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He woke up at 6:49. He sat in the doorway and asked for mama once. I sat down near him, and his only being upset when I said she was at work was to tell me to “Move” away from him. But a minute later we were sitting together on the couch. He suggested going outside but I told him it was colder and cloudy and he just leaned against me instead until he had to sneeze, then said he wanted to watch the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Ninth. Then played Namoo and Human Body.

We read There’s a Wocket in My Pocket! and Gustav, the Goldfish. He was then hungry so had a couple of slices of apple, and played with his plastic extendo arm and got his sandal and called it his “shoe hand” and used it to keep his hand from getting cold when he touched the freezer. I had music on and a track called “Death Speaks No. 2” he said “I like this. Add it to your playlist.”

He wanted oatmeal and banana for breakfast, so we had that. He played with the plastic piece extendo arm and had it peeing. He assured me “Don’t worry. It’s not real.” Exercised, then he was stretching with the extendo arm on the window to see how high it could reach. His iPad froze and restarted “I’m going to push it away so I can’t see the Apple.” I took a shower while he read/played with Little Green Riding Hood.

He started talking about going outside pretty early, so I started getting ready to go. At one point he jumped off the couch and declared “I want to move to Israel now.” I asked “What made you think of that?” He replied with “Mama’s at work…I want to do a work(?) party…I want to do a Monday(?) party.” He then said “I want to go to Israel now…How many days until we go to Israel?”

Took us quite awhile from there though to get outside. When we tried to get clothes for him he instead thought up filling a shirt with other clothes, like a bag. He then stacked a bunch of clothes on Carly’s blanket, which was sitting in there. He then had the idea of taking the blanket out to the reading area and piling random stuff on it. So that turned into a long game involving Duplos, doctor stuff, smurfs, etc. At one point he listened to my heart. Then he had his shirt and was dropping small items down through the sleeve for a long time.

Finally, he was stacking things on his water bottle, then swinging the measuring tape around to the music, saying “Measuring tape sounds like…” When he dropped the measuring tape he just swung around his two arms in the air and said “Two arms sound like…”

We left at 11:50. He was singing on the way out: “Umbrella, umbrella, umbrella…scoot, scoot, scoot. I was playing a scooter…spray, spray, spray…I was playing a fire extinguisher.”

At Hagye station he started pointing at people and saying “I don’t like those people…I don’t like that person, I don’t like that person…” Had to explain ‘rude’ to him. Just talking and singing and playing on the way down. Wore my hat for a bit.

We took our second chicken bake, grapes, a banana, and crab for lunch today. We walked up by the rectangle pond to eat. I set him down and kissed his head. He said “Maybe you kissed bird poop.” He then proceeded to wipe it on me. We ate lunch and our banana and he asked where bananas come from. I reminded him there were banana trees in the botanical gardens and he wanted to go see them. But first we looked for the Ants Go Marching book, but it appears to be gone. He also found a stick and was throwing it. We left at 1:00.

He walked all the way to the botanical garden. We watched the frog fountains then went inside to find the banana trees, and look at the pond and fish. He then needed to use the bathroom so we went to the ones in the building. After that he was done with the botanical gardens. Outside, he played with the Little Rock’s and flowers in the pots. A mom and daughter came up. The girl wanted to take a photo with August – she had a Flat Stanley paper doll and it was for school. August obliged, and gave a funny pose. He needs to work on his smiling in such photos because he looks like he wasn’t having fun, but he was laughing about how he stood afterwards.

We talked about going to the four swing playground. We headed through the zoo, and came across the elephant at feeding time. We watched the elephant for about 10 minutes. It ate lettuce and apples, then rubbed itself off and ran around a bit and blew air out its trunk.

We walked up and over the hill (August still walking) at to the walking path, where he balanced a bit. He then walked into the four swing playground, but we found it had just been stained and was technically closed. Which wasn’t stopping several people from using it anyway. He played with the closed ribbons a bit, then we moved on to the flat area next to where they are building a new playground. They’ve suddenly started to build a lot more – concrete patch where one playground used to be (where August played with those two girls a few weeks back), etc. Don’t know if anything will be done before we leave…

He played with sticks in the dirt area, at one point holding two in the air at once. When he was done with that we sat on a nearby bench and ate a snack. We were basically out of food by the time we headed home.

Done with that, we headed to the children’s museum. He walked much of the way again, playing a couple of benches as instruments along the way. Finally, had me carry him a bit, but not much. By the big field east of the children’s museum we found a bunch of small buildings. Not sure why they were there, but they were fun. We talked about the fish painted on the side of one, then pretended to sell each other ice cream at an ice cream stand. Another was a full house with all the furniture painted on the walls. He pretended to sit on the couch.

When he decided we were done, he was impatient to go: “Children’s museum. I’m going.” And started walking off towards it. We got to the children’s museum at 2:40. It was packed. I later learned that schools were off today because of the presidential election. August started by wearing the butterfly and bee wings and smelling the flowers. Did that quite a bit. He then wanted to go to the “Space area” but first got distracted by rhythm gymnastics, then the window puff ball things. We then headed up to space, but he just looked around a bit, then headed up to the construction site. There he briefly put on a safety vest. He waited a turn to draw on the light art area, then was not upset when a smaller girl took it from his hand. He went to the vegetable garden area and planted some carrots, etc. then mainly played with the conveyor belt that takes bricks to the second floor. There were other kids playing with/running it, but this didn’t bother him, and he was happy pushing his way in to grab bricks from the basket to put on the conveyor belt.

He needed the bathroom again, so we went up to the third floor. He then walked to the cafeteria and we ate the rest of our lunch and crackers. He was still talking about being hungry – or at least wanting a treat – and I told him about how we were stopping at the bakery in the station on our way home. Also, it was supposed to start raining around 4:30, so it was a good time to take off. It was about 4.

In the station we played with some of the spinning fidget toys that are all the rage everywhere, then we chose a blueberry pastry for us again and a dark chocolate one for Carly this time. Ate most of ours while we waited for a train, then he stood at the bar for a bit before taking a seat on the train. There, one guy was concerned about the scrape on his leg. Which was fine until the guy was actually trying to touch August’s knee, at which point I shut him down. As if that wasn’t enough, the woman next to him was concerned that he was cold from the air conditioner. We went through a whole conversation, but she wasn’t appeased, and then reached down and was grabbing both of his legs to see if they were cold. I reached down and gently grabbed her hand and removed it from his leg and firmly said to her “He’s okay.” in Korean.

On th
e walk home he was singing the first two lines of “I lost my helmet” over and over. We went to Tous Les Jour and bought bread, then headed home. In the elevator, he noticed they had changed the art hanging up: “The art is different…Dada likes the art?”

We were home at 5:05. We were reading Gustav, the Goldfish as Carly got home. We finished that, then they nursed and had dinner. He ate a good amount. While nursing, I told her about how he had talked about moving to Israel. She asked if he was ready to move to Israel and he nodded yes.

We read Goodnight Already!, Going Places, and part of the Loch Mess Monster. He then gave the chocolate pastry to Carly, and she gave him some good bites of it. He had me remove a bit of paper from the bottom of a piece he got. He said Or maybe they make it with paper.”

He played a little Sound Rebound, then watched the Smurfs video again while Carly gave him a bath. He got upset when she tried to rinse his hair, so she had me come in to try to do it, but he wouldn’t let me touch it. So back to Carly. They got through it, then were watching more videos in the parlor. He was saying “I don’t like this one, might as well try this one.” Nice use of ‘might as well’. They found a Pink Panther cartoon and he laughed a lot. A bit upset to let it go, but we got him to bed and he was asleep by 7:45.

 

Photos. Big pile: 

Our last trip to Costco! No Costco in Israel, so likely our last Costco for some time.

Carly moved out to the reading area at 4 when she was stuffy. He woke up and followed her out and fell back to sleep until 6:43, a few minutes after she had left for work. He was sad she was gone, but not too upset. We sat by the door and he wanted to go out in the hall. When we got our shoes on and went out he hopped on the bike. We rode his bike through the hallways. He joked about going to B4, but then said he didn’t really want to. We stopped at the elevators and he watched the elevator numbers go up and down. We said hi to Sara as she headed to work and told her to have a good day – August repeated everything I suggested he say.

He wanted to go down to the first floor. There, we followed a hose going out of the building, and found a guy watering the bushes. He watched that a bit, then agreed to go back up to get our sweatshirts. It was sunny, but still a little cool. As we got off the elevator there was a high school girl waiting to get on and August asked “Who is that?” We grabbed sweatshirts – he didn’t get off the bike – and we headed back out and across to the park.

We were outside for an hour, but he stayed on the bike almost the whole time. He sang part of the Shooby shoo waa song from Poli class at one point. We rode around our side of the park, then cross at the north intersection to the other side. He did a little driving over there. Then we crossed the bridge back to our side and went to the playground. I went on the swing for a minute but he didn’t want to get off the bike. Instead, he found a bump in his sweatshirt pocket that turned out to be a caramel candy that someone had given him weeks ago. I let him eat that. We did more riding around, revisiting the scene of his fall, and he steered us to the bridge. We went over to the other side, rode around, then crossed back at the south intersection. He was doing a lot of pointing at trees and saying “That tree’s doing photosynthesis?” Or at flowers and saying “That’s flowers doing pollen?”

I was hungry and a bit sneezy, so finally convinced him to head home at 8:05. But he said “I want to go outside again.” But then he needed to go to the bathroom. After that he wanted some apple so I cut some. As he ate it he was asking what animals eat apples. I listed a few, and he asked “Ducks like apple?” I said probably they would. He then asked “They eat human skin?” I replied “I hope not.”

After the apple we had Cheerios and fruit. His with banana, me with strawberry. He wanted to watch Big Bird. So we watched Big Bird sing a song, then a few others. He then played some of his music apps (Seuss and Discovery Music) and I showered. As I finished up he came in and was wiping the sink with something, like a towel. I couldn’t tell what it was. When I got out I found out it was one of Carly’s shirts. When I asked why he said something like “I wanted a towel.” Also, he couldn’t remember where he found it.

We sat in thereading area and read the Welcome to the Orchestra book. Then he played the Namoo app. Perhaps the trees and flowers reminded him of outside, as he was ready to go outside. So I got ready. He played with his water bottle, sticking it up to the bananas and saying he was making ink. He had me take the lid off so he could pretend to squirt banana ink into the bottle. He said it was yellow, of course, and when he then drank the water he said it was yummy banana ink. I made a peanut butter and jam sandoo and he wanted to eat it at home, so we did that.

We were talking about having enough jam and honey to last us for five weeks, and I said “Because in five weeks we’re going to the United States.” He instantly replied with “To get bubble gum ice cream?” We hadn’t been talking about ice cream at all. That’s Carly’s influence on him.

He played with his fishing pole thing (from playing with Megan yesterday), then we brushed his teeth. He saw his plastic extendo arm up on top of the wardrobe so we got it down and he played with that. Before we left he went to the bathroom, but wanted me to turn the light off while he went. Did that a couple times today.

We left at 11:45. It was 73 degree. In the subway station, waiting for a train, he was still sitting in the backpack. Now that he is three I’ve had almost no comments about him being cold. But a woman came up and saw his bare arms and legs. She said he was cold and grabbed his arm. I was not amused. But it was when she really grabbed his leg and was pulling on it that I got upset and was telling her “No. You go!” (In Korean) and shoved her hand away from him. Of course, as we then waited to get on the train, the boy that ignores most people said “I want that woman again.”

We transferred at Sangbong and went two stops east to Yangwon. We got to the park at 12:30 and went to the playground. He found a light blue coat on the ground and played with that. He pretended it was an octopus squirting ink. He then wanted to go in the play structure, so we took our lunch and ate some of it in there. He didn’t eat a whole lot, and he only ate one of the pieces of mushroom that I offered him. He said “One bussot made me full.” We were climbing from platform to platform, and I was sitting with my legs up against the next one. He said “Up please. You’re in the way.” We climbed up to the top, and he slid the coat down the slide. He wanted to climb out though.

From there it was to the pirate ship, where we spent a lot of time pretending to spray things and each other with the long non working water cannons. He would aim it at me and it would spray off my hat.

Back over by the backpack, he was asking how long it took to count to 20 or something like that. So I actually got out a stopwatch. He was doing random things (to 22, to 18, etc.) but then we did the alphabet. He first did A to Z in 8.2 seconds, but later got it down to 5.41 seconds.

He found a dandelion gone to seed and spread the seeds and watched them blow away. He was then being a vacuum cleaner and said “I sucked up that Jellyfish because it stinged me. I sucked up that bee cuz it stinged me too.”

We filled up his water and were singing “What’s the name of that song?” He told me to sing and “Be the Count.” We left that spot at 1:55 and walked the street east (to avoid going over the hill) to the east side of the park.

He liked being in the shady path, but wanted to go over to the play hills when I told him about them. I’d seen kids on them before but didn’t realize the draw until August and I went on them – they are all springy, like a trampolines. He was singing “What’s the name of that song?” on his own. You had to take off your shoes, and August started pouring sand on the play part and got upset when I made him stop. But I got our broom to clean it up and he helped sweep it off. I also got Smokey and we made a game of throwing those and my hat up on the big hill, then he would climb up and get them and slide down the hill. At one point I point out the shelves for shoes and he took both of our pairs of shoes over there and put them away. We played until 2:30 when he had to go to the bathroom.

We went to the nearby bathroom, then walked back to the shady area and had more of our lunch. He saw his chopsticks and played with those. He then said “I want more backamapack…more walking time.” He got in and we left at 2:55.

We walked up by the temple and looked at it. I said it was too bad that it wasn’t windy because he had liked the fish wind chimes. Then it got just windy enough for us to see and hear them. But he really liked the fountain with a statue of a boy peeing. He thought that was really funny and we watched that for a couple minutes. He asked “It drank a lot of water?” We looked at some more of the statues, then got going at 3:10. We tried to get a look at the big construction site just to the east, but still not clear what’s going on th
ere. Briefly saw a big dump truck and backhoe though.

We walked to the west side of the park, then south, stopping so he could see the actual campground, as he wanted to see that. We then walked west towards Costco. He wanted some song (probably “We all sing with the same voice”) and asked “Dada’s going to pull up the words?” I had earlier said “I’m going to pull it up on my phone…” and he was asking about the phrase.

It had been cloudy, but hadn’t thought much of it in the park. But once we got to civilization I pulled up the air quality and realized it had gotten quite bad in the last couple hours. And here you could tell, what with the car exhaust, etc. trapped by the still air. Just as bad, August got quiet and I realized he was falling asleep. I couldn’t keep him awake, and he slept from 3:40 to 3:50. At that point I got to Costco and woke him up by the family statue out front.

He wanted back in the backpack, and I let him back in when I was sure he was awake. We went in and shopping and snacks went smoothly. We got our cheese and he got two samples: some white fish that was really good, and some sort of strawberry cheese thing. He somehow comment about how he got two good samples.

We went and paid (I was self conscious about our all-cheese purchase, after two of the books I’ve recently read, The Sympathizer and The Orphan Master’s Son, both had Asian characters complaining about how Americans ruin everything with cheese) and then got pizza for Carly and two chicken bakes for him and me.

We went outside and ate some chicken bake by the statue, said goodbye to the statue one last time, and headed home. At Sangbong Station he went to the bathroom, and I asked him if he was done on the toilet four times. At the end of the fourth question he said yes, then said “Dada got to ask four times.” A. Clearly he heard me every time, as he counted on his own and B. ‘Got’ to?

On the train home he stood, and he requested the same Smurf story as yesterday. Also, I now feel my time in Seoul is complete, as I made a guy get out of a seat for a pregnant woman for an actual pregnant woman. I had noticed when we got on that both such seats in that car were occupied by guys in their 20s, obvious to the world around them. After a couple stops I looked over to see a clearly pregnant woman standing in front of the guy a foot away from me. He now had his head back and eyes closed. I tapped him in the shin, and when he opened his eyes I point to the pink signs on the floor in front of him and read them. He looked around, saw the pregnant woman just standing, and let her have the seat. She said “Thank you” to me.

On the elevator home he didn’t say hi to someone who was saying hi to him. I asked why not and he said something like “I don’t say that anymore.”

We got home at 5:15. Carly had gotten an email about someone selling furniture in Israel, so we quickly emailed back, buying a pullout couch, a desk, a chair, and a microwave. Combined with the furniture that the school provides, we should be in pretty good shape.

Carly and August ate some dinner and nursed, and somehow got on a series of ‘making of’ videos, a lot of them from Mr. Rogers: erasers, flashlights, crayons, Legos, etc.

He wanted to read Bob Books at some point and we read 5 from the third collection. We shared the reading for the first 3, but then he just wanted made to read.

I gave him a bath. I had sung the Smurf theme song as part of our story earlier, and he remembered and wanted to see/hear it more. So I pulled up a video of it, then we ended up watching trailers from the new Smurfs movie. He really liked that and was upset when we were done and I put the iPad away.

In bed, I agreed to read Gustav before he went to sleep. They then tried for sleep, but he got upset. When he was asking for me she called me in. I sang some songs and he calmed down. She was going to try again, but he was requesting books. So she went to take a shower and I went and grabbed some paper books and we read The Hole in the King’s Sock and a couple others. Carly came back and he was asleep around 8:30.

Photos. Morning outing:

Finding the coat: 

Holding his pant leg off his wound: 

Spraying: 

Sliding down the big hill: 

Chopsticks: 

Falling asleep: 

Goodbye to Costco: 

He was up at 5:30 but Carly told him it was early and he fell back to sleep until 7. They talked to Oma and Opa and Scrambled egg, fried egg, and Cheerios for breakfast. When I got Cheerios, I asked if it was okay to use his blue bowl, as the other bowls were dirty. He said yes, but when he saw it he started to protest, but he settled for his blue bowl. Played Human Body, then he sang “Yankee Doodle” to Ode for Joy. He played in the sink for quite awhile.

After going to the bathroom, he ended up with his pajamas and underwear hanging from one foot. He called it “Foot hand…foot foot” And said “It’s funny!” He then moved things from cupboard to cupboard in the kitchen. I took a shower. I came out to find they had made a “cool fort” in the parlor out of the chairs, bathtub, and a blanket. They nursed. Again.

We read One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, much of The Cat on the Mat is Flat, and The Hole in the King’s Sock.

We went out for a walk at 11:40. Actually, Carly took him out, and I waited for laundry to finish, hung it up, then went and found them playing on the little hill by the dinosaur playground. He had found another big Y stick and asked “Why’s no one playing with it?” He said “There’s birds on it.” and called it an extendo arm: “I can touch poop with the extendo arm. Because poop is messy.” He even demonstrated how he couldn’t reach the leaves above with just his arm, but with his extendo arm he could.

Carly went to read. He played for a couple more minutes, then realized she was gone. He put the stick down, then made his way out of the bushes area. I was marveling at how he could make his way down the hill and step down the rocks to the ground. He then said “I’m going up the ramp!” He was going to see mama. But then on his way down the other side he tripped on the very uneven boards. He fell and scraped his knee and bumped his nose. His first real fall since scraping his knee in Centralia, and first real injury since the chin incident back in winter. And his first bloody nose. Carly held him a few minutes, then we headed home.

When he felt better, we read Gustav, the Goldfish and The Strange Shirt Spot and we played with a new little alphabet app that lets you photograph your face onto something representing the letter – hot dog for H, queen for Q, etc.

A little after 2 Megan came over for mimosa and pancakes. Her breakfast. August hadn’t been keen on the idea of her coming over, and when she showed up he went in the parlor and locked the door. He kept opening it though, and was eventually coaxed out. She had brought him a memo pad of polar bear stickers. He wrote on them, then he wanted to measure the marker he was writing with, so I got the tape measure. That led to him measuring things like the table with MEgan, then she measured his head and arms. From there it turned into a fishing pole with a drum stick as the pole, and fish made out of the memo pad pages.

Meanwhile, Carly made pancakes and we ate those with strawberries and, when August realized Megan had syrup, syrup. August and Megan played with the piano a little, and then he wanted the keyboard attached to his iPad and he showed her the sounds and the sampler. He then recorded some of his singing while she hit the table with a drumstick.

She put a tissue over the end of the drumstick and it was a ghost. He didn’t like it and kept saying “Take it off!” But then he said “now I do it.”

About 4:30 or so he was getting a bit wild and Carly asked if he wanted to go outside. He basically ran out the door. We walked out with Megan, and separated by the elevator. As we walked out I asked “Did you have fun with Megan?” He replied  “Not so much.” But then he said he liked the measuring and fishing pole and music.

We walked up the stream to the lantern festival thing. Of course, it was still day, so no lights. He got off and walked a bit. We tried to head back but he wanted to keep walking. We continued on to the next bridge, then back the other side. We came to a metal pumpkin thing with a table and bench in it. He wanted down and wanted to get in it. In the pumpkin he said “I want to wait until it’s dark.” so he could see all the lights on it light up. He wanted to keep playing, so Carly continued on to the store. We sat in the pumpkin together for a minute, then a guy walking by wanted his daughter to get in. I said she could come on in, plenty of space. But it turned out he wanted us to get out. Seriously. It wasn’t a photo spot or anything.  I wish I had said no (but I was at least pretty sarcastic with the guy), but I did get out, and August was pretty upset when I made him get out.

After they left he didn’t want to get back in. Instead, he played with a stick and looked at the flowers and threw small sticks around. Stayed for another 15 minutes or so. He kept wanting to go up the stairs but I reminded him the bike was down there.

Eventually, he wanted to go to a park. So we walked south on the stream until we came to a bridge, then we went back up the other side to Chrysanthemum Park. He wanted to climb up on the structure, so he did the loop. He did it, but was whinier than usual – a lot of “Dada! Dada!” and I would help him up the climbing wall, across the rope bridge, etc. Perhaps a result of his fall earlier. I had to climb up to help him down to the shaky platform at the end. There, we sat and he wanted a Smurf story after I told him we had played Smurfs there once. I made up a story about the Smurfs hiking to have a big picnic but then just as they start to eat it gets windy and starts to blow. All their food away. There’s a storm and they shelter in a cave for the night.

We went down the slide together, then he was just pointing, and it turned out he wanted to go to a bench and have a snack. Let him have a couple crackers, then we headed home for dinner.

We were home at 6:15. He ate the rice/pasta/veggies dish that Carly had made, then I gave him a bath at 6:50. We watched Pirates of the Caribbean and Beethoven’s Ninth. I took him in on the bed to get him dressed and he saw Baby Q and said “I don’t like babies. I like that one, but I don’t like real babies. I like toy and pretend babies, but I don’t like real babies.” No idea where that came from. He then made a poop vacuum with his towel and pants. There was poop on Baby Qs eyes. He was asleep at 7:45.

Photos. Fort: 

Zinnie hotdog: 

With Megan. Fishing: 

Getting measured: 

Lantern walk: 

Park: 

He was up at 5:30. When I got up he told me he and Carly had read the elephant book (Five Minutes Peace), Alexander…, and Curious George Cleans Up. We read The Hole in the King’s Sock. Then he wanted to be a doctor, so we played with the doctor equipment a bit. He then just turned that into a game where he was fitting as much stuff into the animal carrier as possible. That went on for quite awhile, then he wanted to go play with the sink. When he was done with that he said “I’m done with water notes.”

He was then getting upset when Carly wouldn’t nurse right away, and being clingy. I had gotten recycling ready, and said she could take recycling down to get a couple minutes break. But he got really upset when she was gone. Almost seemed panicky by the time she got back. So I did the rest of recycling. She made him carrot coins, an egg, strawberrries, and banana bread for breakfast. He saw it and said “This your yummy finger food?”

After he ate he was singing and playing with the Monster Drum. He changed our helmet in the spaceship song to “I lost my chipmunk at the zookeeper store.” He then helped Carly put away Duplos. He and I did stickers in Poli books and he pushed the books with his feet under the rug.

Carly tried to call Cherie but she didn’t answer, so he did some typing instead. He was talking about his favorite letters and said “My favorite letters is Q and Z.” I took a shower, and they talked to Cherie. He then had naked time, and locked me out of the parlor for fun. Carly took a nap, and he played in the sink. We then read books. We read much of Mayzie, but then he jumped to the end and so I read the whole book backwards. We read The Cat in the Hat Comes Back (the correct direction), then he played with one of the music apps on his iPad. For a snack we ate some crab, a leftover hasbrown, and grapes.

Carly got up and went to the store. He lay on the reading area and rolled around naked on the floor. He ate some peanut butter from a spoon, then was turning lights and the fan on and off in the hallway bathroom and the hall. He turned the light off in the bathroom and said “I turned it off cuz no one’s using it.” In the changing room he started pulling clothes from his drawers and putting them in an empty box. He said “I’m packing for Israel.” He said he wanted to go outside, so we got ready and left at 12:50.

Over by the pagoda, he pedaled on his own – mainly backwards at first, but then forwards. It got really windy and we talked about how our lunch could blow away, if we had one. At one point he got off the bike and it started to roll away. Carly came saw us for a minute, but then headed home to put groceries away and make coleslaw.

He rode around for several more minutes, then wanted me to push him to the dinosaur playground. Went on swings for a minute, then he found a big stick, which he said was a Y, then he used it as a vacuum cleaner and started walking around the north end of the park: “It sucked up the ants…it sucked up those people.” At one point he realized we didn’t have the bike with us and said “Where’s the bike…go get it.” He kept playing with the stick, then decided at 1:30 that he was done with it.

At that point he got on the bike and we just kept walking in laps around our side of the park – 4 or so total laps. We were singing songs, We All Sing the Same Voice, Ants Go Marching, etc. It got really windy a few times, but would then die back down.

We headed home, and I made pasta salad. They did some drawing together.

We all went back outside at 4:45. The big duststorm, which was effecting the west of Seoul, never made it over to us. We walked up to Starbucks where we each got a drink, August with his usual white yogurt drink. We took our drinks to Sarang Children’s Park and drank them there.

He went up on the play structure for a minute, and Carly sat in the sun. He and I went over to play in the sand. I ended up scooping sand into the chute, then I would open it and he would closely watch, from the top, the sand empty from the chute. He needed to use the bathroom, so we went across the street to the building. We had looked at the bathroom here once and it wasn’t to his liking so we had left and gone somewhere else. Not really an option this time. He really didn’t want to use a squat toilet, so he reluctantly used a urinal with a sensor on it. It even flushed while he was standing there, but he did it. Quite an accomplishment.

Back at the sand, at one point he demanded “Give me the shovel.” I asked “Can you rephrase that?” then explained what ‘rephrase’ meant. He thought about it, and asked, much nicer, “Can I have the shovel?” Finally, he was helping to scoop sand into the chute, and he got down and opened it himself a couple times. When filling it once he said “Pretty darn full.” Pretty sure I must have said that. Carly was ready to go, so we did it one last time. But then he said “One very, very last time.” – a reference to Frog and Toad when they eat one very, very last cookie.

As we left I taught him a sandal dance to get out sand. That didn’t work, so he took his sandals off to shake the sand out, and he almost got his sandal on in his own. As we started walking, he started saying “A told B and B told C…” from the Chicka Chicka ABC book.

At Brownstone Carly ran to GS25 and August wanted to go home. In the elevator he picked up a wrapper to a cookie sort of thing. I looked up at the elevator floors, then realized he had tried to take a bite out of something in it. He was rather excited by this action, even as we got of the elevator and he dropped it. I asked if he ate elevator garbage and what it was, and he said “I’m not sure.”

We were home at 6:10. He tried to not take off his shoes again, which has become a minor thing. He had some banana bread, then we were reading and cuddling. We read Loch Mess Monster (which he found really funny because he had all sorts of funny Scottish words) and Red.

We then watched Sesame Street songs, mainly the old ones we’ve seen, plus ones with B.B. King and Patti Labelle. We kept watching during naked time after his bath. He made it clear when he was tired, and he went in and was asleep at 7:40.

Photos: 

Lazy iPad: 

Outside: 

The chute: 

He was up at 6:30. When I got up they were skyping with Vivian and Cassie and family. Carly briefly talked to her mom, but they were driving through Arizona and reception wasn’t great. Not helped by August hanging up on her. August had a ton of energy for so early. He had been jumping over things on the floor and got out the number line. He had gone to the bathroom and was wearing his underwear on his arm. When I tried to put it on him he ran into the reading area and was rolling around. He said “Mama doesn’t go outside, Dada doesn’t go outside, and Zinnie doesn’t go outside. We all stay in the same house.” When Carly got him dressed to go outside he asked “We’re going to Israel?” When she said no, we can’t go now he asked “It’s closed?” They headed out at 8.

They were back after 9, just after I’d finished a shower. They had walked to the skate park area over across the stream, watched some of the construction going on in the street,  and played at Chrysanthemum Park. When they got home, Carly went to the fifth floor to see if the blanket would fit in the washing machine down there. August wanted to go with her, so she took him. The washer was busy, but it looked like it would fit. They came back, and August wanted to keep walking in the hall, so they went out again, but just for a minute. He wanted to go outside (so different from most days, when he doesn’t seem to care much about leaving the house, at least early).

We started getting ready, brushing teeth, etc. Carly was lying on the couch and he stacked stuff on her, and made a machine from the caterpillar and the fabric book with a baby in it, and was putting stuff in drawers. He played with the baby in the baby book, and said “It’s time to take a bath, baby. Washy, washy.”

We all went out on a walk, up to Nowon and to Subway for sandwiches. August chose the crab sandwich, so we got one to share. We then walked to the park just south of there (엄지어린이공원) and ate our sandwiches, like last time we went to Subway. August is asking “Why?” a lot, for everything, including why we are in Korea. He made a growling noise and I asked “What noise is that?” “The noise mama doesn’t like.”

We all played on the play structure, in the bus part, and going down the slide several times. He and Carly raced to the swings, but he didn’t stay on for long.

We headed to the coffee shop we planned to go to, 더숲, which is in a basement. Really a cool space, kind of an arts center, with a movie screening room, a small gallery, a stage, books, etc. We looked around a bit, and I took him in to use the bathroom. We looked at the piano and music stands, and of course he wanted to touch them but we couldn’t. But when it came to getting a drink he insisted he wanted dessert. So we decided to save the coffee shop for another day, perhaps when we could see some music.

We headed to Baskin Robbins back in Brownstone, as that had been our big plan for the day – some ice cream for August on Children’s Day. On the way, August saw a truck and said “I want to deliver milk in Israel.” A reference to our walk home from APIS when he wanted all the vehicles he saw.

We got to Basking Robbins at 1:10. Carly got chocolate chip mint, he chose cookies and cream, and I got a cookies and cream drink thing. When looking at the ice cream flavors with Carly he wanted to know the ones they don’t have. He did that at Subway too, wanting to know what sandwiches they didn’t have. Anyway, he really liked the ice cream and finished most of it. He was also watching the traffic lights out the window. He’s really been paying attention to and asking questions about how the lights and signals work. He was also talking about our ice cream choices: “Why dada get a drink.” “Two spoons…not three, because dada got a drink. Dada was thirsty?” He got up and walked around the shop and coughed. We told him about covering his moth, and he said  “I didn’t do it? I did germs.” and smiled.

We got home at 1:40. He played with Duplos, making towers, then ate the rest of our sandwich with me. We read a couple of the Poli books – he was reading the stickers at the end – ‘Excellent’ and whatnot. He had trouble with ‘Awesome’ but was happy when he could read it. We played GarageBand for quite awhile. We were using the sampler, and making instruments out of sounds, starting with ‘so much’ (that was the idea, as some time ago he made up a ‘so much’ instrument), but proceeding to letters and numbers and words and long strings of improv by August. Carly gave him a bath. He got really upset when she washed his hair.

After his bath we played more GarageBand, getting sillier with the sounds, like cough and throw up sound samples.

We took him in to bed at 7:15 Before I left he asked “Baskin Robbins is open?” He was asleep by 7:30.

Photos: 

Park: 

Driving the bus: 

Ice cream: 

Play dough and the piccolo flute in Beethoven’s Ninth: 

Duplo tower: 

He started waking up around 5:30 and they got up at 6. They were humming and singing and making up random lines to On Top of Spaghetti. At one point, Carly sang “On top of Zinnie…” and August continued “all covered with poop.” He then explained that the poop ended up on the wall. We were reading Daisy-Head Mayzie when Carly left for work. August got hungry and wanted cereal. I asked if he wanted to share or wanted his own bowl and he said “own bowl”. When I got out the blue straw bowl he said “No…the bowls I usually use.” referring to the small normal bowls he’s been using for dinner. I also got his Claritin ready and decided to just put it in his water bottle today and see how that goes. I also gave him his vitamins, and he wanted to know how vitamins were made, so we watched a few videos. While I’d been getting everything ready, music by The Urge was playing. He liked it and we added one song to his playlist (quite a contrast to the Sesame Street songs we added yesterday) and he talked about how loud hard rock guitar is.

After the videos, and he ate more cereal, we did exercise and a little Human Body. He was then playing with Duplos and sang something about something being beautiful and a spaceship. He was then humming the Juicy Juice song as he filled the desk drawer again with Duplos.

He was using he word ‘exactly’ a lot this morning, mainly to mean ‘completely’, as in “Are you exactly done?”

We played mandolin and did chords and tempos, and tuned it. Then he wanted to play iPad together and we played a round of Animal Doctor, which we haven’t done in a long time. I wanted to go take a shower, but he wanted to keep playing with me, so I played some Tinybop Earth before slipping away for a shower. We were listening to the new Amanda Palmer album.

Banana Bread. While listening to Amanda Palmer he hummed along to at least one song, and identified a glockenspiel in it. He helped make banana bread, then played with the vegetable steamer and funnels and stacked them with magnets and other things.

I showed him how a funnel works and he got excited. He wanted to play in the water in the sink, something he hasn’t done in a long time. I suggested he go get his stool and he headed for Carly’s bathroom. I reminded him it was in my bathroom and as he ran in there he yelled “One second!” – I think he got that from Carly, although I might say it too. He played with the water a long time. At one point, while he was playing and humming to himself, I went into my bathroom to get something. He ran into the bathroom and asked “What happens if a monkey drives a bus?” I speculated that monkeys might not make great drivers and might run into things. I asked what he thought and he said “Maybe people.” He then ran back to the sink and played with more water.

I hung up laundry, then we skyped with my parents. He did quite a bit of talking with them. Banana bread was done, and after we hung up with them he ate some. He then played with xylophone and magnets and funnel, filling the funnel with magnets and other objects. He was then kicking the magnets across the floor.

We headed to Teuni Teuni class and got there a couple minutes early for once. Class was a blast for him again. The usual dancing at the beginning, then the teacher was acting like animals and August was acting them out too, waddling like a penguin, for example. When it came to a duck, August ran away, almost out of the class, then came back. Then the duck costumes. There was a hat, then a body that they attached around their waist. August wore both parts for the entire rest of class. There was a shaky walking path that August walked as a duck several times. He also squated down several times to have the duck poop.

August is always pointing out the red X and circles with a line through them that mean ‘exit’ or ‘don’t go this way’. Today he started making an X with his fingers and saying ‘exit sign’ when he didn’t want me to do something, and he did it to the teacher once. Makes sense if you know his line of thinking, but otherwise not so much.

Class continued with other duck activities – sliding ducks down a ramp, jumping of a ramp themselves – and the final activity involved a hand puppet duck head and getting fish to feed the duck. The idea was for the parents to be the duck, but August really liked the duck and did it himself.

At the end of class they got a new toy: a Teuni Monster Drum. It is pretty cool. If you roll it on the floor it comes back to you. And of course you can use it as a drum. After class I asked him what the best part of class was and he said “being a duck and playing a drum and it rolled away and came back.”

After class we got on the bike and headed south, to the area southeast of the hospital and north of the university. We found a place called U-Yeon Curry, on the second floor above a coffee shop. It looked good, and August was ready to go up. Climbed the steep steps and went in. We got the dongatsu curry, along with a fried shrimp, a piece of fried chicken, and a croquette. It also came with soup. And some radish that August ate all of. A perfect lunch for us. Ate it all, and then we headed to the nearby park.

On the way we discovered some sad news about a coffee shop we never made it to: Cafe Comma had closed. Would have gone that one time I was down there when August took a nap in the stroller, but it had stairs.

Anyway, we went to the park and went on the swings. When he wanted my swing I wouldn’t let him have it until he made the look he gives Carly. He did it, then said “The other look I do is like…” Not sure what the second face was for.

He wanted to do the step letter game, so I got the stick. We were playing that, and a bigger boy came over, stood by August a few seconds, then simply reached out and tried grabbing the stick from August. August kept the stick from him and I told him no and told him to get away. He didn’t seem too happy about that.

We didn’t play too much longer, and August was talking about going home. But then he found dandelions in seed, and had fun knocking off the seeds, and we watched how they were starting to blow away, even though it was barely breezy. Finally, we left at 2:45.

We walked up past the fire station. August kept saying he wanted to go home. But then he said he needed to go to the bathroom. I took him to the art museum and we went to the bathroom. The play area looked busy, and August didn’t try to go in. He wanted to go look at art. We went downstairs, which is now open. Some interesting stuff down there: a couple of big zoetropes that the attendants spin for you, videos of balloons, and a mechanical U Ram Choe sculpture, that sort of looks like two flying birds. In fact, I’m pretty sure we’ve seen that exact piece when Carly and I saw a show of his work at a gallery downtown. But as a children’s art gallery it continues to be mediocre: nothing to touch, and nothing particularly childlike, except for balloons.

We went back upstairs and into the main gallery. The intent was to go upstairs, which we haven’t done yet. Didn’t get that far. He watched the sewing video again, but then again had the same idea of touching, or perhaps crawling under these big translucent rectangles of plastic hanging from the ceiling. He wasn’t happy when I wouldn’t let him, and angrily said “I want it!”

In the lobby he said he was hungry. As if on cue a woman came over and gave him two pieces of chewy fruit candy. We went outside and he ate it outside on the big wooden benches around the green and yellow sculptures. He then sat on his bike and grabbed his shovel from the back. He used it as a telescope, then discovered the handle could hook on the handlebar and swing up and down. He said it was a backhoe, then a magic telescope, which he changed to a nonsense telescope.

It was time for English class, so we headed to Home Plus. A lot of songs and singing, and not a lot of other kids today,
so it went pretty well.

After class we went to try to find Carly. Didn’t see her at the corner, so we called her and he asked where she was. She was a block away, so we walked to meet her. He sang “Don’t see mama here, don’t see mama there” as we went. We found her, and got up just after 5.

They nursed, then Carly took a shower. He went to the bathroom, then left his shorts off. We play fought for his shorts and hid them in the reading area.

He then turned to filling the door area in the desk with stuff, humming while he did so. He played with the funnel for awhile, and that led to playing in the sink again. When he was done with that we went in on the reading area and read part of If I Ran the Circus, Gustav the Goldfish, part of If I Ran the Zoo, and were reading Daisy-Head Mayzie when he started getting crazy with a pillow. When he threw one at the iPad again after I told him he needed to be careful, I put the iPad away. He got upset – definitely bedtime – but I got him to calm down and to calmly ask Carly for a little nursing before his bath.

She gave him a bath and I did dishes. Then he and I watched our primary Sesame Street videos: We All Sing the Same Song, What’s the Name of that Song?, etc. before he was ready for bed, and he was asleep at 7:40.

Photos: 

Teuni Teuni. Zinnie duck: 

Lunch: 

Art: 

Poli English: 

Home. Filling the desk: 

Ernie: 

No allergies today! August didn’t do any eye scratching, so maybe the Claritin is working…

He was up at 6. They were nursing when I got up, then Carly put on the fourth movement for him and he watched all of that. She made him oatmeal with Apple for breakfast, and he sang Ode to Joy using numbers: “I sang Ode to Joy with numbers. Ha ha.”

He ate his oatmeal and carly headed to work. I prepared his allergy medicine in Gatorade and when he drank that we then read Daisy-Head Mayzie, then all of The Cat in the Hat and The Cat in the Hat Comes Back. He found all the little cats to be really silly. We started to read Marvin K. Mooney but he decided he wanted Namoo, where he looked at photosynthesis. “If you put a cake in a very big pipe and it sucks it up and you lose it – you lose the chocolate cake? The pipe sucks it up. The pipe takes it away. You lose the cake? Because you put it in a very big pipe? It’s THIS big. It’s THAT big, Dada. And you put it in there and close it and it sucks it up? Yeah? I’m doing it with chocolate cake, but I have bubble gum ice cream…” The story continued for several more minutes after that.

He played a little Human Body, then sat in the chair looking at my iPad and humming along as we listened to Sesame Street songs: “ABC-DEF-GHI”, “Elmo’s Song”, and others. He then wanted to play with play dough and we made a couple letters out of it, then exercised and I went to take a shower. Watched a few more Sesame Street videos. During Ernie’s “I don’t want to live on the moon” video he kept asking “Why?” Then he said “I want to live on stars.” And “Stay on the moon.” We had a snack of crackers and crab and string cheese and grapes and listened to more Sesame Street songs. When I was cutting crab he wanted to use the knife, so I let him cut a couple pieces.

Out of nowhere he started asking about what we teach. He asked “What Dada used to teach?” And then “What Dada teach in Israel?”

I cooked some tofu for lunch and made a tofu sandwich. In Human Body he was focused on the whole pooping process. He also joked that he had three or four hands: “I have three hands.” I asked where the extra hands were and he pointed to his forearms.

When I tried to take off his pajama shirt and put on a shirt he started playing with both, wrapping them around his hand and calling them “Funny hands” It continued from there: “I have two electric saxophones.” “Tuba horn and puba horn.” “Funny sock…it’s an instrument with three buttons and two mouthpieces.” I was trying to get us going and finally got him to the bathroom, but he was still playing with the pajama shirt afterwards. At one point he decided “I want to go outside” But quickly changed his mind: “No, no, no, no.” He got my sandal and used it for a “Shoe game.” When I suggested we go he said “I will not stop this game.” He then stuck a drum stick in my shoe and was putting stuff on it. He said “This is a machine I’m making. I’m putting together a machine.”

We watched a couple more Sesame Street videos (We All Sing the Same Song, What’s the Name of This Song?) as we got ready and he was in the backpack, and we left 1:20. We got to the elevator just as it left the 8th floor. I said something about just missing it and he said “Ha ha.”

We walked down and caught the 111 bus to Dream Forest, which had been his idea all morning. At Dream Forest we walked up and found that the wading stream/pool in the middle of the park was on. We took our shoes off and changed his shorts. He really fought getting sunscreen put on his arms and legs. But I did that and we waded down the stream, maybe taking ten minutes or so. He got in just deep enough that his shorts stated to get wet, then he wanted out. And he got upset when he started playing with someone’s shoe and I wouldn’t let him. Couldn’t get him back in the water – he wanted to go back to the backpack and go someplace else.

We walked farther up, and the rectangle wading pools were on, but he wanted to go in the arts building. We went in and there was a photo op set up with a bunch of big stuffed animals. There were other kids playing with them despite the ‘No touching’ sign, so we joined in. He got upset when I made him get out of the way when someone wanted to take a photo, and was actually trying to pose and get in some of the photos. And at one point he hugged a flamingo.

He then wanted to head up the stairs. Nothing in the art gallery. He wanted to go in the book cafe. We went in and I got an iced tea and he got an apple juice. We went in the kids area for awhile and he played on the iPad and I read. He said he needed to go to the bathroom, and as we were going to put our shoes on we saw Jenny, his Poli English teacher. He didn’t talk to her much, but did kind of joke with her through one of the holes/shelves in the wall. And we met her daughter, who is younger than August.

We went to the bathroom then got walking at 3:42 as he wanted to head towards Mama and didn’t want to go in the water. A lot of talk about tempos as we walked. At the stream we saw a big bird and I was trying to decide if it was a crane or a heron and asked what he though. He said “It has feet. It has feathers. It has a beak.” As we walked he was asking about directions, and as we walked down the other side of the stream he was asking why we don’t see more blue flowers.

We got to the entrance of APIS about 4:10. I’d been telling him we couldn’t go in before 4:30, but he didn’t agree with that, and got upset when I started to walk up to the park across the street: “Now go back!” When we got to the park he didn’t want to get out of the backpack. I got out the bubble gun and got out and played with it for a couple minutes, then wanted me to put it back in the bag. We headed into APIS and got to Carly’s classroom just before Carly did. The first thing he said was “Why it say ‘pee’ there?” He had seen it up on a sign she had on the board as part of an acronym for her students. As soon as Carly came in he ran up to her and said “I’ve got my shoes on!” Then proceeded to sit down and take off his shoes; he knows that Carly doesn’t want him to get his feet all dirty on the classroom floor. They nursed, then did some painting together, then we headed home around 5:20.

On the way he decided that he wanted all the vehicles when we go to Israel: the cars, the trucks, the motorbikes, a little backhoe on a truck: “I want that truck in Israel too.” At one point I suggested that instead of getting a bunch of vehicles we get just one perfect vehicle that was just right for us. He got quiet and thought about it for several seconds, then said he wanted a car. Then a second, a third, a fourth… Close to the pink building I let him down so he could walk. He looked at the flowers and did some running. We went to Lucky Mart with Carly. He ran around a bit, but then helped me get cream cheese and crab. On the way home we were also singing Yellow Submarine and he was adding notes to it and making interesting rhythms.

We got home and they nursed, then he hid some tissues in the reading area and had me find them. He went to the bathroom, then back out in the living room said “Uh-oh, the shirt is pooping.”

Carly gave him a bath awhile later, then he got really upset when we made him go to the bathroom before going to bed. Anyway, we got him into bed and he was asleep at 7:20.

Using a knife: 

Funny hand: 

Jumping: 

Dream Forest: 

Jenny putting on his shoes. Him hiding his hands: 

More bubbles: 

Painting: 

Catching: 

Helping carry groceries: 

It was a rough night, as August woke up twice, really rubbing his eyes: once around midnight, then at 5am. So Carly in particular didn’t get much sleep, although I didn’t do too much better.

Carly had him watching Beethoven’s Ninth in the morning. He kept wanting to nurse, but then wouldn’t nurse because he was paying attention to Beethoven instead. At the piccolo part he got really exciting. He stared fake coughing and laughing “coughing instrument”. Carly had looked up child doses of Loratadine. It is half a pill, so I broke one in half, crushed it, and put it in a drink of Gatorade for August and he drank it. He had some banana bread for breakfast and Carly found a Gatorade factory video for him as he was asking how it was made. We read Daisy-head Mayzie and Hop on Pop. Carly headed to work during that. He did some GarageBand, then we played a full game of checkers. I had some videos, and he wanted to know how they were made, so we found a couple videos, then watched his ink video.

He picked up a tissue and put it between his toes, then started walking around, vacuuming with it – a “toe vacuum cleaner”. We went in and played with the Smurfs. There were only 9 figures at first, and I realized there should be twelve. I looked for the missing ones, and he got excited when I found the others in a book basket. Wasn’t clear if he had hid/put them in there today, or yesterday. We had them have picnics. Then he was hiding them. Then he was hitting me and having Papa Smurf bandage me up.

We read Daisy-head Mayzie again, and ate the rest of the banana bread. Exercised, then he made a very long game of filling the desk drawer with stuff. Starting with the DVDs and CDs I had out, but expanding to Duplos, the Smurfs, xylophone sticks, etc: “I’m doing stuff in there.” He kept doing it, and I tried to get him interested in doing some art by doing dots on a piece of paper. He looked at it and said “I see the colors of that. Beautiful!” But he kept putting stuff in the drawer: “I’m putting them in there because they’re pooping.”

Eventually he did dots with me and we filled the paper pretty well. He decided it was “Germs inside your body”. That made him think of Human Body on the iPad: “I want to do Human Body because hat is inside your skin and there’s germs in your body.” He was looking at blood and wanted to know what the macrophages were, so we looked that up. Then I got an email from Carly saying guys were going to come look at the bathroom soon. So we hurried to get ready to go, but just as I was about to put August in the backpack they showed up. They only looked for like ten seconds though, then left. So I made half a peanut butter and jam sandwich for August and he ate that. He then said “I’m ready to go”, but proceeded to play with Duplos, then some piano before we left at 11:20.

At the station he was really rubbing his eyes. We were then singing “Lay Down Your Weary Tune”, as we had been humming it on the way there. A woman tried to talk to him, and he said “I want candy. Do you have candy?” Luckily, she didn’t understand him. I had let him not go to the bathroom before we left, but after a few stops he said he had to go. So we got off and used the bathroom, then got back on.

At Children’s Grand Park he wanted to go to the piano. The park was crazy busy (full of both school groups and families) but the piano was free. There was a group of teenage girls close though, and they kept talking about August. Then a woman and a little girl came and stood by the piano. The girl sharing the piano would have been fine, but the woman was just staring at August from about a foot away, so I decided it was time to go.

We went to the children’s museum. He started in the nature area, looking at the rocks and doing the snowflake puzzles and other things around there. We went to the chalkboard and he had me write the ABCs. Headed further into the art area, and he played with the puff things, excited by how far up he could place them, and then making a shape that he called a “horse letter”. He continued on and played with the CDs you can hang on a fish shape, looked at the kaleidoscopes, then played with the light rods and light blocks and light shapes. Finally, he spent several minutes in the ribbon gymnastics area, twirling and spinning about. That was fun to see.

We went to the food place by the conservatory, but it has changed. The food court area has a. Lot less choices (and no burger place), and the end is now a GS25. We went there, but they didn’t have much, and the line was long. We got a couple of regular soft-boiled eggs, some garlic-filled crab, and a couple of drinks. He did a good job standing in line. We got separated for a few seconds as we walked to the zoo and he didn’t see me turn, but quickly found each other. Hard to find a place to sit, but we finally found a bench between the primates and the tigers and ate there. A group of teenage girls came and took their photo with him.

We started to walk towards the playground on the other side of the hill, but realized the water birds and tropical buildings were open. So we went in both of those, although in the tropical building he mainly only looked at the fish. The zookeeper door was propped open, and I explained how he used to really like them, but he didn’t seem to know what I was talking about. We then walked through the children’s zoo (also now open) and spent some time with the goats. And he really liked the farmer and sheep statue, which he’s seen many times before.

At about 3 we went to our usual bathroom. When we exited, he ran ahead of me. He had gone up the hill, then ran really fast back down to me.

Kind of startled me the first time, and I was glad he didn’t fall. He did it a couple more times, but was safer about it, and didn’t go as fast. He then spent a few minutes listening to and humming the music on the PA system. There were high school students gathering in the theater space below us, and he went and sat and watched them (and at one point picked up an empty chips bag and sort of threw it down), then made a game of pulling things off the trees and dropping them down the drains. We left there at 3:20; he wanted to go back to the children’s museum.

We didn’t make it that far. We saw a boy with one of those battery-operated bubble guns, and I remembered that we’d brought ours. It was part of our unbirthday president to Carly last year and we had never used it. So we stopped at the deck area by the coffee shop and played with it there. He sprayed them for kids passing by a few times, and also shot them at the bushes and trees. He called the music that it makes the “Bubble song”. We went through most of the small two bottles that we brought. At 3:50 he said “I want to go somewhere.” and walked off. He sprayed some bubbles and we walked towards the exit, then let me put it in the backpack.

In the subway station I stopped to look at the new bakery that had replaced the old bakery. We got a blueberry pie, then a chocolate one for Carly. We ate our blueberry one on the platform. We were on the subway about 4:15. Got the dancing spot again, and he did some dancing, and was singing my tune (and words) to the nursery rhyme “There was an old woman tossed up in a basket”. A seat was open, but he didn’t want it at first, but then changed his mind. I got him on the seat, then went to get the iPad from the backpack. While my back was turned, a woman either tried to shake his hand, or tried to move him back or keep him on the seat. I heard him say “Don’t. Shake. My arm!” as he got off the seat and came to me. He then asked “How angry was that?”

Walking home he sang “hit, hit, hitty, hit, hit” to the tune of Ode to Joy and hit my back as he did so. He got quiet and I reminded him he couldn’t fall asleep. He started singing again, then a minute later got quiet again. He fooled me, because he was only acting like he was falling asleep. We went to Tous Les Jour and got bread and were home at
4:55. He played Human Body and was rubbing his face. But he hadn’t done much of that while we were out, and it was more nose and much less eyes today, so that was good.

Carly was home at 5:25. We were just about to start reading Daisy-Head Mayzie, and he let us do that instead of nursing right away. When we were done, I had him give Carly her chocolate pastry. She gave him a bite of that, then they nursed. A bit later he did the toe vacuum with Carly’s light black sweatshirt.

At one point they were on the reading area and he was talking about ice cream and other foods, and asking what I like: “Dada likes bubble gum ice cream? Plums? Pineapples?” I asked if he liked flamingoes, and he got a bit serious and answered “Noooo…I can’t eat them. They’re a bird.”

I gave him a bath again while Carly did dishes. August watched more Sesame Street videos: “Me Lost Me Cookie at the Disco”, then Little Richard’s “Rubber Ducky”, Smokey Robinson’s “U Really Got a Hold on Me” (https://youtu.be/ws_vnXup7so) (which August found hilarious, because the giant U kept chasing and grabbing him), “What’s the Name of that Song?” (https://youtu.be/6TjX5r37V0Q) (Which he also really liked), and “We All Sing the Same Song” (https://youtu.be/MYXJlfcfFKU) (which he also really liked, and I vaguely remember from when I was a kid). We finished with “I Don’t Want to Live on the Moon” (https://youtu.be/kIq8jLj5TzU). By this point he was really quiet and serious, and sucking on two fingers in his mouth.

He got out, and we put him to bed and he was asleep about 7:20.

Photos: 

Children’s museum: 

Stretching tall: 

Horse letter: 

Zoo: 

Bubbles: 

Blueberry pastry: 

Watching work in the street: 

Taking photos. One of his: 

Watching Sesame Street: 

He was up just after 7. He went to the front door and after a bit said “Now, go!” We got our shoes on but that was enough to really calm him down. He talked about how our shoes were the same, then we ended up in the “changing room” (as he still calls it) and he helped take down dry clothes. He found he could take clothes off the lower rack and could reach up on the ironing board and set Carly’s clothes up there.

We took our shoes off and went and got banana bread for breakfast. We watched some of the Formula 1 race and he played Human Body and was actually singing “Buffalo Gals” on his own. We discussed the nervous system, then while I got coffee he sang a “Feed him, feed him, feed him…” song to the tune of If You’re Happy and You Know It. We got enough coins in Big Numbers to watch the dance thing at the end, then read Daisy-Head Mayzie and the rest of Horton Hatches an Egg. We had some grapes,  then I cleaned the bathroom.

For several minutes he was playing by himself with the Smurfs and singing “Buffalo Gals”, which he then turned into a “dance with me” song. We played mandolin and he wanted to figure out how to play our Lost My Helmet song. Luckily, the two chords I can play well on it, C and G, work just fine.

We threw around some pillows, then were hiding Duplos. We looked at Human Body and discussed nerves and how they send messages to the brain. He put some Duplos on the end of his finger and was then hitting me with it: “This is my hitting button. I hit people.” He played a little Namoo but then needed to use the bathroom. There, he declared “Three thousand, three hundred, thirty four. That’s how many cats we should have in gramma and grampa’s house.” He then asked “What happens if cats be in pipes? It would be nonsense?”

We had crackers, crab, and cream cheese for a snack, then exercised. He found the Poli flashlight thing and was looking into it and said “Hello, Amber.” I took a shower. When I came out, he was setting books all over the reading area: “I want to read now.” We read Biscuit Wants to Play, Five Minutes Peace, The Hole in the King’s Sock, and Wheels on the Bus.

We were planning to head up to Uijeongbu, but he kept wanting to do things at home, so we were in no hurry. He painted, and used the wood end of a brush: “I’m painting in a funny way.” with end of the brush. He made some spots of colors, then said: “I’m connecting now.” Then he told me “I’m making someone trying to catch a bus.” And asked “What ‘catch a bus’ mean?” We’ve actually discussed this phrase several times in the last couple of days: Mayzie’s mom says she’ll “catch the next bus” in Daisy-Head Mayzie and of course we had just read The Wheels on the Bus.

Finally, he played some piano, then declared he was ready to go outside. We got ready to go and left at 12:45. He was humming Odd to Joy a lot on the way up. Played Human Body on the train, and ate some banana bread while we waited for the U-line. We got on the train and had a nice view outside.  He excitedly said “B sound!” It is the unique sound of the elevated monorail train that they have. In the past I think he used a different letter to describe it, but he was insistent it was a B sound today.

We got off at the Gyeonggi Provincial Government Office stop and walked south to 청사초롱근린공원. Along the way, August declared “The cars are laughing.” He then made a really cool “J, J, J, J, Jellyfish” chant and song that went on and on. We got to the park and found a lunch spot on a round bench. We had stopped on the way out of Brownstone and got some kimbap, which we ate along with some grapes and other things we brought from home.

He then wanted to walk around. In particular, there was a flute player up on the hill somewhere and he wanted to go find the flute. The flute was playing a song that reminded me of Dylan’s “Lay down your weary arms”. Well, that’s how I remembered it at the time, but would later realize it is called “Lay down your weary tune”. Anyway, we went up a little hill, walked to the right, and found there wasn’t a path. Went back, trying a sad climbing thing for a minute, then back up to the trails, hoping one would loop around. WHen it was clear that one wouldn’t, I told August we were headed the wrong way. He said “I want to keep walking the wrong way.” and led the way, walking ahead of me.

And then we found the shape area and wooden instrument. This was quite a find. First, he played with the wooden instrument, which was sticks of various length hanging from ropes, then a stick to hit them with. Then, we started playing with all the large blocks, cut from trees. We were there for probably an hour, and built 6 towers. We saw a bunch of different insects along the way: a grey caterpillar, a green ladybug, a green inchworm, and some. Scary looking black things. Earlier, we had seen a different inchworm and some bees.

When we were done with the towers he played the instrument a bit more, then we kept walking the trails and found a rope area. There were different climbing things involving ropes, and he tried them out. A few times today he was remembering the nerves part of Human Body and said “Touch my leg. There’s messages up to your brain?”

We were running out of time, and were both interested in looking for an actual playground at another park, so we got going. We walked back roads to the west to another park, 열린맘근린공원. East end didn’t have much, but August wanted a snack. We found a covered bench area so got down and had another piece of banana bread. He was then playing with a big C-shaped stick, holding it in the air and making an arch on the ground with it. He said he needed to use the bathroom, so we got going. He wanted to walk, and we headed to the west end of the park. He held my hand as we walked down some sketchy stairs, with all sorts of bolts missing, making the steps shaky. But no bathroom in the west end of the park (or playground), so we got in the backpack and walked a block to the nearest train station.

We went to the bathroom, and he let the door close on the stall. When I opened it he said “Haha. I wanted private time.” He was rubbing his eyes, so I gave his hands and arms a good washing in the sink. Before I could suggest doing his face he protested. As we went out I said “Remember what Opa said, “If it itches, put wawa on it.” He flatly replied, “I don’t do that.”

We took the U-Line to line 1. Had a few minutes before the train came, so we popped into a StoryWay to get something to drink. They had a 2+1 deal on these smoothie drink things, so we got one of each color, purple, yellow, and green. We drank two there, then the third one while we waited for the line 7 train at Dobongson. On the last train he was sitting to my left and the woman on my right said hi to him. He nicely said “Hi! Hi, hi, hi.” But then she tried to shake his hands. He pulled his hands away and hid them in his shirt. He said “My hands are not here. They go out when we go home.”

As we walked home, he sang “Red, red, red, red is a primary color…yes, yes, yes, red is a primary color.” Earlier, we’d been talking about primary colors, and I reminded them they are a bit different in the ink video, as they use cyan, yellow, black, and the red color… I couldn’t remember the red color, and August did: “Magenta!”

We were home at 5:12. Carly was home. He was getting allergic, and they nursed, then ate some dinner. He was chewing, and suddenly upset about something. We thought he had bit his tongue or something, but he didn’t seem to be confirming it. Using the thumbs up/thumbs down, I asked him a bunch of questions, and he said it was his foot – think he may have stepped on something pokey or hit it on the door. Not entirely convinced though.

He went to the bathroom, then ended up having some naked time. He played some Human Body, then was laying on reading area looking at books. I gav
e him a bath in my shower. The bathtub barely fits. We watched Sesame Street videos: “Me Lost My Cookie at the Disco” (https://youtu.be/kKW7TIjqZAA), “Rubber Ducky” (https://youtu.be/tWCEG6lV0ek), “Elmo’s Song” (https://youtu.be/vSYadh2xmcI), “Two Different Worlds” (https://youtu.be/o9_LOwDeMBA), and “Elmo’s Got the Moves” (https://youtu.be/SVEAro-eIQc).

We read Daisy-Head Mayzie, then he was to bed soon after that, asleep about 7:40.

Photos. For mama: 

Hitting button: 

Giving the mama statue a pat: 

Lunch spot: 

Badminton: 

Leading the way: 

Building: 

Ropes: 

“My hands are not here”: 

Naked time: 

Reading: 

He went to Carly at 3 something, then was up at 4 something. He nursed and entertained himself with the iPad, mainly, and Carly dozed until they got up at 7. I heard them then and got up a few minutes later. We had gotten the estimate for shipping our stuff and it was high – $4000. So Carly started going through boxes and getting rid of more stuff. August ‘helped’ with this, putting stuff back in boxes, and trying to pull his clothes out of drawers and put them in the boxes. I went and got stuff out and we made banana bread instead. He also played with his “extendo arm” quite a bit – a plastic cord cover we were going to recycle yesterday but he wanted to play with.

We went back to work on boxes, and I went through all the books again and organized them better as well. He was moving books from one box to another. When banana bread was done I got him some, then went and took a shower. Carly and August did a lot of nursing and resting. He and I played xylophone- he playfully took the sticks and wouldn’t share them. I started to make lunch (chicken sandwich, soup) and Carly tried to go to the store, but he wouldn’t let her. Instead, they nursed and he fell asleep just as I had food ready for him. He was asleep 11:45 to to 12:50. Nursed and fell back to sleep. Carly napped as well. She went and woke him up 1:50ish. When she went to wake him, he was sleeping with his bottom in the air.

They nursed, and then he watched a little Puffin Rock – the story where Bernie needs a new shell. Been weeks and weeks since he has watched a show, but he still refers to the characters. In fact, yesterday as we were walking to the Arts Center, he saw a red light turn on for a parking garage and said “Baba light is on.” And sometime today or yesterday I said something and he said I sounded like Baba or Oona.

He ate his now cold lunch. I played some Shel Silverstein from iTunes. August was intrigued, and started pretending to write in the air. He said “I’m writing the words in cursive.” I think it sounded like Dr. Seuss to him, as he then wanted to read some Dr. Seuss and we read Daisy Head Mayzie. He then nursed again, after again not letting Carly leave on her own to the store, and we all headed to the store about 3.

We took the bike down into the store. August and I found a couple things on the list, then we paid and started to walk out. August was pointing at things and saying “I don’t need that fan for home…I don’t need that coffee…I don’t need to go in there (down to the movie theater area).” He also said “I don’t like black and white, or grey.” When I asked what colors he does like, he said “Green, yellow, orange, purple.”

We went home and dropped off groceries. He played with the front door, turning the handle on one side, but then looking at the other side and joking about how it was turning. But he was also asking about how it works. He was fine going back out with me now and leaving Carly at home while she cooked a rice and tofu and veggie dish.

We walked over to the stream. He said “I don’t see bike fixing.” as we passed the usual place for that. As we walked up past the Bye Fuzzy playground he was singing “Stream, stream, stream, stream… He said it was a “Stream instrument”. Then he saw the flowers and sang “Flower, flower, flower, flower…” and I asked what it was and he said “electric flower violin”. As we got up by Madeul he plugged his ears and I asked why. He said “I’m plugging my ears because the flowers are yelling…for food.” He then said “I’m plugging my ears because things are yelling. Those stairs are yelling. Also those trees are yelling.”

We got to the Spiderweb Playground at 3:45. We went and played in the sand, making an island. He then took his shoe off and we filled that. Some other kids had some plastic toy things out and August went over and played with those. They had been sitting there for several minutes. One of the boys seemed concerned about them though and started picking them up, so I got August to help pick them up. There was also a big, very bent, hula hoop there, and August played with that for awhile. He said he wanted to buy a hula hoop and said it would be 16 dollars. We left close to 4:20.

We walked up and through Madeul park. He saw the answer and question signs and said “A…Q. That not how the alphabet works.” As we walked home he started to sing his name as a song “August Zinn Althauser Nimand…I added a D at the end!” And one time he sang it and skipped ‘Althauser’ and joked “Who needs Althauser?” I knew Carly wouldn’t approve of that one and had to tell her later.

We got back to Brownstone and kept walking, across and around the park. He noted no one was playing Korean chess and wanted to get off and play pretend Korean chess: “I captured all your pieces.” We got home at 5 and nursed. Carly had cooked veggies and rice and tofu. I scooped up a bunch of veggies for him and he ate a bunch of them.

He played Human Body and spent a lot of time on the tooth part – feeding it food and brushing the teeth. Earlier we had dropped off a suitcase and a couple of speaker systems at the recycling area downstairs. I had thought we didn’t have to pay if stuff was in good condition. They caught us and called, and I went down to pay, but the guy came up to the apartment. We met again at the elevators and went down and he gave me change. He was nice about it, and I explained the mix up, but he was mainly excited to show me all the CCTV cameras where they can track people.

Back upstairs, August and I read much of If I Ran the Zoo, Gustav the Goldfish, and half of Horton Hatches an Egg. I gave him a bath at 7. We watched Beethoven’s Ninth, the fourth movement. He wanted the piccolo flute part. Took awhile to get there, and he was very excited when we got to it. We watched all of the fourth movement. Carly brought his food into him and he overheard her talking about how she would prefer plain rice. He said “No, I don’t like this one. I want plain.”

We finished the fourth movement, then headed out to the parlor. He had naked time, and we read more books: Picasso’s Trousers, Help the Earth, Double Dare, and Hole in the King’s Socks.

Then, a guy rang the doorbell. Apparently, there was leaking into the bathroom below during Carly’s shower. Two guys came in and worked on it, running water down the drain. Carly put August to sleep in the reading area, he was asleep by, and the men left several minutes later. They couldn’t fix it, so APIS will have to deal with it tomorrow. No using that shower for the time being.

Photos. Helping with boxes: 

A nap: 

Playground: 

Tasting the wind: 

Pretend Korean chess:

Obsessed with the tooth: