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Woohoo! A new site. Uploading photos and videos will be much faster for me, it will be cheaper, and it is an eco-friendly hosting company: https://www.greengeeks.com/going-green/

All the old entries will eventually migrate over here (once Squarespace allows me to export the data). But for now the old site is at http://thisisourblog.squarespace.com.

I woke him at 7. He watched Pink Panther. When we was done with that I said it was a big day. First thing he said to me today was “I can’t do rest time by myself!” and started crying. He calmed down quickly, and asked if he could play with his bubble timer during rest time. I found it and we took it.  He did fine on the way to school, although as we got near the school he stopped and asked if I could pick him up at lunch.

Once there we talked to Marion. He wasn’t happy, so I took him inside. We timed his timer (a minute) and talked about how he could time rest time. And we read a book about a girl who takes a squash to school. Reia had joined us, and brought over a book about seeds. I said we should be outside so moved out there and sat on the ground. Reia lost interest, but August and I read the seed book. He was nice and calm now. I took him over to Andrea. He had decided he doesn’t want a mat during rest time and asked her to not give him one. I told her about the timer, and she asked August if he could show it to her. He agreed, and I was able to leave just before 8:30.

I told him I’d check in around 10:30, and bring a treat for him after rest time. I ran that by Marion. As I was on my way home I realized I didn’t have my watch. Oops. I was sure he was going to be excited that he got to keep it for a couple hours.

I rode my bike back and checked on him at 10:30. He was chewing on his timer. I didn’t see what he’d been doing, or whether he was just walking around, but he seemed happy. He showed me my watch. He told me he’d been exercising inside and outside and had made it to 30 minutes. He also said he had been letting other people play with it on his wrist. He was fine giving it back to me though. I checked in with him and reminded him I’d bring a treat after rest time. He reminded me of the candy place in the mall. He then said “So come back after rest time! Leave now.” So he was doing okay.

I went home and had lunch and worked, then I biked over to the mall. Ran out of time to get a haircut as I stood in line at the pharmacy to get a teething gel to see if that will help. At the candy stand I got bulk candy and got some chocolate covered pretzels, vanilla and chocolate disk things, and rock candy.

I biked home, then drove to the school. I got to his classroom at 1:35. He was hiding behind the water cooler when I got there. I took him outside and gave himself some of the candy I got from the mall. He said he had laid down and played with his timer during the whole rest time. I confirmed this with Marion a few minutes later. She said he did very well. He did not, however, eat a single bite for snack or lunch. I got his lunch and he scarfed down most of the noodles and mushrooms, some of his carrot, some apple, and part of a granola bar. I asked why he didn’t eat anything. He thought about it, then, with a straight face, said, “Well, I’m always really hungry after school, so I save the food for after school.”

Dropped him off a little before 2. Their choices after rest time are apparently garden, maker space, yoga (although not today), or playing outside. Marion told him to go ask Andrea what maker space was and he was excited by her answer that “it’s a place where we make things.” So pretty sure that was going to be his choice. I also introduced the idea of tomorrow when I need to go to Jerusalem and Carly just picking him up at the end and giving him more of the treat. He seemed fine with it since a treat was involved.

I stayed in the library then picked him up at 3. Andrea told me that he was the only one that figured out how to put the flashlight back together. They also played Turtle Cards. It is a programming card game and Andrea was the turtle/computer, moving around on the floor. We sat out on the PKB bench again and he ate his mixed fruit and his bread: “I’ve been thinking bout the bread all morning.” He didn’t bring up the treat again so we didn’t have more of it.

He needed to use the bathroom so we went back in his classroom. Amelia talked to him about figuring out the flashlight. Said it was the talk of the preschool.

We then headed to the pool. He was talkative about preschool. Told me that the treats helped him make it through the day. And that there’s a girl in PKC named Anna. Carly later said it was the sister of one of her students. But it is the first kid I think he’s ever told me about that I didn’t already know. He met her during gardening time today. Ms. Anna did the gardening time. He said he ate “Kale…it’s a little spicy though…but I love it.” He also said he’d call Anna “Ms. Anna Leaf Leaf” But then said he was calling himself that. He said he hadn’t played with Reia or any other kids, but they had only had a little time on the playground and it wasn’t enough time to play with anyone. He mentioned Pink Panther and I started humming the song. He joined in and we hummed it together.

He didn’t want to get out of the pool at 4:20. He talked about loving the water. He had a great description of being both warm and cool, but I don’t remember the exact words. He had wanted to show Carly the garden and have more kale, but we forgot to do that on the way out. We went home with her and were home before 5. He was a little upset about the garden, but okay with showing her tomorrow.

He played some iPad and played GroGarden and Camping with Grandpa. Carly made him pizza with mushrooms. He asked, “After I eat pizza, can you read the two lines book…appendix.” Figured out he meant Madeline. After he ate the first piece though they did Skybrary first. Carly read Carlos Listens Up, Oliver’s Own Office, the book about the adopted girl, and Yoko Yak. He then did his 20 minutes after dinner, choosing to play one of the pirate games.

He went to the bathroom and when he was done said of pulling up his pants “Lets start practicing.” He does most of the bathroom process himself now, but often kicks off his shorts and underwear and then needs help putting them back on. We went back to the pirate game. He told me, “We need to work as a team.”  A few more minutes of that then we read Madeline. He did talk me into using the iPad a little more when he wanted to play the testing game and use the combining of blocks in Toca Blocks to do so. a rather odd game, really, where I’d tease him that they were just ordinary blocks, then he’d combine them and they’d make something new.

I took him up for his bath. He made one good concoction, then a bunch of bubbles in his bath. Didn’t have to wash him much. He threw bubbles out to make bubble art, then we rinsed him. Downstairs he wanted to time me making the monsters on the monster cards. Did a few rounds of that, then checked the stopwatch on his iPad, which is up over 500 hours.

We then started reading The Scarecrow and His Servant, by Philip Pullman. August said, “Servant! That’s the word of the day!” I described a servant and August agreed he wouldn’t want to be a servant. We read about 10 pages though and he agreed that, in that situation, the boy was right to take the job of servant.

He said good night to Carly and I took him upstairs. He was singing a song that sounded like “Heads, shoulders, knees, and toes” and set to the tune of “London Bridge” and ended with the line “That’s my body”. He wanted me to sing it, but I had to convince him I didn’t know it. We tried to search for it on YouTube, but no luck. He asked me to ask his teachers about it. He wanted to watch videos about body parts and was sad when I said he couldn’t. I turned off the light and sang a couple songs and he fell asleep by 9. I waited to make sure he was asleep and fell asleep myself until Carly woke me up a bit later.

I woke him up at 7. We got going and to school a little before 8

He is having a sightly harder day today. When I dropped him off we had agreed on two and a half hours until I returned. I had also mentioned going home and coming back with the car later and he seemed okay with that. I got him to agree to two hours and forty. But then he wasn’t doing anything and was hanging around me. We kept talking and he asked for it to be 2 hours again. I agreed to 2 and then he let me go.

I walked home, then rode my bike back to check on him. He was sitting next to kids who were playing with kitchen stuff, but not playing himself. He handed me a button he had found and wanted me to put it in his treasures.

But then he asked to go home. He said several times “I’m really not learning anything” and that we should go home. I got him playing with some letter magnets and he sorted most of them into upper and lower case. We went and looked at the kids playing with clay. I talked about getting him doing something and he said “It’s okay if I don’t do anything.” I got him tracing letters on the magnetic board thing and he was okay with me leaving. He made sure I told Marion when I would return, then I could leave. I had been there about 15 minutes.

Rode the bike home and then returned with the car and swim stuff, in case we stayed that long. I picked him up right before 12. He gave Andrea a leg hug and they said they’d both gotten a lot of hugs and kisses today. We hung around for a minute, then were the last ones leaving, except for Reia. The teachers asked if she was going with me – they knew we were going to play with her. I said she could come sit with us over at the tables. So she went over with me and August and they both ate there snacks. August hadn’t eaten anything and she had most of her sandwich left. August shared his seaweed with her. He ate his mixed fruit and sweet potato bread.

Reia’s mom showed up bout 12:15. She showed me the books for the English reading/writing curriculum that she wants Reia and August to do together. Workbook stuff that I won’t have August doing.

They were then eager to go over to the preschool playground. Nicholas and Sophia were also there. August played on the swing and we made soup. Sophia had me twist her on the swing. August had never done that before here, then had me do it to him a minute later. He and Reia started playing together when they worked together to swing Reia’s mom on the tire swing. Then, they were getting on top of the car and fixing it together. August could now also get down from the car on his own.

They went to the bathroom, then August suggested the big playground. We headed over there and found that there is a couch next to it now. I joked that it was for the adults to be lazy on. August started playing and told me “Dada, sit on the couch and be lazy.” After a couple minutes he got on the spinning thing and could spin himself, another first. He said, “You can’t see me.” Like Sophia last year when playing hide and seek.

August and Reia then pretended to be invisible as they played on the play structure, claiming I couldn’t see them. Played along with that for awhile. We then did play hide and seek. First, the two of them were trying to find me. I hid about 5 times. Then Haoyi hid a couple times.

We were getting hot and August wanted to go to the library. He and I got Magic Tree House #23, about a tornado on the prairie, and sat in the back corner on bean bags. Haoyi had been surprised a bit earlier when she found out that we read chapter books to August, saying Reia wouldn’t last a page without pictures. August demonstrated his focus as we read the entire book. The first time we’ve read a full one in one sitting, although we’ve come close before. In the book, Jack has to pull with all his ‘might’, so that became the word of the day. He also later asked “What does ‘lend’ mean?” That is also from the book.

Reia came and went with us as we read. She played with a stool, putting it on the bean bags and annoying August a bit. She had brought over a book on Koalas and I read part of it and we looked through it for a few minutes. They lost interest in that and I showed August a book about Bedouins for a couple minutes and talked about Jordan.

They had to go meet Reia’s dad. He was showing up after picking up or dropping of the car at a shop. It was a new car on Friday and 20 minutes after taking it off the lot, as he drove to work, he was rear ended. August got book #24 and took it to Liz to check out. We left at 2:35.

He wanted to leave swimming to tomorrow and just wanted to head home. Went to the bathroom first, and we talked about playing with Reia. I said something about playing on the playground. He said “No. When it’s playground time I’ll just sit there and do nothing for TWELVE hours and do nothing…No, FORTY THREE hours!” He was excited that he had played with Reia, however: “I finally played with Reia!…but at school I won’t play with anyone.” I tried to get him to explain why and he said “I don’t want to. If I don’t want to I don’t want to play with anyone.”

In the car I asked August if he had any music requests. He said “I can just make music with my window. It has two notes.” And showed me some window music. As I started to drive he said, “This is AWAY from home, silly.” I told him I was happy that he had developed a good geographic sense from all of our exploring, but I had to drive around the roundabout before I was heading the right direction. Then, as we got to our house he was looking out and said, “Let’s park right there, in the shady spot.”

We were home at 3:00. I gave him about 25 minutes of his choice time, during which he watched Pink Panther while I made pizza, then we played the game on my phone. We exercised. August was wearing my watch when Carly called. He said “Mama’s calling.” He then had his first full phone conversation that he answered, talked though, and hung up. And it was on a watch. “Hello…Who is this?…Hi Mama!…at home…Okay…See you soon!” And hung up.

We then did rest time. Not great, but not bad. For my choice on iPad time I said we could do language or math. So we did some Hebrew in Drops, then some Quick Math Jr. Carly was home just before 5. He asked her if she’d found him any treasure, then asked, “Do you remember the instructions? Just keep your eyes open and look down at the ground.” He wanted to do an experiment and he and I looked at a couple of books for a minute, but really he just wanted to make slime. He went out with Carly and they did two batches.

I worked on Carly’s computer and did dishes. She then made noodles and tofu and mushrooms for him. He had his twenty minutes of iPad time and used it to play Dragonbox Big Numbers. He ate seconds. They read Madeline and I went out for a bike ride, as running has been hurting my knees.

When I came back they were out of the bath and reading in the bedroom. She had read a couple of the stories from the Nightlight book I had checked out. He didn’t like the stories, but it has really good pictures and they were looking at one that showed animals sleeping or hibernating underground. They were talking about it, and he was talking about putting a light down there to wake them up. He then asked her “How do you measure brightness?” He was actually getting upset when Carly said she didn’t know, as if he didn’t believe her. I walked in at that moment and when he asked me I said “lumens”. I then looked it up, and we ended up discussing the difference between ‘lumens’ and ‘lux’.

As I went to take a shower Carly asked if he wanted to read Ramona Quimby, Age 8 again. He said, “Yeah, so I remember it more.”

I went to take a shower.
I thought he would last so I could talk to him about tomorrow and I’d put him to sleep. But as I was in the shower Carly opened the door and had me yell a good night. He was asleep a few minutes later, about 8:30.

Fixing the car:

Tunnel; 

On the slide: 

He woke up at 6:30, right as Carly was about to walk out the door. She brought him down. The first thing he asked for was vitamins, which has never happened before. I got him those and some bread.

He watched Pink Panther and ate Cheerios and we got our timing down perfect again. Only hiccup on the way to school was that he had dropped a handle off the bike. Luckily, it was less than half a block that we had to retrace.

At the school we saw Anna taking in the bus kids. He gave her the bracelet he had made. I dropped him off just before 8 and that went smoothly. He said, “So you’ll come back in two hours. Then two more hours.” He and Andrea were talking about taking care of the plants. Andrea was asking him what they needed to do to take care of it. She was looking for “Water it.” He said, in his thinking voice, “Well, is it a shade plant or a sun plant?” He said it looked like a shade plant.

At 10 I checked in on him and he was doing fine. Marion said he didn’t eat anything again today. And that he spent a lot of time walking around and not settling down or playing with other people – I thought she meant for snack, but maybe meeting as well. But that he had been doing better since then. He gave me a couple beads he had found and seemed okay to me. Told me to come back in two hours.

When I came back just before noon he was standing in line waiting for me. Andrea said they had worked on their rocks and taking care of the plants. The rocks have their names on them and are for checking in to class each day. They will pick out there rock and put it in the ‘here’ pile.

We sat at the tables and he ate the fruit cup, part of his egg, and some of his bread, since he hadn’t eaten anything since some cheerios this morning. Reia and her mom came and sat with us. Her mom (How-ee) said that Reia had told her that August hadn’t been playing with her. I said I didn’t think he’d really been playing with anyone yet. I had a good talk with her though. They are from Hong Kong and spent 5 years in Michigan. She really wants someone to do a reading program with her kids and suggested August do it with them, with me leading it, but I don’t think that will happen.

They gave him some alphabet biscuits (cookies) from Ikea and he liked those.  August was getting on the tables, but then told me “I need some attention!” I talked to them about the names of the new kids in their class. August wanted me to learn the names from his teachers. I suggested we go in and look at the names on the cubbies. We did, and learned all the new ones: Judson, Bibo, and Eve, in addition to Lydia, which I had already learned.

Reia and her mom don’t have a car and have to wait around campus until her older daughter is done at 3. We arranged to play at the playground together tomorrow. I had promised August pizza today though so we got going a little before 1. We got to the mall at 1:35.

I think he was both frustrated that the play area was so busy and tired out from school. He zoned out and lay on the side of the play area for several minutes. When I went to get slices of pizza they only had two slices of olive left. August picked off the olives, and also refused any of the sprinkle stuff he had liked last year. Seemed happy enough about it though.

We went to the pharmacy and got vitamins for him and a new sponge for me. He insisted on choosing one though and settled on the pink one of what I wanted, after initially wanting a purple one I didn’t want.

We then went to Tiv Taam. Cheese and hummus and a couple other things. As we were checking out he found a little plastic hippo figure on the floor. A pretty good treasure find.

On our walk home we thought of three things we should have gotten/done at the mall: a haircut for me, fruit for smoothies, and teething medicine for him. Neither of us felt like turning back though. We were home at 3:25.

He played Camping with Grandpa on the iPad. He excitedly said “I know what a black-hearted Susan is!” and pointed to it in the game. I think the game had told him, but he’s heard about them somewhere else as well. We read some Ramona. He asked “can we buy a cat?” Luckily, I turned it around and once he remembered he was allergic to cats he didn’t want me to get one. He said “I can have lots of words of the day.” We settled on ‘seething’ and ‘pry’.

Carly got home. He got grumpy and mean. Wanted to only play iPad or smother Carly. Didn’t want to do anything. He ate a little pita, then was drinking milk and spilled it. The two of them went upstairs to wrestle again. When they came down he showed Carly his treasure from the mall. He talked about his ability to sense treasure.

They went outside, with him in underwear and shoes. He pointed out a seedpod, but later gave her credit for finding the treasure since she had picked it up. It was very nice of him. But then another meltdown and being really sad about the iPad. But when he was calming down and still sad he was able to talk about it to me well.

Carly made him a piece of french toast and he ate that. I then gave him a bath. He was quoting Pink Panther: “And I still brought home a doggy bag… Congratulations! You’re the first one that’s made it this far. Are you ready for the challenge?”

We finished Ramona Quimby, Age 8 and read Gustav the Goldfish and The Butter Battle Book. We went downstairs and while Carly finished getting ready we read Oliver’s Own Office in Skybrary. She took him in and I left them at 7:50. She was back down by 8:05.

Watching the kids play:

We got the timing down perfectly today. I woke him up just after 7. I had to tempt him awake with suggesting Pink Panther. He said “yeah”, then I let him watch two stories downstairs. When we turned it off to get ready to go he said “So you’re gonna leave for hours now.” He then asked “Are you still going to check on me?” I asked how many times I should check on him and he said “Just once”. And told me “So you have three and a half hours of work time, okay?”

He went to the bathroom and as we got going he made an O out of the straw things. He asked “Who wants an O in their name?” I pointed out I didn’t have an O in any of my names, and he said “Ryano!”

I dropped him off a little before 8. He was going to go check out the water table with Andrea and let me get going. Easy peasy. Carly said she saw him from afar as she brought down her Korean students to PKB to help with the Korean boy and that August seemed to be doing fine.

I checked in with him at 10. He was having fun inside. He made sure I was coming back in two hours, then said, “Okay. Leave now.” When I picked him up at 11:55 he was looking at a book with Marion and a couple other students. He had a rock that they were going to use for something. Later he told me, “We did a little scavenger hunt… Just for a rock. A rock that was special to you.” She said that he hadn’t eaten a single thing for snack. He was fine with them sharing the bread we made for snack though, and most of it was gone. He was jokingly telling her that it had peanut butter in it, but she said she believed me. It had also been difficult to get him to drink water.

We sat at a table and he ate much of his snack (the bread, primarily) then walked out with Candy and her mom. Both of the kids were slow as they kept wanting to play with things. August and I walked up to the park on the way to the dance studio, as we had peanut butter sandwiches in our lunch.

We negotiated bars in lunches on our way to the park. He wanted full snack bars for snack. We ended at part of a bar being part of his lunch.

At the park we went up to the tube, where I think he’s done space experiments before. As we sat in the tube (he fit better than I did, as I had to be sideways with my legs sticking out) he said, “This is what I do in preschool sometimes. I get in a special tube.” And he said, “I like every seaweed snack…can’t make me stop liking it.” And quoted Ramona Quimby, Age 8: “Dear Superfoot. Get well or I will eat your eraser.” He asked, “What’s ‘abandoned’ mean?” So that was our word of the day. He was wearing my watch and looked at the activity app. He chastised me: “You sitted around for two hours.”

Finally, he invented the backpack store game. It was a backpack store where backpacks cost nonillions of dollars. Customers would come in and not have enough money. He told me once “You need to collect some more gold. Just go to the beach…I have the perfect map…”

We got out and went over to the climbing and trampoline area for a bit. He remembered I had said he could play a little Green Planet on my iPad. So we played 5 minutes sitting on the trampoline. He needed to go to the bathroom and said it ws urgent, so he went in the dirt and bushes at the edge of the park. Finally, he played with some dials on the play structure, making potions. One of the potions, he said, turned a kid into a little swing thing he then sat and swung on: “One of these things…with eyes on it…so I could rock on somebody…made out of skin.”

With that we headed back to school, getting there at 1:45. We went to the library and he ate some more of the bread and got water. He was continuing his fear of monsters by saying “Oh no! Monster coming!” when he walked by the doors and they opened.

We went to the meeting with his teachers at 2. Talked to them about his tooth, rest time, and possibility of me volunteering. August started with us, then Carly took him to play around the room. They didn’t have a lot of answers about my questions about reading groups and specials and whatnot. Kind of surprising, since it all starts next week.

We said goodbye to Carly and walked home, getting here at 2:45. I asaked if he wanted exercise, food, or rest time. He chose exercise, so we did that, then read some Ramona. Then did rest time. I let him watch a Pink Panther after that, then he played Quick Math Jr. and other learning apps.

He ate some hummus and pita and part of a carrot with Carly, then they worked on some of their painting of the corner unit and his box rocket, then went upstairs to wrestle when he wasn’t really engaged in that. I made a pasta dish, with basil and sun-dried tomatoes and olives and olive oil. The pesto and feta on the side for August and Carly. He ate a little of it, but declared he was skipping the tomatoes and olives.

Carly gave him a bath, then we read in Skybrary: Carlos Gets Upset, Emma Left Right, Carlos Listens Up, Yoko Yak. He ate a few more noodles. I took him upstairs and got him ready for bed. I read “The Dream Makers” to him from the book I checked out in the library. He wanted more reading, but was clearly tired. I sang some songs and he was asleep at 8:55.

Carly woke him up just before 8. The first thing he talked about was the “alien cards”: the card game from Korea. They’re actually monster cards. He informed her that monsters and aliens are the same thing, but aliens live in outer space. He came downstairs, asking for the Pink Panther. We read some Ramona Quimby, then he helped Carly paint the corner unit in the front hallway. They’re painting it a nice blue color. I skyped with my parents while they did that, and August came over. Paul had just arrived back from his trip to hike Mt. Adams and had to work in the morning, so didn’t talk to him. But he had been gone a week. My parents had gone to a Jag car show in Spokane, then stayed at a restore in Idaho called Stoneridge and driven up to the northeast corner of the state to Metaline Falls on the Pend Oreille River. None of us have really been up to that corner of the state before and I’d like to see it sometime. August typed to them and did symbols using the ‘Option’ key and numbers in Arabic.

He then played Quick Math Jr. and I took a shower. Carly did some rearranging, putting one of the green drawer things from Korea downstairs to hold August’s toys down there. Carly then helped me start to do more of the moving upstairs. The small desk is back out on the patio, out of the way. The big dresser took its place in the bedroom so there is actually a dresser in there. Eventually the small grey couch will come out to the play area and the big desk will move in the small room to be the office.

They left at 11:25. I made lunch and did some work. They were back at 12:10. They had just gone to the toy store by the train station. They had gotten paint to paint his big box/rocket, a swim noodle that “shoots bubble gum jam”, and some glue for something.

They worked on painting his box. Carly had done laundry, and we put the blue shirt that Atsuko had given him when he was a year old on him. It finally fits. They left again. They went to Tiv Taam. He did an arm time machine where he spins his arm around like he does when he runs and he went to different time periods: “before humans…just molecules…the big boom.” The last being his moniker for the Big Bang. We haven’t discussed different time periods recently, so not sure where that came from. But not totally surprising. They also went to the crafts store in the mall and got more paint for the corner unit.

They were back at 3. He did more painting with Carly. He then did more exercising with my watch. He decided to run around in circles on the rug for 5 minutes, but he slipped and fell. He didn’t cry out or anything, but ignored me when I came over. He did some self-soothing, and just lay on the floor by himself for upwards of ten minutes. When he got up he came over to me on in the kitchen and said “Dada, close your eyes.” He took me to the couch and buried me in pillows. And he said “I think I love you.” He then did more balloon machine. I roasted the sweet potatoes to make purée for the bread we were going to make later. And I made a mango smoothie for us all.

Carly was working outside. She keeps stepping up the landscaping, especially in the planters around the kitchen. He helped me make the maple sweet potato bread, then made scary monsters out of the monster cards on the couch. Carly came in and they played with the straw building things. She made a long snake sort of thing that he would blow in and other things would come out of it. Later it would produce chairs and stools for us in the thousands.

He wanted to do more exercise with my watch. He went outside and was running around got the 30 minutes of exercise. He really wanted to get the calorie goal as well. He slid down the slide on his stomach, backwards, then got the hose and washed off the slide as it was dirty. He came in and ate some of the bread fresh out of the oven, then Carly had him watch a video on the different colors of poop. I’m not sure what started that, although I think it had something to do with the dual definitions of ‘stool’.

He and I went out walking again at 6:50. We saw cat #28 on our way up. He also stopped to look at a big, shiny, new BMW motorcycle and asked questions about it. He said he has a cat sensing power. I said I didn’t have that ability, but maybe I just needed to practice sensing cats. He said, “I have a machine that does it and you have a power. So we just need to upgrade your power.”

He had been using my watch so much today that it was down to a few percent and wasn’t going to last through the walk. He took it off and gave it to me so he wouldn’t have to see that happen. He wanted the snakes and ladders playground again. There, we played the spaceship game. And he was singing a spaceship song.

We went on the spinning thing and that was his spinning time machine. “I have my arm machine and this one.” He spun around, just relaxing in it. Started singing his counting song: “And a one and a two…” He told me, of this song, “Remember that song I sang this summer and it went to a thousand? I updated it and it goes to a million now. Can you help me singing it?” But then he started talking about which time period he was in: “We’re in the ape one now.”

We left at 7:30 and got home by 7:50. I hadn’t mentioned it recently, but he suddenly said “We need a word of the day!” We reviewed the words from Ramona Quimby, Age 8 that we had discussed in the morning (brooded, indignant, arthritic) and chose ‘brooded’.

When he wanted his water he said “You’re a stray. Could you get my water bottle please, stray cat?” Carly made him noddles and mushrooms for dinner. We read more Ramona. He repeated some of his favorite lines from it. As we went upstairs he called Carly Bigfoot. Carly commented on Ramona being a bad influence too.

We started his bath at 8:20. I washed his hair and he did a little art on the door. We used the hair dryer on his hair and since he hadn’t had his 20 minutes of iPad after dinner we negotiated one pink panther Pink Pink Pink Pink episode. He watched that and had more bread. He initially ran to Carly  and wanted her, but I said he was going to bed with me again and he was fine with that. He said goodnight to her and we went upstairs and brushed his teeth. We were in bed with lights off and singing to him before 9:15. He was asleep at 9:25.

Shirt that Atsuko bought him when he was a baby:

Carly went and woke him up at 8. We talked recipes and decided to make creamy thai carrot sweet potato soup. He said he wanted peanut butter, then Carly made him peanut butter syrup toast again. We read the Supernuisance chapter of Ramona Quimby, then the book It Starts as a Seed that we checked out yesterday. August then suggested we do daily challenges in Nature Cat. We went out and listened to birds in the morning and recorded them, then drew a picture of things you wear in the rain. He drew a coat. He then sat at the table and played Endless Reader with Carly while I went to take a shower.

She made him pizza, but it turned out to be spicy sauce. I ate that and we made him a new pizza while he played the Gus Hebrew app. When he got the new pizza he said “I love it!” Carly and I were talking about the school and Carly said she thought she had the best classroom in the school. He said “No, Mandy’s science room is the best.” But his best line of the morning was “I don’t have to eat spinach AND I don’t have to clean up…says me.”

We got going and got to the school pool at 10:30. As we walked through campus he described the painting over the cafeteria area as looking like gummy worms. And he talked about the painting of an alien spaceship abducting a cow (good question as to why it is there) and called it a sad or “serious alien”.

When we got to the pool Tessa and her two kids were there. August and Liam ignore each other though so we just played with him, but talked to Tess about school. Then Sharna and her kids, Maya and Ben, showed up. I talked to her husband about Ben’s first day of preschool yesterday. Ben is in PKB and he had to stay with him/on campus the whole day. August and I were playing with the kickboard and shooting it out of the water. It hit him right in the face once. Cried, but no damage. Did some time without the floaties. He’s not expressing interest in swimming, but I think he watches Maya and Liam swimming around and has ideas. He’s definitely very comfortable in the pool now.

We got out at 12:40 to get a snack, then went back in the pool for awhile. It was time to go when August started to shiver.

We drove down to the big Tiv Taam. August asked “Do you think you’ll park in th spot that has that  pumper thingy?” We did. The pumper thingy turned out to be a piece of metal sticking out of the ground in the dirt. It is at an angle, and sort of like a pedal on a piano.

Inside I had the list so did most of the shopping with the cart. Carly took him to get one of those pastry snacks and they had cheese and honey in them. They did some challenges for me, finding groceries we needed. He spotted dried strawberries with sugar on them and was very excited when I agreed to get them. Earlier, he had spotted a round tin of hard candies which he said was exactly like what Oma has and didn’t like it when I said no. I also found Pez candy refills for his Smurf Pez dispenser.

We left at 2:25. While talking about his teeth I called them baby teeth and he responded with “Baby teeth? Are you just calling me a baby?”

At home he played PBS Science and the Namoo app. In the Namoo app he’d keep calling us over to show us his favorite part of photosynthesis, etc. Carly made them scrambled eggs and veggies.

I made a thai sweet potato and carrot soup. I used less than half of the curry paste it called for, but it turned out to be too spicy for August and Carly. I ended up with really good soup for me though. Carly also made pasta and mushrooms for him. They did the cranberries and fizzy water experiment and read It Began with a Mistake. They then went upstairs and did more beading, finishing the third bracelet for his teachers from last year and this year. He basically did it all on his own.

He then exercised with his watch. I heard him ask “Mama, are you impressed?” He watched one episode of the Pink Panther. He cuddled with Carly and said “I’m leaning on your breast.” He’d never used that word before and asked where he learned it. He said from Oma.

He drank the cranberries and fizzy water experiment and said “It’s like fizzy water infused with cranberries!”  In the bathroom he decided he didn’t like the tile pattern because it wasn’t like a chessboard, but the rows shifted: “I think the floor is ugly…I want them to line up.” He took a long time in the bathroom, then had me use his recycling machine/conveyor belt machine. He asks me what I need to recycle, but I can’t find a bin, and then his conveyor belt takes it away. He started it when we were by the bathrooms after going to the beach after the science center last Wednesday.

I helped wash his hands after he was done. When we finished he asked if I had used soap. I had. He didn’t believe me, and even went out and told Carly I hadn’t used soap on his hands. He did his balloon machine on the couch, fulfilling orders for balloons that I would make up. That started a few days ago as well.

I took him out for an evening walk.  Couple blocks away, he yelled “Hi doggy!” to a dog hanging out the window of a passing car. As we got closer to the snakes and ladder park, he said something was “5 meters, 3 inches.” I tried to explain that he was mixing measurement systems. He didn’t agree: “No! It’s right!”

We got there at 6:20. He was wearing my watch and wanted to exercise, so we went in on the exercise equipment. After playing in there for several minutes (he found an arm machine he could use, and found he could sit on the swinging machine and swing back and forth, thanks to “momentum!”) he went over to the climbing area and did more exercise. He ran in circles around it and had me tell him how fast or slow to go. Finally, he sort of rested on the climbing wall shapes. We left before 7.

On the way back he spotted the moon again (we’ve had great views of the moon waxing and the three planets in the sky) and a plane flying close to it. He explained though that the moon was a lot farther though and it was an optical illusion.

We were back at 7:10. He asked “How’d people wash things before they had sinks?” He ate a carrot, then noodles and butter. Then ate more carrot to earn even more noodles and butter. He wanted ‘breast’ to be the word of the day. I went for a run at 8.

When I got back he started quoting Pink Panther lines: “Try artichoke with liver, yum, it’s the best.” “No more Mr. Nice guy.”

He and I read the rest of Magic Tree House #22, which is about General Washington crossing the Delaware River. We discussed the words commander-in-chief, caption, and spy. August decided they should all be words of the day. Carly had given him a bath. I took him up to brush his teeth. In the middle of that he asked, “Did you know we’re on a gigantic horse? That goes around the sun.” Then started to brush his teeth again. Carly came in and I  left them at 9:55.

Bracelets for his teachers:

Pez:

He came down at 6:51 and queitly curled up on the couch at the other end from me. He watched a couple Pink Panthers and had some Cheerios. We got ready to go and were walking just after 7:30, getting to his class just before 8.

They are starting school outside each day, in the covered area next to PKA. I like that idea. August played with the magnetic blocks again, and Hector came and played next to him. August kept asking me to tell him what to do next, and saying “Convince me” to do it. He did go and talk through the schedule for the day with Andrea. She said they would play at the larger playground later and asked if he liked it, he first had to clarify which playground she was talking about, as he knew about both of the other playgrounds. When she said she meant the preschool playground she then asked what his favorite parts of the playground are. He replied “My favorite thing is the instruments and the wood.” Another good sign was when he let me go in to rearrange his snack bag. He did follow me in after a few seconds, but then he went back out and hung out outside, talking to Anna when she walked by.

I was the only parent that stayed. At all. I did see a dad sitting outside of PKB for awhile. I talked to August about me going to the PTA coffee at 9. He didn’t want me to leave. At about a quarter to, Marion suggested the three of us sitting together. We sat on the stairs so we could still see the rest of the kids. Marion talked about learning from Andrea, and I mentioned we were considering starting a compost. She said they were starting composting too at school, and that they would be getting chicks in October and that the preschool would help with them. Also, Candy saw that August was sad and came over to help.

There had been negotiations, and August agreed to let me leave for a half hour. He wasn’t happy when I left, but he wasn’t really upset either. As I ran up the steps I looked back and Candy waved to me.

The PTA coffee was just awful instant coffee and people standing around mingling when I got there. So I went out and sat on one of our usual benches and typed until I heard it get quiet. I went to the back of the library where they were doing the presentation and stayed until 9:30 when I went back to check in with August. They were just coming out after reading a story and were going to have snack. He was being grumpy and refusing to have snack, but Andrea said he had done fine. And when I said I wanted to go back to the presentation he volunteered I could go for another half hour.

So I went back. Nothing substantial to the meeting, although Anna, Tomaso’s mom, is pretty funny and made some good jokes about drinking. When she was done she said “That’s it. The power of my drinks is over.” I then headed back to the preschool at 10:06. August was going into the art room with Marion to find painting paper (although he later told me no one painted). He seemed fine, so I asked about leaving until the end, telling him it was about an hour and a half. A bit surprisingly, he just said “Okaaay” and let me go.

I went up to the library and worked, running into Tom Marshall, Shary’s husband, for a minute. August was standing at the doorway, holding his water bottle and snack bag, patiently waiting for me, when I got there a couple minutes before 12. Totally calm. Andrea said they had built solar panels together for the animals so they could get power.

He and I headed up and sat on our bench and ate our hard-boiled eggs, Cheerios, and apple for lunch. He wouldn’t tell me much more about his day, except for which blocks (the wooden ones with the plastic in the middle) he used for the solar panels. He also tried to tell me that he’d made a post to hold up the cover over the walkway. I mentioned we didn’t have a word of the day, and he thought of ‘instantaneously’, a good companion to ‘simultaneously’. We practiced what ‘instantaneously’ meant, then eventually went in the library.

We went and he first got Magic Tree House #22 and started reading that. Didn’t get very far. He wasn’t really into looking for books either, but he was intrigued that we were the first people to look at the new books. And he agreed to get The Case of the Hungry Stranger, another Crosby Bonsall book. For new books I found It Starts with a Seed and The Book of Mistakes, both of which have amazing art and I got Philip Pullman’s The Scarecrow and His Servant, which might work as a chapter book for him after we finish Ramona.

We went to check out the books and Liz told us about a podcast called The Alien Adventures of Finn Caspian. She thought he might like it. Also, the author has his son on at the end of each episode and she said the son reminds her and her daughters of August every time they hear it.

We left at 1:20. On the way out he was wearing my watch again and was running through the school to get exercise. He stopped to look at a couple water meters, and sang a song based on “Change of Time”

At home I made a mango smoothie. August then wanted to finish the exercise ring on my watch, so we exercised. He wanted the yoga mat out to use and he exercised with his 1kg weight. We then did rest time. Tried the podcast but he wanted that off. We just lay on the floor, resting. He switched from the floor to the chair a couple times, but only talked to me a few times.

He then started a game of hiding the weight for me to find. He would leave a mark with a marker on the floor as a clue. He did a pretty good one where he dumped Legos out of a box and put the weight in instead. Eventually though he wanted my help finding good hiding places, which I explained wouldn’t work because then I’d know where the good places were. I suggested we hide it for Carly, and we hid it up under the dining table on a ledge.

We read The case of the Hungry Stranger, played some Piano Maestro, then Carly got home. We had her look for the weight right away. She tried to get more out of him about preschool today. The first thing he told her was that I left. Besides that he wouldn’t provide any additional details. He found Notion, the music notation app on his iPad and played with that a bit, then switched to PBS Science. We then did the Nature Cat daily challenges outside. Drew birds flying, animals at night, and took a photo of a plant that has grown indoors (the one that is taller than him).

With Carly he talked about a machine that would instantly change the floor:

“Floor changer…it turns the ground into different materials…glass, rock…iPads… they’re not bolted down or anything. You can just pick one up and play with it…now turn it into sausages…now turn it into hats…now turn it into water bottles with water in it…”

He remembered doing Hebrew in the Drops app. But he was disappointed to find that they apparently took out the AR mode in it, where he liked popping the bubbles. He then claimed he didn’t like peanut soup: “I don’t like how it is squishy in my mouth.” That’s from the Picky Peggy book. Can’t remember what she didn’t like. When it actually came he said “Yummy!” And he ate it.

For his 20 minutes after dinner he watched Pink Panther and laughed a lot. I went for a run. When I came back August was eating a root beer lollipop and she was cutting his hair more. I asked what had happened to the two weeks. 

I read him some more Ramona, then he had peanut butter and syrup toast. On the couch he climbed behind Carly and said “I’m talking behind your back.” That was a pretty good joke. I’m not sure where he learned the phrase, although maybe in Ramon. I grabbed him and he told me “I really love you but you’re really sweaty, so you should drop me.”

I took a shower and she brushed his teeth and they read more Ramona. He then requested m
e. I went in and told an August story where he and Teegan get taken into the tunnel by Ms. Robin and meet the human on the other side of the door before they have to return. They are late getting back and Ms. Anna forbids them from playing in the trees.

I then sang to him. He did a lot of rolling around and I fell asleep too. I think he fell asleep a little after 9.

August got his watch wet in the pool on Tuesday and it stopped working. I took it apart, and this morning it was working gain. He was up at 7:27. Very sleepy as he went to the bathroom. We read a chapter of Ramona Quimby, Age 8. The word of the day is ‘nuisance’, as Ramona’s teacher calls her one. He then watched Pink Panther and we ate the last of the carrot cake. We set a timer, and played the Green Planet game for 5 minutes. While I took a shower he played Dragonbox Big Numbers. When picking up the groups of apples he was practicing counting by 10s.

Somehow, he ended up wearing my watch, and found the Activity app, which shows your calories burned, exercise minutes, etc. He saw the exercise bar go up, then kept doing more minutes of exercise to make it go up. He would have me set a timer for 2 or 4 minutes, exercise, then look to see the meter go up. He really wanted to get it full before we left, so we were a little hurried when we finally left for his one-hour back-to-school thing.

We left at 9:37, so I walked fast to make it there by 10. He was still wearing my watch. We had agreed he’d take it off before going into class. On the ride he told me “Did you know some of my food is stars? I have a big tube and…” He went on to explain how his tube goes up to the sky and he sucks in stars to eat. Then I said he accidentally sucked up a planet instead, and that turned into a game where he was sucking up everything in the universe.

We got to school just as Juhyeok and his mom were arriving. We said hi, then passed them to go park the bike. She stopped me and asked if we’d been to Korea. She had spotted the Home Plus bag I was using to carry stuff. I pointed out that the bike was also a Pororo bike from Korea.

We then headed down to the preschool. They had a board out front with the class lists up. We found him listed first under PKA, with Marion and Andrea as his teachers. Either class would have been fine, but I had a slight preference for PKA as, personally, I would have felt a bit claustrophobic up in PKC. Also, it is great he gets one of his teachers again, and Marion and Andrea are a good combo: Marion with the gardening and food interests, and Andrea with the STEM background. She even mentioned maker spaces and robots in her intro. Oh, and is from Portland, Oregon before teaching in Norway. He has a lot of students in his class from last year: Reia, Candy, Derin, Leonard, Yaya, Juhyeok, and Hector, I think. Also Sophia, Nicholas’s sister, who he played hide and seek with last year. And 3 or 4 new kids. Omri and Selma are in PKC, which is kind of disappointing, as they were probably the most welcoming towards August each day.

Anyway, we went in and the first things to do were find a place for his plant and choose a cubby, or “box” as August insists on calling it. We then played with the magnetic blocks for most of the time. Juhyeok and his mom, Taeun, came over as well. I talked to her about Seoul. They had left in 2013. Mike came through and they talked about the elephant. Mike said the elephant has now turned blue, and August said it was hiding up in PKC right now.

They had an iPad set up for stop motion animation. Kind of funny, as both teachers, then Maaian showed it to August as something cool in the class this year. They also have a document camera.

For the last 20 minutes they had a meeting during which they introduced themselves. August sat on my lap, and Reia was next to us. We were right by a little tea set, so quietly played with that. On difference this year is that we have to bring snack Monday thought Thursday. When they were talking about drinking/snacks August turned to me and said “I can drink somebody’s blood.” After the stars and this there was one other thing a bit later that he joked about eating, but I couldn’t remember what it was later.

We were the last to leave. We got a calendar, but they ran out of the postcards. We headed to the bike and started walking up into town. We stopped on a shaded bench by the community center to have a bar for a snack. Up in town we found the pizza place closed. Disappointing, as pizza really sounded good to us. Also, the alternative, Sushi Ishimoto, was pricier. Should try to get him to like the Israeli place again.

We ordered our usual pad thai with shrimp and an order of the crispy roll. We made shapes out of the chopsticks, then he drew some art in Paper on his iPad. Made things pricier when they brought us the crispy salmon roll instead. But it was really good. He didn’t like the wasabi mayonnaise decorating the plate, but scarfed down two of the four sushi. I’m sure he would have done more, but refused more as it was too messy running down his arm. He then ate most of the shrimp, and some of the noodles. Slight mishap near the end when he was washing off his hand in his cup and spilled it. The waitress, who we had not seen before, was helpful though and brought paper towels. She earned her tip.

As we got walking he heard a pipe making noise near the hardware store. We went to investigate and he found the water meter was really moving, faster than he had ever seen. Pretty exciting. As we left, he asked, “Remember when we saw those sailboats going over the Atlantic ocean?”

We then stopped at the snakes and ladders playground. He was wearing my watch again and wanted to get more exercise minutes and fill the calories ring. So we went to the exercise equipment. I talked to him about ‘gamification’. We then went to do more exercise in the climbing area. I wanted to rest and lay on the ground while he curled up in the “hammock” area. I called it our siesta and he said “Siesta? I learned that in that Moon show.” He meant Ollie and Moon. I told him about Madrid, when Carly and I rested in a park during the heat of the day after going to a museum.

When done with that we went and played the plane and escaped luggage game and we went on the spinny thing. We then left at 1:40. He talked about watching “Pink Paddington”, his name for Pink Panther. Specifically, he remembered the one in which the slurpee machine fills up the building.

We were home at 2 and found that episode and watched it. I then gave us a few more minutes of playing Green Planet as we were close to finishing a planet. Did that, then went outside and did the Nature Cat daily adventures. we did more listening, and drew a picture of a papaya plant, and took a photo of things that could be recycled. A cool little app-aided daily routine.

Speaking of recycling, we then loaded up the bike and went up to do recycling. He talked bout his crunching powers as he helped do the cardboard.

We went back home and practiced rest time. He mainly lay on the floor, which is a good start. We then read more Ramona and a few Skybrary books: Yoko Yak’s Yakety Yakking, Umm Ungka’s Unusual Umbrella, and Scrubba Dub, Carlos. He was hungry and ate a whole carrot. Carly came home as we read the last one and we told her about preschool.

He added to his music composition and we worked on sort of adding chords to it. He then found the PBS Science app and did a little of that. Also a very cool find.

I initially made him peanut soup and rice for dinner, but then he requested pita and hummus. Carly had the soup, and I got him the pita and hummus and some milk. After he ate that he had his 20 minutes of iPad time and chose to watch the Pink Panther. I watched a bit of it with him, and he was a little frustrated when time was up, but I thought was okay. Carly was cutting up mangoes so we would use them up, and he wanted to go watch. I went up to start his bath. Things fell apart downstairs and I heard him screaming. I came down and tried to talk to him. He was still wearing my watch and wanted it off. I helped him take it off, but then he grabbed it from my
hand and threw it at me and it fell on the ground.

Carly gave him a timeout and I went up to finish the bath. I came down and took him up, then talked to him and calmed him down. He wanted to talk to mama and we went downstairs so he could talk to her and get a hug.

I gave him a bath. It turned into an art session. He used different soaps to make a picture on the door. I then had to go get Carly to do an rot viewing. He then made lots of bubbles and splattered them on the wall, Jackson Pollock style. I showed him some Pollock paintings on my phone. August seemed to like it, but asked if Pollock’s art was better than his.

Downstairs he smelled mango and thought there was a lassi for him. Carly made him one, then went to take a shower.

We tried to Skype with my parents, but they weren’t online. He typed some random things instead, and then also ‘I love you’. August had talked about sending things to Vivian on Wizard School when he was in the bath, but then decided he just wanted me to delete it from his iPad because he didn’t like that Vivian was sending him more stuff and her level was going to get higher. I told him he was the only one turning it into a competition. Now, we did do a little Wizard School on my iPad, sending her a couple things and watching some of her creations. He switched to art though and drew things in Paper.

We then turned to reading. We read some of chapter 4 of Ramona Quimby, Age 8. He was getting sleepy, so we went upstairs to read Dad’s First Day. Carly took over for me and they read that, then she brushed his teeth. I said goodnight, then they were in and out of the bedroom a couple times, getting ready, before they were quiet about 9 and then asleep.

YouTube seems to find this video of August smearing soap on the shower door breaks their guidelines, even though it only shows him from the chest up. I’ve filled out the little appeal form; we’ll see if they ever change it back:

He was up at 6:34. But not really up, as he lay on the couch for close to 10 minutes. He got up and went and found his iPad. He said “I want to show you something” and asked where the world clock was. He showed me the stopwatch was still running and it was up over 330 hours. He was very excited about this. I’ve been making sure we start each day with books, but last night I reorganized his iPad, hiding/getting rid of a bunch of apps and adding in a few PBS apps and a math game we’d tried a couple years ago called Quick Math Jr. that I thought he might like. He noticed the changes and wanted to try Quick Math Jr. so did that for awhile. We then did Skybrary and read Percy Gets Upset and Zero, Zilch, Nada. He then went to  his Dragonbox math apps.

He sang a line and part of a tune: “That you’re never gonna get to touch.” He thought it was Josh Ritter. I figured out it was “Hey Man (Now You’re Really Living)” by the Eels, which is on his Songs for August Zinn @ 2 Years playlist. It was also cool because he was sounding more like an actual singing voice and not just a little kid’s voice.

He found the Word Wizard app on his iPad. The app where you trace letters in words and you can add your own. He hasn’t used it in a couple years, but I thought it was a good one to bring back. The old version stopped working with the upgraded iPad, so our old word lists (of family members and animals, mainly) don’t work/exist anymore. He remembered the lists, actually, and I had to tell him that. We had fun re-recording some of them. I started a list of our words of the day and he traced some of those. Then he wanted to do body parts. We added a bunch, with him doing the recordings, and he switched to Human Body to look for more words. He would find something (blood vessel, bacteria, etc.) and I’d make a note of it so we could add them later. He found some other games he hasn’t played recently (Endless Wordplay, Metamorphabet, and Music4Kids) and played those as I took a shower and we got going.

At one point we were discussing the science center, and he was trying to remember it, since we’d only been in the exhibits once, and decide if it would be more fun than the Madatech science center in Haifa.

He had to play with his barrier stick outside before we left. It is his long taped-together bamboo stick that he puts between the boards of our walkway. I acted as someone trying to get through and it would open or close for me. We left before 10:30.

He requested Chemical Brothers on the way up and looked at the map on the phone as we drove. We went up 4 this time. He looked like he was going to fall asleep, but made it.

We parked a block south of the museum. Things didn’t look promising, as the building that the exhibits are in is under construction. Luckily, it turns out it is still open as they add an extension to it and a floor or two on top. However, the museum was also very busy. Much, much busier than last time, when it was just us and one or two other families. We first dropped a few coins in the spinning thing. I’d found 4 of the 10 agora coins in the car. Then we made our way around the inside for 30+ minutes. Hard to get turns on things, like the big car track. He was a little discouraged, but still having fun. Mainly, he played with the whirlpool making machine. I would be a fish swimming in a normal old pool (we were thinking like McElliott’s Pool) and then I’d find a button underwater and push it and it would make a whirlpool I’d get dizzy in. He also wanted me to make fun of each thing, as if it was his science experiment, then he’d amaze me with it. That was from a Captain Underpants plot.

I was hungry, so convinced him to head outside for awhile. I grabbed a quick bite, but he was too interested in science to eat much yet. Did a little science, mainly some of the water things and driving the solar-powered boats, then went back inside. Managed to play with the car track a couple times and wandered around everything else a few times as well. Periscopes, funny mirrors, dark area, magnets, infinite mirrors, chair of nails, etc.

Then back outside for lunch at 1. He really was hungry, as he ate both of the hard-boiled eggs I had brought, leaving me the last bite of each. He did more of the water pump things, then needed the bathroom. We went in the other door and wandered around, looking into the medical classroom at the anatomical models, then used the bathroom and filled our water bottles. He spent several minutes watching other kids play with the coin spinning thing, but was frustrated as they only had one coin and weren’t letting it drop to the bottom. Seeing it drop is his favorite part. He wanted to do more coins, but was upset I hadn’t brought more. He got to watch one, at least. Outside, we saw a helium balloon floating away and instead of liking that he said he really wanted to let one go as well – a desire he’s talked about before, since he skipped that possibility after refusing a balloon at the fair in Pennsylvania.

We went back to the car. We looked at the map, debating what to do next. Finally decided to go down to Olga Beach, right down the hill. We had gone there once before. We didn’t have our swimsuits, but we had the beach bag with toys.

We got down to the beach and put down our stuff. He was soon down to his underwear and playing in the water. The beach here is kind of different, with the waves crashing a ways out, but having a long in and out distance. So even though it was just a couple inches deep where he played, the waves could splash pretty high. So he never lay down, although he sat for awhile. He said things like “I love this water” a couple times. He also found a bigger plastic shovel where we put down camp, and we took it home later. He also asked “What would happen if you put a cat in the water?”

Around 3 he needed to use the bathroom, so we decided to head out. The bathrooms were open this time, so that was nice. Used it, then got going. as we left, a woman who had been at the beach with her dog was smoking near the parking lot. She asked where I was going. I said Netanya. She said perfect, and that I could give her a ride to her home in Hadera. I politely refused, saying my wife wouldn’t want a dog in the car. And pointing out we were heading south, not east. She was upset about this, and I got August to walk away. At the car I explained to him why I didn’t give her a ride. The easiest thing to point out was asking hm if he wanted a rather large dog riding next to him in the car. He said “No!”

Then, as we were about to pull away, another woman, An African woman this time, got my attention. She needed her car jump started. I wouldn’t have been able to help, but she had the cables. This one I happily agreed to. Moved our car over and August got out to watch. I had to position the car a little closer, and August chose to stay with the woman while I moved the car. That was very brave of him. I think he also liked seeing the motors. I heard him telling her his name. On the second attempt we got the car running.

We drove to Even Yehuda and stopped at the big grocery store in town. Main reason was to get the last item on his preschool list, a box of wet wipes. We also got some produce that Carly requested, a bottle of wine to celebrate Carly’s first day, and coffee and milk. He spotted a pudding cup with M and M sorts of candies on top. Something he’s wanted before but never had. I agreed, and he agreed to share it with mama as another first day celebration.

When we got back to the car and I put the groceries in I realized that one of the handles on his bike was missing. I didn’t say anything, but I didn’t see it in the trunk at all either. Back at home, I went back out to the car and this time found it. It had fallen inside the beach bag when I put the bike in the car.

At home he and I went outside and did the daily challenges in the Nature Cat iPad app. He drew pictures of a couple rocks, we recorded the sounds we heard as we sat under a tree and discussed them, and he drew a picture of his favorite bird, a puffin. Inside, we read Percy Gets Upset again and made the word of the day ‘scowl’. We also read the Vicuna Vacation book and he had the app read Picky Peggy to him. He doesn’t usually choose the narration over me.

He had had some stir fry and rice, but mainly ate the rice and tofu. He now agreed to just eat a carrot and ate the whole thing. He and I then went out and planted his classroom plant, then I let him have his pudding treat, which he shared with the two of us.

Carly took him upstairs and gave him his bath and they cleaned the bathroom. I did most of the dishes, then went for a run. When I got back he was having an apple lollipop. He had let her trim his hair. Just a little off the back, but it didn’t bother him, and it looks much nicer now. He agreed that he’d let us cut it again when it grew “6 or 7 inches”. We suggested every two weeks instead and he agreed to that and I set a recurring reminder.

I talked to him about his first day tomorrow and how it was just an hour and suggested we could go out for lunch afterwards to celebrate. He asked Carly, “Will you celebrate my first day of school with me?” We told him we could all celebrate together this weekend.

I went upstairs and took a shower. On the way up I heard him telling the cashew knock knock joke with Carly.

He requested sleeping with me. I told Zinnie story #4. I then sang some songs and he was asleep by 9:05.

By the way, I don’t think I’ve mentioned his ‘box’ versus ‘cubby’ preference. He really wants me to call it his ‘box’ at school, not ‘cubby’. This goes back to last year. In telling one of these stories a few days ago I used ‘cubby’ and he told me to use box. And he told me that when we went to the jumping place this summer and put our shoes in one he heard me call it a cubby and he noticed. We laughed about that one. But then a day or two ago I jokingly referred to it as a ‘cubby’ in a story and he said ‘I HATE it when you call it that!” So ‘box’ it is.

Stopwatch up to 311 hours:

Egg:

Beach:

Jump starting the car: