He was awake just after 7. I was awake by 8. As soon as he saw me he said “iPad”. We let him on the iPad, and he mainly watched shape videos and shared Cheerios and milk with me. He did some reading with Carly, mainly Kipper, but some other books and Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus a couple times. He went searching for At the Zoo and found it and read it with me. Once again, when he got to ‘flamingo’ he said “Want some flamingo…yummy mango.” When Carly asked him how many strawberries he wanted (we still don’t have mango), he said “Million!”
We had planned on meeting up with Jill and Logan today, but she said they were going to a kid cafe as it was raining. I didn’t want to do that, so August and I just went for a walk in the drizzle. It was basically an August walk, as I let him decide where we were going, starting with when we got to the stream area. We walked along the stream, spotting an egret. We walked through a couple parks (at the traffic safety park, he wanted to look at the garbages and “See galleta”, as this is where we saw a cookie in the garbage once) but he didn’t want to stop, besides having me turn the water fountain on at Wild Chrysanthemum Park for a minute. From the second park he wanted to go along the road, and when we got to the main road he wanted to cross, then go straight. He passed up another park, but finally wanted to see another park close to Toys R Us (백합어린이공원). But once we were there, he only wanted to touch a sculpture from the backpack, and didn’t want to get out.
From there he wanted to see the animals at the “zoo” (pet store) by Toys R Us. We went there, and it was opened (it has usually been closed on Sundays), so we looked around. He was reading the “Cats only” sign for the cat area. We then moved on to Toys R Us, where they had a book display out front. We looked at a couple books, but he didn’t want to take any of them home. He was starting to act tired, so we headed home. We had left home at 10:40 and got back a few minutes after 12. He fell asleep pretty quickly, and slept from roughly 12:15 to 1:15.
He nursed, and was then typing with Carly on her computer. He got out his alphabet blocks, and played with those with me – we found the whole alphabet and then the numbers. At the end he started knocking them off the reading pad, saying “That’s a silly thing to do.”
I took him back out again so Carly could cook and work. He was fine with leaving, saying “Bye” to Carly. Very different from earlier in the day when he was upset to leave at first. I had asked what he wanted to do, and he said play in the sand. But he didn’t want to take the bucket, saying “Nooo”.
We decided to head to the tree playground (Hagye Children’s Park – 하계어린이공원). On the way down, he wanted me to read all the Hangeul signs, then tell him what they meant. If I didn’t know, he wanted me to look them up. So we ended up translating things like “realtor” and “domestic freshwater eel”. We played at the playground for about ten minutes. I was writing big Qs in the sand and he was tracing them. But then it started to rain, and then got heavier. We took cover for a few minutes, but then decided to head to a coffee shop. We went to Caffe D’Ate a block away. I tried to order strawberry lemonade, but for some reason she could not understand me (I order ‘strawberry’ stuff all the time, so don’t know what the issue was) and we ended up with just lemonade. August tried it, but didn’t want a second drink after that, although he did play with the ice. And he really liked the letters on the wall that spelled ‘Pick Up’. They were the glued-on kind and he could feel them, and the K was sliding down the wall, which he liked. We hung out for awhile, him on the iPad and me reading, then headed home.
Outside, he said “Zinnie walk” and proceeded to walk the entire way home – several blocks. I just picked him up for intersections. He was stopping to look at puddles and wet spots on the ground.
At home, he read with Carly, then had me blowing up balloons. He had me blow up to 5 at once and we were holding them at the same time then letting them go. I was teaching him the word ‘trinity’ when we had 3. Carly was going through his clothes and found his hat from last summer. She put it on her had, after he refused to try it on, and August called her a “queen”. We did a lot more balloons and spelling after that. We were telling Carly about our walk and he told her about the rain “Messy rain on the hair.” Carly went down to get me pho, then we all ate dinner and I brushed his teeth.
Carly gave him a bath, which went pretty well considering it was hair washing day. She was trying to get him to tilt his head back while she rinsed his hair, so held the D up above his head so he would look. He didn’t like this, and afterwards was saying “No pick up the D”. After his bath they played with the Spanish cards, etch-a-sketch thing, and wooden shapes puzzle, then we did dinosaur stickers. I read Plant a Tree for Me and he knew all of the fruits and nuts, except for ‘walnut’. It also made him want some apple, so we went and got that. Out on the couch, he read Dot, the third Bob Book, all on his own. Will have to get that on video. We were then reading Jig and Mag when he decided it was time to nurse. He went to sleep a bit before 9.
New words/phrases: only, fifth, spelling ‘apple’, ‘four’, ‘five’, peach, cherries, almonds, avocado
During the Zinnie walk:
Home:
Tree playground trip:
He has always called the benches Cs, but this time he also pointed out the D shape around the trees:
