Saturday: train track walk and National History Day

Carly was off to National History Day today, who we had an extra Dada and Zinnie day this week. He nursed around 5:40, then slept until 8:08. Held him in my arms for several minutes and we looked out the window, identifying cars and things. He then got down and was playing Yankee Doodle. He gave a couple of his bid grins when he finished playing. He picked up the xylophone and started to take it to the parlor, but then was shocked to see all the stuff he had moved missing. I had to show him where I put everything, and he decided to get the octopus out of the toy box. We put it down in the parlor and we decided each leg did something – zapped, sprayed water, etc. He jumped over the legs and counted.

On the reading he cuddled with Marshy and Peter Rabbit a bit and declared he liked earwax. He then went and got all the Duplo animals and brought them to the reading area and had the alligator chomp Peter Rabbit. For then chicken he said “Hen. I call that a hen. Kind of chicken.” He used one of the octopus arms as a crown and wore that a bit and we had a whole alien and robot thing going for awhile. He broke the alien by doing a headstand, but they had a machine that fixed broken things.

He turned the light to the closet on and asked about the machines in there. That led to a discussion of the air conditioning and heater. He said he was still cold and wanted a blanket. We investigated all the blankets in the house, then he played xylophone while I made oatmeal (the slow kind). He asked “Where’s mama?” And we had the following discussion:

“National History Day. Remember? She…”

“Without a blanket?”

“She has her coat…”

“Mama’s blanket is still here?”

“Yes”

“I want mama’s blanket.”

We read Biscuit’s Picnic, then made our oatmeal. He had five tiny chunks of brown sugar. Ate, then back to piano. We practiced together.

Back in the parlor he made a loop of the hoses and said there was water through there. He wanted to spell ‘hope’ on paper; so I wrote it once and he wrote it over and over. One time there was a yo-yo hanging from the ‘e’. He started talking about which words start which each letter. We also spelled nose and hose, and talked about the S making a z sound. And he has started worrying about putting the kids back on, as he doesn’t like it when the markers run out.

I had found out that a software company called Duck Duck Moose had been purchased by Khan Academy, and all their apps were now free. I had downloaded them, so we tried out some of the words and math apps. I also found the Orchard board game, which I had planned on buying this summer, was also now an app. So we played the Orchard game, then had some crackers. He played with the Duck Duck Moose apps while I took a shower, then we played Orchard together again.

When I said “Sorry” about something about the shapes in his tracing app, he asked “What’s that voice? You sound funny.” Later, out on our walk, he again told me I sounded funny, and I realized my throat was a little sore. Hopefully not the start of a cold.

We played some mandolin, then read a Biscuit book and the Pete the Cat knight book. We got out of the house at 1:30. We stopped at Tous les Jour and picked out a potato and ham (supposedly) sandwich, a vegetable (supposedly) croquette, and a chocolate donut for lunch. We walked south towards the railroad tracks. He pretended to eat a lot of candy and at one point said “The mouth peed on the ground”. At the park we found a table in the sun to eat at. He wasn’t too impressed with either the sandwich (there was no ham) or croquette (too beefy), but of course the chocolate donut was a hit.

We then walked along the tracks to the east, until the trail/park ended after a couple blocks. It will eventually continue further, but is under construction. We walked back. He got off the bike, and was running and hopping on the trail – particularly happy when he was on the wrong side. He was all about walking on his own and being safe crossing the street as we got back to Hagye Children’s Park (the tree playground), but once he saw where we were going he said no, not that one.

He played with a drain in the sidewalk for a bit, then took the shovel out of the bike and started walking with it. He made up a song repeating “The shovel cave it out”, then sat on a random spot of the sidewalk and kept singing it, and hitting the ground with the shovel. He swung it at a guy walking by, then was pretending to hit everyone he saw with it (across the street, etc.), saying “hit” and “smack”. When he wouldn’t stop that I took the shovel away for awhile. He wasn’t happy about that, but then we got to the smaller park, talked about it, and he got the shovel back and was just smacking inanimate things. At one point he asked “Why dada don’t like you going ‘smack’?”

We did some math in the sand, went and used the bathroom, did more smacking, went back to math (intentionally doing multiplication wrong at one point) and words, and played the “I want you to think of things that don’t taste good with banana bread.” We also went over and played on the walking path for quite awhile, him trying to balance on it. We found one of those library phone booth things, and he found a Korean book about birds that we took home. Oh, and we sat by the bike and played with the beads he has collected in the back and did some math with them.

Around 3:40 we headed north, cutting through the apartment complex. We came across a small apartment complex playground that had swings, and he wanted to get out and swing. Did that for awhile, then headed home and got home a bit after 4.

We played on the iPad and did some surgery and checkups until Carly got home. They nursed, then August and I shared a salmon sandwich for dinner, and he ate a bunch of broccoli and zucchini (cold, as is his preference) while we joked that it was Carly’s and that he couldn’t eat it. While eating the sandwich, he claimed that “Manning doesn’t like the lettuce” and that Manning was “the character…in Drumstick.”

He was playing piano, and now singing and playing both the first two verses and choruses of Yankee Doodle. We played mandolin, and were working on holding the neck the right way so he could press down the strings, and playing with the pick.

Carly was going to Skype with Mandy, the woman we know who now lives in Israel. We weren’t sure when August would want to go to sleep, and the call got pushed back. I took August in for his bath, and we just stayed in there, watching a whole bunch of orchestra pieces on the iPad, while Carly skyped. August also let me clean under his fingernails (they were filthy – if you looked at them now you wouldn’t think they had just been cleaned, but they’re much better) and trim a couple. And he took a turn at cleaning under mine.

Carly came in at 9:30 or so when she was done, and we got him out of the bath and off to sleep around 10.