He was up a few minutes before 7. When I got up a little later the first thing he said was “I’m a monster and I’m scrunching my teeth.” A bit later I started the beginning of the Formula 1 race. August was excited by it, to the point where he was screeching and I couldn’t hear anything. TUrned it off for the time being. He had Cheerios and shared some noodles with Carly for breakfast. I took a shower. They were starting to read Tickle when I went in. A few minutes later he opened the door and said “uh-oh” but then closed it when I asked.
August and Carly then played a door game, where Carly tried to block him from going into the parlor. She then got the spaceship thing and was pretending to chomp with them; he found it funny at first but was then scared of the chomping.
We headed out at 9. He was singing Skip to My Lou on the train and said “I was playing hard rock guitar.” Today Carly had a dentist appointment at U.S. Dental down by the National Museum, then her health check for her new job at the international clinic in Itaewon. We dropped her off at the dentist a little after 10, then August and I walked to the National Museum. We sat by the mirror pond and had a snack. After that, August spotted some workers working on the drain and ran over to see what they were doing. They were very concerned that he not get too close. We watched them for a minute, then headed up to the museum and to the children’s museum. We looked at the flowers along the way, and at the poppies up at the top that we hadn’t looked at last time.
We got to the children’s museum just after 10:30. He first went in the house area and watched the video again, then we constructed a traditional Korean roof and ground some wheat. He went and played on the hills briefly. He saw a school group and said “All those kids look the same age.” We then went over to the wall writing area and he did some math on there. Carly called, saying she was done at the dentist. We headed out, went to the bathroom, and met her out by the poppies. In discussing the poppies and their petals, he made connections to other words: “Petal…like a bike.” “Poppy…pop, like a balloon.”
We went to the station and headed to Itaewon. On the train he was doing math like 10-2 and 6-5 pretty easily on his fingers. We headed to one of our favorite places in Itaewon for lunch,, Petra Palace. In looking at the menu August copied me: “So many options”. We got the lamb and hummus, and a falafel plate. August got a strawberry yogurt drink and I got the ginger and lemon tea. He was pretending to play the menu as an instrument and said “Maybe I didn’t set it up right”. I refilled his water bottle from the container on the table. He asked “You filled it up with that?” When I said I did he replied “Thank you.” As we finished eating and got full, he joked about getting sick: “soon get sick” And he remembered it was a Frog and Toad reference. And at some point he started singing a “Paint another pancake” song. No idea where that came from.
From there we had an hour until Carly’s appointment. But it had started raining. We tried to go to the Beautiful Store book store, but it was closed, and appeared permanently so. We stopped by the office to see if she could go earlier, but they were at lunch until 2. While we waited for Carly to talk to the nurse, August and I read an article about how to make kimchi. We still had 40 minutes. Luckily, the rain had slowed. We walked to Whatthebook, the big bookstore. August and I went to the children’s book section. August wanted to read a book called Stories for 7 Year Olds, but I went to set down the backpack I kind of bumped his head. Don’t know if it was that, or that he thought I had said no to the book, or because it was too dark (a rather dim bookstore), but he started crying. Carly came over, he was better, and we started reading the book. But then out of nowhere he started crying again. A second visit from Carly and he was fine after that.
We walked back to the clinic and August and I read more about Kimchi while Carly had her appointment. Went pretty quickly and we headed home right after 2:30. At some point, as we were walking through Itaewon, we were talking about ice cream and August said to Carly “You’re dreaming of bubble gum ice cream?”
We were home at 3:30. The walk from the subway station was a wet one though. At first August liked the rain on his head and didn’t want his hood on, and took it down. But he changed his mind and when we got home he said “Dry me off.” They nursed, then shared a toasted peanut butter sandwich. When he wanted more he requested not toasted. Carly read The Grouchy Ladybug to him. He pretended to be a skunk (“Spray”) and all the other animals. She then read My Family Plays Music. We played music together. He created a little musical line, and told me to play it on xylophone while he played it on piano. After that we read Frog and Toad stories, then he wanted to type in Pages. He typed “We are living in a yellow submarine.” He said “That’s pretty cool.” when changing fonts. We did mah on the floor using the Duplos and talked about music as we listened to M83 remixes.
He went in on the toilet and sat there for a long time. Carly was showing him pipe organ videos. She asked why he was sitting on the toilet and he said “For funsies.” Got him out to the living room where we watched more organ videos, and found the organ in Philadelphia that I now want to go see.
I gave him a bath. Carly had started making a number line on the floor in the hall, so we made it a quick bath. He went out, and they did math on the big number line. He was very excited about that one. He was tired though and went to sleep at 7:30.
Photos. Running to see the workers:
Poppies:
Making a roof:
Tracing the sign:
Lunch:
Lights in the book store:
Hood in the rain:
Typing:
A long time on the toilet:
