They woke up at 8:30. He came up to me at 8:50, then wanted to go outside: “Ask mama to turn on the water…turn in the water mama.” I went outside with him, and he spent several minutes just standing at the top of the porch and looking around and performing. We heard a machine noise of some sort up the hill, and we went to investigate. It was a work crew a block up scraping off the old stop lines in an intersection and putting down new paint. We watched for a few minutes and headed back. Went inside and had Cheerios for breakfast. At first he was refusing blueberries again, but then I slipped one in a bite and he liked it so he ate several more. Still rejected a raspberry – I think on texture. He had told Carly that they were “fuzzy”. We went back outside, and were playing with water for awhile, but then “Want to water with grandpa.”
We went in to ask him, but he wasn’t ready to go outside yet. August ended up looking at everything with the magnifying glass, then went downstairs to nurse with Carly. They read Plant a Tree for Me and he he learned the word ‘sturdy’. They then went upstairs and August wanted ice, but wanted it “warmer”. This led to first melting ice in what was left of Carly’s tea, then simply hot or warm water. He kept talking about it and saying bye “Say bye bye to it.”
I took over and did some melting with him, then we ended up back outside, first cleaning out Celeste’s water dish, which had been dirtied by the raccoons, and then simply refilling it, and then the buckets over and over. He also remembered the snails from the other day and how he wanted to hold them: “Sad about the snails in the rain…hold them.”
Eventually we all got ready and got in the FJ Cruiser and headed down to Beebe Spring Wildlife Area. We first walked around on the upper paths, which we had never been on. Didn’t find the mythical waterfall, but found an old rusted car and plenty of things burned by the fire. Oh, and the skull of a marten or something that someone had placed on a stick. Dad found a tooth from it on the ground, and August liked looking at it. We then walked down to the river and he spent a long time throwing rocks in the river: first with grandpa, then with gramma, and then Carly. He slipped and fell on his tailbone once, then cuddled with Carly. When throwing rocks he was looking for big ones, and would then say “BIG one” when he threw it. And he found grampa trying to skip rocks very funny.
We then went back to the car and drove just a ways to Entiat State Park, where he did some climbing on the play structure, watched both Carly and grampa go down the slide (he thought both were very funny), then poured water from his water bottle after I took the straw out. Carly was nice enough to refill from the weather fountain.
On our way into town, we stopped at Walmart. August loved riding around in the cart. He seemed to remember exactly what it was. Carly and I went crazy buying fruit: plums, watermelon, peaches, etc. And I got California rolls to see if August thinks they are a decent substitute for kimbap (which he has requested a couple times). My parents let him (us) pick out a toy for him, and we got a writing tablet thing that also shows him how to draw letters and numbers. And, he got to pick out sunglasses, which he has also been interested in (and a couple times now he has been hiding his eyes). Not a large selection, but he ended up with blue ones he liked. Also, gramma was kissing his hand and he found that very funny and requested more.
We headed home, where he opened the new toy with grampa and played with it a bit. Then he went outside with me and helped me spray down and scrub our backpack. Dinner was then ready, so we ate out on the deck. After dinner, my parents brought out the dead butterfly they had found and August got to see it up close and touch it. Carly gave him a bath tonight, and he went to sleep at 7:30. A couple of wake ups in the next few hours, but then he seemed to sleep well.
New words/phrases: spheres, snowballs, hose, the poke yous (plant with thorns), sturdy
Playing on the porch:
Filling Celeste’s water:
Hiking:
Rocks and water:
Playground:
Sunglasses:
Home. New toy:
Cleaning the backpack: