He was up sometime around 6. When I got up they were reading Berenstain Bears Go to School. A bit later he was eating enchilada and threw it up. And then more, and then more. I cleaned it up while Carly took care of him. Seems to be that he got a big bite or spinach stuck in his throat or something as he was fine the rest of the day.
I took a shower and Carly started making hummus. I took August out at 9:20. We went to the park past the pink building. He surprised me by wanting to play there. He spotted an open swing and wanted to go on it. So he got on the green swing. Then we realized that the girl on the other swing had a bird in a plastic cage under her swing. While on the swing he noted that it was squeaky: “I want to measure how squeaky it is. Sounds like a mouse. Hard to tell. Maybe it’s a wood swing, I think.”
The girl got down and headed over to the exercise equipment. August followed, playing on the exercise equipment and watching her swing the bird on the exercise equipment as well. He got close to it as she put leaves in the cage. Soon after that she ran off over to her grandmother. We headed the other way. August got up on the slanted wooden bench sort of exercise equipment and slid down it several times, holding my fingers. And he had me lift him up to the chin up bars. He found a big grate and saw a bunch of garbage under it. He asked why, and I said it was probably because there were no garbage cans and all the kids threw their garbage down there. He wanted to do it as well, but settled for dropping rocks.
We left about 10 and headed home. We all left about 10:30. He saw a light on in the other room and said “That light’s on so it’s making pollution?” He had apparently discussed this with Carly. As we left he spotted the broken light fixture cover that I had broken a bit a long time ago. He asked why I had broken it and I said something about dropping it. He added “Also gravity? Gravity pulled it down? Maybe a crane could catch it. Or a vacuum cleaner.”
On the walk to the station he was making up instruments and said “I’m playing a dump truck mixer” as he hummed Ode to Joy. He sat with Carly on the train. Think they did Art Maker. A woman gave him a piece of candy and we put it in his pocket to eat at the park.
Sat outside the museum and he had the chewy vitamin D candy then chased and popped bubbles a girl was blowing (along with several other kids).
We went into the children’s museum and saw the woman from downstairs working the entry and said hi. He headed down to the basement and played with the robot and a couple things before heading to the blue blocks. Only one kid there when we enter d, then more showed up. A girl spoke English and kept asking “Can I play with you?” They then played together as more kids showed up and joined in.
It got really crowded, but generally things went really well. The girl who had been really nice at first kind of turned on him though when she had girls her own age to play with. August saw them being cats and he wanted to be a cat too and tried to curl up in the fort they had made. She told him to go lie on the floor, and August did. He also got frustrated at one point when basically all the blocks had been claimed due to the various building projects going on. We took a little break, but then some kids left and there were plenty of blocks. There was one more time that August tried to lie down like the girls, lying on one of the curved pieces. She was telling him to move and pushing the piece away with her foot. I didn’t make him move, as she was being quite bratty. He wasn’t going anywhere. Her dad saw and wasn’t having it either and made them leave at that point.
He needed to go to the bathroom, but had to spend some time playing with the x-ray and jumping on the round things before we headed out.
We were hungry for lunch, so we got in the backpack and headed out of the park and across the street. Carly went to Subway and August and I went to KFC. We got a sandwich and chicken salad and a drink. August filled the cup for me. We then walked down to Subway and met Carly. We all then walked back to Children’s Grand Park in the drizzle. We went up by the rectangle pond and sat at a table under a tree and ate lunch.
After that we went up to the coffee shop and Carly got a drink. On our way out he saw the piano, so we went and played a bit. At one point he was done, or wanted me to stop playing and I said I wanted to play more piano. He told me “You can play for one minute.” As we were then leaving he said “We’re ready to go to the playground. The really fun one.”
We walked over and showed Carly the new playground they’re slowly working on. We got to the four swing playground at 2. I went and got a cappuccino at the little place next to there. I came back to find him playing in the sand, filling a cardboard coffee holder. There was a girl with a plastic drink container that he was seriously coveting. We then headed over by the walking path where a boy and a girl were getting water from the faucets and pouring it in the sand. August played with them, using our cup from the backpack to play with. They also ran around a bit crazy. But eventually the desiring of the toys other kids had was too much when he spotted someone playing with a simple paper cup and had to have it.
Time to leave. But he spotted the water pouring down to keep drinks cold and we stopped to watch that. We stopped at the bathrooms by the entrance of the park, then he started playing on the little prince statue and the associated snake in an elephant structure. That started about 2:45 and lasted about an hour. There were two kids in particular that he was watching and copying (and taking turns with), walking up on and sliding down the elephant’s trunk. He did a little slide and said “That wasn’t cool.” He caught himself falling off the edge: “But babies can’t do that. Babies would fall right on the ground?”
They left, and he had it to himself for awhile. When someone else came I mentioned he’d have to share: “No. I don’t want to share. I want to go to Israel…I want to go to a small town.” And he’d been calling it an elephant, but at some point he changed his mind: “I don’t like really like the slide. It’s actually a snake and I don’t like snakes.” He had, on his own, remembered the story (I had briefly reminded him we’d read about it when he was on the Little Prince sculpture) and that it was an elephant inside a snake, and not just an elephant.
We headed out about 3:30. As we walked in the station I was lifting him up to the ceiling. When I got tired, he put things in my head (like he used to put ideas in there): “I put exercise in there.” He saw a clock and thought it wasn’t working: “It’s not clocking?”
We stopped at the bakery and got some pastries. Looked at a little hand fan (battery powered) then headed home. Art Maker on the train. We were home after 4. He was pretty sleepy in the backpack.
I gave him an early bath. We watched the William Tell Overture and Ride of the Valkyries. Carly finished the hummus. He ate Watermelon and broccoli for dinner and added a Waxahatchee song to his playlist. He then was joking
“I want to add watermelon to your playlist…forks to your playlist.”
We then sat on the couch and read “The Weather Smurfing Machine” and most of “The Purple Smurf”. He had to go to the bathroom, then went in to bed about 6:50. We got him ready, and he was asleep by 7:20.
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