At about 5:30 I awoke to a popping in my neck. And pain. A lot of pain. I’ve had back spasms before, but not one like this for a long time. I was up an hour before I got back to sleep. August was up at 8. I woke up a couple more times after getting back to sleep, but when I woke up close to 9 my neck was much better. Good news, as when it happened I didn’t know if I’d make it to the party. While I was still asleep, August had heard the refrigerator turn on and said to Carly “That’s the refrigerator noise.” And Carly gave him his vitamins. She gave him 6, but he miscounted them as 7 and claimed they were 7. I’m pretty sure he knew he was counting wrong, as that is what he does with me all the time. It started with him wanting me to make a mistake in my counting, so we could say ‘oops’. I asked him how many vitamins mama gave him, and he said 7, then counted to 7 on his fingers. I wasn’t surprised that he could count to 7, or that he used his fingers, but I can’t say I’ve actually seen him use two hands and hold up the fingers to get beyond 5. Huh.
We hurried, doing recycling and getting ready to go, and left a little before 10. We got to Tayo at 10:20 or so. Jill was there with her kids. August first played with the wooden beads. He tried throwing beads at two kids, and we had him say sorry. He asked what ‘sorry’ was in Korean, and Carly didn’t know. So he turned to me and said “hey dada. Teach mama.” It was funny though, because the last time he played with kids he didn’t know was on Thursday for his class, and half of class involved throwing styrofoam balls (snowballs) at each other. So it totally made sense that he would throw the light beads as well.
Anyway, we had a lot of fun the next two hours. Carly and I sort of took turns with him, got coffee drinks, and visited with the other parents (I mainly talked to Sophie, Cora’s mom). August loved all the fried foods: potato balls, wedge fries, and chicken nuggets, mainly. It was either while eating those, or the cupcake later, that he said “This is so yummy.” He also spent time climbing in the structure (once with Carly, once with me), bouncing on one of the trampolines (he and I both pretending to fall down and get hurt), playing with the keyboard baby toy, playing with the bus toys, and coloring on paper. And he was back to those beads multiple times. Oh, and we filled a basket of balls in the ball pit, but never took them up to the cannons.
When it came time for the singing and cupcakes, he was standing next to me. When Jill took out a lighter to light the candles though, he backed away and went and watched from the doorway. I think with all of his questioning about fire extinguishers and Smokey and types of fires that he is kind of nervous of fire now – kind of like the signs on the escalators and subway doors and notices about the gaps as you step off the subways.
He came back in the room when singing was over and the candles were out and there were cupcakes to eat. Not wanting to get messy, he set the cupcake on the table and bent down to bite it with his mouth. He really liked that cupcake (and ate half of mine), and when I asked later what his favorite part was he said “Eating the cupcake.”
As we were thinking about going, he said he was ready to leave, but then said “Im going to do something real quick.” We left just after 1, and thought he might fall asleep on the walk home. He was having too much fun though. Singing at first, but then as we walked along the stream he looked over at it and started doing his erasing motion. I asked what he was erasing and he said “Everything…what happens if you erase everything?” That was quite a philosophical question. After that, we were joking about just erasing the water and how the ducks would be taking a bath and floating in dirt. We stopped to watch ducks float and swim a couple times. He was starting to doze off, it seemed, a bit as we got close to home, but he made it.
He got Smokey out and played with him, joking that Smokey was playing in the cords. I reminded him of going to sleep the night before and he said “You said you wanted to sleep on the carpet.”
He fell asleep from 2:15 or so to 3:38. Walked out and saw me and said “No” and threw his arms out in front of Jim and crouched on the ground. Got back up and walked to Carly and whispered “Come”. Took her to the parlor and he closed the door.
Carly talked about making the pancakes again. He wanted to do it right now. He walked to the corner and said to her “You stay right there. I’m going to get the stool.” He and I ended up writing music notes on paper. He talked about wanting to go to Carly’s classroom again, and got upset when we said we couldn’t go today. He wanted to type on the big screen again. Carly made him alphabet pasta and broccoli and cheese. August said, excitedly, I should add, “Tastes like pufferfish!” He had some snot and said “Oh no. It’s slimy.” He then laid on the floor and Carly asked why. He said he was doing it to make him hungrier.
We all went to the pink building to do grocery shopping. He helped a bit, but was also in a mischievous mood. I wouldn’t let him get a slurpy thing, so he had fun instead by taking one and putting it in the wrong refrigerated box section. He did this twice and said “I messed up two things.” I snuck them back. He was looking at the meat, which is in plastic, but then talking about touching the fishy stuff, which isn’t. He made his way back over there a second time, and I was trying to make him just look. He twisted around and his coat slightly grazed the tail of an eel. I told him this and he took it as a victory: “I touched the fish. I smell like fish now.” He would keep talking about smelling like fish through the evening. I told him he had to be careful, as the puffins and seagulls would think he was a fish. I would then have them chomp on him.
Before heading to the pink building, he and I had been talking about peeing on the toilet, and I had mentioned that he could start trying it when we are out about places – a lot of places have little toilets for kids. He liked this idea, and we were going to try at the pink building. After we got back though, I mentioned we’d forgot to do it, and he got sad.
A little later we ate our fruit: we had gotten a little pineapple, and a thing of strawberries. I cut up the pineapple, and at one point he decided to pick up the fork and use it to feed both me and him pineapple.
Carly made the batter for the pancakes, and he helped. He then came over to me and took over typing on my iPad. We were typing words, and it reminded me that earlier he had said to Carly that “Sky is a ‘k’ word.” Meaning it had a k in it. Then while playing in Pages he figured out how to put charts in a document, and was excited about that.
Carly had cooked some pancakes, and he wanted some more. He asked what it sizzled in the pan, then wanted to write ‘sizzle’ on paper. But he insisted it only had one ‘z’: “You said just one Z. Dada did it wrong. You should try it again.” We moved from that to writing musical notes.
He then asked me to read Snoozers. I got it and sat on the couch to read. He stood a few feet away. But when I got close to the part where the elephant goes SNORE he backed away several more feet.
I got his bath ready, and he got in. “I smell like fish.” He sat down, and made waves to get my had wet. He then gently washed the back of my hand. He got the letters out, and we made sculptures of them. We were then talking about smells, and smells we like. He said he likes fish and seeds. I mentioned lavender and he said “I like snap flowers…and dandelions.” The ‘snap flowers’, I believe, go back to my dad showing him snapdragons in Wenatchee by the river. And he seemed to Remember shooting dandelions with the spray bottle at Children’s Grand Park last spring.
They went in to bed at 9:30. He came back out several minutes later. He said he wanted a banana, but went straight to playing and asked me
to join. So Carly took him back in. But he was out again a few minutes later. He ate a banana (all but a bite) and we read the monkey book and Peppa Swims. Back in again right after 10. After awhile though he had some crying time. I went in, and did some singing. But after a couple minutes he told me to stop and wanted to go out. It was now 10:30. We went out to the reading area and he lay on the floor for a few minutes, just making tired noises. He said he wanted to sleep on the carpet again. After awhile he got up and wanted me to read. I read Mother Goose, and he made some little towers out of Duplos. He then came and cuddle with me and we read much of a Pooh story. He was really rubbing his eyes now. He asked for soy milk and I said no and kept reading. A couple minutes later, at 11:20, he silently got up and walked to the bedroom and got up with Carly and went to sleep.
Morning:
Tayo Cafe:
Watching the candles from the doorway:
Smokey:
Helping make pancakes:
Letter sculpture:
