He was up by 6:40 today – a rather short night of sleep. We had a usual morning, and were getting ready to leave a little before 10. When I said we were getting ready to leave, he grabbed his big pink water bottle and started running to the backpack, saying “Take wawa!” He remembered that the small blue one we had yesterday had leaked and barely had any water in it. I had said we would take a different bottle in the future.
Then, when I changed him he was upset he couldn’t put the owl shirt on. He had agreed to the Barcelona gecko shirt, but still wasn’t entirely happy with it. So he was still fussing about that and I went out to the living room and put the backpack on the coffee table. I turned around to find August walking to me carrying his cloud pants, saying “This, this.” I wasn’t going to make him wear two pairs of pants as it was warm today, but he insisted on wearing both. So we put those one and left soon thereafter.
It was drizzling on the way to the subway. August had the light cover up, but I didn’t use the full cover all day. My hair was a bit damp by the time we got there, but it wasn’t bad. We walked to the left, around the pond/swamp area to get to the children’s museum, and we had a good view of fog over the pond and park. August did his “Ooh” excited noise. We got to the museum a bit before 11. The entire park and children’s museum were dead. Mainly a few other foreign families walking around. The rain was enough to start the cancel-all-field-trips protocols.
At the museum, he wandered around the nature area and played with the static cling window magnets. He looked at the minerals, and when he pulled out the selenite he said “Selenite!” We settled on the chalkboard, as usual, but weren’t there for a long time. We then went back to the light stuff, and he played there for awhile – the shadow puppet things (he likes the sheep), the light tubes in the wall, and mainly making towers on one of the light tables and knocking them down. He is getting better at adding to my tower – a couple days ago he was adding the tenth-ish blocks to my alphabet block towers without knocking them over, and he was doing the same here.
We went up to lunch about 11:45 and were the only people in there for awhile. He mainly ate ravioli, but stole the last bite of my half of the peanut butter sandwich and was quite proud of himself. He pretended to bump his head on the table and on a chair, and drew more tildes on the yellow wall. And of course there was the usual ABC singing.
We got ready for a nap. He is trying to avoid them now, talking about going home instead, or saying he won’t nap, and when we get to our walking area he will protest at first. And whereas he used to willingly tell me what song he wanted me to sing as he went to sleep, now he just says “No singing.” Anyway, I was a little worried he wouldn’t fall asleep since he wasn’t acting tired, didn’t fall asleep on Wednesday, and it was drizzly. Luckily, there was no reason to worry, as he fell asleep as usual. Before he did, as we walked by the fountain he spotted a pigeon and said “Be-dulgi in fountain.”
He was asleep 12:44 to 1:40. Woke up kind of startled, so I thought he would want to get going right away. But instead he wanted to get out of the backpack. We ended up hanging out in the coffeeshop, drawing in Sesame Street Art Maker. That is his favorite app right now. In fact, he would say “No ABC songs on subway. Art Maker on subway.” I was asking where he wanted to sit, either in the low chairs by the window, or on the comfy chair. He chose comfy chair, then said “Dada’s lap”.
As we were getting ready to leave, he said “Ampersand!” as he had spotted one on the shelf. He has also been spotting tildes, in signs both at Home Plus and at the children’s museum.
We went to the zoo. August gave a nice cry of surprise when he saw the baboons out, as he had just been saying “Primates inside.” We saw them and the macaques, then the elephant. We walked around that area, and ended up seeing the jaguars, leopards, tiger, and lion. The tiger was talking, and walked towards us and lay on the wet concrete slab in the cage. And we got to see the lioness (don’t know where the male went – we haven’t seen him in a couple months) tentatively step on the ice of her little frozen pond and then walk around on it. Both very interesting to see, and both quite depressing.
From there we went and saw the water birds, which he requested, but then he changed his mind when we got in there. He wanted a snack, and some extensive negotiations ensued as to where said snack would be eaten. He wanted to sit in the middle of the damp square. That was out due to the benches being soaked. But he didn’t want to sit on the covered steps by the tropical building, or under the cover across the main path, or on a bench in the water birds area. I THINK what was going on was that the dark areas were darker than usual due to the overcast sky and fog, and there were a lot of weird noises due to the lack of people and the dripping water everywhere. That would explain why he changed his mind about seeing the water birds as soon as we went in there.
Anyway, we settled on the little covered area at the exit to the children’s zoo. We have hung out there many times and you have a view of the miniature horses. We sat there and ate my bar, some sandwich, and the rest of the ravioli, and the banana. At one point he realized he could “See primates!” out the exit.
From there he wanted to see “kitty cats” again. So we walked by the lion, etc. He wanted to see the owls, but changed his mind on the rest of the birds as he wanted to see the zebras. We went and saw the herbivores that were out, and he thought the sentence “Vemos cebras” (We see zebras) was really funny. We went and saw the seals. The downstairs part was open again, after being close for a month. Didn’t look in there long – again, rather dark and eerie – just a couple minutes at he fur seals. He wanted to go to the upstairs part and look from there. Should mention that most of the animals were difficult to see due to the glass being fogged up everywhere. But went up and managed to see the spotted seals and sea lion.
That took us to a little past 4, so we headed home, walking the south path we don’t often take back to the subway. Got two seats on the subway and made it home a couple minutes before Carly. Called her to tell her the iHerb package had arrived but I had forgotten to pick it up and she said she had just reached the building. So August and I went and met her at the elevator. He didn’t really greet her though, as he was complaining that we didn’t have the backpack. In fact, when we went back to the apartment he didn’t want to go back in. He wanted to go outside in the backpack. I think maybe he thought that when I said we could go meet Mama he thought we would walk down the street to where we meet her by the pink building sometimes.
He soon got over that though and spent a lot of time doing play dough (mainly destroying her snails), and of course nursing, with Carly. She gave him a bath and he totally resisted heading to bed, but he went to sleep pretty quickly, about a quarter after 8.
New words/phrases: selenite, middle, hola, eliphante, negro (black), water birds, morado (purple), paraguas (umbrellas)
Fog:
“Selenite”:
Showing me where to write:
Looking at the baa baa:
Knocking over more towers:
Lunch fun:
After his nap, working on our masterpiece. I wrote the alphabet probably 15 times, and he would trace over my letters:
The masterpiece. Boo on Sesame Street on including both an ad and a border around their image exports:
Zoo:
Snack time. Nice light to work with. Wish I had my good camera with me and had wiped his face:
Home. Destroying mama’s snail:
