7:33. A sad wake up today. Quite a change after asking about the pink wawa and barely mentioning Carly the last few days. Finally, I sat down by the stuffed animals, and that did the trick. August wanted to do the piano keys and for Green Monster to come. We did that, and August wanted to start playing Wheels on the Bus with only a couple keys in. Instead, we started doing Are You Sleeping? and he immediately started picking up the words to that. Later, he was asking about a word in a New Order song, and in the evening, we were listening to a Carrie Akre live album, and he was asking about words. Got his iPad out so I could shower, and after that he wanted to do funny sentences – he was referring to the Freespeech app and had it open. He asked about this yesterday, but I couldn’t figure out which app he was talking about – we haven’t used it in a few months. Anyway, had fun with that and he created a few crazy sentences. We then played with play dough, and he wanted to combine them, and we ended up making a small collection of marbles using various combinations. We put them in the little containers we used to use for banana bread and other snacks – they are too small for our snacks nowadays. August wanted to take them with us, so we talked about where we could and couldn’t take them out on our trip, then he put them in the backpack. He got the brick red pastel out, and was drawing on the paper. He said it was “a fire extinguisher”. Color must have reminded him. I took him in to change him, and he was pretending to draw letters in the air and on the floor. Then he actually drew two Ks on the floor. He didn’t want to clean them up, but then also refused to say “please” when asking/telling me to do it. He got upset, but we worked it out by doing it together using our robot cleaning.
So we got out a little after 10. There was a festival being set up in the park, and it turns out it is a children’s festival. There was a table with puzzles, etc. They were still setting up though, so we thought about coming back later. As we left the building, he smelled something and said “I smell a little gross.” As we walked through the park, he saw the family statue and called out hi to it – something he hasn’t done in a long time. We went and said hi, and he asked how they were doing. As we left, we heard music from across the street. August said “The baby was a little scary…little scared of the drumming.”
We made our way north, transferring at Dobongsan, then onto the U-Line and going one stop to Beomgol. Walked a block east to 호동어린이공원. We had heard a few drops of rain while waiting for the train, so at the park August thought we should sit on the covered platforms. There was a woman and a man on them, who talked to us a bit. We ate lunch, including some kimbap we had bought in Dobongsan Station. We talked about all the parks in Uijeongbu, and he said “There’s one bajillion parks…there’s two bajillion parks.” He was dancing/doing yoga on the platform and I asked “Are you doing yoga?” His reply “No. I’m not.”
We went and played on the playground. Down the slides several times, etc. He climbed on the little plastic climbing thing, but didn’t seem to like it much. He started pretending to take it out and build a good climbing wall, talking about the shape of the climbing handles and their colors. We finished up at that park and decided to head to another one. Along the way, we saw a car being cleaned, and then he started looking at all the cars along the way and deciding if they were clean or dirty: “This one’s not too bad…that one’s a little messy…that one looks pretty clean…that one came by was dirty…that one was clean. Lots of them are dirty.”
We got to the second park, 범골어린이공원, and that turned out to be the winner for the day. Bigger slides and a climbing wall. First went down the spiral tube slide, which he called the dark one. Did that several times, and wanted me to go down after him. He liked talking to me through it but not being able to see me. Sitting at the bottom, I knocked on the slide up around the curve and that started him. He climbed up over me to see what it was, then said “That scared me a little.” He then moved to the straight covered slide. At the bottom of that, he saw women on the picnic structure having a picnic. So he wanted to have a pretend picnic. We talked about all the foods in our picnic and pretended to eat them.
He then went to the rocking car things, which were by the women. That got him a lot of attention, and he’s getting pretty good at holding up three fingers when people ask how old he is. There was also a girl playing at the park that was talking to him a bit, and rocking him in the car things.
We then went over to the climbing wall, and he worked on that a lot. He was talking to the climbing wall, asking how it was doing. I had the wall say something about it being happy to have a kid climbing on it, and August said “Zinnie is a kid. Zinnie is a boy. Zinnie is a truck(?). Zinnie is a people. Dada is a people.” Then, he spotted a bead in the sand, and we started collecting them. Got up to 44 of them at the end. We counted them on the bricks.
Now past 1:30, more than six hours, and we got walking for his nap. But first saw a weird Pinnochio piece of furniture thing on the side of the street that we examined. We walked by two more playgrounds to check them out, but they weren’t too exciting. He fell asleep right about at the perfect spot, as we were nearing our usual book cafe. He slept from 2:07 to 3:20. He wanted to read Everyone Poops after he woke up, so we went and looked at the books and grabbed a total of 6, and sat on the steps and read them all. The others were Dear Zoo (nice, but why are all the animals male?), ME! ME! ABC, One Bear at Bedtime (which was really cool, and by Mick Inkpen), and two Donald Crews books: Ten Black Dots and Tomorrow’s Alphabet.
Got walking around 4. He was very interested in all the Uijeongbu stops and bus numbers. Went to Daiso, and was able to find watercolor paints and brushes. Still no chalk. He was really interested in the piggy banks, and did a good job of putting things back. As we walked, he was chanting math – he definitely has ‘zero’ down, chanting “zero plus 4 is 4, zero plus 3 is 3…” He was then making up crazy math problems involving billions and trillions, etc.
Headed home. A guy handed us a sample for a packet of nuts and berries. Ate that on the train. He had one cashew while on line 1. Took a few minutes to wait for the transfer, so about 10 minutes later he was doing okay and had more on the train. The cranberries were his favorites. Had a couple more cashews, and as we were pulling into Nowon, he started complaining, and did his almost throw up thing. Had me thinking he was having an allergic reaction, although he’s had cashews before. I had already planned in my mind riding to Hagye and taking him to the emergency room, but after he did the coughing thing he was completely fine – just a case of getting nut pieces stuck in his throat.
Festival was done for the day as we walked through at 5:30. Bought some kimbap and a sausage on a stick from a vendor, then headed home. Carly was in the shower. Distracted August by eating our food. The sausage was pretty spicy, and he reacted like he did in Chelan when he kept eating something spicy. He took 5 or 6 bites though. But for the last one, Carly was in the room, so he went to her to nurse.
After awhile we went outside, stopping to get a couple bop burgers and a large peach Mama Juice to share. Walked over to the park and sat on the fountain area, until the women came to start their dance aerobics class. We went over to the playground and he played there. The main thing was when he went to the little metal bars/steps and climbed them on his own. Then across the shaky bridge, then up the big step/ladder, and down the metal slide. All things he couldn’t/wouldn’t a couple weeks ago. Did that loop several times. Played on the exercise
equipment as well. Getting dark and mosquito-y, so we headed home. Carly was holding his hand as we walked and squeezed it a little. He said “That hurt me a little bit.”
At home, they nursed, then played and did some reading. He was then playing with Duplos on his own, making Duplo arte abstracto. I gave him a bath and we talked to the letters. They went in to sleep about 9, but at 9:25 he came out to me. A couple minutes on the Duplos, then I said we had to read. I suggested on the iPad. He liked that idea. We haven’t done that much, as having the iPad out usually leads to him wanting to do other things. But tonight he was very much into the books. Maybe a little overexcited about turning the pages, but not too bad. A nice development though, as I’ve purchased several children’s books. We read Swirl by Swirl (about swirls in nature), Fall Leaves (about the season), Carly Cat, Chu’s Day, and several pieces from Classic Nursery Rhymes. We were reading those when at 9:43 he said “I’m going to bed” and did so.
One sentence he said several times today to both me and Carly was “Thanks for talking to me.” At first I was confused where it came from, but then I realized I have a lot of the objects that he talks to say it: the climbing wall, the concrete benches after we left the coffee shop today, etc.
Waking up:
Marbles:
Walking:
Park 1:
Walking:
Playground 2:
Book cafe:
Walking to Daiso:
Home:
Duplo art:
