Author: Ryan/Dada

With one spring-like day in the forecast, we had to take advantage of it. I went with two friends to do the second leg of our walk around Seoul on the Seoul Trail. While I did that Carly and August sent to the store, and later went for a walk to the stream and played at a playground. And it was the first time that Carly got to take him on the swings. 

 

Skyping with Thatcher and the rest of the family: 

Playing on the bed: 

Eating dinner with Marshy: 

With his diaper garbage can: 

From our walks. A couple shots of what I saw: 

And August with Carly at the playground, hanging out at his favorite spot, the bottom of the slide: 

While Carly was off at the NHD competition (they did quite well, with one 7th grade group taking 1st place), August and I kept busy. We Skyped with Vivian for over a half hour, did recycling, played at the kid cafe, went to Dream Forest where we played at the playground and played and ate in the cafe, walked to APIS, and walked home with Carly.  

He has gotten pretty good with a high five, and in fact have his first high five to a stranger when a middle school girl asked him for a high five when we left Cafe Dream.  

Also, he has taken two shuffle steps – one yesterday and one today – so he is at least thinking about walking.  

Morning: 

His wake up photo for Carly: 

Giving a high five: 

Skyping with Viv: 

Kid cafe: 

As soon as we left the cafe and were on the escalator he looked tired. By the time we reached the first floor he was asleep: 

After a nap, we were off to Dream Forest for the playground and cafe: 

August and I got a lot of stuff done around the house this morning, like taking a bath, cleaning the bathroom, and making banana bread. But we had time before his nap to go grocery shopping, and after his nap we got out for a walk along the stream and play time at a playground. 

Tammi (8th grade English/SS) came home with Carly to stay here for the night. They are both going to National History Day very early tomorrow morning, so this worked best. 

August loved having a guest and we went and got pho for dinner.  

 

He had a slow wake up. He actually laid back down on a pillow, facing away from me, and stayed there for a few minutes: 

Then he turned towards me: 

And then he was awake and ready to wave to mama: 

Playing in the morning and demonstrating his movements: 

Then he got some clothes: 

On our walk to the store they were tearing up the ice rink. So we watched them work for awhile: 

At the store I tried on belts and it was amusing to watch August crawl around with all of his clothes on. He flapped his mitten to hit the belts: 

Back home: 

He kept pulling on his hair as if he just discovered it: 

Asleep for a nap: 

Before going on our walk he had a conversation with the vacuum cleaner: 

On our walk we stopped at a playground. We went on the swings, he played on a slide, and six boys came over and talked to us: 

On our walk along the stream we had a nice view of the sun and the power plant: 

In the evening with Tammi: 

He showed off his spitting while we waited for our pho: 

He enjoyed reading with her: 

We have a bunch of videos today, so here it goes.  

We went to Children’s Grand Park. First to the children’s museum for lunch and to play, then we walked to the zoo, only to find the whole thing is closed due to avian flu. But we could still see the seals from up top and the conservatory was open.  

From there we returned to the children’s museum and played for another hour. First we explored the science section on the third floor, then went back to the infant area.  

We headed home, stopping to swing along the way.  

Carly brought home with her a letter to August from my parents, and his first birthday present from Vivian.  

Onwards to the videos and photos: 

Waking up: 

Stacking: 

This is his little rocking of excitement that he managed to stack them: 

Children’s museum: 

Seals and plants: 

Watching the fish and waterfall: 

Banana flower: 

Walking back to the museum, he took off his hat by pulling the pom pom. I tried to pull back and said ‘no’ but he laughed. It was a new game. I tested, and no other word elicited a response when I pulled back on the hat. Only ‘no’. This may make discipline more difficult. Or at least funny: 

Back at the children’s museum: 

Kissing the horse/zebra. He actually did this on his own, but did it again when I asked him to kiss the horse: 

Back home, he really liked his card from grandma and grandpa (it has a dog on it) and the birthday present of Vivian’s favorite things: 

It was a nice warm day today so we had to get outside. The pollution levels almost ruined that as the particulate measure started to climb. Luckily, it didn’t get too high and we were able to enjoy the day. 

After a morning at home he took a shortish nap and woke up in time to go to his music class.  

From there we walked to Toys R Us to buy more bubble mix. While there we sat in the food court and ate his lunch. He drew quite a crowd. Made worse by the fact that he keeps waving to everyone.  

We walked back to Home PLus to do some grocery stopping and then stopped at the playground on our way home to do some sliding. 

I had PT and while on the way home August sent me his first Skype video message (presumably with Carly’s help). We then Skyped as I did part of my walk home.  

A couple observations today:

He is quickly picking up the Head to Toes book. In addition to the ‘bend my neck’ instruction that he started to so yesterday, today he started to pick up on ‘pound my chest’ and ‘clap my hands’. He would first help me pound my own chest, much as he would previously hold one of my hands and help me clap my hands, but wouldn’t clap his own hands. But then he started pounding his own chest. He then, at the end of the book, started to actually clap. Unfortunately, we needed to leave to make it to his class so we couldn’t further practice these. 

He hasn’t been into clapping yet, but he also started to do a better high five today, repeatedly clapping my hand hard enough to make noise.  

While at music class we had these buckets with foam disks in them (see video below). The first time he had one filled with the foam disks he picked it up with two hands, dumped it on his own head, then put the bucket on his own head for a few seconds. The teacher had just demonstrated this. Alas, he didn’t do it again, so no evidence.  

He has an ‘In the Garden’ book that shows different types of gardens and the plants and animals in them. Each garden has a bird in it, and I started pointing them out this morning. By this evening he was doing a good job of pointing out the bird on each page, often without any help or prompting. This was impressive as children this age, and particularly boys, are much better at seeing motion and objects in high contrast environments. So objects like the birds in these realistic paintings are often difficult to distinguish (it is kind of like and I Spy book). We’ve been focusing a lot on identifying objects in books like Where the Wild Things Are and that seems to be paying off.  

Music: when he was tired this morning but not taking a nap, I put on his first playlist of songs. He cuddled on my shoulder for four songs. We then played for a few songs and he heard a Jason Webley song that I sing to him as a lullaby. He recognized it and stopped playing and wanted to go on my shoulder again. That lasted two songs and then he went back to playing. It was another hour or two before he took a nap. 

Books: On the it-was-cute-the-first-couple-times side of things, he has decided that the best way to get my attention when he wants to read a book is to hit me in the face with it. This has replaced the ‘look at me, I am putting the book in my mouth’ method, probably because it is more effective. If I am looking away (cleaning up toys, doing something on my phone, reading a different book) , I could miss the book in mouth attention getter. The book upside the face, not so much. 

 

Breakfast: 

Music class: 

Notice how he likes to set the drum stick on top. Also, his use of a foot: 

Lunch in the Toys R Us food court: 

His favorite spot at the playground: 

Sending a Skype message to dada: 

This little man is 11 months old today: 

Today we went to Dongdaemun. We first ate a lunch and did some shopping and exploring. Then when he fell asleep I went to the design museum and then up to the design lounge (the place with the chairs where we went before) and read until he woke up.  

We then walked over to little Russia and went to a bakery before walking back past the DDP, walking down a few new streets and then heading home.  

In the morning August ate two nice breakfasts and spent a lot of time playing, in particular reading his Napul Napul books: 

On our trip: 

Waving to someone during lunch #1: 

Playing on the floor. He liked the circles: 

Messing up a window: 

After his nap, more playing in the design lounge: 

A second lunch in the nursing/changing room: 

On our walk to little Russia we found this: 

Finally, August really likes flags, particularly when it is windy. So he really liked the flags at the DDP today: 

Here we are walking up to and through them on our way back: 

 

August slept until close to 8, allowing me to get some work done in the morning. 

He woke up happy and had a good breakfast. We read a lot of books, and he seemed to focus on books we hadn’t read for awhile: Tickle, Barnyard Dance, and But Not the Hippopotamus. 

He started acting tired after 2 hours, but ended up making it to 7 hours and doing quite well along the way. 

First up was his Monday class. It was perhaps the best one. The main activity was all about textures and August loved it. She had all sorts of squares with different things glued to them and you could walk the babies over them. August decided he preferred to use his hands, but would also reach out his foot like another hand and feel with that. Very cute and resourceful. 

From class we headed straight to the subway and headed 5 stops south to Costco. Restocked our cheese supply and got lunch and got out of there pretty quickly. 

Found a nice seating area in the subway station to eat our lunch. Was going well for several minutes but then an overly nice woman came over and wanted to help. First she wanted to wipe his nose using some brown liquid from her water bottle, then she was very concerned when he fell down (it was a gentle fall and he didn’t cry at all), followed by being concerned when food fell on the bench and he tried to eat it (I had wiped down the bench beforehand), and finally putting his mittens on when I was getting ready to go. Ugh. 

We made it home just fine and he actually stayed awake a bit longer. He slept for an hour but was awoken by some majorly loud hammering from outside. He tried to get back to sleep, but just couldn’t. 

He ate a good second lunch and then we walked around while waiting for Carly to get home. 

In the evening, Carly tried to introduce him to mustard, which backfired as he got too much and threw up. 

But later he ate a huge dinner involving egg, tofu, broccoli, strawberry, prune, and cauliflower. 

We had a nice family game of playing with the orange ball. It was really the first time we had tried to pass/roll it to each other. He loved chasing the ball around and was getting better at sending it the right direction. 

Last night he slept pretty well, but a couple times when he sort of woke up he came straight for me and climbed on my face. Quite a way to be woken up. Twice. Carly had to save me both times. 

Saying hi for a photo for Carly after he woke up: 

Waking up: 

Playing with a sticker:

His class. The main activity was about textures:

Previewing the textures: 

Exploring. Note how he uses his foot: 

Foot and hand at the same time. The rocks were definitely his favorite: 

The full layout. He is feeling the other set of rocks: 

Lunch in the subway station: 

Perfectly content before being interrupted: 

Home. Awake for 7 hours. Looks ready for a nap: 

After his one hour nap: 

Earing lunch #2 and showing off the empty dish: 

Bubbles with mama: 

It was cold today. Forecast to hit 25, but the forecast changed to 23 this morning. And I’m pretty sure it didn’t hit much above 19. I was supposed to go hiking today but that was postponed due to the cold.  

So instead we spent a lot of today cleaning and then went, during the warmest part of the day, on a walk up to Starbucks (we still have gift cards) and then to the art museum to see the last day of a show there of art for children. 

August in the morning. He is actually opening and closing his hand here – something new – and not just waving: 

Getting ready for our walk. It was only 19 degrees, so a lot of clothes were involved: 

At Starbucks: 

At the Buk. It was the last day of this show about animals, so we took his picture with his three favorite pieces, the bull, red pigs, and the giraffe snake: 

And Carly drew on the white board: 

Walking home, we walked through the park a bit. August has a selection of sculptures and other objects he gets excited about. Today, he added these posts to the list: 

Back home for the evening: 

Eating a broccoli stem: 

Avoiding clothes: 

Playing with the freezer. He likes to touch the cold surfaces:

He just kept eating and eating this evening. He had two dinners and seemed reluctant to stop eating:  

He stayed up for close to 7 hours after his nap. Here he is finally close to ready to sleep. I don’t often look at August and think ‘oh, he looks like me.’ But his face in this photo reminds me of a photo of me or Paul:

A couple of people had scheduled a get together at the kid cafe right next door to us. The idea was we get there when they open at 10 in order to avoid the crowds. We were the first ones there and had the place to ourselves for the first 10 or 15 minutes. Then Chris and Ashley showed up with Kinsey and it was nice and relaxed for another half hour. By the time other families started showing up it was getting busy and August was ready for a nap so we headed home.  

August had a restless night last night because he was stuffy and gassy, and Carly didn’t sleep too well either, so they both took a nap.  

After that we ran an errand to the seamstress and we managed to get the key to our storage room down the hall. We have lived here for two years and just recently found out we have a storage room. Thanks, school. Anyway, that allowed us to move things like fans and car seats out of the apartment. Woohoo! 

We then made a shopping trip to Home Plus. On a Saturday afternoon. So it was busy. It went well though, and I think August actually liked it better, as there was more excitement and people to look at.  

Had enough time when we got back for dinner and a bath for August and then he was ready for bed.  

He was extremely talkative today and making all sorts of noises we haven’t heard before. He is also getting more confident in his crawling and climbing and will now simply crawl over my legs or whatever is in his way.  

He woke up talkative: 

At the kid cafe: 

Back home: 

He started off fine in the bath, but after a couple of minutes decided he was done and surprised Carly by climbing out of the bathtub. So his bath was finished standing up: 

He continued his talking and hamming it up after his bath: 

Not only is he deciding when his bath is over, he’s decided to start taking charge of the video taping and when that is over. He managed to stop the recording: 

But he was getting tired, so headed to bed right after 7: 

Finally, asleep for the night. Well, sort of. He seems stuffy so we think he will be restless again. Outfit chosen by Carly, position by August, photography by Ryan: 

After his bath he had another meal in his construction vehicles pajamas: 

We did our maybe-a-routine one-a-week trip to Dream Forest and the cafe there then walk to APIS and walk home with Carly. Since I moved to just one PT trip a week we didn’t have to hurry to get home at a certain time. 

We are lunch at the cafe, played, and met a seven month old baby and her mother.  

August was so intent on feeding himself and kind of playing around at the same time that I was actually able to read a few pages: definitely a first.  

Looking serious in the morning (but actually it is just that he was holding still; all the photos when he was moving came out blurry): 

A yawn in three parts: 

Laughing snotty boy: 

Before we left on our adventure, August decided he wanted to practice getting on and off the bed. This lasted at least ten minutes:

At the cafe he played one of his favorite games, pulling books off the shelf: 

While eating he was very amused by the bird in the wall. This is what he was laughing at in the following video: 

Playing around the cafe: 

He had put Bluey in the backpack so Bluey got to come along: 

August fell asleep after we left the cafe. We walked a new route to APIS, walking over two hills north of Dream Forest to get there. Here is the view from one of them: 

At APIS August got to eat part of Carly’s apple; his first apple in a long time (maybe since Seoul Forest with my parents when he only had two teeth):