He was up right at 7:40. After changing him we were out on the couch and he asked for Marshy ABC songs. So I had Marshy singing ABC songs, and in particular the “A is for…” song and we ended up using the other stuffed animals (D is for Dragon, for Puff, for example). We then did the alphabet puzzle a couple times, and did some Spanish typing. Toast and then oatmeal for breakfast, then a lot of getting ready to go. Left about 9:40, did Art Maker on the subway.
Arrived at the children’s museum to find it basically empty. Straight to the chalkboard, then making a “huge Z” out of the floor magnets, then back playing with the light stuff. Then found an ‘O’ and was playing with that everywhere. He found the zoetrope and was spinning the O in that. A couple times he said “Bye O” as he spun it away. Then through the nature area. At the minerals, I asked him to find the Quartz. He did. Then the Selenite. Then the amethyst, biotite, etc. He got all 5. I expected him to look at them and/or just know their locations, but the way he did it was by looking at the words: He knows that ‘quartz’ is the one with the Q (kind of tricky, as it is actually Rosequartz, so he has to find it in the middle of the word), Amethyst starts with ‘A’, Biotite with ‘B’ (for black). So he would find that one letter and know that was it. Now 11:20 or so and he said he was hungry, so we went up to the third floor. But first he wanted to play with the stomping thing, the air/ball things, and the cultural puzzles. Then to the cafeteria, which we pretty much had to ourselves. We sang our English/Spanish/Korean Colors song (hereby called the ESK Colors song) and he surprised me by knowing several of the Korean colors on his own: yellow, blue, and green in particular. We are also starting to get grey, black, and silver down. Did some more cultural puzzles, then walked down to the home area and did some vacuuming and looking at the food: “Want this”, pointing at food, then, seeing sushi: “Sushi for mama”. From there to the book area where we read Oh No! and looked at a couple books in the loft, then got out the iPad and read some Dr. Seuss.
Changed him and we went outside and had a snack on the benches before going off for a nap. He was talking about zookeepers, saying he wanted to “Open zookeeper door”. Earlier, after lunch, when we were walking by the bathrooms, he said “Hear zookeepers!” Then was holding my finger and wouldn’t let me go down the hall to the bathrooms. And then he said “Spying on zookeepers.”
We went for our walk. And kept walking. Took well over a mile and over 30 minutes before he fell asleep. Put his head back a few times, but then it would come up again. I was singing number songs, and when I first thought he was asleep I then heard a slurry “Want ABC songs”. A few minutes later it was a slurred “Sing A is for Apple”. Finally asleep, and we went to the upstairs coffee shop, where he slept 1:37 to 2:33. I went upstairs because they have more food, and the idea was to have a muffin and smoothie when he woke up, kind of like at 18 months. But when he woke up the first things he said were “See zookeepers…Hear zookeepers!” and he wanted to go outside.
So we went to the zoo. Of course, when I asked what he wanted to see, he said “Zookeepers”. We walked around and saw the jackals and servals, etc., then he really wanted to see the vulture, so we did that, then the rest of the pheasants. Then to the water birds, and on to the tropical building to look for zookeepers. We saw one come out of a zookeeper door, and a second trying to feed a dead mouse to a snake. The snake wasn’t interested. He also touched his favorite zookeeper door. So, pretty successful zookeeper spying, although we didn’t hear or see anything though the gates.
We then went out to the big square in the zoo and had some crackers, then played there for the next 30 or 40 minutes. Workers were ripping down the little souvenir shop, so that was some entertainment. He got a little rock and was throwing it around, and throwing it on my shadow. I then got the yellow ball out of the backpack, and we were playing with that. He would occasionally not know where it went and say “Where’d it go? I see it.” He was up on the benches, throwing or rolling it off, then I would throw it back to him. At one point I was throwing it up in the air and catching it, so then he was walking around, throwing it up the air, and saying “throw…catch.”
We headed home, playing more Art Maker. We got home a few minutes after Carly. At home, he started writing in his notebook, writing 1 to 12, drawing and saying “triangle”, and writing both ‘two’ and ‘to’ – he had initially learned the latter, but I hadn’t seen him write it since learning the number. After awhile, I went to the pink building to do some grocery shopping and pick up wrapping paper and some more little notebooks for word notebooks. While I was gone, he ate a bunch of asparagus and some broccoli. I came home, and at one point, as Carly was getting his bath ready, he wanted the iPad and was getting upset when I wouldn’t let him get it out of the backpack. I started doing the pirate thing to distract him, and he was laughing for the next several minutes. Carly gave him a bath, and he was having fun. Requested the Robot ABC song, which is interesting since he hasn’t watched it in a couple weeks. After the bath he nursed and they had some nice calm time. For the rest of the evening he would hold onto the front of his shirt, kind of like when he is holding up his pants.
While Carly was taking a shower, I asked what Zinnie loved. In order, he said: “zookeepers, play areas, pillows, wawa, Teuni Ball, ball, Mama.” Also, out of nowhere he said “Do yoga”, so we went in the parlor and did a little yoga.
We were then in the parlor and he wanted to make a tower, then a path with the bricks. He saw the puma and asked what it was in Spanish. As I went to look it up, he made a guess “Puma…Apum” which was amazing because he was adopting the ‘Tuna…atun” structure he had learned yesterday. But no, it is ‘puma’ in both. He was requesting the EKS Colors song, and was saying “Korean”, which we hand’t heard him say before, although he understood it. We spent a lot of time playing with one of his little shape stickers that was on the floor. He would shove it under the reading area cushion and say “Where’d it go?” Then we would lift it up to find it. Finally, we were reading the Little Kipper book, and he pointed and said “More this”, referring to the house that Kipper makes for Arnold out of a cardboard box. I told him he’d have to talk to Mama for that, and she said she’d make him one this summer. Unfortunately, he wanted it now, going out and pointing to the scissors: “More scissors…more box.” Carly took him in and he fell asleep soon after that, around 8:30.
New words/phrases: atun (tuna), nolansak (yellow), noksak (green), palgansak (blue), Korean
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