Carly had a lot of grading work to get done today. I took August out twice, and we did a lot around the house.
In the morning, Carly skyped with her parents and took out recycling. August led me in some yoga. And we made homemade oatmeal, topping it with honey and canned blackberries. August also did a lot of coloring. He can now identify/say nine colors: black, brown, blue, green, peach, pink, orange, yellow, and purple. Still working on white and red.
I then took him over to the park, where we mainly played, for the first time, in the petrified wood display between the dinosaurs and the senior center. He spent most of the time sweeping off the rocks with his little blue broom and walking (usually with my help) around the rocks.
He took a long nap; close to two hours, I think. After that, the three of us played on the bed for a long time. He ended by playing with Carly’s Nook, somehow landing on ‘More D’ for wanting to look for letters on it. When he was finally done and we left the room, it was an epic session of ‘bye bye’, with him saying, multiple times: “bye bye mama’s book”, “bye bye pillow”, “bye bye Marshy”, “bye bye kitty cat”, “bye bye Pooh”, etc.
In the afternoon I took August for a walk and to another park. It is called Gukhwa Children’s Park, and it about a 25 minute walk to the southeast – past the hospital. Carly walked with us for a few minutes to get outside before returning to do more work.
Last time at the park (we’ve only been there once), August was all about sitting on the bottom of the slide (his thing at the time) and playing in the sand (for about the first time). Today, it was all about writing letters in the sand. He would say “Dada do C” or whatever letter he wanted me to write. We then had a game where he would walk on my letter and find it hilarious. I’d say “Don’t step on my letter!” He turned this into saying “Stepsie!” when he stepped on it: a combination of ‘whoopsie’, which he often says when he does something on purpose, and ‘step’.
We played there about 40 minutes, then went back up the street and ordered a couple pizzas at Pizza Myung, a little pizza place up the street. Then back to the park for 10 minutes while we waited. I tried him on the swings, but he would’t focus on holding on – he kept getting excited by the CU convenience store across the street, pointing and saying “C U!” because of the letters. So we went over to the castle/easy climbing wall area, and he had fun walking up and down the climbing wall (it isn’t exactly steep). Then put him in the backpack and picked up our pizza and headed home.
On the way, we saw the crescent moon. We have started calling these ‘banana moon’, because he would see them in books and he would call them ‘nanana’. I would tell him it was a moon, thus the phrase ‘banana moon’. But this was the first time we saw the real moon. After he saw it, when it went behind the buildings he would say “bye bye nanana moon.” At home, in front of Carly, I asked him, “What did we see in the sky?” “Banana moon”, was his answer. Very cool to realize he could understand that question.
There was one big mystery that we couldn’t figure out: as we were walking, he looked up, like towards the tops of the buildings or trees, and was saying something like ‘cut’. Neither Carly or I could figure it out. He gets a big grin when you do figure out what he is saying, and we didn’t get that.
We ate pizza for dinner. August is a fan, eating almost a whole piece. A lot of playing in the evening, with Duplos, his new glass markers (although we used them on paper), reading in the reading area, and in the bath. And a LOT of looking at the wood grain throughout the day. He slides across the floor, saying “grain, grain, grain” and pointing. He also did it on the headboards when we were playing on the bed. He also had some iPad time in the evening. A lot of jumping around between his usual programs. I also introduced the Montessorium Letters app to him. He doesn’t have the fine motor control yet to trace the letters himself, but he liked holding on to my finger as I did it, and he would make the letter sounds.
He was up until close to 10. Will probably have a good night’s sleep.
New words/phrases: garbage recycling, red, cooking, ravioli (rah-vole-ee), Pooh dada hug, button on mama’s shirt, Smokey (kee-kee), no flag (no flags on flag pole), dada do c, banana moon, sorry mama
Petrified wood:
Back home:
Children’s Park: