He was up at 6:52 with a dry diaper. I was surprised, as he had said “Want to go to the toilet” sometime during the night, but had fallen back to sleep. Had some banana bread, then we read seven books together, some, like Suddenly, a few times. Had some more banana bread, then music time. Improvising on Are You Sleeping and remembered how to play the song in F sharp.
Read Doc McStuffins in the reading area, then walked around saying “I don’t see anything. No animals here.” as he looked around the room. Confusing, as I didn’t know where it came from.
I rested on the reading area, as I was developing a headache. He wrote on the etch-a-sketch sort of board, then did TodoMath. I got up and he copied skeleton words, such as humerus, on paper. Did some exercise, and he found the pieces of the stamp pad roller. We put it together, and did some stamp pad art. We had some Cheerios, then read more Suddenly and Peekaboo Sophie. Then practiced lowercase letters and Hangeul and figure 8s on that smart board thing.
He then wanted to write Chinese for real (not just make it up). So we searched through a few apps, and found a couple that show you how to write different characters. He was tracing Chinese while I took a shower. He was still hungry, so we made a couple scrambled eggs with mushrooms. Played some piano, and took turns conducting. He wanted to watch some orchestra, so did that. He let me brush his teeth – he pretended to be Oona, so it was her bill. He then ‘taught’ me how to write letters, then played piano and I brushed his hair.
He saw me start to measure things (Carly had found the dimensions of the largest boxes at the post office) to see if we could send them, and August immediately wanted to make sure the piano would fit. It will.
We left just after noon. Walked up a few blocks and caught the 1139 bus. As we went over the stream, August was looking out and said “Nice statue”, referring to the cone-ish shaped statue there. We watched the driver, and he went quiet. He even had his head resting back, and I think he was close to falling asleep. But then we got off the bus and he perked up a bit. I walked a couple blocks to the park, but when we got there at 12:45 he didn’t want to get out. He agreed to walking and falling asleep, so we went walking again. 13 minutes. But we sang all we know of Yankee Doodle, then he sang all twenty vereses of Ants Go Marching (he knows almost all the words himself). He even kept going past 20. Think we were up to 24, with me making up new lines for the ant, when we got back to the park. Clearly he wasn’t attempting to fall asleep.
But back at the park he still wanted to stay in the backpack and sleep. But then he said he needed to use the bathroom. We did that, then sat on a bench and ate lunch. Actually, first he did a long chomp attack on me. Then while eating there were these women at the next bench over really trying to get his attention. At one point he went over and gently did a chomp attack on one of them. He walked on the lines of bricks. Carly and I have had some odd interactions with the women who frequent this park (the woman who stared at her breastfeeding, the woman with the bubble wrap), and today was no exception. One of the women came over and was chasing him – he was running away and I had to shield him. She then wanted to give him a piggy back ride. As that was happening, I had our lunch and stuff spread out on a bench a couple feet from us. There were plenty of open benches. Two other women came over and insisted on taking our bench.
We escaped across the park to the playground. They swings were being used most of the time by older kids coming and going. August could have easily gotten a turn, but because he was tired he didn’t want to. And then he started to notice when the swings were being used and would hide from them by covering his eyes. We wrote with our stick in the sand instead, and he started drawing Qs with hats. Absolutely no idea where he got that. He hasn’t drawn a hat on any other letter, and he drew several Qs this way. We drew some Hebrew, then he started to say he wanted to go home. But he found some big pieces of styrofoam. Played with those, then he wanted to throw them away. We walked over to the bathrooms and did that.
He was then being Baba, learning to swim, and we wandered across the middle of the park to kind of the small circular hill area that is bisected by two paths that cut through the hill, meaning you can kind of hide around it easily. We played hide and seek for awhile, then he pretended to be Baba swimming again. At one point I found a pretty big shell discarded in the dirt, so that was his “Shiny shell”. A woman came up and gave him what I thought was a cookie. Rather, she insisted on giving me a whole big container of this cookie-looking things. She kept saying kabong (backpack), even though it wouldn’t have fit in the small backpack I was wearing and that she kept patting. Also, it turned out not to be cookies, but cookie sized and shaped hard candies, kind of like a candy cane. I let August lick on one for a couple minutes. His tongue and lips were nice and red. I gave him one more minute, and he was thrilled to sneak 10 or so extra seconds out of me by running away so I had to catch him.
We tried one more time for a nap, walking in the little streets again between the park and the bus stop. But he just kept insisting I sing, and not the sleepy songs. He would get upset if I didn’t sing. So we headed to the bus. We got seats on the bus, and he was eating crackers next to me. He was so tired that when he dropped one and it went in a crack below the seat in front of us he couldn’t handle not getting it back. He cried and wailed and kept asking me to find it because he wanted to eat it. He wouldn’t eat any of the other crackers we had. Luckily, just a few more minutes on the bus. After a couple, he said “I want to cuddle with dada” I held him and he put his head on my shoulder, but still kept sobbing until we got off the bus.
He calmed down, got in the backpack, and fell asleep after a few minutes. I got over to Cafe Sarang Bang, only to find that it is closed, it appears, until June. Luckily, it was a warm day. We sat out on the benches near there (humorously, the same benches where a woman once insisted it was too hot to have him sleeping outside when it was in the 80s and it was shady – i kept expecting someone to tell me it was too cold for him to sleep outside this time, but it was deserted now). He slept from 3:30 until I started to wake him up at 4:05.
We made it home at 4:20. I got him out and he just lay on his stomach on the floor. Wouldn’t respond to me, but I put the Pirates of the Caribbean orchestra piece on his iPad and he got up and watched.
He then wanted pictures of punctured eardrums. This is what it means when they say that parenting changes you; I would have never looked at such photos before, but here I was. He then did some letter tracing, and Carly was home at 5:30.
They nursed and read Doc McStuffins. August insisted on her saying ‘BFF’ as it said in the book, when she just wanted to say ‘best friend’. August mentioned pudding to her, and she asked how he knew about pudding. I finally remembered we had talked about it at the children’s museum when we saw someone else eating it. August still needs to try it (I also mentioned cinnamon rolls to him the other day, and had to show him photos – we will take care of introducing him to cinnamon rolls in Chelan this summer).
He was being loud, and said “Mama’s cochlea will hurt.” He and I read Kipper’s A to Z, then had rice and soup and banana for dinner. He watched Puffin Rock as Carly cut his hair. She gave him a popsicle, and he asked how long it would take to melt before he could eat it (they won’t come out of the containers at first) but asking “Will it take 15 Puffin Rock episodes?” Which I thought was a very creative and personally relevant measure of time for him.
I gave him a bath. He ate his popsicle in there,
then we invented a ‘If I Go’ song together, then he sang a good nonsense ABC song. Carly then took a shower, and August was asking about snare drums, so we watched snare drum videos. He went and got his drum and was beating it to wake me up, then was pretending to play timpani and other instruments.
We headed to the bed. He wanted a nest, and went out to the parlor and got the blanket there and dragged it in to me. He was being quite hyper. Finally, Carly nursed him a little before 9. However, he came out to me a little before 9:30. We ate a banana and sang the If I Go song. He then said it was sleepy time, and went back in to bed at 9:45.
Photos. Stamp roller:
Piano time:
Danggogae Park. Q with a hat:
Styrofoam:
Candy:
Hard to wake up:
Haircut:
Drum:
