Tuesday: Children’s Grand Park

It was a rough night, as August woke up twice, really rubbing his eyes: once around midnight, then at 5am. So Carly in particular didn’t get much sleep, although I didn’t do too much better.

Carly had him watching Beethoven’s Ninth in the morning. He kept wanting to nurse, but then wouldn’t nurse because he was paying attention to Beethoven instead. At the piccolo part he got really exciting. He stared fake coughing and laughing “coughing instrument”. Carly had looked up child doses of Loratadine. It is half a pill, so I broke one in half, crushed it, and put it in a drink of Gatorade for August and he drank it. He had some banana bread for breakfast and Carly found a Gatorade factory video for him as he was asking how it was made. We read Daisy-head Mayzie and Hop on Pop. Carly headed to work during that. He did some GarageBand, then we played a full game of checkers. I had some videos, and he wanted to know how they were made, so we found a couple videos, then watched his ink video.

He picked up a tissue and put it between his toes, then started walking around, vacuuming with it – a “toe vacuum cleaner”. We went in and played with the Smurfs. There were only 9 figures at first, and I realized there should be twelve. I looked for the missing ones, and he got excited when I found the others in a book basket. Wasn’t clear if he had hid/put them in there today, or yesterday. We had them have picnics. Then he was hiding them. Then he was hitting me and having Papa Smurf bandage me up.

We read Daisy-head Mayzie again, and ate the rest of the banana bread. Exercised, then he made a very long game of filling the desk drawer with stuff. Starting with the DVDs and CDs I had out, but expanding to Duplos, the Smurfs, xylophone sticks, etc: “I’m doing stuff in there.” He kept doing it, and I tried to get him interested in doing some art by doing dots on a piece of paper. He looked at it and said “I see the colors of that. Beautiful!” But he kept putting stuff in the drawer: “I’m putting them in there because they’re pooping.”

Eventually he did dots with me and we filled the paper pretty well. He decided it was “Germs inside your body”. That made him think of Human Body on the iPad: “I want to do Human Body because hat is inside your skin and there’s germs in your body.” He was looking at blood and wanted to know what the macrophages were, so we looked that up. Then I got an email from Carly saying guys were going to come look at the bathroom soon. So we hurried to get ready to go, but just as I was about to put August in the backpack they showed up. They only looked for like ten seconds though, then left. So I made half a peanut butter and jam sandwich for August and he ate that. He then said “I’m ready to go”, but proceeded to play with Duplos, then some piano before we left at 11:20.

At the station he was really rubbing his eyes. We were then singing “Lay Down Your Weary Tune”, as we had been humming it on the way there. A woman tried to talk to him, and he said “I want candy. Do you have candy?” Luckily, she didn’t understand him. I had let him not go to the bathroom before we left, but after a few stops he said he had to go. So we got off and used the bathroom, then got back on.

At Children’s Grand Park he wanted to go to the piano. The park was crazy busy (full of both school groups and families) but the piano was free. There was a group of teenage girls close though, and they kept talking about August. Then a woman and a little girl came and stood by the piano. The girl sharing the piano would have been fine, but the woman was just staring at August from about a foot away, so I decided it was time to go.

We went to the children’s museum. He started in the nature area, looking at the rocks and doing the snowflake puzzles and other things around there. We went to the chalkboard and he had me write the ABCs. Headed further into the art area, and he played with the puff things, excited by how far up he could place them, and then making a shape that he called a “horse letter”. He continued on and played with the CDs you can hang on a fish shape, looked at the kaleidoscopes, then played with the light rods and light blocks and light shapes. Finally, he spent several minutes in the ribbon gymnastics area, twirling and spinning about. That was fun to see.

We went to the food place by the conservatory, but it has changed. The food court area has a. Lot less choices (and no burger place), and the end is now a GS25. We went there, but they didn’t have much, and the line was long. We got a couple of regular soft-boiled eggs, some garlic-filled crab, and a couple of drinks. He did a good job standing in line. We got separated for a few seconds as we walked to the zoo and he didn’t see me turn, but quickly found each other. Hard to find a place to sit, but we finally found a bench between the primates and the tigers and ate there. A group of teenage girls came and took their photo with him.

We started to walk towards the playground on the other side of the hill, but realized the water birds and tropical buildings were open. So we went in both of those, although in the tropical building he mainly only looked at the fish. The zookeeper door was propped open, and I explained how he used to really like them, but he didn’t seem to know what I was talking about. We then walked through the children’s zoo (also now open) and spent some time with the goats. And he really liked the farmer and sheep statue, which he’s seen many times before.

At about 3 we went to our usual bathroom. When we exited, he ran ahead of me. He had gone up the hill, then ran really fast back down to me.

Kind of startled me the first time, and I was glad he didn’t fall. He did it a couple more times, but was safer about it, and didn’t go as fast. He then spent a few minutes listening to and humming the music on the PA system. There were high school students gathering in the theater space below us, and he went and sat and watched them (and at one point picked up an empty chips bag and sort of threw it down), then made a game of pulling things off the trees and dropping them down the drains. We left there at 3:20; he wanted to go back to the children’s museum.

We didn’t make it that far. We saw a boy with one of those battery-operated bubble guns, and I remembered that we’d brought ours. It was part of our unbirthday president to Carly last year and we had never used it. So we stopped at the deck area by the coffee shop and played with it there. He sprayed them for kids passing by a few times, and also shot them at the bushes and trees. He called the music that it makes the “Bubble song”. We went through most of the small two bottles that we brought. At 3:50 he said “I want to go somewhere.” and walked off. He sprayed some bubbles and we walked towards the exit, then let me put it in the backpack.

In the subway station I stopped to look at the new bakery that had replaced the old bakery. We got a blueberry pie, then a chocolate one for Carly. We ate our blueberry one on the platform. We were on the subway about 4:15. Got the dancing spot again, and he did some dancing, and was singing my tune (and words) to the nursery rhyme “There was an old woman tossed up in a basket”. A seat was open, but he didn’t want it at first, but then changed his mind. I got him on the seat, then went to get the iPad from the backpack. While my back was turned, a woman either tried to shake his hand, or tried to move him back or keep him on the seat. I heard him say “Don’t. Shake. My arm!” as he got off the seat and came to me. He then asked “How angry was that?”

Walking home he sang “hit, hit, hitty, hit, hit” to the tune of Ode to Joy and hit my back as he did so. He got quiet and I reminded him he couldn’t fall asleep. He started singing again, then a minute later got quiet again. He fooled me, because he was only acting like he was falling asleep. We went to Tous Les Jour and got bread and were home at
4:55. He played Human Body and was rubbing his face. But he hadn’t done much of that while we were out, and it was more nose and much less eyes today, so that was good.

Carly was home at 5:25. We were just about to start reading Daisy-Head Mayzie, and he let us do that instead of nursing right away. When we were done, I had him give Carly her chocolate pastry. She gave him a bite of that, then they nursed. A bit later he did the toe vacuum with Carly’s light black sweatshirt.

At one point they were on the reading area and he was talking about ice cream and other foods, and asking what I like: “Dada likes bubble gum ice cream? Plums? Pineapples?” I asked if he liked flamingoes, and he got a bit serious and answered “Noooo…I can’t eat them. They’re a bird.”

I gave him a bath again while Carly did dishes. August watched more Sesame Street videos: “Me Lost Me Cookie at the Disco”, then Little Richard’s “Rubber Ducky”, Smokey Robinson’s “U Really Got a Hold on Me” (https://youtu.be/ws_vnXup7so) (which August found hilarious, because the giant U kept chasing and grabbing him), “What’s the Name of that Song?” (https://youtu.be/6TjX5r37V0Q) (Which he also really liked), and “We All Sing the Same Song” (https://youtu.be/MYXJlfcfFKU) (which he also really liked, and I vaguely remember from when I was a kid). We finished with “I Don’t Want to Live on the Moon” (https://youtu.be/kIq8jLj5TzU). By this point he was really quiet and serious, and sucking on two fingers in his mouth.

He got out, and we put him to bed and he was asleep about 7:20.