Wednesday: Children’s Grand Park

He was up before 6, then fell back to sleep on the couch for 10 or so minutes. He was just waking up when I came out. With Carly he took care of pillow, yellow circle thing, drumstick (that had eaten an insect), etc. as a doctor. We were playing

Animal Doctor while she left. We then went into the reading area to read: Loch Mess Monster, Goodnight Goodnight Construction Site, Frog and Toad, and Tallulah’s Tap Shoes (he wants to do both now). We had Cheerios and banana for breakfast. We then played a lot of the Doctor game taking care of objects. It kind of went on and on. Watched some Pink Panther and exercised, then more Pink Panther and showered. Followed by more taking care of objects. One was the box for the Teuni Spin Monster game and he wanted the cups to do the rolling like the picture on the box.

As we got ready to go he saw his tan hat and claimed of both his hats “They’re both getting small.” And he said “I want to go outside and eat letter cookies. Cookie Monster doesn’t eat then cuz he’s in Sesame Street.” When it came time to choose which shoes to wear he tried to choose my shoes before settling on the water shoes. I remembered to grab the picnic mat before we left, he said “I want TWO picnic mats.”

Got to Children’s Grand Park around 11:30. Got some kimbap to add to our lunch then went to find a picnic spot. But suddenly he decided “I don’t like picnics.” He’d seen a picture of a picnic in one of the books we read (Frog and Toad?), so quite a turn around. We ate by the rectangle pond, and he continued to talk about not liking things: “I don’t like trees because they get big. I want them small. I like SMALL things.” And he sang about how he didn’t like the smoothie drink (he doesn’t like the green one as much) “I don’t like the smoothie drink because of the flavor…It tastes like lemon…I don’t like the lemon…the lemon taste is unbelievable, unbelievable…”

We looked at the books, still no Ants Go Marching. Headed to the bathroom at 12:10. The big fountain was on, but he didn’t like it and put his fingers in his ears: “I don’t like the loud noise.” And in the bathroom he didn’t like the soap things (they have bars of soap on long rods that rotate up and down) being down: “I like UP things.”

As we walked out of the bathroom he covered his ears for the fountain and for the tennis ball a guy was bouncing. I asked if he really didn’t like the sounds or if he was just being silly, and he said “silly”. We looked at the flowers on the way to the playground. He went up on the play structure for a minute, then was tagging kids going the other direction as he ran back down the ramp. He told me “I’m going under.” and we went to the underneath part and played with those rotating toy things, particularly the one with the balls stuck in it. He found a plastic bottle under the slide but needed my help to grab it.

We then went over to the faucets at the west end of the playground and played there for quite awhile. The only complaint was that August wanted the lower faucets to turn, instead of being push faucets, although he figured out how to do them on his own. We then sat at a covered bench and had some letter crackers, after which he saw older kids playing in the other set of faucets, the ones in a circle. When they started to clear out we went and played in that water. He particularly liked making one of them spray out of the water area and onto the sidewalk. Had to be careful that he didn’t spray anyone walking by.

We were done there at 1:30. He found a stick and asked Found stick “Is this our sticky?” He then wanted to hear all the stories about our lost things: “What happened to the buried one?” (Referring to a tennis ball we were burying and then left) “What happened to sticky 1?” “What happened to the shoe?” (The shoe we lost on a train) He put his shoes on his hands and was rubbing them on me, asking “I’m sharpening dada?” He then sat on my lap and we took photos of his shoe hands. A tractor drove by again and he plugged his ears for it again (after it had gone by the drinking fountains earlier).

We then walked to the children’s museum. He got up on the deck area and said “Walking on boards where…played with bubble gun.”

We started playing at the children’s museum at 1:55. She showed him the handstamp and he said “Alien!” He ran into the Idea Transformer area and first went to recycling, where a bunch of kids were playing with it. He got a bit frustrated as he couldn’t get in to play, but then that group left and we played with it. From there he ran over and was playing with the black shape magnets on the board, and made a big L-shape shape out of them. He was just stepping back and telling me a couple times to “Look at my shape!” when a smaller girl came up and started playing with the magnets. He got so upset as I picked him up and comforted him: “I want MY shape!” “I liked my shape!” “Its mine! It’s mine!” After they left we went back and remade his shape (I’d taken a photo just as she she was about to play with it).

We then went to the building blocks area and spent a long, long time building what he said at one point was a city, although later he told Carly it was a playground. That was really a lot of fun. That kind of ended when he was stepping in front of a sensor that turns on a fan to blow some pinwheel things. He didn’t like the noise and was covering his ears and walking halfway across the room, even though it was a quiet sound. I showed him what was happening, and how he just needed to add to the opposite end of our city, but he was done. We played a bit more with the recycling, then went downstairs at 3:05.

There, he was able to turn all the robot wheel things for the first time, then finished up with a long stint playing with the blue blocks. There, he really liked the three songs that repeat: Thomas Newman’s Dead Already from American Beauty, Michel Portal’s James from the album Anyway, and a piano piece Aria Mit 30 by Sara Davis Buechner (although I listened to this later and Shazam got it wrong…need to find this one though, as he said “I really like it.”). A woman that works there came over and was playing with him – they were swinging the big long blue pieces at each other, and building things out of them. He played with one as an extendo arm and said “I can reach high with my extendo arm”.

We left because he needed to use the bathroom. Went up to the second floor for that, then he wandered up to the construction site and played with the lift belt that takes the bricks to the second floor. He said “It’s like an extendo arm.” I thought that was a pretty cool connection to make. He then went to the little garden area and was planting things. He wanted the watering can. There used to be one, but it has vanished. I got out his water bottle and he was happy with that: “Water this. Now it will grow.” Back in the construction area he did some light drawing, then ran off. Which was a problem, because by the time I extricated myself from the small house area with the backpack, I wasn’t sure if he’d gone on the down ramp or the up ramp. Luckily, a worker instantly told me he had gone up.

Up by the water area I took him aside and got him to focus and talked about not running off. He said he understood. He mainly played with another of the ball shooters that shoots the balls up a jet of water, then they roll down a track and into the tub with a funnel of water in it and fall through it. However, kids keep putting more than one ball in at once, meaning they then don’t have enough pressure to get over the top and get stuck in the tube. You have to stick your hand in and grab them out, and try to not get squirted by the jet of water in the process. You end up getting squirted by the jet of water in the process.

Anyway, around 4 I was trying to tell him it was time to go home. He kept saying “Oh no! Oh no! Oh no! Don’t do th
at!” We agreed on 3 more minutes, but it was more like 10, and we left at 4:20.

We had a snack out front. He stole my apple slice from me at one point. At 4:38 I said it was time to go. “No. I don’t like leaving.” We walked across the pond and I spotted a turtle. After it swam away he didn’t want to leave: “But I want to look for more now.”

We were on a train at 4:50 and he ate most of a Larabar. We got home a bit past 5:20. He was falling asleep when they nursed, so she put on Beethoven’s Ninth to keep him away. He ate a little dinner, then they had some popsicle. I tried to get him to repeat what he’d said earlier about trees, but he changed his story: “I like trees because they’re not the people.” Carly gave him a bath, and afterwards he was plugging his ears as he continued to watch some Pink Panther. We read Hole in the King’s Sock before he went to sleep a little before 7:30.