He slept in today, but took a nap right on schedule. Slept in until 8:30. I heard him talking, but didn’t understand what it was about. I walked in the room to find him sitting in the middle of the bed and pointing over at the crack/wall and saying something. When I told him Mama was at work he was upset, and when he calmed down a bit the first thing he saw was “Go find mama.” We made oatmeal for breakfast. He was standing on his stool and I was still getting strawberries out and he wanted me to pour the oatmeal, so he grabbed the packet and said “Pour this in the bowl.” After that he wanted to do math on the table with the magnets and Duplos, and we did more tower building with the wooden blocks. He thought the round blocks looked like a handstamp, so then he was giving hand stamps to the letters on his toy box lid. He did a lot of typing on the computer, mainly punctuation and Hangeul.
He was having fun with all of that and in no hurry to go, so we didn’t leave until about 10:50. We stopped at the GS25 in the station and got kimbap, two hard-boiled eggs, and a strawberry cookie thing. When we got to the children’s museum and I was taking him out of the backpack (outside, as the weather was nice), he wanted to eat the food we just got. So we ate it all, except one of the eggs. He really liked the smoky egg. As we were eating it, a woman and her son came up to us and said hi. It was the woman and boy (Bin) who we had met a couple times last year, but hadn’t seen since. We talked for a few minutes, exchanged contact info this time, and then August and I went in (they had been leaving the children’s museum).
Inside, he played on the first floor. Went straight to the minerals. Got selenite again, and really seems to be trying to remember quartz, amethyst, and machite. Then did some chalkboard time, played with the Os on the windows (he made a game of them ‘accidentally’ falling on the floor and saying “uh-oh”), and the stuff in the light room. Then he wanted to go eat. So we went up to the lunch room. I did most of the eating. He had a few bites, but I don’t think he was very hungry due to the snack. When I divided the sandwich today, he declared which half was his and which was mine, as usual, then he immediately insisted on having my half. He was very proud of himself. He also joked about screaming: “screaming in the dalgi, screaming in the N.”
From lunch we walked across the third floor, him leading the whole way. He played with the balls that float on air for a few minutes, then headed down the ramp. Stopped at the housekeeping/food area. He found a wooden tea cup and wanted to “put (it) away”, by which he meant he recognized it from the little kids area, which was on an entirely different floor. I had to show him there were others here to get him to not try to return it. Not sure he was entirely convinced, as he kept saying “put away” several times while we were there.
Speaking of putting away, when he was playing with the window magnets he found a cotton ball that belonged on the other side of the room and had to return it. Later, in the zoo, he saw a wrapper on the ground and I set him down so he could pick it up and take it to the garbage can. And later at home he helped recycle the egg container.
He then wandered further down the ramp to the second floor. Played in the space ship area then with the Hangeul magnets and then went over to the big kids climbing structure. Once again upset he couldn’t go in. It was now 1:15 and he was starting to be really tired – early really, given how long he slept last night.
One thing I noticed as we did this wandering through the building, is that when he wanted to go somewhere else he would say “backpack” to me, because I set it down, and I’m always saying to him “Wait, I need to get the backpack first.” So now he’s telling me to get it.
We walked around the play structure, where he saw a door in back which he said looked like a “zookeeper” door. He went under the play structure and bumped his head where it gets low. That was the breaking point, and we were off to change him and to a nap. Did our usual walk and everything went smoothly. Fell asleep at 1:40. Walked into the coffee shop at 1:45 and headed for the snacks to get new bags of the go-guh-muh (sweet potato) and hobak (pumpkin) snacks. As I reached for them I heard, in a very slurred voice, “hobak and go-guh-muh”. Headed outside for a minute and walked around until he was back to sleep, then went back in.
He slept until 2:40. Did some iPad (Art Maker) and had some of our new snacks. Then headed to the zoo. We walked around the ferocious animals. The hyena, foxes, and puma were out on the backside. Still no servals, which he duly noted. All the big cats out on the front, but no elephants or primates.
He didn’t know where he wanted to go next, so we started to walk back to the Arisu water museum, behind the children’s museum. We hand’t been there since spring, and I told a 2nd grade teacher at APIS I’d check it out for a possible field trip. Along the way, he saw the outdoor area attached to the botanical gardens and wanted to go in. He changed his mind when he realized we had to go through the botanical gardens. He wasn’t happy when I went in (a lot of “No, no, no”) but we made it through. He didn’t want to stop for the fish. Looked around in the outside area, but didn’t want me to set him down. I think he is a little scared of it now, perhaps because it is a bit dark with weird noises. He did, however, liked the water in the plants in the entrance, so maybe that will get him back in.
Anyway, we went to the water museum and he loved it. There is a water table area, with little water wheels that turn if you direct the water through channels to them. Last we were here, he wasn’t big enough to play with them. We played there a good 20 minutes, probably longer, before I convinced him we should go around the rest of it and that we were already late for getting home. His other favorite parts were the drinking fountains, where we got a cup of cold water to drink, then he was able to stand and push the button to operate the drinking fountain (new for him, as they are always too high/too hard to push).
Finally left and made it home a little after 5:30. On the way home he was doing art, but decided at Sandbong that we were “Next stop” – not the case as there were 5 left. So I found Hat Monkey on the iPad. August went to the banana scene, where you give the monkey a banana, and he kept playing it over and over and found it hilarious every time the monkey slipped, got bonked on the head, or gave a thumbs up.
He ate a little with Carly, then later remembered the egg we had left over from lunch. He basically ate all of it. Carly gave him a bath, and we did a lot of coloring and math (Carly got to do math with him for the first time). The books we ordered from What the Book arrived: A for Activista, Maisy’s First Numbers, and Kipper’s A to Z. He was really excited by the appearance of the Maisy book he’s been requesting. And the Kipper book is really cool and we all like that. It will get read a lot.
A little protest about heading to bed, but went pretty quickly. Asleep about 8:45.
New words/phrases: alce (moose), como se dice ‘poop’ en espanol?, several more Spanish words – I’m losing track of what he has already said
Waking up:
Writing the Spanish ABCs for her:
Looking through the tinted windows:
Dada’s sandoo:
Bernoulli’s principle:
“Dada do ABCD”:
Headed home:
Home. New books:
Trying to drink both waters at once:
