A couple minutes after Carly left, I heard noise, then talking, from the bedroom. A minute later, at 6:37, he came out. This wasn’t good.
“I want to nurse. Can we go outside now? Can we meet her now? What happens if we meet her now? I want to go now…I want to open that.” He kept trying to climb the door stop and handle to get to the latch that was out of his reach. Finally, I asked if going out in the hall would help him calm down. His answer was “No” and he actually left and walked the other way and lay down in the parlor and calmed right down. First on the floor, then the reading area. He didn’t want me in there though, and I sat on the couch.
At 6:55 i heard him move towards the door, but when I peeked in a couple minutes later he was sitting up and said “Go away” and covered his eyes. A minute later he got up, came out for a second, then headed back in the parlor and closed the door. I heard him walking around. A couple minutes past 7 I went in and he was standing and I gave him a pat. Wrong thing to do. He started crying again and saying “No, no”.
A couple minutes after that I asked if he wanted to read. He said “No”, but when I asked if he wanted the songbook he said “Dada do it on his own” but then came out. He wanted the iPad. When I opened iBooks he chose Berenstain Bears go to School and we read it on the couch. He then wanted the songbook, and wanted me to sing “Down in ththe Paw Paw Patch”. I didn’t know it, so we looked it up on YouTube and watched a couple versions, then looked up ‘paw paw’ on Wikipedia. Learned what a paw paw is.
He watched Puffin Rock and I took a shower. We played hide and seek. Made oatmeal and he ate some, but then would slowly eat almost the whole bowl. Played with a blue clip thing after wanting to do a harder metal one he had found somewhere. Think he came across one of these in Thailand. Anyway, the metal one was too hard to do on his own, so I got the blue one for him. Later, when we went to leave, I found it clipped to the cuff of my sweatshirt when I put it on.
We watched some Arabic and Chinese songs on YouTube, then he sang songs to the songbook. He made up a song about the snow outside. We skyped with my parents. My mom had mentioned in a message that Paul and my dad had the flu, and that she was trying to avoid it. He wanted to ask them, mainly Paul, about being sick. He asked “Why Uncle Paul not avoid the flu?.” My mom mentioned the pool in Thailand, and he got sad about it when I said we couldn’t go to a pool here.
Near the end he wanted to hang upside down. After the call, we worked on doing a headstand. We did it against the closet door. Then we played piano and xylophone. I played Ants Go Marching on the piano, and he played along on the xylophone. He understands the rhythm, and sort of seems to be trying to get the right notes. But he doesn’t want me to show/demonstrate what notes to play. We did that for a long time.
He broke a xylophone stick after I told him not to bend it more. I was very calm about it, and explained that while the sticks don’t cost much, that I’d get frustrated if he didn’t listen to me, etc. He said “Go ahead and do that” (be frustrated, that is). He asked of himself “Why you broke it?” That also led to a discussion of doing things to find out what will happen, and also was he wondering why he was motivated to break it, or was he wondering why the stick broke instead of just bending (two very different things to wonder about). Anyway, I then got out the superglue and he watched me glue both the stick and the piano key that he (re)broke last night when he stepped on the piano keys.
Finally, I gave him a bath and washed his hair. A quick bath as we needed to head to class. Then got dressed and on his bike and we got to class a couple minutes late, at 12:42.
Class was all about pulling things apart. Started with two cubes with handles in them, and Velcro that attached them, that the kids pulled apart. There were then octopi with suction cups on them, and cows they pulled out of holes. There was also a triangular tunnel that August refused to crawl through, but he liked climbing over. He was insisting on my help though until the teacher was playing with/teasing him. Wanting to get back to me, August was able to climb over it on his own.
On the way out we ran into Olivia and her mother, who was taking her to the doctor. Outside, he requested I stop while going up the ramp on the bridge. He got off to touch the little snow that remained from the nighttime snow. Over by the playground we went up to the rocks so he could touch more snow, but then he wanted to go on the swings. It was definitely time for a nap, and when I said no, he started to have a fit on the path. A guy walked right up to us and started laughing at him. I had to rather forcibly shoo him away. Add that to the list of ‘Things that wouldn’t happen in Thailand’.
At home I figured it would be a good day to actually fall asleep in bed. He begged to differ. We read Pajama Time at one point, but otherwise he mainly just refused to consider the idea of napping. He basically decided he’d skip a nap. But that would mean he would fall asleep for good at 5 or so. So at 3 I gave in and we went out in the stroller. We crossed at Baskin Robbins. He was awake. Less than a half block later I said we would turn around as the wind was blowing in our faces. When I turned, the cover blew down in front of him. When I didn’t hear a peep I knew he was asleep.
We went home and he was asleep from 3:18 to 4:30. I woke him up and get him out of the stroller. He kept trying to go back to sleep, laying down on the floor. After about 10 minutes I got him up enough to go play some more piano. Then I suggested we learning Hebrew together. It was the greatest reaction every. First, as soon as I suggested we learn Hebrew, he enthusiastically agreed. I’m not even sure he knew it was a language, just that I’d suggested we learn something. When I said we could learn together, he stuck his hands out in front of him, perpendicular to the ground, and said “Together!?…Yeah! Let’s go!”
So we got my iPad and found an app and downloaded it. We used it and got markers and started drawing the letters on paper. Carly got home as we did that, and he was excited to tell her. They nursed, then he was typing on her computer, in English. I suggested we could install the Hebrew and Arabic keyboards on his iPad, and he liked that idea, so was then typing Hebrew and Arabic.
Carly had stopped at the store (I’d planned to go, but his late nap meant that didn’t happen) and made spaghetti and veggies for dinner. He was excited about dinner, saying “I love cheese” and as Carly was feeding him “That’s definitely a mushroom.”
We practiced more head stands. I actually did one too, against the wall in the reading area. I told Carly to come in and see if she wanted, but before she could August pushed me over. We then studied some more Hebrew and wrote it. And then did more Ants Go Marching on the piano and xylophone. The stick broke again so we glued it yet again.
Carly took a shower and August and I played the privacy game. After her shower, August was ready to try to sleep. Carly was getting him dressed and he took his socks, ran down the hall, and hid them in the parlor. He came back and said he wanted his feet to be cold. Tried for sleep, but came out at 8:25.
He was singing from the songbook, and made up a song where he sang “Won’t you be my friend?” – based on Mr. Roger’s “Won’t you be my neighbor?” He sang another one that went “Go away from the car…go away from my car, car, car.” I don’t know where that one came from. He then read Berenstain Bears Go to School with the narrator. It highlights the words as she reads, and August was following along, calling out words that he knew. He went back, and was asleep at 9:10.
His photo for Carly:
Teuni Teuni. Pulling:
Being an octopus:
Touching snow:
Trying to fall back to sleep:
Typing Arabic:
