He was awake a little before 7. He was spelling numbers with Carly soon after: fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, etc. We all skyped with Derek for his birthday. At one point I was saying something and August grabbed my hand, saying “No dada talking. Zinnie Dada fort. Hide from bebe.” We took the blanket in on the couch and he had a lot of fun hiding from Kayla and everyone else. After the call he was reading books like Tickle and Kipper A to Z with Carly, and reading words like ‘tickle’ and ‘giraffe’. With me we were watching some Peg + Cat videos and other videos. For several days now he’s been having me do large numbers with my fingers, showing him 14 fingers, 19, fingers, 78 fingers…now he also requests a million fingers. We also played with a balloon.
We were slow getting ready to leave today and finally about ready to leave. But somehow the diaper we just put on him leaked and I had to change him again. He was not happy about this, and ended up nursing again. He was acting tired, and fell asleep a bit early for a nap, so no leaving the house yet. he slept about 50 minutes, waking up a little before 1. After more nursing, we left the house at 1:40. We had planned on going to Seoul Forest earlier, but with it being so late we changed plans and headed north to the Iris Garden. On the way up, he played the Elmo Look and Find app. He now knows words like ‘trombone’, ‘paddle ball’, ‘hula hoop’, ‘jack in the box’, and ‘pogo stick’ thanks to it.
We got to the Iris Garden and first went to the bench area he and I have been to a couple times. We sat on the big Lincoln log-looking bench and had a snack. He played on the bench, with Carly saying “What are you doing?” and him saying “Walking on a log.” August eventually decided it was time to get going, and headed down the ramp, saying “Bye!” We caught up to him and he led the way as we wandered around the park. He liked the different kinds of paths, particularly the round and rectangular stones. He wanted to find rocks, and we ended up at a bench in the southwest corner, where I handed him rocks and he dropped them off. We needed to change him, so went to the building and found they had just made a new mothers’ room. All went well until we were leaving and he wanted to play in the sink. He melted down a bit in the hallway “Sad about sink.” He calmed down, and as we walked out he saw workers painting the ceiling in another new part. He watched that for a minute, but then a couple of women came and tried to say hi to him. He started screaming. I picked him up and got him away, but he was quite upset. We walked up north of the building and found a picnic table surrounded by pine trees and took a nursing/reading Sherlock Holmes break.
When he was recovered he climbed on the table and I was handing him pine needles and pine cones and we were all playing with them. He mainly liked dropping the pine needles through the cracks and through the hole in the middle of the table. Carly was wearing a sweater, and he read the ‘Columbia’ tag on it. We had previously helped him read the Columbia tags on other pieces of clothing, but he sounded this one out on his own.
When done playing there, we put him in the backpack and went for a walk, out of the park and to the southeast, following the Seoul Trail across the river and then up the stream/park on the east side. We made a loop, crossing the stream and heading back on the other side. As we went, August got really into having me read the signs in Hangeul. So we made up a little “Looking for some Hangeul” song. Oh, and had been spelling words, like ‘M A M A’ and I would say the word – he started to change the letters, and it turned into a game of nonsense, and him laughing hysterically.
We got on the subway and headed home. At home we ate dinner, and he was starting to fall asleep at 6:30 when nursing. But there was to be quite a bit more to his evening. He is really into the At the Zoo book, and when reading that the word ‘flamingo’ reminded him of ‘mango’ so he wanted to eat some frozen mango. So we got that out for him and thawed it. We all did a lot more reading and word stuff after that – he was reading more of Kipper A to Z with Carly. 7:30 or 8 Carly took him in to go to sleep, but they just ended up reading a lot of books. They came back out and Carly painted while I read more At the Zoo and Alphabet book with him. He started rubbing his eyes a lot, but really fought sleep and going to bed, but was finally asleep about 9:40.
New words/phrases: Hula hoop, paddle ball, pogo stick, trombone, quake (the quaking dog at the Iris Garden)
Morning:
Iris Garden:
Exploring:
After the nursing break:
Rocks:
Walking:
Home:
