He had a very happy wake up at 8:07 and we played on the bed for awhile. Later in the morning we ended up playing back on the bed and I taught him about rolling on the bed for the first time. He does it a little himself, but mainly thinks it is hilarious for me to roll on the bed. But as usual, the first thing he wanted to do was play with Duplos. After that we ate breakfast: he ate some banana bread, two whole eggs with pepper, some mango, and a couple pieces of broccoli. I had him wear his Lake Chelan animals shirt today (each shirt he has is now getting a name – he calls this one the ‘animals shirt’). We spent quite awhile learning the animals on it. He now knows raccoon, wolf, beaver, and puma (which we’ve been working on at the zoo). And as I was changing him before we left, he got interested in my t-shirt – the ‘I power KEXP’ shirt that uses a blocky font.
Anyway, we left a little before 11. Pollution levels were really high, but luckily for us tapering off after being high overnight. So didn’t affect our outing. We stood on the ride to Dream Forest, then walked to see the deer – which he requested, but then didn’t want to stay at. So we headed on to the playground, where we played for the next 90 minutes. Lot of up and down the stairs, playing with rocks and sticks, and also walking on the “shaky” rope bridge. And he went down the slide a few times. When a childcare group would come through he would get surrounded by big kids for a few minutes, which both amused and startled him. He really liked staring at the group of teenagers (“big kids”) when they came by. At one point, he sort of played a chase game around a toy structure with a girl who was 3 or 4 – although I’m not sure she knew they were playing. He then hid between my legs, and kept saying “bye bye girl” and waving to her.
He found a stick and wanted to write letters, so for 20 minutes we went over to the small play area and wrote in the sand (and he stepped on them, of course). He also found someone’s abandoned rock collection, so we played and wrote with those.
A little past 1 I took him in to change him and start the nap process. Walked along some trails we had never been on. He’d slept 12 hours, so it took longer to get him to sleep – about 25 minutes and a mile. Went back to Dream Cafe and he only slept 30 minutes. Not surprising, given the long night.
We spent the rest of our time in the book cafe. He pulled down some chapter books, and then found a book about insects with nice watercolor paintings. And then we started playing Endless Reader on the iPad. Like Endless Alphabet, but the words are in lower case, and once you finish a word, you put words into sentences. He caught on pretty quickly: the lower case letters didn’t throw him. Putting the words into sentences was more difficult, but he got the general idea. His favorite words was ‘funny’ (not a surprise) in the sentence for ‘dog’. A couple times, he picked up my empty coffee cup with a straw and offered water to the dog on the iPad.
I changed him once more before we left a little before 4. He played with my hat on the changing pad – putting it on his head, then playing peek-a-boo. We left, and walked the main street-ish back way to APIS, getting there right at 4:30. Carly nursed him, then we walked home.
We stopped at the pink building for some groceries (including spaghetti sauce that wasn’t spicy), and August ate a whole bowl of non-spicy spaghetti for dinner. We did more rolling and playing on the bed and playing with Duplos. Carly created a structure with pretty much every animal and Duplo piece. I then got video of August pointing to all of the animals and naming them. We also played more on the bed, and added to our rolling, with him pushing or pulling me to get me rolling. And we had some good coloring and letter writing time after Carly gave him a bath and before she tried to get him to sleep around 9.
With him only taking a 30 minute nap and waking at 2:20, you would think he’d go to sleep a bit earlier. Not to be. He stretched it until almost 10:20. Very hyper boy. Kept wanting more water, and playing with the light switch in the bedroom, and wanting to come out and see me (although he would act like he was afraid of me, standing in the doorway, saying ‘Dada out there’, but not coming down the hallway). Anyway, eventually I went in too and sang to him and Carly got him to sleep.
New words/phrases: enormous C (normo C), mango off my face (as I was wipin his face), puma, raccoon, wolf (oof), beaver, beaver at the zoo (pointing out towards books), bye bye wawa. Set counter. (Then runs out of room to set bottle on the counter), help dada’s shirt, funny, bye bye book cafe, food, lunch, boy/girl, lion
Dream Forest playgrounds:
Inside and Dream Cafe:
Offering the doggy water:
As Max again. Notice he now has to crouch to put his head through:
APIS and walking home:
Home: