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A good day of sleeping for August. He slept ten hours for the night, and then took naps of 90 minutes and two hours. 

During the day we went to the park and saw two new exhibits at the Buk art museum.  

We were going to go to APIS to hang out with 7th graders after school and come home with Carly after her activity, but since he slept two hours for his second nap we didn’t go.  

August now has six teeth and seems to be working on more. He is also doing a lot of waving and working on his walking.  

Teething:

So after his nap I froze some apple sauce for him. It was a hit:

He has started offering things – particularly food – to other people. Today he took it a step further and started offering things to the balloon man in Carly’s painting. You can see that in this video:

He also went crazy with waving today, particularly into mirrors:

When we went outside it was only 16 or 18 degrees. We walked around the park and checked on the pigeons:

In the art museum there were a few pieces that caught August’s attention. This was one of them:

When we got back he fell asleep as soon as we got home:

When he woke up he spent a lot of time standing and playing at the coffee table and couch:

We knew Carly was on her way home and August started to walk down the hall. So I opened the door and we kept walking. All the way to the elevators:

We had to wait for a few minutes, and August wanted to play with the bumps on the floor. These are the same bumps we would drive the stroller over to calm him last spring:

Since he loves the Very Hungry Caterpillar and is fascinated by this same caterpillar in Logan’s room we got one for August:

A second applesauce popsicle in mama’s lap:

Before bedtime I caught video of two other developments. A game of falling on the bed, and cruising around his crib:

You get to see him wave. I am pretty sure he is waving at the washing machine:

August didn’t get asleep until 10pm last night and woke up at 6am. Then, when he fell asleep for a nap he only slept for 38 minutes. Not sure why he’s having some sleeping weirdness. It could be his teeth, but there aren’t really any other indications that they are bothering him. And he is still in a good mood. 

Anyway, the result was that he took another nap just an hour and a half later. He ended up missing his music class today as he slept through most of it.  

So when he woke up we made up for it by going to the kid cafe in the building next to us. For 3 bucks we could play for two hours. And boy did he have fun.  

From there we quickly came back to the apartment and then left to take the bus to APIS for my one PT appointment this week. He fell asleep on the bus, but only slept 20 minutes before waking up when we got to APIS.

While I went to the appointment, August watched part of the APIS Christmas concert. He really liked it at first but started to make too much noise after awhile. So when I got back to school following my appointment we hopped on the bus to head home. 

He fell asleep on the bus and stayed asleep once we got home. So we will see how long he sleeps tonight. 

Here he is in the morning: 

Playing in the bath:

Waving to the camera:

Standing at the table and playing:

Sleeping through his music class:

Here he is waking up from that long nap. He is now sitting up at the end of almost every nap:

At the kid cafe the woman working there spent a lot of time with him (there were only two older kids there most of the time) and he had fun with all sorts of things. 

Like the toys: 

And the merry-go-round:

And the octopus:

And the trampoline:

And sliding down the ramp:

And walking with a walker:

And playing in the ball pit:

And riding a rocking toy:

And more push toy:

While at APIS he had fun playing with the globe and beach ball in Carly’s room:

After it snowed a bunch last night it took a few hours to drop below freezing, leaving everything cold and icy. So we didn’t plan on going to far today. 

Then there was August’s sleep schedule. He woke up around 3am and stayed awake for an hour and a half. I stayed up with him for awhile, then Carly took my place. He fell back to sleep but woke up at 7:10 – which seemed too early. But then he proceeded to only take a single 45 minute nap between them and when Carly got home at 5:30. 

He then took another nap and woke up around 6:30 just enough to nurse. We then proceeded to wake him up, thinking we didn’t want him to just fall asleep for the night. Thought we would be lucky to keep him up an hour. It is now 10 and he is still awake, although perhaps about to fall asleep. 

Anyway, we did make a successful trip to Home Plus and have a lot of fun around the apartment. Here are some highlights: 

Awake in the 3am range: 

Up (at 7am) and doing what he does best:

Milk time. Did I mention yesterday that he has started to sign ‘milk’?

Practicing for his part in the baby production of Hamlet. “…a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy…”:

Playing by th crib is obviously popular given how much time he spends there:

Awake from his one and only nap:

Under…

and around the table:

Finishing off a banana:

Off to Home Plus. Clear skies and ice:

Play time with mama:

Put him in the bouncy chair about 9:30 as he was still hyper. He proceeded to bounce like a mad man. Here he has calmed down a bit:

We had August’s third activity class and in the evening went to APIS for the Christmas dinner. 

When he woke up this morning j found him sitting up in bed. So that is a first. He was a bit fussy, so I didn’t take time for a photo, but he soon cheered up:

At his class we started with the usual songs. There were then a variety of activities involving fish. He tolerated the hat for about ten seconds:

We then played with fish-shaped rattles:

His favorite activity though was the parachute:

There were also the usual bubbles, and then we ended with playing with fish stickers. August really loved the fish sticker I put on his sock. After the class was over he was still playing with it and showing it off:

August didn’t cry once during the class, and as you can see from the above photo, he was happily sitting and playing by himself a few feet away from me while I put on coats. 

Back at home there was some good playing and a nap:

It started snowing and basically just kept snowing all afternoon and into the evening. So we took the bus to APIS instead of walking:

When we got to APIS we were greeted by one of the faculty kids. He was feeding August snow, which is what I was trying to get a photo of, but he posed for the camera instead:

Before the staff dinner, we had some time to spend in Carly’s room. He likes playing with the broken globe:

He had a blast at the dinner. Here he is going crazy with the kisses for Carly when she held him:

He fell asleep during the bus ride home. He woke up a bit when we tranferred him to the bed, but Carly got him back to sleep and he was down for the night:

Finally, our neighborhood dinosaurs in the snow:

We went for a walk along the stream and river today that was quite nice. And this evening I went with a couple friends to see The Theory of Everything. A good film; not great, but worth the ten bucks.

But I thought today would also be a good day to highlight some of August’s accomplishments. 

Perhaps the coolest one today was doing the sign for milk/nurse – it basically looks like squeezing your fist. He only did this while nursing, so no video, but it was very deliberate and different from his usual motions. So that will be his first sign and second official word.  

The next notable accomplishment is putting objects on/in other objects. He has been putting the salad spinner lid on the spinner for a couple days, and Carly has seen him set small objects on other objects. Below you will see him put a block in a small box.  

What else? Crawling more, our first video of him walking while holding my hands (although he has been doing that for some time), more vocalizing… Oh, and he pretty much has the pincher move (finger and thumb) down although I don’t know if we have a video of that.  

To the photos and videos:

Dinsing the best object for teething. Five teeth so far; I expect number six soon: 

Playing and crawling:

Not long ago he couldn’t pull himself up by the vertical bars. Not a problem now:

First toothpaste. Banana flavored. Warning: underwhelming video ahead:

Our walk:

Crane:

In the afternoon/evening:

Figuring out the double sided tape:

His feet while he eats:

Crawling:

Some nice vocalizing and playing with a tear in the floor:

Walking:

Putting a block in a box and dumping it out:

Seoul Trail is a 170km or so trail around the entirety of Seoul. My friend Derek and I are planning on doing it in 20 chunks or so over the course of a year. We got started today on the first portion. While I was busy doing that, Carly and August were, I’m sure, doing equally exciting things. But I wasn’t there to take photos, so it basically didn’t happen. 

I was around in the morning though to watch Carly spinning this bottle for August. He was pretty transfixed: just not when I was filming:

The hike was quite excellent. Pretty easy, as hikes go, as the trail generally runs parallel to the city a few hundred meters away. You go up and down a bit, but there aren’t any peaks you are going over. I’ll spare you the details (I’ll link to Derek’s blog posts about the hike when he gets them written in case you want to know more), but here are a few shots I took along the way:

After finishing our 7.2km hike, I returned home. We had about an hour before we set out for dinner at their house.

With the potentially slippery sidewalks, we have gone back to using the stroller more often. He is still getting used to it, and totally fought being put into it, but was fine once we got going:

Falling asleep in the stroller. I should have worked to get less glare, but the light was changing. He fell asleep right before we got there and finished his nap in the stroller:

Once he woke up from his nap, August had all sorts of fun. 

He ate dinner in Logan’s high chair and then sat there for quite awhile – I think because he had a great view of everything going on: 

It turned into a game of putting the container in my glass:

Derek was pretty successful in holding him this time:

They had Christmas lights up and August loved them. We will have to get ours up soon:

Winnie the Pooh:

Looking at the Christmas tree:

Playing in the general vicinity of Logan:

This is a great photo to end on. You have to love the hair and the eyes:

Snowed nicely this afternoon and evening, starting with a few flakes when August and I started a short walk and picking up during our walk and while we were in the grocery store. 

In the morning: 

He is really moving around more. At one pint he started in his room, went into the hall, contemplated the bathroom, went into the guest room, back to the hall, and down the short step to the front door:

He played with himself in the mirror for several minutes:

On our walk:

By the time I was coming home from PT and Home Plus it was snowing nicely again and the park was quite white:

Crawling around, he decided he would go into the bedroom:

He managed to spill a bunch of water from his sippy cup, so then got to splash in it. Much fun. Thus the wet sleeves:

August and I had fun checking out a couple parks in the Suraksan area and scouting out the beginning of the Seoul Trail (which runs around Seoul for 170km or so and my friend Derek and I plan on hiking it – in pieces – over the next several months). 

We also hung out in a coffee shop for awhile and then headed to APIS to visit with 7th graders and encourage them to finish their National History Day projects, which are due tomorrow.  

First, August is really loving the book we got from his Monday class. Also, I don’t think I’ve mentioned that it came with a CD of music that she also uses in class. If I put on one of the three songs he has heard in class he totally snaps to attention and listens. Very cool. Anyway, here he is with the book: 

He loves this flap of the duck and duckling so much that he will probably rip it off soon:

As he has suddenly gotten much more mobile over the last few days, he can also move from his tummy to sitting with ease. It also means that he moves his body into all sorts of different shapes. 

Combine that with the new silly faces he was making today and you get photos like these: 

Our walk was cold but lovely. We were in the area a few miles north of us where you have Bukhansan just to the west, our River in the center, and then Suraksan just to the east. You can walk from the base of one mountain to the base of the other in about 20 minutes. 

I had women (not) helpfully worried about August being cold headed both ways on the subway. He was wearing two pairs of socks, two pairs of pants, two sweatshirts, in the carrier strapped to me, with the cover, and wearing a warm hat. 

For example, when we got on the very warm subway headed north, a woman got up out of her seat and adjusted his hat over his ears even though I was about to take it off him. She then tried covering up his hands with the sweatshirts even though I had just taken them out so he could actually use them. 

Note: It only got down to 32 today and was sunny. 

Anyway, after we had been walking for awhile, it was indeed time to get in out of the cold for awhile. So we went in a coffee shop and had a latte (me) and milk (him) and warmed up for awhile. 

As I mentioned, he is really workingn on lids. Got to develop that fine motor control. He was practicing in the coffee shop:

Of course, we are also working on sitting at a table. He managed to make it without banging his head on the table. Although he kept trying to climb on the table. But for a few minutes at least he was calmly sitting on the bench:

Some of the scenery:

Base of Suraksan with the mountain in the background:

From a lovely green area along a stream looking over at Dongbonson (the peak at the north end of Bukhansan National Park) to the west

Didn’t take photos/videos at APIS as we were trying to keep students focused on their homework. However, he fell asleep right as we were getting ready to leave, so I took this:

Back home he continued to play with the book. He also really enjoys these pages, which have two of his current favorite things, cats and dogs. Even better is that the ears of the dog and tail of the cat are fluffy, and thus suckable:

Carly noticed the older babies first handing objects to other people at the first birthday party we went to a couple weeks ago. August must have taken note because he started doing it soon after:

He’s been out in the world for as long as he was inside Carly. Somehow that makes him seem old. 

He had his second music class, which went great. But first, a new toy in the morning:

Playing in the chair before his nap:

Music class. Playing with a drum:

Finger puppets:

Finishing with bubbles:

The best part was that at the end of class he wanted to just keep playing and didn’t care if I wasn’t right with him. While he has enjoyed the classes up to now, he has generally wanted to be in my arms all the time. This made putting on my coats and the carrier at the end difficult. But today he just kept happily playing:

Back home:

Working on the standing. His record is 15 seconds:

He has loved the quilt for a long time and enjoys feeling the green fuzzy part. Think this is the first time he got it filmed: