Tons of word-related activities today and music. And realized that he is suddenly writing the letters of words in pretty straight lines, drawing all his letters lower case, and writing Korean words pretty easily.
He was up at 5:55 to nurse. Fell back to sleep a little, but was back up at 6:20. Fine with Carly leaving today. He was looking at the pronunciation guide on the Hangeul app, and really getting into the complex vowels like ㅞ. He said “Want to write that crazy Hangeul.” So we went and got the paper and crayons and started writing all the complex vowels. Then writing other things. He invented “ㄷ turns to ㅁ turns to popsicle” by drawing a stick on it. We wrote other Korean words, then he was getting hungry. We decided to make French toast again. At first he was frustrated it wasn’t already done, but then he went and got his stool and helped make it. Ate that, then we read the Daniel Tiger doctor book and retold Biscuit Steps on a Mooka Mookasa. He played Metamorphabet as I showered, then we did more Hangeul pronunciation together.
He decided he wanted to go outside, so we started to head that direction: put a diaper on him and his new dinosaur hoodie shirt. But then he started playing Endless Wordplay for the first time in months. They are in lowercase – I think that is where the lowercase writing later came from. Also, the robot in the game sneezes, and he really liked that. He also wanted me to explain the line “I must be allergic to something.” He would repeat that throughout the day.
He had some maximum silly time, confusing Sophie and talking about letters on the door. He then wanted to play Figure. We did that, and he had another long silly session where he was talking about the names of the sounds and making up new ones. He was then getting into the temp setting and counting beats when I showed him how to do that. And he was reading and spelling the words in the app: shuffle, tempo, and sound names. Without me asking, he said “Your chin is feeling better…your chin is feeling good.” Finally, he spent a few minutes typing nonsense stuff into the Wikipedia search bar, finding it funny to get the ‘No articles available’ message each time.
Headed out about 10:50. Went to Home Plus to get some lunch. Again, planned to eat in the park. He spent some time writing Hangeul with his finger on his favorite spot on the floor, then looked at the little plant jars and touched them gently. Went to kimbap and sandwiches and told him we could get two total. He kept trying to convince me to get some combination of 3 as he couldn’t make up his mind. Ended up with our usual kimbap pack and a ham and potato sandwich which was surprisingly good. He decided it would be fun to hang on the side of the stroller and have me push him. Did that through much of the store.
Went out and sat on the side of the building again and ate. At the end made jokes about being allergic to the benches, post, etc. Went back in at 11:50 and got up to class as they were doing the forward rolls. He said “skip it” to the forward rolls, but walked the path once, which is progress. Class was about spiders. He put on the “spider backamapack”, as he called it, and kept it on until the big walking path at the end. He asked me “what’s in there?”, and then he said things like “Larabar, water bottle, iPad…” Spider-related activities, so we learned the words for ‘spider’ and ‘fly’. The teacher was playing with the fly, making an “Aaaaa!” sound for the buzzing. August was confused at first and had to ask me what the teacher was doing – we make a “buzzzz” sound in English. But then he understood, and one time when the teacher stopped, August said “Aaaaa!” at the same pitch. The teacher thought that was pretty funny. They crawled around like spiders, then there were two activities picking up flies and putting them on webs with velcro. Then we put the flies in silk, also with velcro. The final activity was a walking path. The teacher lay under the rope net bridge like a spider. August walked over it 4 times – 3 with the teacher under. The first time, when he tried tickling August’s feet, August got smart and balance barred it along the frame. The second time he walked right over the teacher, then he balance barred it again. August got his treat, did a good bow, and got a handstamp at the end of class.
We took the stroller so we could head right out for nap time, since he had woken early. But he was amped up after class. He requested the A Ah Apples song, and we spent 13 minutes explaining all the lines to the song. I tried to move on to a different song at some point, but he wanted to go all the way to Z. We walked south, past the hospital. By the park we spotted a little caterpillar crawling on the ground. Watched that for a couple minutes. Said bye to it after I assured August it would find its way to the plants. Walked to the trail entrance to the university across from Comma Cafe, up to campus, and wandered about. August would put his head down for a minute, then sit up and start singing. I talked to him a couple times about taking a nap, and he would put his head back down. But when I did that in the university he said “No”. That was actually a good sign, and soon after that he nodded off as we wandered some streets SE of Comma Cafe and the park. Took 57 minutes and 2.15 miles. Hadn’t paid attention to my coffee choices, but now realized that the first three were too full or had multiple steps up to them. Luckily, a lot of choices, and found Cafe Geuneul.
He slept 1:25 to 2:35ish. He woke up once in there and just stared at the white brick wall for a minute then went back to sleep. A slow wake up at the end, then we headed out. Went to 국화어린이공원, which I today decided we would henceforth call ‘the writing park’, since this is where the letter writing and C to O to Q really started, and today we wrote letters and words for over an hour.
Met a guy who was picking up his kids from the kindergarten across the street. Talked to him for a minute. His wife is a nurse at the hospital. August and I started drawing letters, and I wrote his name in Korean: 아그스트. So August would step on in and say “Step 아그스트!” We took a break to eat the rest of our lunch. He was doing counting math on his fingers (and mine). Then he was down on the ground and talking about making a beetle’s nest. A little frustration there, as he wanted me to help, but it wasn’t clear what he wanted to be ‘real’ and what was ‘pretend’. Back to the sand, he wanted me to write ‘ Uidong’ in Korean, so did that. He was making little noises and said “my sound is a beetle noise.” (I guess after the teacher did the fly noise earlier.) He was again big on me making ‘Oops!’ things, so I wrote ‘namu’, Korean for ‘tree’ in combinations mixing up the Korean characters and English letters. He thought that was funny. I asked if he wanted to know how to spell 우유 (milk), and he just went and did it on his first try. I realized that he is spelling Korean words on his own with little problem as it is so phonetic. With him writing, he then wanted to spell ‘Zinnie’ and ‘quest’ I helped him sound out the letters, and he wrote them – lower case and in straight lines. Starting with the ‘e’s he began giving the letters eyes. Not sure where that came from – possibly the YouTube videos.
More with me writing, but him helping sound out and figure out letters and then tracing, we wrote (all at his request) ‘question’ and ‘photography’ and ‘slide’ and ‘paper’. But then came ‘pine needle’. Lots of laughing until we got to the ‘d’. We’d had a lot of fun making mistakes, but then he got his ‘d’ and ‘b’ mixed up. I tried to show him the difference, but he drew a ‘b’ again, and when I told him to try again he suddenly got sad. I picked him up and held him. He just cuddled on my shoulder, and wouldn’t talk. So I started singing the A Makes Ah song and making mistakes, and getting stuck on letter sounds and he started laughing. When I got stuck he would have to ta
p me to get me to go on to the next letter.
Went over to the center of the park to change him, and he spotted the other side of the park, which is just a round sand area with an almost flat (horizontally, that is), circular climbing wall area around it. Rather odd. August was excited by it, and went and walked on it, but then rather confused when he couldn’t really climb on it since he could just…stand on it. He sat down, and I sat next to him, and he finally talked about why he was sad, first saying he was sad about “b and g” then changing to “b and d”. He started picking up pine needles and was putting them down the cracks between the boards. He wanted to keep cleaning up the park instead of heading home. Then he said “want to write pine cone…there’s no b in pine cone”, which was pretty clever.
We walked home, getting home a bit past 5. Carly got home a couple minutes later. August had just gotten the iPad out and was starting to play. He said “mama found you” and was then torn between going to nurse or iPad. Started to go to Carly, then turned back to the iPad and said “Want to do this.” Eventually nursed, then ate pasta for dinner. He told Carly why he had been sad. They nursed and read Winnie the Pooh. He requested banana bread, so I started to make it. He of course wanted it ready right away, but then decided to help with it, and that worked pretty well. I had New Order playing, and he was dancing to it – it reminds him of Figure. He was impatient for the bread to cook, but was appeased a bit by licking the spatula. But after that kept saying “the banana bread’s done”, especially if he heard the rice cooker beep.
He was nursing and said “Raspberry banana bread tart… that would be yummy.” Carly gave him a bath, and he confused her by saying “Maybe I’m allergic to…” until I explained the reference to her. He played iPad for awhile and had some banana bread when it was done. Carly asked him to say good night, and he said “Night night iPad. Have a good sleep.” And he turned it off. He then ran around a bit, tagging both of us, and said “Mama, Zinnie, and dada…all together.” The last bit coming as he lay his head down on the couch.
He went in with me to make a nest at 8:35. Got out my iPad to read books, but he wanted to read Dada’s books. He was interested in a table of contents, and learned the word ‘Contents’. He then wanted to confuse both Sophie and me. We read the Peppa Pig fall day book, then he cuddled in his nest, and we did a lot of taking care of animals. He went to sleep about 9:30
Home Plus:
Teuni Teuni:
Playground:
Home:
Photos:
Home Plus:
Teuni Teuni. Spider backamapack:
Park:
Writing ‘Zinnie’:
Home:
Hood:
