Up a bit before 6. He had slept right up next to me for an hour or two last night before getting up and going to Carly.
Befor Carly left for work they read Welcome to the Symphony. Reminded me they had listened to the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Ninth, probably on Friday. He put his fingers on the cover and said “My pinky is touching the trumpet, my ring finger is on the flute…” He played piano and wanted to know why Mary Had a Little Lamb is just white keys. I told him because it is in the key of C. He then wanted to know what The Ants Go Marching is, so we got out Piano Companion and figured out it is in C minor. We then were playing it and transposing it into different keys. Starting to figure out the circle of fifths. To mandolin. Chords for a long time, then picking out a song called “Soldier’s Joy” together. Then he played on his own for quite awhile. He had some banana bread and I went to hang laundry. He wanted to play GarageBand and said “I want to make a symphony.”
More GarageBand. Different sounds, and rhythms with the arpeggiator. He read “Jetstream” on his own. He was then sitting at the table and grooving along to the song playing – a Howie B remix of Polaroid Kiss’s “Pay Your Dues”. In the play list the song was listed several times, and he asked “Why is it the same song, but different?” I explained they were remixes of the same song. He really liked the song, so we made a playlist called ‘Zinnie’s Songs’ and I told him we could add other songs that he likes to it so we can listen to them again in the future.
We exercised and he watched Pirates of the Caribbean while I took a shower. I came out and he did some of the Chinese app, although he really only likes the parts where you can trace the characters. He then played sink or float while I got the backpack ready, and made a “Funny K” from his shakers (maracas and banana). Finally, he did some drum machines in GarageBand, played with the compass on the old phone, played my belt as a musical instrument, and we left at 10:40.
We sang Ants Go Marching on the way to the station. He said he wanted to get to 20-something but we got distracted. On the train he was talking about the seats for pregnant women, then noticed there was a woman in one across from us: “There’s a baby? That woman has a baby?” as he pointed. He wrote math problems in Paper, and did a lot of music, pretending to play instruments, on the second train (it was loud, and that seemed to encourage him).
We got walking at 11:45. I outsmarted myself and added a bit of distance at the beginning, but we got walking up a stream and along the Seoul Trail. He spotted a bee, then we saw gnats. I was explaining about the silent g, then he asked “how many words there are?” We were singing the How Many? Song from YouTube, and he wanted “How many leaves on a tree? Scales on a fish?”
We walked through a tunnel and he counted the lights as we went, saying the words funny. We stopped along the stream for lunch at 12:20. There was construction going on on either side of the stream, and he wasn’t a big fan of the noise of the elevators going up and down. He spotted fish though, and we watched and egret trying to catch fish. A lot of talk on the rest of the walk about why only little fish, and why it was hard to catch them.
Got walking about 12:40, and stopped a bit later at some bathrooms. On the way in saw a guy passed out at the top of the stairs, and a couple on the phone. Assumed he was drunk (not uncommon), but as we used the bathroom I thought about if he wasn’t breathing, and got myself ready to do CPR with August there. Went out and luckily found that he was breathing. Was able to communicate enough the with guy with the phone to confirm that and that the ambulance was on the way. It showed up a few seconds later, and August was interested in watching the doctors help him.
We went back down by the trail, and a minute later the couple who had called 119 walked by and I thanked them for calling. August was then a lizard, crawling around the rocks and through the grass. And making lizard noises with his lizard tongue. A few minutes later, the guy who the medics had woken up came and sat right next to us and started smoking a cigarette. August looked right at him and said “He needed medical help?”
We got walking again at 1:10. Up the stream, right at a road, then through a park area along a highway – actually nice, as it was bordered by those huge barriers, so quite quiet. We stopped at 1:45 for a letter cookie break: “R for raccoon” He got a second R: “There’s two Rs?” “R for rock music!” He counted with his finger shadows, then was a lizard again. He lay on the bench and held the backpack: “I’m going to hold it because I’m concerned it will blow away.” Walking again at 2:05.
At 2:30 we found a playground and we stopped. He played on a swing, but only had me push him for a few seconds. The rest was him swinging on his stomach and climbing on and off.
We had to get going, but he wanted to climb on the spider web thing, count the moving discs (like an abacus), and go on the teeter totter. We left at 2:55. Through the day he refused to wear his hat, although he wore it so well in Thailand. Had it on for a minute this time before taking it off. He called my bluff at one point: I said he either had to wear the hat or get sunscreen on his face. He has always chosen the hat. But he said sunscreen, then I had to admit I didn’t have any in the backpack yet. He won this battle, but I will prevail eventually.
We hurried along more to finish up the trail and get to Suseo Station at 4. As we walked we saw men cleaning the bottom of a stream, and August surprised me with this: “If 5 plus 5 is 10, and 3 plus 3 is 6, what 5 plus 5 plus 3 plus 3 is?” Then, when I restated it as 10+6 he was able to solve that and get 16.
The trail had taken us over a hill, along a stream, and along a river. We crossed the river and found the spot for the next stamp in the stamp book. He didn’t even do it, but was excited about getting more of them.
We got to the station right at 4. A convoluted trip to get home, requiring 3 transfers and just over 50 minutes. At one point he saw a girl wearing fishnet stockings and was commenting on those.
We got home at 5:30. I told her about his math problem, and he now did another one, but changed the 3s to 6s, so it was 10+12, and he was able to solve that.
She got him dinner, then he was typing on her computer. She showed him bullet points and headings, and got it to do chapters. He loved this, and got into the whole algorithm required to type a chapter title (he just typed nonsense), move the cursor back to the beginning of the line, delicate it, press enter so it starts the next chapter, etc. Then I showed him the Option+arrow commands for moving word by word, so he didn’t have to push the arrow keys so many times.
Carly gave him a bath and I did dishes, and he went to bed right after that and was asleep by 7:15.
Photos:
Funny K:
Subway music:
On the trail. Concerned about the elevators:
Fish:
Letter cookie break:
Shadow counting:
Playground:
Spider boy:
Counting:
Hat for a minute:
River at the end:
