He was up at 7:16. A little upset at first. After I set him down he laid on the couch for a few minutes and I would give him a kiss and he would just grunt. Finally he got up and started singing Yankee Doodle. We read Also an Octopus, all the way though, then 1-2-3 Peas and Hap-pea All Year (the peas book about months). Had Cheerios and banana for breakfast, then he played a new piano version of Yankee Doodle, starting to add in a left hand line (just C, but changing up the rhythm a bit too) that is entirely his own doing.
On the toilet he talked about temperatures: “What happens if the weather is 3 million 8 hundred billion 20 thousand 5 hundred…?” “I’m outside and the temperature is six hundred and sixty six million!”
He played GarageBand, and I took a shower. He was playing GarageBand when I went in, but when I came out he had switched to TodoMath and was working on subtraction and addition equations. I helped him for awhile, then he said he was done with that…he wanted to do math on paper: “I’m going to do addition problems.” He wrote his first problem with a variable: “2 plus what equals 18?”
We played mandolin and he played two notes in a row a couple times. We talked about the word ‘bothered’ because I said the strap bothered his neck. As an example I said when I read too loud. He said “Tallulah’s Tutu” Hid behind the pillow while I looked to see what part he was talking about. He then said “Don’t read it…close it.” But it turns out it wasn’t my volume that he doesn’t like so much as he doesn’t like when characters get upset, which is what happens in Tallulah’s Tutu when she is upset she doesn’t get a tutu.
Anyway, we then read the Sense and Sensibility opposites book. He asked why the guy was sad in it and we were making guesses. I sad he maybe listened to sad music, so August wanted examples of sad music. Which led to the Dylan song “Rock me mama” which led to August asking about the line “like the wind and the rain” which led to me mentioning porches, which led to August asking what a porch was, which led to me mentioning the one in Chelan where the gnome is which led to August asking what the name of the gnome is. So he clearly remember the gnome but couldn’t remember the name he gave it. We couldn’t quite think of it. Later, on Skype, my dad would remember it is Oh-ee-oh.
We then skyped with my parents. We were in the parlor and I let him eat in there while we skyped, but then he decided to try wiping his face on the carpet. Took him to wash his hands, then he went back and was wiping his wet face on everything. He then was pretending to count peanut butter drips, and they got to hear him pronounce “thirty” with his new ‘th’ sound. He played the hard rock guitar sound on GarageBand and kept saying “Say it hurts grandmas eardrum.” When they asked what he wanted to learn to play he said “autoharp, bass guitar, electric keyboard” He also said something was spooky: “spooky…that’s from mama’s zoo”.
After we hung up it turned out he meant Peek-a-Zoo, one of the new iPad apps he was playing a bit earlier. It is sort of a match and find game, where you find the character that looks sad, the one that is happy, etc. He first looked at his iPad, but then said “Must be on dada’s iPad.” and found it. Not sure why he brought it up though, and there’s no mention of ‘spooky’ in the app.
Anyway, we got ready and headed to Teuni Teuni. On the way he said “I want six forward rolls. Or maybe 100.” He jumped right into class, and did six laps to do six forward rolls. He helped put it away, then ran to me. I was about to say that he did six of them, when he said “That was six!” Clearly he had counted them. Class was about scarecrows, and included a scarecrow outfit that August happily tried on. At first though it looked like the teacher was being a bird, so August held his hands out like the teacher was and said something about “I’m doing what sangsaengnim…” When the teacher had them sit down in a circle, August was repeatedly counting everyone in the circle, in both English and Korean. The teacher then counted the kids, “1 2 3 4”. August looked at him and said “No. 1 2 3 4 5” and included the teacher in his counting.
Class was about scarecrows and balancing (because you hold your arms out like the scarecrows). There was a scarecrow outfit that August loved wearing, with arms that attached to the back. They jumped around, and August looked at himself in the mirror. Also, during the class he realized he could turn around and see his back in the mirror and was doing that (remember the other day when he got sad that he couldn’t see his back). They also built little scarecrows and August liked that part.
After class we went down to the food court and August wanted the same bibimbap dish as last time. We got that and enjoyed it. There was a girl about his age a table over who was crying, and he wanted me to guess why she was sad, but didn’t seem to like my ideas: “Make another guess why she is sad…No, make another guess…” And he quoted from the Peek-a-Zoo app: “Can you dance the macaroni?…Hey, you’re wearing my sock!”
We headed out and walked across to the park. He was walking, and singing his new song, that he started a couple days ago. In the art museum we looked around the lobby (he likes the raised letters on the wall). Then he noticed the ‘Information’ sign on the front desk. We looked at that and read it in Korean, then he moved a couple feet to my right and looked at a sign sitting on the counter. It was sort of an L shaped (the bottom of the L being a base) sign with information on it. He pulled the edge. It turned out to be a heavy metal sign, and resting on towel. It slid right off and fell on the floor, making a huge noise in the lobby. And as it slipped out of his had it scraped his finger.
Took several minutes for him to calm down, and he wasn’t happy when I took him outside. He still wanted the play area. Eventually we went back in and went in the play area. He held his left hand gingerly for much of the time, but was okay. Played around in the balls and worked on throwing. At one point was talking and said “…and I realized I wanted to come.” When he was done with the balls he went and colored the two pictures they had available. The first was an Alice in Wonderland picture, and like the Wizard of Oz one last time he kept asking me to tell him about it.
It was now past 3 and his English class was at 4. The weather was nice, so we went for a random bike ride/walk around the blocks to the east of Home Plus. He sang the whole way. We got to class a bit early and sat at the tables for a couple minutes, went to the bathroom, and went to class. Class went well, and we got a bunch of our cheesy little English books and stuff. The teacher’s name is Jenny, which August seemed sure about, although I thought it may be Janie or something. One of the characters is ‘strong’, and August turned to me and said “Dada is strong.” That made my day.
Also, there is a character that is a fire engine. Through the first class and most of this class I thought the character’s name was Louie. Then there was another fire engine (I thought), called Roy. Several minutes later I realized they were one in the same. ‘Roy’ in Korean is basically ‘Loh-ee’ because there is no R in Korean, and no ‘oy’ diphthong (and thus it has to be two syllables – like ‘Ryan’ is 3 and ‘August’ is 4).
After class we went to meet Carly and called her from the corner, but she was already home. Went home and they nursed, then they did math before he played some piano in the parlor. I then did some math with him, then he took the keys out of the piano. He tried to get out of putting them back in, but we wouldn’t let him escape and he did it with me.
He got silly and was throwing the blueberries on me, then tried to do headstand while Carly was still in the chair. I was throwing pillows at him, and he said “Say you’re going to throw a
pillow very gently.”
I took him in for a bath. We watched the livestream of an Amanda Palmer concert again, and he wanted me to tell him more about Alice in Wonderland. He also said “I love dancing…goodnight toes” and when I asked him what that was from he said it was from a book. I figured out he meant Busy Toes. I’ve only read it with him once. Don’t know if Carly has read it with him more, or if he was looking at it on his own. I went and got it, and we read it. It ends with the ‘goodnight toes’ line, but while it has a dancer in it, it doesn’t say “I love dancing”. He repeated that line a couple times though, and so it sounded like something he was saying himself, or him imagining what the book said.
Anyway, the real story was when he said “I want more Numbers you don’t know”. We talked about variables and how they worked, then when he kept wanting more I told him about ‘infinity’. If you really want to stretch a very tired almost-three year old’s brain you get them thinking about infinity. He was definitely trying to get his brain around that one. Took a long video of that. Pretty straight to bed and sleep after that, asleep against at 7:50.
Teuni Teuni:
Counting:
New song:
Infinity:
Photos. Looking at his back in the mirror:
Scarecrow:
Another scarecrow:
Lunch and the crying girl:
Throwing:
English class:
Cuddling:
