We went to class, taking the stroller this time as we had a long grocery list for afterwards. Class was about the tiger and the cat. He likes that page in the book, so kind of knew what it was all about already. He really danced around to the opening songs. When she offered him cat or tiger hat and paws, he chose the tiger, but wasn’t about to put them on. There was also a shaker activity, and he really got into playing with them and stacking them with the teacher. But at one point August decided the activity was over, saying “all done”. He started handing shakers to the teacher (which is what they do when we are done with an activity), but she just thought he was being really nice. When she got down the bin to actually put them away, he was right on top of cleaning them up, even trying to pull one from Jungbin’s hands when he wasn’t putting it in the bin.
At the end of class, I had August hand out sticker packets from the DDP to all the other students and his teacher. That went well. And at the beginning of the class the teacher noticed August’s hair was cut and was impressed I had done it.
We then went shopping. Got all sorts of stuff. August saw the digital temperature gauge in the lizard’s cage and called it a clock, then “Oma’s clock”, remembering the clock at home.
We came home and made a smoothie and had salmon and crackers for lunch. At one point August got out his Korean baby animals counting book and ‘read’ the first pages, something like “Mama cow. One baby cow. One.” After lunch, he started ‘counting’ the red spots on the soccer ball. He’s known his numbers, but this is the first clear evidence that he understands what numbers stand for.
At the 5 hour mark he wasn’t looking tired at all. Finally, around 3 (6 hours) he was looking tired. When giving him choices he was choosing the bed over the stroller, and then being held over the bed, but he wasn’t falling asleep. Finally, I put him in the carrier and went for a walk. After taking a photo of the ‘Mexican’ chicken at the chicken place across the street, he finally fell asleep at 3:40. Got him in bed, and he slept until 4:20. Would have been good enough, I think, to get us through dinner, but he wanted more sleep. After crying for a few minutes he fell back to sleep on me at 4:25. At 5:00 I started trying to wake him up by talking and jostling him, and playing YouTube videos. Nothing. Finally, at 5:13 Carly came home and forced him to wake up.
Carly skyped with Glecy before we left for dinner. While she did that, August and I wrote on the whiteboard. We made the shift from ‘big’ and ‘little’ letters to ‘uppercase’ and ‘lowercase’. He liked that, and just wanted me to write the alphabet over and over. He would declare a case (“lowercase”), and I would write it out, then he would erase it with the eraser.
We went to dinner. On the way out the door, August was excited that we were all wearing coats, repeating “Mama’s coat, Zinnie’s coat, Dada’s coat.”
August liked standing on a chair and watching everyone as they came in. When the service started, he liked the music, but for the talkier stuff I took him out to where Miles and Cora were playing. He did great at dinner and ate a ton, trying a lot. The chicken was too spicy for him, but he loved the noodles, pizza, Korean pancake, and fruit. And dessert. He also liked spotting Megan in the crowd. We sat with Karl, Melinda, and Don and had good talks with them. When Carly was eating dessert, I took August out, and he just wanted to go look at all the yummy foods and try more things. He ate a couple of seasoned fries while we walked around, and ended up trying all of my desserts.
As we left, I had him give another pack of stickers to Megan. They were Le Petite Prince stickers, which turned out to be one of their favorite books.
Back home, we were talking about the fun we had just had and listing the foods he had eaten. He piped in with “Pizza. Yummy pizza.”
He was in no hurry to sleep. Carly ended up going to bed, and he stayed up with me until about 11:20 before going in to bed. Luckily, no false alarms. Around 10:30 he was almost ready to try to go to sleep with Carly, starting to close the door and saying bye bye to me, but changed his mind, coming out of the door to close Carly in, saying “night night, Mama.” He didn’t go back to the bedroom until he went in and fell asleep.
He now knows 5 digraphs: ‘sh’, ‘ch’, ‘oo’, ‘er’, and ‘qu’. He’s identified at least the first 3 on signs as we are out and about. Have started showing him Korean words to work on syllables, starting with Jungbin (중빈) and sangsaengnim (my teacher – 산생님). Need to start hanging Korean words in the house as well.
Oh, and his awareness of outside sounds is continuing. Really noticing sounds coming from the hallway today. I taught him it was neighbors, so he was saying “hear neighbors”. Carly then taught him it was monsters, so he was saying “hear monster”.
One minor tragedy today: I think we lost blue broom on our return from Home Plus. Farewell, blue broom. You served us well.
Class:
Back home:
Asleep:
Dinner:
