Tuesday: 5-TOUCH Class and APIS Christmas Party

He had his usual class today, then we went to APIS in the evening for the Christmas dinner.

He woke up around 7:15. I think he had basically been waking up for quite some time, then just popped up and turned on the light.

In the morning he was playing on the iPad when I said I was going to do some vacuuming. He immediately got up and went and opened the closet by himself and pulled the vacuum cleaner out. He helped with the vacuuming. At one point he wanted to play with Siri on the iPad, which entails him telling me what he wants Siri to do an image search for. He was very serious about the whole thing, and when he wanted me to talk to Siri he would put his hand on my head and push my head down towards the iPad.

Then, before we left I was hanging up laundry. He knew we were getting ready to go to class, and went and was playing at the front door. I told him he had to wait a couple minutes, and went back to hanging up clothes. A minute later I saw him leave the front door and walk down the hall. A few seconds later, he came by, pulling the backpack to the front door.

Finally, I asked him “Ready to go?” and he responded with a nice long sentence, “Ready to go to class.”

We made a quick grocery run before heading up to his class. Class went well – he is no longer intimidated by all the new people. It was about the seasons today, and so they were playing with little pairs of sunglasses, mittens, scarves, and umbrellas. First he really liked the sunglasses and played with them for several minutes, then the umbrella.

After class we walked home and had lunch, then walked him around the 8th floor to fall asleep. Took a lot of walking – close to a mile – but when he did fall asleep, he slept from 1:17 to 2:53, and I woke him up at the end.

We got ready to go, in the backpack this time. First walked over towards the stream and bought more strawberries. Then walked down along the river. Mid 40s, but damp and windy, so I stopped at a bench to try to put his hood on. I also tried his mittens. He would agree to put the mittens on because his hands were cold, saying something like “hands cold” and holding up his hands so I could put them on, but then when I got them on he would sort of grin and say “Nope” and take them off. Did this 3 times, then he finally kept them on all the way to APIS, except he took one of them off about a minute before we got there and just held it in is hand.

We were early, so we first played at what is in the summer the water park. He didn’t find much to do there, so requested “other playground.” So we went to the other one and had more luck there. I helped him climb up, then back down the net ladder – he was getting the idea pretty well – then he had the rest of his sandoo and we played up on the play structure.

We went in to see Carly a little after 5, then headed down to the cafeteria for the Christmas dinner at 6. Dinner went well. We sat with Rob, Courtney, and Megan and Torrey. August was apprehensive at first, sticking to Carly. But he liked the singing, and when it turned to just speeches he was saying “more more” to request more music. He enjoyed all the food, and by the end was happily walking around on the floor.

We took the bus home. He was pretty hyper when we got home: he was saying “more floor” – I wasn’t sure what he meant, until he lay down on his back so I could slide him around on the floor by his legs, bumping him into reading area. Then he grabbed a pillow from the reading area and put it on the floor and was playing on that, which he has never done before. Then he wanted to do forward rolls. He was clearly tired at this point, and when he gently bumped his head on the wall trying to get another pillow, he suddenly was done and said “more nurse.” It was now close to 10 and he fell asleep about 10.

New words/phrases: different Dr. Seuss (wanting a different Dr. Seuss book), sideways, backwards, not shaky (referring to the bridges on the play structure), mama getting milk (Carly went into the GS25 when we got home and we were waiting for her)