Carly took the car this morning as it was raining. We could have driven her, but she had just brought August downstairs and he was still waking up. And I didn’t plan on using it for anything today. August asked for Skybrary. When I said we could do that he said “Thank you!” We read Scrubba Dub, Carlos (after which we started singing Row Your Boat or a made-up Scrubba Dub song everytime we washed his hands), Pig Pig Meets the Lion, and Nina Nandu’s Nervous Noggin. During the second book August asked “Do Lions chomp and hurt you?…Then lets not have a lion in our house.”
He asked for his water bottle and for me to fill it, then said “Pink and sink rhyme!” We played some Seuss Band and were making a pretty good team on one of the difficult songs. He was just playing the low C and I’d do the rest. We were getting closer to 60,000 points on it. I got him to switch to Dust Buster and Piano Maestro for a bit, then we read more of volume 2 of The Sisters. I gave him peanut butters on his beloved rectangle crackers and he loved it.
He watched Marble Machine and asked if it was powered by air. I said no, and wondered where he got that idea. He told me of a dot painting he had done with Carly: “It was a dot painting and mama designed it to have air going in it to move the marbles.” I made a mango and strawberry smoothie. He was watching more music machines and asked “When did people first discover drums?” He was then a music machine: “The guitar still plays but the strings and bells don’t work.” “You better go to the store if you want to fix my strings. You need super glue and you’re out of super glue.” “You know, it’s funny that the batteries aren’t working. I think you got the wrong kind of batteries. These batteries are for a marble machine. This is a music box.” “Nevermind, I’m a paper machine. It doesn’t have many parts so it can play 19 BILLION songs in a row…It’s the same kind of paper machine I watch on YouTube or something.” He was thinking about another machine by the maker of the Marble Machine that plays a song on paper like a player piano.
Exercised and he watched Kipper, then I moved him upstairs and I took a shower. I took him in and found new Animusic videos for him to watch. He said “You should add this to our blog!” It was “Starship Groove” by Animusic. We also watched one called “Heavy Light”. Gave him his bath and washed his hair. Quickly, and with him not happy as I wouldn’t let him drain all the water out right away.
Out in the play area he played with the drying rack as a music machine and we pretended light was playing it like in the video. He then wanted me to play guitar along to it so I connected it to GarageBand on my phone. Eventually I wanted to get some lunch.
I made a pizza with olives and za’atar. He played Seuss Band all on his own for several songs. He wouldn’t even consider my pizza and wanted more crackers and peanut butter instead. He told me he still liked pizza in a show though, telling me flat out: “I think so. Their pizza is better.”
For some reason he decided yesterday that he wants to break the small wooden giraffe. He was playing with it again today and kept talking about wanting to destroy it. So I put it up on a high shelf to protect it from him. We read more of The Sisters. Then I got all of our library books. There was a Clementine, a Cam Jansen, two Magic Treehouse, and one Max Axiom Sound book that we’ve never read but had had for about 3 weeks. We decided to return them and get books he’d rather read. He said “Let’s not tell the librarian.” I said they wouldn’t care and didn’t think they’d even ask. But later when August set the big stack of books on the desk one of them said “You read all those books?” I just didn’t answer.
We did the Cam Jansen picture thing though in the book we were returning (the Summer Camp Mysteries), then we finished the Max Axiom Food Chains book. We opened the colored pencils and drew with those a bit. We discussed the difference between markers and pencils again, as they don’t have lids like markers. We also discussed what would happen if the world ran out of gas or food. He went to the bathroom and we did a washing his hands song. He was then humming “Dont Stop Believing” (which is on Piano Maestro) as we made a dog house with a slide for the Duplo dog. He then played a little on his own, then played GroRecycling and let me finish some typing.
We left at 2:05. As we left he told me “Next time we play the Dr. Seuss instrument and we have the same sound a couple times please remind me to change it. Cuz I might get bored of the same sound over and over.” As we walked by a barking dog he said “Everytime a dog barks at us a coisonous liquid senses how loud the barking is and it makes the barking go away.” A little disturbing.
We got to the school and went to the library. We read a Berenstain Bears detectives book, then checked out three Young Cam Jansen books (Ice Skate Mystery, Circus Mystery, and 100th Day of School Mystery), The Berenstain Bears and the Missing Dinosaur Bone, The Punctuation Station, and Under, Over, By the Clover: What is a Preposition? (which I knew Carly would like). And Mr. Bliss by J.R.R. Tolkien, which I had never heard of.
August put the big stack on Amanda’s desk. As we checked them out August was cautious or concerned about something and I explained it Amanda, and told her about how he was concerned about the pencil sharpener I had bought him. Just then I noticed August was looking at the electric pencil sharpener and he asked me what it was. He then got to use an electric pencil sharpener for the first time and loved it, especially when it just rotated the pencil really fast. Out on the free books stack I found a diamond in the rough: The Wing on a Flea: A Book about Shapes. It is from the early 60s, and on the inside it is dedicated to someone named Peter and signed by the author, Ed Emberley, with a little drawing of a bus with it. Sadly the dust jacket is missing andthe spine is pretty damaged.
We went to the playgrounds. First the preschool one, but no one was there. Then the larger one. He started playing and climbing around. I had brought 8 crackers and 8 slices of apple today. Starting with the walk, he said that he each one was magic and would turn him into something. I got to choose what, so he had been a jellyfish and and otter, among others. We sat on the little mushroom-shaped steps and ate an apple. I tried to turn him into a mushroom, but he said it had to be something that moved. Carly showed up at 3:40 as she wanted to head home a bit early. He said “Oh, no.” when he saw her. He still wanted to play.
So Carly walked home, leaving the car for us. There were two girls, sisters, also playing at the playground, and suddenly August was over on the teeter totter playing with them. He then followed them as they played on the big play structure. He ended up back on the teeter totter with them a couple more times. The younger one was crying at one point and he was pointing that out: “That person is crying”. They started to leave, so he was ready to go as well. He wanted to play school and asked me if I knew how to print things in Carly’s classroom. I said I didn’t have a key to her classroom, so he was ready to go home instead.
Stopped and went to the bathroom, then on the way out of the school we saw Bar and her mom. I talked to her and set up a possible play date on Wednesday. We left at 4:15. He speculated on what Bar’s house might be like: “Maybe Bar’s house is pink cuz sometimes I see her wear pink clothes.” (She was dressed in a tutu with a couple other girls.)
Randomly, he asked me “Does a two hump poop actually exist?” He was thinking about the Everyone Poops book, which he read with Carly a week or two ago. We listened to the rest of the Marshmallow Shooter Camp story on Story Pirates on the way home.
Home at 4:30. Before we went in the house he wa
nted to look at the power meters and wires and discussed how the numbers on the meters worked. After awhile I got him some of the noodles dish for dinner. I set it on the table. The pencil sharpener was somewhat close to him. He saw it and said: “No! Not that! I’m gonna put the pencil sharpener right there.” He set it on the corner far away from him. After a good amount of dinner, Carly let him have a bit of the candy cane (she had mentioned getting treats for her students, and the mention of treats had done it).
He then told Carly “Uh, mama. It’s not gross when tea is cold.” Carly tried to get him to go for a walk, but he wasn’t budging. He read Young Cam Jansen and the Ice Skate Mystery with me instead. Then showed GroRecycling to Carly. At one point he asked her “Mama, can you pretend I’m a black and white printer?”
He and Carly then did a pumping heart model out of cups and straws and balloons. He was very excited when they got it working: “Cool! We invented our first machine!” When she was fixing it she set the big scissors on the ground and they were too close to him: “Big scissors!”
They played with the model for quite a bit, then headed upstairs to get ready for bed. I took him the small water bottle before he went to sleep and told him it would turn him into a frog, bird and hippo during his dreams. I left them at 7:50.