Author: Ryan/Dada

He and Carly were up at 7:30. He came and found me a few minutes later. He and Carly had slept on the reading area as she is feeling sick. Kind of an eventful night. When I went in to go to bed last night he woke up, having a dream, saying “No, no, I’ll do it, I’ll do it, no…” probably dreaming of HS not letting him use the iPad or erase a restaurant sign. I got him to calm down, and he sat there a couple minutes and seemed to be falling back to sleep but wouldn’t lay down. Eventually Carly had to come in. Later, he woke me up and I carried him in to Carly, where he spent the rest of the night. But he woke up a couple more times. One time he didn’t see her next to him and he started walking back to the bedroom another time she was sitting on the couch and he walked by and headed to the bedroom and was startled when she said something.

Anyway, once they were up I measured him st his request – about 92cm now. Carly made him oatmeal, but he still won’t try to feed himself. I helped, and joked about when he would learn by. He assured me he’d learn by the time he was 10.

He sang “There’s a 100, there’s a 100, there’s a 100, there’s a 100, there’s a 100 at the bottom of the sea.”

As Carly said something August said “ai, ai, ai” and said that mama says that. I mentioned Skippyjon Jones, which we haven’t read in a long tie and he wanted to read it. I found it and we read some, but he wanted to know more about ‘siamese’ and ‘chihuahua’. In discussing those he said “What civets eat?” I was impressed with myself when I figured out what he was saying as it was rather off topic. So we looked up civet on Wikipedia.

He was then doing the Silent E song and wanted to know what ‘site’ means. So we were discussing ‘site’ and ‘sight’ and he was asking for more examples.

He then wanted to draw on my iPad, and wanted to ‘share’ by having me use his. I figured out that he really wanted to use the stylus, so I got the blue stylus out for his iPad and he happily did art for quite awhile.

August and Carly Skyped with Oma and Opa. Afterwards, he sent them a video by himself and watched Cherie’s reply on his own. He was then sending messages to my parents and Paul. He was typing a lot of words on his own: boo, Zinn, hi, kit kite

We Skyped with my parents while Carly went to the store. “Why don’t you like the spaghetti. “Because I don’t like the sauce…the sauce is too spicy.” I asked him something else and he was coughing and said “I’ll tell you in a minute.” We ate some kimbap and made playdough marbles while we Skyped. He wanted the play dough knife, but we couldn’t find it. While looking for it he said “The play dough knife was around here, but I don’t see it now.”

Carly was home about 11. She started making soup and her rice stuff. August wanted to go outside, but I needed to change him. He forgot about going outside after that and wanted to do art instead. So I got him set up with the paper and I hung up laundry. Later we were playing in the parlor. He had a running monologue of what he was doing as he was playing on the reading area: “Maybe the playdough knife began hiding under something but I don’t see it…it’s not hiding in my nest…I’m going to type on my computer. Look at my typing. What did you type. Anything…maybe I typed a baby or mooka moo…but I don’t know. Maybe I was making a joke.”

They nursed and then August saw me typing. He then read ‘doll’ and Carly got out Baby Q. August said “She’s sad because Oma…she’s sad because Opa is in Mexico.” They also played with Puff, and August was laughing a lot as he played the music and moved around and Carly made fun of him. I was playing with him and he was talking about a fish. When I stepped in the ‘water’ he said “The fish will say ‘Hey, you’re in the water. You can’t be in the water. Go out there. Leave us alone. You have a time out.’”

Eventually, he and I finally headed out to let Carly finish cooking and get some work done. We first walked down to the stream and down to the river and back. On the way down we stopped to look at a bunch of fish. August was putting his foot through the fence and drawing a ‘K’ for the fish. On the way back up, we saw an egret and watched as he struck for fish 3 times, succeeding at least twice. We then continued on to the park near the pink building. There, he was singing portions of the Big Numbers song, things like “1 billion, 2 billion, 3 billion, 4 billion…” Out of the stroller, he said “My favorite game is finding beads.” He went up in the area where he and Carly looked for beads, and was wondering why the leaves were falling of the trees. I mentioned hibernating animals and asked “Do you remember animals that hibernate?” He said “Yeah! Hedgehogs. Spiky hibernates.” Spiky is the hedgehog on Puffin Rock. We looked around for awhile, finding a few. I looked up and he had climbed back out of the area over the little fence. It wasn’t huge – maybe up to his waist – but I was surprised he just did it. He then tried to squish an insect and when I reminded him that would hurt it he said “sorry” to it.

We went over to the rocky things and he went to the train one and said “That’s a 기차” (train in Korean). Also, he’s regularly saying “yeah-yo” for yes nowadays. Don’t know where that came from. We climbed on the play structure and shaky bridge, then went down the slide together. He spent a couple minutes sort of wandering around and singing, then dancing. He then said “I’m running around.” And did. He climbed on one of the cars, rode it, then got off and wandered around. I asked “what are you doing?” And he responded “I’m the silent E.” He then walked around singing a new song (“That’s leaves, l l l, that’s the kids, k k k…”). A boy said he was cute and I said thanks. August said “Hi! I love your art!” That’s a line that Elmo says on Sesame Street Art Maker. He followed it with a few other random sentences, but I didn’t catch those.

We then went to the grocery store for a few things. August had slept a lot last night, and I didn’t expect a nap. And so far he hadn’t been slowing down. He helped at the store, getting out of the stroller right away. He remembered the slurpy things and went and got a peach one on his own when we got near. Then he started crawling on the floor – I think he was a puppy – and laid down and looked up at the ceiling. Suddenly he was acting tired. We finished up and got him in the cart and headed home. He yawned once.

At home he nursed and showed some signs of wanting to sleep, but rallied. We shared two mandarins, then read Skippyjon Jones. Or part of it. He kept wanting me to fall asleep so he could wake me up. That continued through the day. And he’d want me to go to the bedroom to fall asleep. He typed messages to gramma, then ate some soup with mama. We then played the falling down game where we each kept falling down in the parlor, and falling on each other. We played with Duplos, making an exhibit for all the herbivores and letters and Hangeul out of bricks. We typed on the iPad, and I taught him about ‘autocorrect’. So then he was trying to spell words slightly wrong to get autocorrect to kick in. That’s his sort of game.

He ate some rice, then read Amelia Bedilia and Pete the Cat with Carly and did some more typing. We played with play dough, mixing colors together and making brown and printing letters. Suddenly, he got the idea of pretending to pee on me. Very random, out of no where, creative, funny, and slightly disturbing.

As we headed to his bath he said “you can try sitting down again.” And he did try, for a few seconds. Before he was in though, he was running around naked. He stopped in front of the mirror and was repeating “what just happened?” In the bath, we were trying to remember what Pooh rhymes with autumn. He’s starting to catch rhyming words. There was then a couple minutes where I tried to wash him
but he still wanted to play with letters and he used his ‘attitude’ voice to say “NOT washing. JUST letters.” He also wrote in the air and said “잠자다”. I asked what that meant and he said “to sleep”. It does.

He acted like a puppy dog after his bath. He was cuddling on the bed (in the reading area, as that was where they were sleeping tonight) under the soft blanket and “I’m right here cozy.” Carly came in and out of the blue he started saying to her “I like cashews. I like cashews. I like cashews. I like cashews.” I think I told him that was a good way to test his mother’s love. He then was making up a game and explained it: “you hit this bar and you catch a little toilet. it’s not a real toilet, it’s a pretend toilet. It’s like this tall.” They finished by reading some Winnie the Pooh and were asleep about 8.

 

He was up at 5:30. Carly was stuffy and had already gotten up and was in the parlor, so when he woke up he came and poked me awake. I tried to get him to lie back down, and he thought about it for a second, but then wanted to know where mama was. So I spilled the info and he went and found her. They did a lot of typing and skyping and nursing. When I got up he had just started watching some Puffin Rock. Carly made him oatmeal, and he ate that and did some hide and seek as George and Peppa, and we found him. He then laid on the floor and made letters with his fingers. He was then ‘erasing’ the punctuation on Go, dog. Go! and decided he wanted to write punctuation on paper. So we went and did that and also did some math. As he sat on my lap he made up a song “Baba in the bathtub…achoo in the morning.” They Skyped with Vivian and Cassie while I took a shower. He went down with me to do recycling but saw a puppy as we got off the elevator and wanted to play as a puppy. Got him outside only to find it wasn’t full recycling. Could only recycle our glass. Tried to read the notices by the elevator, but didn’t see anything about recycling.

Back up in the apartment he made up a places chant “…Myanmar, Centralia, Mongolia…” We got ready to go and left about 9:50. He fell asleep on the bus at 10:10. He woke up at 10:50 as we got off the subway at the War Memorial.

We went in the children’s museum at the War Memorial from 11:10 to 11:50 while Carly went to the War Memorial to scout it for an upcoming trip with her students. In the children’s museum we went to this upstairs place where I had to crawl because the ceiling was low. August liked to see me crawling like a horse. There was a castle wall with foam bricks you could put in it. He sat in the box for the bricks, then spent a few minutes on the wall. From there we took another 15 minutes or so to go though the rest. There was a digital puzzle he worked on, a little tracing thing, some shapes to play with. It was kind of about the effects of war, but had the overall message of the larger memorial – Japan is bad, Dokdo belongs to Korea, here’s the guy that unified Korea, etc.

At the end was a big play room. As we walked in it, the two women in the room jumped at him and got in his way to tell us he wasn’t big enough for the big play structure. Really quite aggressive and annoying. And August didn’t like the news. He didn’t want to play on the little kids one (which just had a climbing wall and foam shapes – no slide, etc.) I held him for a few minutes, but he just kept talking about going on that one. Eventually we headed out.

Back outside, he kind of walked around the open area and sat down. He wanted to do iPad and kept asking “Can dada do art?” We sat in the middle and did art for awhile. He then agreed to go on the play structure. He climbed up on it and we went down the slide – first me to show that it wasn’t too fast, then he came down on his own. He had some crackers, and when he was done I took them to the backpack. Had my back turned for about 3 seconds and turned around to find him holding two gummy bears. Couldn’t figure out where they came from, until a girl came by holding a gummy bear package. Wasn’t entirely clear whether she had given them to him, or they had fallen out. August tried to give them back, but she wouldn’t take them, so I let him eat them. He was happy about that.

Carly showed up and we sat on the benches for awhile and he played around Carly. We then headed to the subway and headed eight stops west to Mangwon. We walked towards our second museum, and found a Vietnamese sandwich shop along the way. We got sandwiches and Vietnamese coffees and sat on stools and ate lunch. His first time, I think, sitting on a tall stool on his own, outside of the ones in Centralia.

From there we headed to the War and Women’s Human Rights Museum. On the way we stopped to look in the windows of a store, and August was walking. Well, sort of. He was pretending to be a puffin, then a snake. And was slithering on the ground. I turned him into a robot with a spell, and he said, in his robot voice, “I am IOQ-excuses-2014…” Carly or I had used the word ‘excuses’ awhile before that, and he picked it up.

Wasn’t sure if I was going to take him in, but he seemed intrigued by it, and it was only 3000 won and he was free. Glad we went in, as the museum was really well done, and August did a great job. Mainly, he was attracted to the audio guide things. He listened to the voice and talked back, as if it was a phone call. When we got upstairs he and I sat on the floor for a long time so I could listen to the audio guide and pretended to dial numbers and make phone calls. Downstairs, he and I went outside and down the stairs to a small space while Carly went and arranged for her field trip. As we went to go back in, there were two women sitting outside. August went up to them and was saying “Now get off.” in a funny/demanding voice. Told him to say hi instead, and he did. They asked where we were from, and August was telling them we lived in different places (made up places). He finished by saying something like “I told them three things.” So funny. Carly took him in to the bathroom and changed him, then I had him put coins in one of the donation jars.

We headed home. He did a lot of art on the train home. At Seokgye, transferring to the bus, he was starting to fuss a bit, and Carly made up a little chant with him. She said “Waiting is so hard.” And he would reply with “I don’t want to wait.” One time he let out a big burp instead and thought that was funny. He rode home on the bus sitting on Carly’s lap. He was getting a bit impatient but she did a good job of distracting him and getting him home.

At the building, Carly went to get bread and he and I headed to the kimbap place where the pizza place used to be. We got 3 kinds of kimbap: dongatsu, cheese, and aloha cheese. He had the idea of getting Juicy Juice, and he settled on an apple and I got mixed fruit. I had a bit and Carly had the rest.

We went up and they nursed. Carly then tried the kimbap and had an allergic reaction and got sick. It was the cream cheese stuff in the aloha cheese – there were chunks of nut in it, probably cashew. August then had some kimbap, and the cream cheese stuff was the first part he wanted. And he decided he really liked the cashews. Later, he asked “Where the cashews go?” I replied, “In mama, Z. In mama.”

We read Peppa’s Ballet Lesson a dI changed him and got him in the bath. He was fine until he realized I was washing him and then he wanted mama. I finished it; got his diaper on, then Carly took over and put his pajamas on in bed. He calmed as she did that and I asked him if he was going to sleep. He said yes and let me give him a goodnight kiss. He was asleep at 7:10.

 

Photos: 

Asleep in the subway:

Play area: 

Outside: 

Gummy bear: 

Vietnamese sandwich place: 

Slithering: 

War and women museum: 

Writing ‘kite’: 

Juicy Juice: 

At some point in the night when he woke up to nurse he was talking about “just a little poop.”

He was up at 7:13. He walked out and curled up on the reading area. I went back to typing on my iPad, hoping he would fall back to sleep. He came out to the living room about 8 minutes later and said “Go to bed a little bit”. So we went in on the bed and laid down. He said “Hi dada” and something else, then “Let’s play with Duplos.” He got off the bed and whispered “Dada come.”

We read Snoozers. He then wanted to do art on the iPad. He really wanted my iPad, but settled for his. He did some drawing while I typed. Then, of course, he decided he wanted to type on mine. He had seen me type the date before, and wanted to do that. So he ended up typing dates. He got the slashes and general format down. He was typing things like “11/77/99” and saying “That’s mama’s day.” Or “That’s Derek’s day.” He then just started doing art.

He was doing art when I went in to take a shower. He stopped his art and spent most of the time singing and reading the zoo map and other things. We then wrote several words from the zoo map in Korean on the paper. He wanted to know what ‘snot’ is in Korean, so we looked it up and learned that it is ‘콧물’ – nose water. Back out in the living room we read the Alphabet book we hadn’t read last night. He kept mentioning going to Uijeongbu.

I had music from 2016 playing. He kept saying he changed the words singers sang on songs. And at the start of a New Order song he said of the bass sound “I changed it to Buzzerbass!” He said “808 Bass” for another song. Those are bass sounds from Figure.

We changed him and he started playing in the basket. It tipped over and he kept hiding, pretending to be George and Peppa. That game extended over much of the house, and he was pretending to be George as I put him in the backpack.

We headed out and took the trains north to Uijeongbu. On our way there there was a woman who was calling him a ‘doll’ in Korean. We both recognized it, as we had learned the words in one of the books yesterday at the Cafe Dream. A stuffed bear is a ‘bear doll’ in Korean. I noticed that the stick in the backpack was gone, having probably fallen out in the last couple of days. I said we had lost Sticky 3 (we had just named it a couple weeks ago). He said “I liked sticky 3.” The first stick in the backpack he lost at Dongdaemun last year. The second one was probably left at a park a couple months ago.

We got some kimbap and a sandwich and headed up to the roof of the department store. There were three other kids up there, and the boy was really interested in August. August first wanted to play, and was climbing on the rubbery hills, pretending to be George. They kids came and talked to him and ran off. August ran after them a bit and said “I chased them” He was climbing all over the hills and I missed a “snort snort” as I took a video. He read the 새둥지 – birds nest – sign. The other kids left and we ate went to eat lunch. But we decided it was now too windy and went inside and sat on a bench and eat.

He wanted to go back outside after that, but stopped before going out. So we went downstairs to the toy store. First, he found the keyboard. He stood at that, and played with it for 10 minutes or so, playing along to the backing tracks and dancing back and forth. Then, he found the magnets on magnetic boards. There were only 4 sad Hangeul magnets (the rest were Magformers). He really wanted to find more: “let me find the Hangeul magnets.” He spotted the play area, and wanted to go. I said we could do it after his nap, and he started to lose it: “I’ll go in the play area.” He said repeatedly.

Changed him and took off and he fell asleep right away, at 12:24. Had headed west to our usual coffee shop, but stopped a few blocks short and found a new one. At the coffee shop he woke up at 1:06 and started requesting we go outside. I told him to go back to sleep. And he did. He woke up at 1:36, waving his arm as it had fallen asleep. He quieted down and sat there for five minutes before asking to leave again. He wanted out of the backpack, so we walked around the block to 의서어린이공완 – a children’s park we’d played at once before. Along the way there was a restaurant with one of those chalk-type boards out front. August wanted to erase letters with his finger.

At the park he walked on the bench, chanting “all the way to this 7, boop” and turning the ‘boop’ part into more of a melodic line. He noticed part of the bench was coming apart, and wanted to know why. So I was teaching him ‘rot’ and ‘rotten’ and explaining why it rotted. He then picked up little pieces of rotten wood and was “sorting” them into the cracks. He was hungry so ate a banana, then was back to walking around and chanting numbers. He then started climbing the hill thing as George and Peppa. He saw some bigger boys and chased them when they came off the slide. Did that a few times. He spotted blue paint on the ground as George (“George found paint on the ground”). At first he needed my help getting up the hill, but soon he could do it on his own. The hill was different colors, but fading, so he was curious about the colors: “I thinked about colors mixing into grey…see what I know.” I said one color was a ‘pinkish grey’. Him: “a pinkely grey…I changed it.” “Peppa likes that smell.” From the guy sawing something in the nearby alley.

He sang a long song, with a tune he made up. Then he said “You made up a very big tune.” He saw a girl climbing the spider-looking thing and wanted to do it. So I helped him up. He then got down and was singing into the voice thing. He sang the 123 version of the ABC song, and the girl sang along singing “A B C…” He went back to the hill thing and was climbing it again – this time as George. Peppa could already climb it, but George needed my help. But then George could do it on his own and was very happy about that. We saw a fuzzy fly bye and he said “Bye fuzzy!” – a reference to our youth center playground experience. Suddenly, he was down on the ground and pretending to be a seagull, flapping its wings. More correctly, “George is pretending to be a seagull.” After that he said “You’re August again.”

He then was playing by the alley and said “What’s the yellow?” It was sparks from where the guy was working across the street. I picked him up and August watched him through the doorway for a couple minutes. He used the grinder once so August got a good view of the sparks. I was explaining what sparks were and teaching him how to spell it. When August was done I had him say thank you before we walked back to the park. He sat on the ground and made letters out of his fingers. He did a pretty good lowercase d and b and uppercase D and several other letters.

He sang and played around a bit more, then saw me reading on my phone and said he wanted to type on his iPad. I thought about it and said okay, and he got excited and ran off, saying “Let’s go to another bench! Let’s go! Let’s go!” Good timing, as then it started to rain. We sat on a covered bench and read and typed and did some art. But then he was upset, wanting my iPad, then we just worked together on his.

We changed his diaper, then ate a Larabar as we got ready to go. He said he wanted to go to home in Uijeongbu. I told him which trains we would take, and he said “Er sound” for the Uijeongbu line. He had mentioned this on the way up. As we walked to the train, he imagined letters everywhere, saying “l is walking over there, R is walking over there…Q is walking that way, S is walking that way…” and pointing.

On the train he did the ‘errrr’ sound when he heard it. Much of the way home he worked on a big piece of art on the iPad, zooming in on one part and drawing, then another. When walking he heard a car honk and said “that was a ng sound.”

At home he chose to put a
diaper on after I changed him. I talked to him about practicing to be a big kid, but he said he wanted to do that later. We read some Go Dog Go, with him reading lots of the words, and Carly got home. August saw she had bags: “you go to the store. What you get?” They nursed. He then played on the couch with me, casting spells and turning him into different animals: storks, etc. He was saying ‘Choi-chwon-i-cal’ again. To himself: “Is it from Puffin Rock? No. is it from imagination? No.” I started to say “You are…” and he finished with “confusing”.

He went and played with his magnets, and exclaimed “You wrote 귤!” He had. That’s the word for mandarin orange.

I changed him and was singing Cada Semilla. He asked what ‘something else’ means, so we were going through examples. He would then say “another  sample”. I then changed to ‘someONE else’ and explained that. He was then listing people, saying “Torrey or Megan or Gramma or Rosie or Logan…” When we were done I told him he could do more art on the iPad but that later I wanted to do other things, and listed something. He said “No, I want to do iPad. I want something else.” We both then got excited that he had used the phrase in context.

He and Carly nursed again and ended up watching our videos on my phone for quite awhile. They then did coloring together. He came it and found me typing on my iPad and wanted to type, so I let him do that for a bit. Carly went and took a shower, and we went and made our fort on the bed and read some Smurfs. When she was done and came out we hid as quietly as he could until she found us. He went out and found his iPad and did some Hangeul magnets. Carly started his bath and he wanted to go it in the hall. So she put some shorts on him and they went out for a few minutes. Came back, took his bath, then went in on the bed and was asleep at 8:30.

 

Park art: 

Up by 6:40. He was fine with Carly leaving. We watched Peppa Pig, then did a bunch of art on the iPad. We ate banana bread and then he switched to Timmy Time while I took a shower. We wrote on the paper. I introduced him to writing full sentences, like ‘I want crackers’ and ‘Mama goes to work.” And used words like ‘subject’, ‘verb’, and ‘object’. He then wanted to write ‘Australian Pavilion’ in Korean. This was a reminder that we had grabbed the Korean map at the zoo on Monday so we could learn some of the words in Korean. So we got out both copies of the map and wrote things like ‘Australian Pavilion’ in Korean. He then found one of his sticker books in the drawer and we did a lot of stickers – he likes putting them in the proper place now. We then went in on the bed and made a fort. We read Planting a Rainbow, Mr. Gumpy’s Outing, and Mañana Iguana. He then did some painting. We were brushing our teeth and he got some toothpaste on his hand. He said “What you get toothpaste on your finger about?” I replied “I don’t know. Why did you?” His answer: “Because it’s funny.” And he started a game where he was pretending to slip and fall down, and of course he wanted me to join in. And he was singing  “I’d like to have a barbecue with you and you and you.” That’s a line from one of the Jolly Song letter sound videos on YouTube.

We got to class on time today. No forward roll, but he was very good with the teacher today. And for that matter there were two teachers, as there is now an assistant. At one point the teacher tried to hug him, and August gave him a high five instead and said “Just high five.” But at the end of class, the main teacher put his hands out for a hug. August first gave him a high five, but then considered it, and walked into the teacher’s arms so he could hug him. Class was about cars. There were cars they rolled around on the floor and on a track, steering wheels they used to push around cars, and of course little car scooters they sat on and pushed around with their feet. August liked all of them, but was probably most impressed by the horn on the steering wheel. It was hard to make squeak though, so he spent a lot of time working on that. Oh, and near the beginning of class August was on his hands and feet, and said “you’re a rainbow”. There was also a cubby with extra floor mats in it, and August climbed up into it and curled up a few times.

On our walk home he was singing letters and said “The letters are wearing costumes” He was then listing what costume each letter was wearing: ”C is V…dada…pancakes…6…Hangeul…” We stopped in the park in our now usual spot so he could trace Hangeul and play around for a few minutes.

When we got home he wanted to play with the door buttons. He hit the pound sign key and it shut it off and wouldn’t work at all. This happened once, long ago, and just means it turns off for a few minutes. We went and checked the mail and got in a couple minutes later. But as soon as we were inside, he wanted to go for a walk. So we got ready to go. He wanted to go right away, so when I asked if he wanted soy milk he said “No!…Just a little.” He then managed to spill some soy milk right as I set some banana chips on the tray in front of him. Once we were cleaned up, we walked over to the youth center. He got out for a snack lunch – Larabar, etc. He said “Ready, steady, go!” When I asked what that was from he said “from Peppa Pig.” He was poking me and making a noise: “Pon, pon, pon…that’s the sound of poking.” There was a group of older kids playing, and a bunch of boys were over at the picnic table. August heard them knocking on the table and went to investigate. He then climbed up at the table and started knocking on it, like them. They left to go back inside, and August played on and around the table for several minutes. I asked if he wanted to do something, and he said “I’m a little too busy for that.”

He pooped, so I decided we’d go home to change him first, then try again for a nap. But on the walk home he wanted to get out. I let him out, but he started walking back the way we’d come from, looking at the ground. I asked what he was doing, and he said “I’m just looking to see if there’s anything interesting.” A street cleaner truck went by, going the other direction, and we watched that.

We went home and changed him. He was clearly tired. He wanted to do iPad, and when I wouldn’t let him do that, he sat on the floor and said “I’ll just do marbles then.” Referring to making marbles out of play dough. Got him in the stroller and we went for a walk. He fought a nap, but clearly needed it. I picked him up at one point as he was upset, then had to force him back in the stroller. Took about 50 minutes total, but finally he fell asleep and we went to the Sarang Bread coffee shop. He fell asleep from 3:11 to 4:24 when I woke him up as we left. He woke up from a coughing fit at 3:26, sat up for a minute, and fell back to sleep. On the way home he fell back to sleep a couple times, until I got him out of the stroller. He quietly said “can we eat?…yeah, yeah.” We made and ate a salmon sandwich. We then went and played in the fort. We read Night Becomes Day, In the Forest, and In the Small, Small Pond.

Carly came home as we were in the fort – that had actually been the plan since earlier in the day when we were in the fort and August wanted mama to come home. They nursed, then did lots and lots of art on the iPad. He was using the smart tool to draw ovals, calling them eggs: “I know a kind of seagull. It’s a clown seagull. It’s a clown made out of smoke. It’s a clown smoke seagull.”

Carly gave him a bath. He called ‘Ryan’ so I came and looked in. He laughed. That was a game, with him laughing every time I came back. After his bath he came out and he said “Why dada say…?” I don’t know what I said that got that going, but then I would say a random word and he would laugh and say “Why dada say…”’ again. After a couple minutes of that he suddenly got quiet and serious and said “All done saying things…Let’s play Duplos.” And he he took my finger and led me to the parlor. We wrote on the whiteboard thing, but but first I made a big production of panicking about not being able to find the pen for it. He was then wanting things to go kaboom, so we laughed a lot saying kaboom and kablooie and boom. He and Carly then did Duplos, and I remembered I’d mentioned cutting his hair. So we let him watch Peppa Pig and we cut his hair. Actually, Carly did it this time – her first August hair cut. Took quite awhile, and he did quite well. At one point though he said“I’m too busy to sit down” as he lay on the back of the couch instead.

Headed to bed. Read Pete the Cat. Left them at 9:45. Then at 10:23 he came in to the parlor. He wrote on the board thing for awhile. “Why you not sleepy?” He asked of himself several times. We read The Little Kipper Collection and Mother Goose (Elsie Marley is still Tia Cassie, and the spoon is Mama). He went out and got the Matthew Van Fleet Alphabet book, but he wanted to read it in bed. I said he could either read that in the reading area with me, or go in and sleep with mama. After a couple minutes of deliberation, he decided on bed. He went in right at 11 and was asleep pretty quickly.

He did a lot of slithering like a snake today, and we got the Halloween card from my parents.

Fort: 

Class: 

Park: 

Street cleaner: 

Asleep: 

Home. Fort:

Haircut: 

Up late reading: 

He was up at 6:30 and very smiley this morning, and fine when Carly left. He was pretending to be a baby duck and climbing behind me on the couch, then we read 줄 타는 코끼리 (the elephant book). We went in and wrote Korean on the paper. Wrote words from the book and from one of the little word books from one of his classes. He then wanted the cookie jar song, so we moved to word songs on YouTube. He started watching a collection of songs that had “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” in it. He whispered “What is it?” And scooted back and crouched on his toes. I asked if he liked it and he whispered “Yeah”. It was like he was mesmerized.

I took a shower. After I was done he called to me, and wanted to pee on the toilet. The first time he has done this with his diaper still on. We read the Korean baby animals counting book. He could read and understand the whole thing. That is two Korean books we now have down.

We Skyped with my parents for an hour. August was really giggly and funny. He was joking about making them look at the ceiling, then sent them lots of “nonsense” typing. He remembered what ellipses are, but decided that they should be called something slightly different. He picked up some new phrases from Puffin Rock that he really liked and wanted me to explain: “Leave the rest to me” and “we’ll miss it” and “Puffin patrol”. He also said  Oona said something like “ker-whanickle” or “tyrannical” but we couldn’t find it in the episode he had been watching.

He played Figure on his own, then I was playing and played something that reminded him of “Three Little Kittens”. So we figured out how to play and sing it. He then moved to Paper and did some art. He was singing “Three Little Kittens” to himself before moving to other tunes.

Getting ready to go, he was walking around the living room/kitchen and noticed the temperature of the floor because of the floor heater. He walked back and forth saying cold and warm.

We walked and took the 100 bus to Dream Forest. We first walked up and saw the deer for a few minutes. One of them made deer squeaking noises next to us, and August was curious about that. We went to the playground and sat on the edge and ate lunch (leftovers from yesterday) and he pretended to be Oona climbing on me. He then walked and crawled on the rock wall. Sang the Lulu song from class. He heard a noise from the construction site and said “I like that noise…the low noise.” He did his “All the way to this stream, boop” chant, and added the line “All the way to this I, boop”. He also tried crawling on it and said “I’m a flamingo working on it (the pine needles)…so dada can be happy.” He stumbled, after which he got down and started walking away, saying “I want to go to the coffee shop. I’ll just type a document.” I asked if anything was wrong, and he said “yes”. I held him a few minutes, then we walked to go inside to the bench area. But then he saw the play structure made out of dodecahedrons and wanted to play in it. We spent several minutes climbing up into it, and counting the levels. He liked the sunnier spots as they were warmer. We made it to the top, and we went down the slide. It was fast and we shot off the end. I said “I think I scraped my butt.” He said “Let me check…no…there’s no blood. ”

We walked inside to go to the bench area. We have revived the whole “I got my dada/I got my Zinnie” thing when I pick him up, but of course it is now a joke all the time and he changes it up. As we went in the building to the stairs he wanted me to pick him up and he said “I got my Duplo.” So I put him back down since he hadn’t called me ‘dada’. I joked that I wouldn’t pick him up because until he called me ‘dada’, and he said “I won’t pick you up anymore.”

We got up to the bench and played on there for awhile. I asked if he wanted more food and he said “I’m fine for now.” He is also using “I suppose…” and “I prefer…” sentences a lot. He spotted the information desk across the room and read out 꿈의숲아트센터 in Korean. It means ‘Dream Forest Arts Center’. He hopped around on the floor, saying “hip hop, hip hope” and then climbed on the wire furniture, pretending to get his foot stuck, then pretending the ghost also got his foot stuck.

He argued against a nap a bit, but we got him changed and in the backpack and walked some of the trails and he fell asleep. Went back to Cafe Dream and he slept from 1:40 to 2:43. After he woke up I got him out and he stood around while I packed up. A woman came over and gave him two mandarin oranges – 귤. August and I understood her using the word as we had learned it at Mama Juice the previous day. We went in the kids’ area and ate one, and read a couple of the Korean books. He then spent quite awhile doing art on the iPad. We got ready to leave at 4. I picked him up and was swinging him from side to side, singing the Basho song, and he started talking about the word ‘side’: “Side…it’s close to sign…and it’s also close to scientist.”

We headed outside to find it drizzling. We popped under a cover to put up his cover and had some crackers as it rained heavier for a few minutes. We then walked to the bus stop and caught the bus home, transferring at Induk and taking the 9 to Brownstone. Carly was home about 10 minutes later.

They nursed and then they did art together on the iPad. He was showing her more make believe shapes: “Which is a tricky one…which is not a tricky one.” He and I then and went and played in the fort. He said something about eating spaghetti in there and I said she’d go ballistic if we spilled spaghetti on her bed. He didn’t know the word, but got the gist of it and thought it was funny: “Mama go ballistic…mama go crazy.” He went out and watched part of a National Geographic video that Carly needed to watch for school. Then he and I played on the piano. I played The Ants Go Marching and he kept singing made up verses to it.

He wasn’t eating dinner, refusing to eat the spaghetti. Earlier he had eaten a couple of bites after he had spilled some on the floor, and we made a big deal of calling them ‘floor noodles’ and Carly was jokingly telling him ‘No’ to eating them. He laughed a lot, but didn’t eat much. He just wanted banana bread instead. I made a deal where he would eat one bite of bread, then one bite of spaghetti. But when it was time to eat a bite of spaghetti he told me to eat it instead. He then got upset when I wouldn’t let him eat more banana bread. He went in the bathroom after Carly was done with her shower, then they went straight to nursing in the parlor. I started his bath, and got him in the bath. He played with letters a bit, but the second I started to touch wash his hair he started to lose it. Carly came in to take over, but they ended up going to bed and he fell asleep pretty quickly, at about 8:30.

Fascinated by Twinkle Twinkle:  

Dodecahedron structure: 

Not quite: 

Bench area: 

Reading and 귤: 

Art: 

Pausing for the rain: 

Home: 

In the fort: 

Funny words: 

7:18. He walked out and laid down on the reading area. First thing he wanted was iPad, but we read the What Are Clouds Made Of? book and had fun with that. He wanted Korean apps, and made words on the magnet board. He was then writing on the etch-a-sketch thing. We were writing Korean words, and I got out the little booklet things from his classes. One of them looks like a phone, and he started calling the animals on the cards. I had one of them ask what he was doing today, and he said “Going to Children’s Grand Park …children’s museum.” He remembered from our discussion the previous evening. We watched some Puffin Rock and had Cheerios for breakfast. I had gotten out a quilt and it was folded and sitting on the couch. He asked what it was, and when I said ‘quilt’ he got on it and started quacking, and said “Quacking on a quilt.” – the line from the “A Ah Apples…” song. He then made a nest out of it and the pillows in the corner of the couch. First he said it was a duck nest, then a dung beetle nest (from Puffin Rock). He was then feeding Baby Q (which he jokingly called Baby T) dung. He then decided he was feeding Baby Q ice, and so we discussed ‘brain freeze’, which he found funny, and which he seemed to understand (probably from eating frozen mango).

We headed down. On the subway he did some art on the iPad, and a woman was impressed as he was writing words in Korean on the iPad. We got off, and I set August and the backpack on a bench. Someone then bumped into me from behind, and didn’t move away quickly. My first thought was to check my pockets. But it was a student from Sejong University (she had a jacket), and she slumped down on the bench next to August and started calling someone on her cellphone. My first thought was that she was drunk, but then I realized she might be really sick and trying to make it to her classes. So I got August out of there. He had leaked though, so we stopped in the infant room in the station and changed him. As we left, he was singing songs, and he would finish one and say that song was “for the pelicans…for the slime.”

We went up to the park and to the new Yes and Yes convenience store to get lunch. But they didn’t have kimbap or sandwiches. Instead of going back down into the subway station, we went across the street to the one at Sejong University. Good choice, as they have a good selection. Went to the children’s museum and ate in the cafeteria.

He saw the little kids area from the cafeteria and wanted to play there. So we went in. He did some climbing in the center area, then we went up to the kitchen area. He did some tea, traded an apple for something else with a “baby”, and climbed around on the little chairs, tipping them over and making a sort of fort out of them. He went down the slide on his own, then played with some of the puzzles. There is a new wooden puzzle that does shapes, and he really liked that one. Then he asked where the “light blocks” were. He was referring to the blocks in the light area downstairs. It was getting on to nap time now, and I said we would change him first. He didn’t want that, but we got him changed. He was clearly tired, so we headed out for a nap.

But like yesterday he was quiet and let me sing for 15 minutes or so. But then he wanted apple. We stopped on a bench and ate, then started walking again. He said he didn’t want to nap though, and did his letter yelling thing again. Didn’t want to deal with a lot of walking in the 40 degree weather again, so we headed home. On the way two separate maintenance trucks that zoom around the walkways in the park came uncomfortably close to us. I’ve never liked how they speed along the paths as if they were roadways, and not walking paths, and don’t bother to signal.

We made it in one piece though. On the subway, we ate some of his Halloween pretzels (bat and pumpkin shapes), then he was really into art on the iPad. A guy wanted to take August’s photo. I have no problem with him just snapping a shot, but I knew he wanted August to look up, and I didn’t want to interrupt August’s art, so told him no.

On the walk from the station, he was saying long lines of nonsense, then saying he was playing a joke on a Smurf: “You were making a joke on Handy Smurf.” We stopped to look in at Pink Burger, and the guy who owns Mama Juice started talking to us. He said it should be open this weekend. August wanted to read the Hangeul on the Mama Juice sign, and the guy was impressed, and helped August with the translations he didn’t know – like tangerine and persimmon. August needed no help with pronunciation though, as he is now about as fluent as I am – he easily read ‘Americano’ and ‘caramel macchiato’ off the menu in Korean. August was also going through all of the flavors and declaring which ones he has tried and which he hasn’t: “You have not tried that one before.” I told him we could get some juice when we went back out for a walk, and he chose persimmon.

As we walked up, he randomly said “Fishy McFisherton”. I asked where he got that, and he said “From Mama”. We were at home for awhile, changed him (he had leaked a little, again – no idea why. Almost no leaking since we’ve been back in Korea, then twice today), then headed out in the stroller for Home Plus. We stopped and got his juice and a coffee for me. The guy let August put the straw in, and some splashed on me. No big deal.

At Home Plus August got out of the stroller when I looked at diapers. He started acting like a puppy dog, barking and pretending to lick me. When I left that aisle, he was behind me. I took too long to get moving, and, as he was on his hands and knees acting like a dog, he started pushing the back of my legs and saying “you can do it Dada.” He kept doing this, and scooting along the ground, for quite some time. When not pushing my legs and telling me I could do it, he would bark along beside me. I had to pick him up a couple times when he was in the way/drawing too much attention.

Finished our shopping and headed home. He sang my numbers version of the “Bottom of the sea” song much of the way. Despite liking the song, he had been having some trouble picture it (it goes “there’s a 4 on a 3 on a 2 on a 1 in a zero at the bottom of the sea…”) and kept asking “What’s that mean?” So when we got home I drew a picture for him on the etch-a-sketch thing. We also ended up singing the “Five Little Ducks” song – a song which he generally likes now, but still calls sad. I made a version where at the end the mama duck goes swimming and finds her missing ducklings, and he really liked that because he liked the happy ending. (I don’t think I mentioned that he found one awful version of the song on YouTube where the mama duck lost all the ducklings, but then the dada duck called them and they all came back. Yuck.)

Carly came home as he was at the counter with me, helping to make banana bread. We included some persimmon this time. August didn’t ask to nurse right away, but then did, then came back and helped me finish up. At some point he said “You like helping dada.” I gave him the spatula at the end and he sat on the floor and intently licked it for a few minutes. Carly got him in to the bath. He went in just fine, and was having fun. But when she started washing him a switch flipped and he was exhausted and wanted out. It was a pretty straightforward trip to bed and fight to put his pajamas on, and he was asleep about 7:30.

 

Photos: 

Banana bread: 

He was up at 6:25 and sad when Carly left. Wanted to get in stroller and go outside. But he didn’t want his coat. “I’ll just stay cold…just socks.” Of the coat he said “Put it in th stroller.” But he let me put his coat on once we got downstairs. First thing he asked was “What is it dark about?” Of course, it was also drizzling. We walked south around the pink building, then over to the park. We went up on the wooden pathway area, and he wanted to get out. I let him out, and he walked around for a couple minutes, doing some quiet singing, then he was ready to head home. As we got home, I said “Being outside makes you happy, doesn’t it?” He said “Yeah!” As we got out of the stroller, I felt his cold hands and told him he could wear gloves, and he said “Next time!”

We then checked the messages from Glecy and Gramma on his iPad, and he sent messages. We got ready to go, which took longer than expected, because as usual August kept finding distractions. I suggested we take the Korean elephant book for the long subway ride and he agreed, then when I suggested we get an English book he grabbed Horton Hatches the Egg, a big book. I wouldn’t let him take it, and he was a bit sad about that. I was sitting on the couch, and he took my spot: “That is my spot. You can’t sit there…that’s your spot.” We left at 9:40. I mentioned his gloves as we walked down the hall, and he actually wanted them on right away. So we walked back to the apartment and put them on. Took us awhile to figure out the fingers, but we got better through the day. He was happy with them.

On the train down he saw tildes on the subway map (listing starting and end points of each line) and so we practiced what tildes mean. He then was pretending to type, and wanted to understand commas. So I was explaining and giving examples, and he was repeating them, like “However comma we decided to go somewhere else.” He wanted more “tricks”. We read the elephant book once, with him doing all the reading, and me providing the English version. He played with the calculator app. Looking at the map, he said “오이도…you like that name.” He also wanted to list ‘ng’ words. And he mentioned various sounds on the subway: “m sound…u sound…cricket sound (a loud screeching noise)”

We walked up to CU, but they only had a couple rolls of spicy kimbap. We walked to the other CU, but there wasn’t anything there either. So back to the first one where we got two sandwiches, a bean bread thing, and an apple juice. Walked up to the zoo and ate by the giraffes. August didn’t wear his gloves on the way, and I got my first disapproving comments about his hands being cold as we walked by a couple of women close to the entrance.

After eating, we went and changed him. We talked about how we had changed him on different changing pads in the past (there is a whole row of them), and he spent a few minutes crawling back and forth on them, trying to choose one: “this one or this one…” He also randomly did a “grunt, snort” from Peppa Pig, and didn’t want to put his pants back on, saying “want to see animals in just a diaper”. After some more crawling around, he notes the pink posters, then we found pink things. He said “pink is my favorite color…we are finding pink things…”

We got walking. He was calm at first, and when I asked after a few minutes if he wanted me to start singing he said yes. But after about 20 minutes he said he was hungry. We sat down on the steps by the elephants and he sat next to me and we ate some apple and watched the elephant. While we were there a woman was taking a photo of her daughter and asked for August to be in the picture. I initially said no, but then I asked August and he wanted to do it, so he got up and stood next to her.

We got walking again, went and saw the lions, then tried for a nap again. But after awhile he started singing, then shouting letters in my ears. He wouldn’t stop, so I took the backpack off for a minute. He was now saying he wasn’t going to nap. It was too cold to mess around in the park just wandering around, so we started to head home. But then I decided we might not be back for a few months, and I wanted to see the tropical bird building, which we hadn’t yet been to. So we walked up there, and ended up spending a lot of time there. We spotted birds of different colors, he got down and read bird names in Korean, and we spent a lot of time looking at the egg exhibit.

You leave the building from the top, and there is a walkway to the ground. From there, we heard some of the water birds across the way, and August wanted to go see them. But first he spent a few minutes playing with the door heading out, which slides closed on its own. He’d need my help to get it going, then would push it open further, and let it shut.

Between the tropical birds and the water birds there is a random platform you can climb up. He wanted to do that, and he wanted to do the walking, although I think I ended up carrying him the last flight. Stayed up there a few minutes, then went into the water birds. We were just watching the birds for a few minutes, and he asked what all the water was for. I had just said something about there being fish in the water, since most of the birds eat fish, when a zookeeper came along pushing a cart, and dumped a big container of fish into the small pool near us. We spent the next 20+ minutes just watching the birds feed: how the pelicans catch fish and let the water run out of their mouths (and fish escape), the fighting between the storks (and the sounds they make) and how the loud red cranes ate first, and quickly, and then after they and the storks left, the kingfishers and swans started to feed. A literal pecking order. August was enthralled by all of this. I wasn’t having to convince him to stay.

Eventually he was ready to go. On our walk out, we walked by the nocturnal house, and I asked if he wanted to see the kinkajous, so we went in there for a few minutes and saw them (he spotted them first, when I couldn’t) and a few of the other animals. As we walked out of the park he was singing. He was using ‘mama jut’ in his song. ‘Mama jut’ is a mispronounciation of ‘Mama Juice’ and what would happen if you wrote ‘juice’ in Korean as a single syllable – as the ‘s’ sound in Korean at the end of a word has to make a ‘t’ sound. Anyway, August really liked that lesson when I gave it, and it stuck.

We changed him again (a bit more crawling around) and sat and ate some apples before taking off.

And as we were in about the exact same spot that a woman commented about his hands being cold on the way in, he spotted ‘apple’ (in Korean) on a banner across the street. We stopped to translate the whole thing, when suddenly I felt a tugging behind me/to the left. I literally thought I was going to fall over at first. A woman had decided that August was showing some ankle skin and took the initiative to pull down his pant leg while we were both looking the other way. I shooed her away and told her it was rude not to ask. I’m pretty sure she got the message.

At the station we had a few minutes, and he was still hungry. So we ate the red bean bun thing we had bought with lunch. It had a custard center, and August went straight for it. He decided he likes custard. On the train home he ate the last of the apple. He did some typing on the iPad, and we told Smurf stories: getting fish for the sea festival, their first cold day of the fall, etc. He was typing in the ‘search’ bar and it wouldn’t let him type anymore. So I deleted it. Big mistake. He didn’t get upset, but got whiny/sad and kept saying “I’ll just do the same one.”

We got off at Changdong and caught a 1144 bus pretty quickly. All was going well, and he had been high energy. But suddenly that changed and his head was down and eyes were closing. He fell asleep at 5:25 and was asleep when I went in the apartment and Carly saw him. I took him out of the backpack and he just slumped on the couch. I laid down and cuddl
ed next to him for a few minutes, since I never get to do that. Then, with some light tickling (very cute to hear him laughing in his sleep) and mentions of nursing, we woke him up at 5:40.

They nursed, then he typed on Carly’s computer. He was then pretending to type in the air (a new thing he’s been doing, then he’ll say who he was typing to) and said “I was sending Uncle Paul messages on Skype.” So we set up August’s email account on his iPad and he can now send emails to people now as well – useful for those people who don’t have/check Skype. He sent a few emails. Changed his diaper a bit later, and on the changing pad he said “Oh. My. Good. Ness.” Which reminded me that on the subway he had randomly said “dis-gus-tu-sing”. I don’t know where he gets that voice.

I changed the sheets, and he ‘helped’ and we read Mr. Gumpy. Played a bit on the bed, then on the couch. He was climbing all over me and the couch. He started saying crazy math problems using ‘361’ and a funny voice. Playing in the reading area, we did some Duplos and he told me to sleep. He was drawing on the magnetic smart board thing, and kept saying “I’m making a picture. Now don’t erase it. Or I can be sad. I’m gonna erase it myself.” Which I’m pretty sure was payback for deleting his typing earlier. Carly had given him his bath, and he did his usual complaining as we put his pajamas and diaper on – he would prefer to just nurse naked. It took awhile for him to get to sleep, and he somehow managed to take until close to 9.

 

Morning walk. Using the blanket: 

Photo with a random girl: 

Eggs: 

Asleep for a very short nap: 

On the couch: 

Up little past 6. Skype with Vivian. Came in to ask me what August was saying “cookie jar song”. He did a happy dance when I figured it out. Oatmeal and mango for breakfast. He wanted to see a video of bees making honey, so Carly pulled one up the iPad, and Vivian watched it through Skype. Cherie called at some point, and they skyped with her as well. When he wanted to nurse, he made a joke of not saying please after “want to nurse”, saying it then telling himself to say please.

We went out to go to the store and to the park. August decided he wanted to go straight to the park, so Carly went to the pink building and did the shopping, while he and I went to the playground. On the way to the elevator he was crawling and said he was a ghost. I asked why he was a crawling ghost and he said “because it is fun.”

At the playground we saw the swing swinging on its own and talked to the ghost. He climbed up on the shaky bridge and talked about the pattern of colors on them, then we played the foot stuck game. While pretending to get his foot stuck, his other foot slipped through as well. He was left dangling, holding on to the two railings. I had to go help him, but he didn’t get upset. He kept talking about it, saying “you were swinging…you were swinging like a monkey.” He did the tube slide thing with my help, then played with the swing. He said something that reminded me of the Beatles song “Ob-La-Di” and he liked it, and he said “you can dance to it later.” He played on the teeter totter, and another girl got on the other end and they played together. He wanted to go, but as we started to walk out, he said “You’re going to find your froggy nest.” He went up into the bushes, and played in those for a few minutes. On the way back, he held my hand crossing the street, then walked across the driveway on his own, like he wanted to do last night. Carly caught up to us as we looked into the progress on Pink Burger, the new burger place that was being built.

At home we spent the some time reading a Korean poster, then we went and read the Mother Goose book. On the Elsie Marley one he said it was Tia Cassie, then “Oops, Mama.” On the iPad, he was sending emojis to my mom, and recorded a video and sent it without us knowing. In on the paper, he was writing ‘LMNOP’, then ‘bit’ and ‘bite’. He explained the silent E the way I do it for him: “the E comes along and says hey. You need to say I…”

Derek was bringing Rosie over to the park, so I took August back down to the playground while Carly made spaghetti sauce. I played with August a bit, and got the stick out of the backpack when he wanted to write in the dirt, but mainly I talked to Derek, and August played well on his own – he acted silly and walked shapes on the ground, and walked backwards. He went over and hung on the climbing wall on his own. He then went over to the dinosaur foot prints and wanted to play in them. Rosie came over and played there a bit, then Derek left with her. August laughed at Derek and gave him a high five before he left. August kept playing in the footprints, and counted leaves and rocks as he dropped them in. He had wanted to splash in puddles again, but there was barely any water in them. I talked about going home and eating some spaghetti. August said “it’s going to be messy…you doesn’t like that…the messy.”

He ate some spaghetti and then went to sleep, from 12:50 to 2:05. They nursed for a long time, then he was typing. I was impressed that he’s figured out the shift key and can do that all on his own. He said “You have the parentheses down.” Carly and I wanted to go for a walk, and I asked August if he wanted the backpack or stroller. He said “I agree to stroller.” Before we left, he was pretending to sit by the “iggly wiggly” worms before we left. “I’m just sitting by the iggly wiggly worm.” I asked “Is that from Puffin Rock?” He replied “No. it’s not.” Which is a joke, because it is.

We headed out for a walk at 3. We walked up the stream and went to the park where he had split his chin open. Carly went on the swings, and August got on the rocking toys for awhile. They then went and dug a hole in the sand and made mountains that August kept smashing. I took over for awhile. Before we left, he spent a few minutes being a kitty cat in the bushes and hiding. We walked home, and as we got close to home he was spitting water on the ground from the stroller. He did it a couple times in the building and I told him to stop. He said “I spit water out of my trunk…I’m done spitting water.”

At home we read the Korean poster, then Snoozers, then part of New Kid on the Block. We ended up singing “If you’re happy and you know it” and he wanted more and more verses. One we did was ‘scrunch your neck’ and he really liked that. I changed him, and he was pretending to be an elephant. He was then writing and doing art on the smart board thing while we listened to  Amanda Palmer’s ‘Piano is Evil’. Next, we read the Korean elephant book, and August did much of the reading. Carly remembered the slime, and I got it out and they played with that for a long time. Carly gave him a bath, and there was lots of laughing. He came out, and actually wanted to get back in. Going to bed was pretty straightforward, and he was asleep by 8:30.

Photos. Skyping with Vivian: 

With Rosie: 

Park: 

He was up with Carly at 6:30. They looked out in the hallway, Skyped with Oma and Opa, and Carly showed August a video of snow. After I was up, August wanted to go back out in the hall: “I want to go in the hallway…I suppose I can.” He sat on the cold floor, naked, and noticed there weren’t many people outside. Back inside, Carly offered him cheese: “I’m good for now. I can have more later.” He wanted back outside. We went for awhile: he did ribbit, we checked the mail, and he sat in a baby seat mysteriously by the bicycles. Back inside, Carly commented on how he knows his directions – when she had said ‘north’, he had said ‘south’. That comes from all of our talk about the subway lines and riding the busses. Anyway, back inside, we wrote words on paper, figuring out which words ending in ‘s’ end in a ‘s’ sound or ‘z’ sound. We read the elephant book, mostly translated now, then he decided he wanted to go back in the hall. We were done with that for awhile, so carly distracted him with teaching him about timers and stopwatches on her computer.

I took a shower and they got ready and went outside. I caught up and found them in the petrified rock garden. He was acting like a frog on ththe rocks, and getting berries. Played there a few more minutes. On the way back he wanted to go in the science center, but there is a sign saying it is closed through the end of the year.

At home he wanted to play in the hall, but settled for lunch. Kimbap and apple. He did the map puzzle with Carly, then he and I read Biscuit Goes Camping and Old King Cole.

He was then ready for a nap, and slept from 12:00 to 1:40. They did a lot of nursing after that, then he had rice curry for lunch. He and I then wrote on the paper. He wrote “Mama”, then called “Hey mama! Can we nurse?” Carly told him he’s a big kid and didn’t need to nurse. “No, no. I do a baby.” He was then pretending to be a baby, and did a baby cry, etc. Carly was teasing him, telling him that if he was a baby he couldn’t walk, talk, etc. They then played with Smurfs, and then he typed in search on my iPad. We then read Elmo ABC. He got a hair in his mouth and said “it was slurpy.”

We got ready to go to the Halloween gathering, and Megan came over at 4:45 to go with us. We walked down and caught the 111 over to Luceen. We were a bit early, so had time to put our costumes on: Carly was 17, I was 11, and August was 14. August found it odd to walk in his costume, but seemed amused by it. We met up with everyone else, and August got to take a swing at a piñata. Then took a group photo, and headed up for some trick or treating. At the first place August got a cookie. We then went to the Meyers’ place and he and Cora and Megan had fun playing with the oobleck slime. By the end they were mixing it up, making a big ball of slime. He was playing next to Cora, who was wearing a Peppa Pig costume, and I asked if he wanted to say hi to her. He turned and said “Hi, Cora.” I then asked him if he wanted to say he liked her costume, and he turned and did that.

We left and went outside. August was playing with Megan’s wand, which lit up. Cora was going home, so I had him say goodbye and compliment her on her costume again. We got August in the backpack, and the group walked over to Lotte. August was singing along the way, and casting spells on me to turn me into a tree and other animals. At Jodi’s he got candy and a plastic spider, then at Melinda’s was the first time he actually got to say “Trick or treat”.

The final destination was Caroline’s house. I took him out of the backpack and he immediately started acting like a kitty cat. Took him down the hall to get his treats, and he was really excited by the bags of pretzels. His favorite food of the evening though was the cornbread. He drank some mango juice, then sat on the floor and ate some pizza with me. He was lying down and scooting around the floor a lot. After awhile he calmly said “let’s go home”. But we stayed another 15 minutes or so. He got to choose a piece of a cupcake, and he chose the red one. Then watched a couple minutes of Charlie Brown before we left. As we left, I picked him up and told him to say goodbye to everyone, nice and loud. He said “Bye, everyone” and waved.

Megan left with us, and we all took the bus home. As we got out of the bus, his coat was bothering him, and I took him out of the backpack. He walked some, then had me pick him up as we crossed the street. We had a little conversation about being safe across the street, and that one day he’d be able to cross it himself, etc. and as we walked into the building he wanted back down, to walk across the driveway part on his own. He kept wanting to go back, saying “I’ll just cross it.” Back home, he went to sleep pretty easily, just before 9.

Hallway:

Photos. Dancing: 

Park with mama. Froggy getting worms: 

Trick or Treating: 

Slime: 

Wand: 

He was fascinated with the masks, and had just been touching this one. Missed that, but thought it was still a good photo: 

Floor: 

Charlie Brown: 

6:56. Took a look in the parlor, then went and opened the door and looked out for a minute. Then went and sat in front of the paints and wanted to paint. Took a couple minutes of stretching and rubbing his eyes before he was ready to paint. Did some painting, then we ate banana bread and he typed in search. Then played on the piano, singing Ants Go Marching. He wanted to go look out in the hall, so went and looked out. A neighbor walked by, and August said ‘hi’ after he had passed. He heard a car honk, and said “I like cars…that honk a little.” He then went out into the hall and hopped around as a froggy for awhile. I didn’t want him making too much noise, so we want back in after a minute.

We played with Duplos, and made shapes: “that’s a filled up square…you put lots of colors in it.” We sat in the reading area and read Mother Goose. For the one about Elsie Marley, which he used to say looked like mama, he said  “That’s Jeff…Tia Cassie. Fine.” But then for the Cat and the Fiddle one he looked at the dish and spoon and said “Those are mamas.” We wrote on the paper, and he wanted to copy the ‘libros espanol’ sign. He was working on his ‘b’ and ‘d’, saying “you’re not good at it.” But then we worked on them for awhile, practicing both.

We then watched some Puffin Rock, and I took a shower. He was watching word songs after that, and singing along to much of them. He was also singing along to much of the Puffin Rock theme song. He often watches the song a few times, practicing it. Finally, we searched for ‘alien’ for some reason on YouTube, and an episode of Timmy Time came up about aliens. We watched that, and left at 10:20.

As we walked out the building, he was pretending to see seagulls (from Puffin Rock) and combined that with the silent E song: “No seagulls here. Wait, the seagulls are changing grac to grace.”

On our way downtown, he talked about wanting a slurpy thing. We walked into GS25 in Insadong and he pointed straight for the water jelly drinks. I think he remembered from the last time we went to the folk museum, as he immediately asked for the mango one and talked about liking it the best. As we went to cross the street, Atsuko came up to us. We talked for a minute, then the light changed and we headed on our way.

We walked up to the Folk Museum. Along the way, they were filming a TV show or something in the narrow street from Insadong to the art museum. August wanted to stop in our usual spot behind the art museum for lunch, but I convinced him to go over to the folk museum. We checked the wait times for the play areas, then sat outside and ate lunch. Then headed in at noon. Of course, he decided to be Oona on the way in, which involved crawling and pretending to sleep on the ground outside in front of a big group of older kids.

We could go to the tree area first. Up there, he typed, climbed in the window of the hanok house, did more of the typing, played with the hammering thing, then did some art, drawing what he said was a bird.

We then went downstairs to the new exhibit, on animals in Korean mythology. He climbed on the climbing area, wrote little notes and sent them up a pneumatic tube, then spent most of his time playing in the ball pit in the ‘Underwater palace’ area.

We headed out, changing him in the infant room. As usual, he played in the crib for a few minutes, curling up and pretending to sleep. We got walking, and he had some crackers to start. Then singing, then wanting more food. We walked along a new road, up by the hanok village, then stopped to get out some apple. Ate for a few minutes, then kept walking, through the village and back towards the art museum. Finally, he fell asleep, and slept from 2:12 to 3:17 in Latteya Coffee.

After he woke up, we went to the Kukje Gallery and saw the Anish Kapoor and Wook-kyung Choi exhibits, which close on Sunday. I’d wanted to see the Kapoor, and Meg and sent me an article about the Choi. The first Kapoor pieces we saw, were the big black circles using Vantablack, the darkest pigment yet created: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/anish-kapoor-seoul-kukje-gallery-615575

August preferred the big mirror pieces in Kapoor, and in the Choi we talked about what we saw in the pieces. I mentioned that one looked like Korea, and so then in another I asked what he saw, and he said Myanmar. Then said the red part was India, and black was Mongolia. He wasn’t a huge fan of the art, but made it through.

We talked about going and playing outside at the folk museum, but I decided it was too late. We walked to the station, and stopped to get a snack. They were the round bread things. I ordered six, but August kept saying “No. Seven.” So the guy gave us a free one. He slathered them in sauce and the onion flake stuff, which August seemed a bit disturbed about.

We headed the rest of the way home. At Kwangwoon we transferred to the bus. As we went over the river, I asked if he saw any birds. He pointed far off, and said “Maybe that’s a bird off in the distance.” I asked where he had learned ‘off in the distance. He said “Kwangwoon University”. I asked what had been off in the distance, and he said “a chicken.” I remembered now, although he had the location wrong (I think). He was referring to previous times we had eaten behind the art museum (ironically, the spot we walked past today). We had once heard a chicken ‘off in the distance’. That was last year. A few weeks ago, I had told him about that as we were eating lunch there. So it has come up. I also think that maybe it had, in fact, been discussed as we walked through Kwangwoon University a week or so ago. Anyway, interesting to see how he remembers and connects things.

Also, he was talking about a ‘snack’ and explaining how to pronounce ‘snack’ in Korean – that is, as two syllables. This is a new game, where he takes English words and sort of turns them into Konglish.

Carly was staying a bit late to get work done. August was frustrated by this news on the bus, but handled it fine when we got home. We ate the bread ball things, which turned out to have octopus in them. However, August thought I was playing the ‘Oops ingredients’ game when I told him, and wouldn’t believe me. I’d say “Octopus”, and he’d say “Oops! No octopus!” So we settled on ‘sausage’. He liked those (luckily, not spicy). We then heard the noise of a drill from another apartment. He was pretty fascinated by it: “I like that noise…maybe it was a zzz noise…want to go check.” He then did a painting, and when done set it up on the counter to dry and to show Carly.

She got home, and they nursed. Her and I were trying to talk about work stuff, and August kept interjecting, trying to change numbers, or saying the opposite of whatever word she used. He’s definitely getting opposites. We typed on Skype, and I helped him type all of ‘octopus’. He wanted an octopus emoji, so we found that. Carly had put pants back on him without a diaper, and he remembered this time and went pee on the toilet. Later, he would start to have an accident, and felt a little bad about it. There was more watching and signing of the Puffin Rock song, and he did some drawing with the glass crayons. He was upset when Carly wouldn’t let him use them on the costumes.

Carly got his bath ready, and I gave him a bath. He did not want to get in though, and kept trying to avoid it. Eventually I had to be firm about it, and he melted down. A quick wash, but at the end of it he just kept calling for mama, and wouldn’t get out of the water. He kept insisting that mama wash him, although we were already done. Eventually, she got him out of the bath, and in on the bed. He then couldn’t handle her putting on the diaper or pajamas. Definitely his biggest meltdown/fit in recent memory. Luckily, still really cute. He fell asleep about 8:30, but twice woke up and walked out and Carly put him back to bed.

 

Photos. Slurpy drink:

Tree exhibit: 

Animal exhibit: 

Crib: 

Anish Kapoor sculpture: 

Money for musician: 

Floor of the subway: 

Bus: 

Octopus balls: 

Hiding as George: