August was awake a little before 6 with a fever. Carly gave him the iPad to watch ABC songs while she got ready, and he was totally singing along to all the songs. At least the temperature wasn’t affecting his energy level in the morning. After she left, we kept watching ABC songs, then made a smoothie together. Sometime after that he suddenly got quieter, and we were lying around on the floor of the parlor and in the fort. We were singing the “A makes Ah” song, and he started signing and saying “Again” each time we finished. We also played with a balloon. He was getting really tired, and I changed him and got him in the backpack. He was fighting sleep though, saying he wanted to go on an “adventure”, not fall asleep. When I asked where to, he said “park”, and when I gave him options on what he wanted in the park he said trees and birds. Despite his denials, he fell asleep within one lap of our park.He slept from 10:57 to 11:56.
He had sounded really stuffy at the beginning of his nap, but got better. He awoke with a little cry, then wanted to go straight outside. So I grabbed some snacks, threw them in the backpack, and we were off. We walked for a long time. First southeast, to find the art store Meg mentioned, then to the tomb area/park further to the southeast (where I walked with my dad). August just wanted to keep walking. So we headed north past the getting-closer-but-behind-schedule science museum and visited a little historical site with a stone stele that we hadn’t visited before. We then walked into Hangeulbi Park and I set him down to rest, despite his requests that we keep walking. He initially refused anything to eat, but finally ate a little bar, and drank a little water.
A few calories and some water seemed to perk him up. He didn’t get out at the park, but started talking more; to this point he had been in “No” mode, with no singing or talking. From the park we walked out the northwest corner and went to Toys R Us. We went and looked at books there, then went to the pet store. He wanted to “See more pets” as we walked by, which surprised me because I usually just call them animals, not pets. We walked around the pet store until he said “All done here.” I changed him and we headed north, towards the stream, as he liked the idea of the stream. As we walked he still didn’t want to sing, so I was asking what he wanted, and at one point I hopped. He laughed, and was saying “More dada hopping.”
We got to the stream and saw smoke. On the other side there was a fire in the grass. A lot of smoke, but the wind was taking it away from us. There were a few workers standing on the path near it, and at first I thought it was intentional, as they do burn the grass along the streams. But it didn’t seem right, and sure enough, a minute later we heard the sirens. So we stood there and got to watch the firefighters put out the fire.
We then walked down the stream, making our walk into a sort of circle around Junggye-dong. We stopped at Cafe Tolerance and got a strawberry smoothie and sat looking out over the stream. He remembered what ‘smoothie’ and ‘funny’ are in Spanish before I did (‘zalamero’ and ‘gracioso’). He played on the iPad, we worked on his reading in the Bob books, and we read some Dr. Seuss. When I was reading The Things You Can Think he said he was “thinking bout zookeepers.” He got up and was doing some singing and wandering around the coffee shop, then was ready to head out. We went outside to put him in the backpack, but he decided he wanted to play at the playground. We played for maybe close to a half hour. At first, he was saying there was “Something in shoe” and had me take off his right shoe three times. There was a string thing that I pulled out, which did the trick. He put it down the crack in the boards on the pagoda, and was initially upset that it was lost, but then I said “Bye bye fuzzy” and he thought that was really funny. I got the shovel out, and he played with it, dropping it through the backpack and dropping and throwing it off the pagoda for me to get. Near the end he actually got down and walked around the playground, insisting the dolphin on the ground was a cat and standing on it, and calling the tail a “nanana moon”. There was a mom and a boy who was kind of following him around. He sang some ABC for the mom, and pointed to the boy’s lollipop and said “This is?”
About 4 he decided he was ready to head home. We walked home. At first he was disappointed Carly wasn’t home. But we started playing with a balloon, then with the blanket on the couch and making a fort. He was sitting next to me on the couch and got quiet. We were both listening to the Radiolab podcast that was playing (there was some yelling and clapping that got his attention). After a couple minutes I looked down to find he was falling asleep. He fell asleep sitting up next to me right at 5. I got up laid him over on the blanket. He slept there until Carly got home and woke him a bit at 5:45 to nurse him. He fell back to sleep and she put him in on the bed. Thinking he might wake up in the middle of the night, I went to bed early, and was falling asleep when he woke up at 8. Carly stayed up with him, and he went back to sleep at 10:15.
New words/phrases: adventure, pets
Listening to number songs as he rests on the couch:
Resting:
Fire:
Tolerance Cafe:
Playground:
The, uhh, kitty cat:
Coveting the lollipop:
Asleep on the couch:
