I moved the car at 8. They were both still asleep when I left, so I sat in the car and listened to a few more minutes of S-Town before heading back. Carly was up when I got there, and August got up just before 8:20. He and Carly kept doing their tea game and British accents. He’s now requesting teas as well: “Mango tea. Yeah, that’s my favorite.” Carly made coffee, but discovered that the coffee in the cupboard was old and stale. I took a shower and got out to find that he had eaten all the crab filling from the sushi Carly got at Trader Joe’s. He wasthen ready for a walk: I’m gonna put my shoes on and go for a walk.” He got them on the correct feet. There were three umbrellas and he chose the green one: “I want green for mama…I folded it up for mama…Now it doesn’t fit through the door…It’s a nice color green?” He was spinning it and said “it has batteries in it to make it rain.” He then wanted me to lift him up so he could let the air from the air conditioner into his mouth: “Yummy air.”
We found our car at the new parking spot and as we drove off he said “That place is my favorite.” Wasn’t clear if he meant the parking spot or apartment or what. We got up to the Imunch Cafe in the Brewerytown neighborhood at 10:15. We ordered a mang strawberry smoothie and two egg croissant sandwiches. Carly’s with cheese and mine also with salmon. We found a seat upstairs (it was empty) and August went back down with Carly after a few minutes. I heard “Is it done yet? Is it done yet?” We got the smoothie and headed back up. Reviews said the service could be a bit slow, and it was. Not sure why we had to wait for our sandwiches, but we did. People were all very nice though. But when we did get our sandwiches, August suddenly said “I need to go real bad” I took him down to use the bathroom and he sang a “Spiraly spiral” song as we went down the spiral staircase. That bathroom was in use, but we were told there was one upstairs. We went in there and he exclaimed “Nice bathroom!” Went and finished our breakfast, then went over to the Smith Playground.
Got to the playground at 11:05. I hadn’t really looked into it much, but knew from the map it looked big. It didn’t disappoint, as there is playground after playground. On the walk over from the car though he said “I’m not going to walk in ANY grass.” We gave a five dollar donation and I let him put it in the box. Carly then had a few coins that he was able to put in the alligator (well, actually a dragon) thing.
Play at the first playground fir awhile. There was a monkey bar sort of thing that tilted back and forth. Did that quite a bit, and he called it a pump, pumping up a tire. But when other kids started coming he didn’t do so well. He didn’t want to share, and wanted whatever toy other kids were playing with. We had to pause and Carly talked to him for a minute. He got better after that, but mainly because we found the historic wooden slide that you ride down on burlap sacks. He and Carly went down. And did it again and again and again. Ten or more times total. I sat and read and watched them.
Then over to a ship area for awhile. He sat in a swing thing that went back and forth and said “I call it a back and forth swing.” From there to the train, which he pretended to drive to another playground, but where mainly the kids would sit next to each other in the cars, not really doing much. A little odd, actually.
It was hot and humid, so next we headed inside August spent almost all of his time playing with a little grain elevator sort of toy that went with the wooden train set. I showed him that the K’nex pieces lying about would work in it. He had to collect all the pieces he could find: “I actually need all those…I need all the K’nex to make the conveyor belt go.” He tried to keep it to himself when another kid tried playing with it, but otherwise did just fine. He also played a bit with a toy vacuum cleaner.
We went to the bathroom, then left just at 1. We went to The Monkey and Elephant coffee shop. All they had for August was a lemonade, which he first wanted, but then said he didn’t like when it came, but then drank a fair amount of when I coaxed him into liking it. They had a few shelves of children’s books and I read Bernstain Bears and the Trouble with Friends. We left the coffee shop at 1:40. Carly and I traded drinks as they made hers with too much chocolate and cinnamon in it (just a mocha). Here they had the coin parking meters, and he asked how they worked, so we talked through the whole process.
We decided to go for a drive and see if he would take a nap. We had neglected to ask him about the bathroom, and as we neared West Fairmount Park he said he needed to use the bathroom. So we went to the children’s museum and parked on the street and used a portapotty across the street. I looked up the hours and price for the Please Touch museum and it wasn’t good: 19 dollars for each of us and it closed at 5. So we decided to leave it for tomorrow and went for a drive. He did not, however, fall asleep. Everntually he wanted a snack and had some Cheerios. He was pretending they were coins (pennies, in particular). When he had had enough he said “And that’s enough coins.”
We got back to Smith Playground at 2:50. Before we went in though he found a mystery flavor lollipop in the car and we let him eat it. But first I tricked him, flipping the stick over as if there had been nothing under the wrapper. He looked at the stick though and said “That’s my favorite pointing stick.” I think that had been a reference to the Berenstain Bears book in which a pointing stick gets broken. Anyway, it turned out to be root beer, and then outside the car (maybe when we were leaving?) we found a pair of white sunglasses that somebody had lost and we decided to keep. We’ve lost a couple pairs ourselves, so it seemed reasonable to get a pair back.
He asked to put more coins in the alligator (dragon) thing, so he and I went back to the car and got all the pennies, nickels, and dimes out of it, and I remembered the bag of change in my backpack. He had a good little stack of coins to put in.
We wandered through the nature playground area this time, then walked over under a great big tree before going to the bathroom with Carly. On his way out he kept repeating “The things they’re using I want to play with, but the things they’re not using I don’t want to play with but…” Down in the playground he sat in a spinning cup thing that he was able to make spin by himself. Had a lot of fun on those, then wandered off with Carly while I looked for Wanamaker Organ info on my phone. They ended up at the swings, where he was swinging on his stomach and kicking his legs way up. He spotted some colorful cotton ball things on a tree as decorations and sent me to investigate, then I took him over to look at them. He fell off while getting back on the swing. He then wanted me to steal Carly’s swing, politely asking: “When mama’s done could you please steal mama’s swing?”
But then the best toy of the day: a big rotating cone made out of rope. He climbed halfway up and basically hung on for the next twenty minutes as people pushed it, chanting “faster, faster, faster” or “not much faster”. We also spent some time on an odd sort of teeter totter before he went back to the cone.
Before we left I took him into the bathroom. There were lots of questions about pipes in the bathroom. We left at 4:50. The plan was to drive into downtown and go see the Wanamaker Pipe Organ, the largest in the world, getting played at 5:30, then go to a Thai restaurant for dinner. Driving through downtown was crazy, and we couldn’t find a parking garage. Not a lot of them. Finally found one right in the Macy’s building at parked at 5:30. Went up and saw the organ, then watched from the second floor. August liked it, but was getting tired and hungry. We stayed about a half hour total. He was lying on the floor by t
he jeans area, pretending to be a pump and saying “The pump wore out.” There was lots of being a machine today and also sucking people up.
Anyway, that seemed like a good sign that we should get going so we left at 6. We parked just north of our place and August got upset when I put the credit card in the parking meter and he didn’t get to do it. He hit me with his sunglasses. Carly asked if he had hit dada and he admitted “Yeah”. They headed to the apartment to turn on the AC and ended up staying for awhile as he sat on the toilet. They then went to the market and got some drinks. I went to a Thai restaurant but it was permanently closed, so I went to another one a couple blocks away and ordered a couple things and brought them back.
I was back after 7. I had developed quite a headache and lay down for a a few minutes. He said he had the same headache as me, which was funny, but then it turned out that he was actually quite concerned about me. Very touching. I got up and we had dinner. He really liked the wide noodles that Carly had gotten. He wanted some water and said “I want to get the food in my tummy soggy.”
After dinner he found the Wheat Thins and I joked that those were car snacks and that if he ate any we would have to go for a drive in the car or the snack police would come. He said “There’s no snack police?” Carly took a shower and we put stuff away and talked while she showered. He sat on the rocking chair and it bumped the wall. I moved it forward to it wouldn’t bump, and he joked “There’s no wall police?”
He wanted to read the Intro to Electricity book so I started to read it, then realized I needed to move the car one more time at 8. I went and did that and was back at 8:25. I came back to find them reading the rules of experimenting with electricity. He had her read that section several times: “I want to read the rules again. I like the rules.”
She gave him a little bath, then he was asleep about 8:40.