Tuesday: Children’s Grand Park – and saying ‘up’

After missing our usual Thursday trip to the CGP last week since he was sick I decided to go on Tuesday this week. August is still not acting his usual self and is more easily frustrated, so it seemed easier than the other trips I was considering this week (ha – I now consider 10 subway stops ‘easy’).

Today started out well. August woke up happy and seemed to be feeling happy. That lasted until we were skyping with my parents and I wouldn’t take him to play with the handle on the window. Things got tough after that.

He seemed tired and fell asleep at one point, but woke up (twice) when trying to put him down.

Eventually (after 11), I decided we should just leave the apartment. Total change. August was great on the subway down to Children’s Grand Park. We then went and saw the seals and then the herbivores, where he saw his first favorite zoo animal, the guanaco (when we went with my parents August got upset when a guanaco walked away from him). He also quite liked the mouflons as they are basically wild sheep.

He then fell asleep so I went to Peace Cafe to get a smoothie and start my book group of one idea. I read one chapter and then August woke up after only sleeping 30 minutes.

We then went to the children’s museum for a couple hours. Spent time in the toddler play area until it got busy. There was a 9-month old, Bin, that played with and alongside August. At one point Bin was holding August’s foot. We spent the rest of our time in the book lounge. August had just as much fun in there but it was almost empty. He played more with the magnifying glasses, and in fact when we found two of them left across the room he pointed back to the set and then set off crawling, carrying one to return it to the set. We then went back together and got the last one.

He started to get upset and look tired again and it was time to leave (close to 4). We headed off and things were going fine until a woman was freaking out that I was letting him sit on the floor between my legs while I fed him Cheerios. Not sure if she was concerned that it was dirty or unsafe, although I was bent over, with one arm around him to hold him.

I tried to tell her it was okay but finally gave in and out him on the seat next to me as she wanted. She then was upset that I had him too close to the edge (again, I had an arm all the way around him). She may have actually touched him as she was trying to get me to scoot him back. Anyway, at this point he started to lose it (and I wanted to get away from her anyway) so I got up and put him in the carrier. He screamed until the next stop. I got off and he fell asleep almost instantly and we hopped back on the next train.

Second nap lasted another 30 minutes until we were home and I tried to set him down again. He was again rather on edge until Carly got home. I think in part it is because he is sick, because he is getting all of his milk through nursing nowadays (he only drank 1.5oz from the bottle today), and because he simply misses Carly. He was much happier and content for the rest of the evening.

The good news today though is that he has started to say ‘up’ and even sometimes signing please when he wants to be picked up. He did this pretty consistent with me throughout the day, although needed some reminding with Carly. So much better than a shrieking infant pulling at your pants.

Oh, and Carly got him to pretend to wipe his own nose with a tissue this evening. He thought it was funny, but clearly gets what is happening. He had pretty much hated the process to now, but hopefully this means he will now be more accepting of it.