No allergies today! August didn’t do any eye scratching, so maybe the Claritin is working…
He was up at 6. They were nursing when I got up, then Carly put on the fourth movement for him and he watched all of that. She made him oatmeal with Apple for breakfast, and he sang Ode to Joy using numbers: “I sang Ode to Joy with numbers. Ha ha.”
He ate his oatmeal and carly headed to work. I prepared his allergy medicine in Gatorade and when he drank that we then read Daisy-Head Mayzie, then all of The Cat in the Hat and The Cat in the Hat Comes Back. He found all the little cats to be really silly. We started to read Marvin K. Mooney but he decided he wanted Namoo, where he looked at photosynthesis. “If you put a cake in a very big pipe and it sucks it up and you lose it – you lose the chocolate cake? The pipe sucks it up. The pipe takes it away. You lose the cake? Because you put it in a very big pipe? It’s THIS big. It’s THAT big, Dada. And you put it in there and close it and it sucks it up? Yeah? I’m doing it with chocolate cake, but I have bubble gum ice cream…” The story continued for several more minutes after that.
He played a little Human Body, then sat in the chair looking at my iPad and humming along as we listened to Sesame Street songs: “ABC-DEF-GHI”, “Elmo’s Song”, and others. He then wanted to play with play dough and we made a couple letters out of it, then exercised and I went to take a shower. Watched a few more Sesame Street videos. During Ernie’s “I don’t want to live on the moon” video he kept asking “Why?” Then he said “I want to live on stars.” And “Stay on the moon.” We had a snack of crackers and crab and string cheese and grapes and listened to more Sesame Street songs. When I was cutting crab he wanted to use the knife, so I let him cut a couple pieces.
Out of nowhere he started asking about what we teach. He asked “What Dada used to teach?” And then “What Dada teach in Israel?”
I cooked some tofu for lunch and made a tofu sandwich. In Human Body he was focused on the whole pooping process. He also joked that he had three or four hands: “I have three hands.” I asked where the extra hands were and he pointed to his forearms.
When I tried to take off his pajama shirt and put on a shirt he started playing with both, wrapping them around his hand and calling them “Funny hands” It continued from there: “I have two electric saxophones.” “Tuba horn and puba horn.” “Funny sock…it’s an instrument with three buttons and two mouthpieces.” I was trying to get us going and finally got him to the bathroom, but he was still playing with the pajama shirt afterwards. At one point he decided “I want to go outside” But quickly changed his mind: “No, no, no, no.” He got my sandal and used it for a “Shoe game.” When I suggested we go he said “I will not stop this game.” He then stuck a drum stick in my shoe and was putting stuff on it. He said “This is a machine I’m making. I’m putting together a machine.”
We watched a couple more Sesame Street videos (We All Sing the Same Song, What’s the Name of This Song?) as we got ready and he was in the backpack, and we left 1:20. We got to the elevator just as it left the 8th floor. I said something about just missing it and he said “Ha ha.”
We walked down and caught the 111 bus to Dream Forest, which had been his idea all morning. At Dream Forest we walked up and found that the wading stream/pool in the middle of the park was on. We took our shoes off and changed his shorts. He really fought getting sunscreen put on his arms and legs. But I did that and we waded down the stream, maybe taking ten minutes or so. He got in just deep enough that his shorts stated to get wet, then he wanted out. And he got upset when he started playing with someone’s shoe and I wouldn’t let him. Couldn’t get him back in the water – he wanted to go back to the backpack and go someplace else.
We walked farther up, and the rectangle wading pools were on, but he wanted to go in the arts building. We went in and there was a photo op set up with a bunch of big stuffed animals. There were other kids playing with them despite the ‘No touching’ sign, so we joined in. He got upset when I made him get out of the way when someone wanted to take a photo, and was actually trying to pose and get in some of the photos. And at one point he hugged a flamingo.
He then wanted to head up the stairs. Nothing in the art gallery. He wanted to go in the book cafe. We went in and I got an iced tea and he got an apple juice. We went in the kids area for awhile and he played on the iPad and I read. He said he needed to go to the bathroom, and as we were going to put our shoes on we saw Jenny, his Poli English teacher. He didn’t talk to her much, but did kind of joke with her through one of the holes/shelves in the wall. And we met her daughter, who is younger than August.
We went to the bathroom then got walking at 3:42 as he wanted to head towards Mama and didn’t want to go in the water. A lot of talk about tempos as we walked. At the stream we saw a big bird and I was trying to decide if it was a crane or a heron and asked what he though. He said “It has feet. It has feathers. It has a beak.” As we walked he was asking about directions, and as we walked down the other side of the stream he was asking why we don’t see more blue flowers.
We got to the entrance of APIS about 4:10. I’d been telling him we couldn’t go in before 4:30, but he didn’t agree with that, and got upset when I started to walk up to the park across the street: “Now go back!” When we got to the park he didn’t want to get out of the backpack. I got out the bubble gun and got out and played with it for a couple minutes, then wanted me to put it back in the bag. We headed into APIS and got to Carly’s classroom just before Carly did. The first thing he said was “Why it say ‘pee’ there?” He had seen it up on a sign she had on the board as part of an acronym for her students. As soon as Carly came in he ran up to her and said “I’ve got my shoes on!” Then proceeded to sit down and take off his shoes; he knows that Carly doesn’t want him to get his feet all dirty on the classroom floor. They nursed, then did some painting together, then we headed home around 5:20.
On the way he decided that he wanted all the vehicles when we go to Israel: the cars, the trucks, the motorbikes, a little backhoe on a truck: “I want that truck in Israel too.” At one point I suggested that instead of getting a bunch of vehicles we get just one perfect vehicle that was just right for us. He got quiet and thought about it for several seconds, then said he wanted a car. Then a second, a third, a fourth… Close to the pink building I let him down so he could walk. He looked at the flowers and did some running. We went to Lucky Mart with Carly. He ran around a bit, but then helped me get cream cheese and crab. On the way home we were also singing Yellow Submarine and he was adding notes to it and making interesting rhythms.
We got home and they nursed, then he hid some tissues in the reading area and had me find them. He went to the bathroom, then back out in the living room said “Uh-oh, the shirt is pooping.”
Carly gave him a bath awhile later, then he got really upset when we made him go to the bathroom before going to bed. Anyway, we got him into bed and he was asleep at 7:20.
Using a knife:
Funny hand:
Jumping:
Dream Forest:
Jenny putting on his shoes. Him hiding his hands:
More bubbles:
Painting:
Catching:
Helping carry groceries:
