He woke up around 3:30, stuffy, and lay in bed for several minutes. Hoped he would go back to sleep. It eventually Carly (who is now feeling good enough to sleep in bed) got up and took him to the reading area. I fell back to sleep and didn’t hear them until 6:15 so I had hoped he had fallen back to sleep. No such luck. He had played iPad and done music, and I’m sure nursed. When I came out, Carly was teaching him how to do addition problems in a spreadsheet. So I did more of those with him and he got the ‘autosum’ process down. When Carly had to leave, he switched to iPad and did some more Dragonbox Numbers (the original one). I got paper and markers to do some math, and he wanted to do snake voices – i.e. nonsense – on paper. We shared a bowl of Cheerios and bananas for breakfast, then he wanted books on the iPad. He landed quickly on the songbook, and we sang a couple songs. We found “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” and “Under the Sea” and I suggested we watch them, so found we found them on YouTube. Then we found “The Unbirthday Song” from Alice in Wonderland (https://youtu.be/6zxFlrxdwyY). So I found the tea party scene and we watched that. He laughed hysterically the entire 6 minutes…all the spilling, the mouse running across the table, the teapots dancing, and especially the Mad Hatter pouring tea through his coat and the tea cup getting cut in half and filled…he found it all hilarious.
So then we started the movie at the beginning. We watched it all the way through to the end of the tea party again before he wanted to pause it. After watching a good chunk of it with him I exercised and took a shower. I then let him play a little Dragonbox Big Numbers, but then when I said we were done with screens for the morning he got upset. A lot of yawning and it was clear he was getting tired. So I got out the stroller and got us ready for a walk, him still wearing pajamas. He recovered a bit though and was asking funny things, like “How you make crab?” “What happens if you drink your blood?” “Be Kipper”
We left at 11:10 and walked over around the stream area. He said no nap though, and instead playing music: “I’m playing a crab keyboard Clickity clackety, clickity…” So after 25 minutes we were back home at 11:35. We made a salmon sandoo for lunch and ate that and I made a banana and blackberry smoothie. I took off his pajamas to get him in clothes and he rolled around on the floor in his underwear for awhile. We played some mandolin. And before we got going he found a few stringy bits from the banana on the counter. He was using them as musical instruments and describing how you press the keys and blow into them.
We got back in the stroller, a backpack full of sand toys and iPads this time. We headed southeast (he was asking about directions again) and towards the writing playground past the hospital. As I suspected, he fell asleep. At 2:02. We were a bit past the hospital and the park near it when it happened. I was right by ToPresso, but there were three steps up. So I walked across the park to Masim (마심). I think Masim may have been the first coffee place we took August when he was starting to walk. Carly and I discussed how long to let him sleep, and I tried waking him up after 70 minute. But he just fell back to sleep a couple times. He finally woke up at 3:35. The woman at the coffee shop had brought me some strawberries and a brownie, and I shared the brownie with August. He wouldn’t eat the strawberries though.
We got in the stroller and headed towards home, and with the design of going to the four swing playground that he likes. We stopped at the park by the pink building and used the bathroom, then continued on to the playground. He went down the slide a couple times, running into me, then went on the swing. I had told Carly that was where we were, and she planned to meet us there on her walk home. But suddenly he decided he wanted to head home. So I called Carly on speakerphone so we could tell her we’d meet her at home. August first smiled when he heard her, but then got his totally sad face and then broke out crying. I said goodbye and we headed home. He made me carry him much of the way, before agreeing to get in the stroller by the pink building.
We were home just before 5. His nose was really runny. Carly got home a bit later. They nursed and I made more noodles. He played piano, and Carly wanted to hear Old MacDonald, but he played it to the tune of Are You Sleeping. He was then doing that with other songs to frustrate Carly. Then he said “I played “Old MacDonald Really Has to Poop’”.
Carly gave him a bath, and they tried for sleep for the first time at 7. That didn’t last long and they were back out. We read a new book called In Mary’s Garden, the Persian instrument book, The Bear and the Piano, and a little of The Little Prince. He said he was tired again, so they tried again. Back out at 8:15. Carly had thought he had gone to sleep and he had rolled over like he always does. But then he popped up. She showered, and we read A Violin for Elva. I showed him a little of Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (referenced in the book). He wanted Beethoven’s Ninth so we switched to that. He saw a Violin player and said “That looks like Oma.”
We went in to bed at 8:50. On the bed he asked about the window things Carly had made with the colorful squares to block out the hallway light. He said “I still don’t like it because dark green.” Then said his favorite color is “Brown” I mentioned other colors, like Amber. He said “Amber what?” I think he expected me to say ‘orange’ or ‘yellow’ after it. Instead I said “Amber amber.” He laughed at that. Amber is also a character in Poli. So he said “Poli Poli”. Some hilarity ensued as we doubled everything for a bit, then ended with “Night, night Poli, Poli”.
The night wasn’t over though, as he was back out a couple minutes after 9. We looked a little at Rad American Women A-Z and read two and a half Kipper stories before he went back in to Carly at 9:20. Finally asleep.
Photos. Pointing in directions:
A nap. I like the one wild hair off the top:
