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Last night around 11 he sat up for a few minutes. I tried to get him to lie back down but he landed on Puff, who played some music. Nursed. But sometime later he sat up again. He crawled over to Carly and lay his head on her a bit, but eventually just lay down next to her and fell back to sleep.

He was up right after 6. When I got up a little alter we did math with the blueberries, then played with the Poli flashlight in the dark. He figured out how to change the pictures. He wanted to write the names of the characters in Korean, then ended up writing Carly and dada in Korean a few times. He then wanted Peter Rabbit with him while he played the instruments from Welcome to the Symphony. He was then playing french horn and talking about playing “very loud” and kept walking around humming the Puffin Rock theme song. Very loudly.

We ate cereal and bananas for breakfast. We did lots of cuddling in the reading area and at one point we had to go get Carly’s blanket. He got some of the little puzzles out and we did those, and he did more writing on paper – and put the kids back on on his own without me reminding him.

He played some GarageBand on his keyboard in th reading area, then followed me around as I hung up laundry. He looked at the lid to the toy box, the one with letters on t, and said “Tou really liked this when you were a little baby? But I still like it.” He then wanted a sticker that he had once put on it taken off so he could see it all. A bit later he ran out of the room saying: “I’m going to draw Hs on paper! H H H H! H is for hug and hut!” He drew letters on paper, but invented “dot letters”. Didn’t know the inspiration for this, as I’ve never done it, until we went back into the laundry room and he pointed to one of the Hs on the lid and said “I did that.”

There was some Sesame Disco on and I was holding him and we were sort of dancing to it. He was acting sleepy for the first time and putting his head on my shoulder. Started to do some exercise but he was acting tired again and sort of curled up in the rocking chair for awhile and I cuddled with him a bit. When he got up he went to the paper and was asking how to spell numbers and was copying numbers like ‘seventy’ ‘two’ ‘sixteen’. We sang a lot of “London Bridge Is Falling Down”. I took a shower, and when I came out he was watching a color wheel video. He then said “I love green, yellow, blue, black, white…” On YouTube he saw a listing for a Dr. Seuss video and recognized it and said he wanted to read Dr. Seuss books. We read On Beyond Zebra and Marvin K Mooney. He loved On Beyond Zebra, and started copying all of the made up letters onto paper, then was making his own. When he went to the bathroom we worked on pulling up his pants.

We headed out around noon and walked down to catch a bus. Caught the 172 as the 100 and 111 weren’t coming for awhile. August was playing french horn on the bus, then surprised me by falling asleep. I got off and went to Cafe Another, which is where Carly and I went the first time we had a babysitter for August (when the three girls watched him). He slept from 12:25 to 1:45. When he woke up the first thing he said was he wanted to play the big piano.

That was why we had headed to Dream Forest today. In the morning he said he wanted to play the big piano again. Besides the one at Children’s Grand Park, I could remember ones at Seoul Forest and Dream Forest. So we walked up to Dream Forest, finding a green car (a Fiat) along the way that August really liked. We walked up into the park and to where the piano used to be. Alas, it wasn’t there. We looked around at a couple other places, in case it had been moved, but no luck.

Got him out of the backpack in front of the arts center and he played around for awhile, one sleeve down over his hand and his shoulder showing. We went into GS25 and got a croissant sandwich thing, a set of fried sushi, and a thing of peaches. We sat outside and ate. He liked the fried sushi, but couldn’t eat the interesting ones as they surprisingly turned out to be spicy.

We went over to the playground and to the play structure. We started by drumming around on it, then climbing inside it. He was counting the steps, or something, and I remarked I didn’t know how his counting game worked. So as he went through he said things like “I’m gonna count Dada but I’m not going to count that bus.” “I’m not going to count that bike, but I’ll count that woman.”

After that he walked over and helped push the round thing a bit but didn’t want to get on. He then climbed up the stairs and across the rope bridge on his own, and went down one of the short slides. He then saw a little boy playing in the sand area. He got the stick and started writing in there. But then he started kicking sand. I took him out, then he started kicking again. Upset once more, but then was fine after that, and he spelled the start of his Mani song. He says it starts ‘Manitsnonq’. He then wanted to spell all of Yankee Doodle. So we worked through a lot of it, and he surprised me by being able to spell a lot of the words.  It was about time to head out, and it was time to go when he started to put sand in his coat. His hands were really dirty and he kept wiping his face, acting sleepy.

We headed out at 3:35, and stopped at the bathrooms near where the piano was supposed to be. He got to choose which toilet to use: dragonfly, snail, or turtle, and he chose turtle. We then washed his very dirty hands and face. As we walked out he saw the new flowers (they put in the spring flowers) by the visitor center and said “Nice flowers. Ooh. I like them…I want to take a picture.” We caught the first bus then transferred to the Nowon 9. He played french horn on way home, then was quiet and put his head down a bit.

At home the plan was to switch to the bike and head to the grocery store. But when we got there he said “I want to rest in a nest in the parlor.” So we rested for awhile, then he was having fun having Marshy and GM poop and use the bathroom. Back on the reading area, he said “Let’s go.”

We went over to Lucky Mart and shopping went smoothly. He started drumming on everything, starting with big cans in the back. We headed home at 5:20. They nursed, then while he was on the toilet he counted all the way to 100 for Carly. He had done that once earlier today, and sometime yesterday.

We played London Bridge on the piano then on my iPad he got into the My First Orchestra app and played with that. He ate some olives and then the last piece of sushi from lunch. He stuffed much of it in his mouth and dropped a bunch of rice on the ground. A minute later he said “I’m still hungry” and walked over and picked up some rice from the ground. I gave him an new commandment: “Though shalt not eat floor rice.” Carly and I had made stuff for burritos. He’s never liked burritos, so I had just given him a bowl with olives, tofu, and bell peppers in it. He ate everything else, but left the pepper. But I told him he should try it and I thought he’d like it. He tried it, and liked it and was excited: “I like pepper!” But to be clear he then said “I don’t like tomato.”

Carly gave him a bath and washed his hair while I did dishes. We tried for sleep after that, but they came out after awhile. Carly went to take a shower and he and I looked at the MFA Musical Instruments book. He spent over a half hour going through it and listening to/watching it and pretending to play all the instruments. He was so hyped up by it; I wonder if any other three-year old has been made hyper by a book of antique musical instruments.

They went back in sometime after 9. Thought he went to sleep, but I heard him fussing at 9:45 or so, then got quiet after that.

Photos:

On Beyond Zebra: 

Dream Forest: 

He was up at 6. Carly skyped with Cassie and family. Vivian was playing a song on something, and Carly taught them the “I like to make mistakes”. I told Carly how I intentionally make mistakes with that song so that August can correct my mistakes. Vivian was really into talking to August, but he found the Dr. Seuss music app I had installed on his iPad and he was hooked. He was playing that, and started to sing “If I Go” to it. Carly left for work and had to hang up the Skype call.

I made scrambled eggs and veggies for breakfast. He continued to play with his music apps. He drank some water and said “I’m using my water bottle to make music with my hard rock guitar” as he sucked on it and it made noise. He wanted to play mandolin and I went to take it out. Then, tragedy. I went to pick it out of the case as he bent over to look at it. I hit him with the headstock in the left cheek, and one of the wire ends poked him below the eye. So kind of lucky, as it could have been worse. He didn’t exactly see it that way. When he calmed down, I played mandolin and he played piano and we played a couple songs together for the first time.

On his iPad he chose Magic Piano and we figured that out a bit before he moved to a different music app. Exercised, then we read Welcome to the Symphony. He memorized the sentence “The brass section…” after he had me read the paragraph several times. We watched a piccolo flute video, then he watched Pirates of the Caribbean (symphony, that is – he hasn’t seen the movie yet). He was still hungry so had some crab. We then had some word silliness: “I like to make mistakes…” “That’s a funny thing to moon…” “The trombone is wearing my sock in the orchestra.” Him: “I started to say my ribs didn’t work but…they are bone…I said they were broken.” And he quoted the Peek-a-Zoo app: “Can you dance th macaroni?”

We watched brass instrument videos and found a guy who shows off and plays all sorts of random bass trumpets and alto horns, etc. August was then playing music but being silly about it: “I’m playing the trombone silly.”

I went to take a shower, and I heard him call out, still processing the videos we had seen several minutes earlier: “There’s a bass trumpet the guy knows? There’s a BASS TRUMPET?” Before I could get in the shower he then said through the door: “I’m 77 hungry. I’m still hungry.”

So I got him something else. He then invented another silly game: “Oh yeah? Well I’m a…” We would take turns finishing the sentences with a random instruments, animal, or other random thing: play structure, joint. He was then copying my answers. We also ate the last piece of pizza.

He said “Sing the song I don’t know…falling.” I didn’t know what he was talking about so I made up song about me falling and breaking my arm. Finally realized he meant London Bridge and he was really excited (although he said he also liked my song). I tried to go take a shower again, but just as I was about to step in I heard “Turn off the water. I want to make a nest.” I tried to ask him to go watch something or play piano but he got a sad look on his face and went and lay down on the reading area. So I made a nest with him. Some good cuddling, then he started talking about neighbors and was pointing in every directions, asking “neighbors that way?” I said we might have less neighbors in Israel, and that was hard for him to believe. He then got the little puzzles and we did some of those.

Finally, a shower. At the end he said he had to go to the bathroom. I was drying off and said he could go and I’d be there to help him wash his hands. When I came out I found the door closed. He had turned on the light, closed the door, and was on the toilet. When I opened the door he said “You surprised me”.

We ate a small piece of cake, then did the big Itsy Bitsy puzzle and sang London Bridge. We left at 12:30.

He sang the Mani song until a few stops from Children’s Grand Park. He was then singing his new song, “Anikalooah”. Those two, plus his “The shovel caved it out” are his first three very clear and repeated melodies/songs.

We went and did some sidewalk chalk (he was asking how to spell words in Korean, like playground, mama, dada, and writing them), then had some food. He saw the tennis ball in the backpack and asked why we had it, then wanted to play with it. He immediately started throwing it to me and was super excited when he got it to me. Started a couple feet away then got him to back up a bit. Every time I caught the ball he would jump up and down and be excited.

He was acting tired several times, and so I figured we’d try a walk. He did some hopscotch, then we went to the bathroom, then for a walk. He was singing and singing. We paused to eat some crackers and he said he was done singing, but it soon started again. So we went to the lower coffee shop. As we walked in he said “I turns to upside down V turns to N turn to M”. He did another one as well. We did multiple of these when he was learning to draw letters (C to O to Q being the most common), but these were ones he had just imagined in his head while walking.

We went to the counter and he was looking in the display case. He saw muffins and said “Looks like muf-cakes”. Wasn’t clear if that was intentional or a slip. Very nice either way. We got a strawberry smoothie, then went and he did art on his iPad. After awhile he started asking me for help in spelling his made up words from his two songs and was writing them down.

He said he wanted to play a big piano. Not sure if he remembered there was a piano upstairs or if it was a coincidence, because then he seemed surprised when I said there was one upstairs. He kept saying “You mean up there!?” and pointing to the ceiling. We were joking about me hiding something, and he made up “I hid Zinnie’s iPad because he didn’t follow the rules.” Then, as we walked up to the roof he said “I was dreaming about having a long piano.” I later asked if he remembered any other dreams he’s had, and he said no, but he reiterated that he remembered dreaming about a big piano.

We played the piano for quite awhile. I hadn’t worn my heavy coat today, but in the shade on the roof with some wind was a bit chilly. Couldn’t elevate though, as he was so excited. Let him get up and see inside, and he really liked that. We played songs together, and he made things up. He also surprised me by transposing the songs he knows to different keys: He figured out Are You Sleeping on the black keys, Itsy Bitsy Spider starting on G, and was working on it on the black keys as well.

It was time to get going. We went to the bathroom up there, and he asked “What’s a woozle?” Remembering that Pooh story that he was a bit frustrated about because he didn’t learn what woozles are. We talked about reading more Pooh, but then forgot later.

At the station he was walking around and playing an instrument while I stood in line. I asked what he was playing and he replied “French horn. You know. French Horn’s the best.” On the train he stood most of the way. He was looking out the door and saw the train going the other way. I said it was the train going south like we had earlier. He then pointed the way were were going and said “That’s north?” Then left down the tracks: “That’s south?” He ate some crackers, then asked me about the months and we worked on the ones he doesn’t know. He did fine standing up, but the last few stops started lying down and I corralled him in the corner by the door so he couldn’t lay down in the middle.

We were home at  5:40. They nursed and I trimmed and cleaned his nails. We read Welcome to the Symphony, and then they nursed again and read one of the new books Carly brought home from the library. She gave him a bath and I did dishes. He was still hungry, and she fed him some of the quinoa. It looked like eyes: “Why does the mushroom have eyes?…I want another one with eyes
.” “Mama let me eat quinoa in the bathroom!” “Say that’s thousands of eyeballs.” Joked about eating Bob.

Lots and lots of french horn and trumpet playing at home today. Finally, I introduced him to a book I had just purchased: Boston’s Museum of Fine Art’s Musical Instruments. It is instruments from their collection, many with audio or videos. He watched a few of those and loved it, but was rubbing his eyes. I left, and he fell asleep about two minutes later at 7:35.

 

Photos. Puzzles: 

Throwing: 

Trying to close his eyes without squinting: 

Spelling his words: 

He ran out at 7:13 and quietly jumped up on the couch. He then looked at the Mike the Knight book and I asked if he wanted to read it, but he said “I want to do math on my iPad.”  But then he went and played on the toy piano. After ten minutes or so he wanted to play Park Math on my iPad. He did that for awhile and he really likes the music in it, then switched to another one of the Duck Duck Moose apps and just listened to the background musi: Take Me Out to the Ball Game, Itsy Bitsy Spider, Yankee Doodle, Shoo Fly, London Bridge, Baa Baa, This Old Man. We then had cereal and fruit for breakfast and read all of Welcome to the Orchestra.

He played piano, then wanted videos of brass instruments he doesn’t know. We had just watched a videos of an alto horn and Vivian and Colin called. August wasn’t happy that his brass instrument time was interrupted until Vivian went and got Cassie’s clarinet and was playing that. August was then pretending to play oboe and making a lot of music. Colin seemed to be sucking on random things and dancing. After 11 minutes they disappeared and August wanted to go back to brass instrument videos.

But instead he sent some videos on Skype. He spent a lot of time on his piano and GarageBand. We did exercise together. And we looked at Welcome to the Symphony again. I took a shower. Afterwards he was playing with his comb/brush and used it as a musical instrument, or several actually, pretending to play it by pushing down on the bristles. We played mandolin, then looked at a few of books about musical instruments in iBooks that I had downloaded previews of.

I let him eat two letter cookies, then we read the Frog and Toad story “A Swim” three times in a row before he let me go and finish making our lunch. He wanted to look at the dinosaur book but couldn’t find it, so got the Junior Picture Dictionary instead and was pretending to be animals out of there and chomping/stinging/hugging me.

We ate a salmon sandwich and half an orange for lunch. We were listening to music, and the Sesame Disco album. He really liked that and pretended to play trumpet to “Disco Frog”. We played piano together and were figuring out how to play “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”. And we taught each other how to play “Itsy Bitsy Spider”. I misheard him saying something, and that turned into a nonsense “I thought you said…” game, with us each saying things like “I thought you said snare drum.”

He was then pretending to be a pipe organ playing frog with four legs and three feet. I could not make that up. He continued to be a frog as he did man with the blueberries, counting by tens and adding more to make more tens.

I packed up some snacks, and let him have one more letter cookie. He chose ‘m’ and said “I have M for milk, muffin, much, and mud.” We left at 1:30. We walked through Madeul and he spotted the ‘A’ and ‘Q’ signs (for answer and question). He said “’A’ ‘Q’ You liked that when you were a little baby?” He was asking how to spell a couple words, like ‘sun’ and he mentioned ‘sky’. I told him how to spell it, and he gave me a dismissive “I can spell that.”

We crossed the river and walked up to 모랫어린이공원. These were two parks we went to awhile back where we found a jumprope stuck in the ground. We found this one as we left and didn’t play there. This time, we went on the swings for quite awhile. There was an older boy there who kept trying to throw sand on August. I had to tell him no and be more forceful with him than any kid before. August wasn’t too phased by it though. At one point August was asking about how many trees there were in the world, and said there were infinity trees.

Eventually he got off and played around the playground. He worked on climbing up and sliding down a climbing wall with a rope. As we roamed around I said “That’s a funny thing to do, that’s a funny thing to say” and August kind of asked what that was about, but we can’t remember when/why that was from. I tried to search the journal/blog, but no luck. I know we used to say it a lot though, and also turned it into a nonsense thing, with things like “That’s a funny thing to floozle…” There were these small hills and August ran up and down them. He got on a teeter totter facing the wrong way and the third boy at the playground got on the other ended and I pushed the end August was on. After they left, August ran up and down the hills a bit more, then sat next to me on one for a minute before he said he needed to go to the bathroom. So we went to the bike and walked one building over to 월천근린공원.

We went to the bathroom and tried to go to the big bathroom, which he had used before. But it had a sensor and he refused, backing out. I checked the regular stall and it didn’t have a sensor. But the urinals between where it and where August was did, so August sprinted past them to get to the toilet.

That taken care of, we sat on a picnic platform and had a snack. He started with the letter cookies. Two girls came by. I suggested he share a cookie with them. He was holding a cookie, looking at it and thinking, when they left before he could decide. He said “I thinked”. “You can have I for ice and igloo.” “Q is my best letter. Q is for queen becuase I love queens.” The girls came back with a dog a few minutes later. August seemed surprised that it wasn’t barking, and then got to pet it. They left, and a few minutes later the workers, who had been sawing off fence posts at a distance, came close to us. August had been interested in what they were doing when they were across the park. But the second they turned on the chainsaw this time he started screaming and hid behind me. I happened to start recording video just as it happened. I picked him up and we walked a ways away and watched from the distance. He calmed down, and seemed fine when I walked a bit closer, but when I sat back down on the platform he got upset again. I took him away again, and by the bathrooms I asked if I could set him down and go get our stuff and return. He said yes, then ran to the back corner of the bathrooms and waited there until I went and got our stuff and the bike.

We went over to the playground, hoping to find the jumprope buried in the sand. Instead, we found a crime scene. The jumprope had been broken, with the rope piece by the bushes and the plastic pieces spread about. It looked recent, as the hole was still there. We used the shovel to dig down, but found no additional rope. An unsolved mystery through and through. Anyway, we spent the rest of our time writing things in the sand. He wanted me to write sentences, then asked “What’s the word for twelve? Thirteen?” He’s liked ‘dozen’ and ‘baker’s dozen’ the last few days. I also invented a ‘ Zinnie dozen’, which is 14. He also confused me by saying “I said ‘I don’t remember’ in the hospital.” No idea where that came from.

We left after 3:30. We walked to Cafe Tolerance where he got an orange juice and a pineapple juice, of which he only drank the orange. We sat in our usual chairs looking out at the stream. He went to the bathroom at the beginning, played music apps, then near the end ran off. He went and put on the slippers and headed into the bathroom on his own.

We were home just before 5:30. Carly was home. They nursed and read Welcome to the Symphony. He played more of the Park Music and ate dinner. I got two new iPad apps: My First Orchestra App and Beanie’s Instruments. He particularly liked the second one.

He went in with Carly to take a bath. He was sitting on the toilet, talking about his fingers bending and others not bending. I asked why, and he answered “Those ones don’t bend because these ones do.”

After his bath he went right to bed at 7.

Playground: 

Q: 

Hiding from the chainsaw: 

Scene of the crime: 

Cafe Tolerance:

MUp just before 7. When I came out later they were skyping with Cherie. August was singing songs, and she sang Frere Jacques in French with him. He then wanted her to “Make Yankee Doodle up in French” When she didn’t, he said “No, it’s like this” and sang Yankee Doodle in made up French: “That’s how it goes in French.” At the end, she pretended to give him a noisy kiss. August asked “Oma was practicing playing the trumpet?”, remembering his trumpet lesson yesterday.

A bit later he said “I get my hopes up…about ice cream…or candy…or cookies.” I was making jokes, and he copied Carly in saying “Dada thinks he’s funny.” I am. We skyped briefly with Glecy, and at first video wasn’t working. August said “I don’t see anything EITHER.” I had warmed up a piece of pizza, and after about one bite I found I had lost it to August. He kept talking throughout the day about watching an axe video again. Not sure if he and Carly ever actually did watch one.

I got the stuff out from our Poli class and we played with the Poli flashlight. He then wanted to take care of my heart, so he used the new medical equipment and the flashlight to perform surgery on me.

He was saying lots of random things, like  “My kidney’s in Costa Rica”. He started drawing letters on paper and said “The G is crying.” He then wrote the alphabet, but said it was mixed up. It was sort of a puzzle for me to find all the letters. I got his little notebooks from the other day. In the lines one he started to write small, and wrote “Hi mama and dada. How are you?” He then wanted the Funny Mathematics notebook. He made up and solved 8 math problems in there with some help from me. He has been changing how he writes some of the numbers. Like using a closed 4, putting the little line at the top of 1, and making the bottom of his 9 curvy. And I love that he had ‘7+7=14’ memorized.

He did a total of 24 math problems, then wanted a video of an axe again. Again, not sure he every watched any of it. We Skyped, for real, with Glecy this time. We gave him his present from Glecy: a big container of alphabet and number cookies. He looked through them and chose a 6 and said “6 reminds me of 16. That reminds me of Alexander and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.” Because Alexander says “Who needs 16?” As he ate the letter ones we (but mainly he) were coming up with words for them: “Z for for zebra…and zigzag…I have J for juggle and jellyfish…and joke…H for hug…P for pet and paint and picture…A is for August…and astronaut…astronauts go to space.” At some point he said “I want another present from Aunty Glecy.” We cut off the cookies, then he nursed. He then said “I nursed a lot…I did too much sugar…sugar high.”

After we hung up on Skype he and Carly played with playdough. Carly made a little sucking fish and he was afraid of that. They then looked at the dinosaur book and he was pretending to be all of them.

He and I read Welcome to the Symphony. We read every word, and started it a second time but then he started doing math. Back to writing math problems in the notebook. He then used a calculator as well. Carly came and did Kathe ith him while I took a shower. Afterward, I heard them working on commas. I came out and made us a sandwich. We were asking him problems, like 6+6, and he was writing them out and solving them. He had to go to the toilet, and as they went Carly would ask him one and he’d say “You know. 2 plus 2 is 4.”

We had a teriyaki tofu sandwich. He doesn’t really eat the lettuce in sandwiches, but insists on me putting it in. At least he likes it in theory. He spit out one big bite today because he sensed some lettuce.

Then, to mess with mama he pretended to be a dung beetle: “I’m a beetle rolling poop.” We went to the store in the pink building together. We talked about the rules of the store in advance, but he ended up running away from me again and thinking it was a game. Not sure why the Lucky Mart has turned in to that, as he is always fine over at Home Plus. I picked him up, and he was fine for a bit, but then asked “Why did you pick me up? Because I was running off?” When I said yes he started crying. Carly heard him and took him and I switched and paid for the groceries.

On the way out he headed towards the movie theater, missing the stairs. I had the idea to go read books in the movie theater area and he liked that idea. Carly took the groceries and headed home. We read a total of 11 books, some more than once, and he snacked on banana chips. One was called something like Happy Day, and part of it was about what dreams are happy dreams. I asked him:

“Do you ever dream you are playing music?”

“Yeah”

“What instrument?”

“Hard rock guitar.”

Before we left he slipped off a stool. Didn’t seem to be too hard, but it upset him. Think he was a bit tired. He calmed down and we rode his bike around the park for awhile.

We headed home. On paper he wrote “Hi mama dada” on his own. Then they looked at the dinosaur book and he was pretending to be all the dinosaurs and chomping mama. In the reading area I read one Biscuit book to him. He went to the bathroom, and was pretending to force feed me cake. He wrote a bunch of Gs on paper, then ‘good day’ Carly had made a quinoa dish, and August ate some of that.

We all headed out for a walk at 4:10. “I want to ride my bike please …” At the ‘bye fuzzy’ playground he got off and declared he wanted a snack. I realized it was because we’ve often stopped for a snack there. We walked up the stream and across the bridge and back to Chrysanthemum Park. We went on the swings, then he climbed up the ladder part to the top of the play structure. He needed my help to get over the top, but when I went up to help he simply stood up and wasn’t using his hands to climb over the top ledge. That wouldn’t work, so I handed him down to Carly, which he didn’t like. Went back and did a little more swing, then we headed home at 5.

As we got home he said “Hi mama and dada. I love you question mark  exclamation point.” We were playing on the piano and he took exception to how I played something in When Johnny Comes Marching Home. He said “Let me teach you. See? Like this. Yeah.”

He did some math on his iPad, then ate more quinoa for dinner, then played with the monster music app. With that going as a background he told me “You play the drum and I’ll play the tambourine drum…it will be like an orchestra.” We also read the Welcome to the Symphony book at some point and had read it earlier. We’ve read it a few times over the last couple days.

Carly gave him a bath, which went smoothly for a hair washing day (it didn’t get washed yesterday). He came in to the parlor to find me and say good night. But we started talking about days of the week and months, and he surprised me by knowing “March, April, May, June, July”. He needed some help with August and the rest of them. He then went to bed and was asleep just after 7.

Photos. Math: 

Kids on the roof: 

Interesting mushrooms: 

Books. Covering his ears like in one of the books: 

Snack: 

Chasing: 

Swings: 

Wheelie: 

Drums: 

Sleeping boy: 

He was awake at 7:40. Sometime before my meeting started he was singing a “I want to make a K out of Duplos” song. I had a book group meeting from just past 8:30 to just past 10. August spent a lot of time coming in and wanting me to make letters out of Duplos. Carly made him french toast for breakfast.

My meeting was over a little after 10, and they showed up at 10:40. Right before they got here August was practicing drawing crescents and hearts. Sophie and Jeff and the two kids, Cora and Maggie came in and handed August his present. We opened it and it was a set of foam things you can use to make art in the bathtub.

They played in the living room for a bit, trying out the piano and xylophone (August was really amused by how Cora was playing them), then we all ended up in the parlor. August kept counting everyone, although since he kept turning in circles to do it he often went past 7, We started to ask him questions like how many people with brown hair, how many kids, how many blue eyes. For the hair or eyes he ran off to go check himself in the mirror.

A bit more playing in the parlor with the tool kit, Duplos, etc. then Jeff went back down to the car for the trumpet. He came back and gave August a little trumpet lesson. August tried a little but couldn’t make a sound. Carly tried and blew a couple notes. August started crying, and Carly took him to the bedroom for a bit.

They came back out and ordered pizza. We played and had lunch, then August disappeared. He had gone to the changing room and was just playing by himself. He wanted some alone time, and told both Carly and me to leave. I went back down after 10 minutes or so and convinced him to come out as we were having cake. He came out and ate cake. They left just before 1.

A little straightening up then we opened the card from Glecy and then Skyped with my parents to open presents. He liked the letter wrapping paper and when he found the Q said “That’s my best, best letter.” He wanted the big present first, and that was the medical stuff. He liked the medical stuff, and listened to his own heart with the stethoscope. He said “It’s making music in my body.” He also listened to me and Carly.

Next was the set of letter rubber stamps, then the two books. August played the new piano and was then talking about instruments. He said “I have an instrument with zero strings and infinity frets.” We finished skyping at 2:10, then August and I read the Mike the Knight: The Tricky Trail book.

I talked to him about why he was sad earlier and he said “loud”, which I took to mean that he didn’t like it when Carly blew the trumpet. But a bit later I asked him in front of Carly and he said “blowing”, and seemed to confirm that it was because it was hard to play.

They nursed, then on the toilet he said “I’m a rattlesnake.” They did math together, then played a little Venus fly trap game. They ended up watching a series of odd videos: some using an axe to cut a tree, kidney and lung surgery, and something else random.

I took him for a bike ride and we went up to Sarang Children’s Park a little before 4. He saw it was busy and said “I don’t like the kids.” because the swings were busy. I asked him if he wanted to go to Madeul, which is never busy. He thought about it and said “Sand” and decided we’d play in the sand instead.

We made a sand mountain and he crushed it. While writing things in the sand with our stick he asked “How do you spell Maggie?…Cora?” Then he wanted to spell “Daisy…Biscuit” He ate a Larabar for a snack, and we played the Larabar game, which we haven’t done much recently, not eating Larabars, making up ‘oops’ ingredients.

He wanted to go on the swings but sent me as a scout: “I want dada to go on the swings.” While we waited I pointed out the map we had looked at before. He asked “You looked at it when you were a little baby?” He also pretended to play the piano on the side of the play structure and I made up a nonsense song.

We got a swing and he was on that for quite awhile. He joked “What do yellow and red make? Do it with your paint fingers.” That is, like we use our fingers to make numbers and letters, he wanted me to make colors out of them. We played tag on the swing and I was telling him to stop moving.

He started talking about someone named Mani (like his song – and I can’t remember if it was a similar name when he last seemed to be talking about a pretend person): “Mani should go over there…to those teeter totter things…mani doesn’t like tomatoes.” Mani was from some place, then from ‘March’. He declared “March is a place.”

He said something about “you can’t tag along”, which seemed to be from Berenstain Bears No Girls Allowed. He then got on his stomach on the swing and recited a couple of verses from Yankee Doodle as a poem.

Off the swing, we went up on the play structure to check out the pipes on what appeared to be a musical instrument. Perhaps it was at some point, but now the ends were covered up. We went down the little slide and played there, with him sliding into my head while I pretended to try to rest o the slide. He also climbed up the slide several times. He picked up something off the ground and, against my wishes, licked it and declared “I did it.” He did more sliding into me and declared “I’m a bully…What’s a bully?…Suddenly.” He was thinking of the bully in the book Suddenly that pushes past the main character on the slide.

I said ‘Boo’ at one point and he said “That tickles!…It tickles my eardrums.” We went on the teeter totter things, first sitting in the middle, then getting on the ends. He was watching the girl and mom on the other one, and when they switched ends August wanted to switch ends too. Out of nowhere he said “I want a picture where Oma broke…broke the arm…and the X-ray.” He wanted to see my x-ray and I told him we could when we got home, but we forgot.

We left at 5:35 and went across the street to a public restroom but it was very dirty and only had squat toilets. August didn’t want to go there and I didn’t blame him. We walked over to Chrysanthemum park to use the bathroom there. As we passed the two wooden worms he observed “The head is missing” on one of them. We then headed home. At one point he said “Squash. There’s a dog.” That was a reference to the driving simulator at the science center that tests your reaction speeds when a dog runs into the road.

We were home a little after 6. Nursed, then we used the letter stamps a bit, using q and m. We had a piece of pizza, then watched videos of a harmonium, pipe organ, and a harp, the last two playing Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Jeff had earlier mentioned a Sesame Street album he had on vinyl as a kid (about the symphony), which reminded me that we had Sesame Street Disco, with the song , sung by Cookie Monster, “Lost My Cookie at the Disco”. I found it on YouTube and we watched it as we went in for his bath.

Carly took over to do the bath foam stuff with him and they had fun with that. He was singing the ABC song, and sang “Next time won’t you sing with Cora.” After a long day, he was asleep at 8.

Photos: 

Sarang Children’s Park. Godzilla:

Superman: 

Letter stamps: 

He was awake at 6:52 and came out upset. I picked him up and held him in the parlor until 7 when he wanted down. Set him on the reading area and he lay there quietly for a bit, then said “I want to watch a video of a kid learning to count by…twenty-twos.”

But he played some piano instead, playing a Itsy Bitsy Spider and singing it. He wanted to play GarageBand, so I decided to give him the keyboard from Cherie and Chuck. First we read the birthday greeting from my parents on Skype.

We opened the keyboard and hooked it up to his iPad. He started playing and had to count all the keys. Cassie and Vivian and Colin called and said Happy Birthday. This interrupted August’s playing in GarageBand, so I called them back on my iPad so August could play for them. He was playing Ants Go Marching. I didn’t realize he had figured out the end of it (since it is different from Johnny Comes Marching).

After talking to them Carly called us and got to see him playing it. A couple students came in and wished him happy birthday.

At the end of that he said he was making up a song: I’m going to play my Vee-urr-naise song. He kept playing for awhile and was playing Yankee Doodle “I played Yankee Doodle on the bass guitar!” He was also being silly: “There’s an octopus playing the keyboard…Squirt!”

Had him go to the toilet, finally. He asked “What does a paramore sound like?” It was a new made up instument. We talked about going to the science center and he joked about eating super worms and grubs. And said “No onions!” – a line from the Starts with Octopus book.

We had cereal for breakfast, and I was trying to get in the shower. But he wanted math and said “I want to do that for a couple minutes.” So we did some math and then played on the keyboard. I took a shower and he kept playing keyboard. I got out of the shower, and he came and asked me through the door “Is this how you draw a crescent, Dada?” I said “Go give it a try.” He went back and a few seconds later I heard him exclaim “I drew a crescent!”

Back out, he wanted me to play a sad song on the electric keyboard. I played some chords and made up a little song that went something like

“The baby’s crying

I don’t know why

I gave him a bottle

But he continued to cry

I think he’s tired

But won’t go to sleep…”

I didn’t get any further because I looked over to see him starting to rub his eyes. I asked if it was making him sad and he burst out crying. I grabbed him and held him on my lap for a few minutes while he cried. I then lay back with him on my chest. I told him this was how I first held him when he was born. He liked that, and held my finger like I told him he had when he was born. He slid off of me, but then lay back down down with his head on my chest for a minute.

We got ready to go. I got some of the Cookie Monster letter cookies out and he insisted they were “Big bird cookies”. He asked me “What shape you are?” I said I was an octagon. He thought about it and said “I’m a…oval.” I then surprised him by having Green Monster, Bluie, Marshy, and Peter Rabbit hug him and say Happy Birthday. He thought that was funny.

Finally, as I was getting him in the backpack, Cherie and Chuck skyped. After opening the keyboard we had recorded a little video saying thank you and sent it to them. Cherie sang him happy birthday in Spanish, then we headed out at 9:50.

He was singing his Mani song as we walked to the train. I asked him what the song was called and that is what he called it: “Mani”

It has gotten easier and easier to travel long distances on the train with August. Just sat for awhile, had some snack, looked at the river as we crossed, and played some iPad. We got out the station and headed out. Bought a couple of drinks and two triangle kimbaps and a strawberry cookie. As we exited, I pointed to the spot where I tripped with him in the backpack and asked if he remembered what happened. He said: “fell…blood.”

For a minute I was afraid it was closed. There was no one around. I said it looked dead. August asked “Why dead…like the batteries?” Made sure it was open, then sat at a picnic table and ate lunch. He was talking about north and south and I explained we were ‘south of home’ He asked “What ‘of’ mean?” Randomly, he said “Jason Webley…I said Jason Webley.” He was looking over at the playground, and spotted the odd swing things that are on ends of a lever, so if you sit on one it pulls up the other one. I taught him the word ‘investigate’ and he said “I want to investigate why they go up and down.”

We went and played on those for a few minutes, then he played on a shaky platform. We then headed in. Bought a ticket, entered, and went to put our stuff in a locker. He saw a woman and said “I thought that was mama. It looks like mama.” I think he vaguely remembers meeting mama there. He actually walked over and took a closer look and came back saying something about “brown shoes”. He also was looking at the numbers on the lockers upside down.

The main wing to the left was closed for construction. We briefly looked through the famous scientists area, but then went to the wing on the right, the ‘Basic Science’ wing. Looked at the wave machine, then wandered around. Looked at a table of elements, a spring wave thing, then a place where you can record yourself talking and it sends it to a speaker across the room. We found a big mechanical clock with balls that roll on tracks and we watched that for a a few minutes. Every five minutes it drops a big ball and makes noise, and some little robot figures play musical instruments. We set a reminder to come back in 15 minutes to see it change at 1:00, then went and looked at all the electricity exhibits. Talked to him about electricity and circuits, etc. He also really liked a video of ships breaking through arctic ice. We went back at 1 to the clock, but he decided it was scary and wanted me to walk away from it. We kept getting farther and farther away. Later, he didn’t want to come anywhere close to it.

We wandered the rest of that hallway. He saw models of molecules and asked “Is that molecules?” He saw a video of blood and a diagram of veins and arteries. He asked “Is that the heart?” There was a display about how babies develop and he really liked that. And seemed appropriate considering it was his birthday. One of the pictures showed twins in a womb and he pointed at those. Somehow we ended up talking about how he was naked when he was born, no clothes. There was an area about vision, and a thing you look into and try to use your hands to bring two tools together. But it switches your vision, left to right eye and vice versa, making it incredibly hard. He liked that.

We went to the bathroom and stopped in the lobby to have his strawberry cookie for a snack. We heard a song playing. I started to say “That’s a song from f-“ And he interjected “5-touch class.”

We heard music coming from the lobby stage, and went and watched the dancing robot show. He had been afraid of it the one time we tried to watch it before, but now he loved it. He danced along, and finished his cookie. At the end he came to me and said “They’re funny cuz robots don’t dance.”

When that was over we went in the kids play area. He walked past the funhouse mirrors. He said “I thought that’s water but it’s still glass.” We went up through the big structure, and climbed through the rope path. At the end there was a guy stationed who told us adults aren’t allowed through. Don’t know why he wasn’t stationed at the beginning.

We spent time looking at the optical illusions (making it look like there was a hole in his hand, etc.). He liked say “Optical illusion”. He kept looking down at the robot things on the floor below and said “I think the robots need help.” We went down and played with the power generating things (turning cranks and riding a bik
e) and played with the robots and the water area and the floor piano. Finally, there is a floor with fish swimming on it, and when you get close they swim away. He spent a good amount of time trying to step on the fish.

We then went and saw the whole robot show again, with him doing a lot more dancing. After that he was talking a lot about musical instruments as we headed outside and walked to the Insectarium. We walked through there, and he touched the superworms. He really liked looking at the beehive and talking about that, then at the displays of how different insects go from eggs to full size. Finally, he touched a grub and we looked at the beetles. Before we left we went into the butterfly room. But when you go in there is a large fan that blows air to help keep the butterflies from escaping. He did not like the noise. Even though it turned off, he wanted to leave.

As we walked back, I blew on him like the fan, and he said I had “Salami” breath. We had water from the mater machine in the lobby, and August was saying “No, you’re silly.” from Also an Octopus. We went to the bathroom, got our stuff from the locker, and headed home. On the subway he ate the letter cookies: “I have M for mama…Z for zizzerbug…O for octopus and on and off.” Took line 4 to Changdong, and got the 1144 bus right away. Home at 5:25.

He showed Carly the keyboard and played a lot with her. He was using the smart strings and I showed him how he could start to play along with them, playing songs he already knows and making up melodies. He asked “What happens if you play the mandolin with a bow?” And said he was quoting Word Wagon when he chanted “Pickle juice, pickle pie” Carly and I did a lot of cleaning, preparing for the play date with Cora tomorrow. At some point we mentioned his birthday, and he had the idea of measuring him. He is now 94cm and 13.7kg (30.2 pounds).

Carly gave him a bath, and the birthday boy was asleep just before 8.

On our way: 

Photos. A big smile:

River: 

Lunch: 

Reading numbers upside down: 

Twins: 

Rope bridge: 

Dancing: 

Superworms: 

Beehive: 

Last time in the toddler area: 

Leaving: 

Falling asleep: 

Piano with mama: 

He was up at 7:16. A little upset at first. After I set him down he laid on the couch for a few minutes and I would give him a kiss and he would just grunt. Finally he got up and started singing Yankee Doodle. We read Also an Octopus, all the way though, then 1-2-3 Peas and Hap-pea All Year (the peas book about months). Had Cheerios and banana for breakfast, then he played a new piano version of Yankee Doodle, starting to add in a left hand line (just C, but changing up the rhythm a bit too) that is entirely his own doing.

On the toilet he talked about temperatures: “What happens if the weather is 3 million 8 hundred billion 20 thousand 5 hundred…?” “I’m outside and the temperature is six hundred and sixty six million!”

He played GarageBand, and I took a shower. He was playing GarageBand when I went in, but when I came out he had switched to TodoMath and was working on subtraction and addition equations. I helped him for awhile, then he said he was done with that…he wanted to do math on paper: “I’m going to do addition problems.” He wrote his first problem with a variable: “2 plus what equals 18?”

We played mandolin and he played two notes in a row a couple times. We talked about the word ‘bothered’ because I said the strap bothered his neck. As an example I said when I read too loud. He said “Tallulah’s Tutu” Hid behind the pillow while I looked to see what part he was talking about. He then said “Don’t read it…close it.” But it turns out it wasn’t my volume that he doesn’t like so much as he doesn’t like when characters get upset, which is what happens in Tallulah’s Tutu when she is upset she doesn’t get a tutu.

Anyway, we then read the Sense and Sensibility opposites book. He asked why the guy was sad in it and we were making guesses. I sad he maybe listened to sad music, so August wanted examples of sad music. Which led to the Dylan song “Rock me mama” which led to August asking about the line “like the wind and the rain” which led to me mentioning porches, which led to August asking what a porch was, which led to me mentioning the one in Chelan where the gnome is which led to August asking what the name of the gnome is. So he clearly remember the gnome but couldn’t remember the name he gave it. We couldn’t quite think of it. Later, on Skype, my dad would remember it is Oh-ee-oh.

We then skyped with my parents. We were in the parlor and I let him eat in there while we skyped, but then he decided to try wiping his face on the carpet. Took him to wash his hands, then he went back and was wiping his wet face on everything. He then was pretending to count peanut butter drips, and they got to hear him pronounce “thirty” with his new ‘th’ sound. He played the hard rock guitar sound on GarageBand and kept saying “Say it hurts grandmas eardrum.” When they asked what he wanted to learn to play he said “autoharp, bass guitar, electric keyboard” He also said something was spooky: “spooky…that’s from mama’s zoo”.

After we hung up it turned out he meant Peek-a-Zoo, one of the new iPad apps he was playing a bit earlier. It is sort of a match and find game, where you find the character that looks sad, the one that is happy, etc. He first looked at his iPad, but then said “Must be on dada’s iPad.” and found it. Not sure why he brought it up though, and there’s no mention of ‘spooky’ in the app.

Anyway, we got ready and headed to Teuni Teuni. On the way he said “I want six forward rolls. Or maybe 100.” He jumped right into class, and did six laps to do six forward rolls. He helped put it away, then ran to me. I was about to say that he did six of them, when he said “That was six!” Clearly he had counted them. Class was about scarecrows, and included a scarecrow outfit that August happily tried on. At first though it looked like the teacher was being a bird, so August held his hands out like the teacher was and said something about “I’m doing what sangsaengnim…” When the teacher had them sit down in a circle, August was repeatedly counting everyone in the circle, in both English and Korean. The teacher then counted the kids, “1 2 3 4”. August looked at him and said “No. 1 2 3 4 5” and included the teacher in his counting.

Class was about scarecrows and balancing (because you hold your arms out like the scarecrows). There was a scarecrow outfit that August loved wearing, with arms that attached to the back. They jumped around, and August looked at himself in the mirror. Also, during the class he realized he could turn around and see his back in the mirror and was doing that (remember the other day when he got sad that he couldn’t see his back). They also built little scarecrows and August liked that part.

After class we went down to the food court and August wanted the same bibimbap dish as last time. We got that and enjoyed it. There was a girl about his age a table over who was crying, and he wanted me to guess why she was sad, but didn’t seem to like my ideas: “Make another guess why she is sad…No, make another guess…” And he quoted from the Peek-a-Zoo app: “Can you dance the macaroni?…Hey, you’re wearing my sock!”

We headed out and walked across to the park. He was walking, and singing his new song, that he started a couple days ago. In the art museum we looked around the lobby (he likes the raised letters on the wall). Then he noticed the ‘Information’ sign on the front desk. We looked at that and read it in Korean, then he moved a couple feet to my right and looked at a sign sitting on the counter. It was sort of an L shaped (the bottom of the L being a base) sign with information on it. He pulled the edge. It turned out to be a heavy metal sign, and resting on towel. It slid right off and fell on the floor, making a huge noise in the lobby. And as it slipped out of his had it scraped his finger.

Took several minutes for him to calm down, and he wasn’t happy when I took him outside. He still wanted the play area. Eventually we went back in and went in the play area. He held his left hand gingerly for much of the time, but was okay. Played around in the balls and worked on throwing. At one point was talking and said “…and I realized I wanted to come.” When he was done with the balls he went and colored the two pictures they had available. The first was an Alice in Wonderland picture, and like the Wizard of Oz one last time he kept asking me to tell him about it.

It was now past 3 and his English class was at 4. The weather was nice, so we went for a random bike ride/walk around the blocks to the east of Home Plus. He sang the whole way. We got to class a bit early and sat at the tables for a couple minutes, went to the bathroom, and went to class. Class went well, and we got a bunch of our cheesy little English books and stuff. The teacher’s name is Jenny, which August seemed sure about, although I thought it may be Janie or something. One of the characters is ‘strong’, and August turned to me and said “Dada is strong.” That made my day.

Also, there is a character that is a fire engine. Through the first class and most of this class I thought the character’s name was Louie. Then there was another fire engine (I thought), called Roy. Several minutes later I realized they were one in the same. ‘Roy’ in Korean is basically ‘Loh-ee’ because there is no R in Korean, and no ‘oy’ diphthong (and thus it has to be two syllables – like ‘Ryan’ is 3 and ‘August’ is 4).

After class we went to meet Carly and called her from the corner, but she was already home. Went home and they nursed, then they did math before he played some piano in the parlor. I then did some math with him, then he took the keys out of the piano. He tried to get out of putting them back in, but we wouldn’t let him escape and he did it with me.

He got silly and was throwing the blueberries on me, then tried to do headstand while Carly was still in the chair. I was throwing pillows at him, and he said “Say you’re going to throw a
pillow very gently.”

I took him in for a bath. We watched the livestream of an Amanda Palmer concert again, and he wanted me to tell him more about Alice in Wonderland. He also said “I love dancing…goodnight toes” and when I asked him what that was from he said it was from a book. I figured out he meant Busy Toes. I’ve only read it with him once. Don’t know if Carly has read it with him more, or if he was looking at it on his own. I went and got it, and we read it. It ends with the ‘goodnight toes’ line, but while it has a dancer in it, it doesn’t say “I love dancing”. He repeated that line a couple times though, and so it sounded like something he was saying himself, or him imagining what the book said.

Anyway, the real story was when he said “I want more Numbers you don’t know”. We talked about variables and how they worked, then when he kept wanting more I told him about ‘infinity’. If you really want to stretch a very tired almost-three year old’s brain you get them thinking about infinity. He was definitely trying to get his brain around that one. Took a long video of that. Pretty straight to bed and sleep after that, asleep against at 7:50.

 

Teuni Teuni: 

Counting:

New song: 

Infinity: 

Photos. Looking at his back in the mirror:

Scarecrow: 

Another scarecrow: 

Lunch and the crying girl: 

Throwing: 

English class: 

Cuddling: 

Woke up upset at 6:47. Cried and sat down on the floor in the hall. He wanted mama. I picked him up and made him let me hold him for a few minutes. I set him on the reading area and he took off his socks and just sat there a few minutes more. We read Kiss Good Night and Wild About Books. He was hungry so we had some cereal and then he sent mama a video message on Skype. She called us. At the end of the Skype call he said “confused” then “about talking.”

We went to fix his humerus bone, and he was still acting odd after the Skype call. I asked if he was sad or tired and he said “Both”. Did some doctoring, then he wanted to play some Endless Numbers. From that he wanted to go to the bed to do math with the friends using the blueberries. He is now pronouncing ‘th’, as in ‘thirty’ and it doesn’t sound like an’f’. Although it sounds like he is trying really hard. He did subtraction by stuffing blueberries down his shirt and saying “I tooked away 6…that means minus.” I had Bluie and GM attempting to climb in his shirt with the blueberries and he found that funny.

He played hide and seek with them, then we went and ate grapes and a hobang as a snack and talked about our plans. He liked the idea of riding the bike all the way to mama’s work and wanted to go right away. He settled for math on the iPad, and then words, while I took a shower. Then he played a round of the Orchard game when I came out. We made a tofu teriyaki sandwich for an early lunch. He was wondering about bread (we had to get white bread this time because they were out of wheat) and wheat, so we watched a video about how flour is made.

We played mandolin a couple times through the morning, and he tried playing it like a cello. On the paper he went and wrote ‘x-ray’ on his own. He looked at Carly’s paintings of 14, Q, etc. We decided she should do 아 on the empty canvas as that is the start of his name in Korean. “Why Q? Cuz dada loves you a ton of Qs?”

He saw a raccoon in something and wanted to see a raccoon video again. Did that, and he pretended to be a raccoon climbing on the couch. He was playing an instrument that we made up the other day that is played by sticking your hand out. He calls it a bliblia. Wrote more x-ray and ‘flowers’ (with my help) on paper. He would write it once with my help, then copy it out on his own. He drew a big A with a smaller A inside it and said “The baby A is inside the mama A.”

Finally, he was playing piano, and was fine until he started hammering on it at the end of a song.I stopped him and he got upset. We were putting on coats at the time, so had to pause. Eventually he calmed down and we got going at 1.

Slightly warmer than yesterday, but still grey and breezy. Quite windy as we crossed the river. We walked down to the new path along the train tracks and crossed the bridge and walked to eMart. First went to the grocery store. Out of sour cream, sadly. We picked out a chicken cranberry sandwich, a couple jello and fruit things and an orange juice and iced coffee drink. He wanted to go outside. I questioned him on this a couple times on our way out and figured out that when I asked about inside he thought we had to go a long way and he wanted to eat right away. Convinced him we just had to go up one floor and he was excited about that and took off running. Pointed him in the right direction and we went up to the food court.

He also changed his mind about the play area (구름빵), initially saying he wanted to go back outside. But once we were done eating he wanted to go in. We had been here once before, when he was upset about the boots for the sand area before he changed his mind and decided he liked them.

A couple of changes I noticed:

When we went in he totally let a woman help him take off his coat and shoes while I paid. He wouldn’t have allowed this before. When we went to the sand area he ran and chose boots and said “These are pretty cool.” And when we went to leave the sand area a woman helped him take off his boots, brushed him off, and used the blower on him. He stood up, sat down, turned around at her request. All without me saying a thing.

Much of our time was spent at the red and yellow pushy thing. He wrote words quite a bit, mainly ‘Zinnie’, then ‘mama’ and ‘dada’ and 아그스트. He also did ‘gargantuan’. At one point a boy came over and they spent a few minutes pushing them back and forth.

He also jumped on the bear, played with a set of blocks a bit (counting them), did some crayon on the wall you can color on), and went down the rolly slide once. Then the sand area for much of the remaining time. We had a thing that you drop sand in the top of and two gears turn. We made a game of putting more and more sand in until they stopped turning. Our second pile went until we completely covered up both gears. It got to be a really big pile before that happened. August also made banana bread using a bowl and sand.

The other new thing for him was actually riding the hanging balls that go around like a merry-go-round. Did that three times.

He had gone to the bathroom, liking aiming at the fly in the urinal a bit before, so we headed out, getting to APIS just after 4:30. For much of our walking today August was humming or singing Itsy Bitsy Spider, often with his autoharp sound.

We met Carly in the entrance to APIS and went down to Melinda’s elementary music room. August was in heaven. Narayan, Melinda’s intern, was there and showed him some of the percussion instruments. August got to play the gong. Then Melinda came back and August looked around a bit more. He got up at the big piano and started playing. Soon, all the music teachers were applauding his playing. Melinda opened the piano, and August stood on the bench so he could look inside. Someone asked what instrument he wanted to learn, and his list today was: autoharp, electric guitar, pipe organ, violin (I think), and a few others. Oh, and Melinda showed him her singing bowl (like Cherie has) and August got to touch that.

From the piano we went next door to the orchestra room and he got to try out a small violin. He loved that. I helped him with it a bit, then Melinda came in and helped as well. Probably ten minutes or so of violin, then he and Carly played the wooden xylophone together, and had a nice song going. It was tough for him to leave – he really didn’t want to go. In particular he wanted to open the cello cases.

We headed out and walked home. When we came out on the other side of the line 1 tracks it was raining. August was also wearing his hat and gloves today – if the weather goes as forecast, perhaps today is the last day for both snow and hats and gloves. It was a nice little unexpected flurry.

We got home, had some dinner, and he watched the outdoor orchestra videos in the bath.

Carly asked him ‘Do you still speak stopadoo language?’ And he said “When the weather was warm.” Carly thought he said ‘river’ instead of ‘weather’, and August was happy when we figured out what he meant – like other things he has remembered with me recently, he remembers doing them back when it was warm. He was exhausted from the exciting day and went to sleep easily at 7:50.

Photos. Counting: 

Like a cello: 

On top: 

Upside down: 

Peddling: 

Two sides: 

Pulling it out of the mountain: 

APIS Music: 

Touching the bowl: 

Violin lesson: 

Walking in the snow: 

He was up nice and early at 5:40. When I was up a bit later he was working on counting by tens with Carly using the blueberry cubes. Carly left for work, and he worked on When Johnny Comes Marching on the piano. He had the last of the banana bread for breakfast, then played GarageBand. On Word Wagon he continued adding a definition after sounding out some of the words. Carly noticed this when he was doing it yesterday, and I’m not sure where it comes from. For example, he said “train…something can drive…” He played more piano and did more of When Johnny. Then played music on Figure.

We sang When Johnny and Yankee Doodle, looking at the lyrics to learn a little more of Yankee Doodle. Suddenly, he said “Wait! I have an idea! Let’s count by 70s!” We went in and actually ended up counting by twos using the blueberries. He is starting to be able to do it on his own. An announcement came on and he didn’t like it, so we went into the reading area and closed (and locked) the door. We made a nest and read The Hole in the King’s Socks three times. He was singing and making up random words for the jumping game song, then writing uppercase and lowercase letters on paper, then tried writing some cursive. He needed the Cursive app to show him, then he ended up playing in the app. I took a shower.

When I came out he was doing some math, and talked about doing math in his head, and joked about it: “In your brain? In your skull? In your humerus bone?…Say yes.” As we wrote on the paper, he broke apart one of the pencils which had been slightly broken, then needed me to tape it back together. We went back to the reading area and read Kiss Good Night three times. The first time, he said he was afraid of the “AGAIN!” part. I was talking to him about it, and figured out that he didn’t like when I said it too loud. Once that was out, he loved it, and actually made a game out of reading the book really quietly or loudly.

He then was singing something, and hit upon his “Shovel cave it out” song again. So we figured out how to play it on the piano.

A delivery guy came to the door to deliver a package from my parents for his birthday. A nice surprise, as they were afraid it was going to be late.

August wanted a snack, so we had crackers. He has started to pretend that the non-letter crackers have things on them. Started with letters, but progressed from there. Today it was “Is this a brain wheat thin? Is this a humerus wheat thin?”

Finally, he spotted one of his fish oil vitamins under the couch. He couldn’t reach it, so I got down and got it. I held it out to him and told him not to eat it. Big mistake. He took it and ate it. I asked if it was an old one, and he said “Yeah. It was squishy. It was an old one.”

We left at noon. He was singing “Shovel cave it out” as he walked. He started saying “Yo mas” and asking what it meant. Told him ‘I More’ but that didn’t make sense and that we’d have to ask Carly if she says something like that to him. Finally, he was working on finger math on his own on the train down, and doing problems like 10-2, 10-10, and 3+2.

At Children’s Grand Park we walked to the playground. I had told him what food we had (half a sandwich, strawberries, string cheese, rice curry) and he had said that was enough – no need to stop for kimbap, etc. Empty today. Not a holiday, but also chilly (36) and a bit windy. So he wanted to go on the swings. He went briefly on the round swing and the relaxing swing. Put his sunglasses on for that one. But spent most of his time on a regular swing. Then was walking around and playing around. Seemed tired, and at one point twice tried to lie down on the sand. But then didn’t like sand all over himself. He was then pretending to be a skunk/electric eel/octopus and spray/zap me.

He ate somewhere in there, then were ready to leave as it was chilly and past time for a nap. But he played on the hopscotch, went on the turning thing, climbed the hill, went back to hopscotch, etc. Eventually I picked him up and we headed out.

We went to the bathroom, got in the backpack, then started walking. A nap didn’t happen though. He was just too hyped up; his brain was too on. He was talking and singing constantly: “I can change O to P, I can change P to R…” Lots of stuff that I would have found really amusing if I wasn’t carrying him on my back for a half hour. And in the continuing construction drama of Children’s Grand Park, the new playground doesn’t look any different BUT there were a couple guys starting to work on something. Also, August and I had been predicting for a couple weeks that soon the new escalator from the station (the one that took nearly two years to install, and has been out of commission multiple times already) would break down, as it has been extra squeaky. And indeed today it was closed off and the panels were all open.

Anyway, after a half hour we headed home. Considered children’s museum, but August didn’t seem excited about it. And the weather was just too cold.

On the subway home I asked him about a music teacher again. He said “I want a cello teacher. Electric guitar is my second choice. And buzzerbass. And guitar. And autoharp. And upright bass. And last but not least….harpsichord.”

At home we read a new book on the iPad called Also an Octopus, which is a story about how stories are structured. We then played piano. He wanted to wear it, so I put it on him. He was then turning around and bumping it into the table. He had the good idea of taking it in to the parlor, but as he excitedly ran off I called after him to stop, so he didn’t hit it on the other table, chair, door, etc. He broke out crying, upset that I’d raised my voice. Took some consoling, then we went back to mandolin.

From there we went back to the couch and watched music videos of instruments he didn’t know. First, lute. Then ukulele. For that we watched the Amanda Palmer Tiny Desk concert: https://youtu.be/LRix5o2-fiU He liked that, although for much of it she didn’t play ukulele. We also watched some theremin, and then he ended up on the marble machine again and a video of covers of the marble machine song.

Around 5 we headed back outside, as we needed to get bread and we were going to the book store in the pink building to get more pads of paper. We stopped to leave the bike at the top of the stairs in the pink building, and as we walked away he said “I’m concerned.”

In the book store we found pads of paper. I also let him get a notebook with lines in it for writing, and another notebook that said ‘Funny Mathematics’ on it. It was really busy in there, and August said “Excuse me…I said excuse me a lot.” He also looked at pens that he thought looked like toothbrushes.

As we left, he ran ahead, kind of flapping his arms and singing “De de de” As he ran he looked to his right and saw a woman eating soup. Without slowing, he pointed and said “That looks spicy” and went back to singing “De de de”.

We went to Tous Les Jour. Right before we went in, Carly called, from home, asking where we were. She asked where we were, and August said “Home”. Which was sort of true, but not. Then he said something like “We are at the bread store and are going to buy bread.” We talked about not touching before we went in and it went well. He had trouble picking one treat, but decided on a honey bread thing. We were home at 5:45.

They nursed, then he ate dinner with chopsticks. Watched some tabla, then marble machine. He played GarageBand, then we shared the honey and cheese bread Carly gave him a bath and I did dishes. She was doing something as they went in, and he signed ‘more’, using his open left hand method. In the bath he was singing Itsy Bitsy and putting in random words. Straight to be after that, and asleep at 7:15.

Photos. Playing on the chair and looking at photos: 

Children’s Grand Park. Swing: 

Skunk: 

Home. Resting and reading books: 

Mandolin: 

Toes: 

Book store. Looking at pencils: 

7:35. A long, long sleep. And straight to a warm spot on the floor. A little piano, then some Word Wagon, then to the bathroom, then a lot of music: first GarageBand, then working on holding the mandolin and then piano. He played a slow version of Johnny Comes Marching. We played mandolin a couple times. He wanted to hold it standing up, so I shortened the strap. I got him banana bread, banana, and a couple yogurt pretzels for breakfast. We did some exercise together, then he wanted to do yoga, and wanted to do as many yoga positions as possible. At the end he was trying to twist around and see his back, and got a little sad that he couldn’t.

To the iPad, where he played Elmo Loves ABCs and Metamorphabet a bit, then he remembered instruments he didn’t know, and we watched videos of harpsichord and autoharp. When I went to take a shower he was watching a trombone video. He came into the bathroom at the end of my shower and asked “What’s a tuba sound like?” So then we watched tuba and sousaphone videos.

He saw me typing an email to Carly, and asked why I was using two hands. He then said “I want to type with two hands so it’s FAST!” So I showed him home row and all that, and he figured out making capital letters with shift. He said “I want to type Qs because Q is my favorite letter.” We had just talked about what to do for the day, and he wanted to type “We are going to a park.” Which he then did, with help, and added in punctuation park. He wanted to type ‘Sinnaedong Park’ and I started to tell him how to do that, but he insisted “I want to do it in Korean.” So I showed it to him on the map, and he typed it, then (because the full name is Sinnaedong Community Park), he typed ‘park’ and ‘community’ in English.

We spent a lot of time making instrument sounds and he sang Baa Baa black sheep in the different sounds. I mentioned singing Baa Baa to him and he said “When you were a little baby?” We sang both versions of the song. We were talking about learning music in Israel, and I asked him if he would like a music sangsaengnim in Israel. He said yes, and when I asked what his instrument choices were, he concluded “I want harpsichord first choice, guitar second choice.”

In playing his made up instruments they would get quite elaborate: “I have a thousand frets and a million strings.” It was a thousand keys when playing tuba. He asked for more instruments, and I remembered accordion. For that I pulled up a video of Jason Webley playing “Last Song” at the 11.11.11 concert that Carly and I went to. He loved that, and watched all of it. As he was playing accordion he said “I’m pushing a lot of buttons. I have a quadrillion buttons.”

Back on GarageBand he made a discovery: “Ooh! I didn’t know they had that one!” When he found instruments like flute and glockenspiel he could play.

We got headed to the park. Walked down to across from the hospital (I asked if he remembered what the building across the street was – he had once called it “mama’s work” because she had gone there a few times – this time he said “Is it the doctor’s office?”) and caught the 1221 bus. Got to the park and sat on an orange bench and ate lunch. I got him to eat the carrots by having them say “Don’t eat me!” and then the others said “He ate Bob!” He had fun giving them names after that. I got out my ‘real’ camera to take some official three-years-old photos, and we played around with that. He wanted to use it, and took some photos of me while I helped hold it.

We then went across to the playgrounds, where August was initially disappointed to find no swings (two playgrounds and no swings? Didn’t remember until much later that there is actually a third playground up the hill we could have checked). But then he found a big stick and was playing with that. He drew shapes in the sand, including one he said was a bear. There was a girl making sand mountains like he does, but she didn’t seem interested in August joining. August wanted to play right by her though, and make similar sand mountains. He kept wanting to crush hers though, and when she crushed it herself he joined in. He then wanted to pretend to crush strangers’ stuff, a game which I wouldn’t participate in. He then switched it, and pretended to be a stranger himself and told me not to erase what he was making.

We walked over to the weird stage area. Or whatever it is. He wanted a bunch of theories on what it is. He found a broken piece of the plastic floor stuff and played with that. He then stood in it and directed himself as he made music. He found found a maple seed, and I showed him how they fall. We found a bunch of tiny maple seeds, and he stood on some rocks and dropped them. I also held him up in the air so he could drop them.

From there we went to the slides. He wanted me to go down first, but then he went down the little wavy slide a bunch of times. The first time he needed help up the ladder, but he had it after that. His game was that we would hit the slide to make noise as the other person went down.

Then we drew geometrical shapes, and he learned to draw a pentagon and a kite. And he’s drawing really good hearts now. We started to go, and I had Smoky, who was in the backpack, say something. August wanted him to say something about fires, then August pretend to spray fire everywhere, like with a flamethrower. No idea. He said “I blew fire!”

We headed to the bathrooms, and he saw a sign with different stretches on it. He spent quite awhile trying to do the stretches. We went to the bathroom, then got going. We ate some of the pretzels. August said “I ate Bob…the pieces of Bob Are in my esophagus.” He invented an  instrument: “it is like a piano, but it has frets.”

We went up to a park I’d found on Naver Maps in the middle of an apartment complex. On the way, we found some bushes with little purple berries on them. He pretended to eat them and get sick as we walked. They had swings here. Getting windy and chilly, but he went on the swings for 15 minutes or so. Got his swing time in. We had talked about going to a coffee shop to get out of the cold, and there was one a couple blocks away that looked promising. He really wanted to go. Started to walk that way, but the wind was in our face, and for a second he said he wanted to head home. But then when he realized we weren’t going towards the coffee shop he wanted to turn around.

We turned around and made it to Coffee So. There, it was either a choice between a shake to share, or a small hot cocoa on the kids menu. August heard us talking about ‘cocoa’ and decided on that. He was tuned to the word ‘cocoa’, because he had just been talking about the name ‘coco’ (or ‘koko’ as was his preferred spelling), which is the name of the bird in Word Wagon, and I was explaining was different from ‘cocoa’. Anyway, we got that, and he loved the cocoa. He said it looked like coffee. He counted all of his sips, getting up around 30. He also pretended it was making him sick – like the berries. And he gave a lesson in how to drink cocoa. He did a little Word Wagon, and I read one page of my book before he wanted to head home. But I also spent some time using Shazam to identify songs playing. I liked “Down” Marian Hill and “Vals Bebel” A Mar.

We walked up and found a bus stop and headed home. On the walk from the hospital I hummed the Addams Family song, which he wanted to know the words of. Will have to look that up. He was spelling things with random letters as we walked through the park, and spelled ‘Mack’. I told him it was a name, and reminded him of Yertle the Turtle. Will have to read that.

Home a bit after 5:30. He told Carly about the cocoa right away, and said “I tried to get sick because I had extra drinks!”  He had the curry rice for dinner, and we got out the chopsticks for him. I helped him at first, but he got the hang of it, and was pretty soon eating with them.

He played more GarageBand, and showed Carly the instruments. Carly put on t
he Jason Webley video, and he watched a few minutes of that, but then he wanted it quiet so he could play GarageBand on his iPad again.

Carly gave him a bath and I did dishes. He was having fun in the bath, but I think when the washing started he was done. He was ready for bed, and was asleep at 7:30.

Photos. He wanted to use the changing pad for funsies: 

Mandolin: 

Yoga: 

Bus: 

Lunch. Eating Bob the carrot: 

Juice: 

Taking photos: 

Hearts: 

Coffee shop: