He was up at 6:30 and very smiley this morning, and fine when Carly left. He was pretending to be a baby duck and climbing behind me on the couch, then we read 줄 타는 코끼리 (the elephant book). We went in and wrote Korean on the paper. Wrote words from the book and from one of the little word books from one of his classes. He then wanted the cookie jar song, so we moved to word songs on YouTube. He started watching a collection of songs that had “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” in it. He whispered “What is it?” And scooted back and crouched on his toes. I asked if he liked it and he whispered “Yeah”. It was like he was mesmerized.
I took a shower. After I was done he called to me, and wanted to pee on the toilet. The first time he has done this with his diaper still on. We read the Korean baby animals counting book. He could read and understand the whole thing. That is two Korean books we now have down.
We Skyped with my parents for an hour. August was really giggly and funny. He was joking about making them look at the ceiling, then sent them lots of “nonsense” typing. He remembered what ellipses are, but decided that they should be called something slightly different. He picked up some new phrases from Puffin Rock that he really liked and wanted me to explain: “Leave the rest to me” and “we’ll miss it” and “Puffin patrol”. He also said Oona said something like “ker-whanickle” or “tyrannical” but we couldn’t find it in the episode he had been watching.
He played Figure on his own, then I was playing and played something that reminded him of “Three Little Kittens”. So we figured out how to play and sing it. He then moved to Paper and did some art. He was singing “Three Little Kittens” to himself before moving to other tunes.
Getting ready to go, he was walking around the living room/kitchen and noticed the temperature of the floor because of the floor heater. He walked back and forth saying cold and warm.
We walked and took the 100 bus to Dream Forest. We first walked up and saw the deer for a few minutes. One of them made deer squeaking noises next to us, and August was curious about that. We went to the playground and sat on the edge and ate lunch (leftovers from yesterday) and he pretended to be Oona climbing on me. He then walked and crawled on the rock wall. Sang the Lulu song from class. He heard a noise from the construction site and said “I like that noise…the low noise.” He did his “All the way to this stream, boop” chant, and added the line “All the way to this I, boop”. He also tried crawling on it and said “I’m a flamingo working on it (the pine needles)…so dada can be happy.” He stumbled, after which he got down and started walking away, saying “I want to go to the coffee shop. I’ll just type a document.” I asked if anything was wrong, and he said “yes”. I held him a few minutes, then we walked to go inside to the bench area. But then he saw the play structure made out of dodecahedrons and wanted to play in it. We spent several minutes climbing up into it, and counting the levels. He liked the sunnier spots as they were warmer. We made it to the top, and we went down the slide. It was fast and we shot off the end. I said “I think I scraped my butt.” He said “Let me check…no…there’s no blood. ”
We walked inside to go to the bench area. We have revived the whole “I got my dada/I got my Zinnie” thing when I pick him up, but of course it is now a joke all the time and he changes it up. As we went in the building to the stairs he wanted me to pick him up and he said “I got my Duplo.” So I put him back down since he hadn’t called me ‘dada’. I joked that I wouldn’t pick him up because until he called me ‘dada’, and he said “I won’t pick you up anymore.”
We got up to the bench and played on there for awhile. I asked if he wanted more food and he said “I’m fine for now.” He is also using “I suppose…” and “I prefer…” sentences a lot. He spotted the information desk across the room and read out 꿈의숲아트센터 in Korean. It means ‘Dream Forest Arts Center’. He hopped around on the floor, saying “hip hop, hip hope” and then climbed on the wire furniture, pretending to get his foot stuck, then pretending the ghost also got his foot stuck.
He argued against a nap a bit, but we got him changed and in the backpack and walked some of the trails and he fell asleep. Went back to Cafe Dream and he slept from 1:40 to 2:43. After he woke up I got him out and he stood around while I packed up. A woman came over and gave him two mandarin oranges – 귤. August and I understood her using the word as we had learned it at Mama Juice the previous day. We went in the kids’ area and ate one, and read a couple of the Korean books. He then spent quite awhile doing art on the iPad. We got ready to leave at 4. I picked him up and was swinging him from side to side, singing the Basho song, and he started talking about the word ‘side’: “Side…it’s close to sign…and it’s also close to scientist.”
We headed outside to find it drizzling. We popped under a cover to put up his cover and had some crackers as it rained heavier for a few minutes. We then walked to the bus stop and caught the bus home, transferring at Induk and taking the 9 to Brownstone. Carly was home about 10 minutes later.
They nursed and then they did art together on the iPad. He was showing her more make believe shapes: “Which is a tricky one…which is not a tricky one.” He and I then and went and played in the fort. He said something about eating spaghetti in there and I said she’d go ballistic if we spilled spaghetti on her bed. He didn’t know the word, but got the gist of it and thought it was funny: “Mama go ballistic…mama go crazy.” He went out and watched part of a National Geographic video that Carly needed to watch for school. Then he and I played on the piano. I played The Ants Go Marching and he kept singing made up verses to it.
He wasn’t eating dinner, refusing to eat the spaghetti. Earlier he had eaten a couple of bites after he had spilled some on the floor, and we made a big deal of calling them ‘floor noodles’ and Carly was jokingly telling him ‘No’ to eating them. He laughed a lot, but didn’t eat much. He just wanted banana bread instead. I made a deal where he would eat one bite of bread, then one bite of spaghetti. But when it was time to eat a bite of spaghetti he told me to eat it instead. He then got upset when I wouldn’t let him eat more banana bread. He went in the bathroom after Carly was done with her shower, then they went straight to nursing in the parlor. I started his bath, and got him in the bath. He played with letters a bit, but the second I started to touch wash his hair he started to lose it. Carly came in to take over, but they ended up going to bed and he fell asleep pretty quickly, at about 8:30.
Fascinated by Twinkle Twinkle:
Dodecahedron structure:
Not quite:
Bench area:
Reading and 귤:
Art:
Pausing for the rain:
Home:
In the fort:
Funny words:
