He got up at 7. Woke up saying “Do letters”. He and Carly skyped with Cassie and Cherie, and I got up after that. He and Carly were looking at the Yoga book and having Peter Rabbit do yoga. Carly changed him, then he played with the animal magnets and he and I worked on the small puzzles in the changing room. Carly made him oatmeal, and we listened to Basho and Friends. He was standing on the couch and said “No, yes, undecided” as he looked at the table, floor and couch. Carly had said this yesterday as we discussed where he was allowed to stand. He and I got out his little bucket of play dough from Daiso and opened that. We used the little car shape in it to make cars, then used our letters to make letters out of play dough. I ate Cheerios for breakfast, and he had some as well. He then read and nursed with Carly, and came out and played in the sink. Morse nursing, then Carly had to leave a little before 11for her NHD meeting in Itaewon.
He watched some ABC songs as I got ready to go. One song has a pig using tools to make something as he sings and there is a cloud of dust. August thought this was funny and said “All the dust!”
We walked towards Dream Forest. I thought he would make it most of the way there, but as we walked under the tracks he hid behind his hands. On the other side he kept his eyes covered, put his head down, and fell asleep a few minutes later. So I turned off by Lotte Castle and went to Ediya Coffee, where he slept from 12:22 to 1:43. Carly was done with her meeting by then and heading home. So instead of continuing to Dream Forest, we walked back and went to 나팔꽃어린이공원 (Morning Glory Children’s Park). We’ve been here once before.
There was an older boy that was really interested in him and talking to us a bit. August wanted to play in the faucets, so we did that. He was getting his shoes wet so I took them off. A few minutes later a woman with a walker came up to us and kept telling me he should be wearing shoes. Sigh. From there we moved to the sand, where he did some digging and burying garbage and playing with a yellow ball that someone had left at the park. But he spent the most time sitting on/next to me and writing letters in the sand. Eventually, he wanted to “Go home, find Smokey.” I had mentioned that we had forgotten Smokey on our walk from home, and August wanted me to turn back for a second. I changed him, and he ate a bunch of strawberries before we got going.
Derek and messaged me, saying they were headed to Junggye Park, so we met him and Logan and Rosie at the bridge and walked with them. There was a little festival back at our park, so August and I grabbed some popcorn chicken, potatoes, and a mango juice and set up the picnic mat on top of a little hill by the playground. Logan really wanted a balloon, so they wandered around looking for the balloon man without luck until Derek needed to feed Rosie. Meanwhile, August and I enjoyed our food, and August did a little dance thing while eating chicken. As I packed up, he walked down the hill and there there was a girl that tried pulling his hair. I missed that, as he was down by Derek.
We all went up to the apartment (I’d warned Carly) so Derek could feed Rosie. August and Logan drew on the paper together, knocked down all the blocks and played in them, and played xylophone together. August was having a lot of fun having them over, and was crawling around like a baby. He also played around with Derek. Rosie had a nice throw up, so she got to borrow August’s old dinosaur shirt.
After they left, Carly gave August a bath, then he played in the sink for a long time. He and I played on the bed, reading Marvin K. Mooney and the Korean textbook, and with Bluie and GM (earlier he had thrown them down the side of the bed and figured out how to get down in the crack himself to get them – he did more of that and also put them in the crack between the beds). Back out on the paper, he wanted me to do dots and he wrote letters. He was giving them all little extra flourishing, and I started to call them ‘abstracto’ letters. He went through the alphabet a couple times, doing abstract letters. Then he wrote on the floor, but when I asked where he was supposed to draw he didn’t want to say “On paper”, he was trying to be funny and doing is “That’s not a K…” type of jokes. Finally, I said I needed to put the markers away and he immediately said “On paper”. He was then using two markers to write at once. A few weeks ago he was doing this, but really needed help to get the two markers in his hand correctly. Not a problem for him now.
I left at 8:30 to go hang out with Derek. August fell asleep not long after that, about 9.
New words/phrases: hasta luego, spelling ‘ball’, ‘words’, sounding out ‘walking’
Derek and I went up to Nowon and to a makoli and korean pancake place he goes to a lot. Had a good time, talking about books, movies, crazy stuff at APIS, etc. We moved out to a table outside for the last half hour or so. I took off at 11:45 and he headed up to Metro.
I got an email from Paul telling me that our Grandma Niman had passed away today. Got it just as I met up with Derek, so didn’t get to tell Carly and August about it until later. Kind of weird to realize that all of our grandparents are now gone.
New play dough:
Hiding on our walk:
Park:
Walking home:
Park:
Home:
Evening: