I feel like the days are very full, yet there is little to report. We are out of extra money this week, we are moving, so we are not doing things that cost money. I had planned to take Zakiah to Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia. But that will have to happen at another time.
Zakiah is a happy child. Today he played around me quite a bit. We started the day watching Diego and Dora the Explorer. He liked those, and joined in with some of the Spanish and English words. Dora always has a map, and Diego a backpack. We had banana and pancakes for breakfast. Zakiah loved a simple pancake with honey on it.
Then he and I made a trip to the new house. I brought the rest of our framed pictures and paintings and a few books, always more books. It was 10:30 by the time we left, so I drove thru McD’s and got us one chicken mcnugets meal to share, Zakiah having an orange juice as well. He explored the house but really lost interest in that faster than I thought he would. (As a kid, I was excited about exploring any new house. It was always a big, good time for me to run through a new house.) He found a chess set and played with that, but soon took pieces here and there, so that didn’t work too well either. I unpacked some small kitchen boxes, as we needed them back at the house to pack (more books) into.
We walked over to the pond behind the house briefly, then returned for a little more lunch, (sugarless) popsicle, and NAP. He has only had candy once while here. The nap was into 2 hours long, so I decided to run a load of books to my office, with Al calling me if he woke up. He did wake up and was very sad Grandma wasn’t here.
Some Newberry friends Al has made at a coffee shop here, came by to help us move our couch, my mom’s hutch, & a file cabinet. Zakiah was excited to return to the new house with Grandpa but very upset Grandpa rode in the truck and not with us in the car. We unloaded all that stuff there and took a relaxed walk around the big pond (see picture). Zakiah has learned while here to be interested in “the woods”. There were some side trails into the woods there so he said, “Let’s go THIS way.” He wanted to touch the water, but gave up on that when the grass got wet near the water (He was holding my hand). There are no ducks on this pond. We are not sure why. We heard frogs but couldn’t see them.
Back home, dinner, shower, brush teeth, phone call to Mommy and Baba, and to bed. He has 3 books he has adored reading every night here. (Kids get into habits and remember certain books). Every night we have read “Swimmy,” “Put me in the zoo,” and “The Giving Tree”. There is one other one which is an antique, a really strange, older book, called “The Funny Bunny Factory,” about some rabbits who live in an abandoned factory that they accidently turn on, and it starts making fancy colored and candy eggs.
Funniest part of the bedtime tonight was reading “Swimmy,” who is the only black fish in a school of all-red fish. Zakiah knows the part where he says “and ONE fish was BLACK,” and the next line is, “And his name was _______.” Zakiah tonight said, “Dirty!” I guess this is the first time I’ve interacted with Zakiah closely with books and he has listened all the way to the end, and taken part in the words as he gets to know them.
He has missed Mommy and Baba too, and reacted with pure delight tonight when I said, “And day after tomorrow we go to mommy’s house.” He also is into the letter “s” and the SSSSS sound. Every time he says “Yes,” he hangs onto the ssssssssss sound. I also noticed him accentuating a “t” sound at the end of a word tonight, saying t-t-t- a few times.
Other than this, he was out in our yard here at the older house for awhile and always enjoys that, a little bit in the sprinkler, etc. He is happy outside.
Doctor Grandma 
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