August woke up a little before 8. After rolling around on the floor and doing some yoga as he woke up, H\he pretty much went straight to his Duplos and played with them a lot. As we left, he was saying goodbye to everything: Oma and Opa, of course, but also the people in the wall hanging from Glecy, his chair, the lizards on the chair, the ‘sass’ (snake) on his poster, and to “Zinnie” when he saw himself in the mirror in the elevator.
We made it to Seoul Forest a little after 10. When we got to the top of the subway station, he said “sun, sun”. The first things he saw in the park were the empty drainage ditches, and a fountain that wasn’t on. He would point and say “sad”. He chose animals over playground again, and we first went to the butterfly house. He enjoyed that, but he really wanted to play with the rocks by the waterfall, which wasn’t allowed. I took him outside to play with rocks there, but then he saw the building next door and started saying ‘inside’. I don’t know if he remembered the building from the spring (doubtful) or if he saw other people going in, or if he saw the animals on the windows, but he threw down the rock he was holding and wanted to go in.
We went in and walked through, seeing frogs (gaeguli, that is), which was exciting. Upstairs, they have chipmunks, but they were asleep and you could barely see them. As we walked down the passage, he said “bye, chipmunks.” And as we started to go downstairs, he suddenly got really sad. I asked him what was wrong, and he pointed back and said “chipmunks.” We were stuck in a group on the narrow stairs, so I said we could go back later.
Downstairs he perked back up, and he loved walking around the room with the fish, spiders, turtles, axolotls, and iguana. He wasn’t too perturbed by the crowds of bigger kids, and was wanting to see what they could see (which also happened upstairs with the pinned beetles). We were in that room quite awhile (several other groups came and went) and then we went back upstairs.
And the chipmunks were awake! He watched them, and in fact went and got a little stool and set it in front of the chipmunks and sat on it. He wouldn’t sit still, however, and ended up going and getting the three other stools as well, and climbing on and off them as he watched the chipmunks.
We finally headed out. We went to the CU convenience store and got a rice thing and banana chips. The rice thing, unfortunately, had kimchi in the rice. He ate a little, but not much. But he loved the banana chips. We had sat on the benches between the CU and the bathrooms (I remember changing August on these benches when we came with my parents). This meant we had tons of elementary school groups walking by, one of which was pretty annoying (I had to tell one kid to knock it off when he yelled in August’s face, and I was looking around for their teacher), but we made it through.
Now close to 1, so we went walking, down towards the deer area. He fell asleep and we sat on a secluded bench close to the deer. Slept for close to an hour, 1:07 to 2:04. When he woke up, we went and bought deer food and went into the deer area.
The next 30 minutes were pretty crazy. He loved feeding the deer. We also shared that small area with a girls’ middle school. They were all over August. Luckily, they were pretty good about it, and respectful of August. He started to get overwhelmed at one point, but I think it was a combination of a deer almost knocking him over with its head and the girls. I held him for a minute, and then he wanted back down. We worked on his deer-feeding technique, since he didn’t understand holding his hand flat – he wanted to hold the food like he did with the sheep. He was getting the idea by the end.
From there (and getting a lot more attention on our way out as we were walking with the girls when feeding time ended) we walked across to the Waterworks Museum. It is located on the site of the first water treatment facility in Korea. August really liked seeing pictures of animals in the first building, the Ari and Soolee statues (the water mascots) outside, the big map of Seoul on the floor in the second building, and the statue of a water seller that talked when you stepped in front of it in the third building.
We headed home. Carly called when she was leaving Derek and Jill’s (she and Megan had dropped off the food and cards). A couple minutes later I got a photo from Derek, showing he had the wrong card. So August and I intercepted them walking home and showed them the photo. When they figured out what they were looking at and why, they started laughing. August was thoroughly amused, although he didn’t know what was going on.
We headed home and ate the yummy peanut sauce pasta that Cherie had made. Chuck had seen that they were setting up for a concert in the park. So we headed over, catching the end of a saxophonist playing “Hey Jude”. August loved playing with Oma and Opa on the bench by the tree. Oma got him to dance, and he walked out on the fountain area and started dancing. Cherie took him over to see a woman’s dog, and she started dancing with August too.
I took him up closer to see the singers. After awhile he wanted to go back to Oma and Opa. But later he then surprised me and Carly by asking for “more singers”. So I took him back up for the last two numbers. He sat in my arms, starting at them the whole time. The encore was “Funiculi, Funicula”.
After the concert we all walked home. He kept saying “more singers”, so I ended up pulling up a video of Bocelli singing it on YouTube.
He watched it a few times, quietly sitting in my lap. Eventually, he was getting tired, so against his protests we got him ready for bed and he went to sleep a little before 8:30.
New words/phrases: alligator (his duplo in the morning), eyebrow, buttons (vending machine), yoga, sun (as we came out of subway station), inside, hedgehog (photo in waterworks museum), buttons (in museum), dark (our hallway, as we left to go to the concert), bye bye Megan (he had said it when I showed him the video from yesterday, then was saying it after we saw her today), more singer
Waving to people on the subway:
Seoul Forest:
Banana chips with lunch:
Deer park:
Waterworks Museum:
Home:
Dancing in the park:
A little “Hey Jude” on sax: