Another rainy day. He was up at 6:30. Got on the iPad before Carly left. He found the Colors app, and I introduced him to color mixing (blue and yellow make green, etc.) and he liked that. We played with Peter Rabbit a lot, joking about him breaking the rule of stepping on the iPad. We used Garageband on the iPad to record our first song, the XYZ song. It was hard to get him to stay quiet long enough so I could record the piano track, but then he really liked singing along to it when I played it back, and then singing along with ourselves for a second vocal track. He got Smokey out of the backpack for a bit. Finally, we watched the video from class and brushed his teeth. At some point this morning he was listening to music and started “stepping to the music” in the living room.
We went to class, unsure if it was happening, since today had been declared a holiday just a week ago. There was class, and it went really well. August knows the songs really well now, and was into dancing around to the beginning songs. The biggest surprise was when she did the roll call thing and he actually let me stand him up, he took a couple steps forward, and let the teacher give him a hug. He liked the activity of pushing a caterpillar through holes in fruit (it was basically a Very Hungry Caterpillar thing), then crawling through tubes (which he has been hesitant to do before). At the end of class he got two Poby (a polar bear) stamps on his hands and said thank you (in Korean) and bowed when I asked him to. The teacher handed out free soy milk drinks – he drank one there and we saved the second for lunch.
We got in the backpack and headed to Children’s Grand Park. Hadn’t used the cover on the way to Home Plus, but put it up for the walk to the subway. Bought kimbap and eggs. Drizzling when we arrived about 11:30. Tried to go in the children’s museum, but August said “No!” as I walked in – he was getting tired and it was busy, so made sense. I suggested by the rectangle pond, where there is a covered picnic bench. When we got there he wanted me to keep walking – I think he was about ready to fall asleep. But I gave him the option of a table with chairs back under the cover of the building and he chose that one. We ate lunch, then got ready to go. While sitting at the table he started kicking it with his foot, making noise, and made up a little “Mooka Mooka” song. I changed him and took him to the picnic table to put him in the backpack. His shoes were wet from the ground, and as I put him in they made a squeaking sound. He asked what the noise was and he kept asking for more squeaking. He was looking at the wall and workers have patched the cracks in it. He saw the lines and asked “Who did that?” I told him it was the workers. He then thought all the lines looked like “Japanese.” – that has been his default now for letters/etc. that don’t look familiar. We walked around the cover of the building, much like Tuesday, until he fell asleep.
He fell asleep from 12:49 to 2:05. We were upstairs. When he woke up the first thing he said was “More shoes squeaking”. He did some drawing on Paper for iPad, then saw the bags of banana snacks. I said we could but them, and he pointed to the woman we know best, sitting behind the counter, and said “There she is.” We practiced saying “Please give me banana snacks” but he got shy. we walked over to the display case and he repeated me one word at a time: “바나나 스낵 추서요.”
He wanted to go see animals, so we headed out. Just barely drizzling. We got to the covered space by the primates and he was reading off all the labels on the garbage/recycling cans. It was raining harder, and he was the only person in the park in short sleeves and no hat. Eventually I put on his coat as he wanted to keep playing in the rain. He got very sad about this and was sad for a few minutes. “A long sad” I called it. Eventually he ate some banana and then was ready to get going towards home. But he spotted the conservatory and wanted to go in. We went in but he changed his mind about seeing the fish, but we did show Smokey the banana trees (we had talked about that before) and August wanted to see the mossy elephant sculpture. Back outside, we spent several minutes going back and forth between the little fountains by the entrance and the bigger fountains with the frogs. Eventually he wanted down and sort of stood close to the small fountains so he could throw little rocks in them. I let him do two, then said we should go to the stream by the robots to do more.
So we did that, but the stream wasn’t on. He did throw a couple rocks in the fountains at either end, then wanted to talk to his three favorite robots. We did that, then headed home. I had changed him after his nap, so didn’t do so now. As we left, we saw kids walk by blowing whistle things. He liked the sound, so we tracked down where they came from – you got them free by the entrance. There was still the children’s festival going on, although kind of a wet one. We got a butterfly whistle thing and some button pins – he particularly liked the one with a fox on it, and eventually put it in his coat pocket. You could get a free set of crayons if you first drew a picture, but when we went to that tent it was crowded, so August suggested we “draw at home”. We took one last look at some of the random/funny sculptures (August had liked the giraffes out of flowers, a robot-like dragonfly thing, and a few more) then headed home. This whole time we had been singing the Basho and Friends “Hasta Mañana” song over and over.
On the subway he played with the whistle/hand fan thing. It was shaped like a butterfly. One side was blue and the other pink. He started flipping it back and forth saying “blue fly, butterfly”.
Got home right at 5. Figured Carly wasn’t home yet, so on the first floor I gave him the options. He actually came up with the option of going up and then waiting at the elevators. So we did that. Two minutes and then Carly showed up. He nursed and they read (he is really into doing both at once – a bit later he would request “Nurse and type”), then we had pizza for dinner. I put on an album of clarinet and accordion klezmer music, as there was some music playing at the park that August liked that reminded me of it. August listened a bit, then excitedly said “Write numbers for the music!” He started writing on the paper, numbers at first, but then other things. He drew his first sun, making a circle and lines around it.
I gave him a bath, then he was back to Carly. They Skyped with Cherie. He and I read Frog on a Log while Carly and Cherie talked, then he went back and was having Oma make letters with her fingers. He was asleep about 9:20.
Oh, in the morning he had been doing art on the iPad and pulled up the photo of him by the art museum yesterday. He was asking where the ball was that he couldn’t play with, and I told him it was just off to the right. So he talked a couple times about taking photos of a “B A L L” today. Didn’t actually happen, but he remembered again in the evening. Also, this spelling things out thing is something he does from time to time.
New words/phrases: dada forgetting his phone, ask dada
Mixing colors:
Class:
Children’s Grand Park. Lunch:
Looking at trees with Smokey after his nap:
Sad about the coat:
At the fountains:
Home: