He was up at 6:25 and sad when Carly left. Wanted to get in stroller and go outside. But he didn’t want his coat. “I’ll just stay cold…just socks.” Of the coat he said “Put it in th stroller.” But he let me put his coat on once we got downstairs. First thing he asked was “What is it dark about?” Of course, it was also drizzling. We walked south around the pink building, then over to the park. We went up on the wooden pathway area, and he wanted to get out. I let him out, and he walked around for a couple minutes, doing some quiet singing, then he was ready to head home. As we got home, I said “Being outside makes you happy, doesn’t it?” He said “Yeah!” As we got out of the stroller, I felt his cold hands and told him he could wear gloves, and he said “Next time!”
We then checked the messages from Glecy and Gramma on his iPad, and he sent messages. We got ready to go, which took longer than expected, because as usual August kept finding distractions. I suggested we take the Korean elephant book for the long subway ride and he agreed, then when I suggested we get an English book he grabbed Horton Hatches the Egg, a big book. I wouldn’t let him take it, and he was a bit sad about that. I was sitting on the couch, and he took my spot: “That is my spot. You can’t sit there…that’s your spot.” We left at 9:40. I mentioned his gloves as we walked down the hall, and he actually wanted them on right away. So we walked back to the apartment and put them on. Took us awhile to figure out the fingers, but we got better through the day. He was happy with them.
On the train down he saw tildes on the subway map (listing starting and end points of each line) and so we practiced what tildes mean. He then was pretending to type, and wanted to understand commas. So I was explaining and giving examples, and he was repeating them, like “However comma we decided to go somewhere else.” He wanted more “tricks”. We read the elephant book once, with him doing all the reading, and me providing the English version. He played with the calculator app. Looking at the map, he said “오이도…you like that name.” He also wanted to list ‘ng’ words. And he mentioned various sounds on the subway: “m sound…u sound…cricket sound (a loud screeching noise)”
We walked up to CU, but they only had a couple rolls of spicy kimbap. We walked to the other CU, but there wasn’t anything there either. So back to the first one where we got two sandwiches, a bean bread thing, and an apple juice. Walked up to the zoo and ate by the giraffes. August didn’t wear his gloves on the way, and I got my first disapproving comments about his hands being cold as we walked by a couple of women close to the entrance.
After eating, we went and changed him. We talked about how we had changed him on different changing pads in the past (there is a whole row of them), and he spent a few minutes crawling back and forth on them, trying to choose one: “this one or this one…” He also randomly did a “grunt, snort” from Peppa Pig, and didn’t want to put his pants back on, saying “want to see animals in just a diaper”. After some more crawling around, he notes the pink posters, then we found pink things. He said “pink is my favorite color…we are finding pink things…”
We got walking. He was calm at first, and when I asked after a few minutes if he wanted me to start singing he said yes. But after about 20 minutes he said he was hungry. We sat down on the steps by the elephants and he sat next to me and we ate some apple and watched the elephant. While we were there a woman was taking a photo of her daughter and asked for August to be in the picture. I initially said no, but then I asked August and he wanted to do it, so he got up and stood next to her.
We got walking again, went and saw the lions, then tried for a nap again. But after awhile he started singing, then shouting letters in my ears. He wouldn’t stop, so I took the backpack off for a minute. He was now saying he wasn’t going to nap. It was too cold to mess around in the park just wandering around, so we started to head home. But then I decided we might not be back for a few months, and I wanted to see the tropical bird building, which we hadn’t yet been to. So we walked up there, and ended up spending a lot of time there. We spotted birds of different colors, he got down and read bird names in Korean, and we spent a lot of time looking at the egg exhibit.
You leave the building from the top, and there is a walkway to the ground. From there, we heard some of the water birds across the way, and August wanted to go see them. But first he spent a few minutes playing with the door heading out, which slides closed on its own. He’d need my help to get it going, then would push it open further, and let it shut.
Between the tropical birds and the water birds there is a random platform you can climb up. He wanted to do that, and he wanted to do the walking, although I think I ended up carrying him the last flight. Stayed up there a few minutes, then went into the water birds. We were just watching the birds for a few minutes, and he asked what all the water was for. I had just said something about there being fish in the water, since most of the birds eat fish, when a zookeeper came along pushing a cart, and dumped a big container of fish into the small pool near us. We spent the next 20+ minutes just watching the birds feed: how the pelicans catch fish and let the water run out of their mouths (and fish escape), the fighting between the storks (and the sounds they make) and how the loud red cranes ate first, and quickly, and then after they and the storks left, the kingfishers and swans started to feed. A literal pecking order. August was enthralled by all of this. I wasn’t having to convince him to stay.
Eventually he was ready to go. On our walk out, we walked by the nocturnal house, and I asked if he wanted to see the kinkajous, so we went in there for a few minutes and saw them (he spotted them first, when I couldn’t) and a few of the other animals. As we walked out of the park he was singing. He was using ‘mama jut’ in his song. ‘Mama jut’ is a mispronounciation of ‘Mama Juice’ and what would happen if you wrote ‘juice’ in Korean as a single syllable – as the ‘s’ sound in Korean at the end of a word has to make a ‘t’ sound. Anyway, August really liked that lesson when I gave it, and it stuck.
We changed him again (a bit more crawling around) and sat and ate some apples before taking off.
And as we were in about the exact same spot that a woman commented about his hands being cold on the way in, he spotted ‘apple’ (in Korean) on a banner across the street. We stopped to translate the whole thing, when suddenly I felt a tugging behind me/to the left. I literally thought I was going to fall over at first. A woman had decided that August was showing some ankle skin and took the initiative to pull down his pant leg while we were both looking the other way. I shooed her away and told her it was rude not to ask. I’m pretty sure she got the message.
At the station we had a few minutes, and he was still hungry. So we ate the red bean bun thing we had bought with lunch. It had a custard center, and August went straight for it. He decided he likes custard. On the train home he ate the last of the apple. He did some typing on the iPad, and we told Smurf stories: getting fish for the sea festival, their first cold day of the fall, etc. He was typing in the ‘search’ bar and it wouldn’t let him type anymore. So I deleted it. Big mistake. He didn’t get upset, but got whiny/sad and kept saying “I’ll just do the same one.”
We got off at Changdong and caught a 1144 bus pretty quickly. All was going well, and he had been high energy. But suddenly that changed and his head was down and eyes were closing. He fell asleep at 5:25 and was asleep when I went in the apartment and Carly saw him. I took him out of the backpack and he just slumped on the couch. I laid down and cuddl
ed next to him for a few minutes, since I never get to do that. Then, with some light tickling (very cute to hear him laughing in his sleep) and mentions of nursing, we woke him up at 5:40.
They nursed, then he typed on Carly’s computer. He was then pretending to type in the air (a new thing he’s been doing, then he’ll say who he was typing to) and said “I was sending Uncle Paul messages on Skype.” So we set up August’s email account on his iPad and he can now send emails to people now as well – useful for those people who don’t have/check Skype. He sent a few emails. Changed his diaper a bit later, and on the changing pad he said “Oh. My. Good. Ness.” Which reminded me that on the subway he had randomly said “dis-gus-tu-sing”. I don’t know where he gets that voice.
I changed the sheets, and he ‘helped’ and we read Mr. Gumpy. Played a bit on the bed, then on the couch. He was climbing all over me and the couch. He started saying crazy math problems using ‘361’ and a funny voice. Playing in the reading area, we did some Duplos and he told me to sleep. He was drawing on the magnetic smart board thing, and kept saying “I’m making a picture. Now don’t erase it. Or I can be sad. I’m gonna erase it myself.” Which I’m pretty sure was payback for deleting his typing earlier. Carly had given him his bath, and he did his usual complaining as we put his pajamas and diaper on – he would prefer to just nurse naked. It took awhile for him to get to sleep, and he somehow managed to take until close to 9.
Morning walk. Using the blanket:
Photo with a random girl:
Eggs:
Asleep for a very short nap:
On the couch:
