He was up bright and early at 5:40. I put together lunch and snacks while Carly was still here. The pollution was down and the weather was nice, so our first trip to the big zoo at Seoul Grand Park seemed in order. August was ready for that, and when asked what he wanted to see, the first thing he said was “giraffe”. So changing him and putting clothes on him went smoothly – he requested the tree shirt. We left the house at 8:30.
I was reminding him a lot that we would have a long subway ride, and it went pretty smoothly. Didn’t even get out the iPad much, as we sand the tongue twister song for quite awhile. Eventually, we got out the iPad but just used it to read Bob Books. Looked out the window across the river, then as we went through stations he would point out at each one and ask “This is?” and I’d tell him what station it was. We also sang our three languages song, focusing on ‘enormous’ – he remembered ‘enormous’ in Korean when I didn’t.
We made the long walk into the park and up to the children’s zoo. By the time we were actually in the zoo it was a little past 10, and August wanted to stay in the backpack and keep walking instead of getting out at the sheep. So we walked to the other side, watching the workers on the bridge cutting the stone for a minute. On that side we spent almost all our time in or outside the building with all the rabbits, mongoose, tamarins, marmosets, squirrels, birds, and turtles. We would go from inside to outside and back again, around in circles, looking at all the animals. There was also a zookeeper washing out some of the cages, which he liked.
We did that for quite awhile, then he decided he was hungry. We sat in a pagoda and ate and watched school groups come and get a little talk on the steps, then put on glove things and go and feed the rabbits. We goofed around a bit (he had spilled some soy milk, then joked about wanting more soy milk on everything else, and he sang an ABC sound song while making funny noises), then changed him and got in the backpack. Oh, and we threw our garbage away and turned on the water faucets, which was the first of many times of both looking in garbage cans and turning on faucets today. Not sure which he liked more: the animals, or those two activities.
We walked back and forth along the lake on some paths we had never been on in order to put him to sleep. We saw a coupe cranes and two different water birds we’d never seen before. One of them, which actually looked kind of penguin-like, dove and came back up with a big fish. He fell asleep and I found a picnic table and he slept from 11:56 to 12:39.
He woke up, and we walked over to the sheep. The machines with hay in them were empty (I don’t think they’d yet been filled today) so we were gathering some stray pieces to feed the sheep, when a couple of workers came along and started filling the machine. We waited until they were done and bought a bag. Then spent the next 20 or 30 minutes feeding the sheep. August was at first just trying to drop the pieces inside the fence. Which was kind of funny when his path was blocked by sheep trying to get it out of his hand and he was saying “uh-oh”. But he caught on and fed them a lot from his hand. I would also feed the sheep so August could pet them and write ‘ABC’ on them, and feel the horn of one of the rams.
Finally, it was time to move on, although we stopped near the entrance to first have a snack. We went out and across the street to the main zoo. Once in there, the first goal was giraffes, although on the way we saw the flamingos and stopped and looked at those for a couple minutes. We studied the big flamingo sign, then August wanted me to point out specific kinds of flamingos. Next were the giraffes. There was 3 of them, and we watched for a few minutes.
From there we started walking through the zoo. August was in explore mode, but there was so much to see he couldn’t decide which way to go. He led us up to where we saw the meerkats and fennec foxes, then he saw a statue of an elephant and wanted to find elephants. We saw hippos and water buffalo along the way. We found the elephants, but they were off in the distance. He wanted to get closer, but first we saw the playground and the stream.
We went down to the stream and he wanted his socks and shoes off. Took them off, then went and played on the rocks for 15 or 20 minutes, dipping his toes and fingers in the water, and generally having fun lightly holding my hand and walking from rock to rock. We went up to our backpack and ate a little snack, then he wanted his shoes on and went in the sand. He was talking a lot and seemed to entertain the two girls playing there. Someone before had dug a big hole, which August was standing at the edge of when it collapsed and he found himself sitting on the edge. Didn’t phase him though and he just sat and played there, writing shapes in the sand. First scribbles, playing the “This is a?” game, but then he was doing letters. He was having fun, but it was now past 3 and we needed to head home. Finally got him headed the correct direction. We saw the elephants again, which he wanted to “See elephants outside” (closer – we were already outside). Later he would say he was sad about not seeing them closer up. But we kept walking, and he wanted to turn on all the water faucets and look in the garbage cans. I skipped one set of faucets and he wasn’t too happy about that. But we did actually play at one set of them for a few minutes near the entrance.
We got to the subway and got a seat after one stop. We stayed on the 4 all the way up to Changdong (about an hour). More iPad this time. Off the train, August was talking about going home, but seemed to really understand the whole needing to first take a bus. He was interested in the bus numbers and looking for our bus (1144). We got home about 5:45.
He was pretty worn out after our long day and was looking to fall asleep nursing, but we managed to keep him up. He ate a little dinner, and did a lot of reading with Carly, then she gave him a bath and they did more reading. Earlier in the day he had been spelling ‘nine’ and ‘ten’ and working on ‘eight’. In the evening he also spelled ‘eight’, so he has all of the numbers 1 to 10. He and Carly were reading Wild About Books and he likes the big words from the insect critic, particularly ‘pretentious’.
He lasted until about 8, at which point Carly took him in to bed and he fell asleep a few minutes later.
New words/phrases: spelling nine and ten, 거대한 (enormous), spelling your and going, reading ‘food square’, reading ‘pretentious’, spelling eight
More soy milk on the olives:
Silly letter sounds:
Feeding the sheep 1:
ABC on the sheep and climbing the fence:
Feeding the sheep 2:
Feet in the water:
Waving his arms and “walk there”: Playing in the sand: This is a …:
Luch:
View from the nap spot:
Feeding the sheep:
Animals:
Rocks and stream:
Sitting on my lap:
Sand:
Water time:
Reading time with Peter Rabbit:
