7:05. He sat on th floor upstairs and had a minute or being upset, then had me carry him downstairs where he lay on the carpet for quite awhile, silent until he spotted an ant and wants to follow it. Spent some time exterminating ants, then he watched Puffin Rock and ate Cheerios. He got a remarkable amount of milk on himself today, which usually bothers him, but today it did not.
Paused to go out and check on our soy milk experiment. All dried out now, so he wanted to add water. We added some and set it back out. He then wanted to find it what would happen to yogurt. He said he wanted strawberry yogurt and a banana, but then didn’t want either, so those became my breakfast.
He requested his airplane app, saying “‘ll play my airplane app and you dance to your music.” There had been no dancing happening; I think he just wanted some entertainment while he played his app.
He felt my pocket and asked “Are the mints still in there?” When I said no he gave a funny face and an exaggerated “Oooh? Where IS the mints then?” He asked for his water bottle and clarified “I don’t want water ON the couch; I want to DEINK water on the couch…When I drink water it goes in my hose…One end of my hose is attached to me and the other end is attached to that outlet.”
We put out our yogurt experiment: a little strawberry yogurt mixed with water. “Do the germs like the nutrients? I want to ask the germs…The green germs like the white germs…” Looking out at the lawn he said “I want to lawnmower shopping.” I reminded him we don’t have to mow our lawn.
Back inside we played some Gro Forest and I took a shower. Or tried to. He followed me up to play the iPad upstairs, then came in to go to the bathroom while I was in the shower. He then played with my deodorant while I brushed my teeth. He wanted some special milk, with honey. I gave him some, but he said that mama lets him squeeze the honey himself, and mama lets him have extra honey. We went over to the easel to play and do our goals, but were distracted by finding ants carrying bits of food out through the crack where the sliding windows go into the wall. We cleaned that up (August likes to kill the ants, but wants to leave the ones with food alone) then did our goals and played with stencils and rubber stamps. Actually, he mainly used them as blocks, using those and the cotton balls to make a house for ants. He grew a little frustrated when I mentioned all the blocks we have coming from Korea, as he wants them now. Finally, we read Skippyjohn Jones Lost in Spice and Albert (about a guy who holds a bird nest in his hand the whole time it has eggs in it). August didn’t like Albert, so we decided to return it to the library.
Eventually, it was time to head into town for lunch, etc. But I couldn’t find my coin pouch thing and was looking for that. August was getting impatient, I think, and started to do a lot of hitting. That delayed us further. We finally left, and took kind of a long route, zigzagging some new roads, until we reached downtown. Went first to the bank to deposit our cash. First ATM was Hebrew-only, but there is one inside that has English. August helped me, pushing most of the buttons and helping put the cash in the machine.
From there we walked to V.I.Pizza. We got two slices of the pizza they had available, a cheese with a few green olives, and each got a beverage. I asked for a knife to cut up his piece and we got a pizza cutter. He had fun trying to use it on the pizza. And he wanted to sit in the table closest to the corner so we were close to the stroller outside and no one could take it. When eating the crust he said “Dry mouth” – a reference to the Sarah and Duck book where she eats too much bread.
From there we walked to the hardware store. Got black tape, a blue folding stool for the bathroom, and some sealant to try to close some of the ant routes. We spent several minutes looking around the store. He liked seeing all the different parts, although he was reluctant to touch most of them.
It felt kind of early to head to the school and the park along the way. I knew he wouldn’t want to play in a park for too long. So we walked slowly. We stopped at the park we had walked by with Carly when we walked from school into town. He climbed on a play structure a bit, went on the merry-go-round, sat and drank some water and we got out the iPad and played Gro Forest together, and then he wanted to go down a little slide but decided to was too sunny. Instead, he stomped on the tall grass, saying it was a musical instrument and that the song changed.
We continued on to school, and right before we got to the gate we heard the bell ending school. We had arrived a minute late, as students started to come out to their busses. The school has a single gate as its entrance and exit, so we were stuck for close to 10 minutes. August enjoyed it though, and as he watched them come out he made his machine noises and moved his arms back and forth like he was conducting or swimming. I asked what he was doing and he said “I’m putting all the people in my machine and putting them up into logs.” Slightly disturbing, but a reference to Gro Forest and the machine that cuts trees and turns them into logs.
Once in we went to the library. They have a huge selection of picture books. We could have stayed there a long time, and August kept wanting to read books there. We found The Wind Blew and read that, then read a Biscuit Halloween book. We ended with A Birthday for Frances, Biscuit’s Earth Day Celebration, and Rocket Writes a Story.
It was about 3:30 when we got going, but he first stopped to play with the big stuffed animals. He lay on them, and had me cover him up. He would have happily stayed there longer but I finally convinced him to go find mama. We went over to the pool and first went to the bathroom. It took awhile, and when we finally came out Carly was getting to the pool at the same time.
We went in, and Carly spotted an open shed with swim noodles and swim fins in it. She ended up getting noodles for him and her, and she wore swim fins. He tried the swim fins at one point but they were too big and he was upset there weren’t any smaller ones. The noodles were a good tool for August; as soon as he had one he let go of me and started swimming around out in the open. It was something he could still hold onto a bit but allowed him to swim on his own.
We had a good hour in the pool playing around. We tried stopping at the library to ask one of the librarians about when we could come in but they weren’t there. I saw the free books We then got going home, and had to stop a couple times to keep August from going to sleep. We stopped at Jack and Celeste’s house to borrow a big measuring cup so August and I could make chocolate chip cookies tomorrow.
At home we had some dinner and took August up for a shower. He kept asking “Could you put more soap on me?” I commented on how tan he was and he said “I know”. We all went in to wrestle on the bed and he was asleep about 8:20.
ATM:
Hardware store:
Playground:
Library:
Silly in bed:
