He was up at 6:30. When I got up they were skyping with Vivian and Cassie and family. Carly briefly talked to her mom, but they were driving through Arizona and reception wasn’t great. Not helped by August hanging up on her. August had a ton of energy for so early. He had been jumping over things on the floor and got out the number line. He had gone to the bathroom and was wearing his underwear on his arm. When I tried to put it on him he ran into the reading area and was rolling around. He said “Mama doesn’t go outside, Dada doesn’t go outside, and Zinnie doesn’t go outside. We all stay in the same house.” When Carly got him dressed to go outside he asked “We’re going to Israel?” When she said no, we can’t go now he asked “It’s closed?” They headed out at 8.
They were back after 9, just after I’d finished a shower. They had walked to the skate park area over across the stream, watched some of the construction going on in the street, and played at Chrysanthemum Park. When they got home, Carly went to the fifth floor to see if the blanket would fit in the washing machine down there. August wanted to go with her, so she took him. The washer was busy, but it looked like it would fit. They came back, and August wanted to keep walking in the hall, so they went out again, but just for a minute. He wanted to go outside (so different from most days, when he doesn’t seem to care much about leaving the house, at least early).
We started getting ready, brushing teeth, etc. Carly was lying on the couch and he stacked stuff on her, and made a machine from the caterpillar and the fabric book with a baby in it, and was putting stuff in drawers. He played with the baby in the baby book, and said “It’s time to take a bath, baby. Washy, washy.”
We all went out on a walk, up to Nowon and to Subway for sandwiches. August chose the crab sandwich, so we got one to share. We then walked to the park just south of there (엄지어린이공원) and ate our sandwiches, like last time we went to Subway. August is asking “Why?” a lot, for everything, including why we are in Korea. He made a growling noise and I asked “What noise is that?” “The noise mama doesn’t like.”
We all played on the play structure, in the bus part, and going down the slide several times. He and Carly raced to the swings, but he didn’t stay on for long.
We headed to the coffee shop we planned to go to, 더숲, which is in a basement. Really a cool space, kind of an arts center, with a movie screening room, a small gallery, a stage, books, etc. We looked around a bit, and I took him in to use the bathroom. We looked at the piano and music stands, and of course he wanted to touch them but we couldn’t. But when it came to getting a drink he insisted he wanted dessert. So we decided to save the coffee shop for another day, perhaps when we could see some music.
We headed to Baskin Robbins back in Brownstone, as that had been our big plan for the day – some ice cream for August on Children’s Day. On the way, August saw a truck and said “I want to deliver milk in Israel.” A reference to our walk home from APIS when he wanted all the vehicles he saw.
We got to Basking Robbins at 1:10. Carly got chocolate chip mint, he chose cookies and cream, and I got a cookies and cream drink thing. When looking at the ice cream flavors with Carly he wanted to know the ones they don’t have. He did that at Subway too, wanting to know what sandwiches they didn’t have. Anyway, he really liked the ice cream and finished most of it. He was also watching the traffic lights out the window. He’s really been paying attention to and asking questions about how the lights and signals work. He was also talking about our ice cream choices: “Why dada get a drink.” “Two spoons…not three, because dada got a drink. Dada was thirsty?” He got up and walked around the shop and coughed. We told him about covering his moth, and he said “I didn’t do it? I did germs.” and smiled.
We got home at 1:40. He played with Duplos, making towers, then ate the rest of our sandwich with me. We read a couple of the Poli books – he was reading the stickers at the end – ‘Excellent’ and whatnot. He had trouble with ‘Awesome’ but was happy when he could read it. We played GarageBand for quite awhile. We were using the sampler, and making instruments out of sounds, starting with ‘so much’ (that was the idea, as some time ago he made up a ‘so much’ instrument), but proceeding to letters and numbers and words and long strings of improv by August. Carly gave him a bath. He got really upset when she washed his hair.
After his bath we played more GarageBand, getting sillier with the sounds, like cough and throw up sound samples.
We took him in to bed at 7:15 Before I left he asked “Baskin Robbins is open?” He was asleep by 7:30.
Photos:
Park:
Driving the bus:
Ice cream:
Play dough and the piccolo flute in Beethoven’s Ninth:
Duplo tower:
