He was awake bright and early, right at 6. Nursed for a few minutes, then they came out. He was happy, and fine with Carly leaving for work. In the morning we watched a Dresden Dolls rehearsal on Periscope, then were listening to Young Fresh Fellow albums, which he seemed to like, as we played with Duplos and bricks. He built a tower out of Duplos and said “Smoke is coming out.” I was confused where he learned about a chimney until he then said “The light is flashing.” It was the power plant across the stream. Might also be why everything he imagined this morning was purple. He was counting the towers he made, and also calling them Q towers. At one point he was pretending the Duplos were letter crackers and pretending to eat them. We switched to the bricks and made a Q-shaped building, which he stood in, then a triangle one.
Eventually, we ate some cereal, brushed teeth, etc. and got going around 9:40. He was singing, then doing math on his fingers as we walked to the station. We took the train to Ttukseom, and got off. I had checked the website for the pools, which didn’t say anything about being closed Mondays. But as we approached the pool it seemed quiet. But then I saw the banner saying the pools were open from June to August 22nd. Good, that’s today. But then it was definitely closed. Walked to the front entrance, and the banner there had a ’21’ taped over the 22. Crazy. They closed the pools when it is still reaching 95 degrees. Not the only one surprised, as I saw several other families (at least 4) showing up.
August had no interest in the playgrounds, so we walked over to under the tracks, where he wanted to see a dance exercise class for a minute. He then wanted to go up into the J-Bug building. We wandered around in there, and up to the 3rd floor, where we looked at the animals. Ttukseom continues to disappoint: after taking out the coffee shop last year, and now the pool, more and more of the animals are gone. There haven’t been any crabs in the crab aquarium for months, and I’m now convinced the crawfish have been gone for quite some time. Now, they’ve removed all of the tanks for beetles. We went down to the library for awhile and looked at books. He didn’t mention the phone we had found again, but before we went in he talked about taking off our shoes because of the sign. Then when we got in, the sign wasn’t where it used to be, so he was asking where it went. He was pretty full of energy, so we didn’t last too long, as he was getting loud. He wanted to play in the elevator, so we went up and down a few times, him pushing all the buttons (he could reach them all! Hurray for wheelchair accessible elevators). We went back to the top floor and sat on the benches and ate crackers. He rolled around on the bench, and looked over the back at the view. Eventually, we changed him and got going.
I gave him some options and mentioned the possibility of walking to Konkuk University, one stop north. He didn’t know what it was, but was really excited by this. We got going, and found the tunnel under the highway. Stopped to look at the animal pictures inside. Just north was a nice area we’d never been in. Spotted some coffee shops for future use. After just a few minutes he fell asleep, and I found another coffee shop called Life on Mars. As I set him down I found something in one of my pockets of my swimsuit: his blue sunglasses. So have two pairs now. He slept there from 11:51 to 1:06. Woke up groggy and wanted out. Took him out and he just sat on the floor for a few minutes, then explored the coffee shop, leaning on chairs, etc.
We got walking. I carried him mostly and he did some walking as we headed north. Ran across something called the Gwangjin Arts Center. Looked around there. Nothing too exciting. One gallery space but nothing in it. We did like the statue of a robot head out front. Also, there were several fountains that would have been cool…if they were on. There was a glass elevator, and we had more fun with this one, riding up and down. He wanted to get off at each floor and see what was there. On the second, he stuck his head out and said “Eh”. We looked in through the windows on a pool at basement level. Then we headed out, stopping to get a bar out to eat and put him in the backpack now.
We walked up to Konkuk University. There, they have some stone plaques showing the history of different alphabets. He liked these, and we looked at Greek and Hebrew. Continued on and found the lake. Planned to sit on a bench and eat lunch, but he said “I’m not hungry…want to go home.” So we kept going. Walked by the mall where I’ve seen a few movies before. There are some colorful metal sculptures out of runners and people on bikes. We looked at and touched them, then went inside to refill his water. Then headed down to the subway. He was doing more math with his fingers. Oh, we were also playing the ‘More sad baby’ game. He said one, then said “Dada’s turn”. For something (baby bumping her head or something) he said the mama or dada said “wash it off and put a purple bandaid on it.”
On the subway he opened the Peg+Cat Big Gig music app. It is sort of a preschool Rock Band app where you copy a pattern of notes. It was cool to see, because he sort of just got it, but also clearly had to work hard to do it. On the way from the subway, I talked about the plan: go home for awhile, then head out in the stroller. We could stop at Mama Juice, then walk over to the youth center to try to get info on the indoor swimming pool. At the mention of Mama Juice, he said “Mama likes ant juice. But beetle juice has chunks of mango in it. That sounds yucky.” Right. It is the chunks of mango that would make that yucky…
So that’s what we did. Upstairs for about 10, then headed out. Got peach juice, then walked to the youth center. He was still processing what I was saying about the pool, as as we were walking he said something about the wading pool being off and seemed confused as to why we were going. So we went in the building as went down and looked in at the pool. He was excited, and wanted to go in. We got a brochure, then went out. He spent a few minutes inspecting a kid’s bike and turning the peddle. Then we were looking at the animal plaques (for lining up groups) and squirting the spray bottle. I looked down to find a moth crawling on my sandal. We then followed it and touched it a few times. It would sort of hop/fly a few feet. He yelled at it a bit and at one point touched it roughly, so a lot of talking about that, but he did okay. Eventually, it was climbing up a wall, so out of the way of shoes, and we said goodbye to it. Oh, and August was looking through the grates, and talking about touching the ‘bees’, which I said no. Then he said “pretend touch” and wanted me to, so I said okay. I pretended to be stung by a bee, which he thought was funny. But then, looking in the grate, I realized he meant ‘beads’ and not ‘bees’ – those little plastic ones we find everywhere. When I realized my mistake, he found it pretty funny.
We walked back to Brownstone and recycled our Mama Juice cup. August was looking in the recycling bins when Carly came up from behind and tapped August. We went up and they nursed and did some reading. We then had dinner – Carly made him a quesadilla and he ate a good amount of olives as well. August was being clingy to Carly when she was trying to eat, so I put on Beat Bugs, the new show on Netflix that uses music of the Beatles. He was surprisingly focused on it for the 23 minutes or so of the first episode.
The big activity of the evening though was taking all of the keys out of the piano and then putting them all back. Entirely on his own. I just helped him find what keys went next, and he put them in. He had figured out the trick for doing this in the morning, but it still took a long time. As he went, he would review the white keys, playing a scale and saying the names of the notes “C, D, E, F, G…” And also doing them descending “B, A, G, F, E, C…” I’ve never done scales like that wi
th him, at least not recently, and not for more than a few seconds at a time. He then made the connection to the xylophone, and was asking which color on the xylophone was which letter.
He then took a bath, with Carly today, and made a Colin/colon joke that he thought was funny when he asked where poop comes from. Carly said ‘colon’ and he said something like “Poop comes from Colin” and laughed. After the bath, they went in on the bed. Cary had stretched out, and he stretched out naked at a right angle to her, and somehow realized that they were making a ‘T’. He yelled out to me “come look at the T dada!” We then played on the bed. He was pretty hyper before bed. I read the Kiss Goodnight book as they came in and out of the room. He was turning the light on and off, and when he turned it on would say “Sooo bright!” like Carly does. He also said “want to pretend nurse” at one point. But then he was ready and went to sleep pretty easily around 8:30 or 8:40.
Morning:
Walking to the subway:
Library:
Elevator:
Cracker time:
Waking up:
Gwangjin Arts Center:
Konkuk:
Math as we enter the station:
Headed home:
Youth center:
Home:
Making a T:
