First, I’ve been meaning to mention that a few days ago I measured August’s height. Turns out he has grown 3 inches in the last 5 months. He’s now 2’ 8”. So, no longer on the short side of things. Haven’t been able to weigh him though.
No big adventures on this, Carly’s last day before the first day of school, but we got out of the house four times. Also, August is talking pretty constantly and often using what are clearly intended as words, but as his vocabulary grows it is becoming more difficult to identify what those new words are.
Anyway, one thing that happened in the morning was that August was playing with his bear, Marshy, out in the living room. When he was done, he walked into the bedroom, placed him on the bed, said ‘All done. Bye bye’ and waved to Marshy.
Our first trip was in the morning, before Carly left for work. He suddenly wanted to go outside, so the two of us went. There was a lot of trash left over from last night’s celebrations. August, of course, wanted to pick it up. But the trash bags themselves were overflowing, so I had to hold him above them so he could drop the garbage on top. This quickly lost its appeal to me. So I took him across to the other side of the park and we sat near the art museum and sang some songs. After 30 minutes or so we headed back in. We ran into Carly, headed for the bus, on the way in.
We were inside for awhile, then headed back out. We went to the museum, as the new children’s exhibit had opened a couple days previous and it was the last day of the show in the main gallery (with the big breathing creature things that August likes). We walked through that old exhibit, then down to the children’s exhibit. It was an Alice in Wonderland-themed show, but there was plenty of random stuff. August liked the broccoli forest paintings, but he loved the box that you stick your head in. Inside there are mirrors and projectors showing characters from Alice in Wonderland. He stared into it for several minutes and would occasionally say ‘more’. Before we left the museum he played for a couple minutes in the play area but wanted to leave when other kids showed up, and we took one more walk through the main gallery to see our favorite pieces again.
From there we walked back to our side of the park and threw rocks into the stream area (still off, but there is a little standing water left from rain) and picked up some more garbage.
On the way back inside we stopped to get the mail. I let August grab the one piece of mail, the gas bill. He immediately started saying something over and over. When we got in the apartment, he ran to his crayons and started coloring on the gas bill. What he was saying sounded similar to his ‘coloring’, but different at the end. Possibly ‘color it’. He was very proud of himself for this idea.
For lunch we made a salmon sandwich and had a Larabar. He was acting tired a couple times, but not close to sleeping. We watched the Days Go By video (has a dancer) on the iPad and then the danger from the Take Me to Church video dancing on the Ellen show. He liked that, but got upset at the end when Ellen interviewed him and he stopped dancing. So we watched the actual music video a couple times. August figured out the spacebar and can make the video start and stop, and was saying ‘stop’ and ‘go’. Carly came home 1ish and I thought he’d go to sleep then. But he just kept playing with her. And playing. And nursing. And playing.
Finally, about 3 we went for a walk. We were going to get coffee and walk somewhere, but he immediately started to fall asleep. So we looped back through the park and set him in the backpack, asleep, in the bedroom. He woke up after 30 minutes, but Carly nursed him and he slept another 40, until 4:45
We went out for one more walk. Rain was threatening, but only came at the end. We got a drink at Dunkin Donuts then walked up the stream a ways and back down. Then across to the park, where we looped around the other side (August touching the cool lampposts and hugging the camel) and we went to the art museum once more. Got to see the main gallery stuff a couple more times, and also showed Carly that box. It was even cooler having both of us there for August, because he could see our faces repeated in the mirrors over and over.
It was raining as we left, so we hurried home. There was lightning as well, but we got home before it got really loud. August ate a big spaghetti dinner. Then there was about 3 hours of August at full energy. He carried Carly’s shoes around at one point and put one on his head, we played some Endless Alphabet, he carried his stool around and sat on it in different places, he sat by the sink and cleaned, he nursed a lot. Finally, at 10:30, after Carly had been asleep for an hour, he called it a night.
New words: head, give me(?), salmon (see-bee), stop, go, spaghetti, poop (identifying it on poster), snack(?), tortilla
First trip out:
Second trip:
At home. Coloring on the gas bill:
Finally asleep for a nap after 3:
Final walk:
Hugging the camel:
Taking mama in to see the sculpture box:
In the evening:
