He slept nice and late. He came out at 8:44 and lay on the floor. He was wheezing and sounded stuffy. After awhile I got out the Smurf box thing that I had bought at Toys R Us last time and put in the closet. He liked the figures, and put them in the water, then out of it. He ended up really liking Jokey Smurf, and kept having him hurt the other Smurfs. Eventually we had to put Jokey in a timeout. He was then typing on Skype, sending messages to a bunch of people, then me. I was in one room and he was in the other and we were sending emojis and words back and forth. At some point we also played with Siri, and he ended up singing to Siri. I said we were going to Children’s Grand Park, but he initially did not want to go. He said “it’s too crowded.” He had us crunching fake lollipops at one point, and wanted me to sing the We Like to Make Mistakes song. Finally, we tried the new Sesame Street crackers that arrived the other day.
We got going. At the other station we were looking at the subway map, and he pointed out 오이도. He wanted to know why it said ‘cucumber’, as the first two syllables spell cucumber in Korean. Then, at GS25 August was reading out the Korean on the sandwich wrappers. The guy working there heard him and was impressed.
We went up to our rectangle pond for lunch. After we ate we spent time reading the Ants Go Marching book. He called one of the pages ‘periwinkle’. He was then singing Ants go Marching and walking around. He would choose random numbers, then fill in the “Little one stops to say…” part. He also acted out playing hide and seek and trying to find George.
From there we headed over to the playground. The goal was sidewalk chalk, but he saw the sand and wanted to play in that. I found a stick, and we ended up writing words. For some reason, he wanted ‘tion’ words, and we wrote words like ‘question’ and ‘action’. I asked him something, and he started acting like Siri: “Hmm. Good question. Let me think, Ryan…I’m Siri, I’m Siri, I’m Siri…”
He got was acting somewhat tired, so we changed him and got ready to go. I didn’t really expect a nap, but hadn’t mentioned the idea as I didn’t want him to actually attempt to avoid a nap. As we were getting ready to go he remembered sidewalk chalk and was sad. We walked for 30 minutes. He was silent and resting for much of it, but that was all he needed.
We went to the coffee shop about 2:30. I asked “Do you want a strawberry smoothie?” He replied with another Siri line: “Hmm. Interesting question, Ryan.” We sat and shared the smoothie. He played with Hangeul on his iPad: “This is my favorite song…this was your old favorite…this is a new song I like.” Then in the magnets app he was filling the screen with letters: “what are you spelling? That’s super crazy!” “Look at that you typed! It’s crazy!” “You’re doing lots of work.”
We were there for a good hour. He then had the choice between sidewalk chalk and the children’s museum. He chose the sidewalk chalk. We got there and used the broom to sweep off some sand. He immediately started talking about ‘blending’ – he remembered from the girl who had made a rainbow last time. He started doing the chalk and talking to himself: “I’ll blend it.” “You’re making it nice and pretty.” He had been focusing on the name of the playground earlier:꿈틀꿈틀놀이타. He had said it maybe meant ‘catepillar playground’. Eventually I realized why he said that – in one of his videos from class there are caterpillars and they are crawling. 꿈틀 means crawling or wriggling or something of the sort. So I think it is in the song and he made the connection. Anyway, he wanted to write that in sidewalk chalk. He was mixing colors, and said “maroonish mixed with periwinkle” A bunch of other kids joined in and it was quite a party. Unlike that one time, when no one asked or said thank you for the chalk, this time a mom, after they had been using the chalk for a long time, suddenly asked if it was ours and was then very apologetic. Overly so. She and the other moms kept letting their kids use the chalk, but every time they changed colors, they would have their kids come and hand the piece of chalk back to August. August was rather confused why the other kids and the moms kept shoving new pieces of chalk in his hands. Anyway, near the end he was making a bunch of deliberate lines and said “I’m writing Japanese…” Then he made an ‘e’ on top of a Hangeul ‘ㅜ’ He said “that’s an ‘e’ sitting on a ‘ㅜ’…” He then decided the ㅜ was an iron: “that’s an iron…burned the e…the mama was ironing…”
It was past 4:30 and time to go. Other kids had all come and gone with the chalk, but August was still going. It was hard to get him away. Eventually I convinced him to head home to her. As we left the park, there was a man playing guitar and singing. August wondered why he was by himself: “What he alone about?” August was then clapping along to the music, and really liked clapping at the end of songs. We listened to two. The second included some yodeling. Probably August’s first yodeling experience.
As we headed out, August was saying “dinosaur” repeatedly in his George voice. Then, he was speaking ‘smurf’: “then smurf up to the smurf”. I used the phrase ‘that doesn’t ring a bell’ on the subway, and he thought that was funny and wanted to know what it meant. I used names to explain ‘rings a bell’ and ‘doesn’t ring a bell’. He caught on, and started naming people, and making up names…he came up with Opa, uncle paul, and Megan.
As we crossed the road by the pink building, I suddenly heard him say “oops oops oops…” He had pulled out the stick and dropped it. We retrieved it and as we kept walking I said “Good use of ‘oops’.” He said something about making a mistake and “you did a bunch of oops.”
We were late getting home. He nursed, then wandered into the parlor and was playing with the Smurfs by himself, talking to himself as he did so. Really clear imaginative play going on. Later, he talked like Siri again, saying “It seems that I cut you off. Please repeat.” He did a lot of singing of Ants Go Marching, did more of his George voice, and did a lot of drawing on his own. I gave him a bath. After that, it was a pretty straightforward bedtime, with him going to sleep at 8:05. Pretty good for a no-nap day.
Photos:
Counting to ten:
Shaking his head:
The last two chalkers:
