I was in the bathroom when he got up at 7:47. He didn’t make a sound, just walked around the house until he found me, then wanted to go plug the cords into my computer. Did that for a bit, then wanted to play on his iPad, then with the blocks. He made a “funny F” out of Duplos and I said the extra bit looked like a hand. He then had the F waving out the window to Bluie, who was apparently going to Safeway. He then said that Bluie got hit by a black car. Bluie was okay though, escaped for a scraped knee, which August kissed. We did some drawing on paper, and he drew a K with a hat on. He then wanted me to write a lot of numbers, like 300,002 and 300,006. He then wanted letters in them, like 300,00Z. We managed to get out of the house by 9:30 to head to the big zoo, on our quest to find a new animal.
Train went smoothly, building things in apps on the way down. Stopped at CU on our walk in and got veggie chips, kimbap, a mango soy milk, and a little sandwich for lunch. We saw the flamingos and giraffes, then sat under the blue covered area and ate lunch. He was done eating before me, and wanted to get started on the quest. I told him I wanted to eat a banana first. When I tried to get him to take a bite, he said “Nope. That is not part of the quest…want new animal.” But before we got to animals, he got sidetracked by a couple of Angry Birds rides. I told him we wouldn’t put money in them, and he was fine with that, but played in them for 10 minutes anyway.
We had looked at the map, and he decided that the ‘Australian Pavilion’ would be our first stop. We’d never been to that building before, though we’d seen the emus. Well, the building is closed, which bugged him – he kept talking about going in it anyway, and when we went to the nocturnal pavilion later, as we approached he said maybe there was a sign that said ‘Do not enter’, referring to the sign in front of the Australian Pavilion. Anyway, we did see the emus, wallaroos, and kangaroos, and our first official new animal for us was the Australian cassowary.
We then went next door to the Insectarium. There, our new animal was the bichir, and he spent a lot of time looking at the ornamental spiders. He really wanted to see the centipedes, but we couldn’t see any in their cages. He asked “where’d the cementapedes go?” I really liked hearing him say “Australian Pavilion” as well. His favorite part though was the building out back, with the fake streams, etc. and all the toads and salamanders and turtles. Mainly he liked that each cage had a temperature setting on it, and we could read them. Also kind of cool to see how they were kept at different temperatures.
He’d been having me carry him a lot, which made me think he was a bit tired, but it was still rather early. But the moment I asked if he was tired, he wanted to go home. And when I said we couldn’t do that right now, he had a meltdown. He calmed down though, and I got him changed and in the backpack. As we got going, he said “No go home” as if he had changed his mind and was making sure we weren’t headed home. He fell asleep in about 10 minutes, at 1:21, but kind of woke back up a bit both when I bought the cheap latte outside, and when I set him down inside the cafeteria building. But he put his head back down and went back to sleep.
He woke up at 2:37. Wanted to get going, and we went outside, but then I asked if he wanted to look at the map and he said yes. So we sat on a platform and I gave him a bunch of options. His final decision was “Nocturnal pavilion THEN playground”. He stuck with that plan, even as we went by the playground first. But first actually we walked through part of the bird area that we hadn’t seen before. Peacocks and chickens, and a display on nests. We also walked by the tropical birds building, which we haven’t been to. But nocturnal animals it was. We went in, and saw the kinkajous, slow loris, bats, owls, and porcupines. He was asking a lot of them “How you doing?” As we left later, he was asking “How you doing flamingoes…How you doing Seoul Grand Zoo?…How you doing Seoul Grand Park?” And I would have them talk to him. Oh, and back at home he had wanted to call the giraffes, wanting to know their phone number. So that conversation continued with them when we saw them at the zoo.
From there we walked back to the playground. He had seen the one random concrete slide along the way, and wanted to go down it. Looks steep, but turns out it barely slides – he had to scoot his way down. Then went to the playground, where he mainly played on the two climbing walls. He sat on the first one, and identified the animals on the handholds, and counted the colors of them. Then went to the second wall, where he looked at the shapes again, and decided which ones I liked. I had told Carly we would probably be late, and we were. Headed out around 3:45, changed him, and was leaving the park just after 4. By the time we walked to the station, etc. we weren’t home until just before 6.
As we transferred to the bus at Changdong (we took line 4 home), he was asking for the name. I told him, and he said “Where you (I) were born.” He meant ‘Cheongdam’. When he asks what is at Cheongdam on the map, I always include that. Had to change him, but told him we could go straight to the bus if he liked, as I was afraid we’d miss a bus if we stopped. But I told him if we did that we’d have to change his diaper first thing when we got home. It worked: we did just catch a bus, and when we got home he took Carly right into the changing room to change his diaper. While we were sitting on the bus he was pretending he was driving it.
They nursed, then read books that she had brought home from the school library: Planting a Rainbow, Night Becomes Day, Manama Iguana, Goodnight Gorilla. He then had her write numbers on the paper, like earlier: 300014, etc. They then spent quite awhile counting crayons. He would put more crayons in a line, then she would count them. He would count along, and clap when she finished. He then played by himself for quite awhile, with the iPad, and with the floor puzzles. Carly gave him a bath, then he played Duplos with me while she took a shower. We were working on the zoo after he made an ‘E’. At 9 I told him it was time to read stories and go to bed. We read Kipper’s Birthday and The I Love You Book. For the latter, he actually only wanted to read the sad baby page and talk about why the baby was sad. Carly was ready for bed just before 9:40. August at first wanted to give me just a pretend forehead kiss, but then gave me a really good forehead kiss, and an actual kiss. Oh, and he was doing the “I love you a ton of Ts, Zs, Xs…” things as well. He had a lot of good non-letter ones as well. And earlier, after he had gotten upset and was in the backpack, he also gave me a really long forehead kiss before we got walking. They fell asleep in short order, about a quarter to 10.
Plugging in the cords:
Seoul Grand Zoo:
Spider:
Home: