August and Carly were up at 5:30. I was up at 7. He remembered the ‘ssss’ sound in the piano and asked “Where is the S sound?” and wanted to open the piano. He remembered the Wheels on the Bus book, and we spent a long time reading and playing with that. He likes to make up crazy names for the babies that are crying on the bus.
Then we had to say bye to mama as she headed to work for a few hours. This was a tough one. We decided to walk to the bus with her, thinking it might make it a little easier, and be easier to distract him with the playground afterwards. But we got downstairs and outside and Carly realized she had forgotten to pack any food. So we said goodbye there, and I took August off to the north, intending to go to the playground. We made it there, but August was having none of it, and wanted to go home. We walked around part of the building and I was hoping Carly had left, but as we approached the elevator lobby, she walked out. I quickly covered August’s eyes and ducked out the side doors. He hadn’t seen her. At this point he had calmed down enough to where he was only having a little sniffle every few seconds. But he was disappointed when we got home and started crying again. He wanted me to put my shoes back on, and we went outside. He calmed again, then cried a bit more when we got out of the elevators. As we walked out of the building, I said “Cuddle with dada?” And he put his arms around my neck and cuddled against my neck. Did that for awhile, then covered his eyes and put his head down on my shoulder. We walked over to the park and to the fake stream area, which is on. We looked at the pond, stream, and waterfall and he slowly improved. On the way back, we saw someone had put blue paint on the ‘mama statue’ and looked at that. Before we went back inside I took a photo of August. Even though he had calmed pretty well down, he still looked so sad in the photo.
I had been talking about things we could do when we went home (part of the ‘Zinnie and dada have fun’ part of the day) and he had come up with the idea of watching Zinnie videos on my phone. So we did that for awhile. When he was done with that, he played some iPad – watching Kipper and trying some other things. He then put the iPad away on the table (I had cleared the table of my laptop, so we now have a nice clear table for eating on, and is home to our iPads) and a bit later found the tongs in a drawer. I taught him how to use them – another skill learned pretty well by the end of the day – and we used them to pick up shapes and plastic fruit/veggies. He then started playing more with the fruit and veggies, and was holding them in his mouth and then ‘patooieing’ them into the container. All was fine until 10:30 when suddenly he got sad again and wanted to go outside. Seemed pretty tired, and it had been 5 hours. At about the same time, I got an email from Carly saying she was on her way home in a few minutes.
So August got in the stroller and we went walking around the park. We stopped at the mama statue and he got out and stood on it and inspected the paint. His favorite is the big glob of it on one of the eyes that has a drop of paint hanging down. We continued to walk around the park, stopping to push buttons on the signs. He then got mellow and we just walked around on the opposite of the park. He covered his eyes at one point, and I got out his sunglasses and he wore those for several minutes, and was still wearing them when we saw Carly get off a bus.
Back at home, he ended up on the bed, nursing, and doing a sort of remembering game, talking about things he remembered. In particular, he talked about the bus ride from the airport: “lights in tunnel on distance part…neighborhood part it makes stops” We thought he would go to sleep soon, but he just kept getting up; seemed really excited to have mama home. Eventually, she was falling asleep, so I took him out and he had to cry for a couple minutes. Let him go back in, and he fell right asleep at 2:20.
I did a bunch of catching up on the blog and other stuff, then left at 4:15, leaving a note for Carly. I was headed to Hoegi to deal with our phones: I had lost my SIM card, and Carly’s SIM needed to change from the old size to the new smaller sizes due to us upgrading phones this summer. Took what seemed like way too long to get there (just about an hour – the entire length of Pearl Jam’s Vs., it turns out) to get there, only to find out the the ‘global’ store didn’t have anyone that spoke English. So I could have just walked up to Nowon. Got half accomplished: I got my replacement SIM, but in order to transfer the phones for Carly I needed her ARC card. The number, and a photo of her card, just wouldn’t work, as they need to photocopy everything. So headed home. Stopped at Daiso and got August a new spray bottle to replace the one we lost in June, and took a look at the board game cafe called the Dice Latte.
Carly and August had slept to 5, and when I got home were making fried rice. August had really helped with the sauce, and when I got there was ‘washing’ dishes over and over. We ate the delicious fried rice for dinner, and then in an evening all went for a walk, with August in the stroller. Walked up to the spider web playground and played there for a few minutes. August talked about wanting to play with other kids. But there weren’t really kids to play with, and there were mosquitos. We headed back, and stopped again at the playground by the youth center. August mainly walked on the ledges, and watched a bigger girl climbing a tree and tried it himself.
We walked home, and August and Carly fell asleep at 10.
Sad boy:
Skyping with gramma and grampa:
After watching videos and remembering the ‘Other hand’ song:
Patooie:
Park. Blue paint on the statue:
Buttons:
Sunglasses:
Back home:
Evening walk:
Tree climbing:
