He was awake at 7:40. Sometime before my meeting started he was singing a “I want to make a K out of Duplos” song. I had a book group meeting from just past 8:30 to just past 10. August spent a lot of time coming in and wanting me to make letters out of Duplos. Carly made him french toast for breakfast.
My meeting was over a little after 10, and they showed up at 10:40. Right before they got here August was practicing drawing crescents and hearts. Sophie and Jeff and the two kids, Cora and Maggie came in and handed August his present. We opened it and it was a set of foam things you can use to make art in the bathtub.
They played in the living room for a bit, trying out the piano and xylophone (August was really amused by how Cora was playing them), then we all ended up in the parlor. August kept counting everyone, although since he kept turning in circles to do it he often went past 7, We started to ask him questions like how many people with brown hair, how many kids, how many blue eyes. For the hair or eyes he ran off to go check himself in the mirror.
A bit more playing in the parlor with the tool kit, Duplos, etc. then Jeff went back down to the car for the trumpet. He came back and gave August a little trumpet lesson. August tried a little but couldn’t make a sound. Carly tried and blew a couple notes. August started crying, and Carly took him to the bedroom for a bit.
They came back out and ordered pizza. We played and had lunch, then August disappeared. He had gone to the changing room and was just playing by himself. He wanted some alone time, and told both Carly and me to leave. I went back down after 10 minutes or so and convinced him to come out as we were having cake. He came out and ate cake. They left just before 1.
A little straightening up then we opened the card from Glecy and then Skyped with my parents to open presents. He liked the letter wrapping paper and when he found the Q said “That’s my best, best letter.” He wanted the big present first, and that was the medical stuff. He liked the medical stuff, and listened to his own heart with the stethoscope. He said “It’s making music in my body.” He also listened to me and Carly.
Next was the set of letter rubber stamps, then the two books. August played the new piano and was then talking about instruments. He said “I have an instrument with zero strings and infinity frets.” We finished skyping at 2:10, then August and I read the Mike the Knight: The Tricky Trail book.
I talked to him about why he was sad earlier and he said “loud”, which I took to mean that he didn’t like it when Carly blew the trumpet. But a bit later I asked him in front of Carly and he said “blowing”, and seemed to confirm that it was because it was hard to play.
They nursed, then on the toilet he said “I’m a rattlesnake.” They did math together, then played a little Venus fly trap game. They ended up watching a series of odd videos: some using an axe to cut a tree, kidney and lung surgery, and something else random.
I took him for a bike ride and we went up to Sarang Children’s Park a little before 4. He saw it was busy and said “I don’t like the kids.” because the swings were busy. I asked him if he wanted to go to Madeul, which is never busy. He thought about it and said “Sand” and decided we’d play in the sand instead.
We made a sand mountain and he crushed it. While writing things in the sand with our stick he asked “How do you spell Maggie?…Cora?” Then he wanted to spell “Daisy…Biscuit” He ate a Larabar for a snack, and we played the Larabar game, which we haven’t done much recently, not eating Larabars, making up ‘oops’ ingredients.
He wanted to go on the swings but sent me as a scout: “I want dada to go on the swings.” While we waited I pointed out the map we had looked at before. He asked “You looked at it when you were a little baby?” He also pretended to play the piano on the side of the play structure and I made up a nonsense song.
We got a swing and he was on that for quite awhile. He joked “What do yellow and red make? Do it with your paint fingers.” That is, like we use our fingers to make numbers and letters, he wanted me to make colors out of them. We played tag on the swing and I was telling him to stop moving.
He started talking about someone named Mani (like his song – and I can’t remember if it was a similar name when he last seemed to be talking about a pretend person): “Mani should go over there…to those teeter totter things…mani doesn’t like tomatoes.” Mani was from some place, then from ‘March’. He declared “March is a place.”
He said something about “you can’t tag along”, which seemed to be from Berenstain Bears No Girls Allowed. He then got on his stomach on the swing and recited a couple of verses from Yankee Doodle as a poem.
Off the swing, we went up on the play structure to check out the pipes on what appeared to be a musical instrument. Perhaps it was at some point, but now the ends were covered up. We went down the little slide and played there, with him sliding into my head while I pretended to try to rest o the slide. He also climbed up the slide several times. He picked up something off the ground and, against my wishes, licked it and declared “I did it.” He did more sliding into me and declared “I’m a bully…What’s a bully?…Suddenly.” He was thinking of the bully in the book Suddenly that pushes past the main character on the slide.
I said ‘Boo’ at one point and he said “That tickles!…It tickles my eardrums.” We went on the teeter totter things, first sitting in the middle, then getting on the ends. He was watching the girl and mom on the other one, and when they switched ends August wanted to switch ends too. Out of nowhere he said “I want a picture where Oma broke…broke the arm…and the X-ray.” He wanted to see my x-ray and I told him we could when we got home, but we forgot.
We left at 5:35 and went across the street to a public restroom but it was very dirty and only had squat toilets. August didn’t want to go there and I didn’t blame him. We walked over to Chrysanthemum park to use the bathroom there. As we passed the two wooden worms he observed “The head is missing” on one of them. We then headed home. At one point he said “Squash. There’s a dog.” That was a reference to the driving simulator at the science center that tests your reaction speeds when a dog runs into the road.
We were home a little after 6. Nursed, then we used the letter stamps a bit, using q and m. We had a piece of pizza, then watched videos of a harmonium, pipe organ, and a harp, the last two playing Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Jeff had earlier mentioned a Sesame Street album he had on vinyl as a kid (about the symphony), which reminded me that we had Sesame Street Disco, with the song , sung by Cookie Monster, “Lost My Cookie at the Disco”. I found it on YouTube and we watched it as we went in for his bath.
Carly took over to do the bath foam stuff with him and they had fun with that. He was singing the ABC song, and sang “Next time won’t you sing with Cora.” After a long day, he was asleep at 8.
Photos:
Sarang Children’s Park. Godzilla:
Superman:
Letter stamps:
