Colin and Vivian were up really early, so August ended up getting up around 6 or so. They played outside at some point, and were all coloring on the paper when I got up. He went outside with Carly on the porch (too cold for me). Back inside, he saw Vivian drinking warm soy milk in a mug, and wanted ‘tea’ himself. He excitedly ran and pointed to the mugs and said “Want it in a mug.” Later, he and Vivi had a blast giving everyone shots with the play syringe. We sang Cada Semilla in English, which has the line “…you need something else”. A game the last couple weeks or so has been giving him examples of ‘something else’. So we played more of that. Vivian set up the yoga blocks in a line, and August was walking on them. He slipped and fell once, but thought it was funny, then was intentionally trying to make them slip.
Carly, Cassie, and I got all of the kids in Cherie’s car, and Carly drove and we went into town. We stopped at Burgerville and Carly ran in and got a bean burger, fries, and a couple of raspberry milkshakes. We drove to Riverfront Park and played there and ate our food. Vivian and August were both on the swings, then Cassie went off with Colin and Vivian, but August spent his whole time in the swing. At one point he started singing an “Other hand” song. Not sure where it came from, but it was about the game where you hide something in one of your hands and he chooses it, it isn’t there, then he chooses the other hand. He had hand motions with it and a lot of words. He would later sing more of it back in the car. Perhaps his most impressive song so far.
Back at the house he slept from 11:43 to 2:18. A long time. After his nap, he played upstairs with Colin. I went up to find them doing kisses and lots of head rubs. Carly spent a lot of time in the afternoon scanning photos and papers. Cassie and I had August and Colin down in the sandbox. Vivian had gone with Cherie to Costco and other stores and were gone for a few hours. In the sandbox August stood on the corner (so as to not get too dirty) and mainly played with the toy cow, putting it in the water. Vivian and Cherie got home, and Vivian gave August a box of band aids to play with. Earlier in the morning, August had been outside with her and Cassie and he had fallen down and reopened his toe and scraped his knee a bit. We played with the bandaids; August still didn’t want one, but he found it fun to put them on other people and watch Vivian put them on us.
We ended up outside again, this time out front. Vivian wanted to do hopscotch, so I drew a hopscotch course for her, and August helped write the numbers. Vivian then showed him how to hop on it. He can’t hop on one foot, but he had fun hopping on it. We played with the squirt guns, and I brought up the bucket so we could fill it up and refill the squirt guns. Big surprise was that August could position the bucket and turn the water on and off on his own. Couldn’t do that last year. The two of them played with the water for quite awhile. Then August started playing in the sand Chuck had put in the cracks. I was blocking him from doing it and said “That’s a no-no”. He responded with “That’s a yes-yes.” Very funny. We also talked about it being tempting, which he pronounced “that’s temptaning”. They got back to the water, and Vivian was dumping out the buckets and sat in the water. August, who still won’t sit in the bath, saw her and sat in it too. But just for a second, then he was done.
I talked to August about going in for dinner and getting something to eat and drink. He said “I was thinking bout orange juice.” We started to walk inside, and he saw the bottles of water on a shelf and grabbed one and said “Give this to mama.”
We ate dinner – leftovers today, as we had about 6 dishes to finish up. Carly then took them downstairs and they played in the sand. Back upstairs, Carly gave Vivian her old Russian nesting dolls. I was then downstairs with them for quite awhile as they played with the noisy ball toy and plastic oven, and played the piano. Very easy supervision time, as they mainly played by themselves and with each other. Cassie took Colin and Vivian upstairs, and Carly tried to get August to sleep a couple times, but no luck. At 9:30, Derek, Andrea, and their two kids showed up. August was thrilled by this, and first watched Thatcher hop like a frog, then studied Kayla’s pajamas with desserts on them. The last piece of excitement was watching Uncle DD pretend to prick his finger on the toy syringe and going “Ouch!” Still took a lot of effort and time after that (August and I read the Berenstain Bears Truth book at some point), but he was finally asleep around 10:30.
New words/phrases: bandaid, hide and seek,
Morning:
Park:
Headed home:
At the house:
Kayla and Thatcher arrive:
