Friday: Logan and Rosie’s, Children’s Grand Park, and Costco

A long day. And the weather dropped down into the teens at night, so it was nice and chilly when we left the house early. We were going over to Jill and Derek’s house to watch Rosie for a couple hours so Jill could go to the pension office and run a couple errands.

But first, August woke up at 4:30. Early, early, early. Carly got up with him. August noticed the cold, and asked her “What’s it cold about?” He let her put songs on him (but requested the short socks – he doesn’t like socks pulled up his legs at all) and they sat on a warm spot on the floor. He was sitting on the toilet when she washed her face, and he looked up and asked her “What are you up to, mama?” And they watched some Puffin Rock and she got him oatmeal for breakfast.

We watched some more Puffin Rock and he finished his oatmeal for breakfast, then had strawberries and banana bread. I took a shower, and we got ready to go. I got him to try his hat on for a few seconds before we left, but he still wouldn’t wear it. He noted it was cold out (still shy of 20) when we left at 7:45. We had to wait 8 minutes at the bus stop, then took the 15 to their house.

When we got there at 8:30 we found that Atsuko was also there, helping Jill. Logan was not yet gone to daycare, as he was having a tough morning. Totally not surprising, given all of the upheaval going on (dad off in Canada, sister gone three nights in the hospital, a bunch of different people watching him, and the house getting packed up for the move). When August tried looking at a book Logan took it away. Logan got the big blocks out and was making a tower. August was just sitting there, watching, and I said to August “What you doing? Watching Logan” Logan replied with “No watching Logan!” and held his hand up, as if blocking August’s view.

Luckily, August didn’t seem to take it personally. They got him ready for daycare, and all took off a little past 9, leaving me and August with Rosie. Rosie was sad seeing her mama walk out, but handled it quite well. Given that she was just in the hospital for 3 nights with pneumonia, she’s gotten used to a lot of different people watching her. She did rest on my should for 10 minutes or so, and I thought she might fall asleep. But she got down, and we played around. August was mainly excited about trying all of their snacks: they have a whole basket full of bags of kid snacks, and we tried all of them: blueberry yogurt bites, freeze dried strawberries, some sort of cookie, etc. We played with the blocks, Rosie clapping every time she put a block on. August found the Boynton book Are You a Cow? and we had fun reading that. Rosie can’t go outside for a few days (oh, before she left Jill had Rosie use the nebulizer – August really liked watching that, and I explained all about it, and Rosie being sick, which he kept asking about. Think we have new material for taking care of the Duplo animals), but at one point she went and got her shoes and brought them to me. I put them on her, then she went and opened the closet and got out her coat and wanted me to put it on her. When I didn’t do that though she went and tried opening the door.

Rosie sort of fell or something, minor, and I picked her up. This time she did fall asleep a few minutes later, just before 10:30. It took me two attempts, but I managed to set her down in the crib, which is low. That is a long way to lower her – I was never, ever close to lowering August that far when he fell asleep.

August still wanted snacks (think he was ready for lunch) and we got a slice of white American cheese out of the fridge. He did not like it, however, and he said it “Tastes like poop.” He remembered using the square blocks to make squares out of play dough, and kept asking for it. I had meant to ask Jill, but didn’t. We looked for it, but didn’t find it.

He was sitting on the toilet when Jeff and another guy showed up to take Logan’s bed out. August said he thought that Jeff looked like Uncle Paul. He was still sitting on the toilet a couple minutes later when Jill came in. She started talking to Jeff, so she didn’t hear, but he was leaning forward, looking out the bathroom, and asked five or six times: “Where’s the play dough?” We asked her a bit later and it turned out, as I had suspected, that they had already thrown it away.

Sometime around when Rosie was going to sleep and Jeff was showing up, August said “I want a story of Baba as a grown up.” This is the second time he’s asked, but we’ve gotten distracted both times. The story I made of Baba wanting to learn to swim is the one he’s requested the most – I think he likes the ‘growing up’ stories (and likes them on the show – the ones about Oona learning to fish, or dig, or act like a Puffin).

We were out in the living room, and August saw Jill’s scarf on the chair. He grabbed it, and put it on. We’ve never put a scarf on him, but he understood it. He posed, and pretended to be cold, and said “You wear a scarf cuz it is cold outside.” Wore it for a minute or two.

We got going, and went and caught the bus back to Hagye Station. He fell asleep on the bus at 11:33. He slept through getting off, going to the train, getting off, and buying lunch at CU, but then woke up as we walked into Children’s Grand Park. I think he heard the music and recognized it. He nodded back off, but then picked his head up again right as I was about to the coffee shop. He started to sing numbers to the song (I think he recognized the song) but then really got excited and sang loudly when the next song was “The Ants Go Marching” (in Korean).

So I made a left turn and headed to the children’s museum. We went up to the cafeteria. He started to get upset, saying he wanted to play first, but I was starving. I told him I had bought him a juice, and he was suddenly okay with lunch. Had actually gotten two: one was in a funny bottle from ‘Bad Farmers’, so I had to try it. He didn’t eat a ton (we didn’t open the kimbap at all) but had a bit, and it was enough for me. From there we went to the veterinarian area. We took care of a bunch of animals, looked at the real x-rays they have, and he went over to the food area and we brought a bunch of foods back over to the animals and found out which foods each animal liked (he particularly liked how all of the herbivores found the fish ‘disgusting’). He went and got the big lion stuffed animal to feed it something. I was having the small monkey hide behind the counter, and August found this both hilarious and terrifying.

Eventually, we were overwhelmed by a bunch of older boys. A few tried to talk to us while we were in the middle of a patient, and I told them to please leave us alone. But the noise got to August and he said (after he himself was banging something on the counter) “What you making so much noise about?…I want to go to a quiet place.”

On the way, he saw the spot where he had been kicking the glass last time. He at first made a joke of it, but was then actually kicking the glass. When I stopped him, he laid down on the ground for a few minutes. After he was better, I asked if he wanted to go to the bathroom, and he did. We did that, then went to the reading area. He was standing by the base of the steps to the loft area, and another girl came and looked like she was going to go up. He pointed at her shoes and said “You need to take your shoes off.” We then went and played with a balancing scales game for awhile. He then wanted to read Oh No!, so we found it and took it and my iPad up to the loft. We read that, then he did art on my iPad for quite awhile. He then found a Korean book called Tina and Orchestra. We read parts of it and looked through it. He saw some notes in it and was singing them.

We talked about going to Costco. He liked the idea, getting excited: “I want to get samples. Yum! I love the samples!” We talked more about what he loved and he said “I love Flynn(?)…I love treats…and sparkles.” Don’t think he actually said ‘Flynn’, but didn’t figure out what it was. But ‘spar
kles’ was clear, and I don’t know where that came from.

We headed out, but first remembered about the book exhibit downstairs. We went down and looked around for a few minutes – there are samples of children’s books from around the world. Pretty cool, but August was hungry and wanted to go eat. So we headed out, and ate a Larabar on the way to the subway.

The trip to Costco was pretty straightforward. He stayed in the backpack, and was hungry so was requesting we go get samples as soon as we entered the building. He got a couple pieces of cheese, a mandu, and some chicken. We paid, and he got out at the restaurant area. We got a couple pieces of pizza. They have blueberry smoothies now, so I gave in and tried one. A little better than the apple they had before, but not much. We had some of that, repacked our stuff, and headed out. He was talking about slipping on the ground as we got of the moving walkways. Like a snail, he said. He was then demonstrating slipping for awhile next to the statue outside. Then got in the backpack and headed out.

We stood on the subway home. We were sticking our tongues out at our reflections in the window. Got home at 5:30 and Carly wasn’t home at first – she had stayed a bit late. So I heated up the slice of potato and bacon pizza. While I did that, August rolled around on the floor and was making up pizza rhymes: “Pizza, mizza, dizza,…” We were then painting when Carly got home. He asked me to paint a shape at one point, and even specified black, but when I did it he said “Good job trying, dada, but I need to wipe it cuz black is not for the painting.” As he was rubbing it with the paper towel, he joked “It bothers mama’s ears.” At one point he was singing notes, and stomping the floor to rhythm.

Carly gave him a bath, and he went to bed soon after that, by 7:20.