August was awake at 7:40. He was sitting next to Carly on the couch a little later, and I came and sit next to him. He was patting our legs, and surprised us by saying “Dada is sitting by me.”
Carly had to leave to go to her annual dentist appointment. I was thinking of taking August along and going to the National Museum while she had her appointment, but I had a weird back pain last night and didn’t feel like going so far. Luckily, it went away quickly in the morning.
Anyway, August and I had out his leftover stickers from class on Tuesday and he was trying to figure out where to put one. This was when Carly left. 15 minutes later, we were still looking at the book, going through all the pages again and again, him saying “another page.” I was pointing out all the funny places he could put the sticker of a digging mole (like in the center of a snowman), so I was saying “That’s funny,” He picked up on that and kept pointing out things he thought were funny. This continued throughout the day, as he called the fork and knife on the floor of the cafe funny, and the wooden penguins funny.
We’ve been trying to get him to cut down on writing on the floor with the crayons, so when he does it, we make him stop and clean it up before he proceeds. Today, that happened and I had a wipe out but he didn’t want to do it, telling me “Dada wipe.”
We finally headed out of the house at 10:40, headed for CGP. We met Carly in the subway station, and bought a couple sandwiches for lunch. August had told me twice on the trip that he wanted to go to the children’s museum first, so that’s where we headed. As we headed in, he told Carly “Play area is fun.”
We went up and changed him and ate, then went to play. He wanted to go to the “big kids area”, so we started at the spaceship. Spent most of his time kind of dancing/counting numbers in front of the screens, playing with the Hangeul magnets, and air writing Spanish on the floor.
He wasn’t quite ready to go when we left, but it was getting close to 1. We put him in the backpack and did our usual walk, with Carly for the first time, and he fell asleep from 1:09 to 2:22. He woke up all excited, as he saw Carly right away and said “Nurse!” He then saw her iPad and said “Mama’s Nook book!” After he woke up he played in the cafe until about 3, pointing out letters and words on the ground for most of the time.
Carly headed home to get some work done. As August saw her walking away he did his best “Miss Mama” a few times while she could still hear. He didn’t really get upset though when she was gone. We went to check on the new playground, but it still wasn’t open. I gave him the choice between animals, the other playground, and the children’s museum. He chose “other playground.” So we walked to the Adventureland Playground. As we got close, I asked “Hmm, can you find the playground?” He surprised me by pointing and saying “Right there!” as opposed to his usual “I see it!” Or just pointing.
We played there until 4. Mostly writing in the sand, although we also went on the musical instruments for a good while. He sang ABCs while hitting the xylophone, but I didn’t get my phone out in time to record that. The drums are falling more apart, and all that is left is the big one. I had August sit on it though, and I could hit the side of it and still make a nice sound, vibrating him. He kept wanting me to sing the numbers song over and over as I drummed to it.
As we were writing, I wrote ‘Mama’ and he first said “M A M A pattern!” Awhile later he was asking me to draw patterns. Also, when I started doing a crosshatch pattern he identified it as “crosshatch.” We’ve also been working on punctuation.
At 4 we headed to the entrance. He wanted to walk though, and it was his longest walk yet. He made it all the way past the fountain, close to the bathrooms, but the walk ended when he fell and scraped his knees. About 400 meters by then, without wanting to be picked up. It took a long time though, about 20 minutes, as he was carrying a stick and stopping along the way to write on the ground, trees, vending machines, and everything else.
We stopped at the grocery store, him in the backpack, on the way home and got strawberries and crackers and a couple other things.
Came home and skyped with Glecy and shared dinner – more turkey, zucchini, rice, and cheese – with me. Then spent a long time in the evening coloring with Carly. He kept turning the pages so they would color on another page. The notebook is getting very full and colorful by now. In the new crayons gold was his favorite, and he’s already used that crayon, and almost one of the blues, up.
When Carly changed him before his bath he started another joke – saying “Happy birthday” to random people, including “Happy birthday, Auntie Q.”
She gave him a bath and they did more coloring, then it was time for bed. He said a lot of “Miss dada”s, but went to bed pretty quickly, around 8:40.
New words/phrases: Dada is sitting by me, another page, that’s funny, right there, crosshatch
Children’s museum:
Cafe:
Playground. Trying to trace my letters:
He found this bent stick and was turning it back and forth, as it looks like two Hangeul characters: ‘g’ and ‘n’ :
You get an idea of how much writing we did in the sand:
Our long walk:
“Upside down V”:
Seeing the Hangeul N in the bricks:
Home:
He had been holding the water bottle just by his teeth. I caught it just as he dropped it:
I think he’s staying, turning it over there. in the last post.