7:10. More “See Dada” as he looked out the crack. Came out and we sat on the floor by the door to the parlor, playing. We were counting his owls and he noted that “both” the wall and my pants are messy, but that his hands are “clean”. He suggested the stains on the wall are “tea”. He then spent several minutes sitting on my lap typing to Carly, before getting up and wanting the iPad. Changed him, then we played Classify It! together on the iPad. Later in the morning we Skyped with my parents. August was still playing Classify It! then switched to Paper where he showed off his K writing. He then started importing photos of himself and drawing on top of them. He was making scribbles and playing “What is it?” and answered one on his own, saying “Grandma.”
We went to class and he wanted me to hold him during the beginning songs, but when roll call came we were able to sit and he raised his hand. We did stickers, then the activity today was about flowers. They got a bag of fake flowers and a rectangular block of foam to press them into. August really liked this and liked arranging his flowers – saying something like “Zinnie’s” or “Zinnie do it!” when he was done. When it was time to put them away though he was happy to do it and took both the bag and the block up to the teacher. He then insisted on putting everything in her large bag, including the extra blocks she had sitting on the floor. He made it all fit, then on his way back to me did a sort of double fist thing, like “I did it!” which made Soh Na’s grandmother laugh. We then played a Red Light, Green Light sort of game. At the end of class, he was excited by getting a handstamp – especially so given our recent playing with the picnic mat. He wanted “the green one” but was happy when it turned out to be Pororo. I then reminded him to say thank you/kamsamnida and he said “Kamsamnida!” for the first time, nice and loud. She really liked that. He also did a really good job saying goodbye to Soh Na and her grandmother (they are also in the Thursday class, so we see them more than anyone else).
We headed to Children’s Grand Park, buying kimbap, little eggs, and soy milk at GS 25. Along the way, he started making up variations on ‘bingo’, spelling ‘ingo’, ‘singo’, ‘dingo’, etc. and declaring “Name!” if it wasn’t a word (so he now knows about dingos). He wanted to eat by the rectangular pond again, and today was very interested in the music playing on the loudspeakers. He’s never done that before. He started by hiding to “Bingo”, then started pointing out every song that was a “New song” he hadn’t heard before and asking me to “Look it up” using Shazam (he’s starting to think that everything can be looked up – later when we were trying to remember words that end in -ey he also said “Look it up!”). They do play an interesting mix, from Korean kids’ songs like “Pig Song” to Annette Funichello’s “The Monkey’s Uncle” and “Let’s Get Together” by Hayley Mills. A crow came close, cawing, and August watched it and asked “how bout aah aah aah?”
A Korean guy came and talked to us for a couple minutes. August was getting impatient to throw our garbage away, so when he left we did that. I then realized I’d let August throw away the lid to the soy milk, which we still needed. I said “Oops!” and August thought it was funny, asking for “More dada oopsing!” We got the lid, washed it, changed him, and went walking. He protested for a second but let me put the sun shade up before he fell asleep today. He spotted one set of faucets from quite a distance so we turned those on, when he was done he actually said “Sleep” and we got walking. Didn’t take to long and he slept from 1:11 to 2:26. He woke up and played some Elmo Loves ABCs and ate my ice. It was now around 3, so we got going as we needed to go to Costco. It was suddenly very grey and a bit windy. Threatening rain, but it never came. We noticed that the fountains by the robots were now on, so he watched those and threw some rocks in the pond. We walked to the other end, him on tippy toes, then watched the fountains in the folktale area. We then headed out, changed him, and made our way to Sangbong and Costco.
A pretty quick trip at Costco, and not many people. We basically got a bag full of different cheeses. We also got two chicken bakes, and August really wanted one. I put them in the bag and he was very concerned to make sure we still had them. We went out and sat by the statue and ate one of them. August kept eating and eating, so I actually had to start eating it to keep him from eating the whole thing. He ate everything in it, but if he specifically saw a piece of spinach he would take it out, call it “Yummy” but then give it to me, saying “Not eating spinach.” Hard to tell, but I think he ate at least half of it. We were calling it ‘turkey’ at first, and I remembered we had spelled another -ey word earlier in the day. I finally remembered it was ‘Mooney’ from Dr. Seuss, then August wanted liked saying “turkey and Mooney” and requested “Another -ey word”. I thought of ‘joey’, so taught him that, then back at Hagye Station he saw the Goo Goo store so I taught him ‘gooey’. He had spelled ‘picnic mat’ earlier in the day, but was then chanting picnic as “P I C K N I CK” as we walked.
As we left the station he saw some graffiti on a bus sign and said “Who did that?” So a lot of new words I was teaching him today: in addition to ‘joey’ and ‘graffiti’ I had been teaching him ‘uncouth’ when he was trying to stand on the chair and get on the table in the coffee shop, and he spotted a little stream joining the bigger stream by the robots so I was teaching him ‘tributary’.
We got home about 5:20, after Carly. He was attached to Carly again for the evening. After his bath he was playing around with me for a little while, but then said “No dadaing!” It started to fall asleep and Carly took him in about 8, but he popped back up again. At one point he was reading the ‘namu’ sign on the wall, then turned off the light saying “Bye namu!” He came out to the living room and was writing on the paper. He started drawing a little line over the top of his J – he’s always just done lowercase ‘j’ before – so he was proud of himself. He wrote J and K over and over for awhile then was reading with Carly. She had brought home “presents” for him from the APIS library yesterday and they read more today, including Marvin K. Mooney. August wanted to “nurse and read”, so I read Hop on Pop. He wanted to skip to the eating page, so I read really fast. He found this funny, so I read the entire book as fast as I could a couple times.
Carly took him in soon after that, but it took quite awhile for him to fall asleep, sometime around 10.
New words/phrases: spelling ‘picnic mat’, kamsamnida, sangsaengnim blows bubble (he said this several hours after class, randomly), spelling ‘more water’, reading ‘exit’, another GS25, pretty funny
Sitting on the floor:
Classify It!:
Class:
Lunch spot:
Aaa aaa aaa like the crow:
Tippy toe:
Watching the bigger fountain:
Costco. Signing “more”:
Pigeon:
Headed home:
Trying out the teething ring again:
