He ran out at 7:13 and quietly jumped up on the couch. He then looked at the Mike the Knight book and I asked if he wanted to read it, but he said “I want to do math on my iPad.” But then he went and played on the toy piano. After ten minutes or so he wanted to play Park Math on my iPad. He did that for awhile and he really likes the music in it, then switched to another one of the Duck Duck Moose apps and just listened to the background musi: Take Me Out to the Ball Game, Itsy Bitsy Spider, Yankee Doodle, Shoo Fly, London Bridge, Baa Baa, This Old Man. We then had cereal and fruit for breakfast and read all of Welcome to the Orchestra.
He played piano, then wanted videos of brass instruments he doesn’t know. We had just watched a videos of an alto horn and Vivian and Colin called. August wasn’t happy that his brass instrument time was interrupted until Vivian went and got Cassie’s clarinet and was playing that. August was then pretending to play oboe and making a lot of music. Colin seemed to be sucking on random things and dancing. After 11 minutes they disappeared and August wanted to go back to brass instrument videos.
But instead he sent some videos on Skype. He spent a lot of time on his piano and GarageBand. We did exercise together. And we looked at Welcome to the Symphony again. I took a shower. Afterwards he was playing with his comb/brush and used it as a musical instrument, or several actually, pretending to play it by pushing down on the bristles. We played mandolin, then looked at a few of books about musical instruments in iBooks that I had downloaded previews of.
I let him eat two letter cookies, then we read the Frog and Toad story “A Swim” three times in a row before he let me go and finish making our lunch. He wanted to look at the dinosaur book but couldn’t find it, so got the Junior Picture Dictionary instead and was pretending to be animals out of there and chomping/stinging/hugging me.
We ate a salmon sandwich and half an orange for lunch. We were listening to music, and the Sesame Disco album. He really liked that and pretended to play trumpet to “Disco Frog”. We played piano together and were figuring out how to play “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”. And we taught each other how to play “Itsy Bitsy Spider”. I misheard him saying something, and that turned into a nonsense “I thought you said…” game, with us each saying things like “I thought you said snare drum.”
He was then pretending to be a pipe organ playing frog with four legs and three feet. I could not make that up. He continued to be a frog as he did man with the blueberries, counting by tens and adding more to make more tens.
I packed up some snacks, and let him have one more letter cookie. He chose ‘m’ and said “I have M for milk, muffin, much, and mud.” We left at 1:30. We walked through Madeul and he spotted the ‘A’ and ‘Q’ signs (for answer and question). He said “’A’ ‘Q’ You liked that when you were a little baby?” He was asking how to spell a couple words, like ‘sun’ and he mentioned ‘sky’. I told him how to spell it, and he gave me a dismissive “I can spell that.”
We crossed the river and walked up to 모랫어린이공원. These were two parks we went to awhile back where we found a jumprope stuck in the ground. We found this one as we left and didn’t play there. This time, we went on the swings for quite awhile. There was an older boy there who kept trying to throw sand on August. I had to tell him no and be more forceful with him than any kid before. August wasn’t too phased by it though. At one point August was asking about how many trees there were in the world, and said there were infinity trees.
Eventually he got off and played around the playground. He worked on climbing up and sliding down a climbing wall with a rope. As we roamed around I said “That’s a funny thing to do, that’s a funny thing to say” and August kind of asked what that was about, but we can’t remember when/why that was from. I tried to search the journal/blog, but no luck. I know we used to say it a lot though, and also turned it into a nonsense thing, with things like “That’s a funny thing to floozle…” There were these small hills and August ran up and down them. He got on a teeter totter facing the wrong way and the third boy at the playground got on the other ended and I pushed the end August was on. After they left, August ran up and down the hills a bit more, then sat next to me on one for a minute before he said he needed to go to the bathroom. So we went to the bike and walked one building over to 월천근린공원.
We went to the bathroom and tried to go to the big bathroom, which he had used before. But it had a sensor and he refused, backing out. I checked the regular stall and it didn’t have a sensor. But the urinals between where it and where August was did, so August sprinted past them to get to the toilet.
That taken care of, we sat on a picnic platform and had a snack. He started with the letter cookies. Two girls came by. I suggested he share a cookie with them. He was holding a cookie, looking at it and thinking, when they left before he could decide. He said “I thinked”. “You can have I for ice and igloo.” “Q is my best letter. Q is for queen becuase I love queens.” The girls came back with a dog a few minutes later. August seemed surprised that it wasn’t barking, and then got to pet it. They left, and a few minutes later the workers, who had been sawing off fence posts at a distance, came close to us. August had been interested in what they were doing when they were across the park. But the second they turned on the chainsaw this time he started screaming and hid behind me. I happened to start recording video just as it happened. I picked him up and we walked a ways away and watched from the distance. He calmed down, and seemed fine when I walked a bit closer, but when I sat back down on the platform he got upset again. I took him away again, and by the bathrooms I asked if I could set him down and go get our stuff and return. He said yes, then ran to the back corner of the bathrooms and waited there until I went and got our stuff and the bike.
We went over to the playground, hoping to find the jumprope buried in the sand. Instead, we found a crime scene. The jumprope had been broken, with the rope piece by the bushes and the plastic pieces spread about. It looked recent, as the hole was still there. We used the shovel to dig down, but found no additional rope. An unsolved mystery through and through. Anyway, we spent the rest of our time writing things in the sand. He wanted me to write sentences, then asked “What’s the word for twelve? Thirteen?” He’s liked ‘dozen’ and ‘baker’s dozen’ the last few days. I also invented a ‘ Zinnie dozen’, which is 14. He also confused me by saying “I said ‘I don’t remember’ in the hospital.” No idea where that came from.
We left after 3:30. We walked to Cafe Tolerance where he got an orange juice and a pineapple juice, of which he only drank the orange. We sat in our usual chairs looking out at the stream. He went to the bathroom at the beginning, played music apps, then near the end ran off. He went and put on the slippers and headed into the bathroom on his own.
We were home just before 5:30. Carly was home. They nursed and read Welcome to the Symphony. He played more of the Park Music and ate dinner. I got two new iPad apps: My First Orchestra App and Beanie’s Instruments. He particularly liked the second one.
He went in with Carly to take a bath. He was sitting on the toilet, talking about his fingers bending and others not bending. I asked why, and he answered “Those ones don’t bend because these ones do.”
After his bath he went right to bed at 7.
Playground:
Q:
Hiding from the chainsaw:
Scene of the crime:
Cafe Tolerance:
