We’ve been getting out of the house pretty early lately, so when today we had a leisurely morning and made it out of the house, I was surprised to find it was still before 9:30. In the morning we played with his hand puppets (Eddy, the blue cat, and the Korean frog) and August started putting on the cat puppet and saying ‘meow’. We then made a smoothie, and August decided he now likes yogurt, after flatly rejecting it in the past.
As we were headed to the subway, we found booths being set up for a children’s festival in the park, happening both today and tomorrow. There were concerts in the afternoon, so I figured we’d try to get back for them.
We went up to the stream at Dobongsan and played there for a little over two hours. I remembered to get out his toys this time, so he spent a lot of time digging in the sand in the stream, and we sailed the boat. As we got there, there were three ducks. He was excited by that, and would later stop playing and say ‘ducky’ or ‘more ducky’.
After an hour or so, we stopped for a snack. As we were eating our snack, there were three women and a girl up above the bank having a picnic. They brought over a plate of food: sweet potato, 2 hardboiled eggs, squash, and a bread stick thing. August preferred the sweet potato, not least because he liked using the chopsticks to poke holes in it.
When we were done eating, we went up to say hi. We took a bag of cranberries and a Larabar and I had August sort of offer them to the little girl. They then offered August a variety of nuts – cashes, walnuts, and almonds – which he tasted, but didn’t really eat, since he doesn’t like crunchy foods yet.
We left to go back to the water, but August preferred climbing on the rocks. As we were doing that, an egret came walking up the stream. August saw it first and pointed it out. We watched it for a few minutes until it disappeared upstream.
August wanted to go back and say hi to the women again, so we did that. Then, we were back playing on the rocks when the egret flew back downstream.
It was now 5 hours since he woke up, and I needed to change him. So I took him over to our usual changing spot by the waterfall fountain and there was the egret. It stood there, about 10 feet from us, as I changed August. When I let August up, he started walking towards it and got within a few feet.
We headed back to our stuff and packed up, just as it started sprinkling. We started walking down the stream and it continued to rain. It was light though, and the sunshade was enough. He fell asleep, and I sat in the same spot overlooking the river.
When he woke up we went to the subway and back to our stop. We went into the park to look around and watched a little drumming. It started raining harder, so we went home.
A little after 3 we left to go back to the park and concert. August took with him a plastic spoon and the camel. There was no music at first, so he played by/with some bushes and flowers with camel and his shovel. Then the music started. He really liked the kids and their nantas performance (there was fire and steam shooting up as they performed on the drums, so that was exciting) and the high school brass band. Between shows we walked up the stairs outside the art museum, which he really liked, and played up there. He also got to climb and stand on the lizard sculpture. The museum has taken down the ropes and signs prohibiting this, so they were being swarmed by kids.
He wasn’t into the last show, more traditional Korean music that was supposed to be calming, so we went into the museum to see the new show that just opened up. Some cool art, but more difficult for August, as there were things like chairs that didn’t have ropes around them, yet he couldn’t touch and climb on. We went down to the children’s space and of course he want to the box thing. Then had fun sort of running in and out of the tunnel area, and ended by giving high fives to a woman that was talking to him.
We got home at 5:15, but Carly wasn’t home. August wasn’t happy about that, so we turned around and headed back outside, and met Carly and Megan as they came into Brownstone.
Spaghetti for dinner and a bath, and he went to bed about 7:30.
New words/phrases: hurt, ducky (both his bath duck and the ducks at Dobongsan), cool cool, moss (have taught it to him a couple times; he used it on his own today pointing to miss on a rock by the stream), sure (Me: So you want banana bread? Him: sure, sure), trumpet (in his sticker book)
Stream:
Waving to the egret:
Asleep:
Watching some drumming:
Headed back outside:
Playing with the flowers:
Nantas performance:
On the lizard:
Going down the stairs on the art museum:
Running out of the Alice in Wonderland area:
