Carly had her back to school night, so wasn’t going to be home until around 7. In the morning August and I watched a couple of videos of Hozier performing “Take Me to Church” live on YouTube. This was how we discovered his next favorite song/video, Lorde’s “Royals”. He watched that a couple times, but had no interest in some other video I tried to put on.
We then made a smoothie, and made a game of throwing and catching his shirt that he had yet to put on. He was doing pretty well.
We also skyped with my parents to see how my dad was doing after shoulder surgery. It went smoothly, and he seemed to be doing well. The call ended when August was rubbing his eyes and I asked if he wanted a nap. He said ‘nap’, walked to the bedroom, and turned around and waved and said ‘bye bye’.
He was ready to sleep, but it has been months and months since he has just laid down to take a nap. He got a pillow (had to take it out of the pillow case) and played with it and laid on it several times. But then he bounced back a bit and we ended up playing Nighty Night. We finished that and he was upset we couldn’t keep playing. So there was some crying and I held him for several minutes. But then he didn’t protest when I laid him on the bed. I laid down next to him for a few minutes and sang to him and he fell asleep for an hour long nap.
He woke up a few minutes after noon and we headed to Dream Forest on the bus (which he now calls ‘subway’). At Dream Forest we first went to the wading pool outside the performing art building (the only water thing that was on). We stayed there for over 90 minutes, playing in the water several times and doing a lot of eating and playing on the bench.
From there we changed him out of his wet clothes and went to the book cafe. I asked him if he wanted to go to the playground or cafe, and he said ‘cafe, cafe, cafe’ and pointed to it as we got close. We got a strawberry drink that he could share and played for awhile. He liked climbing on the little tables and pointing at the bird and saying ‘tweet’. He had too much energy for the cafe, so we headed outside and went to the playground. A lot of independent playing there, so I read a little, and he rediscovered slides and went down several times. Also practiced the stairs. Oh, and he found a little apple thing that someone had drawn a face on. We threw that around, as well as the ball. And he still calls pine needles noodles.
From there we heard music being played at the outdoor amphitheater. It was a brass band rehearsing. We watched them until they were finished around 5:20. Thought the concert might start at 6, so we went up and visited the deer. We then walked through the wildflower garden, where he was looking for frogs and I taught him the word ‘cricket’, as we could hear a lot of them.
Went back to the amphitheater and decided we had time to get some dinner. Went to GS25 and bought two packages of kimbap. Went back and ate it on the lawn in front of the stage. They did indeed start playing at 6, but it was a marching band and headed out across the park. They came by once more as we sat there, waiting for the main concert to start. August was plenty entertained though by the kimbap, playing with the backpack, and talking to a woman about the baby she had with her. Around 6:30 we heard that Carly was headed home, so we left. As we were leaving the park August was singing ‘Twinkle twinkle’ to himself.
A couple drops of rain as we boarded the 147 bus. Got off at Induk to find it starting to rain more heavily. I hadn’t put the hood up for August. Luckily, I ran around the corner and there was the 9 pulling up to the bus stop. We hopped on that and it stops right by our building.
His eyes were closing as we got off the bus at close to 7:30. He didn’t fall right to sleep though and rebounded for awhile, finally falling asleep around 8:30.
After that, Carly and I started season 5 of Game of Thrones. Earlier, during his nap, I finished watching the old Stanley Kubrick film Paths to Glory, with Kirk Douglas.
New words: strawberry, throw, nap, ankle, cafe, crickets
How he fell asleep:
Playing in the water at Dream Forest:
Destroyer of sandwiches:
Nice and wet after our slash fight and falling down once:
Cafe Dream:
Waving:
Heading home: