Woke up upset at 6:47. Cried and sat down on the floor in the hall. He wanted mama. I picked him up and made him let me hold him for a few minutes. I set him on the reading area and he took off his socks and just sat there a few minutes more. We read Kiss Good Night and Wild About Books. He was hungry so we had some cereal and then he sent mama a video message on Skype. She called us. At the end of the Skype call he said “confused” then “about talking.”
We went to fix his humerus bone, and he was still acting odd after the Skype call. I asked if he was sad or tired and he said “Both”. Did some doctoring, then he wanted to play some Endless Numbers. From that he wanted to go to the bed to do math with the friends using the blueberries. He is now pronouncing ‘th’, as in ‘thirty’ and it doesn’t sound like an’f’. Although it sounds like he is trying really hard. He did subtraction by stuffing blueberries down his shirt and saying “I tooked away 6…that means minus.” I had Bluie and GM attempting to climb in his shirt with the blueberries and he found that funny.
He played hide and seek with them, then we went and ate grapes and a hobang as a snack and talked about our plans. He liked the idea of riding the bike all the way to mama’s work and wanted to go right away. He settled for math on the iPad, and then words, while I took a shower. Then he played a round of the Orchard game when I came out. We made a tofu teriyaki sandwich for an early lunch. He was wondering about bread (we had to get white bread this time because they were out of wheat) and wheat, so we watched a video about how flour is made.
We played mandolin a couple times through the morning, and he tried playing it like a cello. On the paper he went and wrote ‘x-ray’ on his own. He looked at Carly’s paintings of 14, Q, etc. We decided she should do 아 on the empty canvas as that is the start of his name in Korean. “Why Q? Cuz dada loves you a ton of Qs?”
He saw a raccoon in something and wanted to see a raccoon video again. Did that, and he pretended to be a raccoon climbing on the couch. He was playing an instrument that we made up the other day that is played by sticking your hand out. He calls it a bliblia. Wrote more x-ray and ‘flowers’ (with my help) on paper. He would write it once with my help, then copy it out on his own. He drew a big A with a smaller A inside it and said “The baby A is inside the mama A.”
Finally, he was playing piano, and was fine until he started hammering on it at the end of a song.I stopped him and he got upset. We were putting on coats at the time, so had to pause. Eventually he calmed down and we got going at 1.
Slightly warmer than yesterday, but still grey and breezy. Quite windy as we crossed the river. We walked down to the new path along the train tracks and crossed the bridge and walked to eMart. First went to the grocery store. Out of sour cream, sadly. We picked out a chicken cranberry sandwich, a couple jello and fruit things and an orange juice and iced coffee drink. He wanted to go outside. I questioned him on this a couple times on our way out and figured out that when I asked about inside he thought we had to go a long way and he wanted to eat right away. Convinced him we just had to go up one floor and he was excited about that and took off running. Pointed him in the right direction and we went up to the food court.
He also changed his mind about the play area (구름빵), initially saying he wanted to go back outside. But once we were done eating he wanted to go in. We had been here once before, when he was upset about the boots for the sand area before he changed his mind and decided he liked them.
A couple of changes I noticed:
When we went in he totally let a woman help him take off his coat and shoes while I paid. He wouldn’t have allowed this before. When we went to the sand area he ran and chose boots and said “These are pretty cool.” And when we went to leave the sand area a woman helped him take off his boots, brushed him off, and used the blower on him. He stood up, sat down, turned around at her request. All without me saying a thing.
Much of our time was spent at the red and yellow pushy thing. He wrote words quite a bit, mainly ‘Zinnie’, then ‘mama’ and ‘dada’ and 아그스트. He also did ‘gargantuan’. At one point a boy came over and they spent a few minutes pushing them back and forth.
He also jumped on the bear, played with a set of blocks a bit (counting them), did some crayon on the wall you can color on), and went down the rolly slide once. Then the sand area for much of the remaining time. We had a thing that you drop sand in the top of and two gears turn. We made a game of putting more and more sand in until they stopped turning. Our second pile went until we completely covered up both gears. It got to be a really big pile before that happened. August also made banana bread using a bowl and sand.
The other new thing for him was actually riding the hanging balls that go around like a merry-go-round. Did that three times.
He had gone to the bathroom, liking aiming at the fly in the urinal a bit before, so we headed out, getting to APIS just after 4:30. For much of our walking today August was humming or singing Itsy Bitsy Spider, often with his autoharp sound.
We met Carly in the entrance to APIS and went down to Melinda’s elementary music room. August was in heaven. Narayan, Melinda’s intern, was there and showed him some of the percussion instruments. August got to play the gong. Then Melinda came back and August looked around a bit more. He got up at the big piano and started playing. Soon, all the music teachers were applauding his playing. Melinda opened the piano, and August stood on the bench so he could look inside. Someone asked what instrument he wanted to learn, and his list today was: autoharp, electric guitar, pipe organ, violin (I think), and a few others. Oh, and Melinda showed him her singing bowl (like Cherie has) and August got to touch that.
From the piano we went next door to the orchestra room and he got to try out a small violin. He loved that. I helped him with it a bit, then Melinda came in and helped as well. Probably ten minutes or so of violin, then he and Carly played the wooden xylophone together, and had a nice song going. It was tough for him to leave – he really didn’t want to go. In particular he wanted to open the cello cases.
We headed out and walked home. When we came out on the other side of the line 1 tracks it was raining. August was also wearing his hat and gloves today – if the weather goes as forecast, perhaps today is the last day for both snow and hats and gloves. It was a nice little unexpected flurry.
We got home, had some dinner, and he watched the outdoor orchestra videos in the bath.
Carly asked him ‘Do you still speak stopadoo language?’ And he said “When the weather was warm.” Carly thought he said ‘river’ instead of ‘weather’, and August was happy when we figured out what he meant – like other things he has remembered with me recently, he remembers doing them back when it was warm. He was exhausted from the exciting day and went to sleep easily at 7:50.
Photos. Counting:
Like a cello:
On top:
Upside down:
Peddling:
Two sides:
Pulling it out of the mountain:
APIS Music:
Touching the bowl:
Violin lesson:
Walking in the snow:
