Saturday: Home Plus and the park

He was up at 7 and I was up a few minutes later. We had a pillow fight in the reading area, then he played piano. Carly is listening to the Trevor Noah book as an audiobook, and August was wondering what she was doing. So she put one of the earphones in his ear, and they listened together for several minutes. He asked what ‘prostitute’ means. I made pancakes and he helped mix them up. He was then asking about baseball rules (from Take Me Out to the Ballgame).

Carly took down recycling and went to get bread as well. As she left I made a joke about how we could the bread to make towers. Carly was confused, but then August came in saying “That’s silly. Bread towers. That doesn’t make sense.” and laughed.

He was slowly eating pancakes, quarter by quarter: “Were doing quarters with pancakes…see, I have two quarters.” “Pancake math. I like pancake math.”

We watched a couple videos of pedal steel guitar, then skyped with Vivian and company. She was very excited about showing off the new iPad and watching Sarah and Duck. We got out the wooden car and backhoe puzzles to show Colin. Cassie took Colin up for bed, but he wouldn’t stop talking about the truck, so they had to come back and see it again.

August did some drawing on paper, and said “I’m making designs just for funsies.” I took a shower and they were still skyping when I came out. For the next hour or two I did taxes and they nursed and played. Carly got him peanut butter and honey sandwich for lunch. We were then trying to get outside, but he didn’t want to go.We did kisses math on the reading area, then headstands. He untwisted part of the dog. I thought he was then going to want it back together, but he was fine with it. He was then being a woodpecker. And confusing: “It can peck you because it is in a fire.” He went and looked out the window: “Why we don’t hear recycling?” He was then trying to make fingerprints on the window, but I said that was okay. So instead “I want to do it on mirrors.”

We got him outside at that point, about 1:15. We stopped at the banana sculpture and played on and around them for quite awhile. Carly and I had been talking about potential car size for our car in Israel, and AUgust then transferred that to looking at all the kids on bikes and picking a bike size for himself: “Maybe a bike that size.” I asked if he wanted a bike or a scooter. He thought and said “Bike AND scooter.” “Or maybe that size!” He observed that his blue coat and pants matched: “My coat matches my cat pants.” Then to me: “Your shoe ties are blue? I thought of ANOTHER one!” as he pointed to the ground in emphasis.

Carly went ahead eventually to do the grocery shopping. We continued to play in the park and he wandered around a bit and be played in the dirt of the planting boxes. We talked about what he might want to grow in Israel, and he said fruits.

Eventually he wanted to head to Home Plus. We were singing Yankee Doodle as we went down the walkways. A woman asked me what the song was as she recognized the tune. We went in and found Carly and finished the grocery shopping, then headed home.

On the way home we stopped by the guard station to see if there was a package. A guy saw us and said “pal sam chil” (837). It was actually the delivery driver, who then led us to his truck and got the the box. He had simply recognized me from the few brief seconds he has seen me when dropping off packages when he brings them to our door. Impressive service.

At home August helped put iHerb away. We snacked on the baked lentils then I made a salmon sandwich. They nursed, then we ate our sandwich, then read some Kipper. Carly cooked a cheesy rice dish and August and I read Bob Books. We did lots of music time: mandolin, Piano Maestro, Dust Buster. August figured out how to make the instruments play pizzacatto in GarageBand, and he also played with the Itsy Bitsy app.

They nursed, then we played with the yellow alien and spaceship and introduced them to Bluie and Green Monster. August pretended to be an alligator and chomped on Green Monster. Carly didn’t like the idea of the feel of it – carpety, she calls it. So August found it really funny. They then played GarageBand together and August showed her how to change the instruments.

I gave him his bath and washed his hair. We watched hurdy gurdy and keyed fiddle videos in the Musical Instruments book. August was talking about diapers and underwear, and we talked about eventually not wearing a diaper at night. He decided he wanted to try it tonight, but when I said no, not yet he got really sad. We got him dried off and off to bed and he was asleep about a quarter to 8.