He was talking a lot in his sleep during the night, although I couldn’t remember what any of it was. But I ended up putting his cat shirt on him for the day, and Carly tells me he said “Kitty cat shirt please” when he woke up to nurse around 5. Anyway, he woke up at 7:35. I had heard some movement noises before that, and when he came out at 7:35 he was entirely happy and awake, making me think he was actually awake for a few minutes playing on the bed. Said “Do ABCD” as he came out, then sat on the couch spelling ‘quack’ and ‘quiet’ and then talking about “Mama do amethyst.” Then he was standing and spinning, singing ABC songs.
He watched ABC songs on the iPad then we drew on the paper, and I wrote the sentence “We got to the park to have fun”. He could read all the words except ‘park’ and ‘have’. We went and read Frog on a Log? in the fort, then he came back out and played Endless Alphabet, which he hasn’t done it quite awhile, on the iPad.
I looked up ‘beginner books’ on Amazon and found the Bob books (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0439845009/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0439845009&linkCode=as2&tag=rcnimannet-20&linkId=GQQFV3U2PFTIEXLL). Bought the first set on the iPad, and this is where August officially started reading. He immediately started laughing at the books, and we read through the first two books together. Along the way he was able to read two full sentences on his own.
We headed to Uijeongbu a little after 10, reading a little more of the Bob books along the way. First went to the toy store and he played with their open toys for a few minutes, but then wanted to move on. Took him up to the roof, but he didn’t want to play there; he wanted a play area instead. So we went back down and paid to go in the play area for an hour. I made a mistake in not eating first, as he immediately said “eating” as soon as we walked in. So he snacked a little while we were in there. Also, while we had gone in at 11:20, less than 4 hours after he had woken up, he soon started looking tired. He eventually lasted about 50 minutes. Mainly played with their magnets, which were missing a ‘Q’, so he made one out of the ‘O’ and a little broken one, and one of those wooden baby cubes. We also went in the ball pit for a couple minutes, wee he realized the balls had numbers on them, and I got him to go upstairs, where he then walked around and had fun sliding down the cushy round stairs.
We left, getting my ‘free’ latte on the way, and went to the roof and sat and ate lunch. Then changed him, and started walked west towards the Uijengbu city hall area and the parks behind it. He fell asleep almost right away – like 5 minutes – and I found a nice empty coffee shop called J-won Latte where I had a lemon black tea in a real cup. He slept from 1:00 to 1:54, then wanted to get walking when he woke up. We walked over to the parks. The last (and only) time we were here was on June 1st, when he played in a water fountain and then put rocks and dirt in his hat and through a grate. He didn’t want to play at the playground this time, and instead directed me to keep walking around. We walked up to the sculpture garden/pond area and got down to have a snack.
This is where we spent most of our time and he had a lot of fun. As we were eating I listed a bunch of names (August, Augustine, Z, Zinn, Zinnie, Zinnio) and asked which he wanted people to call him. He chose Augustine, although waffled a couple minutes later to Zinnie (“Call you Zinnie”), before going back to Augustine. There was a rope along the path and he played with that (“play with the rope”). He spent a ton of time playing with the pine needles, noting that the groups of 3 liked like Ws or Ms, then taking them apart (“came apart…uh-oh”), and dropping them in the grate. He was concerned about getting some in his mouth, saying “Get some in your mouth” and pointing to his mouth. He then stood on the bench and I would hand him clumps of pine needles to drop. While standing on the bench he pointed to a tree and said “This is a pine tree”. A guy came and hovered over him for a few minutes, which was a little odd, then another guy came and sat on our bench, next to our backpack – also odd as there were other open benches. But August liked his shoes, as they had a Z, no N on them that he kept pointing out. We needed to head home a little early as we needed to go to Home Plus, but August just kept playing.
There was a low set of posts lining a walkway among the sculptures, and he wanted to walk back and forth on that a few times. He really liked the horse sculpture, where it looks like 3 metal horses go through a wall. He then was walking up and down a steep hill and ended up by a large group of women and sang ABC to them. When they then started talking to him and tried to get him to do something, he loudly said “No” and turned and walked away. They all laughed. We were looking at the sculptures and trying to figure out what they looked like, so I explained ‘abstract art’ (explaining that it is “tricky”, which he understands, having called Jeff’s book, where the animals are constructed of letters and punctuation, “tricky”). Which led to him asking for ‘abstract art’ in Spanish, and as we finally left to head to the subway, he was saying “abstract art…arte abstracto.” In the evening I told Meg about this and she said my homework was to teach him ‘juxtaposition’ tomorrow.
We headed home, catching the little monorail. Transferred to the 1 then the 7. He didn’t request iPad until the very end. Also, on the way up he had wanted me to stand on the 1 and we just looked out the window. At Hagye he only wanted to go home until I mentioned the lizard at Home Plus, at which point he changed his mind. We went there, only to find there is no more lizard. He kept saying “Now what?” They do, however, have a bunny. We went down and got a few groceries. He requested crackers, so we got those. Got home about 5:20, after Carly.
At home he ate dinner, then Carly gave him a bath, which involved a lot of laughing. But before he got in Carly had thrown all the letters in the water. This was unacceptable, and I had to take them all out before he would get in. He and Carly then made a ‘fort’ on the bed, hiding under the blanket, and we had a lot of fun with first me coming to find him, then Bluie, Green Monster, and Marshy, after August requested them.
Back out on the couch we did a little reading on the iPad, then he played Endless Alphabet. He got to ‘Journey’ and he said “Go in a journey”. He hadn’t done it yet, just heard the word. Not sure if he had played through it this morning (I don’t think so) or whether he had remembered it from weeks ago, or what. He went to sleep about 8:40, but woke up twice in the next half hour for more nursing. He was fine after that.
New words/phrases: pine needles, agua de pino, drop, get some in your mouth, this is a pine tree, Zinnie have pine needles (as he was holding some),
Toy store:
Play area:
Pine needles in Spanish:
Saying no:
Abstract art. He said this was a goose or duck:
Waiting for the train:
Using a fork:
Fort fun:
