Up at 7:40. Happiest wake up ever. Threw open the door, saw me, smiled and pointed and said “There’s dada!” He was then writing on the paper and wanted some mango. I was asking him how he wanted it, and he said “Want to eat it!” and turned that into a little chant. I got up to get it, and ward him say “Aug-GUST” to himself. I turned around to find him scribbling all over the floor with a yellow glass crayon. He was rather proud of himself and was saying “Wipe! Fill in.” Uh-oh” “Who do that?” He wouldn’t agree to write on the paper, so I had to take away the crayons. He ate some cold mango, and wanted to hear “Spanish songs” so I put on Basho. We ate Cheerios for breakfast, then got ready to head out, earlier, for the long trek to the big zoo. He requested the “AWQ shirt”, which turned out to be the CWU shirt. As we got in the backpack he recalled the yellow crayon incident from the morning, entirely on his own:
“Sad about the yellow…dada picked it up….where do you color? On the paper. Mess here.”
On our walk to the subway he talked about what we were doing: “going to the big zoo.” “Giraffe…go to the bug.” The subway ride down went smoothly. As we made the long walk into the zoo, he hid behind his hands. When I asked what he was hiding from he joked “Hiding from the sss sss sss. Hiding from the th th. Hiding from the T H T H.” So yes, letter sounds/letters. Also, there are about a millions sets of garbage cans and faucets along the way. On the subway he had been tracing the word ‘bat’ so that was now what he wanted to see first. But we kept stopping. As we walked to the nocturnal animal building he pointed at another garbage can. Exasperated, I said that if we stopped at every one we would never see the bats. He responded with “See the bats. THEN see the garbage.”
I also pointed out some picnic tables that would be good for lunch. He then wants to eat right then, so we stopped, put the picnic mat on the table, and he sat on it and we had a little lunch. He spent a lot of the time nibbling the grains and seeds out of his bread. After that we finally made it to the nocturnal animals. I didn’t know how he would respond to the dark building, but he dis just fine with me holding him in my arms. We saw kinkajou, African porcupines, ural owl, civet, three-striped night monkey, bats, scops owl, slow loris, and a couple others. The kinkajou (because they were active) and porcupines (because they were huge) were our favorite.
From there we went in the Insectarium. That went fine for the most part, except when I wanted to rest my arms. He didn’t want to walk on his own, so I sat down and he wasn’t happy with that. He liked the stag beetles at the beginning, and the crickets made an impression on them as he would mention their noise later. They have an impressive collection of spiders, but we kind of hurried through that part as August was ready to go outside.
We walked up to the playground and went in the stream. Took his shoes off and sat on a rock. A leaf floated by, so I have it to him and he was dropping it in the water to go down a little waterfall area. I would then grab it and hand it back to him. That lasted a few minutes, but then he wanted his diaper changed: he had sat in a little puddle and his shorts were wet. We changed him, then he played in the sand. Kept seeing kids over on the climbing wall and wanted to do that. So we went over there. At first he just wanted me to help him climb. So I helped him up a few feet to where he could sit. He really likes the handholds on the walls and tries to figure out what they each look like. He wanted up in a different spot. This time, I was pointing out the other kids and telling him he needed to lean forward and use his hands, instead of just holding on to mine, which is what he always wants to do. It clicked this time. He said “lead forward” and did so, holding on to the wall. He didn’t really climb up, but he was on the wall by himself for a couple minutes, talking about the shapes of the handholds.
We walked about 15 minutes and he fell asleep. A couple minutes before drifting off we saw the water birds area, which we’ve never been to, and wanted to go in. He slept from 1:13 to 2:08 (in the cafeteria area by the Dolphins) and when he woke up his first words were “Go see water birds”. So I got in the backpack and we headed out. We had to walk through some of the outside birds to get there, and August wanted to see some of the condors and vultures on the way. As we approached he said “Hear the pelican”. We went in and saw the water birds. He liked that for a few minutes. Quite impressive compared to Children’s Grand Park.
Back outside, he wanted out of the backpack. So I got him out, but then he saw water faucets he wanted to see on and wanted right back up in my arms. Except for the playground he hadn’t done any walking on his own today and my arms were tired. So I was trying to get him to walk over there, but he wasn’t having it. He also didn’t want to get back in the backpack, so was quite upset by the time I got him back in. We got walking and calmed down, and we went and saw the elephants. We watched them for several minutes – also much nicer than Children’s Grand Park’s exhibit. Two of the elephants were linking trunks and playing. From there we saw the ostriches (we had seen emus on our way in earlier), hippos, and oryx, then walked over and saw the giraffes on the way out.
Outside the zoo we sat by the water faucets we played at last time and had a snack. He devoured the egg, but before he did he said “Don’t eat the egg! From E.” That’s a line from the E section of a YouTube ABC video he likes. We also ate an orange, then he used his water bottle to play in the faucets. Let him do that for several minutes, then coaxed him away and we headed home. First, we stopped to buy some orange juice to drink on the way.
On the subway we had to stand a few stops. He was being silly and pointing at people and saying things like “Mama, mama, mama, mama…That’s not mama, it’s a persons.” “That’s not an animal, it’s a stranger.” He played iPad for awhile, but then put it away. He was squirming around, and reached out and touched the woman next to us. I said “Nuh, uh, uh.” and he said “Not okay.” I’ve started teaching him what an acronym is, and he looked down at his shirt and asked “Stands for?” We sang the tongue twister song for the last few stops to Changdong, then took the 1144 bus home. He was simply going through the alphabet saying “A is for…, B is for…” A couple that I remember were “R is for rainbow…S is for snake…U is for under.”
At home he nursed, then we all ate spaghetti for dinner. He was coloring with me, but then reached out and drew on the cover of a book. Luckily, it wiped off, but that was the end of coloring for a time. Carly changed him, then gave him his bath. They then were writing words together. Carly was writing words (mainly from the Kipper ABC book) and he was able to read ‘elephant’, ‘picnic’, ‘happy’, ‘hill’, and ‘zebra’. She was drawing lines under the words, and he decided he didn’t like that: “Sad about the lines”. He was pretty upset by it, but because he was tired. He nursed and fell asleep at 7:40.
New words/phrases: porcupines, reading ‘snack’, fist
Awake:
A little too proud:
On the subway:
Fuzzy hair:
Huge porcupine:
Stream:
Playground:
Water birds:
Looking at giraffes:
Playing in the water: