August woke up early, at 5:50. Not a long night. We spent the morning doing a lot of reading (he now requests the ‘Snappy Little Monsters’ book by saying ’snappy’) and playing in the sink and on the bed and skyping with my parents. We found out the APIS maintenance guys would be over by 10 to pick up the desk and chair we don’t need, so we spent the rest of the morning straightening and cleaning instead of heading out to a park. I got out his blanket, which we haven’t used in many months, and he immediately started playing peekaboo with it. Unfortunately, he can now walk, and managed to walk right into a wall with his eyes covered.
His class started at 11:10, so about 10:40 we left and did a little walking around the park before going over. He spotted the camel sculpture so we went and he said “Hi, camel”. As we left he said “bye bye, camel”. He said “bye bye” to a lot of things today, including:
“Bye bye, magpie”
“Bye bye, park”
“Bye bye, cafe”
Anyway, his class went well. There are three other students. One mother is an English teacher, another boy, Jungbean, has been in August’s previous classes, and the other mother speaks at least a little English. August loved the bubbles (we haven’t done those in a long time) and the first stand up song in these classes, but there was no way he was wearing the bird wings or bird hat. He really likes birds though, so it was cool that today’s class was about birds (and he knows pigeon and crow in Korean, so he actually understood part of it!).
After class, it had been over six hours since August had woken up. It took him awhile to fall asleep. I walked over to the power plant and did a lap around the track, then headed back. He fell asleep close to home, but it didn’t go so smoothly this time. He woke up as I set him down, and I couldn’t get him back to sleep. No nap today (6 minutes hardly counts).
We read a lot more – some Maisy books, Wild About Books – and when he seemed mellow again I took him back out in the backpack. But after a mile of walking he hadn’t fallen asleep. So we played at Chrysanthemum Park. First in the sand, where he heard a magpie and wanted to go investigate (this is where the “bye bye, magpie” was said), then over by the wooden worms. Chestnuts were falling off the trees, and August had a lot of fun with these – peeling them and throwing them in the bushes. And later, shoving them under my legs. When the wind came up, chestnuts would start to rain from the trees, so I’d have to make sure we were out from under them.
He finally slowed with that and we went back to the sand, then walked around the corner to the women’s business center and got a blueberry smoothie. We sat and drank that, and the woman, who now knows his name, brought him some cranberry bread this time. We were there for about a half hour before we left (“bye bye, cafe”).
We went home for awhile, then needed to take out garbage. So we did that, and kept walking. Went across the park, going where August led. Ended up at the art museum and went through the children’s exhibit again (he went straight for the Alice in Wonderland box when I set him down). He wanted to ‘sit’ so we went and sat on a bench. He immediately wanted a cracker, as he remembered that last time we were there a woman gave us crackers and we sat on a bench and ate them.
This was the second time his memory surprised me today. Earlier, when we were at the park, he started to walk towards the stream when he heard construction sounds. He looked across and pointed to the northeast and said ‘neigh, neigh’. He couldn’t see them, but that was the direction of Madeul Stadium and the horse sculptures.
When he was done looking at the art, he wanted to climb the stairs. So he climbed the long flight of stairs up to the first floor (holding my hands), then continued to the second. He wanted to keep practicing stairs, but it was 5:20 and Carly said she would be home around 5:30. So I took him out to the bus stop to see if we could surprise her. She wasn’t on the first bus that came, so we headed home. But she hadn’t beaten us, so I figured she would show up at any moment. We walked back (August walking on his own now; a big change from being a bit scared walking around the hallways) to the elevators and she showed up after just a minute and got a good surprise as August was walking up to the elevator as the doors opened.
We went back and tried to keep August awake. He was having none of it, and fell asleep a little before 6. Hopefully he will sleep a long night. Carly tried to go to bed early in case he wakes up early.
New words: puppy, snappy, dalgi, hi (hi camel, bye bye camel), harmonica (onica), cereal, lemon, Molly (in Wild About Books), sand, magpie, spider (pieder), stork (cork)
Haircut:
Class:
Closest he got to putting on the wings:
Drinking from the backpack:
At the park:
Pointing to where he hears the magpie:
Smoothie at the cafe:
