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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  

He got up at 6:15. They Skyped with Cherie and were saying goodbye when I came out. They had oatmeal for breakfast. August smeared some on the window and I got a paper towel for him. We were joking by the window for him to clean it; and he bumped his head on the wall when he pulled away from me. That required a little nursing. When he was done he wanted to do Dragonbox Big Numbers. I got the paper and we ended up writing on that instead. He was adding zeros to a number and wanted to know what they were, looking them up on the chart on Wikipedia. He got up to a novemdecillion. Carly did a quick Skype with her dad to discuss the car, but August was being clingy all morning and really wanting to nurse. I distracted him for a bit and we read Go, Dog, Dog! and sang Oh, Susanna, looking up the words, and watched a Teuni Teuni video. We got him to not nurse again until 9:30.

They nursed, then he played Dragonbox Big Numbers next to Carly while I took a shower. They made big number line (Carly wrote it this time), then he ate the rest of his oatmeal and strawberries. We sang songs: all of Yankee Doodle, Oh Susanna, then got ready to go out and let Carly rest. But first we did chords on the mandolin for quite awhile. Carly had been resting in the bedroom, and we said bye to her as we headed out at 11:50.

We walked up to Sarang Children’s Park and got there a little after noon. Empty park, and we went on the swings. But he didn’t go on for long. Then over to the play structure, where he pretended to play the piano keyboard, then use the big tubes as an instrument. We used a couple of napkins to dry the slide so we could go down that. About 12:35 he decided he was done and he started trying to pick up the backpack. Got on the bike and I rode him to the other end of the play structure and convinced him to climb a post thing. Lasted a bit longer and we left at 12:45.

Went to Starbucks and he chose his favorite, the chia seed drink. We sat across from each other and stayed until 1:45. But at first he just drank some of his drink, then suddenly headed to the door and was trying to leave. I suggested Big Numbers, and he came back and played that. He needed the bathroom, so we went and did that, then came back down for a few more minutes before we left. Outside, there was a little boy (smaller than August) with a shirt  “Acne Studios”. Not sure if that is supposed to be ‘Acme Studios’, or if this is some brand/fad I don’t know about.

We started to head south (he asked about directions a few times), and as we crossed the stream we noticed the waterfall area was on. He wanted to go down and play. We walked through the Poli Park, left the bike at the top, and went down. Down there I first had to pick up the pieces of a broken bottle. He was interested in that, but did a good job letting me do it, and not stepping on glass. He took his socks and shoes off and touched the water, but didn’t go in. Over in the deeper part, we spotted a lonely tadpole and watched it. Mainly he played sink or float, using sticks and leaves and whatnot. Stayed there quite awhile, then headed up to the bike and south again, this time along the road that runs the other side of Brownstone.

We went and did our shopping in Lucky Mart. He helped choose oranges, found a slurpy thing to get, then helped bag some groceries. We stopped at Tous Les Jour to get some bread. He didn’t want to get off the bike because there was a little dog he was afraid would lick him, but I convinced him to get off the other side.

We got home at 3:40. They nursed, then we played some Dragonbox Big Numbers and Carly felt well enough to make spaghetti sauce and we had it on the pasta from Glecy for dinner. They nursed again, he went to the bathroom, then we did some mandolin. I gave him a bath. He was asking big questions, like “What if it is 17 septillion degrees?” And “How many words there are?” So I found https://futurism.com/science-explained-hottest-possible-temperature/ and https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/explore/how-many-words-are-there-in-the-english-language. We then watched a banjo video (Dueling Banjos) and then Pirates of the Caribbean. Carly was ready to put him to sleep after that, so he was right to sleep by 7:30.

 

Photos. Lots of zeros: 

Park: 

Starbucks: 

Stream area:

Toy area at the movie theater: 

Home: 

Carly had a half day of parent conferences today. August was awake at 6:20. I was out a couple minutes later. A little later he was running back and forth to the parlor to grab blueberries and bring them out to the table, doing a math problem each time. I went to change the sheets on the beds, and August and I hid from Carly under one. She went to work, and we played Dragonbox Big Numbers. At one point we needed to collect a lot of apples, so I said we needed to “get serious” about it. Then, as we’d be collecting apples he would keep saying “It’s serious”. We had Cheerios and banana for breakfast. He kept playing and I hung laundry and got recycling ready. I asked if he wanted more Cheerios. He didn’t answer. I asked a couple more times and said “I not answer…I did a joke.” Still didn’t get an answer from him.

At 9:20 we went down to do recycling. I left him sitting on the bike so he could watch the recycling truck pick things up, but then he decided he didn’t like it. I had to move him to the other end, farther away, before I could finish recycling. We went back up and did a little more math, then he played the ‘Picking up boxes’ game, where he pretends to be a crane that picks up the queen or king’s boxes and drops them in the water. There are then consequences, like having to stand on his head or getting squished, etc. We moved to the cardboard blocks and made towers and knocked them over. At first he would go and hide in the pillows in the reading area and watch me knock them over – he didn’t want them falling on his head. But I taught him about how to push them so they wouldn’t do that, and he stated pushing over towers.

We exercised, then he did Arabic while I showered. He wanted to write music in Notion, and I showed him how to add multiple instruments, so he did a clarinet and euphonium duet. He had to go the bathroom, and was asking about how many zeroes certain numbers have. He was particularly wanting to know “What about septillion?” Don’t know when we last talked about septillions. We made a salmon sandoo for lunch, then it was back to Notion where he was looking at the extensive list of instruments and we were looking them up in YouTube: things like clavinet and  train whistle.

Carly was home at 12:40. They nursed, then he wanted to watch Beethoven’s Ninth. When the main opera singer was singing he said “She looks like a piggy”. We were shocked at first, but then I realized he meant it was like the little video emoji that my mom sends in Skype of MIss Piggy singing opera. He was then typing on Carly’s computer and changing fonts, then he played  Old MacDonald for her on the piano. We opened a window, and I realized that I quickly needed to clean the edges as he was rubbing his fingers in them. He found Marshy and was swinging him around, then saw the Helly book from class and wanted to read that. We then went and got the other books from that class and looked at those. More of the Queen’s stuff in the water game, and I was having him do head stands on my chest as I lay on my back on the ground. He wanted Carly to see, but when he ran to tell her to come see he changed his mind and wanted to nurse.

He was nursing and I was humming and he looked up and said “You’re doing Beethoven’s Ninth?” I was indeed, and hadn’t realized it.

I took him out in the after noon. We got to the spider web playground before 4:10. He jumped off the bike and before I knew it he was climbing across the top of the spider web. Hadn’t done that before. He proceeded to climb just about everything there, and do the shaky bridge by himself. Went well until we went to play in the sand. There was a girl playing there and he stepped on one of her mountains. I pulled him away and we said sorry and rebuilt it, and then we built our own mountain. But then when she was destroying it herself he jumped in and started kicking at it right away. I pulled him away again and was trying to talk to him, but he grabbed sand and threw it in her direction. At that I picked him up and walked him away, which really made him upset. I got him calmed down enough to agree to the rules, but that as we got back by the sand there was a smaller boy who was playing with our toys. I wouldn’t let August down to play when he was upset, and he couldn’t handle sharing with the other boy. Eventually we asked for the toys back and went and sat on the ground with him on my lap by the bike until he calmed down and we could talk about it.

We then went on the swings for awhile, then headed to Pizza School to pick up dinner. He chose the potato pizza and also suggested the shrimp rings, so we got those and a pepperoni pizza for Carly. We counted pizza boxes and watched the pizzas cooking, then got home just before 5:30. Eating pizza he said “It’s very inside my body…it’s in my organs.”

After dinner they nursed and then made a big number line out of paper. She gave him a bath and they discussed counting by 1s above 100 and by hundreds, etc. and how many zeros are in numbers, and she wrote them on paper. He went to bed from there, at 7:20.

 

Photos. Hiding under the sheet: 

Tower falling: 

Counting by tens: 

Bike repair: 

Park: 

Spinning: 

Counting pizza boxes: 

Number line: 

Ready for bed: 

He was up about 6. He was watching symphony videos, then playing Discovery Music when I got up. Carly made him a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast, and he started doing cake math (which has come up several times): “What happens if there’s 15 people and 17 pieces of cake?” When asked what happens to the extra he said “Bob” gets it. He then had 16 people and 100 pieces of cake. When Bob got 10 of them, Carly said that maybe it was vegetable cake. August thought about it and ran across the room saying “Vegetable cake doesn’t make sense!” He then said “I winned.” He’s said that a couple times. Not sure where it came from, but maybe just our discussions of checkers and go. Then more general math with blueberries as he kept adding more. He joked about calling 13 “threeteen” again, which he came up with yesterday.

We played mandolin and did chords, then did a little of the snake game. He was playing the xylophone and I would ask for him to make songs with names like “Please don’t eat my cheese”. I had cereal and strawberries for breakfast, but he didn’t want any. Exercised, then we played the “I lost my spaceship” game with the Teuni alien. We got ready to go, and were shooting for 9, but he really got into DragonBox Big Numbers, so we played that together and left 9:30.

Took line 7 south, and transferred at Gangnam-gu Office. We had talked about getting a stamp and that we were going on a hike, but I’m pretty sure I hadn’t mentioned Seoul Trail today. But as we got on the second train and he was looking at the maps and talking about directions, he said we were “Seoul Trail bound”.

We got walking at 10:40. He saw the number ‘119’ on something and I told him it was the number to call for an emergency in Korea. He asked “What’s the number for United States?”

We got to where the trail headed into the hills. He looked up and said “That’s a lot of stairs.” Thanks for pointing that out. We got going up. He was fine, but bothered by the bumps of the stairs. We took a break at 11:25 and had a little snack. When we got going again at 11:40 he wanted to walk, so walked a way. Got him in the backpack at another bench area, but he would complain about bumps. Got to a nice viewpoint, then we were singing London Bridge, and I made a mistake where I skip the “We must build it up again” verse (as we learned it without first). He said “Why you do that every time?” He said “I’m tired.” And I replied “No I’m tired” It turned into the Bugs Bunny game, where you say “You’re tired.” etc.

He was complaining about bumps some more and talked about wanting down. So we stopped at a bench/water area at 12:15 and ate most of our lunch and had some fresh water. We started with one of the little snickers that he had gotten the other day. He liked that. We ate more of our little cheese and tuna round things. We had stopped in the subway station and got a bag of cheese ones and a bag of tuna ones. We had also gotten a roll of kimbap. I didn’t realize it had kimchi in it, so at first I thought he wouldn’t eat it. But it was barely spicy at all, so I encouraged him to try it, and said something like “Just one bite”. He said “Green Eggs and Ham”, as that was a line from the book. And he did like it, and ate much of it. After all that he said he was “Very, very, very, very, very, very hungry.” and ate a bunch of strawberries.

A big lunch in his stomach, we got walking again at 12:45. He was happier now, and I was doing a better job of being light on the steps and he didn’t complain about the bumps much more, and in fact said he wanted more bumps later on. We saw a little squirrel and watched it, then heard a woodpecker. Tried to track it down, but couldn’t spot. Also, we saw a lot of helicopters through the day. He spotted a couple on his own and was excited about that.

At the 4 kilometer mark we came to a Buddhist temple and looked around there and watched them hanging lanterns for the upcoming Buddha’s Birthday. Just past that was a a park/forest and it had a playground. We stayed there for a half hour, from 1:10 to 1:40.

He started by climbing down a very flat climbing wall, but aborted because of an insect. But when I went to get rid of it for him it turned out to be a fuzzy seed pod thing from a tree. It looked like a caterpillar. He thought that was pretty funny. I paused at one point to plug in my phone to the battery pack and I thought it wasn’t working. He was really interested in that, and kept asking “Why’s it not working?” We went down the metal slide together, and then he found that he could climb up it. So we went up and down and around several times, and walked up the climbing wall together several times.

We went over to the bathroom, then came back and got in the backpack. He wanted a song and I made up a slither song. He seemed to like it, but then said “I want a real song”. We walked past a set of tree trunks that were cut so you could see the inside of them. He. Asked “Those are urinals?” They were, indeed, sort of shaped like urinals.

We got walking again, moving along well now. We stopped one more time, when we saw some exercise equipment and he said he wanted to get down and play on it. We played there from 2:25 to 3:10. He found a big stick and was playing with it like you would expect a three year old to do – mainly swinging it around and hitting things. He spotted a helicopter and pointed at it with the stick, then was using it to touch things that he couldn’t reach, and talking about that. He then said “this is an ax”. He then was hitting a metal bar and said “…meditate…rest…This instrument helps you rest.” At the temple we had visited he had spotted a couple different instruments – a big drum and a couple of the smaller things they use. Then “I’m back to axing.” I took Smokey out of the backpack and we took a couple photos of him sitting on a bench. I had Smokey sit on the back of the bench and August was a bit concerned that he’d blow away.

Finally, he was putting his hands over his head in a circle and said “is it sunny?” That was from a song in his Poli class.

We got walking again. After that first temple I had thought we were going to see another temple. He had said “where you want to meditate?” We didn’t see a second temple, but he was thinking about the meditating. He asked “Why birds don’t meditate?” I told him he would have to ask the birds. He wasn’t happy I didn’t know.

I knew the last couple of kilometers were flat, along a stream. We were quite high up, so knew the downhill was coming. The trail fooled me twice, as after going down I twice had to climb up big sets of stairs. At one of them August said “I want to do it…I want to go up,” I told him that was easy for him to say. But soon we were on the last bit of hill and it headed down. It was smooth sailing from there. We got down to the streets, then the stream. Along the stream we went through a few tunnels. August counted the lights using funny numbers again, and sang loudly to make an echo.

We got to Yangjae Citizens’ Forest 양재시민의숲, at the end of our trip, and stopped at bathrooms, then found the stamp box and let him do the stamp in our stamp booklet. Along the way we looked at flowers in a couple of spots. We headed to the subway station, then made our way home. We transferred to line 7 at the Bus Terminal stop, but couldn’t get a seat. So he played DragonBox Big Numbers while standing, with the iPad on the backpack. That went fine until around Sangbong when I looked down and saw liquid on the floor. I said “Did you pee?” He looked up, said “Yeah” and broke out crying. We jumped off the train at Junghwa, changed him on the empty platform, then jumped on the next train. He was pretty sad about it, and took a good amount of comforting.

He was fine by the time we left Hagye though. At Brownstone we stopped to get a box that had come. Carly had ordered something. I said maybe it was socks for her. He
said “maybe Zinnie socks.” Wee were home at 6:17. Carly was home just after 6:30. They were nursing and I was telling Carly about our day and he turned to me and said “Stop talking.” Carly asked him, and it seemed like he didn’t want me talking about him. But hard to tell. After that I was asking him questions about our day to get him to tell her.

Carly lured him to his bath with the idea of eating dinner while in the bath. But he didn’t eat much. He watched Beethoven’s Ninth, and was asleep about 7:30.

Lunch stop:

Playground: 

Last stop by exercise equipment: 

Near the end: 

Photos. Playing with the spaceship: 

First break: 

Off he goes: 

Needles: 

Snickers: 

Climbing the tire: 

Pointing at a helicopter: 

Smokey: 

Enjoying the ride: 

Flowers: 

Stamps: 

Balancing: 

Dragonbox Big Numbers on the way home: 

Today was our more relaxed day after a busy three days. He was up just before 6 again. Carly made him a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast and he was making yummy noises and big grins when I came out. He had been watching orchestra videos, and requested Beethoven’s Fourth so watched a little of that. He was starting to compose music in Notion when Carly left. He made a couple pieces, and was mixing up lengths of notes more and more. He wanted the snake game, but the mandolin was on the reading area so we played that. He started to do math based on the strings, and wanted to move to Duplos to do it. Did some math with them, then made a snake thing out of Duplos. He then wanted the Musical Instruments book and looked at it for awhile. We then used a new app about plant life called Namoo, then used the Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra app before switching to music apps of his own. We had Cheerios for breakfast, and he asked about temperatures, then he ran around the house saying “What happens if it’s 87? What happens if it’s 100? What happens if it’s 200? What happens if it’s infinity? What happens if it’s 1?”

I picked him up and spun him, with him looking up at the ceiling. He said “It looks like it’s still spinning, by it’s actually not.” Another optical illusion of sorts. We skyped with my parents, but he got upset a couple of times: first when he had the idea to go out and climb on the table for some reason and I told him not to. He got a little sad and I had to hold him. He then wanted to do something on my iPad and wanted to close Skype. When I told him he couldn’t yet he got upset, and eventually we said goodbye.

We did Dragonbox Numbers and he wanted to play mandolin. On mandolin he wanted me to do major and minor chords, but it turns out the book we have only touches on major chords. There’s an app for everything though, so soon we were playing with a chord dictionary app and he was finding interesting chords to try.

We then did a squishing him game, where he lay on the reading area and held me up with his feet as I ‘fell’ on him. I tried to set him up watching an orchestra video so I could take a shower, but he decided on the Cookie Monster app instead. I took a shower, then we got ready to go. We were getting hungry, so decided to head to Home Plus and get lunch before class.

We went to the pizza place and got one of the sub pizzas. We sat there and ate it. He counted the pieces, then kept counting how many were left as we ate them.

We finished, and went straight up to Teuni Teuni class. Class today was about boxing, and when he went in he saw a bouncy boxing rink set up. Usually he is good about taking off his shoes before going in, but today he sprinted right in, and I ran in and grabbed him. He then did a ton of forward rolls, helped carry, and then punched apples out of a tree thing. There was a walking path with spinning things on it, then they punched lions that popped back up. He then brought out boxing glove things and boxing hats. August liked hitting the lions, and when there were a free for all against the teacher in the ring August went in, but decided that wasn’t his thing at all, and went back to just the lion.

At the end of class we got a toilet plunger/poop game thing. Kind of lame as it didn’t do much. We then went downstairs and did our grocery shopping. Had a pretty good list, but August did a good job letting me look for stuff, while he just sat on the bike and waited.

We then headed home for awhile, and did some piano time. I was resting on the reading area, and August told me “Don’t fall asleep.” As I put on his coat, I bumped him in the head. I said “Bonk” and he said “I’m okay”.

We went to the English class and it went much better than last week. We took a notebook and markers, and that helped. We wrote English and Korean words and drew some pictures. He danced to the songs at the beginning, there was an exciting 7 song in the middle, and an ending song, so that all helped. Near the end, a mother and daughter came over to ask August his name. Her name was Hannah, and at the end August said bye to her.

We got home at 5, and Carly was home soon after. They nursed, then played Dragonbox Numbers. I made nachos for dinner. At some point he wanted to spell ‘please’, and spelled it ‘plsz’ (because it ends with a z sound). I said “You left out ‘ea’” He turned to me with a smirk and said “Who needs e a?” As we ate the nachos, he just started with chips and cheese and olives, but then I convinced him to try the beans and he liked those. He kept wanting more sour cream, and at one point managed to spoon a big spoon of sour cream on his own.

Carly gave him a bath and he watched orchestra videos. He was ready for bed, and asleep at 7:20. He’s on a good consistent schedule for the first time, getting up around 6 every day and going to sleep between 7 and 7:30.

English class: 

Photos. Lunch pizza: 

Teuni Teuni. Forward roll: 

Punching: 

Poli class. Notebook: 

Sour cream: 

With time running out on our time in Korea, last night I did some sketching out of our calendar and places to go. We’re to the point where we are now visiting places knowing it will likely be our last time there. It was also supposed to rain a lot today, so we headed down to Insadong and the Folk Museum and MMCA for some inside time and to scratch a couple of errands off our list (getting a couple more lanterns for my parents and picking up tea for Glecy).

He was up just before 6. We played Dragonbox Numbers in the morning. Been a few weeks or months since playing that last, and the change was noticeable, as he could reason his way through making the different number lengths a lot more easily. It was also cool how the app adds in challenges so you have to use different strategies for making the numbers.

From there we went to the reading to play the snake game. He then wanted to look at the Musical Instruments book and we watched videos of an ophicleide and violoncello on YouTube. We played mandolin and then typed in Pages, then he wanted me to choose an app for him before I took a shower. I chose Endless Reader, but he kept interrupting me before I got in the shower to come help him with it. After my shower we did a little more Endless Reader, then tuned the mandolin.

We left at 10:45. He was talking about crazy instruments with hundreds of strings and I had him ask me “How many strings on your acoustic guitar?” I replied “-3” He said “What? That doesn’t make sense.” As we walked and waited for the bus I introduced the Down by the bay song to him and he thought that was funny. We took the bus to Kwangwoon then boarded line 1. Lots of empty seats, and when a woman sat down he moved next to her. I realized we should move to the end of the row before it filled up but he said “No, I’m staying here.” So I had to move. That was fine, but later when people got up he tried to move and when I told him he couldn’t he got upset and I had to hold him. He was a little sniffly and a woman tried to shove a lollipop in his face. Wasn’t too happy about that one.

We got walking at 11:40. We went to Tappel Park. It was sprinkling a bit, but then stopped, so we stopped in the park to have lunch. He was then making up lines for the Down By the Bay song, although they didn’t rhyme:

“Have you ever seen a pine nut dancing in the street?”

Have you ever seen a pipa growing a tree?”

“Have you ever seen a tree growing a rock?”

“Have you ever seen a cat asking about?” (about was a word in Endless Reader)

He was then jumping from stone to stone (he said “I call these stones and I call those rocks, pointing to the big rough rocks) and running around, then jumping off one of the rocks. We got walking again and he wanted me to play trombone and he played clarinet. He said “My clarinets sounds similar to your brass instrument.”

We got to the Folk Museum and went to the downstairs exhibit first. No waiting or tickets today as we were literally the only people in there. He did the climbing wall area a bit, then wrote his name on paper and we sent it up the pneumatic tube a couple times. Went in the ball area for a few minutes, then looked at all the little post it note animal pictures. Threw balls at the rotating thing and it was exciting when he got one to stick (with me holding him up). He colored one of the dragon pictures and wanted to make it rainbow colored like some he saw up on the wall. In the reading area he had fun throwing pillows around. Finally, he put on a pink climbing wall helmet for a minute and hung on the spider web.

We then went up to the upstairs exhibit. He hammered nails, we tried the saw, did the wood puzzles, he danced to the video, and we made towers. Finally, he wrote ‘Mama I love you’ on a leaf and we sent a photo to Carly as he wanted to leave it there hanging with the others.

We went to the bathroom and he asked what the changing pad was – been awhile since he’s used one. Before we went in the bathroom I told him about how he stole a sandoo from me in the seating area next to the bathrooms. After we came out we went and sat there and had a snack. He broke a piece of crab in half and gave me half – then he stole it from me.

It was raining a bit as we walked to the MMCA. He let me put his hood up. He counted petals on the flowers and as we walked to the building he said “That’s a one monster and that’s a two monster.” He was looking at the shapes of the paving stones, and referring to the shapes in Dragonbox Numbers.

At the MMCA we first sat on a bench to put our coats away so I could check the backpack. He said “It looks like the lines are on the building but actually they are not.” He was talking about the little lines on the big glass windows and how they looked like they were on the building across the way. He was excited he had found another optical illusion.

He said “A jellyfish doesn’t get a present because it doesn’t exist?” This was somehow based on a conversation we once had, but I don’t remember the details. He also joked “Bob!” – referring to the name of the carrot he eats “Oh no! He ate Bob!” So inside jokes based on other inside jokes.

Finally, before we went in the exhibits, he sat at a grating on the floor and played it like an instrument for a long time. It had screws at the corners, which he said were nobs for volume and other things.

We had fun in the galleries. He liked one of people playing instruments, and of a really abstract one he said it was a “Bubble baby”. There was a wooden sculpture that he was wanting to touch and the attendant whispered to him, but with a scratchy voice. He told her “You sound like a monster.” and repeated it several times. There was one piece along a wall that he said looked like fire, and another one looked like a bench. When I wasn’t sure if we could sit on it another attendant came over and told us we could.

In the last big gallery we explored I was carrying August. Soon after we entered, August was talking to me pretty quietly, not whispering, but quietly, about the art, and another attendant came over and kept saying he needed to be quiet. It wouldn’t be a trip to the MMCA without being shushed once. The other attendants were all nice, but he followed us around. Anyway, we then found August’s favorite piece, which was a two screen video of bottles in a bottling plant. He watched it through a few cycles, probably close to ten minutes.

We went in one smaller gallery before we left, but August was ready to go, and not too fond of the dark video rooms, although he did like some music notes on a wall.

We looked around the other end of the museum to make sure there wasn’t more art, then August played in the big lobby. He was looking up at the colors on the ceiling, then running and spinning in circles and getting dizzy. Finally, there was a video of artists projected on the floor. August ran around on that and jumped on the people and pretended to eat their food.

We took one more look at the ‘breathing’ paper at the art box area, then went to the bathroom. He sat on the toddler seat for fun. We got ready to go, and it was really raining, but he got really upset when I suggested the cover. I let him go with just the sun cover, but by the time we got to the tea store he started whining when we walked in. I found the tea, but then had to set him down and take off his coat and sweatshirt. Then, he got really upset again when I put the yellow cover on before we left. But we compromised, and I just didn’t do the hooks by his feet. It leaves his legs more exposed and flaps around, but at least the rest of him is covered.

We then quickly walked over to the little shop by the temple where I bought lanterns before to get two more for my parents. But I couldn’t remember what design they had, so I got them in two designs. But then found out they only took cash. Luckily, there was a bank across the street. We hurried over there, got some cash, and headed back
and got the lanterns.

We then headed down to the subway station, and stopped to grab a cinnamon and sugar bread thing on the way. We ate it down in the station while we waited for the train. At some point, we were singing a song and he said “Sounds dramatic”. I later learned that this had come from a conversation he’d had with Carly yesterday.

On the train home he had a seat, but when a woman with a baby in a carrier got on he gave up his seat and stood when I suggested it. A couple stops later he was able to sit back down next to the baby. The baby kept touching his hair. The guy on the other side of August reached over and had August touch the baby’s hand a couple times. Also, I noticed the baby was crossing his fingers like August used to do.

We got home at 5:30. They nursed and read Little House on the Prairie. We then played another new music app called The Tune Zoo. Had fun with that, then watched part of Beethoven’s Ninth in that app, then he loved Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra.

For his bath he requested Beethoven’s Ninth and watched that. After his bath he had fun waiting for the ‘dramatic’ part of the symphony when the singers get loud. Think this was the origin of ‘dramatic’. He was asleep at 7:30.

 

Photos: 

Tapgol Park: 

Folk Museum: 

To the art museum: 

Lines that look like they’re on the other building: 

The ceiling: 

Toddler seat in the bathroom: 

Yawning in the rain: 

Wet boy: 

New music app: