bummer Holidays playlist on Apple Music. We were listening to John Denver’s “Please Daddy (Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas)” and August sang along to the titular line.

Oh, and Carly trimmed his hair, I think after we got home when they were doing art. It was so that he would have more hair to use in gluing it to his artwork.

Singing his poem for mama:

Garbage collector:

Explaining how safe his universe is:

Seed pod crushing slo-mo:

Singing a tune:

Teaching me how to use my robot scanner:

His robot drill and the bark:

Taller and shorter power:

The disturbed ants:

Hey, boss and his favorite colors:

His poem for Carly

Car air feshener

Thorns

His laser eyes

Sleeping

His decorated sand house

He got up at 6:30 to use the bathroom. He came back in and cuddled on the bed with Carly, but he was awake and acting like a rabbit so they went downstairs. He watched the groundhogs episode of Wild Kratts again. And had just sent art to Mikaela when I came down, to thank her for her present. He then made more art and sent it down with my help. For the card he made he dictated to Carly what to write: “I love you Mikaela. I’m so happy you like our drawings. Love, August.” It was a bit different when he repeated it. He then kept asking “Does Mikaela know what our insurance is?” When I didn’t know what he was asking he said, “I’m back in my shell.” And he told me, “I’d like you to answer some questions.” In the end he settled on our phone number. He seemed to think it was a code of sorts that would let her know who sent it. I wrote it out, then he copied it onto his card. He tied on another string to the window screen and delivered the bag down.

He finished watching a show, then did one story of Berenstain Bears. It was one where Sister pretended to be a doctor. He was then my doctor and ordered me to rest. He brought me water and wrote down my symptoms. Eventually, he was a baby groundhog who climbed into bed with me and cuddled for quite awhile.

I went upstairs to take a shower.

They were going to go to the plant store and I went upstairs to do some work. It took them quite awhile to get going. At one point, as they were about to leave, he asked her if she was bringing snacks, because he might get hungry. So she made him oatmeal and he ate a full bowl of oatmeal before they left. He did quite well at the plant store even though Carly rejected several of his ideas.

They came back and he watched some of a Formula 3 race with me. He went outside and they planted plants together. I went out and he asked for a bamboo stick from the storage area. I got the key and got a bamboo stick for him and dumped out water from random buckets in there and turned them over. Looked like perfect mosquito habitat. Carly made a strawberry smoothie out of some of the strawberries they bought at the stand. August was working on a wiring system so that he could blast lasers from the roof of the house. It involved using the twine to tie up the plants to their sticks or the fence.

He looked at the remains of his slime from a couple months go. it has gone through quite a transformation every time it rains and dries out. It is now completely black and slimy at the edge: “It looks like honey but it is NOT honey. So don’t eat it.”

Carly had brought home a stack of Highlights magazines for him. I tried to read one with him. There was a questions area and I tried to ask him a couple:

Me: Do you know more about taking care of a bird or a fish?

Him: I know everything, so…

Me: what three words would you use to describe a carrot?

Him: I don’t want to tell you.

And then he headed back outside. We were out there a bit more, then came in and finished reading Amulet 4. He was then a groul (a monster from the book) for an imagining game. He had venom and ‘paralyze’ became the word of the day. That shifted into games where he was a snake.

Finally, he and I headed to the park near us a little before 4. He said, “Let’s play spaceman. That’s when you go in space and pee in your pants and go back to the space stion and change your pants…but there’s no more changes of clothes and you get upset.” I ended up singing all 20 verses of The Ants Go Marching. He helped at the end. Don’t know when the last time was that we sang that. We went on the exercise equipment. He sat on me eating Cheerios. I sang the “Dada loves you a ton of Qs” song. Of mama he asked “What if she doesn’t?” I asked why he questions her love so much. He said, “I like to make her squeak.”

He got one foot stuck on the machine as he got off my lap and fell, spilling most of the Cheerios. He said he wanted to head home, but first he found a small candle. He wanted to light it, and thought it might work like a match. I had to explain the difference. He broke the candle a bit, and that changed his mind. I told him it would still work, but be decided he wanted to light one of our emergency candles at home instead and we never did.

We headed home. I told him he was saying “poopy” too much and said, “Remember when you used to sing all the time on the bike?” He replied, “I sing songs in my head.”

We were home at 4:40. He took some of the pieces off of his Cheerios box art, then sat with Carly for awhile. He went over and got his iPad and played with the synth app.

We headed to Sushi Ishimoto for dinner. Carly had had the idea of going out for dinner, and August suggested the noodle place. He was loud and hyper at first. I looked up jokes on my phone and was telling him jokes. We ordered our “usual”, the pad thai and shrimp, the mushroom noodles, and two orders of sushi.

August ate a few of the sushi rolls, then noodles and shrimp. When we headed home I said it was nice enough to walk. They took the car home and I walked, listening to the start of Forward the Foundation.

At home, Carly read We’re All Wonders, then I read The Book that Eats People twice, After the Fall, and The Invisible Boy. He got mean, pretending to be mean to Brian. Usually when he acts things out there is a reason for it, but this time it seemed he was just having fun pretending to be mean, so we stopped playing. Carly gave him a bath and I think they read some of the First Book of Why.

I went up and took over to put him to sleep. He wanted a visualization in which Joon, from PKC, got lost and didn’t come back. He was talking about Juon being mean but wouldn’t say how. I was trying to make the story happy, with him getting help getting home, but August protested, arguing that it broke the logic of our ‘Path between worlds’ stories, where you could only find new worlds, but not your way back. I solved the dilemma by having Juon come across Blanka, who was now older, and collected children she found wandering the path and took them to a world where they could live together while she tried to figure out how to get them home. August said the story was scary at first, but it was exactly what he had requested. Then, he talked about how he didn’t want the lamp off at all because he’s afraid of the dark. I said he hasn’t mentioned that to us during the night, but he said he hasn’t wanted to tell us. He has seemed more concerned about the dark though. Carly said he hid his head when they walked through the dark hallways at school, and he’s done a couple other things like that.

I was trying to get him to sleep a bit earlier, since he was up earlier, but there was too much going on in his head. I mentioned that, and he said it wasn’t a brain, but a computer. I reminded him of the ‘positronic brain’. He asked, “Do we have a histern?” I figured out he meant ‘cistern’. We discussed the water system, and cisterns versus reservoirs, and what would happen if the water system stopped working He explained how we ran out of water on Earth and he put in a system that gets water from other galaxies. “I connect pipes to other universes because Earth is out of water.”

He then talked about how he wanted Dada-Zinnie adventures over winter break and suggested we go to the science center that was far away, that he went to with Gramma and Grampa.

Finally, I sang a couple songs. I was singing “Idaho” and he was quiet, then he loudly sang, in tune, “nobody can trap my nose” instead of “that he belongs in Idaho” when I got to that line. He was pretty proud of that one, and it was pretty funny. Finally, he said, “Warning power low” in a robot voice. He fell asleep a few minutes later at 9:10.

Speaking of being a robot, Judson also knew that August is a robot, as I heard him telling Heather that at the party.

Sending art to Mikaela:

Tying up the vine:

Adding to his tea party picture:

Riding across the playground:

Ants go marching 20 by 20:

Synth slo-mo:

His inter-universe water system:

He was up at 6:50. He told me to go back to sleep. He went downstairs and I heard him start talking to her right away, I thought about sound in water. She said he didn’t spend any time cuddling and went straight to telling her that the reason the ocean was blue was because of a chemical reaction with the salt. But he said they couldn’t test it because you’d need as much salt as there was in the ocean and the government wouldn’t give you enough salt.

I came down and he was making a thank you piece of art for Mikaela. I got tea and turned off the go-to-school alarm and went back to bed for awhile. Still getting over the Benadryl that I took last night. When I came down again they were making wrapping paper for Eve’s present. August had said “I see you’re really enjoying working on that” to her. Sounded like something a teacher said. One of his pictures was “Signals going into the software.” We had a discussion of ‘abstract’ and how something could both be an object, like a person, and also abstract at the same time, as Carly was making an abstract person. He cut open the little bag of nails, but spilled them on the floor. I helped him put the nails in a cup. He said “It’s kind of satisfying…” to feel them with his hand in the cup.

We read the Lunch Robot from yesterday, as he hadn’t read it during lunch. He said that the upgrades the robot should get are breathing fire, shield protection, and being waterproof. I went up and took a shower. When I came down he was watching the Wild Kratts episode about Gila monsters. That morphed into an imagining game where he was a Gila monster. He asked, “Can baby gila monsters dig big holes?” We watched a video of a real one digging a hole, then he was pretending that he had gone out and dug a hole under a papaya tree and ruined the roots.

He went to the bathroom and told us about a “One eyed fish…it’s a machine that looks like a fish…one eye with a sensor next to it…it can survive running, walking, swimming…and climbing.”

We got going and went to the party. Kind of a comedy of errors getting going. I couldn’t find my keys, then Carly realized we’d forgotten the present while we were looking. Then we left again. I realized I didn’t have his sweatshirt, and when I went back in she told me to also get the present, which we had forgotten again.

We got there a little after 11. It had been planned for Herzliya Park, but because of the weather she changed it to her art room at the school. About 5 kids didn’t show up as a result, as it got farther away for them. So it was Eve and her sister, Zoe, Judson and his big sister, Candy, Yaya, and then a few parents and teenagers (although we weren’t sure what their connection was).

To start with they had apron decorating, face painting, storybook making, and snacks. August was cautious at first. He decorated an apron, then had some snacks. He wanted sweet snacks, and I told him to wait a bit. Carly headed off to do some work. He got more into it, and asked to paint up at an easel. I got paints for him and he intently made a painting. Sadly, we would forget the apron and the painting there. He and Eve then did face painting on my hands; he did the right and she did the left.

Pizza arrived and he was really happy about that. He ate a lot. He, Zoe, and Judson got silly as they played and danced with the skeleton. Then Judson fit back in a shelf area and was “Judson mail”. Next was the piñata. August got two rounds of swinging at it. Eventually, David, their dad, broke it open. August got a good bag’s worth of candy and I let him have a Starburst at the time. Next was the cake, which was quite a process, as after the singing of Happy Birthday David had to deconstruct his very elaborate unicorn cake. He’s a chef, and had made it all himself. August ate a big slice, then went back to get various chunks of the unicorn hair and other decorations.

Eve opened presents (lots of unicorn things, as it was a unicorn-themed party—the water bottle didn’t have unicorns, but fit very well. And Heather said that their markers at home were just wearing out, so the markers were a timely present) and then August got really into cutting off the tissue paper hair from a big part of the piñata, which had been thrown away. He was using different sets of the decorative scissors, and requested we buy him some of those. He got the hind end of the piñata and wore it on his head as a hat, and was carrying around the middle part like some sort of warrior. Eve wanted to keep the head, or August would have been parading that around, I’m sure.

Carly came back about 1:40 as the party was winding down. August had been pretty hyper, but when I picked him up he cuddled against my shoulder and yawned. Worn out. I asked him how late I could be picking him up at school without him being late and he told me I had to be there by “3 oh six or faster.” He got a blank book from Heather. It was an accordion book, and he turned it into all sorts of different shapes and decided it was his wind tester. Heather also told us about an exploding book and told us to google how to make them.

He played with his wind tester on the way home. We were home by 2. I found my keys in my bike helmet. I had set them down together, then hung up my helmet a few minutes later, forgetting the keys were in it. August was sitting on the couch with me and had his hand up for some reason. I called on him using my Ms. Marion voice and he thought that was funny and kept wanting me to be Ms. Marion. He then had fun ripping apart more of the unicorn. Carly showed him a card that came from Stephanie and her family. And a package had arrived from Derek and Andrea, which we filed away as a Christmas present.

August and I had a funny discussion about saying “a imagining game” which he kept saying because it sounded funny. I explained ‘an’ to him but he wanted to keep saying it that way. Carly wrote a letter to her grandma and went to the post office to mail it. He watche Wild Kratts. He asked me, “Dada, what’s the animal that’s the most sensitive to smelling in the world?” and I looked that up. When I said sharks he clarified “LAND animal.” He had brought home a bag of art from school yesterday, and he and I emptied out the bag and discussed it. We then read some more of Amulet 4. He had a bit of rope from school and tied our hands together. He convinced me to read some of Sisters. ‘Gunk’ became the word of the day from that.

I went up to rest and do some Sabeel work. When I came down he was watching the Wild Kratts groundhogs episode. Carly had been cleaning and I asked “Did we move?” August went upstairs with me and I had OMD playing on the iPad. He had us doing “dance mode” where he would hold onto my hands and make a shape, then I would copy the shape. He then helped me fold clothes. He did a good job with a towel and one of my shirts. He showed me his potions and how long they take to separate after shaking them up and said he really likes them. He was then destroying the piñata piece by throwing it at the wall and ground. It left pink marks on the wall from the tissue paper so I had him just throw it at the floor.

I gave him a bath and he started screaming the second water touched him. We got him dried and he was upset that he didn’t get a lollipop. Enough sugar for one day. Carly was putting him to sleep, and I left them at 8:45. I went for a walk and finished listening to Prelude to Foundation. He was asleep around 9.

Painting:

Painting my hand:

Fun with the skeleton:

Judson mail:

Pinata 1:

Pinata 2 – August:

Pinata 3:

Pinata 4:

Scissors song 1:

Scissors song 2:

Frosting:

Crushing the pinata:

Pinata throwing:

Pinata throwing slo-mo:

Painting wrapping paper

Painting an apron

Finishing his painting

The crazy cake

Folding a towel

Bathroom art gallery

He was up by 6:30. I got up too, and quickly realized that my eyes were much too sensitive to take August to school. I took a Benadryl and went back to bed. Carly and August drove to school. They left just before 7:30, as I heard them leave, then immediately heard the alarm going off on the speaker downstairs. Luckily, it turns off after a couple minutes. The Benadryl knocked me out pretty well until lunch time.

I recovered enough to have some lunch, do just a little work, and then walk to school at 2. I met with Johnell about the writing group. She’s very active in writing children’s books. And it turns out her husband, who is in Pakistan this year, has the same job as Zoe’s husband at the embassy. That is, Zoe’s husband replaced her husband, at least for this year. Johnell’s husband is coming back next year (they are staying here so their 10th grade son can graduate from here), so I don’t know what happens then.

I had time to check out five picture books (Johnell was giving me a bunch of recommendations) and then went and picked up August. Andrea told me that when Minnie was watching the class Simona tried to hug August from behind. August was startled and tried to escape and accidentally scratched him on the face.

We got our stuff packed up, then went over to Mandy’s room. I let him have a snickerdoodle on the way. He handed the bag of cookies to Gabby and Jill, and in return Gabby gave him the rest of a bag of chocolate-covered goldfish crackers. As we walked back August pointed out that he’d had a cookie AND chocolate goldfish.

Back on the bench we read After the Fall, about Humpty Dumpty, twice, then he was coming up with chameleon scenarios. About 3:30 we headed over to Carly’s room. He talked about “official bacteria” and ‘official’ became the word of the day.

We drove down to the Art Center store. On the way he said he wanted “Fabric and my own stapler”. Which was a good idea. The idea was to get art supplies for him for over the break, and also a present for Eve. And he excitedly told Carly about the chocolate goldfish. And he talked about how he was going to make us each stuffed animals like the one he had already made for me, but mine was falling apart. As we drove, he told us about one of his inventions, a self-driving car: “You just have to turn it on and program it.” “It also reads your mind and plays the music you want.” I told him people were working on self-driving cars now and he said, “I already invented one, so they’re not working on it anymore.”

We had a lot of fun at the art center. We ended up with a princess water bottle, a roll of decorative tape, and a set of markers for Eve. August got a lot of stuff: felt, rubbery fabric, decorative tape, tiles, a stapler, sparkly pink sequins, styrofoam balls, and probably several other things I’m forgetting.

We got back to the car, and he told us “I have an announcement: Making stuffed animals for you is CANCELLED.” He changed his mind about what he was doing next several times. He also insisted he was going to make us a meal and drink again. As we drove he told us of a reservoir that if you jump into it it “changes your memories.” And he told Carly, “I invented a Pepsi reservoir where you get all your Pepsi.”

I mentioned that there wasn’t a fork in his lunch today, and he said that was why he didn’t eat much lunch. He said, “I have a picture in my head…in my computer…of the fork coming out of my lunch box.” And he explained I was getting diseases from the chemicals inside him, so I shouldn’t be around him all the time. “Just like cats: they be close to you for a little while, disappear, and come back.” Which was a really impressive analogy to make, as that was an observation he’s made all on his own.

We got home and he first got a gift that Mikaela had given him. It was an activity book with dry erase markers. He was focused on that for a good ten minutes, then got into his art supplies. He did a few pieces on his own, then had me come over and do art with him. I did a piece with him, then Carly came over and did art with him. He was then still doing art on his own and told us, “The best part of art supplies is that you use your imagination…you think of something that is real in another universe and make it.”

He got up and Carly noticed that he was still kind of limping. This has been going on for a few days and he says his foot hurts. When it was first happening I said it might be because he is growing, so now every time Carly says something about it he says it is because he is growing. It doesn’t seem to bother him too much, as he never brings it up on his own.

Carly went up and took a shower. He and I ate soup for dinner, then he had toast and peanut butter. She took him to his bath and I did dishes. They then shared a chocolate ball thing that was from Cassie. I read to him The Book that Eats People twice, On a Magical Do-Nothing Day, and We Are All Wonders. He then got a small piece of paper and a pen and was drawing poops all over it. He continued to do so as we headed upstairs at 8:40. He said, “Look at all the poops I made. It’s like a poop circus.” Another great analogy.

On the bed we read a couple chapter of Pinnochio (the whole Field of Miracles section with the Fox and Cat). He told me that someone had invited them over to the kindergarten today and that the whole class went over but I never figured out why. He said there was a men kid named Tomaso there, and asked me if he knew Tomaso. I reminded him that Tomaso had been in his Hebrew class last year. I sang to him a bit and he was asleep by 9:25.

His chameleon scenario:

Gift from Mikaela:

Helping me with my art:

Cosmologic electronic web:

Twirling his fingers:

He got up at 6:50 and came down and lay on the couch. It was more than 15 minutes before he finally said something, to ask for his iPad. He watched an episode of the Berenstain Bears. He was very mellow this morning. The most he talked was as we were leaving and he was looking at the multimedia project he had made with Carly, with the nails in the glue. He explained “I think some chemical reaction is making th glue brown. Maybe because of the metal. The metal is rusting and it is making the glue brown.”

It was a drizzle, turning to a light rain, on the way to school. He handled that fine. Before we left he made sure I had his morning bar and morning snickerdoodle. He ate the cookie first, and when he was done he commented on it being a big one. About half way he asked, “Is it okay if I always sleep longer than the other kids to get more rest and be late for school?”

We got to just before the bell. They had a fire projected in the classroom. Lydia was telling me it was Eve’s birthday today (well, they were celebrating today—it was actually yesterday) and August told me I wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone in his class. He also told me he wasn’t going to bring home anything from school anymore. Earlier, before we left the house, he had found the felt cuddle thing he had made for me and asked me to use it in bed tonight. And he said he would make one for mama. I had reminded him of this now, and he said he might do that, and that would be an exception.

He asked to change his clothes, but he just took his shoes off and I dried them a bit. He was fine otherwise. I went to the library to hang out until 10, when I was meeting with Stephanie about the writing group. The library was a zoo though with high schoolers as it is their exams time. I went and hung out in the staff lounge instead.

At 10 I met with Stephanie. We went and got cappuccinos and met in the staff lounge. She works part-time for UNESCO back in the states, doing writing for a female genital mutilation awareness campaign they are rolling out. She has a couple of possible nonfiction/research topics to write about (including examining documentaries about the death camps in the former Yugoslavia during World War II) and also Edgar Karat-style nonfiction about her life.

I then rode home, then rode back at 2 for library time. The kids were crazy today. Ilana read a book about a long dog. Didn’t catch the name. August told me I could pick out a book during checkout time. I chose, and he approved Muncha! Muncha! Muncha!

Back in the classroom he listened to Andrea reading a story to eve and Candy and I went and picked up Taya. We went and played on the playground. They both ate a lot of snacks. And both agreed to just eat their own stuff and not share. She had a chocolate croissant but turned down the snickerdoodle I offered her. She and I did share the strawberries left in August’s lunch. I had August tape shut the bags write ‘A’ and ‘M’ on two bags of cookies and he carried them in and delivered them on his own to Andrea and Marion. He had a big trip and fall on the grass and they went flying. He was concerned that the cookies were all broken. They may have been a bit worse for wear, but I told them they were fine.

As they played Taya was saying ‘Oh my gosh” a lot. He told me that Eve ate the tuna in his lunch today. When I went in to get August’s water I saw that Marion’s daughter, Amelie, was in the classroom by herself. I asked August if he wanted to give her a cookie. He did, and when he gave her one she said, “Just what I needed to brighten up my day.”

Taya and August played a bit more on the playground. She had her baby and a stuffed panda. They were putting them to sleep and August was using a stick to ply a lullaby on the metal. August started walking around, loudly singing the “Beautiful” song by Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow. Cassie arrived around 4 and headed home with Taya. Omri was then on the playground and she and August played together for awhile. When they were both on the swings he told her, “Hi Omri. You’re a little kid and I’m a big kid. You’re not complex and I’m really complex…I’m a robot.”

We left at 4:30. August was carrying my pen and wanted to find things to write on. He asked, “Can we write a poem on the wall?” I don’t know where he got the idea. I thought it was a wonderful idea, but of course we couldn’t. He got frustrated that he couldn’t find anything to write on.

We got Carly at her classroom, then headed out. We found Amanda sitting by the entrance and we gave her a cookie, since she had said she didn’t know what snickerdoodles were.

He was amazingly calm on the bike on the way home. At one point he was putting his arm out and making a quiet noise. I asked what he was doing and he said he was making flames so he could see, as it was getting dark.

We were home at 5:15. He brought up black holes, and he got genuinely upset when I talked about time moving faster by a black hole and he cuddled with Carly. I think he was a bit scared by the idea of hundreds of years passing by so quickly when you came back to Earth. Carly said it didn’t matter, as we could never get close to a black hole. He said that wasn’t true, as there was now one orbiting around the earth.

He created a preschool game where I was a kid building a tower and it would fall down. He would then have an instant replay camera and show me what I needed to do to make my towers stronger.

I got soup for dinner. He went to the bathroom, and started explaining how we pee: “The muscles retract…” Don’t know where he learned ‘retract’. He then talked about having gills and the kidneys – basically, the kidneys squeeze pee by being powered by air pressure. Perhaps the first time ever anyone has had that idea.

My eyes had been bothering me since Sunday when it felt like I had a small scratch on my left eye. Today I had noticed they seemed a bit sensitive to light. But suddenly it got much worse and i lay down on the couch. August came and asked to give me a massage. He covered my head with pillows and gave me a meal: mustard greens with a touch of salt and strawberries. Carly then helped him make grapefruit-infused water with honey and sugar. He was a little upset when I got out to drink it as it ruined the structure he had built around me. But he built it back up for me when I lay back down.

He went and played iPad with Carly and then they were dragons. She took him up for a bath. It was quick, and there was no screeching or protesting. I questioned him to make sure she’d actually given him a bath. She made him oatmeal and he said, “Thank you, mama dragon, for making me oatmeal.” I had been eating toast with peanut butter, and he also wanted that, so I made him a slice of that as well. Think he ate most of both.

I went up to rest on the bed. Carly made his lunch for tomorrow. She went and took a shower and I read some Pinnochio to him, although it was quite uncomfortable. His bottom was itchy and we took care of that. Carly put cream on when she was out of the shower. She put him to sleep, around 8:30.

Copying Taya:

Music for the doll:

Singing “Beautiful”:

Laughing at mama:

He put a note he had found inside the sign

He woke up at 6. I tried to convince him to go back to sleep, but he wanted to see mama. He went out the door and Carly brought him back in. She got him to sleep, and he slept until 6:30. Downstairs he played a little of Magnus Kingdom, then watched Berenstain Bears. Carly headed to work. He ended with the story about the sleepover. We got ready to go, and he was singing about poop, using his yellow rope thing (he says it was a treasure. I don’t remember where it came from) as a microphone. Got going a couple minutes earlier than usual and had an easy walk to school. He was really happy when I surprised him with a snickerdoodle on the walk. And when I got home I remembered to turn our alarm forward 10 minutes to 7:30.

Dropped him off, then walked home. Did some work, then rested for awhile. Rode back and picked him up. When I went in he was at the ideas table and was drawing with Andrea. He held up what he was ‘writing’ and told me “That means your not allowed to be in here…I’m still doing something.” He was drawing a picture of a boat in the water with the luggage attached underneath it. He then got scissors and was going around cutting things up. He trimmed one of his pictures that he had hanging from one of the strings. I asked what it was a picture of and he said, “Just someone on a boat.”

We went out on the playground and sat on the ground and ate a snack. He played a little on the playground, but mainly with a set of tubes from the water table. We would look through the different holes and it would show us something different, like rock in the earth, or the inside of a cow’s stomach, etc. He then told me “I told everybody at school I am not their friend.” But then he clarified that Eve is his only friend. But he said that the teachers said that everyone has to be friends. We talked about different levels and definitions of ‘friend’ and how he could still be friendly and play with everyone, but only have one best friend. He said he was still friendly with everyone, just not their friends. When he was done with the conversation he said, “Stop talking about this!”

He wanted his water bottle, back in the classroom. I told him he could get it himself. As he went to get it he asked, “Does this mean you won’t take care of me anymore?” He had brought out a pair of scissors to cut grass with and was supposed to return them at the same time. But he came back with them still in his hands. I pointed this out and he replied, “And I’m not doing any more orders from you.”

A few minutes later we got going and we walked by the classroom to return the scissors. I told him to be quiet, but he went in making loud ghost noises. There were three teachers in there. I said, “And you all know August.”

We went to the library and the kids area was busy. Ilana had middle schoolers in there sorting the cookie grams from teachers. Carly’s student, whose name I can’t spell, was there, and August was giggling and running away from her. I got Amulet 4, and found a couple other chapter books to try over winter break: Wildwood (by Colin Meloy) and another. I asked if August wanted to try Magic Tree House again, but he said he wanted to try new things.

Carly found us and we walked out together. We saw Taya on the way. We got the bike and walked with them through the parking lot. As we were by Taya August said something about “Stupid”. Taya responded with “You’re stupid!” Neither Cassie nor I were happy with this. August had had a string of similar incidents today: kicking at me when it was time to go this morning and calling it funny, being loud when entering his classroom, telling the librarians he was going to hurt them when he went in the library, and now this: all trying to be funny, but not funny at all.

At home he watched Berenstain Bears. We then read Amulet 4 and ‘council’ was the word of the day. He ate some soup for dinner, although he didn’t have much. But his snack after school was really his full lunch, with rice and mushroom stuff, strawberries, and tuna. Carly was sitting at the table, grading, and she gave him a couple of rubric sheets and he was tracking sound on them.

He then made a snack for us. He went out and picked mustard greens, then added a little salt to them. He said he had learned his lesson of too much salt yesterday and wouldn’t make the same mistake again. He really wanted both Carly’s attention and mine and was saying “Drop everything to the ground.” He then made a pineapple and blackberry water and insisted we all drink it at the same time.

We read more Amulet, then he was playing a wyvern game where he was a baby wyvern. There wasn’t really a scenario though. He just kept making wyvern noises and I was supposed to come up with more and more stuff. I got Carly to sort of took over at 6:40. But then he was still a wyvern and was eating me, and carrying my body to their nest.

Carly and I were discussing the school climate survey she was filling out and August was interested in what we were saying. Carly gave me (or tried to) a massage for my stiff neck. August wanted to alternately help out and just get in the way.

Carly headed up to a shower, and August asked me to play the science game for him that was too scary for him. He meant Blue Apprentice, and we played it together for awhile. There is indeed a very scary-looking flaming monster thing. We played this with the pillows sort of piled on top of us from after the massage when he buried me.

Carly came to take him up for his shower and he got upset and was kicking at me. She took him up for a timeout, then washed him. He was still hungry so I made peanut butter toast and he apologized to me.

We were getting him ready for bed, and when she said she would fall asleep with him he ran out of the room as he wanted it to be me. She joked, “I was loved, once.” He ran back in, yelling “Dont ever say that!” and started sobbing. He was really tired. I left them at 8:15. Heavy crying for a few minutes. But he was asleep by 8:30.

After we were home Carly was explaining the migraine she had last week and speculating that maybe it was the cold or something that Cassie had had but her immune system fought it off. She used the word ‘maybe’ about 5 times, so I congratulated her on becoming a “Doctor of maybecine (medicine).”

String microphone:

Afraid of Carly’s student:

Picking greens for his snack:

His drink of the day:

Carly said he was really cuddly during the night. At one point he woke up and said “Mama!” and had a big smile on his face when he saw her.

He was up just after 7. In fact, I heard him sitting up just before my alarm went off. He got up and told me I could keep sleeping. I told him my alarm was going off anyway, but he repeated it, and told me “I know mama is here.” And I was now stuffy, so I went ahead and took some more time, watching the short jaguar I-Pace race. He went down and told Carly that he’d told me to go back to sleep. They went outside and drilled holes in the mushrooms and sap, then were inside making a multimedia art project when I came down, out of glue, nails, cardboard, and the red sparkly fabric. August made the observation from their earlier stream project that the white glue turns clear when it dries, and said he predicted they would be blue to see the nails in their glue pool.

He went over and asked Siri to play music. She started to play the New Order playlist we were last listening to. He then added two songs to his Zinnie’s Songs playlist. I joked to Carly that we should tell Dr. Aviv we won’t be needing any speech therapist, as he has Siri to practice with.

He then spent a good amount of time generally playing on his own: he got his pen and drew in his music notebook, he drew a picture to put in the monster magnets box so that when we donate it sometime there will be a picture inside it for the people who get it (as I said he couldn’t draw on the box) and cut up cardboard. He then said “Back to you, Mama!” and ran over to cuddle with her.

He moved on to his iPad for the first time today. He watched some Max and Ruby, then played with his stick and Carly’s backpack while she made a pancake for him. He dressed up in his “costume” of a coat hanger. He wanted to cuddle with Carly again and I offered to cuddle instead. He wouldn’t cuddle with me, but would read. We read more of Amulet 3, and made ‘docile’ a word of the day. They were these huge flying docile eels, and he stopped the reading so that he could be one of the eels. We then got ready, and as we did so he was chanting things like “Sheila won’t share…” from his library book this week.

We drove over to what we thought was Alex’s address in Poleg. We learned today that tons of apartment buildings in Israel have the same door code. I had the address as 18, but Carly said it was 8. I thought she was correct when the door code worked and we went in. We rang the doorbell on the correct apartment, but an older woman in a towel answered the door. Oops. We walked up to building 18 and found the right apartment. He found several treasures along the way.

At Alex’s Sherry and Jeff were already there. That was everyone. August ordered people not to talk or he’d put a hole in them with his feather (one of the treasures he had found along the way). He then wandered off and found Jessepa (her teenage son) in his room and was playing with a toy dinosaur when I found him.

We ate. He had pancake and then chocolate pudding. Then pancake. And more pancake. Mainly he ate pancakes. He tried the eggs with salmon, but they couldn’t compete. I pulled August around as he lay on the floor. He got upset over not getting a second pudding at one point, but Carly took him into the bathroom and he calmed down quickly. He sat on the couch and played on his iPad with his headphones on. We got on their wi-fi and he watched a little Berenstain Bears or something, but not for long. The group started talking shop, so I lost interest (I was more interested when hearing about their lives in Ethiopia, Nepal, etc.) anyway, and we finished reading Amulet 3. Got out the art supplies, but he didn’t do much with them. We read a couple more chapters of Pinnochio with him sitting on my lap.

We got going after 12:30. He had wanted Carly to sit next to him on the way there. When she got in the back this time he politely said, “Sorry mama, but Dadas going to sit next to me.”

We were home before 1. Carly left to go to school to plan the rest of the year with Jeff. August played in the kitchen, and was using the can opener. He ran paper through it, which gave the paper a nice crimping along the edge. He ran a stick through it and said, “Im processing it.” It left little dots on the wood, and later we took a macro lens shot with it.

He then helped me make a triple batch of snickerdoodle cookies. When the dough was mixed he went and watched some Wild Kratts. He then stopped it and told me “Ready for imagining game. And it’s gonna be a crazy one.” It was all based on Wild Kratts and their Tortuga ship. I baked the first couple trays of cookies, and we of course ate a cookie each. He then formed about 16 of the cookies, calling them his experiments: vampire, snowman sitting down, candy wrapper shaped, a ladder, etc. He was then happy with how they all melted down.

Carly got home as we finished the last batch. We played GeoForest together, and he asked me “What’s driftwood?” He said he learned the word from me. I’m sure we’ve used it at the beach, but don’t know when the last time would have been that I’d said it. Carly had gone upstairs to do some more work. I’d woken up slightly stuffy and had had some mild headaches and a sore back through the day. I was now resting on the couch, and August was turning it into a game: he would be a baby animal that I’d find next to me, then he and the mama animal would eat me. Really peaceful.

We had soup for dinner, then Carly came down. He spent a lot of time grating Parmesan cheese, and also said he liked Parmesan and ate some. He then made a snack for Carly and me. It was his salty cheese recipe. He put a lot of salt on it though, so it wasn’t really edible. He then made us a drink, making up a mango juice recipe. He wanted to put frozen mango in cold “refreshing” water. Carly reminded him of “infused water” and he said, “Oh yeah, pineapple infused water. So I’m making mango infused water…and now for the surprise: a TOUCH of honey and sugar.”

We all shared his mango-infused water, then I went upstairs for a short rest. Carly came up to take a shower and he came in the bedroom and watched The Pink Panther as he sat next to me. He laughed a lot. Carly gave him a bath. He had the straw blocks in the shape of a giant pill and was having me eat it as medicine.

We went downstairs and Carly was trying to do some cleaning up. August really got into it, and wanted to recycle all of his old papers and art that were lying around. We then went upstairs and read a little Pinnochio. Carly came up and went to sleep with him around 9.

Can opener on a stick:

Cookie experiment 1:

Cookie experiment 2:

Brunch at Alex’s

Can opener marks

Cookie experiments

A pill

He and Eve’s finished research

His teeth drawings