Wednesday: Logan’s house and APIS

Right at 8. Let me hold him for a minute, then wanted down and wanted me to leave the parlor. After a minute he came out and cuddled next to me on the couch, then laid down. We then read the monkey book and August ate a banana. He then played Musyc, and then we got some banana bread for breakfast. He opened the songbook on the ipad, and found the ABC-DEF-GHI song from Sesame Street. He asked about it, so I found a video of it and we watched that.

He wanted rhyming words, and I came up with this little rhyme,

He was sick, my little boy Zinn

So I gave him some medicine

To his stomach it went in,

Then August got well again

We talked about our plans for the day, and he said he wanted to go to work. Told him I’d look into it. He was interested in playdough for a second, but then started singing to the songbook. He was curious about the ABC-DEF-GHI song, so I pulled up the video of it. It is from Sesame Street, and Big Bird thinks the alphabet is one big long word. I think I only tried to show August one episode of Sesame Street before, and this was it. Anyway, he then wanted to play the notes on the piano, so we went to the piano and I played the melody a bit. We ended up playing around on the piano, and he sang along with nonsense words as I played Are You Sleeping and Th Ants Go Marching. We the went to the paper, where he wanted to learn to draw a heart. “Hey dada, let’s practice a heart together.”

We did that, then headed out at 10:30 in backpack. Pushing the stroller. His one opportunity to ride in Logan and Rosie’s stroller, but he didn’t want to make things easy on me. Derek said that Logan had had a fever the previous night, so had stayed home but was doing fine. So we were going over to hang out for awhile in addition to returning their stroller. As we neared the bridge, August was singing the Big Numbers song, and sang the 70s all out of order. He then said to himself “you did it mixed up. What you do it mixed up about?”

We got to Logan’s at 11. Logan dumped out his big Lego blocks and we played with those. Derek got out the playdough and showed August how to use one of the Lego blocks to make squares. August liked this and made about 10, making a little path. He then used one block as sort of an ice cream cone and squished the squares all on top and was quite proud of himself: “squishing it up is very fun.”

Derek heated us up some pizza for lunch, and asked August what kind of pizza he wanted. He said “I want noodle pizza.” He got very excited about noodle pizza, which Derek of course didn’t have. But I told him we could maybe get some this weekend. He was happy with cheese pizza. Derek put on Beat Bugs, and Logan and August watched some of that. Derek gave August a pack of gummi worms, and August kept asking “What gummy worms is?” That is, what is in them. We ate a couple then, and saved the rest for later. At one point August laid down on the floor. I asked what he was doing and he said “I’m just lying down to make sure I’m full.” August and Logan played a little hide and seek behind the curtain, then Jill got home. It was time for Logan’s nap, so we headed out. I had changed August and he used the toilet there.

But we got outside and I went to put him in the backpack and he said “There’s poop”. So I changed him again right outside. We walked down to the main road. August singing. I asked if he wanted to go to a park a minute away, or a farther one. He chose farther. On our way we saw the library across the street and I asked if he wanted to go there, and he got excited about reading books. We went in, found an English book we never read, then found the Patricelli book Bye Bye Diapers in Korean. We read that, which he of course really liked, and translated a lot of words. August needed to use the bathroom but didn’t make it, so changed his diaper in their little kids bathroom, then he did sit on it and pee.

We got walking, and made it to the bridge over the stream by APIS when I realized he was definitely falling asleep. I turned around and walked back to the Nous Coffee place we had never been to. August actually took quite some time before his eyes closed, so walked around a couple of streets we hadn’t been on before. He fell asleep and slept from 2:17 to 3:42.

We walked towards APIS. August was saying “Mama’s hiding. We got to find her…” We had planned to show up at 4:25, but August didn’t want to stop at a park. Asked Carly, and she said 4:15 would be okay. I convinced him to stop at the park across the street by saying we could finish the gummi bears. He made silly faces as he finished them, then we walked to her classroom, about 4:20. We found Megan outside and she said hi. I asked him if he wanted to say hi back and he said “I’m too busy.”

In her classroom he did some typing, then played with a glue stick for the first time. I went down to the bathroom and he wanted to go as well. He went first – the third place outside the house that he peed today. I let him stand by the door to the bathroom while I went. The door was between us, so I couldn’t see him. I asked “You still there?” and he replied “I’m still here.”

We left about 5:20. We stopped by Derek and Jill’s to pick up the bike stroller thing we are buying from them. As we walked, August had first been staring up at the moon, then as it got even darker he was asking about the color of the sky. A dark periwinkle was what we came up with, but he said “What color is it? The sky. Let’s think about the colors on dada’s iPad.”

We were home at 6. He had been fine, but suddenly wanted out in the elevator, and got upset when I wouldn’t let him out until we were in the apartment. They nursed, and read Moo Baa La La La from the bag of books that Jill had also given us. Carly fed him some soup and letter pasta, but he got a hair in his mouth and really responded badly to that, throwing up. He was typing on Carly’s computer and I taught him about bulleted and numbered lists. They watched some Vivian and Colin videos, then he played with Musyc. He was making dozens of shapes and setting them all to ‘static’ so they weren’t moving. He was asking why he was doing it, and I said something about him liking to control them, and I also said it was a cool piece of art. He said “What you like having control about?” “What’s it a cool piece of art about?”

He ate a few bites of soup, then later some strawberries and grapes and watched more Puffin Rock. Sat on the toilet for a long time. I gave him a bath, and he played with soap on his hands for a long time, then was just sitting in the water and playing with it. Got through washing his hair without too much whining. Nursed, then draw on the paper. On the back is a big grid of squares. August started drawing in it, and said it was his “Chinese list”. Spent a long time just drawing zigzag and scribble lines in red. Now past 9:30 so we headed to bed. Read and sang the new Itsy Bitsy Spider book, then read Everyone Poops a few times. He really likes to pretend to read it really fast. He wanted to use the toilet, so Carly took him. He asked “Why this toilet cold but dada’s toilet warm about?” Pretty sure he’s just sat on mine that one time.

I left then 10:15 but be was out 10 or 15 minutes later. I let him ‘read’ from the song book. He saying Are You Sleeping Singing, singing all the actual words, and was also pretending to count it out, singing in random 1 2 3s. He rubbed his eyes and was yawning, so asked if he was ready for bed. He said “I want milk first then I will go.” Did that, then we went back in together at 10:50. He nursed, but was causing problems – pinching or grabbing or something. I agreed to tell him Puffin Rock stories. He lay on the floor and I hung over the side and whispered two stories to him. One was about Oona, Baba, May, and Mossy playing hide and seek. Oona found Mossy and Baba right away but couldn’t find May because she can hide so well. The second was a repeat of the fishing story from a cou
ple days ago. He then wanted to nurse again, but Carly needed to sleep. He agreed to try falling asleep on the carpet. So he and I went out to the parlor for another 15 minutes or so. I sang to him as we laid on the floor. He then went back to mama. He was poking and hitting her, wanting to nurse. I got him to apologize to her and she tried one more time. But a few minutes later he was kicking the wall, then swinging and kicking her. He said “You’re kicking mama.” I laid between them for a few minutes, then we went back in the parlor. He was rolling around kicking the ground and being wild, but calmly so. It was like he had too much energy. We never did play outside, so maybe he didn’t get enough exercise today.

He laid down by the door when I wouldn’t let him leave. He was clearly sad, and said “Sorry”. I said “For what?” And he said “I don’t know.” I told him one more Puffin Rock story, in which Silkie is upset when she can’t go to the center of the island and play with the other animals, but later she can swim to Bernadette’s island and save her. August then wanted the toilet, so went on mine. “I’ll do one more story…It’s about…Beat Bugs.” But then he started singing. After a couple minutes he suddenly took his pants off and said “I want to take my pants off. I want to be naked.” Finally, a bit after midnight he was looking exhausted. I went to get him a new diaper. He laid on the reading area and I put that and his pajamas back on. We had a little talk where I said if he went back in to Mama he had to be nice and silent, etc. He kept saying “Yeah” to each thing. We went in at 12:12 and by 12:15 he was asleep.