8:04. He opened the door, then came scooting down the hall on his hands and knees. He said “I’m a snail”, crawled up to me and said “Slime on you.” He then offered me something and said “Here’s some beans with slime in them.”
A bit later he said “Dried watermelon. Is that a thing?” This actually goes back several days when he had been joking about dried fruit and said dried watermelon, and we looked it up and found out it is actually a thing.
He was then looking at the Poli posters and talking about them, and I tried to watch the Poli cartoon. I’ve tried a couple times now and he isn’t interested. When he heard the YouTube Kids startup sound he ran over and said “No. I want the green one.” It is this odd little Preschool Prep video about the color green that he found yesterday when watching color wheel videos. Watched that, then blue: “Blue like grapes and blueberries.”
We watched more videos, then had Cheerios and fruit for breakfast, then read Frog and Toad stories. And more and more. Read most of the two books we have.
He had to go to the bathroom, and as he talked he said “Sorry, my voice is different. Maybe like a turtle.” Giggle “I’m a turtle.” He was then doing an “alligator voice”. “That was a dolphin voice.”
He then said “I want to meet the friends…in the playroom!” So we went to the parlor and he had them use the bathroom, then eat. First we had peach cake, then chocolate ice cream. More bathroom game, although it morphed into dealing with the sounds of flushing. If I said flush he would say “I don’t like you!” We talked about saying “I don’t like that!” instead and then he got better about that. And by the end he was acting out using a loud automatic urinal. We also did some cuddling in a fort in the reading area.
We read some doctor Seuss stories: Zinniga Zanniga, Gustav, the Goldfish, then he looked at the Musical instrument book. He went to the bathroom, and he said something that reminded me of Go, Dog, Go, so I said some lines from that. He responded with “I haven’t seen anything funny for a long time.” from Frog and Toad. He went back and was looking at the Persian instruments and I took a shower. When I came out he was back to Dr. Seuss and the birthday book, asking “What’s a Birthday horn?”
We headed to his class. In the elevator he sang “It stopped at 8, now it’s going down to 1.” to the tune of London Bridge.
In Teuni Teuni he did a bunch of forward rolls. Launching himself forward now. Kept talking about instruments as he ran by “playing on guitar…” “…no frets?” When he was done with forward rolls and helping carry, he ran to me and said “So that was seven!” Class was all about cicadas, and it was probably his favorite one ever. When the teacher brought out a big picture of a cicada he was fascinated by it. August felt it, then stood in front of it and spread his arms like wings. Then, when the costumes were brought out he was thrilled and he flapped his arms like wings and kept saying the “Ma ma ma ma maaaa” cicada sound. There were little board things with numbers on them, behind which was a picture of a cicada. August was amazingly happy with something that just had numbers 1 to 7 on it. He pulled off the 5 from the teacher’s board, and said “I have 5…I have 5 fingers!”
They then got to ride around on little carts with poles on them, sort of like they were cicadas attached to trees that moved. The only down moment of class was when August sat on the cart and it tipped backwards and he hit the back of his head. He recovered and got back on it standing up. There was then a hill path that they jumped off the end of. At the top the teacher would count to 3 and they would jump. August’s game was seeing how high and how quickly he could jump before we made him jump. He made it to around 30 the first time, then 11 or 9 or so after that. He wasn’t ready to jump entirely on his own, but had a couple of good ones where he was just holding my hand but I wasn’t really supporting his fall at all.
Finally, there was an activity where they used nets to catch cicadas off of metal posts and transported them over to trees. In between and during these activities, August would stop to look at his wings in the mirror.
Finally, at the end of class they got their treats. August was the only one still wearing the costume by this point. At the end I told him we had to give the costume back and he asked “Why?” I thought he was going to get upset, but he was okay taking it off and carrying it back to sangsaengnim. Before we left, the teacher got down to give August a hug. August is more open to hugs now, and will walk into the hug and kind of pull the teachers arms a bit. As we walked out, August said “I did two hugs!” Out on the bench I put on his shoes and he growled and then said “I’m a lion Flynne cicada.”
We walked across the hall to the School Food restaurant. I wanted the coconut curry, but it wasn’t on the menu. August saw the carbonara pasta and really wanted that, so we went with that. He really liked the soup in advance, and ate several pieces of radish that we put in it. The pasta was good, and when he was done he walked across the hall to the little car/plane rides and sat in a plane while I paid.
We walked across to the park to see all the new sculptures that showed up. He liked sitting on the metal bananas like the metal girl. He started hitting them with his feet, so I took off his shoes. We then spent a lot of time at the ‘love’ sculpture. He said “Love is a silent e word” as he covered up the E. Finally, he sat between the odd person and human cat on the bench and talked about the cat. He said there were letters in it as he traced the tail like a C, etc.
We were going to go the bathroom, but the ones on that side of the park were being cleaned. We walked to our side of the park, but those had construction going on in front of them. So we walked back to the art museum and went there. We went into the art museum play area and played there for awhile. He worked more on throwing balls to me.
From there we went to the English class. Class today was about the character Amber, who is pink. The big activity there was first mixing red and white paint to make pink, then using the paint to paint a picture of Amber, then tracing the word ‘Amber’. He also did a lot of dancing to the songs. After class was over, he told me to “Sing a happy song” and we sang “If You’re Happy and You Know It”. At some point earlier in the day, after Teuni Teuni, I think, he had said “I’m happy.”
We tried to meet Carly again, but didn’t see her and she didn’t answer. We went home a bit after 5. He wanted to go in and rest and have a fort with the friends. There was a lot of talk about flushing urinals (he often has to walk by ones with sensors to get to the toilets without, and so he is concerned they will go off). Carly got home and he hid under the blanket from her.
They nursed, then he was being a fly and cicada. He played piano and figured out London Bridge is Falling Down all the way through and was playing it pretty smoothly by the end of the evening.
We opened the card from my parents. I read the first couple lines, but then realized I should let August. He surprised us by reading almost all of the rest:
“…You’re smarter
Than ever.
You’re funnier,
Stronger,
And ever so clever.
And what’s more-
Yippee! You’re three!
Happy Birthday”
I kind of expected him to get ‘smart’ and ‘strong’, because they are actually words from his Poli English class. But I didn’t expect him to get all the -er endings so easily, and words like ‘Yippee’ and ‘funnier’ and ‘three’. He also read the written part, ‘We love you! Gramma, Grampa, & Paul.’
We watched a Poli video as I was curious. The whole time August kept pointing out the characters he knows when they were on the screen: “Poli…Roy…Amber…Helly…”
That was fine until a truck lost its breaks and was out of control. August wanted it stopped and left the room. It was too stressful for him. Carly picked him up, then they went and did his bath while I did the dishes. He went straight to bed from there, and was asleep at 7:30.
Teuni Teuni:
School Food (with a smiley fork):
Airplane:
Sculptures:
Ball area:
English class:
