August was awake 7:10ish. He was counting with Carly and started being funny, saying “treinta-one, treinta-fourteen, treinta-A, etc.” There was a Skype call with Cherie for awhile, then he and I were doing puzzles on the iPad. And he did some reading with both of us in the morning.
Carly gets to go to his classes this week; today was Teuni Teuni. They got to play with a variety of balls today – it was refreshingly freeform and costume free. For the beginning stuff at class he was distracted by a long triangular tunnel thing that he wanted to go in. When playing with the balls, he liked to put them on his head. He also liked sitting on Carly’s lap and playing from there. At one point he was walking around, practicing the backwards ABC song. Near the end we all sat in a circle and batted around an enormous ball (we called it the ‘gargantuan ball’). One boy stood up and got knocked over. August was very aware that he was upset, although he was too shy to go over and comfort him. At the end August went to the teacher to get a treat, as usual, but then, as I was trying to get him to say ‘thank you’ or bow, he just stood there, staring at him, and milked him for two more treats.
He had been looking really tired during class – he often seems a bit tired/overwhelmed at the end of class, but this was more so. He nursed out in the seating area, and we almost just went home for his nap. August and I were going off on our own for awhile, giving Carly some time to do some grocery shopping and get some work done. We left, heading out the backdoor of Home Plus and walked up towards Toys R Us. He wasn’t falling asleep, so we did a quick visit to Toys R Us, looking at the pet store and then quickly at books. The puppies were all asleep when we went in, but as we were walking out he pointed and said “Awake!” so we went and watched the one that had woken up.
He was still seeming pretty wake, so I planned to stop for lunch at a park east of Toys R Us, then have him fall asleep after that. But as we got close to the park he got quiet, and when we got to the park I asked if he wanted food. He said “No…keep walking” and fell asleep a minute later. I hurried through the Eunhang Junction area to the neighborhood at the base of the hills, where I was planning to go. I found a place called Coffee Zip which was nearly empty. He slept from 11:53 to 12:39. He may have slept a bit longer, but suddenly the place was overrun by a large group of women. I went to give up our table of 4 and rotated him to a window seat for two, but then he woke up. We sat in the window there for awhile, him doing puzzles and playing with monsters on the iPad and me doing some reading.
I took him to the performing arts center to change him, but the bathroom was cramped. Went out to the little park area to change him there. Had to deal with the nice but persistent church people (5 visits) who were handing out tissues and food (and then apologizing when they realized the food was too spicy for August). Changed him, then he wanted to eat lunch there, so we did that. He was having me spell all sorts of words, and entire sentences. He is picking up that a lot of words end in ‘-ing’, saying “I N G in the end!” We also seemed to be spelling a ton of words with ‘oo’ in them today.
From there we headed to a children’s park a bit to the southwest that we’d never been to. It was secluded in the middle of an apartment complex. August got excited when he saw the playground. It had a big tall walkway that sort of made a semicircle and had slides down from it. After looking at a climbing net thing, it was the first place he went. Up on it, he spotted a little spider and was very interested. He spotted an ant a little later. While up there a woman with two dogs showed up and one was parking. August looked out at them through these colored circles and called it “ladrido per” (barking dog). After playing up there a few minutes, I needed to change him, so went down to do that. We then went to a little rounded area with a slight hill around it and played with pine needles. He wanted rocks, so I found one for him. It was dirty though, and first he wanted one hand cleaned, then the other. He said “This is a messy rock” and was eventually disgusted by the rock and dropped it and didn’t want rocks anymore. I used our stick to write letters in the sand and he traced them. They were sometimes hard to see, so he would say “Hard to see G.” We were singing the colors in three languages song, and he started wanting other words, like ‘big’ and ‘small’ in three languages. He climbed up on the structure again, and was dropping off the stick and I would hand it back to him. He then decided he wanted to go down the slides, saying “Dada do it, Zinnie do it.” So I went up and we went down a total of 5 times. We stopped to have a snack, and when one of the containers was empty he said “Vacio. Mama says that.” Oh, and he was using the word “upping” a lot today – at one point when he wanted me to pick him up he said “Upping, upping, upping, upping, upping…” as he held up his arms.
He wanted to go down the slide one more time before we left, so we did that. As we left he said he was sad about the puppies as they had left and he wanted to see more of them. We checked out another playground on our way home, but it was pretty minimal, and he just wanted to keep going. We sang number songs most of the way home. Almost back home, we ran into Patrick and his daughters – August was a bit distressed that we had just crossed the street to Brownstone and I ran back across the street and away from Mama. But he let me say bye, as they were leaving in a couple hours for their move to New York.
As we got home, August spelled ‘gargantuan’ by himself (we had been practicing it a lot today) and as we spotted Carly he called her “M A M A!” That is, he spelled it out instead of saying it.
At home he did some play dough and then painting with Carly. He then wanted me in the parlor, where we were hiding under the blanket and reading Plant a Tree with Me and Bob books. Carly gave him a bath. He spelled ‘hat’, ‘quack’, ‘quiet’, ‘zoo’, and ‘zoom’ on his own using the letters. The ‘E’ was missing, so after his bath he was talking about how he was sad about that, saying “No F turn to E” as Carly had tried to use the F instead and he didn’t like that (they had settled on using the ‘W’ sideways). He also saw the water leaving the bathtub and got sad about that, actually looking sad and later saying “Sad about the aqua.”
He read At the Zoo with me and ‘flamingo’ reminded him of mango again. We were out of mango, but he was happy with frozen strawberries. Basically, all day he was pretty nonstop asking for and spelling words. He fell asleep a little after 8:30.
New words/phrases: spelling ‘big’ and ‘bag’, vacio (empty)
Morning:
Teuni Teuni class:
Coffee shop:
Lunch:
Playground ( 광석어린이공원):
Down the ramp:
Home: