This Is Our Blog

I let him sleep until 7:15. He watched one Sarah and Duck and we were off, walking at 8:40. On the way he told me, “My favorite time of the day is when I take my mat to the teacher…because I get to walk around and stand…”

Got to school just after 8 and I left at 8:10. I saw the rosemary he and helped them find yesterday and the focaccia they had made with it. I had him take the paper schedule out to Andrea and he said I could leave after she read through it. So she did that and he asked me to pick him up. I picked him up and said goodbye and handed him to Andrea. No crying, so smooth. Left campus by 8:20.

When I got to school at the end of the day he didn’t come running out. I went in, and he was with Andrea looking at her computer. They had celebrated Marion’s birthday today, and he had asked who’s birthday was next. It turned out to be Bibo’s in October.

They had had a good birthday celebration for Marion. He ate focaccia bread and drank water. He did the movement/dance class with Ms. Amelia after rest time. He had gotten his timer out of his snack bag and told me I’d forgotten to take it out.

He had handed me some of his treasures – a blue bit of wire, a nut of some sort, and a blue rubber band or hair band. He grabbed the cornbread and was out on the bench eating before I was done packing up his stuff. Out on the bench he told me, “I saw the note you gave me…it was a good gift for me.” I had drawn a picture of a robot saying hi to him.

He said everyone had loved the bread. And he had been on the playground earlier in the day when some people had gone to do gardening. He told me he had “wandered”.

He took photos around outside. A nice one of the beads on the teepee thing, the vines, and then all sorts of textures on surfaces. We headed to the library so he could find more textures, and he found a lot in the different rugs and fabrics. The battery was running low so we plugged it in, and he did art in MS Paint on the computers while I looked for books. We got Magic Tree House #29, Cam Jansen and the First Day of School Mystery, The Word Collector, and a rather dated DK book called Space Exploration. August also had fun watching the people on either side of him play computer games. His favorite was the one to the right, where it was a first-person shooter game, as he told us later.

Carly arrived and we checked out the books. Eve checked them out again. We went outside and August wanted to run around the library. He went to the left and Carly went to the right. August took quite awhile to show up. It turned out that there had been two teenagers sitting on the walkway, blocking it, with their feet up on the railing. He had solved the problem by crawling under their legs. Carly asked if they had found it funny. He said they hadn’t laughed, but it seemed like they thought it was funny.

On the walk home Carly found him more amusing than last year. On Vatikim he found a tangled length of thin rope. It was then dragging behind him as he steered with his feet and tried to untie it. He said, “My string is really causing problems.” At the house he figured out how to tie it to the swing and made it into a machine, using the string to make it move.

In the house, Carly cut up a starfruit. He was being very teenager-y about it, not thinking it would look like an actual star. I tried to film it, but missed that part, but caught his surprise when she sliced it and handed him a star-shaped piece.

He and I started to read Magic Tree House #29. The books change into more of a fantasy series now and they are in Camelot. One of the characters explains they are now in a ‘legend’ and defines it, so that was our word of the day.

I started to take him upstairs for his bath. He said something, and Carly said it sounded like he said I was pooping in the living room. She ran with the joke, and I had him say, “Mama, you’re being uncouth.” I was then saying random phrases to make him laugh. That continued upstairs in the bathroom.

He had his bath, and then as he went down the stairs to say good night to her he was singing a “Mama” song for her and doing a little dance.

I took him up to brush his teeth and put him to bed. In the middle of the brushing he spotted a lizard up in the corner of the ceiling. I was going to capture it, but Carly decided it could stay. August didn’t like the idea at first but went with it.

We read more of Magic Tree House #29, until they leave with the Christmas Knight. Turned off the light and sang and then were quiet for quite awhile. thought he was falling asleep, but about 8:50 he insisted on Carly. She went up and he was asleep soon.

Eating after school:

Running around the library:

Tying his string:

The swing machine:

Starfruit joy:

Making him laugh:

Staring at the fan

Sitting in the cubbies

Today’s treasures

Digging into corn bread

MS Paint art

String treasure

Contemplating his evening snack

He came out the bedroom at 6:20 and I told him mama was downstairs. He went down and sat on the couch for five minutes until she came in from the yard. She headed to work, and he watched some Sarah and Duck. We took the car to school and he cried when I handed him off to Andrea. He had gotten in a last couple of questions about the schedule, then I told him that Andrea could tell him more.

Maaian and his teachers sent updates on his day. Maaian said “August cried for about 2min this morning, and now he and Ms. Andrea are already finding materials and brainstorming ways to create a wrecking ball like the one he made at home.” And sent a photo of them looking for materials.

His teachers wrote later in the day:

“August cried for a couple of minutes but then settled in with the group. We went for a Nature Walk where August shared with us where the best place on campus was to find rosemary (we were on the hunt for Ms. Marion’s birthday). He led the class to the spot! Hector also asked to be partners with August on the Nature Walk.

August shared with us about the wonderful experiments you were doing at home. We heard about a very spicy soup and the wrecking ball!

During recess, August completed a bunch of challenges from going around everything in the shape of a circle to going up and down the slide. Yaya decided to join in with him as well.

At lunch time, Eve was quick to pat the spot next to her and asked August to come sit. Unlike other days, we have noticed August drinking a lot of water. This is a great improvement. As for the food, he joined in the group and sat at the table being a part of the class next to Eve who kindly invited him.”

The bus kids had left when Carly arrived at 3 but he was fine. Did the thing where he ignores her at first. They sat on the bench and ate for a half hour then went to her classroom. They watched a video on that machine that was just launched to clean up plastic in the ocean and August learned it communicated with a satellite, so then he was typing satellite language into Carly’s computer. They also played outside and he did some dancing in the amphitheater area for her. They stayed there until I picked them up at 5:45. August really didn’t want to take the bike home.

They were actually at the entrance of the school when I got there, talking to Eve’s mom, Heather, who is a new art teacher at the school. The first thing he said to me was, “Why did you have to chat with Omar?”

We got home at 6. He and I watched Sarah and Duck together. He played the subtraction game and somehow broke it (found a glitch) as the problems stopped working. He did some TodoMath.

I went for a run as he was eating dinner and I think he tried the cookie things that were leftover from lunch with Omar. When I got back they were reading Magic Tree House #28 again. On chapter 7. I went to take a shower, leaving them at 7:50. He was asleep about 8.

Before I went to bed I heard him really laughing in his sleep. He was up against the edge on my side, so I slept in the middle. In his sleep he sat up and slept against a pillow up against the wall for several minutes.

The snail garden:

Lunch note from me

To school

Staircase in the Sabeel building

When I picked them up

Kaak bread

Looking for wrecking ball supplies

He was up a little after 6. He and Carly headed downstairs at 6:25. When I came down a bit later he was playing the synth. Carly went out to water plants and he went with her. He started banging the swing with the bolt thing. Probably waking up the neighborhood, but they probably thought it was the construction site across the street getting going. When Carly stopped him I heard him say he does it “when there are volcanoes” and I think he said he was warning ships. Must have been undersea volcanoes.

He wanted to take photos and borrowed my camera. He took a few really great shots. He got the macro lens to take some shots, went back outside, then came and sat next to me and did a video of himself singing the Pink Panther song using his potty words, then scrolled through, looking at past photos.

I got his vitamins for him and a full apple. He ate most of the apple. He watched Brain Pop Jr. videos and I made eggs and pancakes. After breakfast he was playing with the anatomy app: “I’m taking the body parts from this person then giving them to my machine and my machine makes parts for the machine.” Then, “It makes things that don’t turn into dirt turn into dirt.” “I’m really taking apart people’s brains.” “Now I’m going to turn the body parts into metal parts…crank, crank, crank…” “I invented a machine that turns snot into MONEY!”

I went up and took a shower. When I came down he was doing the pictograph activity in TodoMath. Carly headed to the store. August asked me, “Can you help me dissect somebody’s body? ‘Dissect’ means ‘take apart’.” So that became or word of the day. He made another machine “Its called the bangersmasher. When anything is broken, you turn the crank and it starts fixing it.” We did some exercise, then added to the mosaic a little and he added to his dream picture.

Carly came back and he took photos again. Lots and lots of photos. He started outside and took a lot of funny selfies while on on the swing. Then inside he took closeups of all sorts of things. And a lot more selfies, particularly of his hair.

I went upstairs to do some work. They did the balloon pump science experiment, getting it to work a little, then wrestled and made a new batch of slime. They experiment with different amounts of the ingredients. This batch turned out very dry once it dried and much different than their others. They missed the ice cream truck a couple times and she told him he could have ice cream later, which I think he did at some point. He also got really upset about getting some crazy math problem wrong as they were reading the Math Curse book.

I came down at 3 as he was watching pink Panther, having lost most of his clothing due to the projects and getting them wet. I got him some crackers and hummus. I organized book shelves and made a book basket for the bedroom. He played on on his own on the couch downstairs and we were both upstairs for several minutes. He went to the bathroom and noticed the toilet was dirty and wanted to clean it. So I squirted the Duck cleaner (he really likes the name on it) and he did the scrubbing.

He took his watch Nd set a timer for when we might get to Israel Cassie’s house for the party. We started listening to #27 on the Rolling Stone list, U2’s The Joshua Tree.

Carly drove to Tel Aviv. They live just a block of the river and port area where we’ve been several times. We parked at 5:30 and went in. Except for a couple of Noah’s, her husband, family members we were the first to arrive. Taya was excited to play with him but then was sitting in her loft watching her Kindle. August had really wanted to bring his iPad to play the synth for everyone. So he climbed up to the loft bed as well and was playing the synth. He was then out on the main floor playing it as people started to arrive.

Cassie got magnet blocks out and he played with those, then the Kerns and Chris, HS social studies teacher, arrived. He was up on a stool and let Jill, the youngest daughter, lift him down. They ended up in Taya’s room playing again and I talked to Matt and Chris about music. I’d also talked to Noah earlier about the preschool. Didn’t know how I’d answer if he asked about what work I was doing, but it didn’t come up. At one point August walked over to me and told me that his anthropology note was “Mandy’s holding two drinks.” I found out later that Carly had sent him to me to say it.

We ate dinner and August was too excited sitting with Taya and the Kerns girls to et much. He sat on the edge of the patio and was making noise with his feet and they were teasing him saying that he was waking people up and they were coming to complain. August seemed a little scared by it but kept doing it. He also chewed on his chair or something and explained,”that’s cuz I have an extra tooth that’s itchy and I go to th dentist.”

Cassie was taking the kids with her to walk the dog. August wanted me to go with so I did. Gaby tried having them play red light, green light, but mainly he just ran. Cassie was asking him about preschool and I asked if he ever saw Omri, who is in the other class. He said, “Only if I’m very lucky.”

Back inside he had some brownie for dessert, and more apple and honey. He spotted kitchen scale in a cupboard that was open and he got excited: “A weigher!” And at some point he went up to Noah’s brother and asked, “How many M and Ms could you fit in the entire universe?”

We got going after Cassie had loaded us up with a container of food and dessert and an iced latte from her machine. We saw three cats on the walk back to the car. We had lost count, but decided on 67, which seemed about right. So now it was 70. We left at 8:30.

On the ride home he played the synth: “This is the goodest app on my iPad to play at night… Because it keeps me up.” He checked the stopwatch on his iPad. Up to 899 hours. I said he was close to 1000 hours. He totally did the math himself when he said, “Only 101 hours.” And he told me, “So you knew how many M and Ms it would take to lift up a pizza truck? 20 billion.” Earlier it was to cover the Earth. I found out from Carly that the M and M thing was from the Math Curse book, and was the math problem he got upset about.

He fell sleep at 9, right before Even Yehuda. I carried him up to bed, no problems.

Potty words song:

Adding to his dream picture and spying on pirates:

Crazy boy:

Making music in Taya’s loft:

Making noise on the patio:

Running on our walk:

Worrying about the battery:

Synth music on the way home:

Exercise

Cleaning the toilet

Meeting the dog

In the loft

Music for Taya

Jill helping him down

Scale

Tired boy ready to go

I woke up at 7. He was cuddled against me, so I let him sleep as I figured he’d wake up when I got up. He had used me as a pillow and done a lot of cuddling with me during the night. He was up about 7:20. He had me carry him downstairs. He and Carly then read the Unexpected Love Story of Alfred Fiddleduckling and The Book of Mistakes. He played TodoMath, then the Insects app.

Carly made a mango smoothie. We drank that, then August wanted to watch how gumballs are made. He watched that on the iPad. I took a shower. They did a chili powder experiment and boiled that and he was watching other how it’s made videos.

We Skyped with my parents. We were discussing fairs and they mentioned scones. August said we had had scones in Pennsylvania and that Tia Cassie had made them, but he didn’t like the baked strawberries in them.

August really wanter to do an experiment with an apple, burning it somehow, but after Skype he got involved with searching for random places on Google Maps after I looked up Nada Lake, where Paul had just gone hiking. For all sorts of places he kept saying things like “Its so beautiful there…I can see things up so close…”

We went to make our zucchini corn bread. I handed August the zucchini Carly had gotten at the store and he noticed it rattled inside. He asked me to write it down as an anthropology note: “zucchini has pit. It was shaky.” Turned out it wasn’t a zucchini at all, but a kind of avocado. We decided to substitute carrot instead and make carrot cornbread. He helped for awhile. When he was hungry he stood at the counter and ate a bunch of cold broccoli and tofu. He asked for the dinner he hadn’t eaten last night. I thought he meant the soup so I heated some for him. When he saw it he laughed and said he meant the other stuff – the rice with tofu and broccoli. He ate that, then helped a little more with bread.

He and Carly then started doing a wrecking ball science experiment off of mysteryscience.com, which Stephanie had told us about. They had a lot of fun with that. At one point he started acting out doing a science experiment in school, telling Carly “Teacher, I think I would need to set up a science experiment.” He explained a wrecking ball and said it could be used to knock down houses to stop a fire. He was remembering the Magic Tree House book and the San Francisco fire. He then explained, “A country made a wall…But the people changed their mind and knocked down the wall.” That was from the video they had watched and referred to East Germany. From their experiments and videos the words of the day were ‘occupy’ (as in use a building), demonstrate (as in show how something is used).

He then took photos with my camera. When the cornbread was done Carly had also cooked corn so he had both of those. We then got ready to go. We discussed decibels after he asked for the bolt thing (He had Carly store it up in the lamp thing) to hit the swing with. He guessed the car engine was 60db. We left at 2, headed to the pool.

At school, Carly headed to her classroom to drop off the work she’d graded. August and I walked to the pool. We saw Omri and her parents and talked to them for a few minutes. We got to the pool and Carly arrived. We all played in the pool. Mandy and two of the girls showed up and August and I went to the deep end so he could say “Nuby” to them.

We were home by 4. I went up and worked as he watched The Pink Panther. When I came down for tea they had the number line out and he showed me how to build a two story school, using the chalkboard, after we cleaned the eraser outside. They then went for a photography walk. He came up to show me his photos when they got back. He also told me that thousands of years ago a guy was nailed to a wall. It is a mention of Jesus in a Skybrary video about Jerusalem that he’s watched a few times.

Back downstairs and outside with Carly. She had hidden easter eggs for him at one point as well. They came back up at 7 to start his bath. He had said thumbs down about school tomorrow and that he was afraid or worried. But when she asked him about what he said, “Nevermind, it’s good” to avoid talking about

When I was done I came down to take him up for his bath. He told me, “All this work you’re doing, it’s like nonsense to me…I understand ‘We’re in a park’ but I don’t understand hundreds or thousands of words.” Which I thought was a pretty impressive explanation. I talked about how he does understand thousands of words at a time when we read the chapter books, and that he could understand what I was working on if we read it in bits.

He played in the bath a good amount of time then August and I went back downstairs and he had some more smoothie. And we started reading Magic Tree House #28 again. He wanted to tell a story through dance, so he danced on the couch. Said it was a nonsense story.

I went for a run. When I came back they were reading in bed. Left them 8:50 and he was asleep at 9.

Fun with time-lapse:

Finding beautiful things on Google Maps:

The wrecking ball:

Running his experiment during math class:

Pool time:

Explaining a two-story school:

Telling a story through dance:

He was up a little before 7, so we all were. We all got up about 7:10. He went in on the Zinnie bed and played synthesizer and then the math game for awhile on his own. We were in other parts of the house. Downstairs he watched StoryBots and I got him vitamins. He was outside with Carly for awhile, hitting things with his bolt. He came inside and Carly took recycling up to the cages. She brought him back bottle caps and some treasures she had found him. I went and took a shower. Using the chalkboard, he taught her about dividing squares into rectangles and rectangles into squares. She taught him about dividing squares into triangles. He was then lying on the floor and she was just sitting in one of the red chairs. She scared him when he forgot she was in the chair.

I got him scrambled eggs and shnitzel for breakfast. He asked, “Did you know spiders have 25 eyes?” I wished him a happy half-birthday. He ate little pieces of the three kinds of cake from the party yesterday to celebrate. He was trying to use his half-birthday as license to break the rules: “It’s my half-birthday, so I can sit on the table. I can do extra stuff.” August was excited about his half-birthday and didn’t think anyone in his class or the world would have a half-birthday. When I asked why, he said, “Because you’re special people!”

Carly drove to school to get notebooks she needed to grade. I made the rest of the pancakes. When she came back he was right in the doorway playing the synthesizer to surprise her. We all sat on the couch and played with the synthesizer. He can pretty precisely play the keys following the tempo of the arpeggios each key makes, which I hadn’t realized. When I tried playing he told me I was playing it wrong and had to wait for the pattern to go back to the original note and then he showed me.

He was then drawing on the chalkboard and driving Carly crazy with the carpets sound of the eraser. From all of that silliness ‘Looniness’ word of the day.

We finally left by 12:40. I had planned to take him to the pool while Carly did some work, but he nixed that plan, not wanting to go to the pool without mama. He wanted to go to the Snakes and Ladder playground instead. He said, “Where every last (something) will die.” It was clearly a quote from something, and he thought it was from the Erie Pirates book.

We made it up to the playground. He first headed to the climbing portion and he wanted to do the running in circles thing with me telling him how fast to run. He then rested in the hammock part while I rested on the ground. He took photos from up there, then got down and did more photos. We went on the spinning thing, where he was the sun in the middle of the solar system. We heard a guy blowing on the shofar horn for Rosh Hashanah and August was copying the sound. Awhile later the guy came through the park and started talking to us. He asked if we were Jewish and when we said no he quickly turned and walked away. Would have liked him to play it for us though. We rode on our spaceship for a bit, then somehow the playground was all made of pineapple. So running around and pretending to eat everything made of pineapple became the major game for the day. He eventually decided that things that swung were made of apple.

We sat and read some of Magic Tree House #28 and ate our snack. We then left by 2:10. We took a slightly longer route back, heading west a block to come down the other side of the pine tree park. He twice said something about how we would have been home already if we took a shorter route. Close to our playground he dropped the orange hair band thing he had found a few days ago. We walked back a bit to find it where he had dropped it.

At home he took all of his clothes off. He had some popcorn with Carly after we made him put some clothes on, then I took him up for his bath. At one point he had gone to the bathroom ll on his own, but came out laughing, saying his underwear was funny. He had gotten both legs in the same hole. He was pretty filthy from the runny nose and skipping a bath yesterday, etc. And it had been a week since washing his hair. He was playing with the hairdryer and convinced me to let him take it downstairs to play with. He was pretending to plug it into things to provide power: first a round metal disk (which was the end of a poster tube) and then downstairs the refrigerator. I had the refrigerator provide too much power and it blew up. He liked that and played it several times. He wasn’t happy though when, after he had made it fall on the ground and when he had hit me with the cord part, I took it way and retired it from being a toy.

He did a soup experiment, putting lots of things, but mainly old chili powder in a pot, then we boiled it on the stove.

We ate apples and honey, and then he helped me do all of the dishes. Carly had been making food and had made a carrot soup and rice with broccoli and tofu. We read the Erie Pirates, Hungry Fox and the Midnight Pies, and the Zach math book. He then watched Curious George Christmas, or part of it. He had said he was tired earlier, and yawned a few times.

We then went for an evening walk. To the southwest again, then back up

Vatikim and through the park and back home. Stopped along the way to smell some flowers.

Went for a walk

Back home we finished Magic Tree House #28. He quoted the math book “I can’t even grow mold on a sandwich” I made him peanut butter Toast. He climbed up on the counter, which normally I wouldn’t let him do, but he just sat there, all calm. He told me, “I want to see all the zookeeper’s in there.” His old joke bout the peanut butter. He used a butter knife to stir the peanut butter.

He played the synth a bit, then was negotiating the bedtime order. We compromised by reading the “Sneetches’ story first. We then brushed his teeth and then went down to say good night to Carly.

Back upstairs we read Will I have a Friend? We discussed the connections to his experience at preschool. He told me, “Did you know at preschool I’m just standing? To me that’s actually playing.” I then sang a bit and lay next to him until he was asleep about 9:15.

Surprising mama with the synth:

Controlling his running:

Being the sun:

The shofar:

Eating the pineapple playground:

His boiling soup:

Half-birthday cakes

Watching mama leave

Trying to hit the fan

He took 17 photos of what we call his adventure water bottle, so it is clearly important to him.

Their squares and triangles and rectangles

On the hammock

selfie

Being the sun

Eating the pineapple playground

How their latest batch of slime dried

Lazy on the floor

Smelling flowers

Chilling on the counter