He got up with us at 6am. We had a pretty mellow morning, as both of us now have colds. He was pretty sniffly through the night, waking up a lot. He would have a runny nose throughout the day, but no coughing or fever. We had oatmeal for breakfast. I thought I’d put maple syrup in it this time, like Bert suggests in Plant a Tree for Me. August saw me pouring the syrup and pointed and said “This is?” I said “Syrup” and he got upset. He kept complaining and wouldn’t eat the oatmeal. Finally, he gave in after a few minutes and ate it.
On the way down to Children’s Grand Park we read Dr. Seuss – all of Oh, the Thinks You Can Think, Marvin K. Mooney, and most of Fox in Socks. When getting him in the backpack to walk into the park I discussed what we were doing and mentioned lunch. He said “Eat some egg and kimbap. Egg and kimbap at CU.” So we stopped and got each. He wanted to eat by the children’s museum again. As we walked across the boardwalk, we saw an egret and two cranes in the swamp area, where plants are starting to shoot up. He really wanted to see some duckies as well.
We ate lunch, starting with the kimbap. We peeled the egg and I said the yolk was inside. He said getting to the yolk was “tricky”. After he ate he was doing a lot of walking back and forth on the bench. He was banging our empty soy milk containers together like cymbals and singing and dropped one. He then looked down, threw the second one to join the first, and said “Uh-oh!” I had sat on the ground at one point, and he wanted me to sit there again, so he pointed and said “Dada down here.” While on the bench he also discovered the shadow of our backpack and found it funny to step on that, then my shadow, then the shadow of the container of strawberries I held in my hand. We also ate shadow strawberries.
Transition to nap time was pretty smooth, although he complained for a minute as we started walking, saying he wanted to go to the children’s museum instead or home. But he fell asleep after about 10 minutes and slept from 11:48 to 12:54 in the upstairs Peace Coffee. After waking up he sat on my lap and did math on the iPad. He took some convincing to get out of there a little after 1. He chose which way we went, and we ended up going down the stairs in the middle of the building, reading all the Hangeul signs as we went. Down on the first floor we analyzed one of the big Peace Coffee signs again.
We went to the new playground. He wanted to play in the sand, and after looking at the garbage bins (something he still does all the time), we got a plastic cup out of recycling, washed it out, and he played in the water with that for awhile. He also played on the numbers a bit, but the playground was crowded and he almost got knocked over once. I also think his energy was on the low side. So after about 20 minutes he decided he was done with the cup and took it back to recycling and then did some of his flying and flew to the backpack. We discussed all the options and he was clear that he wanted to head home. So we walked that way. On the way I asked if he wanted to walk through the robot area and he said yes and that he wanted to “See 3” (holding up his fingers), referring to the 3 at the end that he likes. We did that, then exited the park and stood in the entryway. He was fixated on the big I SEOUL U letters and studied them for a few minutes.
He seemed less sure about leaving now, and I ran over some options. I asked if he wanted to go read Oh No! at the Children’s Museum and he jumped at that one. So we went there, and straight up to the second floor reading room. He saw the texture squares, so we got those down and sorted those for a minute, then got Oh No! and read that. He then grabbed a book called Et Pourquoi Pas Toi? (And Why Not You?) from the shelf and we looked at that for several minutes. The pages are divided in half horizontally, and you can mix and match the pages to show people doing a whole variety of activities. He quite liked that. He helped clean up the room a bit (he saw a magnifying glass and wanted to put it away, and instructions for a game). He suggested going over to the toddler area at one point, but I was trying to avoid getting his germs on too many things, so I was fine when he changed his mind and wanted to head home. We changed him and walked to the subway station and got home around 4.
At home we started with reading. He surprised me by reading straight through Mac, the fourth Bob Book, with barely a stumble, then we read Dot and the Dog. We got down on the floor and did backwards alphabets for awhile, then got out the iPad and our styluses and did some art. He had gone back to math when Carly got home around 5:30.
He nursed and was almost falling asleep. We got him to wake up by asking him to read to Carly, so he read Mac. We played with balloons for awhile, then he was playing on his own with the magnets and floor tiles, then suddenly ran to the closet and was trying to get the vacuum out. Carly helped him get it out, and he wanted her to vacuum. He sat on the couch and watched her vacuum, and he wanted me to sit with him while he watched.
He wasn’t much into dinner, but ate a little with Carly. She gave him a bath, and he fell asleep about 7:20.
New words/phrases: reading ‘not’, ‘tag’, ‘rag’, ‘sat’, ‘hot’, ‘sit’, ‘hid’
A new song:
Children’s Grand Park:
Playground. Reading the Hangeul:
Children’s museum. Learning French:
Oh No!:
Home:
