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He was up at 6:15. He was really clingy with Carly even after nursing a lot and when she had to spend a couple minutes getting ready to go he was really bothering her and not being patient. I picked him up and took him to the parlor as a consequence and said he couldn’t leave until he calmed down. I’d call it his first full blown three-year old tantrum, and he clenched his fists and screamed “Noooo” a few times. But after a minute he was able to calm down enough and I let him go out. They nursed once more and then he was fine when Carly left.

I cooked the rest of the pancake batter (11 pancakes) and he played his math apps. I put on music and much of it was music I just added back into our iTunes Match library that I’d gotten from my cousin Darrin but hadn’t listened to. And it was mainly pretty hard stuff. A song by a band called Mudwimin, “My Liver”, came on and he said “I like this. I really like this.” Another that he really liked was an MXPX song called “Invitation to Understanding” (https://youtu.be/uambX-xc6Kw). He kept asking “What’s the tempo?” and we got out the metronome app to check. Eventually he wanted to listen to Pirates of the Caribbean and he was excited about checking the tempo –  he kept asking me at every tempo change. After that video we had to listen to an ad because he liked the music. The next video started and he said “is this a orchestra? Yeah!” “We can add this to your playlist?” We finished with part of Beethoven’s Ninth, then the first 8 minutes or so of Beethoven’s Seventh (https://youtu.be/-4788Tmz9Zo). He then wanted the ink video (https://youtu.be/Fypi6dAJB8E) – the fourth or fifth time we’ve watched it. This time, thanks to comments on YouTube, I spotted a guy in the background of a one shot tripping and almost falling in a barrel of ink. Makes it an even better video.

He had to go to the toilet, and pretended to be a robot on the way and poop and pee on the ground: “Zinnie robot has a glitch…The Zinnie robot pooped on the ground.” After that I let him go on the iPad, which was a mistake. When I said it was time for the iPad to go away he got upset, despite me using all the usual warnings that worked in the past. I said we could use my iPad to read books, but then he kept trying to go to other apps, and when I let him look at the Persian instrument video, he kept going to watch the intro video, which is just about taking music lessons. So I turned off the iPad and put the iPads in the closet where he couldn’t get them. He had another major meltdown like this morning, and it took him about 10 minutes to calm down. He yelled “Mama!” a few times as if he was calling her to save him, then when I tried to distract him by saying I was going to read books he screamed “Wait! Wait!” (Which seemed to mean “Stop! Stop!). He was trying to go out the door and screamed “I’m leaving!”

Finally, he calmed down and started making the alien noises from Sesame Street. We went to get ready to go outside and were in the utility room (can’t really call it the changing room anymore). He was playing around, closing himself inside the empty suitcase that was standing upright, like it was chomping him. But then he tried to put his feet up in the suitcase and it tipped over, spilling him on the floor. Sad again.

Calmed down and we put on his pants. As I did so he said “P”. I said “You need to go to the bathroom?” He replied “The letter P, not the word ‘pee’”. He was making a (backwards) ‘p’ with his legs. He then went and was writing the letters d, p, d. I got out the letter stamps and we were doing those. He was doing z and x and we were talking about words that start with them and he was joking about xylophone starting with a z: “Have you ever seen a xylophone, spelled with a z?…I spell it zx…that doesn’t make sense, cuz that makes (zx sound)…”

We started to draw a mosaic, and he made a “I’m making a mosaic” song that transitioned to “that’s a made up shape…” song, then, after he stepped on the tub of crayons and spilled them “that’s the end of the song…I spilled too much stuff…”

No longer in a hurry to go outside, I took a shower while he did some art, then we had lunch at home. I asked what he wanted and he said “I want candy…I want bubblegum ice cream!” I made him half a peanut butter sandwich which turned out to be very messy, and he wiped peanut butter all over his shirt. I cooked one of the frozen chicken breasts and we made a banana and mango smoothie (he went and closed the door). We ate those, then he wanted to make blurry photos by running in front of the camera, then wanted to take photos himself. He took a photo in the bathroom and sang a “This is very good, this is very good.” song.

Finally, we played Sound Rebound, using it to build things and making it intentionally slow down. We finally left at 1:20. It took awhile, but after waking up with quite a headache, the Tylenol kicked in and I was feeling really good. We took the backpack and went down to wait for the 1144 bus right outside. They are doing more painting or flooring now, and there was a strong smell of that, even outside. While we waited, I tried to walk down the sidewalk a bit to get away from it. August said “it’s not going away.”

We took the bus north, then west across the river and got off. We walked west, up and over line 1, then kept walking west past the bus library and parks we had visited before. On the north side there was a green space that stretched north and east towards Changdong. We walked up it, first finding a neighborhood garden. August liked seeing all the plants in the gardens, and the numbers on the plots. We saw how high they got, into the 300s. Then, we noticed tags on the trees with numbers and looked at a few of those.

We found a little children’s park called 뱃골어린이공원. Pretty small, and no swings, so he wanted to keep walking. But I asked if he needed to use the bathroom, and he wasn’t sure, but said we could. They were nice and new, and he liked the classical music playing. We then sat on a covered area and ate animal cookies as a snack. He was then walking along the edge of the platform and we took a ‘making mama nervous’ photo.

We kept walking and got up to 초안산근린공원 at the north end. Here there was a really big playground with two play structures and swings. Not busy when we got there, and he started climbing on a spiral ladder thing. But after about 5 minutes the elementary school got out and the place was packed with kids. August liked that though, and we stayed a long time. He needed help with the spiral ladder, but eventually was climbing it on his own, and twice was able to step across to the play structure. We got food out and ate, and he was worried about things blowing away. No wind at first, but then it did get windy. He held onto the backpack, then was carrying the yellow bag so it wouldn’t blow away. He started playing with a woman by hitting her with it, then was swinging it around in circles, getting dizzy.

A lot more climbing on the play structure: up the stairs, up a little climbing will (where he again needed some coaching), and a ladder that curved over. He spent a lot of time on this last one, hanging from and sitting on it. This was when I was able to tell a boy to throw away his garbage after he ate the last of something and then just chucked the plastic tray on the ground.

His most curious activity though came when he was sitting up on the play structure looking down at kids at the bottom of the slide and he started saying “Toodley toodle” over and over. He kind of turned it into a song, and later referred to it as the “Toodley toddle” game and wanted to play it with me. He also climbed on the wood part of the teeter totter and asked “Companies make teeter totters?” At this point too a girl who, we found out, goes to an English kindergarten, came over and was talking to us. We learned that. her English name is Amber. A couple
times people asked him his name, and he replied with either Zinnie or Zinn.

He headed over to the exercise equipment and found he could hold onto the bar and spin himself back and forth. Rather silly like, but he had a lot of fun with it. He also spun one of them with his hands for a smaller boy.

Finally, I let him go on the second, smaller play structure for a couple minutes before we went to the bathroom and left. He said “I’m going to the mustard slide.” He went down the slide at the end (after some discussion of colors and playing of the Jaws game) and then we went to the bathroom and headed out at 4:15. We walked north and east to Changdong. He was hungry, and wanted to eat everyplace. There was one street vendor, with big vats of soup, in particular that he liked and we stopped to look at it. I said we were going home for dinner, and August replied “But, soup is for dinner.” Which is true. A guy there gave him a little peanut-shaped bread snack. August ate it, then he gave us a cup full. That was our snack on the way to the bus, although August pointed at other things to eat as well.

We had 9 minutes to wait for the bus, so we walked a couple blocks towards home so we wouldn’t be on the bus so long. August was falling asleep as we got off the bus, and I had tried to call Carly but she didn’t answer. I went to Tous Les Jours and got bread and was about to pay when she called and said she was almost to Brownstone. So she came into the bakery and woke August up. We were home at 5:10.

As we walked into the apartment, August saw the microwave and said “We need a better microwave? In Israel?…mama wants ten seconds?” We’ve talked about how we want a digital microwave in Israel. They nursed, then he played some Dragonbox Big Numbers. Carly made a salad, and August said from across the room “I don’t like the smell of the salad.” He went over to her a bit later and said “You smell like salad breath.”

Earlier in the day we had watched the ink. Video, and the narrator says ‘many mini balls’ – August picked up on this because of the many and mini difference he’s been working on.

He ate some dinner with me, then they did some painting for cards for Vivian and Colin. Carly gave him a bath (I was achy and drained again, after feeling fine during the day), then he climbed up on the couch with me and we read Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site, The Sneetches, and The Cat in the Hat. They tried for bed, but he was back out. We read Red, “A List”, A Place for Zero (on Skybrary), and some of the Bob Books app. He went back in and was asleep at 8:30 or so.

Photos. P legs: 

Peanut butter shirt: 

On our walk. First place we stopped. Making mama nervous photo: 

 Big playground: 

Holding the backpack so it doesn’t blow away: 

Spinning: 

Soup guy he liked: 

Asleep off the bus: 

Watching the pipes: 

He was up at 6:10. When I got up, I felt sore, like I had gone on a hike yesterday. Didn’t think much of it, but later was feeling very achy and unwell. I had a slight temperature in the evening.

Anyway, before Carly left he sort of sat on the table and said “I’m halfway sitting on the table.” Thought that was an interesting phrase he has picked up. She had sung some sort of gezunheit song and he didn’t like that. She cooked him a pancake and cut it in eighths and he said “There’s eight eighths.” Then did the math as he ate parts of it. Carly headed to work and I cooked more pancakes and he ate a couple. He played Big Numbers and Numbers for awhile and got upset when I said it was time to put it away. Did some piano, then read some Bob Books on my iPad, but he kept trying to get into other apps and games besides books so I put it away as well and he got upset. He was climbing on a chair and touching the iPads on the table, but luckily that turned into a game of me hiding his iPad and him finding it. We ate some Cheerios, then did more hiding of the iPad. I was able to distract him pretty well by saying “Look at that car out the window.” But it was funny when he observed “Why they all silver?”

I was cleaning out the art supplies in my closet, and took out the painting sponges. I hadn’t said anything about why I was taking them all art, but he gets the idea now. He said “I want to take those to Israel.” We have a Larva memory game that we’ve never really played and we got that out. As I put the rest of the stickers on the pieces, he was stacking them. They fell and he said “gravity win”.

I exercised and he joined in a bit. He played TodoMath as I took a shower. This was when I started to actually feel I was sick. I thought food would help, so we stayed home for lunch and made a salmon sandoo. While we ate, we watched his ink video, then videos on how ballpoint pens and pencils are made.

We finally got going at 12:45. Still plenty of time to play at the children’s museum, as I didn’t think we’d be doing much else at Children’s Grand Park due to the rain. As we walked in the slight rain to the subway, August was humming Itsy Bitsy. I then realized he was throwing in bits of other songs, then going back to Itsy Bitsy. At one point he did the opening to the Indiana Jones song. That surprised me, as he’s only watched that once.

We were playing in the children’s museum by 1:30. Went first to the science area. Everything was crazy today due to groups of kids. So he started by doing a lot of watching. The first thing he really did was write on a piece of paper (he wrote a random word, like ‘hat’, although that wasn’t it, that I didn’t know he could spell…’hen’ maybe, which was from the Bob Books) and send it through the pneumatic tube. I got him to look up while pushing the button, so he actually saw it go through the tube, as I noticed none of the other kids actually saw their paper going up. He saw it and said “I did it!” He also did the running and jumping games that he likes,  and controlled the surveillance camera. We then headed up to the vet area, where we looked at the x-rays and took care of the chimp. From there we went up to the water area, also busy because of big groups. We got to do our usual activity of floating balls down the path and cranking them up on the conveyor belt thing, then he played with the path area, where you put in the wooden pieces to direct the water. I had to gather all the pieces from the other water areas, as kids had used them for all sorts of other things. August and a couple other kids shared quite well here, which was a nice change from having to fend off the kids down in the space area who would try to grab controls from August.

And of course he did his water painting on the floor. Quite a bit, actually. He also did the fishing thing, and is noticeably better as he was able to actually catch fish floating in the water. Then he was done with the water and went over and did the fan thing that blows out the scarves. Then over to the culture area, where we tried to work on a puzzle of a building, but ended up going freestyle.

He then went over to the broadcast area, and was making noise into one of the microphones. He wanted me to do it too, and wanted me to make a note. So we ended up doing the copying game, where I would sing a line of notes and he would copy. We also did some with him doing it first. He played with the TV came a bit, then went to a machine where it blows wind in your face and takes photos of you. I thought that might bother him, but it didn’t.

We went across to the cafeteria and ate basically all the food I had brought. Then down to the book area. We haven’t been there in quite awhile, and I was disappointed to find the Uh-oh book nowhere to be found. In fact, the books were in bad shape, and I spent a lot of time finding all the foreign books and returning them to the foreign books section. We also played with the cupcakes game thing, but there was a cupcake missing. There was a new game with colorful sticks, but the sand timer to that was missing as well. Oh, and the magnifying glasses no longer have their nice holder. They are just in a plastic bin and there are only four of them. We read a couple of the books, mainly ‘When I Grow Up…’

We went to the bathroom, filled the water, and looked at the coffee shop for a gift for Cora, whose birthday is this weekend. Unfortunately, the. Sewing kits they have there are a bit too complex.

We had left about 4:40, so still a good 3 hours at the children’s museum despite the late start. He stood up by the backpack and played Dragonbox Numbers on the way home. Two Mormons, Travis and Isaac, talked to me on the way home, but luckily did not bring up religion. Best missionaries ever.

At home I let August play on the iPad and I did the dishes until Carly got home a little after 5:30. I talked to them while he nursed, then I went and lay down for awhile. I got up as they were finishing his bath. He was watching Shakespeare’s 9th. Carly tried to put him to sleep after that, but he didn’t want to fall asleep and was quite upset. I went in at one point, and he was saying he wanted books. She gave it one more shot, but he wanted out, so they came out. He sat with me and we read while she took a shower: A violin for Elva, Frog and Toad’s “A List” and “The Garden”, and all of The Sneetches. He was ready, and was asleep by 8:50.

 

Touching the iPads: 

Memory game: 

Monster game: 

Working surveillance: 

Vet: 

Water area: 

Wind thing: 

Building: 

“What if the ocean was this high?”: 

Sending the paper: 

It was supposed to rain a lot today, so a good day for likely our last trip to the aquarium.

He woke up at 6:56 and walked out. Sad to find no mama, but he let me pick him up and I held him for a few minutes. He then ate the rest of the banana bread for breakfast and we read Kipper A to Z. He then looked at the Persian instruments book on my iPad. He was quite interested in the tar instrument today. That led to the instrument book and finding a video of a ophicleide. He then watched some symphony pieces: Indiana Jones and a Harry Potter one. Then a video on making ink, then we did art in Sketches.

We exercised and had some cereal, then he wanted a piece of toast, which I cut in eighths. He wanted to cook with the friends, so we got all the stuffed animals (the ones that aren’t packed for Israel, and there are still plenty) and took them in on the bed. It turned into a throwing up game, and then he was hiding them. He still refers to Green Monster as “Green Marshy”. He asked “What happens if it’s 99 in Chelan?” Didn’t actually cook/eat with the friends, which was the original plan, as he wanted to go watch Pirates of the Caribbean. Did that, then he was writing letters on paper while I showered.

We read Welcome to the Symphony, then I was brushing my teeth when he wanted something and I told him so. He smiled and said “You said ‘I’m brushing my beak?’”, making a joke. We played mandolin, then went and had lunch with the friends, this time doing the cooking and ice cream, as usual. He did more asking about temperatures and funny math, asking things like “what berries plus berries equal?”

We got headed to the aquarium around 11:30. To avoid the rain we took the long subway route, transferring at Konkuk, so we wouldn’t have a walk in the rain. Walked through the mall and got to our usual bench and ate lunch. He just sat in the backpack for a few minutes, arms tucked in, before I took him out, still resting. We ate, then when he was full he was impatient to get to the aquarium.

We spent a long time in the aquarium – more than two hours, counting the gift shop. And we didn’t stop to take a break like we usually do. From the beginning he went around pointing at fish and pretending to swim, saying “I’m that fish.” The fist spot we spent some time was the river area, where he likes the plants and snails. Also a good amount of time at the funny aquariums, and he had no problem letting the fish nibble on his fingers. A good amount of time in the touch area. At one point he made a stack of starfish, and when he was picking up the big shells he kept saying “Bernie should wear that one.” And at one point he said “I want to go to the place where it shows you the things on a scuba diver…and snorkeler.” He didn’t seem bothered by the darkness in the ocean square area with the moving walkway. Most of the time he sat or stood on the walkway and made a drum sound as we slowly moved through. Oh, and he liked seeing the guitarfish. We had gone into the aquarium at 1:30, and finished 3:15ish, then spent more than 10 in the gift shop. He played with the “baby” toys, then found rods that reminded him of flutes, so he kept pretending to play the flute.

Eventually I got him out of there, and we got our backpack and headed to the book store. ALong the way though we passed the big video screens they have and there was a 2 minute video of animated, made up musical instruments. He stood transfixed for that. We waited several minutes for it to come on again, but it didn’t. There were a couple of other interesting videos though, of people doing art. Then we went to. the book store and down to the toys and he played with those little block things that they have, making towers. We needed to get going: “I want to do three more abstracto. I want to do three more shapes.” I got two coat straps I wanted for our grey backpack. I initially gave him a choice of. Orange or blue and he chose blue, but then he saw pink and really wanted it, so I gave in on that.

We headed out and stopped at the bathroom. I’ve been really, really patient and accommodating with people touching him and giving him candy, etc. the last few months. But as we were washing our hands,  a guy had to push past me a bit (I had the backpack on) to get out of the toilet area – meaning he hadn’t washed his hands. So as we walked out of the bathroom, I commented to August about how that guy hadn’t washed his hands, then the guy literally reached down to touch August’s face. I blocked him and snapped at him,  and pointed back at the bathroom and told him to wash his hands. Sadly, I didn’t use Korean, as I actually know ‘washing’ and ‘hands’. Also, it is a reminder I keep meaning to learn the imperative.

We got in the backpack and headed home, getting home at 5:30. As we were walking, August was humming Pirates of the Caribbean, which he knows pretty well by now. At home, they nursed, then we were trying to get him to tell her about our day. I asked “Did we see a guitarfish?” He joked “No, just a sitar. I saw a sitarfish.” Carly was asking “Guess what?”, which is supposed to be followed by “I love you so much.” But instead he was saying things like “It’s a hair washing day?…Mama has to go to work?”

He had to go to the bathroom and took forever on the toilet. He’s now doing variable problems like “3 plus what equals 9?” And figuring out the answers as he writes in the air. Carly observed that if he does become a mathematician, he’ll have a breakthrough on the toilet. He also said “2 plus what equals infinity? You know. Infinity.” And was asking his favorite temperature questions: “What if it’s 1 septillion degrees? What if it’s 1 nonnillion degrees?” He also asked “Whys your skin stuck to the body?”, which is a new question.

They nursed and she. Gave him a bath. He wanted couscous, so I got that out and added it to his bowl, cold, and he ate a bunch more veggies and everything as I fed him. We took him to bed, and I was trying to talk about getting Dippin Dots ice cream with Carly sometime. We had almost done it at the aquarium, as he’s been wanting Dippin Dots for months, but I told him mama would be sad if we got ice cream without him. Anyway, whether he understood me spelling ‘ice cream’, or picked up on the context clues, he knew we were talking about ice cream. He was asleep by 7:30.

Photos: 

Starfish stacking: 

Flute: 

Blocks: 

Looking at the lights: 

Toilet time: 

He woke me up at 1:30 and I remember trying to convince him to go back to sleep. He asked where mama was and when I said out in the parlor he smiled and went out to her.

When I got up at 7:30 Carly was making veggie pancakes. August was actually watching the blender and humming along to it. I asked if he’d been helping and he relied “I not tell.” When Carly asked why not, he said “For funsies.”

He and I read Suddenly, Welcome to the Orchestra, and Me and My Dad. Carly brought him pancake and he got to eat it in the parlor. After breakfast he nursed and they started reading Little House on the Prairie. I was watching race qualifying for Formula 1 and he kept asking questions and “Why?” I paused it and he and I hooked up the keyboard and played GarageBand. He sort of started learning Baa Baa Black Sheep. He then switched to the Peg + Cat Big gig app, which is also a music app.

He was being quite grumpy today, and clingy to Carly, wanting to nurse all the time. So after I took a shower, and as I was cleaning out the utility drawers, closet, etc. and packing it, she took him outside. They walked around both sides of the park. By the dinosaurs they pretended to be dinosaurs, and were back 40 minutes or so later. They came back around noon and then went back down and got the storage room key. We cleaned it out, so we don’t have to use it again before we leave. I made another chicken teriyaki sand witch for me and August for lunch, then we played ShapeKit, taking turns to make the shapes and connect them. Carly was doing some more cooking, of veggies and rice, and when she was done I was trying to take him out. He was proving to be just as grumpy and clingy as before, and didn’t was to leave the house or mama.

Finally, after some more nursing, we left at 2. We took the bike down to Hagye Children’s Park, aka the Tree Playground. The swings were busy, so we headed to the play structure. As we went up I paused to take off my outer shirt, and when I got up to the bridge I couldn’t find him. Found him a few seconds later up the path on the tree, as he said “Where’s dada?” We climbed up and down the stairs, and played with the track thing at the top, then he wanted to go down the slide. He almost went by himself, but then wanted to go with me. So we went down the big slide together, and it is fast. I’m kind of surprised he landed okay coming out of it when he went down by himself last time. Carly is now the only one of us to not go down the big slide. She says she wants to do it before we leave.

Then, August found an area where there are musical instruments carved into the play structure. He pretended to play those, then saw some kids climbing on a hilly part. He figured out how to climb up, then took a long time carefully walking back down it, as it sloped, and jumping the last bit to the ground. Then, he ran across to the base of the big tree, and climbed up that one, even bigger. Sent a photo of him at the top of it to Carly.

We wandered around some more, playing and went up and down the tree again, then he was hungry. We went over by the sand area to get a snack, but as I was setting down the backpack he suddenly kicked sand at two kids. Didn’t hit them badly, but the small girl started to get upset. As I was telling him to say sorry, he tried kicking sand again. I picked him up, and we walked over to the path near the entrance and got him calmed down. He wouldn’t say sorry to me or them though, so we didn’t go back: “Nope. I can’t say it.” He did, however, look at flowers and count their petals, and he watched kids riding by on scooters.

We left there at 3:10. I don’t remember why, but as we walked he was joking around and said “mama is a number.” He was happy, singing and whatnot, so we took a kind of long way home, and then went across to the park and were walking around. He stopped to watch the men playing go and Korean chess, really intrigued by the latter. Think he’ll really get into board games in the coming years. Finally, there was music being sung in the senior center, so we went up and listened to a couple songs as I held him and he pretended to play along.

We got home a little after 3:50. They nursed, and he played some Big Numbers. Then more nursing, and more being cranky when they stopped. Carly got out play dough and he was happy with that for awhile. Carly asked if he was ready for dinner and be said yes. She gave him some choices for what he could have, but he said “What you’re making”, referring to the beans she was cooking. But when she offered him veggie pancakes he agreed on those, and ended up eating three of those. He told me he wanted to watch a video of sausage being made, so we did that, then that led to watching a video about books being made, then one about ink, one about pencils, and finally one about soap.

Carly gave him a quick bath. As in they were done before I poured water for my tea. They went to bed at 7, but he was back out. Surprising, as he hadn’t had a nap and had gotten up at 6. They tried again at 7:40, but no luck. During these breaks he ran to me and we read: We looked at the Persian instruments book and songbook, and read Splat the Cat, A Violin for Elva,

Would You Feed It to the Monkey?, 123 Peas, Frog and Toad’s “A list” and “The Garden”, and about half of Dr. Seuss’s Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are? before he decided he was ready. That was 8:20, and he was asleep by 8:30. Not clear what caused both the crankiness and long bedtime today. Our best guess for not falling asleep was the sugar in the pancakes…

Photos. Trying out the car seat from the storage room: 

ShapeKit: 

Climbing: 

Top of the tree: 

Flowers: 

Counting the flags along the street: 

Watching Korean chess: 

Coloring upside down: 

Carly was out in the parlor and heard the bedroom door open sometime after 12:30. But August didn’t come out. She came and checked on him and he had opened the door, then, while standing on the floor, put his head down on a pillow on the bed and had fallen back to sleep. He smiled when Carly picked him up, then slept the rest of night on the reading area until 7:20.

I got up a few minutes after him, and ended up spinning him on the floor. He was back to his optical illusion: “it looks like it is turning but it actually is not. Optical illusion!” We had banana bread for breakfast, then Carly Skyped with her parents. I took a shower then we all got to work on more sorting and packing. Carly started with the books and toys by the reading area, and August had fun making towers out of blocks. Then August and I went through all the books by the desk and all the books out by the couch. He chose a ton of books to donate, and was also very happy to save books. When I held up a book he liked he’d get a big smile, grab the book, and take it in to the big box we were using. He did a good job of choosing books to donate. In the evening Carly and I went through and pulled out a few that we wanted to save, but it wasn’t many.

That took a good chunk of the morning. Then at some point he was doing math problems and asked about 2+2. Knowing he knew the answer, I gave him a nonsense answer. He ignored me, and told himself “Tu sabes”. We had a can of chicken in the cupboard, so I used that to make us a chicken salad sandwich for lunch.

In the afternoon we headed out for a walk, all in shorts and short sleeves, as it was 73. We stopped and got coffee and fruit drinks – August chose mango and banana. While we waited he climbed on the big spheres outside.

We walked up to Madeul Stadium, doing Carly’s route from when she first was taking August out. We got up to where that big globe is, and August wanted to get off and look at it. Did that, then went to look at the new seating area, etc. at the Environmental Education Center. They’ve added a lot there in the last couple of years. There’s even a little indoor playground. Not too impressive, but might have been fun during the winter. We then went into the building itself and played there for quite awhile. There are three stationary bicycles that you can use to power Christmas lights, a radio, and a fan. Did that for awhile, then August and I got out the notebook and did some insect and plants rubber stamps that they have there. Finally, there is a wall where you can turn on different appliances and see how much power they are consuming. August and I played with and discussed that for several minutes.

We headed out, got on the bike, and walked around to the Madeul playground. They went on swings, then August went to play on the play structure. He went down the slide once, then went and got Carly off the swing to play with him on the play structure. He then went and got on the bike, ready to go.

We went to the spider web playground. There it was to the swings first, then I pushed him a bit in one of the broken toy cars that were around. We went over to the play structure, and Carly saw a ‘Store’ window area, and that became the main game. First, she sold him things, then they switched and he was the shopkeeper. Left that at one point to go on the spider web, but he fell forward after he climbed onto the spider web and that was the end of that. It was back to the store after that, and eventually it took some convincing to get him going as he wanted to do even more store.

We all came home, and made a grocery list. August wanted to go to the store, so we all went. Carly hurried ahead to start shopping while we parked the bike and headed down. August and I stopped to watch a couple kids lose at the claw machine (it of course dropped the toy). He and I then went and found tissue packs for the backpacks and found Carly just as she was finishing up.

At home, Carly made couscous and zucchini. He played some Dragonbox Numbers. We ate, then she went to a shower and we did some drawing. He wanted me to draw a cow, so I did a very simple cartoon cow, but that wasn’t up to his standards. Did a snake and a spider, but then he wanted a ‘real’ cow. So we pulled up a photo and did a cow that was more to his liking.

I gave him his bath and washed his hair. I had a playlist of ‘unplayed’ songs going, and we were on the numbers: i.e. Bands that start their names with numbers. He really liked 10,000 Maniac’s “These are  Days”, so we added that to his playlist. Then he really liked a hard rock song by a band called 8STOPS7. Finally, he wanted me to add 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up?” to his playlist. We were playing with the squirt cars, and he was spraying himself in the face and mouth with air, saying he was drinking the air.

After his bath we went in on the bed and listened to some more music and looked at the photos on the wall, counting the mamas in the picture from Glecy, and the Vivians in their picture. He went to sleep a little before 7:30.

 

Sorting and playing:

Environmental Education center: 

Playground: 

Home: 

He slept until 7:23, which was nice after being up so late. But he wasn’t happy when he woke up. He’s gotten used to having Mama there when he wakes up, and he wasn’t feeling well. He cried for about fifteen minutes, us sitting by the door, him wanting to go find mama. Finally, he picked up one of his shoes and just held it out to me. He calmed down as soon as I started putting his shoes on. Then he said “English horn has buttons?…clarinet.” Those were his first words today, except for telling me “No”. We went out and played around in the hallway. First, making a game of the mailboxes, with me saying a number, then him finding that box and seeing if there was mail in it. Second, he noticed the lights were casting two of his shadows on the wall, so he played around in front of them. We then wandered towards the north end of the building and at one of the bike areas he sat on a little kid bike thing and scooted on that a bit.

We then went home and shared Cheerios for breakfast. He played Big Numbers and Numbers. At one point he joke “How many fingers do I have…10. Uhh oh, some are missing. 11, 12. I have 12 fingers.” A bit later he was asking for more Cheerios, but then walked by his bowl, with Cheerios still in it, and said “Oops. I forgetted I already have Cheerios.” I exercised and took a shower. He joked “I want a piano for breakfast.” I said he couldn’t have a piano as that is a dinner food. That led to him listing instruments and I would declare what sort of meal they were. He wanted toast, and when I cut it I cut it diagonally into eighths. He said “like this direction” and pointed NE.

He mentioned a whip (it is a sound available in the Notion music app) and so we found a video of a whip artist so he could see that. That led to Pirates of the Caribbean videos. We then made banana bread. When we were done, he joked “I don’t like the stool…I don’t like that either.” He had wandered down the hall and pointed to those colorful square things Carly had made for the windows in the bedroom to block out the hall light. He said he didn’t like them because he doesn’t like green and yellow. Just being silly. He invented a “Steal cake game”, where he stole cake from me (duh), then we played the snake game on the bed in a sort of fort/nest.

I hung up laundry, and for part of the time he just played in the stroller. For lunch, I asked if he wanted a chicken teriyaki sandwich, and he said “No, I want the kind we normal do.” So we made a salmon sandwich and ate that. When banana bread was ready we had some of that. I had realized we had forgotten the butter (microwaved it, but left it in there). This was actually a wonderful mistake, as the bread turned out really well – drier than usual, which I like, as I liked the bread texture, and I think it lasts longer that way. Almost felt/tasted like corn bread. And August liked it.

My parents weren’t on Skype again, so August played with Skype, sending messages and videos to himself from my iPad to his iPad and vice versa. He sent himself a video, and in it said “This is what happens if you not online Gramma and Grampa.” I had basically said the exact thing in the video we had sent to my parents yesterday, but only once. I was impressed that he remembered it. We then also sent a video to my parents again, but he wouldn’t repeat it.

But a bit later we saw that they were online, so we did Skype to them. August was doing Elmo numbers at first, which was nice as I could talk, but then he wasn’t talking to them. My mom asked at one point if he would play piano, and he simply said “Nooo.” Got the iPad away and he did better. He saw the cats, and he was being a puppy, saying “woofy woof”.

The weather had looked nice in the morning, but then turned to rain. The rain had stopped, and we planned to go out after Skyping with my parents. But as we were getting ready to go there were two peals of thunder and it started pouring. We decided to at least go down to the first floor and ride around. We went down and did that, but after a bit the rain was light enough and we went over to the pink building and rode around the first floor. It lightened even more and we did a couple laps around our side of the park. As we passed where the men are usually playing go and chess he said “I don’t see anyone playing anything.” But as we completed another lap he saw some guys at the other end, and wanted to go see. We rode the bike over. They were blocking the path, but we didn’t want through. A guy on the bench, well into a bottle of maekgoli (sp?) kept motioning to us to go around the other way. Another guy told us to not mind him. I was able to talk to him a bit, and he calmed down a bit.

After a couple minutes, August and I got going, and went across the street at the light to the other side of the park. More riding around, then we stopped between the pagoda and the deer sculpture.

First, he had fun backing up and hitting the deer with the bike. Then, he looked up at the pagoda and thought the rounded Korean roofing looked like an instrument. Then, he got off the bike and was playing around. Running around, then he announced “I want to do more hopping”. He then dipped his sleeve in the water. I said “That’s going to end well.” He was really silly, and pulled his arm all the way out, and gout it out under his shirt and sweatshirt. He ran around, playing like that and dipping the sleeve in the water more.

We needed to head home to get bread and meet Carly, but he was having fun now, and wasn’t in a hurry to do either. While I was talking to Carly on the phone, he ran off to the green and yellow tube sculptures on the grass and was running around them and talking – arm still out. He followed them, saying the water squirted out of them. When he did get on the bike, he wanted to head east, away from home.

Got him headed the right direction, but he spotted the playground and wanted to play. So we got off, and he climbed up on the play structure and walked back and forth on the shaky bridge, arm still off. He sat on a little car toy thing again, then wanted his wet shirt off. Took off his sweatshirt and shirt, and he sat on the car again and talked about directions. I had a dry shirt, but he decided he just wanted the sweatshirt back on.

Got that on him, and we headed to Tous les Jours. We had talked about getting a treat there, but once there he decided he just wanted to sit on the bike and wait. Felt a little odd going inside and leaving him outside. But he sat there the whole time (and I could see him). Got bread, and we headed home. No treat.

We were home about 5:30, and the evening went pretty quickly. They nursed, he had hot dog and noodle and broccoli for dinner, Carly gave him a bath, and he was asleep by 7.

Photos. Ready to go find mama: 

Playing with his shadow: 

On the bike thing: 

Cut diagonally, like the directions: 

Nest: 

Walking in the rain: 

The hand: 

Lots of pointing: 

He was up at 6, so a short night. They nursed in the parlor, then Carly came out and was in the kitchen and he lay in the reading area for a couple minutes. The drawer thing by the door is now mostly empty, and August opened all the drawers and it tipped forward on him a bit. He just made a couple of his noises like he needs his nose wiped or something, so it took a few seconds for us to realize he was actually having a problem. While Carly got ready, I distracted him with Alice in Wonderland, starting where he let off at the end of the tea party. He kept humming and moving his finger along, and said things like “I have a frog keyboard…a creature keyboard…a mole rat keyboard…” and “It’s nonsense.” Carly left for work and we finished Alice in Wonderland, then made French toast and smoothie for breakfast. I cut the french toast in eighths, so there was a lot of math around that. He ate 1 and 6/8ths pieces of french toast. He played Big Numbers for awhile, then was singing songs and asking what the notes were. So we used paper to write out the rhythms so he could see the notes. He did some GarageBand and I took a shower.

When I came out he had knocked down a bunch of the cardboard blocks and wanted to count them. We talked about skyping with Gramma and Grampa and he said something about Grampa. I didn’t quite catch it, and asked what he had said. His reply:

“Nothing, zero. That means I’m not going to tell you.” While picking out clothes for him, I asked if he wanted long or short sleeves. He chose long, but then said “soft” as well and said “I’m picky about shirts.” We then tried to skype with my parents, but they weren’t online. So we left a video message instead.

We went down to the Lee Toast and Coffee (used to be King Kong Juice). August chose a. Mango yoghurt smoothie and I got blueberry, and we got two sandwiches: a ham and cheese and a tuna. We went and sat on the bench. with raccoon tracks on it over close to Home Plus in the park. August mainly had smoothie, but not a ton of it, and wouldn’t touch the sandwiches. The tuna egg and relish on it. That’s a new combination.

We went to class and it was all about cups and buckets. August did great – it was definitely the high point of his day. He did eleven forward rolls, by my count, then caught on to stacking 10 cups in a pyramid. After that there was hammering of cups, then filling buckets with balls and pouring them in big cup-shapes (i.e. decorated garbage cans) on wheels. The teacher picked up August and put him in one of the cups and rolled him around. August started to protest, but mainly, I think, because he had just filled up his smaller bucket and wanted to pour it out. When August got out he spent the rest of his time filling buckets and pouring them into the big ones that the other kids were now riding around in.

From class we went downstairs to the grocery store and did some shopping. Went well, except at one point I let go of the bike to look at something. I had left the basket on the handles. It wasn’t very heavy, but I think August stood up, and the weight was enough to tip the bike backwards. August was hanging in the air for a few seconds until I could get the bike level again.

We got home at 2:20. The idea was to skype with my parents and then go out for a walk and see if he wanted a nap. But he stumbled on my feet and had a slight fall, and was quite upset. Clearly tired, so we got ready to go out. He was calm again and so as he sat in the stroller I skyped with my parents. He joked “I have a gramma keyboard”. Fine for a couple minutes, but then he wanted to start typing to them and got upset when I said no.

So we said goodbye and headed out, now 3:15. If he wasn’t going to sleep, we’d go to class at 4. We walked over behind See and Me, singing songs. He didn’t fall asleep at first, but when I suggested stopping or going to class he wanted to keep walking. He fell asleep at 3:37, and I went to the Coffee House (where I once had bingsu with Meg) and had a grapefruit tea. Didn’t want to let him sleep long, so got walking at 4:10, trying to wake him up. Got to the dinosaur playground and woke him up there, finally getting him up at 4:20. He really did not want to wake up, and took several minutes. I tempted him awake with crackers. I kept pulling it away from him and he smiled, and he said “Cracker chase”.

He didn’t want to play though, so we headed home. He played a few minutes of Big Numbers, then Carly got home. They nursed, and he did more spreadsheet math. I had bought a zucchini and cooked that, but August didn’t like it. Apparently the other kind of zucchini they sell is sweeter. So he had hotdog and noodles for dinner. He and Carly invented the “Mama game”, where he ran/pushed/crawled his way past Carly’s leg to get into/out of the kitchen. I then played it with him, and we did a lot of lifting him “Up to the sky!”

Carly got his bath ready and I gave him his bath. He watched Pirates of the Caribbean, then joked about an “Electric viola…That doesn’t make sense?” But it reminded me that in fact he hasn’t seen an electric violin yet, and so we found that and also an electric 5-string viola. We then watched videos of “Be our guest”, “Under the Sea”, another Little Mermaid song, then started watching parts of Fantasia. He really liked parts of that, and was playing crash cymbals along to it as he stood in the bath. We watched more of it on the bed – the parts about the dancing ostriches and hippos.

Carly tried to put him to sleep, but he came back out. We read Elmo ABC, Would You Feed It to the Monkey?, Red, Persian instruments, and two Frog and Toad stories. We read the one about things blowing away (“The List”), and I realized that his concern for this blowing away is entirely justified based on the stories we have read and seen: there’s that entire book The Wind Blew, then this story, and the Kipper cartoon episode, the Winnie the Pooh video about rhyming, the Wizard of Oz (which I’ve told him several times, but we haven’t read/seen at all)…and it seems like I’m forgetting a couple.

Anyway, we then read Moo Baa La La La – he read it he second time, and much of Berenstain Bears No Girls Allowed before he tried to go back to bed at 8:50. But he was back out at 9. He looked at his dictionary and found pictures of instruments, and we found videos of them. Balalaika (another new instrument for him), sitar, and fiddle. I got ready for bed while he watched Pirates of the Caribbean, and we went in together at 9:30.

But I had to take him back out at 9:45. We finished No Girls Allowed, then read Gaston and 1-2-3 Peas. We went back to bed at 10:05. He still had difficulty getting to sleep, taking off his socks and rolling around between me and Carly, but at some point we both drifted off. Obviously the short nap was still too long, or maybe we should just be done with naps for good.

 

Photos. Waiting for our lunch: 

Lunch: 

Teuni Teuni. Cup stacking: 

Two pieces of his treat: 

Hard to wake up from his nap: 

Secret message on our zucchini: 

Checking out the car vest: 

More Fantasia: 

He woke up around 3:30, stuffy, and lay in bed for several minutes. Hoped he would go back to sleep.  It eventually Carly (who is now feeling good enough to sleep in bed) got up and took him to the reading area. I fell back to sleep and didn’t hear them until 6:15 so I had hoped he had fallen back to sleep. No such luck. He had played iPad and done music, and I’m sure nursed. When I came out, Carly was teaching him how to do addition problems in a spreadsheet. So I did more of those with him and he got the ‘autosum’ process down. When Carly had to leave, he switched to iPad and did some more Dragonbox Numbers (the original one). I got paper and markers to do some math, and he wanted to do snake voices – i.e. nonsense – on paper. We shared a bowl of Cheerios and bananas for breakfast, then he wanted books on the iPad. He landed quickly on the songbook, and we sang a couple songs. We found “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” and “Under the Sea” and I suggested we watch them, so found we found them on YouTube. Then we found “The Unbirthday Song” from Alice in Wonderland (https://youtu.be/6zxFlrxdwyY). So I found the tea party scene and we watched that. He laughed hysterically the entire 6 minutes…all the spilling, the mouse running across the table, the teapots dancing, and especially the Mad Hatter pouring tea through his coat and the tea cup getting cut in half and filled…he found it all hilarious.

So then we started the movie at the beginning. We watched it all the way through to the end of the tea party again before he wanted to pause it. After watching a good chunk of it with him I exercised and took a shower. I then let him play a little Dragonbox Big Numbers, but then when I said we were done with screens for the morning he got upset. A lot of yawning and it was clear he was getting tired. So I got out the stroller and got us ready for a walk, him still wearing pajamas. He recovered a bit though and was asking funny things, like “How you make crab?” “What happens if you drink your blood?” “Be Kipper”

We left at 11:10 and walked over around the stream area. He said no nap though, and instead playing music: “I’m playing a crab keyboard Clickity clackety, clickity…” So after 25 minutes we were back home at 11:35. We made a salmon sandoo for lunch and ate that and I made a banana and blackberry smoothie. I took off his pajamas to get him in clothes and he rolled around on the floor in his underwear for awhile. We played some mandolin. And before we got going he found a few stringy bits from the banana on the counter. He was using them as musical instruments and describing how you press the keys and blow into them.

We got back in the stroller, a backpack full of sand toys and iPads this time. We headed southeast (he was asking about directions again) and towards the writing playground past the hospital. As I suspected, he fell asleep. At 2:02. We were a bit past the hospital and the park near it when it happened. I was right by ToPresso, but there were three steps up. So I walked across the park to Masim (마심). I think Masim may have been the first coffee place we took August when he was starting to walk. Carly and I discussed how long to let him sleep, and I tried waking him up after 70 minute. But he just fell back to sleep a couple times. He finally woke up at 3:35. The woman at the coffee shop had brought me some strawberries and a brownie, and I shared the brownie with August. He wouldn’t eat the strawberries though.

We got in the stroller and headed towards home, and with the design of going to the four swing playground that he likes. We stopped at the park by the pink building and used the bathroom, then continued on to the playground. He went down the slide a couple times, running into me, then went on the swing. I had told Carly that was where we were, and she planned to meet us there on her walk home. But suddenly he decided he wanted to head home. So I called Carly on speakerphone so we could tell her we’d meet her at home. August first smiled when he heard her, but then got his totally sad face and then broke out crying. I said goodbye and we headed home. He made me carry him much of the way, before agreeing to get in the stroller by the pink building.

We were home just before 5. His nose was really runny. Carly got home a bit later. They nursed and I made more noodles. He played piano, and Carly wanted to hear Old MacDonald, but he played it to the tune of Are You Sleeping. He was then doing that with other songs to frustrate Carly. Then he said “I played “Old MacDonald Really Has to Poop’”.

Carly gave him a bath, and they tried for sleep for the first time at 7. That didn’t last long and they were back out. We read a new book called In Mary’s Garden, the Persian instrument book, The Bear and the Piano, and a little of The Little Prince. He said he was tired again, so they tried again. Back out at 8:15. Carly had thought he had gone to sleep and he had rolled over like he always does. But then he popped up. She showered, and we read A Violin for Elva. I showed him a little of Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (referenced in the book). He wanted Beethoven’s Ninth so we switched to that. He saw a Violin player and said “That looks like Oma.”

We went in to bed at 8:50. On the bed he asked about the window things Carly had made with the colorful squares to block out the hallway light. He said “I still don’t like it because dark green.” Then said his favorite color is “Brown” I mentioned other colors, like Amber. He said  “Amber what?” I think he expected me to say ‘orange’ or ‘yellow’ after it. Instead I said “Amber amber.” He laughed at that. Amber is also a character in Poli. So he said “Poli Poli”. Some hilarity ensued as we doubled everything for a bit, then ended with “Night, night Poli, Poli”.

The night wasn’t over though, as he was back out a couple minutes after 9. We looked a little at Rad American Women A-Z and read two and a half Kipper stories before he went back in to Carly at 9:20. Finally asleep.

 

Photos. Pointing in directions: 

A nap. I like the one wild hair off the top: 

He was up just before 6:30. Almost twelve hours of sleep. Nursed and hung out with Carly, then he lay on the reading area, pretending to draw on the ceiling. He got up and looked out the window and was asking about directions and wanted to see on the phone. So I gave him the old phone and he played with the compass. We discovered that it has a level function, so he was twisting all around to make that change. I asked what he wanted for breakfast. He answered “Candy…ice cream…snail poop.” We settled for our usual cereal and fruit. He then looked at instruments in Notion and we looked up videos of them on YouTube: water gong, slide whistle, etc. He played GarageBand and ended up sort of making soundscapes using Jet Stream etc and all the octaves – down to the negative octaves on the keyboard (which he really liked). We looked something up in the dictionary, and that led to looking up translations in Google Translate and then playing with different languages. We read Pete the Brave and A Violin for Elva and part of The Little Prince, then played Dragonbox Big Numbers. I exercised, then took a shower. We’ve been listening to a lot of Miles Davis. He was listening and asking “What those notes are?” He often does this now, where he wants to know what are quarter notes, etc. Miles Davis is a bit hard for that though.

He carried Marshy around with chin/neck, then had more Cheerios and part of the peanut butter sandwich I had made for later. We then finished the pizza, a slice each (his cold). He wanted to work on his W and R, particularly the word “water bottle”.

He was asking how many countries there are, and he asked “How many elements there are?” I downloaded a periodic table, and he spent the next half hour playing with that – he was particularly interesting in what each element is in (they have a picture of an example), and at which temperature they melt and boil. For hydrogen there was a video with exploding balloons. He saw the small one, but didn’t want to see the big one: “No, no, no, no, no!”

Finally, I dragged him away from chemistry and we left at 12:25. As we walked through the park he was making music and said “I’m playing a number line. I’m making up instruments. I’m going to play a tree.” On the train he played London Bridge with an interesting staccato rhythm. I asked what he was playing and he said “bassoon”.

At the park I tried to steer him to something outside, but he wanted the children’s museum. Last night, when Carly asked him what he wanted to do today, he said “Inside play area” and “Children’s museum”. He hadn’t changed his mind.

So we headed in. He went up to the space area, then into the spaceship area. He kind of wandered around a bit, then said “I don’t know anything at all.” We played with a couple things together, and he played with some switches, then his big break: the big group of kids around us left, and he was free to climb in the pilot’s seat for the first time and use the actual controls. We got a few good minutes, then another group came. I let August finish the game he was on, then we headed out.

He headed up the ramp to the construction area. There, he helped a smaller boy load bricks into the basket on the crane. He’s more aware of cranes now, and kept talking about the crane. He then headed up the next ramp and we ended up at the water area. He got an apron on and went at it. He did some fishing pole, then we spent a lot of time at the begging dropping balls into one of the stream things, then winding them up the conveyor belt part. He played with the water wall thing a bit, then the part where you can put the little gates in and make a path for the stream and put a ball in it. But then his big innovation: he got his hands wet and started making hand prints and stripes on the floor. The floor was soaked in areas and regularly being mopped, so his little water wasn’t a big deal. With all the chaos and noise around him, he kept this up for a long time.

About 2:30 he was done with that and we went to the bathroom then the cafeteria for a snack of letter cookies. He played in the lobby again, making music, then suddenly running over to me and doing a boa constrictor attack. We left at 2:50.

We went and did sidewalk chalk. He first pretended to be a seagull, then inspected the area we were going to use and carefully picked up some flower petals and removed them. He then wanted to draw a pizza. I drew a circle, and he drew mushrooms on it. He then said there was a telescope, then started to draw a line from it. I asked what the line was, and he said it sprays water. Then the line kept going and going. Right off the sidewalk chalk triangle and off across the playground. And it wasn’t straight – it was all curvy and twisty, and he kept running back to get a different color. He did a great job of not staying in the lines. We shared the chalk with other people. He started to object at first, but I reminded him we had done it before and he was fine after that.

About 3:30 he headed to the play structure. And he realized it looked like a pipe organ. So the whole time he was in it it was his pipe organ. He climbed up this step area without me, and a couple times caused a bit of a bottle neck, because he needed some help getting down, but all the other kids would just shove through, so I couldn’t get in to help him. Then he was going around pointing to all the pipes, and the controls to his pipe organ, and all of the buttons (screws and bolts): “I have all sorts of crazy switches.”

Then it was down to the ground level, where there are those pipes where you talk in one end and someone listens at the other end. We played with those for several minutes, then he just played them like instruments. Underneath the structure he got fascinated by a couple of the game things. Mainly the one he’s played with before, where there are shapes that move in tracks on one side, but from the backside you can also make them move. He played that with a few kids, and when there wasn’t another kid he would call me over to play.

There were a couple times what with the crowds and all our moving around where he wouldn’t know where I was (or vice versa) for a minute, but he handled those okay. Once, when we were underneath, he headed out to find me, not realizing I was a few feet away. When I got out I found him calling for me. Then at the end he climbed up the climbing wall. I told him I was going to the other side of the structure to get the backpack. I expected to find him on the structure, but he wasn’t there. I found him down by the sidewalk chalk area. He couldn’t remember how he got off the structure, but I think he got to the top, went right down the slide, then headed to the other end of the playground where the sidewalk chalk area is, as that was where the backpack was originally. Anyway, when I found him he was admiring his line and playing hopscotch.

He added a little more to his line, and we left at 4:30. We stopped at the bathrooms by the entrance, then headed home, getting off the train at 5:25. On the walk home I heard him signing the tunes to the Rabbit Dance that I made up with Bluie and “It’s OK” (that punk song).

Right before we got to Brownstone though I realized he was sounding a bit stuffy. He denied it, but once home he had a runny nose. Now he has a cold. Carly got home a little after us. For dinner I got him cold noodles with olive oil, olives, and cheese. He did some math on his number line. He was making music and told Carly “I played a baby…a cow. Moo, Moo, Moo.” She was confused by that until I told him he had been playing random instruments. Earlier it was a number line, zucchini, and boa constrictor. He also told her “I went down to low negative E flat.”

She gave him a bath, he watched some orchestras, and he was asleep at 7:40.

Photos. Using the level: 

Children’s museum: 

Snack time: 

Sharing the chalk: 

In his pipe organ:

In the way: 

Instrument: 

The sidewalk chalk at the end, with him in the distance putting finishing touches on his line: 

Flower season: 

He was sleeping in, so Carly woke him up at 6:30. After nursing he lay on the reading area for several minutes. Carly felt well enough to head to work. I made toast for us, and we did math with the quarters of the two pieces, doing fractions. I had the Formula 1 race on and he watched a little of that. I then cut up banana and strawberries, and we did math with that. When he went to the bathroom, he asked math questions about cake slices while on the toilet. Most were small, but then he asked “What if there were 1 nonillion people and a hundred pieces of cake?” He requested typing in Skype. He sent emojis to gramma and grampa, typed a big number to Vivian – unvigintillion – and sent her “snake voices” (nonsense), then sent Carly a video where he had taken his shirt off so he could see his bones using the black and white effect. Cassie called on skype, and they were in the bath, so August and Vivian sent messages back and forth. Vivian wrote ‘I love you’. August started to type it back, but hit send before he was done and it autocorrected to ‘I log’. He then joked that Vivian was a log, and further joked that she just looked like a log (“Optical illusion”).

After that he did some more typing, then we exercised, and he played Dragonbox Big Numbers

Shower while I showered. He was hungry so I got some pizza. I made the first piece hot, so he wanted a second piece. I put the second in and barely warmed it. He ate a bite, but then said “cold” and reached into the container and grabbed a piece of cold pepperoni pizza and proceeded to eat the whole thing. We were listening to Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger album, and he was liking that, talking about hard rock guitar.

We got ready to go and left at 11:45. We sang “Rock Me Mama” on the way to the train, with him doing instruments and me making up words so it would go on and on, like he wanted. On the train he sat next to a woman who had different color stripes of polish on each finger, and really big costume jewelry bracelets, etc. August was fascinated by her fingernails, and was asking what the colors mixed would make. He then played her bracelet like an instrument. She got out a bottle of vitamin or supplements of some sort and gave August one. I felt very Korean letting him have it. It was too hard and big for him and he wanted it broken up. I had to use my teeth. It was basically like an Altoid, I think. Anyway, he liked it, at least.

He then wanted to extend the ‘How Many?’ song from YouTube. We used Wikipedia to figure out that there are 11 players on a soccer team, 12 is a dozen, 13 a baker’s dozen, 14 is days in a fortnight, and 15 is the number of minutes in a quarter hour.

We got to Ttukseom Resort and August wanted to go straight to the J-Bug building. As we went, I remembered there is a piano at the other end. We headed over there to find a few guys playing the piano. August listened for awhile (the guy playing literally played Chopsticks and that other horrible song that everyone here plays on piano) and we sat and ate our sandwich. He also really liked the sculpture of metal butterflies snaking up the wall and across the ceiling. I looked out at the round garden area, which is now ripped out. August said “They undoed it?” We then discussed the various forms of ‘do’, ‘undo’, and ‘redo’ and what they mean.

We then we went to ride the elevator up to the third floor. We looked around, but there are less and less animals up there every time. When we came back down the piano was free, so we played it for a good twenty minutes. We made a list of the songs he can play:

– Are You Sleeping

– Yankee Doodle

– Itsy Bitsy Spider

– Old MacDonald

– Ants Go Marching

– When Johnny Comes Marching Home

– Mary Had a Little Lamb

– London Bridge

I think he also knows Hot Crossed Buns. Not sure about Baa Baa Black Sheep, Twinkle Twinkle, and ABC… Anyway, I asked what song he wants to learn next, and he said “I don’t know. There’s thousands and millions.” Then decided “It’s O.K.” His first punk song, it will be.

He had a ton of fun, and when two women came, one with a violin, to play he was reluctant to give it up. I tried to have us sit and watch for awhile, but he was a little too frustrated for that, although I could tell he was excited by the sight of the violin.

So we went and used the bathroom, then headed outside. Oh, and on the way in he had thought that the big wooden bench, made up of dozens of vertical wooden pieces, looked like an instrument. We went to the big playground area to the east of the station. Along the way he stopped to smell and count petals on flowers.

At the playground he directed me to the sand. I swept to get down to the wetter sand for writing purposes, but he kept erasing what he would write, saying it was too chunky. He had been wearing his hat while in the sun, but then took it off as we went to the play structure. We played there for a long time. He was telling other kids “I’m bigger than you.” or  “We’re the same size.” And then saying they were the same age or he was older. Which seems kind of rude from an American standpoint, but is SOP for Korean culture. He also did a lot of climbing and we went down the metal slide a few times. Up in the sine waves, I reminded him of resting in there and being (I think) Spikey from Puffin Rock. I mentioned we had also played a game, but that I didn’t remember what it was. He did. He remembered the flying snake game and we played that. At some point today I had said something that made him think my voice sounded like Kipper. He then invented a game that played on both his fear of our food being blown away and his favorite Kipper TV show episode, the one in which he and Tiger have an ill-fated picnic: the chips blowing away game. Basically, I would tell a story of Kipper and Tiger having a picnic and their chips would blow away. He would then want this again, but I’d change it up a bit.

He needed a little coaching to climb the big climbing wall and the big rope ladder parts the first time, but then climbed each on his own. Back under the structure, there was a mom with a smaller boy. August had to go investigate, because he heard music. She had Korean kids music playing from her phone in her back pocket. August went and listened, then when she climbed out, he followed the music and just hung around next to her, listening. Pretty funny.

When we were on top we had seen some helicopters, and August had spotted kites flying in the sky. So when we were ready to go we planned to find the source of the kites and to go over to the flower garden area to the east to check it out. On the way back across the playground we found a small abandoned sand shovel. I suggested we take it with us. He said no, but went and played with it for a couple minutes before leaving it in the sand area.

We went to the drinking fountain to fill his water and get a drink, and ended up playing with it (it kind of makes a waterfall down the side) for several minutes. Drinking fountains are one of many things where I’ve been thinking about how poorly they are designed. This was a perfect example, as one side had a step for kids. But it was a little step and a tall drinking fountain, meaning you still had to be 8 or 9 to reach the water. Why design something that can’t be reached by people until they are 8 and that aren’t accessible to people in wheelchairs at all?

We went to the bathroom and got in the backpack and walked down the steps and found the boy and mom flying a kite. We then walked over the the flower garden. It’s a rose garden, but given Korea’s love of changing flowers with the seasons I expected other flowers. There weren’t any, but we did see other flowers along the way. We walked back to the station, and headed home. He stood up and played Dragonbox Big Numbers again.

We were home at 5:20. They nursed, then I got him some dinner. He said he didn’t like the spaghetti sauce though, so I cut up a tortilla and gave him a bowl with
olives, sour cream, beans, and cheese in it, and we used a spoon to put the stuff on the tortilla pieces. Carly gave him a bath – think there was more Pirates of the Caribbean – and I did dishes and she took him to bed early, at 6:40.

Photos: 

Ttukseom. Watching piano: 

Flowers: 

Sand: 

Play structure: 

Ready for a walk: 

Drinking fountain: 

More flowers: than