He was awake just after 8. He nursed and then they played with the hair dryer and did some reading. They made a smoothie and he was speaking some good nonsense. They had been reading the Berenstain Bears Double Dare book, which he really likes, and she had left it sitting open. He was looking at it and pointed out where it said “he followed” to Carly. He is fascinated by the jump rope in it, so yesterday there were some kids at the park with a jump rope and August really wanted to hold it. Today he talked about being sad that he couldn’t hold it. Carly made eggs for him for breakfast.
It was scheduled to rain a lot starting in the early afternoon, so we left in the morning for a walk. We walked up the stream to the Sanggye Station area, and went to the park kind of across the street from the Tayo kid cafe. On the way up he was initially frustrated when we didn’t stop at a couple of other places to play, but when we got to the art along the stream he really liked looking at it, and said “Remember this” a couple times, and “See the broken one”, remembering the one with broken tiles before we got to it.
At the park he went on the seesaw with Carly, then they got out the notebook and markers and were drawing on the bench. He spotted one of those bugs we keep seeing, so we have started to call them ‘xugglybugs’, after Kipper’s A to Z. A bunch of kids came and kind of just sat and looked at August. A bit odd, but one bright spot: August asked “What is your name?” and he got a response from one of the girls. We went back on the play structure and he went down the slide with me. He was then hiding from Carly who had gone away for a minute. He wanted Smokey and was slid him down the slide, and was then playing with him down on the ground. Set him aside when we started writing words with the stick and then August would trace them. He read ‘smokey’ when I wrote it, and we were working on words like ‘found’ and ‘sound’. He found a big stick and was writing letters with that, then Carly spotted a ladybug. August said “Ladybug from I. Looking for food. Where’s food?” Then watched it for a couple minutes. Not sure what he meant by the ‘I’ part, although he might be referring to an alphabet book or video that has a ladybug for ‘Insect’.
We walked around a bit, then he wanted to go in the library. August and I had been in once before. We chose some books from the English section and sat in the little reading room. At first he was fixated on the floor mats, which had letters and pictures on them, but he really liked the LMNO Peas alphabet book which Carly read to him a couple times. He was also picking up the book, waving it over his head, then setting it down. A few times i na row he actually turned in a circle as he did this.
We wanted to get home for his nap (and before the rain) so we took off. We stopped at the Julietta coffee place we’ve been wanting to go to, as it was actually open this time. August and I shared a strawberry smoothie on the way home. We walked home, and he fell asleep from 1:40 to 2:35, then spent a long time nursing and napping some more on Carly.
Carly wanted to go to the store, and August liked the idea of going in the Ergo, so the two of them went. He wanted down as soon as they got there, but he did a good job of walking with her in the store and they were able to get their shopping done. He was fascinated by boiled peanuts or something like that, probably because of the texture of the packaging. He also spotted letter crackers, so she bought those and he was happily eating those when he got home. They came home and Carly started to do some cooking, making more fried rice. I took August down to the little store and bakery to get milk and bread. At the Tous les Jours he wanted to try new things: we got a danish sort of thing because it looked like a “twirly twirl”, and a sesame bun thing. Came back up and we all shared the sesame thing, then ate dinner.
I gave him a bath. At the end, he wanted to see the frog at the corner of his towel, and started saying “Ribbit A, ribbit B, ribbit C…” Carly put her umbrella up to dry it, and he was playing with it, lifting it over his head. Carly got the spray bottle to do rain, and he was playing with that as well – it takes two hands, but he can now spray it, although is still working on direction. Carly took a shower and he played more with the hair dryer, then played Todo Math on the iPad. Back to the spray bottle: he was spraying it and counting “14 times, 15 times…” He and Carly were sitting on the reading area, reading Wild About Books, and I was in the rocking chair. He told me to get down on the floor with him, then climbed in the chair himself – he stole it from me. Carly said something about “kicking Dada out of the chair” and he took it literally, scooting forward so he could kick me with his foot.
We made the bed – Carly wanted to sleep out on the reading area to hear the rain at night. We then played in a ‘fort’ on the regular bed before Carly took him off to sleep about 9:15.
New words/phrases: reading ‘Smokey’, spelling ‘penguin’, loopty loops,
Looking at art:
Playground:
Asking ‘What is your name?”:
Spying mama:
Library:
Home:
On the chair:
And in the ‘fort’:
