He was up at 6:50. Way too early, as that was less than 8 hours of sleep. He went to the front door and was whiny that Carly was gone, but didn’t want to go out when I opened the door, and didn’t really cry. He went and destroyed the zoo. When I walked to the kitchen he asked “Are you not going to like me?” I assured him that wasn’t the case, but I didn’t want to play Duplos yet. He wanted to read The Smurf King, so we read some of that. He was then a music machine, then we did more reading. Had some Cheerios and banana bread for breakfast, then read the entire Smurfette story, skipping all the really sexist stuff. He asked me “Can I play Big Dragonbox Numbers to learn about math?” So of course I had to let him play. We then read Pussycat Pussycat a couple times. He went over to the Duplos and picked up a big chunk of Duplos and said “This is a piece of a broke up cottage…This is a piece of an old broken up treehouse that I found in my yard…” He remembered ‘cottage’ from 26-story Treehouse.
Yve (as I now believe it is spelled) came over just past 9 to help move the bed and the couch. He came in and August started giggling at him. Yve joked about taking Duplos for his own kids and August said “Mama and dada got them for me…” August told him he was making houses out of Duplos. Yve and I moved out the couch, then the parts of the beds to his truck. August was getting upset as we got finished, and after Yve left I figured out why. He curled up on the grey rug and said “My houses keep breaking…every time I try to build it…” He didn’t want to go back to Duplos right now. Instead, he asked to play the app with the letters and they change into different things. He was referring to Metamorphabet. He played with that for a few minutes, then told me he was done with the iPad.
He came upstairs as I was rearranging the landing area and putting the books on his shelves. He looked at the Bob Books boxes and chose Jumper and the Clown. We went downstairs and read it a couple of times. He was then pretending that I was peddling a space ship and he was making the rocket noises. He pretended to be in space: “Some red rocks floated all the way to the moon from Saturn…that’s gonna make the moon red! I’m gonna show my friends all the rocks.” He wanted to watch Space Shuttle videos and said “I want to do the mama one again.” Meaning the one he watched with Carly last night. I then found a video of astronauts on the ISS, so he could see them floating in space. He asked “How do you go to the bathroom in space?” But before I could find a video that might explain he decided he wanted to watch candy being made. While watching a video about how jelly beans are made he asked “What starch is?…That thing you used with Vivian?”
I made the okra patties for lunch, then sweet potato fries. We ate that, then I finally got him out of his pajamas. Naked, he started playing with the piano and said
“I was thinking what song we could play with just those three keys.” Somehow it turned into him wanting me to sing a song as a robot, but the robot only had one note. He was then burning the robot up as I played a robot song. He was then giving me more keys, so I could sing more notes, and basically counting to 100. He was then counting all the keys, up to 25. We played “Sentimental Wars” and he did some piano improvs for quite awhile.
We went upstairs and I finally took a shower. He sat on his bed and played Toca Blocks. He was getting sad and tired. Totally seemed like he needed to take a nap. He didn’t like the idea of the old stroller at all, even though it would be more comfortable for him.
I got him some banana bread before we left and he was counting the bites. We looked at books to decide which to return to the library whenever we make it to the school library. For Tacky he said “I’m done with it cuz I don’t like those hunters.” We read Under the Sea with Me, then he looked at the Animal alphabet poster. He asked me “Can I learn the letters in Hebrew?” So we pulled up the Gus Hebrew app and had fun with that for awhile.
We finally headed out at 1:30. He whined and looked so sleepy in the old stroller. He was pressing his hand against the window in the cover and plaintively repeating “Dada, dada, dada…” I was touching his hand through the cover. He got quiet once, but then started crying and saying dada again. Then quieted, and was okay by the time we got to the mall. But not asleep.
We first stopped at the book store where we got a set of Hebrew flashcards, the Hebrew version of Spot’s Big Book of First Words, a book of animals in Hebrew, and a set of Hebrew magnets. We went to Tiv Taam and did some quick grocery shopping (as we went, he was pointing at things and giving them prices: “10 shekels, 8 shekels, 20 shekels” When I asked him to keep telling me prices he said he put stickers on them and told me to look at the stickers), and then stopped at Kravitz to get a tape dispenser since our first one was breaking. While in Tiv Taam August said “He clock in my bedroom is changing, dada.” He had said something like this earlier in the day as well. We then went to the bike store, where I got a helmet, pump, water bottle cage, and lock. I was carrying August in one hand and caught my toe on a bike in the aisle. Managed to awkwardly keep from dropping August and sort of set him down with one hand on a chair.
August still claimed he didn’t like the stroller, but there was no complaining. We were home at 2:45. We had some late lunch and August played Toca Blocks, pretending he was making a map to the Smurf village and that Gargamel was trying to find it, but then making blocks that would hide the village from Gargamel and telling him “You can never find the Smurfs, Gargamel.”
I loaded up the stroller with all the rest of our recycling – our regular recycling and also the last of the boxes and paper from the shipment. I remembered why I like this stroller so much – it can hold so much. We made a quick recycling run and August helped with the smaller stuff. We went back and dropped off the stroller and got in the car. As we did so he asked why I say I love him a ton of Qs. I reminded him about C turns to O turns to Q and how we would look for Qs in books and not find many. He said he still Qs things and so he did some Qing now, and also talked about Zing things, as he says that’s the other letter he likes.
On the drive over to the school he told me “I’m looking for busses with 11 on them. Cuz I love the number 11 too.” We picked Carly up at 4:10 and drove up to his dance class. He was talking about the couches in there that he likes. We were early, so there were just a couple other kids. He pretended to be a sick squirrel and said”Baby squirrel’s gonna feel well when there’s more kids there.”
When I walked him into the dance room as it was starting he said “My motor’s turning on.” and started making motor noises. Starting today the parents couldn’t be in the room with the class. Carly checked on him through the window a couple times. He was in there until 4:57 when the teacher brought him out, saying he wanted to go out. He walked up to Carly and said “I’m out of power.” Carly gave him power and she asked if he was ready now. He said “Yep” and she opened the door for him and he went back in and seemed to be just pretending to be a robot, doing his shutting down thing. He lasted a couple more minutes, then came back out: “Yep. I want to take a little break out here.”
They went upstairs for that break, then Shmuel from the Skoda dealership called back. Carly had been talking to them about some questions we have about paying for the car. While I now tried to wrestle answers from him, Carly tried to get August back in the class, but there were only a few minutes left and he was done. So we headed home. He still said he had fun, but that it was confusing and he was tired. In the car he said “The robot kept breaking down cuz
I didn’t have a place to charge.”
We got home and they nursed and I put the Hebrew magnets on the door. He watched space shuttle videos and I got his dinner ready. He ate a bit then Carly took him up to his shower and I actually gave him his shower. There was some playing on the bed, then he was asleep at 7:05.
Photos. On the floor:
Greeting Yve:
Beautiful, empty entryway:
Landing area:
His bedroom:
