He was awake at 7:15. He woke up as Carly was Skyping with Cherie. A little later they skyped with Cassie and Vivi. I let him play in the sink for awhile while Skyping with Vivi. He spent a lot of time in the morning nursing. He was watching songs on Carly’s computer, mainly the Barefoot Books videos, then playing Elmo Loves 123 on the iPad with me. Carly went to Home Plus, and we read some books while she was gone. He made his way reading through about 6 pages of the Sam book. Carly came home and they looked at the animal pasta that she bought, calling it arte abstracto. August and I were then playing with Smokey on the couch and August thought it was hilarious to make Smokey flap his arms. We played a little more iPad together, then he was looking sleepy. He napped from about 1:35 to 2:40, but woke up in the middle and walked out and Carly had to nurse him a lot in there.
He read the Tickle book with Carly, and was really taken with a font that made a lower case ‘n’ look like an upside down ‘u’. They then read Plant a Tree with Me, and he spotted the 14 card that Carly had hung on the wall (the one I had bought at DDP) and wanted to hold it. He and I then played in the ‘fort’ a lot in the parlor, hiding from Carly and reading books. He didn’t want to stop playing in the fort, but we finally convinced him to go outside.
We walked down to the 100 bus. On the way I started singing the backwards ABC song, and he wanted to do it himself. I was surprised to find he could sing most of it backwards on his own already. At the bus stop Carly took off her coat. August didn’t like this, wanting her to put it back on, then telling her to zip it. We took the bus and then walked to the apartment complex and dropped off the food that Carly had made for a teacher who just had a baby. We then walked across the street to Dream Forest and went up to the deer park.
At the deer park he first wanted to play with the water fountains, so we did that. He then went over and pet the deer, and wrote letters with his finger on the side of one of them. He tried feeding them some grass, then wanted to give them a rock to eat. He was sad when Carly said they wouldn’t eat the rock. Later saying “Sad about the rock, deer” and “Mama says deer no eat the rock.” We sat on a grate across from the deer, and that made him remember pine needles. Later, after we had left, he would say “Sad about the pine needles” because we didn’t find pine needles for him to play with. Had a little snack there, then I was hiding from him and we were running around a bit. Ended up sitting on the bench, all three of us, and having another snack. He was asking for a lot of words in Spanish. He was happily eating pine nuts when he bit his tongue, hard enough that it bled. Carly nursed him, and he said “Sad about the tongue”.
We walked home, and along the way I get a text message from the father of the two girls August and I had met in the park a few times. He and I had never gotten around to hanging out, but he was telling me that they were moving to New York in a few days and we were welcome to come over and help ourselves to things they had left around the house. So after we got home I headed over there. Came back with a lot of food stuff (spices, canned stuff, tea) and a food processor. We ate dinner (thanks to Carly we now have risotto, nutty noodles, and enchiladas in the fridge) and Carly gave him a bath. It was hair washing day, but there wasn’t too much screaming. In the bath, they were spelling words with the bath sponges, and tried to spell ‘vroom’. But the R was missing. They used a ‘P’ but he wasn’t entirely happy with that, saying afterwards “Sad about the P turn to R.” We did fort again, reading much of a Bob counting book and more Plant a Tree. Then he was out on the couch with Carly reading Kipper A to Z. He first read ‘box’, then was figuring out several other words and almost whole sentences. Very cool. He was sleepy, and went to sleep a little after 9.
New words/phrases: harina de avena (oatmeal), reading ‘oak’, spelling ‘box’, another two, spelling you, reading ‘box’
Morning:
Dream Forest:
Walking home:
Home: