Awake 6:15. Let him watch iPad while I lay on the couch. Then we sat on the couch together and blew up balloons and sat under the blanket, hiding from mama. More iPad. Toast and strawberries for breakfast. More balloons together. He went and grabbed a balloon when watching an ABC song with balloons in it, and held it over his head. He then wanted me to sit with him and the globo (balloon). Before we left the house he wanted to read Moby Dick. We finally left the house a little before 11.
At the subway station he was spinning while waiting for the train. We got down to the National Museum only to find it is closed on Mondays. I thought I had confirmed that it was open on Mondays. Also closed were the Hangeul Museum and the special exhibition hall. Luckily, I had also planned to spend time in the park there, Yongsan Park. By the time we were walking over there it was time for a nap and he fell asleep. Set him on a picnic table at the east edge of the park, by the walking path. He slept from 12:52 to 1:36. He woke up happy, and played with Camel for several minutes, having Camel eat the backpack and bench and sand and Hangeul writing that was around. He then walked up and down the walking path, liking each different surface, and calling the harder ones “tricky”. There was a little pond in the garden area and we heard frogs, so went and saw those. August wanted to throw rocks in though, so we didn’t stay. We went back and picked up our garbage and backpack and walked to the playground to throw away/recycle our garbage.
At the playground there were two other kids, both boys smaller than August. One tried to walk up to August, and August decided it wasn’t his scene and turned around and started walking away. I coaxed him back and got him to walk over to recycling, carrying our two soy milk containers. He kept wanting to throw rocks in water, so we walked around the stream/pond areas and came to the little stream, where he climbed out on the stones and sat and could touch the water. We (well, mainly me) found a bunch of little rocks that he was able to throw in there. After awhile he wanted to put his feet in, so we took off his shoes and socks. The sun was really coming out and I had my hat on, so I thought I’d try his. Surprisingly, he didn’t protest much, and wore the hat. It came off and on several times over the next hour or so, but he steadily got more comfortable with it.
He was a bit unsocial when a mom with her daughter, smaller than August, was hovering around us, then finally talked to us and he screamed. But later, there were two girls, maybe 6 and 3 who came up to us and talked a few times. He basically ignored them, while I did the talking, but he didn’t mind them.
With his hat on, he really liked playing with his shadow, and called himself a ‘queen’, because a queen is someone who wears a hat. He walked over to the big bridge across the big pond, and there were three big boys feeding the fish. August was intrigued by their messiness, and wanted to know what the fish were, so I was teaching him ‘koi’.
He was working on spelling numbers all day, and eventually got down all the numbers one to seven, although he calls seven “tricky” and usually spells it ‘siven’.
About 4 we were getting ready to leave and I asked him which direction he wanted to walk out. He looked around and remembered the playground, which he hadn’t wanted to play at all day. So we played there for about 15 minutes. This time, he saw kids digging in the sand and wanted to play with them. We got out his shovel and he played with that. It was quite the change – we saw one kid in shorts, and another little boy with bare legs. This is because most of the people there were American families from the base next door. So I had August’s pants rolled up from playing in the water and kept them that way.
We headed home, getting here about 5:30. We ate dinner and Carly gave him a bath. August was a little upset because he managed to drop letters behind the shower door, which is stuck open because of his bath, so you can’t get them out. Making it worse, the V that he dropped managed to stick to the other side of the door, so he could actually see it, but not get it.
In the evening he read a lot of books, mainly with Carly. He read the first Bob Book by himself a couple times. We were playing in the living room and he want to walk to the kitchen and whacked his head on the counter pretty good. He started to say “Nurse” before he even started crying. Carly took him and nursed him and he fell asleep, a little after 7:30.
New words/phrases: got it, almost got it (he was using these phrases when walking on the walking path), no fall in the wawa, spelling ‘baby’ and ‘messy’, spelling numbers one to seven (although spelling ‘siven’ for seven)
Morning:
Park:
Stream:
Hat:
