We had another interesting day, both in terms of August’s sleep and what we did. He woke up at 8:07. He walked out, and instead of getting upset when I told him mama was at work, he pointed to the table and said “more play doughs.” Seriously his favorite toy at the moment, and he’d later talk about wanting to do play dough a few times through the day.
Eggs and grapes for breakfast. He ate a lot, which was good, as he wouldn’t eat much during the day. The other big morning activity was when I got out the matching blocks and the cards that go with them. We used to play with the blocks, but hadn’t tried matching them. He caught on pretty fast and was working pretty intently to match them.
Left the house around 10. Took the stroller, as later in the day we would be meeting up with Carly and going to eMart to pick up the clean blanket, so we could put it under the stroller. Only drizzling at first. About halfway to Dream Forest we came across the Wolgye Library so decided to check that out. Turns out they have a whole ‘young readers room’, and a really good selection of English books. We were there close to an hour. Also found two interesting Korean books: a counting book about poop, and a color book that was about snails eating different things and then their slime turning different colors – yes, just like class yesterday. So this is a ‘thing’ in Korea.
We checked out the rest of the building (oh, and August really liked the table full of little painted dolphins in the entryway) then continued on our way. It was starting to rain heavier now. I decided there was no point in going all the way to DF, so settled on a park by the stream we’ve been to a couple times. As we walked up the stream we were first thwarted by a path that ended in stairs. Retracing our steps, we passed covered benches by a playground in an apartment complex. Decided we could eat lunch there. But August had different ideas. There was a lot of trash around, and I think he was frightened both by a loud truck nearby, and by a cup left on a bench – he kept pointing to it and saying “someone’s”. He made it clear he wanted to go, pushing away the food and wanting back in the stroller. When I asked if we should keep walking, he said “more walking.”
Rain was miserable now, so I forced him to put his feet inside and zipped closed the cover. He accepted that quite well. So we walked another 10 minutes or so to the park I was aiming for. He still didn’t really eat, but he played in the rain. Wouldn’t put up his hood, so I stood over him with an umbrella. At first this bothered him to – he kept pushing my leg to make me go away – but he got used to it. He played by pushing the toys and moving the seesaw up and down (saying “up, down” as he did so) and just doing a lot of watching/looking around. He pooped so I changed him on the bench. He initially wanted to go back to playing, but just kind of stood around. It was about 12:40, and I don’t usually start any sort of nap procedures until the 5 hour mark, so I asked if he wanted to play iPad until then. He initially said yes, but then started crying. I asked if he was tired, and he made it clear he was, and back at the stroller he wanted in.
So we got walking, and he fell asleep on our way back to the library. I had initially planned to go to a coffeeshop, but when I found out the library building had a lounge I figured that would work. So I reclined the seat for him and he slept quite well, 1:06 to 2:22.
He woke up and we went to Jill and Derek’s house to pay Jill and Rosie a visit. That was the plan. August had different ideas. He had a meltdown like I’ve never seen. Crying and calling for “mama”. Best we can figure is that he’s always been there when Carly is there. He knew we were meeting up with Carly at some point, so I think he expected her to be there. Did get him calmed down and he played with magnet letters for about 5 minutes, but then he just turned to me, got his sad look, and started crying again. Tried to Skype with Carly to see if that would work, it did for a minute, but that was it.
So we left early. Back to the library, where we got a stack of Eric Carle books and a few others. Hung out there for another hour+ reading those, playing on the iPad, and doing stickers/drawing in the notebook. Carly met us there, and she read with him. Also, there was an art class going on in the room we had hung out in before. There were windows into it, and I had shown August that they were playing with clay, which was like play dough. A few times he stood at the glass door, watching, saying “more play doughs.” At one point a woman inside was playing with him, beeping his nose through the glass.
We walked to Home Plus where we got the blanket, ate at KFC, and bought two more pairs of pants for August. While there, I put my hat on August and he watched himself in the mirror. Very funny.
We walked home in the dark. August did quite well. We took turns entertaining him by running in front of the stroller.
Home close to 7. August did not want to go to bed anytime soon. Long story short, he didn’t fall asleep until 11:20. Crazy. He was very funny and amusing most of that time though. A lot of playing with play dough (he really liked Carly pretending it was snot), reading the Spanish books Carly had ordered and that arrived today, and, earlier on, playing on the bed. I read Kipper to him which has a line about Kipper turning in a circle. August whipped around and said “I turn.” Showing some cool understanding and sentence construction there. He did not, however, like his bath, which Carly made a short one.
New words/phrases: ‘m’ again (doing play dough), library, Sherbert (monster character), bing-gul, more coming (from) nose, fat S (a fat play dough ’S’), I turn
Library:
Park:
Nap time:
Waking up:
Library visit #2:
eMart:
Home:
