Carly said he got up a little after 5. He apparently asked for me as soon as he woke up and she was tempted to bring him to me.I heard them Skyping with, I think, Vivi and Cherie before I got up at 6. He found an ABC song on YouTube that is some foreign language (Dutch or something). It sort of sounded like the Spanish alphabet, especially at the beginning, and he kept playing it and singing along, trying to make it work. I gave him his vitamins, the gummy kind he now refuses to eat, and he said “Set it on the table” and transferred all 4 pieces from the the table to the counter.
Many, many ‘sightings during the day’: two soap boxes next to each other were and ’11’, as were two diapers. Our square light fixture, the frame to the dog bears print in the changing room, and his rectangular marker container were the Hangeul ㅁ.
A parenting mistake: I was letting him drink water out of his little blue cup. He was trying to walk around with it and set it on the counter, both of which resulted in some spillage, which he didn’t like. So I was showing him how to keep it level, and if it wasn’t level it would spill. This made August think it was fun to spill the water, and he went around to places he wanted me to pour water and pointed “Here” – he even pointed up to the ceiling.
He started doing “Step color” on the squares on his play area. Stepping on blue and saying “Step blue”, etc. He crawled under the table and wanted to plug in the Christmas lights. He pretended to plug them into his high chair, then I let him ‘help’ plug them in for real. We then vacuumed and cleaned. He took much more interest this week, helping a little, but also following along and singing the ABC song really loudly along with the vacuum cleaner. When I turned it off he twice said “Quiet. Q for quiet.” Later, he would point out when other things were quiet: an empty restaurant when we walked by, and the Teuni Teuni video playing at Home Plus that didn’t have the sound on.
He helped make oatmeal, but was getting frustrated when I wouldn’t let him eat it raw. He started saying “Pinch dada”, but not actually doing so (thankfully). He did this once or twice more. I think it was progress – he was telling me he was frustrated, without actually trying to pinch.
We were on the couch and 3 of the animals fell off the back of it. After trying to teach him that ‘both’ only applied to 2, and with 3 he would use ‘all’ (not sure he quite understood that yet, but a start), he set each of them on the ground in a row, and called it “111”.
We did a lot of play dough letters today. He started by saying “Make E out of play dough.” He then likes to turn the E sideways and call it an M. Later, he would string together perhaps his longest sentence yet: “Make upside down G out of orange.” There were a couple of words today that he said very intentionally, with good enunciation, and was then smiling when I understood him. One was ‘hat’ when he put the letter shapes on his head. First saying they were on his “cabesa”, then calling them a hat. He also called one of the pieces to Carly’s tree painting a ’Nanana moon”. And when I was changing him he looked up at the dog bear picture we often talk about and started himself, saying “Dog bears have a robot” and “Dog bears have a train.” Finally, before we were ready to leave, he saw the plastic bag with a water bottle that Carly had left in the hallway. He pointed and said “Who did this?” He did it once earlier in the day with something as well. Before today, he had only used it for crayon/marker on the floor. Also, he has switched from “Who did that?” to “Who did this?”
We took off early for his class. He was saying “No” to class again, so I figured we could take it easy in Home Plus and let him adjust to the class area. I also needed to register for the next class session. Didn’t really work how I expected. It just gave him more time to want to go home before class started. When he saw the teacher and other parents he started saying “No, no, no.” The teacher brought him a little juice though, which he like. And I was able to coax him into class a few minutes before it started. Once there, he did pretty well. He didn’t try to leave once, and in fact closed the door when class started because he knows the door gets closed. He was really into bubbles and the opening songs. Class was about different animals. He got really excited by the demonstration portion, as she had a colorful red box and big cards with question marks on them. He saw them and kept pointing and saying “Question mark!” She then put a card in the box and it came out the bottom showing the other side, with an animal on it. When she put it in, she turned it upside down, so he said “Upside down question mark!” Unfortunately, he was so excited he kept wanting to go up and touch the box and get in the way. He got upset and started screeching when I wouldn’t let him, and got more upset when I took him out of the room. Fortunately, he really wanted to go “back in”, and he calmed down enough to return. He really liked playing with the question cards we got to use. After that, they each got two pom pom things to shake. He really liked these, dropping them and saying “Red, blue!” and then shaking them a lot. He has refused to do ‘Man-say!’ (arms up) since the summer, but he did it today with the pom poms. The next activity involved getting two sticks and drumming. He did a better job during this intro. She asked a few of the kids up close to sit down, and he sat down next to her. He liked the two sticks, and at one pointed handed them to me to “Do ABCD.” He also used them to make ’11’, ‘I’, and ’T’. When it came time to get the stickers from her, he ran up to her and said “chu-say-oh” (please give me) several times. This was the first time he did that. When it came time for the stickers, he only did a few, and saved the rest for home (actually handing them to me and saying “for home”. Finally, he did the last song on his own, and continues to get more of the movements down. For the first spinning, he said “bin-gul, bin-gul, bin-gul” (spinning) and for the second it was “turn, turn turn”. He was of course excited to get hand stamps at the end of class.
We came home and ate some lunch, then went straight to trying to get to sleep. He wanted to try at home again: “Fall asleep in home.” But once again it didn’t work and we ended up in the stroller, asleep at 1:20. At 1:47 he sort of woke up, and I had to rush and push him out in the hall for a minute, then he fell back to sleep until 2:45. A sad wakeup. Tried pushing him more; didn’t want that. Made him get out of the stroller, and he just sat in the hall, back against the wall, until 3:05, when he requested a “sandoo”. He was scratching a lot at his ankles, so I took one pair of pants and his socks off. He got upset at the mention of lotion. We did play dough letters, then when I went to change him, I took of his pants to find big red patches, particularly on his left legs. I put some lotion on the red spots on the other leg – he wasn’t happy with that. I took his shirt off to see there was any more (there weren’t), but then he wanted his owls. I wasn’t going to put dirty clothes on a child developing a rash, and he lost it for a good 10 minutes. He wouldn’t calm down in that room, so I took him against his will into the parlor and locked the door. It took a few more minutes, with me sitting and calming suggesting things we could do and asking what I could do to help, before he calmed down and wanted to do ABCDs.
He was fine after that. Carly got home and we did more play dough letters. He started saying “favorite number” ( I don’t know where it came from), but saying letters, like “favorite number Q”. He was also saying “Favorite letter”.
Quick ba
th as he was getting tired. Wanted his owl pajamas, but they were in the wash. He didn’t complain too much. A bit later he was sitting on the end of the bed, processing that to himself: “No owls. Owls dirty. Owls wet.”
Carly went to bed about 7 and he was out with me for awhile. But around 7:40 he made a dash to the door and went in with her. She said it took awhile for him to fall asleep, but it went smoothly.
New words/phrases: plug in, flashing (Christmas lights), Make E out of play dough, get it out, “dog bears have a robot”, Monday, make upside down G out of orange, chu-say-oh, dump markers
Plugging in the lights:
“111”:
Letters on his head/cabesa:
Class:
Man-say!:
Sitting:
Stamps:
Walking home. He saw a ‘J’, ‘l’, and an ‘i’ needing dotting:
Traditional Korean games again. Stepping on them like he just did the pom poms in class:
Now the light was an ‘!’:
Sucking his ‘thumbs’ to the Kipper story “Arnold”:
Asleep on the blanket:
Afternoon indoors. “Hold it” letter:
Making a ‘T’:
