August came out just before 7:30, and right after the other two. The house filled up quickly. Jeff made pancakes for breakfast. August almost fell off the stool at one point but caught himself. He had a pancake, then said he wanted more. Chuck asked what his favorite part was and he said “Syrup!”
He got down to play with all the Duplo trucks Colin and I had made: “Which one do I like best?” “I’m playing with this one because I like this one.”
Jeff made pancakes for breakfast. Carly helped August with his first one, then I got him his second. I asked for guidance on how he wanted it cut and whether he wanted syrup on his pancake, or on the side for dipping: “Last time I told mama to put syrup ON my pancake.”
The three kids, after negotiating which stickers he could play with, then played with stickers and play dough at the table for quite awhile.I took a shower. When I came out August and Vivian were playing on the beds with Bluie and Green Monster and debating who got Bluie. August then got to brush his teeth using Vivian’s watermelon toothpaste and spit it out. August was then on the toilet and Colin was playing in the sink. When August got off I was putting his clothes on. With August’s shirt still off, Colin tried to give him a hug. August objected: “No! You are making me freeze! I want hand gloves!” August then ran all the way through the house, Colin chasing him. When he got out to the Duplo area, his shorts fell down and Colin caught him. Very funny. I then had Colin and Vivian give him a big hug and I called it a ‘cousin hug’.
They played in on the beds again and August called for a “cousin hug” a couple times. Vivian got her metal slinky, then Colin wanted a slinky. Then August did. August ended up with the big one and Colin ended up with the little purple one and they were all happy. They played with those for quite awhile, Vivian and August rolling them down the stairs, ending upon the beds where August had the purple one and was bothering Vivian with it and said it was a hair cutting machine. Vivian wanted Carly to do the tea thing, but Carly said she wanted to save that for bath time. Vivian left and closed the door roughly. Turned out she was upset about the tea thing.
August started playing with the rocket shooter thing (he calls it a plane). They played together. After awhile though Vivian went upstairs. Wasn’t clear why. August wanted to go upstairs but I wouldn’t let him. August was then humming Yankee Doodle through the shooter thing “I’m trying to interrupt Vivian…maybe if I try playing again.” “In a nice way?” “No. In a mean way.” We talked about how he liked playing with Vivian but was frustrated she wasn’t coming downstairs. “Maybe if I play with something loud.” I suggested we go for a walk or something but he didn’t like my ideas. “I want to make Vivian like me.” He got a big smile when she came down and said “Boo!”
At 11:45 we loaded the cars. We had Vivian with us in the red Corolla. August announced “I want to look for Subarus on the way.” Much of the first part of our trip consisted of variations on this conversation, on repeat:
Vivian: “Ata, can I have some crackers? Please?”
August: “Ata, can I have some crackers? Please?”
Vivian: “Can I have crackers first, please?”
Carly then played Sarah and Duck on the iPad and had it wedged between the two front seats so both kids could see it. I commented on how cartoons are so much nicer when they have a nice British accent and calming voices to listen to (like Puffin Rock or Sarah and Duck) as opposed to things like Pororo. I then asked August if he could start saying “S’pose” like Sarah does. At first he said no, but I kept repeating it, then he started saying it.
Carly looked for a park to stop at along the way, but met with failure. It was a patch of grass with two garbage cans in front. We then stumbled upon the Edison Public Library a little before 1:30, which was perfect. Carly headed in with Vivian. August wanted to practice buckling himself in the car seat and saying a lovely “I want to buckle myself” song. And then managed to do all the buckles. We went to the bathroom, then Carly and Vivian read much of Johnny Castleseed. Auspicious, as it taught them how to build a sand castle. And they rode the PAC-Man shaped cushions on their sides. And Carly did a “Rocky, rocky, rocky like a chimpanzee” chant with him on a cushion. I found a bunch of Bill Peet books, but not the Merle book, which I recently ordered for August, and read/looked at a book called The Boy and the Airplane by Mark Pett.
They climbed on the cushions some more, went to the bathroom again, and we left at 1:45. As we drove away August saw a guy outside that he said looked like Opa. We thought because of his build and hair, but August also said because of the red shirt.
We continued on to Sandyhook, watching some more Sarah and Duck. August was calm and zoning out as we got there:
August: Where’s my shoe?
Vivian: Its on your foot…Aaaand one’s on your hand.
We arrived at 2:40. We were the last ones there. Chuck and Cherie had left early to spend some more time exploring, and Jeff and Cassie hadn’t stopped, presumably with Colin taking a nap. We met them at parking lot B and got dressed and suncreened up. August preferred the spray, but just barely. He didn’t make it easy for Carly. We walked to the east, to the inland beach. Had a lovely time, but wish I’d been able to experience the Atlantic beach. Also, neither Carly or I realized it was a National Parks site, with a historic area and everything. Would have liked to gotten there a couple hours earlier so we could have checked all of that out.
Anyway, we stopped at the first beach to set stuff down while Jeff and Cassie walked on and found a perfect spot. August threw some sand in the water and waded a bit. We then walked northward, where a sort of pond area was connected to the bay with a little tidal stream that we spent a lot of time in. But as we got there, August and I the last, August said he needed the bathroom. Carly and I discussed which of us would take him, and he wanted me, which rarely happens, because he said “Mama has too much sunscreen.” She took him anyway, and he kept talking about how she felt like she had too much sunscreen on.
I helped Jeff set up the tent in the rather heavy wind. We got that situated so that it wouldn’t be collapsed by the wind. I read a little of my book while Carly played with August in the stream. She had the floats on him for a minute, then he wanted them off. They then wandered up to the tidal lake, where Vivian was swimming. Carly came back for the floats again, and after a couple minutes I went up with them. Waded around a bit, and got August to let me hold him in the water a bit, but not up to his waist. He said “If the robot gets deeper, it will break down.” And then he would do his breaking down noise and stop moving. I said I fixed the robot and put on a waterproof coating. He thought about that and said “Yeah but I put on rainbow paint on it and it is sticky and the robot stopped moving.”
Carly headed back, and did a little reading as well. We then made our way back along the tidal stream and stopped at one point and dug in the sand with Colin and Vivian. Colin managed to get me, dropping sand down my neck. August was antagonizing Vivian by stepping in the hole she was digging, but really just wanted to play with her. When she left, Cassie play-acted with him, and told him what to say if Vivian doesn’t want to play with him and he practiced saying “Then I’ll go play over here” or something like that.
Carly had headed over to the shore on the bay, where the tidal stream comes out, which was where Vivian now was and to see what the people were catching in the nets (small fish). It was now around 5 or so. I took August over there. Vivian had gone back to the camp, but then came and joined us. August let me
hold him high, and wade out into the water. So I had him and Vivian. She wanted to keep going out deeper, and so did August (who wasn’t getting wet at all). We only ever got up to a couple inches below my waist (my shirt didn’t get wet) and Vivian could easily stand. But it felt quite a ways out. There were a couple of 13 or so year old boys who came by us. They started splashing a little and got August a bit in the face. August handled it well, and I politely asked them to avoid splashing August. August liked watching them, and kept talking about them, and when they went by us at one point August said “No splash fights.”
We waded back in a bit, then August let me set him back down, and we started getting him in further and further, Me spinning him in circles around me with his legs in the water. Basically, we got to the point where when I spun him he started to feel the floating feeling from the floats, and when he stood he was comfortable in water up to his waist. I pointed out both those things and gave him a high five while he stood in the water and talked about how next time we could build on that.
Sometime when we were out there one of the many orange Coast Guard helicopters flew overhead and August, knowing that Colin liked them, called across the beach “Helicopter, Colin!” Near the end, as we were walking up the stream towards Carly, one flew low, and August kept calling to mama and wanted to make sure she saw the low helicopter. Finally, Vivian made a detour to a shallow pool. August during this whole last experience kept finding shells for mama and giving them to her. I commented that that might become a thing in Israel and she could make a little shell garden.
As we packed up to go he helped take out tent poles and played with one as a vacuum cleaner. He was sitting on the sand and said “I want to come here next time.” Also, as we had walked up, me holding him and him quite wet, he noted that he was drying off fast because of the wind because of evaporation. I asked Carly if they had talked about it earlier, and she said they had, but that he had been the one that brought up evaporation. I know we’ve discussed it in the past, but not much.
We left the beach at 6:00 and walked to the showers and car. The kids weren’t interested in making any of that go quickly. August and I ended up singing a duet to each other about what we were doing next or something along the way. Managed to rinse much of August off in the showers and get us changed. He started screaming when I first started to hold him up for the shower. I thought it was because he thought I was going to put him right under it, but realized it was because my hands were wet.
In the car Vivian grabbed her iPad from the trunk and declared she was going to play it. I grabbed it out of her hands before August could see it, then got his out and got him to agree that they’d each play with their own iPads. That worked well enough, although he did talk about trading and taking turns a bit. At one point he said he didn’t want hers, but then Vivian declared she wanted it and suddenly she wanted it. Vivian said “I said that so he’d want it.”
They were hungry and ate a lot of the snacks on the way to the restaurant. August got tired of them though and declared “All the things you’ve got, I don’t like.” We got to the Kebab Paradise at 7:30. August was a little hyper, but not bad. When Carly took him to the bathroom he seemed to read the word ‘private’ on a door, as he told her he wanted to go to the private one. We got a variety of dishes, a few of which turned out to be too spicy for the kids. Or for anyone except me. We also got a couple of mango lassees (sp?) which were a big hit. As we finished, I took August outside to look around and Vivian came with. We went and looked at some flowers and they smelled them, then went for a little walk. Vivian ran ahead to another group of flowers and August tried to follow, but tripped on the sidewalk and took a hard fall. Luckily, pretty flat, so the impact was distributed over his entire body. He had a little scrape on his left knee and right arm, although it was his right palm that seemed to bother him the most.
We walked around a little more as I held August, then met the rest as they came out of the restaurant. Vivian rode back with Jeff and Cassie as August was going to fall asleep in the car. They nursed in the back, then we left at 8:25. As we drove, I sang him a few songs until he made his lip noise, wanting me to stop. He was then singing to himself, and as Carly leaned over to him it turned into a “I love you so much” song. She joined in. She told him he should fall asleep, but he said no, he wanted fireworks and said it was dark enough for fireworks. They pretended to light fireworks in the car. He nodded off at 9:15.
We took more of a backroads route home, and had a bucolic drive north and across the Delaware at Belvidere. Carly and I liked that town and figured we’d make it a day trip one of these days. We were home at 10 and Carly carried him in to bed. He didn’t stir a bit. We put things away, had tea, and read a bit and were asleep a bit later than we’ve been recently, a little past 11.