He was awake right at 6:00 again. Carly left the living room for something, then came back to find him writing the alphabet by himself on the paper – kind of shocked her. I came out, and told him I had to take a shower. He decided he wanted the iPad and was holding my fingers. We decided to go ahead and let him have the iPad, at which point he pushed my hand away and said “Dada do bathroom.”

 

So we watched a lot of ABC songs in the morning, switching between English and Spanish, and letters and numbers. At one point I thought he had switched to Endless Spanish, only to realize a few seconds later that he had stumbled on a VIDEO of someone demonstrating Endless Spanish. A lot of junk on YouTube.

 

We moved to Duplos, and he wanted to build a new zoo (his idea, not mine).He called the sheep “obeja”, and started to (mostly) say “cuidador del zoologico” (zookeeper). While getting ready to leave he wasn’t happy with any shirt choice, but we finally were on our way a little before 10. Not the smoothest trip down. We just missed a train at our transfer in Sangbong and had 18 minutes to wait. We went down to the Story Way convenience store and bought some hard boiled eggs and kimbap, then went back up on the platform to eat it on a bench. We had just started eating, when suddenly a guy was trying to give August a drink from his (the guy’s) water bottle. I was speechless, in any language and just shooed him away. Then, as we were sitting on the train, August on my lap, another man reached down and stroked a lock of August’s hair. What…the…

 

We got to the National Museum. August didn’t want to go inside yet, and wanted to stay outside and walk around, near the pond. He kind of directed me around, which was an interesting way to hear what he can say: “more farther, go right there, that way, aqui, walk this way…” We stopped at a bench and ate our lunch. He had fun kind of dancing around, looking at his shadow, and stepping on mine. It was now getting time for a nap (after 11:30), so we headed inside and changed him. Outside the changing room he was walking around and suddenly was crawling on the ground, saying “upside down lights”. The floors are so shiny you can really see the overhead lights reflecting in the floor. Then went walking out back behind the museum, mainly through the traditional herb garden, until he fell asleep. Went to the little coffee shop off the second floor of the museum and he slept from 12:34 to 1:48. He woke up a bit after about a half hour, but just looked around, looked at me for awhile, then put his head back down and went back to sleep.

 

When he woke up he was fine at first, but then clearly cranky. Tried to walk through museum a bit, but he didn’t want to go into any of the darker rooms. He just kept saying “no” to everything and to every question. So tried to go to the children’s history museum. Got him out of the backpack, coats off, etc. only to find they were ‘sold out’ (it is free) until 3, and it was only 2. But he was now ready for a children’s museum (he knows what that means) and wasn’t happy waiting in the lobby, where I was trying to get him to draw in the notebook or the iPad (no interest in the iPad at all). A woman from Australia (probably) asked if he was old enough for sweets, and I declined. After we left to go outside for awhile, I hoped we would run into her again when we went back so I could tell her ‘thanks for asking’, but I didn’t see her again.

 

Going outside was the answer. August recovered as we walked around the pond a little bit, then got out at a picnic table to eat a snack. This time, we ate our sandoo and some other stuff. He started drawing numbers and letters in the air, and was even scribbling them out. Then, as I carried him back into the museum, he continued to do it, even saying what color he was drawing in: “Numbers in silver.”

 

Went in to the children’s museum right at 3, and stayed to a little past 4. He played with the characters in the tracks and climbed on and off the little play structure for a few minutes, then turned towards artsier things: he really wanted draw on the electronic table things they had, but access was hard, and the one we did get to wasn’t working properly. But from there we wandered to the other end of the museum where we found big rubber stamps. We used our notebook and put them in there. From there we went back to where there were little pieces of paper and some pencils for drawing. We got out our own markers and used those and did ABCs for quite awhile. They also have these big oval-shaped magnetic puzzles. He did two: one with another kid, then one on our own. He really liked the puzzles and would have kept on with them, but I convinced him it was time to head home. Also, as we walked back and forth through the museum, there was a dress up area, where there was always someone wearing a crown. He would point and say “Q for queen” each time (I’m assuming he made the connection because of the “A is for Apple” song). Also, at one point we were wandering through the rest of it, and I was trying to get him interested in the turning things with the zodiac animals on them – the one thing he could really reach and play with when we were here a year or so ago. He tried to go to a door in the wall, but I said it was a zookeeper door. Then I realized he had his sad look. Not sure if it started before he went to the door, or because of it. Picked him up and we went to the drawing area and he was fine.

 

Anyway, changed him to get ready to go. In the changing room he was impressed that the water dispenser had a blue nozzle and a pink one, matching the two colors of water bottles that he has. We had a blue one with us, so we refilled it, and he called it “azul aqua.” We then headed home. Again, not so smooth. He was really getting into Loopimal, having 4 animals make music at once. But when we got to our transfer  at Sangbong we had to fight our way out of the train, only to realize we had lost one of his shoes. Don’t know if it came off in the pushing, or was already off. But when August realized I was looking for his shoe on the platform, he suddenly wanted it back on. At least I learned that he definitely knows his left from his right, as he said “More left shoe…put on left shoe.” Then, on the crowded subway home, no one offered a seat. So I held him on one arm, holding the iPhone for him in the other, for the 4 stops at Taerung, where three seats opened up, but were taken by other people before I could move to them. Finally, as I was showing my annoyance, a woman offered us a seat for the last two stops.

 

Made it home about 5:30. As we walked up to the building, he pointed to a grey box on the street and said “This.” I said “electrical box”, and he kept repeating that. He was then pointing to everything else as we entered the building and asking what it was. Carly made the alphabet pasta for him for dinner, which he loved. They are tiny little noodles. He also said (wrong sauce, but still impressively) “More teriyaki sauce with letters and numbers.” So he had fun with dinner, and was dancing to a Josh Ritter song. His big toy for the evening was the flashlight, saying “oooh” as he looked everywhere. Carly turned off all the lights and took him into the walk-in closet looking for monsters. I then had him looking for Green Monster on the couch, after which I was somehow the monster. He would do his ‘hiding’ by covering his eyes until I came into the room and got close, then he would squeal. We then went into the bedroom, where he used the flashlight to look under the blankets and pillows, all the while saying “oooh”.

 

I gave him a bath, which went well. Once out of the bath, Carly was going to put his diaper on, but he was running around drawing big numbers in the air. He bounced around for a few more minutes, then Carly asked if he wanted to nurse. Pretty much straight to bed and sleep after that,
right around 8. No time/too much energy for reading any books. Also interesting that he hasn’t been wanting any iPad in the evening, pretty much for the last week or so.

 

 

New words/phrases: obeja (sheep), ciudador del zooilogico, money, don’t scream (?), huevos, yema (yolk), signo de at (at sign), no want to change diaper), five fingers (randomly, as we sat eating a snack – turned into joking about 14 or 40 fingers), hola, adios, restaurant, electrical box, gas poop

At the museum: 

Lights on the floor (missed him crawling): 

After his nap: 

Children’s history museum: 

Leaving: 

Getting home: 

Home: 

Alphabet pasta: 

Lid on his head: 

Children’s Grand Park

 

He was asleep to 7:53 – almost 12 hours of sleep. More sad than upset for a minute, then up and ready for the day. The usual morning: Cheerios and strawberries for breakfast, writing with the markers, playing with his door magnets. When it came to brushing his teeth, I started doing it when he was watching ABC songs, instead of Teuni Teuni. He was excited by this and said “Brush your teeth (to) ABC songs!” Later, as we were getting ready to leave, he went into the kitchen and started looking through the door, talking to himself: “What you looking for?…flashlight…flashlight in there.” But it wasn’t. I looked with him for a bit, but he had to wait until the evening, when we found it under the table. Anyway, he was distracted away from that by the “1 potato…” song playing on the iPad.

 

Finally, before we left he started writing ‘5’ on the paper. He was saying and writing “Hangeul ㄴ”, then saying “turns to ‘5’” and drawing a backwards C. The first few times I then had to remind him to draw the top line, but after that he would then draw the top line. In the evening, when he was showing Carly, he started doing the ㄴ/backwards C part as a single line and didn’t have to say the instructions out loud to himself.

 

We left a little before 10. Had two seats heading down, which was nice. He was mainly doing Dr. Seuss and Art Maker on the subway today. The children’s museum was busy-ish. I have neither figured out the Korean school calendar, nor why the museum (or certain areas in it) is busy one day, but empty the next. August and I saw elementary students leaving schools yesterday, but today the museum was all families. Anyway, he started by wanting to go downstairs, but changed his ming after we were down there a few seconds – I think because it was busy. We went back up and into the nature and art areas. He played around for awhile, but was getting frustrated by not being able to use the chalkboard. Then, when we finally got a turn, a girl came and stood right by us after a minute, so I made him get up after a bit, and he wasn’t happy about that (nor was I, frankly, as her mom was standing right next to her – go do something else for awhile). He played with the light stuff – stacking blocks, etc. – for 10 minutes or so, then wanted to go eat. So we went up and had lunch. He was all about throwing things away at the end again.

 

From there we did the air/ball stuff on the third floor again, then I followed him down the ramp to the second floor. There are two plastic astronauts (a photo zone), and one is holding up a peace sign. August was walking by and did a double take, then held up his two fingers (he uses his pointer and thumb) and said “Two!” Played with the Hangeul magnets for a couple minutes, then wanted to go somewhere else. Said “No” to the little kids area, but walked him over that direction anyway, and he changed his mind. He spent much his time there focused on two things: First, the leaf-shaped cushions on the floor. They have 5 little harder bumps in them, which he noticed and found fascinating. So he would reach down and touch them, and step on the cushions, and walk from one to another. Second, the wooden puzzles and magnet thing (“metal…not metal”). On the way out, he played with the triceratops, shoving it off the railing, but that was about it for everything else.

 

From there we went right next door to the book area. We grabbed several books, and since we didn’t have our shoes on yet, and the little loft area was empty, we went up there and read/looked at them – mainly the Oh No! book again, which is where I think his interest in falling came from, since his favorite picture is the boy falling out of the tree.

 

We headed out and he started with a snack on our walk, then fell asleep. So took a little over 20 minutes. He slept from 1:42 to 2:37. I’ve noticed that sometimes when he sleeps in the backpack with his arms hanging over the side, that when he wakes up he shakes and rubs his hands like they are bothering him – I think the circulation is being cut off and they are falling asleep. The solution is to make sure his hands are up inside the cover area. Today he woke up and immediately said “Cold”. I had forgotten, and let his right hand come out and he was leaning his head on his right shoulder, which probably made it worse. His right hand was, indeed, cold, while his left was nice and warm.

 

Played on the iPad for a few minutes, but then wanted to go see animals. But he wanted in the backpack, which was good, because we did a lot of walking. He wanted to see the primates, but they were inside. We saw the cats, the hyenas, went upstairs at the water birds (where he saw the slightly bizarre statue of a giant egg hatching a bird. He wanted to touch the shell and then the big foot. Did that, then went back out, looked at the birds (he said “English Pheasant” again, although at the silver pheasant), then went on to the herbivores. Here the fun was in counting the animals. But he claimed there were 7 guanacos, and 14 zebras (there were 2). Walked back around the zoo, then stopped at the exit to the children’s zoo and had a snack. He ate the rest of his sandoo, singing and stomping around on the wooden floor as he did so. We stopped at the bathrooms at the base of the outdoor stage, which we’ve never used before, to change him, then headed home.

 

Carly had stopped at the post office, so we beat her home by a few minutes. August was writing with a marker when he heard the door. He shrieked, then scooted a few feet onto the reading area, literally threw the marker back towards the paper, and covered his eyes, and so was ‘hiding’ when Carly came in.

 

In the evening, he perfected his ‘5’, then focused on ’S’, saying “S is tricky”. I told him it was “C turn to S” or “C, backwards C” and at one point he suddenly got it and was drawing Ss. That just leaves ‘K’ for him to figure out, and ‘9’ in numbers.

 

Carly got the bath ready, and I gave him a bath. He let Sophie float again tonight. He was playing with the shower door, which is stuck open due to the bath, and started saying “No se peuda” (No it can’t), which I had to call Carly in to translate – she had been using it with him when he tried to close the door.

 

He didn’t last long after that, and went quietly to sleep a little after 8.

 

New words/phrases: metal, chips de platano, no se peuda (it cannot), tricky, crunchy, galletas, hard (talking about drawing letters)

Waking up:

Children’s museum: 

Cushions: 

Zoo: 

Snack before we leave: 

Evening. S down, one more letter to go (K):

Taking apart our Cs: 

Awake just before 6:40. Looked happy as he sat on the bed asking for mama, and high energy as soon as he came out to the living room a bit later, asking for the iPad. That high energy would continue all day – no quiet time like yesterday. He sat on the couch watching/listening to songs while I did the blog and sang along with him. Found some bath songs, but mainly focused on the letter songs, particularly the individual letter songs by ‘Have Fun Teaching’.

 

Later, after breakfast, we did some cleaning, and wiped the piano, xylophone, tables, and computer. He helped, starting with the floor, and was really into the xylophone and computer. A few times later he would want to do more wiping, but then insist that I do the wiping.

 

We skyped with my parents, discussing summer plans, and August spent much of the time showing them how he plays with the magnets on the door. He then did a lot of letter practice on the paper (later in the day he would start to get down ‘8’) and we made letters out of Duplos. We left for class about 10:40.

 

He was actually excited about class today, to the point that when I tried to go downstairs to do a little of our shopping, he got upset, so we just went up to class early. He had some time to draw in the notebook before class started. It was the last class of the session, and was about oranges. Before class started, one of the moms handed out little cake-like muffin things, which he ate all of. He did fine through class, but got a bit bored when she was talking about oranges, and he was really getting tired at the end of class. But he really liked the musical instruments we played with (each child got a set of a shaker, drum, and xylophone), but I think lost a little interest because he wanted to play ABC songs, but the other music was loud and the teacher kept trying to get him to play a specific instrument. He also really liked when she gave everyone two oranges. He helped me peel them and he ate all of one and part of another. She then gave everyone an orange chocolate and a blueberry chocolate. At the end of class she saw him finishing up the blueberry chocolate and gave him a second one. “More blueberry chocolate!” Thanks, teacher. He was a little upset that I told him we’d eat it later.

 

We had taken the riding backpack over, so I put him directly in and figured I’d walk until he went to sleep. At first he was talking about going home, so I think he was trying to stay awake. But I walked right by our building and he didn’t complain. I walked the street between us and the stream. Took awhile, but after 20 minutes of walking he was asleep.

 

He was asleep 12:34 to 1:54. After he woke up I changed him, and after that he went straight to writing letters and making new A is for… lines, including “M for math, n for no, o for open, p for pigeon(?), q for question……D for dada) and trying to write upside down question marks. I made the rest of the frozen mandu for lunch. Had been awhile since we’d had any. He just ate the outside of it before. But this time he ate the whole thing. “Zinnie taste mandu …rice in your mouth…take a bite” He has also been asking for a lot of Korean words and names in Spanish, so was asking what teriyaki sauce was in Spanish. I mentioned it was a Japanese word, so then he was asking what teriyaki sauce was in Japanese.

 

He then got into typing Spanish words on the computer, with me telling him which letter to type next and helping him find the letters on the keyboard. At one point he remembered the blueberry chocolate (that never would have happened before) and kept chanting it, so he got the second one. He wanted to read Maisy’s First Colors in Spanish, which it isn’t, but I did my best to translate as many words as possible. Finally, he was walking around the kitchen opening and closing things, saying “close this…open this.”

 

He was bouncing around a lot so figured it was best to get out. As we walked he did more letters “s for snake, p for penguin, y for yuck”. It was 40, but windy, and at the corner of the main street I thought about just going to Home Plus and skipping a park. August said no and wanted to keep walking through, so we continued on to the park. Good choice, as when we got there the wind had died and it was nice and sunny. He initially protested when he saw the tree playground park, but then saw a couple girls playing in the sand, in a corner of the park we don’t often play in, and wanted to play there. So we got out and each got out a stick and were writing ABCs and then doing shapes. His math app, Todo Math, includes rhombus and parallelogram in its tracing game, so I was including those. We wandered around a bit, and he walked on the posts for awhile, but mainly we drew in the sand. At some point it sounded like he asked for a picture, so I drew a sailboat on the ocean. He then wanted me to write ABCDs on it. As I did, it erased the sailboat, so I said “Bye, sailboat.” This became a thing, with him asking for another boat and more ABCDs over and over. Did maybe close to 10 boat pictures. Later, at home, he would ask for a “ship” (interesting he chose this, as I mainly said sailboat) and say the “bye” himself when I started to write letters on it.

 

Finally, right before we left he found a wrapper on the ground and wanted to throw it away. He saw there was something in (“under”) his shoe, so I carried him to the garbage so he could throw it away. Then went and put him in the backpack to head to Home Plus. Still supposedly 39, but freezing in the shade and wind. Think my hands were the coldest they have been all year. Held August’s hands for a few minutes, but then he was pointing and singing, and I got a phone call from Carly. He didn’t seem to mind the cold or the wind though.

 

We went shopping – Carly had gotten out early so was stopping at the pink building to do part of it – and at first August wasn’t excited, and he wasn’t happy that I wouldn’t let him out of the backpack to “help”. But after we left he said “Home Plus fun” – probably because he got a couple free samples.

 

Got home, and he was high energy and pretty random through the evening. At one point he disappeared down the hall into the bedroom. I went and asked what he was doing and he said “Looking for Kipper A to Z”. But before we could go find it, he found a chapstick. He hadn’t liked it before, but now he was fascinated by it. He put it on his lips and got a little on his chin and cheeks. He also smelled it. When he went back out, he got a loaf of bread out of the grocery bags and handed it to Carly, saying “Gift for mama.” He kind of bounced around, eating bites of his quinoa for dinner as he went. He wrote 8s, did a lot of art. When I said it was time for his bath he got up and ran down the hall. But past the bathroom and to the bedroom, where he got on the bed and said “bedtime” and asked for books. I gave him a bath, and Sophie got to go in the water, as August had her and accidentally dropped her in. But once she was in he liked how she floated, and I said “float, float, float”, which he thought was hilarious and wanted me to keep repeating. Both was fine until I said I was going to wash his face, at which point he got sad and put his head down on my arm for a minute. But it had to be done.

 

He also added “M for muddy puddles” (from a Peppa Pig video) and “I for insect” (from Kipper A to Z) to his list this evening.

 

He was asleep at 8:10, but then kind of woke up 3 times as we were going to bed. Carly had to work to get him to stay asleep. The last time he loudly said “Big 2” and was waving his finger in the air.

 

New words/phrases: living room, paseante(?) (stroller), cake, matshiseyoh (delicious), delicioso, Zinnie come, m for muddy puddles, I for insect, adios, hear something dripping (holding up foot in the bath)

The C song: 

Taking apart our crazy Q: 

Class: 

Putting stickers wherever chooses: 

Home: 

Park. Tracing shapes: 

Walking the posts: 

Writing on the sailboat: 

Evening. Chapstick:

Flashlight: 

His “Oooh” noise: 

A few out of the ordinary things today: I had to wake him up. Twice. He didn’t ask about the iPad at all in the morning, and just once in the evening. And he was very quiet/mellow through almost all of our outing today, only starting to sing/talk on our walk home with Carly.

 

He didn’t wake up until 8:40, at which point I turned on the light and started talking to him. Woke up just fine though. First toy of the day was the little flashlight, which he found in the kitchen drawer and we had to put new batteries in it. From there we were on to making letters out of Duplos, then ate leftover eggs and then Cheerios and strawberries for breakfast. There was doing ABCD on the paper, then playing in the sink, lining up the letter shapes (he doesn’t really request play dough letters nowadays) and looking for ‘missing’ ones, and playing with his door magnets and singing. He got out his old sticker books, and was interested in the dinosaur one. There is a sticker puzzle in the back, and we finished that. He was doing a good job at the beginning of matching the sticker to the proper spot, although near the end he was less concerned with that. Finally, we watched Teuni Teuni and brushed his teeth.

 

He was interested in so much stuff at home that we didn’t leave the apartment until noon. We headed to Dream Forest, as we haven’t been there in a few months. We did a little singing at the beginning, but then he was quiet, and didn’t want me to sing as well. When we got near the Wolgye library I asked if he wanted to go in, but he said no, and just wanted to keep walking. Which was good, because it was closed. He was quiet the whole 2.75 miles to and into the park, although once we got to the park he said “Here” a few times. But then once in the park there wasn’t anything he wanted to do. The children’s art museum was closed anyway, and when we got in the performance art building, the art gallery was closed. Too bad, as it looks like we might have just missed a kid-friendly show. Anyway, even when I went to take him out of the backpack, he just wanted to sit in the backpack for a couple minutes on the bench.

 

So we went back down a floor to the Dream Cafe. Convinced him to go there by mentioning the iPad. They were out of strawberries to make strawberry juice, so the only kid-friendly thing they had was bottle orange juice. We got one of those to share and hung out in the book cafe for about an hour. He did some Dr. Seuss, then mainly art. There was one bigger girl there, and she was doing the wooden tree thing on the wall. August went over and watched her, and he did the wooden flower path thing. The first time I’ve seen him able to really move the wooden pieces along the curved paths, either here or elsewhere. Back at the iPad, he was flipping among apps, and asked himself “What you looking for?” again. He settled on Endless Spanish (first word was, of course, ‘todas’ so he could watch Pinkerton eat the cookies). To spice it up, he turned the iPad upside down and was spelling and putting words in the sentences upside down. We also ate a first lunch there.

 

It was now past 2 – he was not wanting to leave, but finally got him out of there (he didn’t want to pose as Max on the way out). Took him up and changed him, and he did a lot of screeching/screaming. Finally he was acting tired, but in the unfortunate way. Got him in the backpack and started walking. Had intended to walk around and return to the same cafe, but didn’t see the point of staying at Dream Forest. Started walking towards APIS using the north route, as Carly said we could meet up and walk home together. He fell asleep pretty quickly, at 2:48. The first cafe I found only served tea, so I was walking back towards some chain coffee shops I had seen, but was by the tree playground that is identical to the one near us. It was a warm 40 degrees, and I didn’t want him to nap to long anyway. So, I decided to taketh nap in the park. I sat right next to him and held his hands and read my book. He slept well, as I had to wake him at 3:38. He woke up fine, but didn’t want to play in the park.

 

So we kept walking. He did spot some ducks in the stream, and liked the deer pictures on a wall, but otherwise was pretty quiet. Every few minutes I would ask to hold his hands, and after I grabbed one he would say “other one” to make sure I took both.

 

We got to the APIS area and went to the park/water park across the street. Again he didn’t want to go the playground (actually complaining when he saw it), and wanted to continue up the hill instead, where he was fine sitting down on a bench. I got him out of the backpack and set him on the bench. Still very quiet, so I asked him if he was sad or happy. He smiled and said “Happy!” Ate a second lunch, finishing of the quinoa and eating the banana and some strawberries. After we were done eating he wandered around the top of the hill a little, but didn’t really get into writing ABCDs. That worked out though, as it was now 4:30 and we walked over to the school.

 

Been a couple months since we had been there, and August wasn’t happy with seeing all the people. As we approached the field he saw the kids and said “No.” Inside the school, he instantly got his about-to-cry face, so hurried upstairs. He kept quiet though until we ran into Megan and I thought he might be okay seeing her. He wasn’t, so we continued on to Carly’s room. Then he was fine. Nursed and then he remembered all the art supplies in her room: he made soup using the paper plates, then was using markers to “Work on…” letters with Carly.

 

Walked home. He found his voice, and was singing exuberantly much of the way home. It was the August Zinn show again. Took him awhile to quiet down as we entered the building and there wasn’t all the background noise. By the time we got home, I had carried him 6.2 miles today. At home, he picked up the empty cereal box that he had knocked on the floor earlier and was waving it around saying “vacio” (empty). We then invented the sleeping elephant game, where I pretended to be a sleeping elephant and he poked me to wake me up. He would keep saying “More sleeping elephant.” Played on/by the couch, then in on the bed. Back out in the living room, he wanted me to lift him up to touch the lights, as Carly had plugged them in. He wanted something and Carly said “Talk to dada”. He then said “Talk to papa”, pronouncing ‘papa’ in his best Spanish.

 

He was doing art with Carly again (we got out a new notebook), and “Work(ing) on…” letters. He could now write 22 letters (all but K, R, S, and X, with i, j, and l in lower case), having recently gotten down E, F, and Y, and by the end of today was doing R (“P turn to R” as he makes the final line) and X pretty well.

 

He was then lining up the letter shapes in alphabetical order. He lined up all 21 letters we actually have – the only help I provided was moving the line down when he ran out of space on the table, and I gave hints for where some of the next letters were when he couldn’t find them in the basket.

 

Carly gave him a bath, which was fine but he was really screaming as she washed his hair. So then she was getting him to practice closing his eyes.

 

He wanted to help me with the bed again, so we entirely made my side of the bed so he could push down all the sheets and blankets. Finally, he found a wrapper of something that had fallen on the ground and enjoyed throwing it away. But as Carly lifted him up to the garbage can he saw a marker we had thrown away and had to save it.

 

He was the one that wanted to read and take books in to the bedroom. Carly grabbed some books and we went in. I read him Happy Birthday, then Where the Wild Things are twice. Carly then took over, reading Alphabet, and he went to sleep soon after that, around 9:15.

 

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New words/phrases: push 1 in the elevator, where (does) it go? (dinosaur stickers), louder, silent, artwork, broken, en orden, vacio (empty), thousand, million (asking what they were in Spanish), move it down (letters when he ran out of room), feet in the crack (as he helped make the bed and put his feet in the crack)

On our walk: 

Dream Cafe: 

An outside nap: 

Walking to APIS. Looking at the deer:

A snack: 

Carly’s classroom: 

Home. Both blue water bottles: 

Working on R: 

August was awake at 7:40 again. I was already awake next to him. He opened the door, but then stood there, not going out to find Carly. I got up and offered to go with him. Instead, he pushed my arm towards the door and said “Dada go find mama.” He wanted me to go bring her back to him.

 

Later, Carly was down the hall or in the bathroom or something. August and I had been reading, and he went to look for her. He went into the parlor and looked at the reading area, where she had been in the morning. He then starting looking under the pillows and blankets for her. Became a joke that he used a couple more times in the day.

 

Carly skyped with her parents. We are all getting into the talking-about-summer mode. August was really working on his animals in Spanish today, particularly as we were reading Barnyard Dance and working to learn the last few animals in there. Then, we were over by the Duplos and he requested the “Ladybug, Ladybug” and “Warm Kitty” songs – multiple times. Both songs that Cherie taught him, although that may be a coincidence. But really interesting since it has been a long time since he has requested anything but ABC and number songs.

 

He slept from 1 to 2:40ish. We had let him wear his owl pants all morning and for his nap. Now, he started playing with his Teuni ball, but was holding up his pants with one hand the whole time. So funny.

 

In the afternoon we walked up to Nowon. We took the backroads route once past the stream to show Carly, going past the two parks. It was pretty windy. August was doing a good job of holding my hands, but still getting cold, and started requesting a coffeeshop. We looked around Nowon a little, then headed back south along the main road. The Starbucks was packed, as was a second place we looked in. Finally settled on an Ediya Coffee. Got out coffee drinks and found a table. August had a little of the whipped cream on Carly’s, but was upset when it ran out. Then he requested ABC songs on the iPad. When I reminded him of no ABC songs in the coffeeshop, he got really sad, doing the lip thing and laying his head on Carly’s hand for a few minutes. No crying, just sad.

 

We were there for quite awhile. We each read a little and played with August. He did some Dr. Seuss, drew in the notebook, and did math and art on the iPad. Got out the food for him and he ate strawberries, raviolis, string cheese and some of the hobak/goguma snacks.

 

Left close to 6. Darker and chillier now. August didn’t want in the backpack, so I carried him. After a few blocks I wanted to set him down for a rest while we waited for a light. He wasn’t happy about that, and still not happy when Carly picked him up. He is used to me carrying him. Carried him the rest of the way home, holding his hands from time to time.

 

Got back a little after 6. He was all about the Spanish words today. Starting to realize that there are some words that are the same, or nearly so, in English and Spanish, and he will say “Same!” There are also some that are similar, and he was working on that concept as well.

 

He was reading Where the Wild Things Are with Carly and when seeing the picture of them hanging from the trees started saying “fall”. I think he did it with another book or picture they were looking at as well. Then, he and I did a bunch of reading as well, and the snakes and penguin on top of a wall in Wild About Books elicited the same concern. Interesting that he is now aware of fall potentials. He also read the word “quack” in Baby’s Busy World.

 

Carly gave him a bath, sort of. It was probably a bit too late, and he wasn’t happy about the idea. She made him suffer through a bit of a sponge bath, but that was all. I still heard a lot of screeching.

 

After that, he was out with me, reading books again i the reading area. Eventually, I changed him, and on the changing pad he was acting tired. I asked if he was ready to go into bed with mama. He replied with “Books in the bedtime…books in the bed…Happy Birthday!” The last referred to the Korean early English book that he likes and we read several times yesterday. So we went and found books and went in on the bed. Read that one a couple times, then Kipper A to Z. Finished with two Maisy books. His last idea of the day was to read Maisy’s First Numbers and Maisy’s First Colors at the same time (“Both!”). So we had one on top and one on the bottom. I would read the top page, then the bottom page, turn them both, etc. After that, he want to Carly and fell asleep at 9:20.

 

Before I fell asleep, I heard him say in his sleep “This”, then, sometime later, “Ooh!”

 

 

New words/phrases: dada can’t nursing, level 1, mas por favor, grande, pequeno (small), police car, nay-mo is Korean, oso (bear – asked me what bear was while reading Wild About Books. I went to look it up, but he provided the answer. We hadn’t discussed ‘bear’ in a long time)

Walk to Nowon: 

Bit of his sad look: 

Writing cursive: 

Back home. Playing in the sink: 

A minute before he called it a night. Reading both books at once: 

He was awake at 7:40 Carly and I both remember him requesting a spanish word in his sleep, but we don’t remember what. I was making the trek to get my iPhone replaced as the battery is defective; I tried to get it done in the US, but they broke off the tabs on the battery when trying to do so. The solution was to give me a new phone for the price of a battery, but they didn’t have the international model in stock. Since it has gotten worse recently, today was the day to do it.

So after breakfast and doing recycling I headed to Suyu. It all worked out and went pretty smoothly, there was one point in all the translating that we were kind of stuck, but the woman waiting for her phone next to me could speak English and helped out. It also took a long time, I think in part because they were really trying to just replace the battery, and because I did the full update/restore there in the store to make sure everything was working right. So after leaving home around 9:30 I got home a little after 2.

While I was gone they had done a lot around the house: reading books, vacuuming, etc. He slept from 1 to 2 and had just woken up when I got home.

Had some lunch and then we all went out for a walk. We walked to the stream, where we saw the the Daeboreum festival (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daeboreum) underway. That is where the fields get burned, they have bon fires, and burn a talisman. We’ve seen the parade past our apartment in previous years. We walked up the stream, stopping at the cafe at the women’s business center to get drinks for our walk, then through the science exhibits, around the soccer field, and to the exercise equipment and playground. Warmer than the last time August and I were here and he got cold. The biggest thing this time was walking along the curved bench around the music sculpture, stepping over the holes from missing boards. He kept wanting to go back and forth, back and forth. We then went down to the playground and wrote in the sand, and Carly did some good swinging. I helped August climb up the rope incline once onto the play structure, but mostly we were down in the sand/dirt with the sticks. Was also writing bigger numbers, like 100 and 2000 and he was tracing those.

At one point he started to walk off, saying “coffee shop” – he’s noticed that the last three times (I think) that he and I have been to Madeul we’ve ended up going to a coffee shop afterwards (twice to Coffeenie, once to Cafe Mug), and the last time we came up with Carly we stopped at Cafe Tolerance and played on the way up. And as we walked back he saw Cafe Tolerance and wanted to go in. Luckily, he wasn’t too upset when we didn’t.

We stopped and watched the festival a bit – there was burning going on, people were playing traditional games, and they were setting up the talisman for later. We then headed to the pink building for grocery shopping. August wasn’t happy about this, but then he was stuck between wanting to go home and wanting to stay with Carly. He melted down a bit out in the food court area before he calmed down enough that we could go back in with Carly and finish the shopping.

For dinner he ate almost two whole (medium) bananas, several grapes (podo, we call them), and then some raviolis. The parade went by our window and he and Carly watched that together. When it was gone he wanted more and got his sad face. I said we could get in the backpack and go find it, but he wanted to stay at home.

I gave him a bath. He made his Spanish joke again, first asking what ‘splash’ is in Korean, then answering himself with “splash-ay” (that’s not it).

We all spent some time building Duplo letters. He would ask for ‘A’, we would build it, then he would remove every single piece from the board before we could start ‘B’.

He was staying up late and Carly was falling asleep, so he stayed out with me. We did some typing, figuring out what sort of weird characters we could type (he liked the upside down question mark and the Apple logo most of all), then read books – the Korean happy birthday book, Kipper A to Z and a couple more. We took them in to the bed next to Carly a couple times to read. As he was finally winding down and Carly was trying to get him to nurse, he suddenly started reciting lines from a YouTube video – the one I mentioned recently on Facebook to Cherie when we were discussing the weird and annoying play dough videos on YouTube. He hasn’t seen it in a couple weeks, but suddenly he was saying “It’s a play dough party” and “Baby Big Mouth”. He drifted off to sleep just after 10. 

New words/phrases: erasers, came apart, put it back under, champiñón, quinoa, go in the restaurant, uno mas (asking for another ravioli), step over mama, it’s a play dough party

Home. His beloved quinoa. Because Q:

Parade: 

His 4 tractor: 

Cleaning up after he wrote on the floor: 

Sometime during the night Carly heard him say “S A T, S A T, sat” in his sleep. We didn’t know he could spell ‘sat’.

 

He was up at 6. He read the word ‘and’ in something’ and was also spelling ‘sit’. Soon after Carly left, I tried restarting my phone, which was a mistake, so I had to do the hairdryer thing again to get it back on (going in tomorrow to try and get the phone replaced). August of course loved this, and helped me hold it over the phone. He then played with the hairdryer, first in the kitchen, then I plugged it in in the parlor, then in the living room. He had me writing ABCDs with it, and wanted “big” letters, but they weren’t big enough, so he wanted “bigger” – first time he’s used that.

 

After that, we made a good bowl of oatmeal and strawberries, and he wanted the iPad to play math apps. Since the math thing kicked in it has really cut down on his ABC songs.

 

We headed out a little after 9:30. He remembered “Hat Monkey on subway funny” and spent part of each trip there and back playing Hat Monkey and laughing at it.

 

We first headed to the children’s museum. Played on the first floor to begin with. Pretty empty. When he was back with the little compact discs, one of the staff played with him a bit. He liked that, as when he went back to the cotton balls you decorate the window with he went right up next to another staff member and played with him. August first requested that I make letters with the cotton balls, but then said “Make a plus!”

 

He wandered through the nature area, and went to the minerals. He would pull out one he couldn’t remember, point at it, look up at me, and say “This is…?” and wait for me to answer.

 

He was done on the first floor, and decided he wanted to go downstairs, but as I took him down the ramp he said “No, no this…eat.” So we went up to the cafeteria and ate our lunch. He got excited at the prospect of stealing my sandoo again as I took the food out. He was singing as usual, and near the end of our lunch he wandered over close to two women and was singing the Spanish ABC song. He sand that a couple times, then changed to English, but he got a bit shy  when they started singing along. At one point he decided to walk all the way out of the cafeteria and I had to catch him and remind him we needed to get the backpack. As we walked down the hall, a man walked near us and said hi to him. August did a good wave and said “Hi” back.

 

He looked around a little more, then it was time for a nap. Changed him and headed out. Took about 15 minutes for him to fall asleep on the walk. Slept from 11:49 to 1:02. Played more Todo Math in the coffee shop, then we headed to the zoo. He wanted to check on the elephants, kitty cats, and primates. His looking today mainly seemed to be about finding out which animals were in and which were out, as he didn’t want to spend any time at each animal. So it was a quick trip around the main area (no elephants, all the cats but servals and lynx, etc.) He paused enough at the leopards to Q them.

 

From there he wanted to go back to the children’s museum, but as we got close he changed his mind to the water museum. We went there. Pretty much a repeat of Wednesday, playing with the dams to make the water wheels turn, but I noticed he is much better at putting the dam pieces in the slots. He also played with the drinking fountains again, and one of the workers got him to walk over and look at the fish.

 

He wanted to go back to the children’s museum, so he got to see his handstamp lit up again. Started on the first floor – light stuff, nature area, etc. – but just for a little while. He stopped at the flower rubbing area. There was a piece of paper there when we walked up with some scribbles on it. I’m pretty sure he never wrote on, or if he did it was only a couple scribbles. But when he was ready to leave he gave it to me and said something like “take it.” I thought he wanted me to throw it away so I started to do that, but he stopped me and insisted on taking it “Home” and walked off with it. So I caught up to him and we put it in the backpack. Then he was hungry again.

 

We went up to the cafeteria again. This time he ate the rest of the rice and beans, string cheese, his sandoo, and anything else in sight. He was walking around, singing as usual, and watching other people. One of his favorite places. He finished up with a packet of crackers. He was getting them out himself, and when he got the last one out it fell on the floor. I left it there to see what he would do. When he was done with all but the last bite of cracker (which he gave to me), he saw the wrapper, picked it up and crumpled it in his hand, walked all the way across the cafeteria and out the door, and to the garbage can, where he waited until I caught up and picked him up so he could throw it away.

 

August led the way from there. Walked across to 3rd floor exhibits, put one ball on the air thing, then wandered down the ramps to the second floor, but didn’t want to stop there. Went to the little kids area, where we were able to take off his shoes – something he had requested two or three times earlier. Played there, mainly with the cube things.

 

Finished up there and headed home. Outside the children’s museum, we got ready to get in the backpack. I called it the back-uh-pack and he thought it was hilarious. He was then going on about the back-uh-pack and what is backpack in Spanish and then pointing up at the big signs and saying “This…”

 

He had 4 jokes/running jokes in the museum today:

 

1. I was pretty sure he had guessed at the Spanish translations of words before, taking the English word and making it sound Spanish. Today he definitely did it,  and as a joke, when he said “‘Up’ espanol?” and answered his own question with “Up-uh” and laughed.

 

2. He wanted to go to the book area at one point, but then he kept going. He was then pointing random places and saying “Book area here.”

 

3. Similarly, anything that looks like an employee door or storage is now “Zookeeper door”. The height of this was after I changed him and was putting on his shoes and he looked up at the ceiling and all the stuff up there and said “Zookeepers!” Then, as we walked out he was pointing up the stairs, saying “Zookeepers here!”

 

4. The last time we were at the chalkboard, he wanted to write Hangeul. But what he did was write English letters and call them “Hangeul Q” etc.

 

Soon after we left he said “Children’s museum fun…fun is diverteda.”

 

We headed home and got there a few minutes after Carly. Carly gave him a bath and did a lot of art and reading with him while I got my iPhone ready to be replaced tomorrow. I did do some magnets with him, helping him find them as he put most of the alphabet together in order on the door (I wasn’t helping with the ordering at all). And he entertained the both of us for quite awhile with his singing and talking in the parlor.

 

He fell asleep about 8:15.

 

New words/phrases: bigger, shiny, doggie goes right there, divertida (fun), pájaro (bird)

Playing with the hair dryer:

Children’s Museum: 

Playing with the staff member: 

Getting ready to steal my sandoo: 

Water museum: 

Second lunch: 

Home: 

Teuni Teuni class and Toys R Us and pet store

 

He woke up at 7:25. Sad for a minute, then ready to do ABCDs. When we were playing with his door magnets, I accidentally used the Hangeul ㅌ instead of an E and August knew the difference. I emailed Carly in the morning, and she replied and said to August “Sorry your owls got wet” since his pajamas had been wet. I read August the message and he gave me a serious look and said “Owls got wet. Q. No 14. Up to 12. Up to O. Up to Q. Up to Z.”

 

Usual morning after that. He wanted to get in the backpack, so at 10:30 we went for a little walk before his class. The weather was nice, so we walked down by the stream. Walked up to the first foot bridge and crossed over, then walked up the other side, crossed over again, and walked back down our side. We were looking for birds but hadn’t seen any, except the ducks painted on the drain cover, when August spotted two ducks right before we were done. So we watched them for a few minutes, and an egret flew by. Took a photo of August and he totally hammed it up for the camera. We were going to be late for class, but it was so nice and peaceful I wasn’t in a hurry.

 

We got to class about 12 minutes late. Hectic, as expected. Last class of the session. August didn’t really participate in any of the actual activities: the first was a black fabric tunnel, which he was intrigued by at first, but then didn’t like the crowd to go through it (and was hesitant to go under at all). So he wanted to walk on the wooden track/hill thing sitting to the side instead. Then they got out fireman coats and hats. I realized August was wet and went out to change him. Pretty sure it was just water that had spilled when we drank from a cup before class, but changed into his camo pants anyway. When we went back it, people tried to give him the hat and coat. He liked the hats because they were silver, but wanted to step on them instead of wear them. Didn’t want to wear the coat – one of the moms tried to get one on him succeeded for a second. Next activity was riding little firetruck carts down the ramp. Forced August to do it once, but that was enough for him. Think he said something like “No more that.” Finally, there was a class photo. August was fine until he told us to scrunch together. Then, we were surrounded and August didn’t like being so close to the mom/kid next to us. So he is crying in the photos. But at the end of class he was playing with the black tunnel and picking up the side. The teacher was giving away extra Teuni balls, and gave one to August. And as we left August was saying “Teuni Teuni fun.”

 

From class we went down and bought some diapers, then headed home. We stopped in the park and used the big stick to write ABCs in the little snow left in the shade and in the mud. After doing that for awhile, we ran into a mom and little boy who are in his Tuesday class. Didn’t really know their names, or that she spoke decent English. She said we could call her son ‘Q’, which would be easy for August. As we were getting ready to leave, he little boy tripped over the curb and landed in the mud. I felt good being the one stocked with the wipes and helped wipe him off. August did not like this. Tried to pull me away once, then stood a ways off and said “Dada over here.” First time he’s acted like that.

 

We stopped at GS25 to get two more eggs, as he was requesting them, and also got two triangle kimbaps (which we are calling say-mu kimbap). Went up and ate lunch. August ate both eggs, and almost the entire cheese and kimbap fried rice say-mu kimbap.

 

My parents were online, so we skyped with them for awhile until August bumped his head and got sad – didn’t really cry, but had the sad face. Thought it was time for a nap. Read some books, then put him in the stroller. He let me put him in, but then said “No this. No fall asleep.” as I pushed him out. And he didn’t, although he was definitely tired. We came back in to switch to the backpack and he heard the Amanda Palmer concert webcast from the computer. We watched some of that, which he liked, until there was a woman dancing and he pointed and said “Mama”. A few seconds later he got sad again. So we went out in the backpack. Walked around our side of the park and he fell asleep. Slept 2:08 to 3:15.

 

He woke up saying “Go…Dada…Go outside…” He was still in the backpack, so I quickly put on shoes and coat and we headed out. Walked to Toys R Us. He was requesting a coffeeshop, so planned to buy markers and go to a coffeeshop. But once there we spent a ton of time looking in the pet shop, then around Toys R Us. He didn’t want to go into Toys R Us at first, but once in didn’t want to leave. He mainly looked at the letter sets (looking for Z) and the realistic animal figurines (he now knows a hammerhead shark). As we were checking out he was singing ABC, but then kept saying “One”. At first I was trying to figure out what he was talking about, but then realized he was holding up one pointer figure and had figured out it was “one”. We then worked on holding up “two”, but he can’t yet separate his finger movements enough for that. On our way out we were back at the pet store. Watched a kitten playing around in its cage (chasing a fly), then August started pointing, saying “For home, for home.” His first pet request.

 

On the way home we got our most demonstrative “Oh no, your baby is cold”  talk in quite some time. A woman was coming the other way on the sidewalk and saw him singing and waving his hands around from 20 or so yards away and started coming at us. She rushed up and tried reaching up and grabbing his hands, which I avoided by blocking her with my hand and backing away in a circle.

 

As we got closer to home he started to sing the A is for Apple song, but then started making up new lines on his own. He came up with “E is for eagle…F is for frog…” before I helped at all. Then he was stuck on G, but eventually came up with “G is for goose.”

 

Carly was home a bit before us. In the evening he was doing some good dancing to the letter songs. Carly gave him a bath – he was actually excited to go to the bathroom when he decided it was time. I changed the sheet on the bed, and August wanted to help with that. Then he kept wanting to help. At one point he dragged me back into the bedroom and had me sit on the bed by the crack where he helps by pushing down the sheet. He kept saying “help” but then would push my hands away if I tried to touch the sheet. Eventually, I re-did the top sheets so he had more to help with. I tried lying down and acting asleep, but he would push my head up and said “Get up…no fall asleep.”

 

I asked if he remembered helping put the beds together, which reminded him of the screwdrivers. So we got those out, and he immediately started saying “Look for board.” We got the tool set from Gramma and Grampa out and played with that. And he played with stickers for quite awhile before going to bed. Carly picked out books to read in bed, but he was trying to get us to read anywhere else except bed. He didn’t avoid sleep for too long though, and wanted the lights out and to nurse. He was asleep about 9.

 

New words/phrases: calabaza, doesn’t push, batata, circle – line down (how to draw a 9)

 

Teuni Teuni tunnel:

– 

 

Writing in the snow

– 

 

Cafe Mug: http://youtu.be/n5Hb4WMQTC8

 

Caiman: 

 

Write an upper case C in the air: 

Walk along the stream: 

Class: 

Park: 

Holding his eggs: 

Home. Kimchi fried rice: 

Pet store: 

Toys R Us: 

On finger:  

Evening: 

He slept in today, but took a nap right on schedule. Slept in until 8:30. I heard him talking, but didn’t understand what it was about. I walked in the room to find him sitting in the middle of the bed and pointing over at the crack/wall and saying something. When I told him Mama was at work he was upset, and when he calmed down a bit the first thing he saw was “Go find mama.” We made oatmeal for breakfast. He was standing on his stool and I was still getting strawberries out and he wanted me to pour the oatmeal, so he grabbed the packet and said “Pour this in the bowl.” After that he wanted to do math on the table with the magnets and Duplos, and we did more tower building with the wooden blocks. He thought the round blocks looked like a handstamp, so then he was giving hand stamps to the letters on his toy box lid. He did a lot of typing on the computer, mainly punctuation and Hangeul.

 

He was having fun with all of that and in no hurry to go, so we didn’t leave until about 10:50. We stopped at the GS25 in the station and got kimbap, two hard-boiled eggs, and a strawberry cookie thing. When we got to the children’s museum and I was taking him out of the backpack (outside, as the weather was nice), he wanted to eat the food we just got. So we ate it all, except one of the eggs. He really liked the smoky egg. As we were eating it, a woman and her son came up to us and said hi. It was the woman and boy (Bin) who we had met a couple times last year, but hadn’t seen since. We talked for a few minutes, exchanged contact info this time, and then August and I went in (they had been leaving the children’s museum).

 

Inside, he played on the first floor. Went straight to the minerals. Got selenite again, and really seems to be trying to remember quartz, amethyst, and machite. Then did some chalkboard time, played with the Os on the windows (he made a game of them ‘accidentally’ falling on the floor and saying “uh-oh”), and the stuff in the light room. Then he wanted to go eat. So we went up to the lunch room. I did most of the eating. He had a few bites, but I don’t think he was very hungry due to the snack. When I divided the sandwich today, he declared which half was his and which was mine, as usual, then he immediately insisted on having my half. He was very proud of himself. He also joked about screaming: “screaming in the dalgi, screaming in the N.”

 

From lunch we walked across the third floor, him leading the whole way. He played with the balls that float on air for a few minutes, then headed down the ramp. Stopped at the housekeeping/food area. He found a wooden tea cup and wanted to “put (it) away”, by which he meant he recognized it from the little kids area, which was on an entirely different floor. I had to show him there were others here to get him to not try to return it. Not sure he was entirely convinced, as he kept saying “put away” several times while we were there.

 

Speaking of putting away, when he was playing with the window magnets he found a cotton ball that belonged on the other side of the room and had to return it. Later, in the zoo, he saw a wrapper on the ground and I set him down so he could pick it up and take it to the garbage can. And later at home he helped recycle the egg container.

 

He then wandered further down the ramp to the second floor. Played in the space ship area then with the Hangeul magnets and then went over to the big kids climbing structure. Once again upset he couldn’t go in. It was now 1:15 and he was starting to be really tired – early really, given how long he slept last night.

 

One thing I noticed as we did this wandering through the building, is that when he wanted to go somewhere else he would say “backpack” to me, because I set it down, and I’m always saying to him “Wait, I need to get the backpack first.” So now he’s telling me to get it.

 

We walked around the play structure, where he saw a door in back which he said looked like a “zookeeper” door. He went under the play structure and bumped his head where it gets low. That was the breaking point, and we were off to change him and to a nap. Did our usual walk and everything went smoothly. Fell asleep at 1:40. Walked into the coffee shop at 1:45 and headed for the snacks to get new bags of the go-guh-muh (sweet potato) and hobak (pumpkin) snacks. As I reached for them I heard, in a very slurred voice, “hobak and go-guh-muh”. Headed outside for a minute and walked around until he was back to sleep, then went back in.

 

He slept until 2:40. Did some iPad (Art Maker) and had some of our new snacks. Then headed to the zoo. We walked around the ferocious animals. The hyena, foxes, and puma were out on the backside. Still no servals, which he duly noted. All the big cats out on the front, but no elephants or primates.

 

He didn’t know where he wanted to go next, so we started to walk back to the Arisu water museum, behind the children’s museum. We hand’t been there since spring, and I told a 2nd grade teacher at APIS I’d check it out for a possible field trip. Along the way, he saw the outdoor area attached to the botanical gardens and wanted to go in. He changed his mind when he realized we had to go through the botanical gardens. He wasn’t happy when I went in (a lot of “No, no, no”) but we made it through. He didn’t want to stop for the fish. Looked around in the outside area, but didn’t want me to set him down. I think he is a little scared of it now, perhaps because it is a bit dark with weird noises. He did, however, liked the water in the plants in the entrance, so maybe that will get him back in.

 

Anyway, we went to the water museum and he loved it. There is a water table area, with little water wheels that turn if you direct the water through channels to them. Last we were here, he wasn’t big enough to play with them. We played there a good 20 minutes, probably longer, before I convinced him we should go around the rest of it and that we were already late for getting home. His other favorite parts were the drinking fountains, where we got a cup of cold water to drink, then he was able to stand and push the button to operate the drinking fountain (new for him, as they are always too high/too hard to push).

 

Finally left and made it home a little after 5:30. On the way home he was doing art, but decided at Sandbong that we were “Next stop” – not the case as there were 5 left. So I found Hat Monkey on the iPad. August went to the banana scene, where you give the monkey a banana, and he kept playing it over and over and found it hilarious every time the monkey slipped, got bonked on the head, or gave a thumbs up.

 

He ate a little with Carly, then later remembered the egg we had left over from lunch. He basically ate all of it. Carly gave him a bath, and we did a lot of coloring and math (Carly got to do math with him for the first time). The books we ordered from What the Book arrived: A for Activista, Maisy’s First Numbers, and Kipper’s A to Z. He was really excited by the appearance of the Maisy book he’s been requesting. And the Kipper book is really cool and we all like that. It will get read a lot.

 

A little protest about heading to bed, but went pretty quickly. Asleep about 8:45.

 

New words/phrases: alce (moose), como se dice ‘poop’ en espanol?, several more Spanish words – I’m losing track of what he has already said

Waking up: 

Writing the Spanish ABCs for her: 

Looking through the tinted windows: 

Dada’s sandoo: 

Bernoulli’s principle:  

“Dada do ABCD”: 

Headed home:

Home. New books: 

Trying to drink both waters at once: 

5-TOUCH class

 

He was up right at 6 again. A bit of a pattern. He was watching ABC songs on the iPad when Carly left and never had a clear “Miss mama” period. But after watching for awhile he did have a sad moment, but it wasn’t clear why – he wasn’t watching anything that he would consider ‘sad’. But he suddenly was done with the iPad and wanted to go on the subway.

 

So then we were playing with the cardboard bricks, making a tower. I saw the one that had a duck on it, and asked out loud, but more to myself “What is duck in espanol?” As I was taking out my phone, August said “Pato”. I had to ask Carly if she had taught it to him. Apparently they had covered it (I assume with the duck in the bathtub) but not for a couple days.

 

He was then playing with the magnets on the door, and picked up on the plus sign and the minus/equals pieces. He then got into numbers and math a lot for the rest of the day. We did some math problems on the table using the number magnets and symbols and Duplos, then he wanted the iPad. This time, he only did math stuff, namely Math Tree and then tracing numbers in Intro to Numbers. We then played with his wooden blocks (more towers) and made a smoothie.

 

We left about 10:30. As we put on our shoes, he pointed to the Korean poster and said “ah-chim,” which is ‘morning’. Then, as we walked through the park he noticed that the ice rink is now gone and said “Ice is closed.” I still feel bad for only taking him that one time. It had been snowing on and off all morning and was snowing as we walked to Home Plus. At the library he wanted to touch the snow on the big round posts, then he wanted me to do ABCs. I wrote on 3 of the posts, then we continued on. He gave the slightest opposition when he realized we were headed upstairs, pointing to go downstairs instead, but that was it. We were a little early, so we sat down and got his notebook out. But then I realized there were already people in the classroom, and asked if he wanted to go in, and he agreed, saying “Notebook in class.”

 

We went in and he was waving to people and said “Hi” to the teacher. Colored in the notebook for a few minutes before class started. Class, given it is the first after the new year, was about traditional games: so more of the jegi (hacky sacks) and more arrow throwing. But first was of course the outfits, little hanbok outfits. August considered it, as when she gave him a blue one, he kept saying “red one” (which was the color the girls had). So we went up and looked at the stack. There were also green and pink, but at this point he refused them all. He did try to put the headband on himself a couple times, but wouldn’t let me do it. As the rest of the kids were posed for photos together, he went off to his notebook in the back of the class. He was “all done class” at this point, but then luckily she brought out the toys. He did some throwing of the arrows and kicking at the hacky sacks, but he mainly wanted to play with the hacky sacks – looking at them as stepping on them. First he was playing with red and green ones (this is when he said “noksak” (green)), but then we got a silver and a gold one. When he had to put the jegi away I thought he might be upset. But instead he waved and said “bye” to them. At the end of class he went up to the teacher and said “handstamp”, as of course he remembered and wasn’t going to let her get away with out it. So he got his handstamps (although I think he only wanted one). He did more good bowing today, both at the beginning and end of class.

 

On the walk home we saw that our letters from earlier were almost covered by fresh snow. It was getting blizzard-like as we got home, and over the next couple hours the snow would stop, then there would be an intense flurry, etc. Had a teriyaki salmon sandwich for lunch, which he was excited about. Then tried to get him to sleep. He spent much longer laying on the bed than he had in the past. But still just wouldn’t fall asleep. So finally got him in the stroller and he fell right asleep. Slept from 1:44 to 3:01.

 

Still fascinated by ‘Q’. He says “Q for..” all the time. And it doesn’t have to be words that start with Q. If you say ‘square’ or ‘squeak’ he will say “Q for square” etc. It is also a joke, as he will say ‘Q for…’ and insert random things. Today he was walking around saying “Q for…square, outside, silver, Hangeul, Q, whiteboard, A, octothorp, at sign.” We also recorded a Skype message for Carly showing more of his punctuation knowledge, as he now knows parentheses, tilde, octothorp, at sign, caret, ampersand, and the math symbols. Think he still needs asterisk and percentage.

 

We had a nice music time today, playing on the xylophone and piano and tambourine and drum. He noticed that the tambourine is “heart” shaped. We also played a lot with his cards in the afternoon and doing ABC with them and on random surfaces, and of course the paper. But he was also requesting that I write “math” on the paper. So I would write math problems, then he would want me to trace them.

 

Around 5:20 he wanted to go “wait for mama”. So we started to go, but then he insisted on the backpack. So I quickly threw on our coats and we headed out. It was kind of nice, as he hadn’t wanted to go outside in the afternoon. This way we were able to get out in the still-falling snow for a few minutes. We met Carly on our side of the park. He got more snow in his mouth and said “yummy snow”, as he had earlier. He wanted to get out and touch snow some more, but he wasn’t dressed for it, and Carly didn’t want to stay out, so we headed in.

 

At one point in the evening he walked into my bathroom saying “Green, green, green” and then “Blue, blue” and pointed at the toilet and the mirrors. I realized he was talking about the cleaners we had used last weekend to clean the bathroom and he wanted to clean the bathroom again.

 

Since August didn’t want to go outside in the afternoon, we hadn’t gone to the grocery store. So after Carly got home and I had a bite to eat, I went over to Home Plus to do some shopping.

 

I gave him a bath today and he had a ton of fun. He was talking and singing like crazy, some of which I got on video. I said he must be having more fun in the bathtub than any other kid who refuses to sit down.

 

As we were trying to get him ready for bedtime, he wanted to read stories with both of us, and wanted us both in the reading area in the parlor. We went in, and one of us turned on the light. He then made a “nee nee” noise, as our light button beeps when you turn it on. We’ve never done that, so his invention. I had thought he had done something similar when we heard a siren or something a couple days ago.

 

Eventually Carly went to bed and he stayed up with me a bit longer, reading In the Garden and Alphabet. We got him to sleep right about 9:45.

 

In terms of reading, he is now picking out and spelling small words like in, on, is, an, and the. He started picking these up on his own, as we have focused on the more interesting words, but now we are helping him pick them out as well.

 

Something I haven’t been able to get on video is the “be-uh, be-uh, be-uh” noise he makes when he is upset and complaining, but not fully crying yet. It also reminds me of his “Aaah!” noise he would make at the end of a series of sneezes that I don’t know if I ever got on video. He kind of did it once on Sunday, I think, after coughing/sneezing.

 

He now knows ‘star’, ‘fish’, and ‘frog’ in three languages. Was really pulling out the animals in Spanish today.

 

New words/phrases: pato (duck), pez (fish), put it back, piece of purple (play dough), estrellas (stars), buel (star in Korean), math, something under (as he was writing on the paper and there were markers un
der it), open it, rana (frog), pájaro (bird), caballo, caimán (alligator), mariquita (butterfly)

 

Math: 

Finding the Q: 

Writing in the snow on the way to class: 

Class. August with his notebook, while the other kids pose for photos:

Jegi:  

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