Friday: Seoul Trail 4.2 – This Is Our Blog

He was up at 6:20. He nursed, then ran to me, saying he wanted to read. We read Hug Machine and “A List”, then he looked at the Persian Instruments book and started playing Artie’s World, so I exercised and started to get us ready to go. He played Big Numbers and I took a shower, then we did some TodoMath, he was a frog, and played his toothpaste tube as a flute. We sang some songs and left about 8:45. Three trains to get to Yangtze Citizen’s Forest. The last one is on a fancy new line, and we realized you can look out the front of the train – no driver – so that was pretty cool. Had packed a good amount of food for lunch and snacks, but wanted to get a little more, but suddenly there wasn’t a convenience store to be found. Ended up taking a basement passage to another building, then found a random convenience store in there and got some kimbap, a couple eggs, and a couple little banana custard cookie things.

We walked into the park and found the playground and sat under a shelter and ate lunch at 10:30. Went to play, but he said “I’m worried about the backamapack blowing away.” Started by playing with a spinning thing. I mentioned it was a different kind of spiral, and later he would ask what different kinds of spirals were and we’d look up the chart on Wikipedia. He went to the climbing wall and declared “This is a poop climbing wall. I’m climbing on poop.” Got up on the play structure and were playing around a bit. It was just us. A few older girls started to come towards the playground, then were called back by an adult. He started a game of guessing why they had left: “Do another guess.” One of his was “Maybe they didn’t want to go down the dark slide.” He had wanted to do the turning tube slide at first, but then saw that it got dark.

We were doing that sitting at the top of one of the slides. Eventually, he slid down, and we started to get going around 11:30. Carried him to the bathroom and he said “What does blue poop and yellow poop make? Green poop. I’m doing poop colors.” After the bathroom we found a bench. I set him on it, and he started rubbing his cheek on it, wondering why the bench was cold.

We got walking, but once we got out of the park, up and across the street, and into the wooded area with a big hill, he wasn’t excited by the idea of a hike and wanted to go home. We stopped for our first break from 12:00 to 12:10 and let him play some Dragonbox Numbers. But when we got walking he kept talking about nursing. Saying “Nursey, nursey”. I told him mama was at work all day anyway and he couldn’t nurse until she got home and he got upset and started to cry in the backpack. He was upset like that for a minute, but then calmed down, but didn’t talk to me for several more minutes. But he also didn’t mention nursing again a single time until he saw Carly at home.

He also got into the walking. I had reminded him that the fun part was finding things along the way. So when we took a second break from 12:35 to little after 1 he was thrilled to find an actual broom. He played with it the entire time we were there, poking me and other things with it, and pretended to hit the people (well out of reach) over on the trail, saying “I’m going to hit them.” And he kept comparing his height and my height to the broom. We also sang a bunch of songs from my phone – Basho and Friends Spanish songs, etc. Early on he hadn’t even been singing songs, and I think it is because he likes going fast when we walk – on the slow part he gets impatient, and would stop singing and would want me to entertain him.

Anyway, we got walking again, and he wanted a Zinnie Poops song, so we made that up. He was joking about wanting to poop on the ground, so it is about that. I knew he was liking the hiking when we came across a temple, which was up the hill above us. I mentioned I was going to keep going, but he said “I want to go up to the temple.” So we went up and looked around all over. I let him hit a big drum from the backpack. We had been there close to ten minutes, at 1:30, when he said “I want to get down and look around.” I let him out and he immediately went to look at all the candles that were around. He kept looking around, at the dragons, lanterns, etc. I pointed out the wind chimes but it wasn’t windy, but then it got windy for us. We went down the stairs to the lawn area and looked at the garden and little statues and kimchi pots, then headed over and used the bathroom and left at 1:55.

After that we focused on getting some distance done, and he was really into music, but specifically tempo. He would hum or sing a few seconds, then ask “What that tempo is?“ He joked more: “I want to poop on the ground.” Then we took one more break at 2:30 near the top of the last climb. He wanted to find a big stick. No luck with that, but there he saw covers over the bolts on a picnic bench and asked about them. He wanted to know what a bolt looks like, but a Google Image search of ‘bolt’ brings up a picture of the cartoon dog. So that led to a discussion of the two meanings of ‘bolt’ and why the dog would be named Bolt. We ate the rest of our lunch, took some photos of Smokey, and played a little more Dragonbox Big Numbers, then got walking again at 3:05.

We found the stamp box at 3:50, then were done with the path and found ourselves on a road headed down the hill. August walked quite a ways, holding my hand, but was then concerned about a truck that went by and wanted me to carry him. We spotted a couple men playing Go, and watched one of the claw recycling trucks for a bit.

Got to the train station about 4:10. In the station we found a bathroom, then he saw a shoe store and really liked a pair of light blue slippers with sparkles on them and tried them on. We caught the train one stop north to line 7 and transferred. Didn’t get a seat, so moved to the next car and found the bike/wheelchair spot empty. August held onto the bar and started to dance on it – don’t know if he got that from Vivian, the Tellulah books, or it is just a natural thing to do when you have a bar. He did that for several stops, then played iPad. One of the apps he played was the Montessorium Numbers app. In it, there is a sort game where you sort ten rods, from 1 to 10 in length. He hasn’t really gotten it before, but started figuring it out right away. Needed some encouragement to finish it when he was almost done, but then did it more confidently a second time. As we went over the river, he and a woman looked out at it together. Also, while he was playing he was actually singing (with words) our “Juice Store” song. We got to Hagye and left there at 5:15.

The official campaign signs are out for the presidential race – we first saw one coming down the hill, and now we saw them hanging them on the railing by the exit. He sang The Ants Go Marching and sang “Zero by zero…what, there’s no ants?” We were 5:30. I had asked him what he was going to tell mama about, and he hadn’t given me an answer. But the first thing he told her about was playing with the broom.

When he went to the bathroom earlier I had counted how many times I had had to ask him if he was done before he answered. In the evening I asked “How many times do I have to ask this time?” He said “Six”. So I asked six times and he answered me. He then asked “How many kinds of spirals there are?” so we went and looked them up on Wikipedia.

He ate dinner, then I let him play this Three Little Pigs app/book on my iPad. All three of us actually kind of watched it together. Along the way it asks you little questions, and we were surprised by the sort of questions he could answer, like which was a picture of something that was closest, farthest away, lightest, heaviest, etc. Although for hottest he chose the teapot over a fire, which makes sense given how much he has experienced both.

Carly gave him a bath, and they watched Beethoven’s Ninth. He was asking for tempos, so I was in there with them for quite awhile, helping with the tempos.

Before the first attempt at sleep, he and I read some Winnie the Pooh, then he wanted to try to sleep at 7:40, but was back out by 7:50. We read The Zax and part of Green Eggs and Ham, then he downloaded the rest of the Dr. Seuss books in the app, watching the progress “Pizza”s fill up. He remembered that from when we did that on his iPad a long time ago. They went back in at 8:25 but were out 10 minutes later. Carly took a shower. We read some of A Violin for Elva, and he wanted to watch Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, so we watched much of that. Attempt #3 lasted 9:10 out 9:15. Read a little of I Ran the Zoo, then back in and he was asleep by 9:40.