This Is Our Blog

August and I had a lot of things to finish up this morning, and he helped with all of them. And he was a character while doing it. Early on I looked up to find him standing on the table. He’s been trying to do this for weeks. I took him off and he said “I did it. I did it. A-ha!”

A while later he was walking around creepily saying “no more dada”

And he really liked helping take apart crib

Another funny phrase he was repeating was “Yummy goat poop” Later, we had this exchange:

Me: What do you want to eat?

A: Goat poop. Eat goat poop. 

To be clear, he had never eaten goat poop. I think. 

Finally, he has taken to calling himself ZZ. Although if you ask his name he says Auggie.

Finally, he surprised me by Humming (na na na na) and conducting a song with his fingers to show he wanted me to play the piano. 

At close to 10 we headed up to the stream at Dobongsan. As soon as we got there, he started working on ‘at’, as in ‘at mul area’. 

He played in the water for quite awhile, scrambling from rock to rock. Then he made a game of throwing his ball and shovel and I would recover. Here he started working in saying “Give me ball/shovel” (and we started working on adding ‘please’ at the end). He surprised me at one point by pointing up at the waterfall and saying something. He had spotted a chipmunk and was saying ‘chipmunk’. Big surprise as I haven’t really taught him that word – the few times we’ve seen them I’ve been undecided on whether to call them chipmunks or squirrels (a word he already knows). 

He was getting tired and I changed him. As I was putting stuff away, he was trying to climb into my arms, saying ‘sit’. So I sat and he cuddled in my arms for a few minutes and said ‘sleepy’. 

But the.b he was back up and wanted to walk on his own to see the sculpture we could see from where we were sitting. 

Anyway, put him in the backpack and did our usual walk down the stream and he did his usual falling asleep along the way and we sat on our usual bench overlooking the river and he took his usual 35 minute nap (which felt long after the last two days). 

We walked to the station and got off at Nowon. Shopped at Daiso for a screwdriver for the fan, a bag for his toys in the backpack, and a few other things. Took the bus home. We did some eating and then went to the pink building and then Home Plus. On the way out, August was walking on his own in the elevator, and then at the bottom exited, went out the doors and down the hall and out the doors all on his own, waving at people as he went. I just followed. 

Got back at 4:20ish and Carly was home and then I went to get the bus to go to the airport. Got them and we just got on the bus headed back at 7. A little traffic on the way home but not bad. Home a little before 9. Had a little time to visit and get the presents from Glecy before going to sleep: a shirt from Sierra Leone and a Gaudi shirt from Barcelona, and a book about Picasso. August is going to look great in both of the shirts. 

Helping with the crib: 

Dr. Seuss. Or Shirt: 

On our way. Using Camel as a pillow: 

At the stream: 

Cuddle time:

At home: 

Note: Squarespace has started to randomly crop and squish my vertical photos. I’ve contacted customer service and they are working on it. Until then, August will look kind of funny in some of the photos. 

 

 

I fell asleep at 9, and was up at 4:30. August slept until 6:45 – a little over 12 hours. 

Speaking in his sleep: “dada” and “hungry baba”

In the morning we made banana bread. He found the hair dryer, so j plugged it in behind the microwave and he played with it in the reading area. 

He also helped peel and mash bananas, then helped with making the smoothie. 

In between, he was licking the spatula and pointing up to the open cupboard saying “I see salsa!”

The delivery guy had called up at 10:15, but hadn’t arrived by 11:02, so we hurried to August’s class, getting there just when it started at 11:10. Class was all about the story about the tortoise and the hare. He got to play with a plastic turtle shell, stand on them, run across the room to get a flag, and play a drum. 

After class we went to Home Plus for a few things, then home. An iHerb package had come and I picked it up at the guard station. To do so, I had to put August down. With my arms full of stuff (including the free Mickey towel they gave me at the guard station as part of the building’s 10 year anniversary), he was able to walk with me to the elevators. 

We played at home awhile and I expected him to sleep. He wasn’t going to sleep, so I took him for a walk in the carrier and that worked. But he woke up and started crying when I put him down on the bed. After a couple minutes his crying turned to laughter. 

So then we headed to Costco. What used to feel like a big trip is now something we do in the early afternoon before Carly gets home. 

I let him down to walk around and look at the toy section. He really liked a few of the things, particularly a fire station set and a bus that teaches phonics. He found out that it also plays ‘Itsy Bitsy’, which he calls ‘Hungry Baa Baa’. 

We headed home and played. At 5:25 he suddenly started wanting mama, so we went to the elevators. She didn’t show by 5:35 so I coaxed him back in by saying we would vacuum. We were vacuuming the play area when Carly got home. 

At 7:30 I went down to my writers group meeting. We met in Cafe Heim on the 2nd floor. 

It got done at 9 and j stopped by Jeff’s apartment to borrow a fan, as one of ours is broken. Went home to find that August had stayed up until 8. Impressive, since he basically didn’t have a nap. 

New words/phrases: hair dryer, Todd Parr, guinea pig, mama statue, Kings sock, baba gate, mailbox

“I see salsa!”: 

Class: 

Costco: 

With his class tomorrow, and planning to go to Dobongsan on Wednesday, I figured today might be the last day for a few weeks to take August on a completely random haven’t-been-there-before adventure, as we’ll mainly be visiting places we’ve already been with Chuck and Cherie. So I decided to make a long trek across the city to check out some of the other parks across the city in the World Cup Stadium area.

And it was definitely a trek. It took 2 hours and 15 minutes to get there, as we took busses to try to avoid the morning rush hour packed trains. But that meant we also hit Monday morning traffic, which is the worst day of the week.

Anyway, August did really well on the trek. I took 3 books along, and that definitely helped. And we transferred twice, which actually helps as well as he gets a break.

We made it to World Cup Stadium and first went to Pyounghwa Park across the street. We walked around the large pond to the big playground. We ate, then he played. He did his usual stealing of my portion of the sandwich, literally saying “Dada’s sandoo” and then taking it. 

At the playground he played in the sand a lot. There were two older boys playing with the water faucets, making a stream in the sand. I had to keep August away as he kept wanting to throw sand or water in their direction. He then made a game of throwing the shovel off the picnic platforms. After I changed him he got into following the pigeons. A couple of pigeons went up a rock embankment, so then August was really trying to climb. We ended up walking around on the dirt to follow them. He is pretty calm about it, and doesn’t try to chase them (yet), although he sees other kids chase them all the time. He was walking around barefoot as his shoes were back on the backpack drying.

Before we left, he really got into drawing with the chalk on the chalkboards that were next to the platforms. He spent at least 10 minutes on it. Ironically, he stayed on the chalkboard, whereas at home he will draw on the floor after about 10 seconds.

He had now been awake for more than 5 and a half hours, so we started walking. As we left the park, he was saying ‘bye bye dulgi (pigeons)’ and he quickly fell asleep. Found a quiet cafe and got a lemonade. But he woke up after 20 minutes. Quickly packed up and headed out, and thought he fell back to sleep. But as soon as I started looking around for a bench, his head was back up.

So we walked up the 300 steps and a hill to the top of Haneul Park. This is the other hill (the east one) that used to be a landfill and now has a park on top. Last year, we went to the top of the other hill, Noeul Park (that’s where we almost touched a spider).

We spent a lot of time at a circular observation building. He really liked climbing up and down the stairs and waving at people. At one point, a couple walked down across from us and they had a little radio blasting (a common occurrence here in Korea). I said ‘Seriously?’ to myself, and August picked up on it. After we walked to the top, we went back to the same spot, and August started saying ‘Seriously? Seriously?’ He then said it a lot more through the day.

We then walked across the park, headed west. We stopped at a little bridge and he played around. The bridge was sort of a ramp, so he would go back and forth on it. He was carrying Camel in one hand, so when he came down Camel was flapping in the wind. He also stopped to wave to the butterflies (nah-be).

Our other stop in the park was a cool sculpture/enclosure that shades some stone benches. We ate a snack here and he played a bit with the bushes and waved to the women meeting there.

We walked around the west end of the park and stopped to refill our water. I then put him in the backpack and walked down the road and out of the park. We walked through Nanjicheon Park, where we had started our adventure last year by having a picnic in the grass near the playground, and where this year we got to admire the flowers and watch some butterflies.

We made it to World Cup Stadium subway station and headed home. Scored two seats together on the subway, and it only took an hour to get back to Hagye Station. He sat most of the way, although sat on my lap for part of it. Made it with the help of Cheerios, the three books, and then playing some Nighty Night and Endless Alphabet on the iPad. The last couple minutes, before our transfer, he started to want down from the seat. Put him in the back pack at the station and he was in that for the last two stops on line 7.

Got home a just a few minutes after Carly. He was really talkative in the evening. He kept saying two mystery words, which I got both of on video, but we had no idea what he was saying. Seemed very intentional though.

During dinner, Carly spilled yogurt on the floor, which seems to have been foreshadowing what was to come. After his dinner, Carly gave him a bath, and he got really upset – more than he’s cried in some time. It got worse when she was putting his diaper on, to the point where he threw up, which only upset him more. Two more throw ups and she managed to get him calmed down and to sleep at 6:30. Very unusual experience for him.

New words/phrases: diaper, brush your teeth (held his toothbrush out to me and said it), cabbage (caboo), Cookie Monster, seriously, Dr. Seuss (how he requests Hop on Pop)

On the busses: 

At the park: 

First piece of garbage for the day:

Dada’s sandoo: 

Climbing to see pigeons: 

After his nap, at Haneul Park: 

World Cup Stadium in the foreground, Namsan Tower on a hill way far away on the right. We live way on the other side of Namsan Tower:

Sculpture thing: 

Headed home: 

Still hiding some Larabar: 

On the subway: 

Mystery words: 

I had another hike scheduled today, but it was postponed. So more time around the house in the morning until August took a two hour nap, which provided time to catch up on blogging and do some reading. After that, we walked to the park near Toys R Us that August and I recently found. We then went to Toys R Us and bought a couple books before coming home.

We all woke up around 6:30. He and Carly left the room first, then August turned around and came back in the room with his head lowered and said “kiss dada” so I would kiss his forehead.

Also in the morning, he did a pretty good job of eating Cheerios with a spoon, and we Skyped first with my parents, then with Chuck and Cherie and Andrea and Thatcher and Glecy in Seattle. August’s biggest discovery in the morning, however, was the hairdryer Carly had gotten out for her mom. First he wanted to hear it, then he wanted to help hold it, then he was holding it on his own, blowing air on himself and other people, and climbing on the bed and blowing it around. This lasted for a long time.

For lunch, he had Carly’s soup. His favorite part is the zucchini. At first he was just saying ‘kee-nee’, but he ended up really getting the full pronunciation down.

After his nap he did a good job of keeping the crayons on the paper when coloring. This has been a work in progress as he likes to color on everything else. So now I say “What do we color on?” and he says “paper”. 

Then we headed to the park. On the way there, he really started using ‘see’, as in saying ‘see namu’ (tree) and ‘see subway’ (he meant bus, but they are all subways now). He’s used ‘see’ before, and says ‘I see it’, but this felt more conversation-y. 

We reached the park and played there for a long time. Carly got to really see him playing more independently, especially in the sand. And every time he would find a piece of a nut or a rock in the sand he would get out of the sand area, go to the bushes, and throw it in. When he got back to the sand area he would excitedly make the big step down into the sand. He still kept us really busy, as he roamed all over the playground, spending a lot of time going from one springy animal chair to another, and then wanting up on the noodle slide (for lack of a better term) and then back down.

Eventually, he wanted to nurse, so we headed to Toys R Us. I was considering getting a full beach play set, and we wanted to look for a couple other things. We ended up getting a book on dinosaurs and a visual dictionary. Both because they were really cool, and because books at Toys R Us are surprisingly cheap.

We went home, and I tackled our storage unit, getting out more stuff that is being donated, and taking a few bags of stuff left by previous tenants down to the garbage. While I did that, Carly fed August (more zucchini/soup and spaghetti) and gave him a bath.

He stayed up until a little after 9. He and Carly had a nice long cuddle/singing time at one point, and he and I read a lot of books. He really liked Kiss Goodnight (about a mother bear putting her son Sam to bed) tonight and we read it twice through the first time, then a third time later on. He loved the line where the mom says ‘hmmmm’ and was absolutely cracking up. It became his new catch phrase. He really picks up on words like that, having previously picked up on ‘tasty’, ‘sure’, ‘yummy’, ‘a-ha’, ‘uh-oh’ and a couple others.

New words/phrases: kiss dada, set go (ready, set, go), zucchini (kee-nee, then the full word a few minutes later), see subway, pinecone (said at park, not sure if I’ve listed it before), hmmm

Hairdryer: 

Park: 

Evening: 

He’d just been making GG hop: 

We didn’t venture far today, as the day was dedicated to rearranging all the furniture in anticipation of Cherie and Chuck’s visit starting on Wednesday. August wanted to get the work started early, as he was up at 4:30. Carly was fully awake, so got up with him a little later. I tried to go back to sleep, but couldn’t really, so I was up around 5:30. Carly was able to go back to sleep for a little while. While she did that, August and I played Endless Alphabet and with his sticker books while listening to a couple of Bach cello concertos.

And then we spent all morning moving beds, hauling stuff to recycling, etc. August liked to help, but he was most excited when Carly got out the screwdriver to put the bed frame together. He stole the screwdriver and took it to where he and I had taken the door off of the cupboard in his reading area. He also really liked extending the legs on the collapsible end tables we have. We would reset all the legs and he would pull them up and then we’d have to do it again.

He took a 2 hour nap and woke up around 1. In the afternoon we all went to Home Plus to do some shopping. We of course saw the lizard, and he got a cheesy sausage, chicken nugget, and pineapple as his samples. He eats more meat at Home Plus than he does at home.

Carly headed straight home to start chopping vegetables for soup. August and I went to the park to check out more of the children’s festival, but the concert that was scheduled to go to 6 was over by the stroke of 4. Bad scheduling there. So we went to the playground and played there for an hour. August wasn’t scared of the crowd and really liked it – waving to a lot of people and watching the big kids on the swings and doing flips over the bar around the swings. He played with his shovel, climbed on a little hill, threw little rocks into the bushes, and generally wandered around the area. He threw a rock over the little dinosaur fence, and another boy about the same age was interested. They stood next to each other, looking at things on the other side of the fence together for a couple minutes.

Finally, he decided he could use some mama time, so we headed home. He had spaghetti for dinner but didn’t get too messy. I entertained him with camel, putting camel on my head and then asking him where camel was. He would point to me, and I’d say, “No, I’m dada. Where’s camel?” He thought that was really funny. Eventually he would lie, and point somewhere else, and when I went to look he would laugh. He didn’t get too messy in general today, so we skipped a bath. He fell asleep rather suddenly a little after 7.

He doesn’t seem too upset about all the rearranging, and in fact seemed to really like the whole process and the way things are set up. And he likes that the fish are back on the wall – I asked him where they were and he immediately walked into the other room and pointed to them.

New words/phrases: trumpet, mama go (playing chase around the house), sock, cream, hammer car, giraffe, guinea pig

The park: 

Looking out at the street: 

We’ve been getting out of the house pretty early lately, so when today we had a leisurely morning and made it out of the house, I was surprised to find it was still before 9:30. In the morning we played with his hand puppets (Eddy, the blue cat, and the Korean frog) and August started putting on the cat puppet and saying ‘meow’. We then made a smoothie, and August decided he now likes yogurt, after flatly rejecting it in the past.

As we were headed to the subway, we found booths being set up for a children’s festival in the park, happening both today and tomorrow. There were concerts in the afternoon, so I figured we’d try to get back for them.

We went up to the stream at Dobongsan and played there for a little over two hours. I remembered to get out his toys this time, so he spent a lot of time digging in the sand in the stream, and we sailed the boat. As we got there, there were three ducks. He was excited by that, and would later stop playing and say ‘ducky’ or ‘more ducky’.

After an hour or so, we stopped for a snack. As we were eating our snack, there were three women and a girl up above the bank having a picnic. They brought over a plate of food: sweet potato, 2 hardboiled eggs, squash, and a bread stick thing. August preferred the sweet potato, not least because he liked using the chopsticks to poke holes in it.

When we were done eating, we went up to say hi. We took a bag of cranberries and a Larabar and I had August sort of offer them to the little girl. They then offered August a variety of nuts – cashes, walnuts, and almonds – which he tasted, but didn’t really eat, since he doesn’t like crunchy foods yet.

We left to go back to the water, but August preferred climbing on the rocks. As we were doing that, an egret came walking up the stream. August saw it first and pointed it out. We watched it for a few minutes until it disappeared upstream. 

August wanted to go back and say hi to the women again, so we did that. Then, we were back playing on the rocks when the egret flew back downstream.

It was now 5 hours since he woke up, and I needed to change him. So I took him over to our usual changing spot by the waterfall fountain and there was the egret. It stood there, about 10 feet from us, as I changed August. When I let August up, he started walking towards it and got within a few feet.

We headed back to our stuff and packed up, just as it started sprinkling. We started walking down the stream and it continued to rain. It was light though, and the sunshade was enough. He fell asleep, and I sat in the same spot overlooking the river.

When he woke up we went to the subway and back to our stop. We went into the park to look around and watched a little drumming. It started raining harder, so we went home.

A little after 3 we left to go back to the park and concert. August took with him a plastic spoon and the camel. There was no music at first, so he played by/with some bushes and flowers with camel and his shovel. Then the music started. He really liked the kids and their nantas performance (there was fire and steam shooting up as they performed on the drums, so that was exciting) and the high school brass band. Between shows we walked up the stairs outside the art museum, which he really liked, and played up there. He also got to climb and stand on the lizard sculpture. The museum has taken down the ropes and signs prohibiting this, so they were being swarmed by kids.

He wasn’t into the last show, more traditional Korean music that was supposed to be calming, so we went into the museum to see the new show that just opened up. Some cool art, but more difficult for August, as there were things like chairs that didn’t have ropes around them, yet he couldn’t touch and climb on. We went down to the children’s space and of course he want to the box thing. Then had fun sort of running in and out of the tunnel area, and ended by giving high fives to a woman that was talking to him. 

We got home at 5:15, but Carly wasn’t home. August wasn’t happy about that, so we turned around and headed back outside, and met Carly and Megan as they came into Brownstone.

Spaghetti for dinner and a bath, and he went to bed about 7:30.

New words/phrases: hurt, ducky (both his bath duck and the ducks at Dobongsan), cool cool, moss (have taught it to him a couple times; he used it on his own today pointing to miss on a rock by the stream), sure (Me: So you want banana bread? Him: sure, sure), trumpet (in his sticker book)

Stream: 

Waving to the egret: 

Asleep: 

Watching some drumming: 

Headed back outside: 

Playing with the flowers: 

Nantas performance:

On the lizard: 

Going down the stairs on the art museum: 

Running out of the Alice in Wonderland area: 

Today August turned 18 months old and we made the most of it. August really wanted to make the most of it, as he stayed up until 10pm and only took a 35 minute nap, after waking up a little after 7.

In the morning he carried Marshy around a lot, hugging him and patting his tummy. We made eggs with crab, broccoli, and cheese together. He then carried around and played with his blanket, and got out a few of the books in his room that we’ve never really read. Finally, he got ahold of one of my belts and was walking around the house making ‘ssss’ sounds like it was a snake. He still had a firm hold on it when I put him in the backpack to leave. I took it from him and he got upset, but calmed down when I coiled it up and put it on the couch and said it would be there when we got back.

He acted surprisingly tired on the train ride down, yawning several times. But when we got to the park we headed straight for the zoo and spent the next two and a half hours there. He first wanted to go see the deer. Then we saw the zebras, then the seals, then walked to the children’s zoo. This is where he really started to spend a lot of time, as he walked from the horses to the goats, then on to the meerkats and otters. He spent a good amount of time in the tropical building, then we sat on a bench in the shade out in the square and ate some crab and banana and other snacks. He was also doing a lot of people watching; in fact, on the way down we took the stairs, and at one point he pointed back and forth across the square and said ‘people’, then sat on the stairs and watched for a few minutes.

After 20 or 30 minutes of eating/watching he headed back into the tropical building on his own. There, he proceeded to spend about 15 minutes playing in the entryway, activating the automatic doors, waving to people as they came in, and laying on, crawling, and sliding around on the floor. He then proceeded back to the lizards (he really likes the word ‘gecko’ now), snakes, and fish, then proceeded to walk up and down the indoor ramps several times, stopping occasionally to watch the water monitor, gibbons, or birds.

Finally, he was starting to look tired, and I needed to change him. So we went up to the bathroom I usually use behind the amphitheater and changed him, then he fell asleep after a few minutes of walking. Went to the cafe, where they now have the umbrellas set up outside, and he slept about 35 minutes.

When he woke up, I realized I didn’t have his shoes. We hurried back up to the bathroom, and they were still sitting on the floor (the light hadn’t been working in the changing room, so that didn’t help).

We went back to the cafe and I bought August a strawberry juice and a cinnamon muffin as his 18 month treat. We sat in the comfy chairs he has always liked, but never sat in (usually the table is being used). He started eating the muffin (he loves cinnamon), and quickly said ‘cinnamon’, and kept saying it. I had also told him it was a treat, so he kept saying ‘treat’. Eating and drinking his treat took about 20 minutes, after which we cleaned up, and August helped by throwing away the wipes, muffin wrapper, and napkin. We said and waved goodbye to the woman who works there, and left to go to Adventureland Playground.

We stopped at the water fountains near the playground to take off his shirt and rinse the strawberry juice out. While at the playground, he played without a shirt, and by the time we were ready to go it was dry enough to put back on.

Anyway, as I was doing that, he climbed down the rock step and started walking towards the playground, saying ‘I see it’. I caught up to him, and when we got to the sand area he pointed and said ‘a-ha’. He would later repeat the ‘I see it’ after I took him across the path to throw away a piece of garbage and he watched a crew mowing the grass area.

He played in the sand areas, then we went up to the instruments and played “Baa Baa” a lot. Then he stood on a little ledge and threw his shovel over some bushes to me, and spent time walking up and down the ramps. He then heard “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” playing on the loudspeaker and got really excited. We went and listened to the rest of it, then spent the next half hour singing both the spider and hungry baa baa version over and over. Initially, his signal requesting the song was kind of patting his own head (his motion for the “up came the sun” part, but eventually he was saying “hungry baa baa” to distinguish it from the “baa baa black sheep” song. And at some point he finished off his strawberry juice and played with his camel, making the camel hop (“camel hop”) and saying “camel sleepy”. 

We changed him and headed home. From the subway we went and did some grocery shopping (and of course went and saw the lizard and turtle, which was out eating lettuce) and headed home. At about 5:15 we went out to meet Carly and met her walking around the corner from the elevators.

He ate a ton of the spaghetti that Carly made for dinner, then I gave him a bath. He had a ton of energy in the evening, despite looking tired. Carly took him in a couple times, but he wouldn’t go to sleep. At 9, I took over and we read a lot of books. At one point stood up on his stool and we read the Mother Goose book on the counter. Finally, a few minutes before 10 he kind of pinched his finger in a drawer. He calmed down after that, but when I asked if he wanted mama, he started saying ‘nurse’, and he went in and went straight to sleep.

His new song creation today was inserting ‘grampa’ into the ABC song instead of letters, ending with “next time won’t you sing with grampa.” And he was talking a lot about soup and fish through the day. For soup, he would randomly say “all gone soup” or “al gone grampa soup” and the fish are because Carly took down Cherie’s fish picture to hand up someplace else. So he when changing him he’ll look up at the blank wall and say “all gone (fish noise).” Today, he expanded that to “all gone sad (fish noise).” We will get them hung back up this weekend. Oh, and he surprised me while taking a bath, turning to the wall and saying pointing and saying ‘tile’. It is a word that Carly and I have used with him in passing, but hadn’t made a point to teach him.

New words: sad, dada/gaegul hop, bye bye sssss, people elevator, see baboon, dirt (as we walked by a flower bed, kind of surprised me), baby elevator (otter and elevator sound similar, and he was saying them, back and forth, then started saying ‘baby elevator’ for fun), kangaroo (surprised me by pointing at the kangaroos and saying it), hay (picked some off the ground and tried to feed the goats), more hay (different meaning of ‘more’ – previously, he has used more to mean ‘I want more’, this time, it was when he went to the other end of the goat enclosure and saw more hay and was pointing it out), gecko, skip, hungry baa baa, camel hop and camel sleepy, all gone sad (fish sound), tile

On our way: 

Zoo: 

18 month treat: 

Playground: 

Reading the Mother Goose book while standing on his stool and looking really tired a few minutes before he finally falls asleep: 

He was up early, about 5:40. He saw Carly’s quesadilla and wanted it, so we started the day by making a quesadilla. We then had a little extended iPad and Sesame Street website time, since he hasn’t done much the last couple days. I took the door off the cabinet in the reading area, and he was fascinated by the screwdriver. Luckily, it was a short, stubby screwdriver, so I could let him play with it a bit. 

We used one of his little brooms to do some sweeping, and when he managed to get some in the dustpan, I said “You did it.” He replied, changing the pronoun like he did yesterday, with “I did it”.

We then had some music time with the xylophone and drum and what not, then skyped with my parents.

We were hanging up laundry when the woman came to spray the stuff down the drains, something they do every few months. That kind of freaked him out, and he started crying.

We were finally going to leave the house when a delivery man rang the bell. So we waited for our iHerb package. After 30 minutes he hadn’t shown up, so we headed down. But no package for us at the security office, so I decided to go back up once more to check. We met the guy at the door.

Finally, about 10:40 we were off, headed for Dream Forest. August fell asleep as we went under the underpass. I looked at the map for a place to stop and realized there was a park we’d never been to back on the east side of the tracks. It was behind an apartment complex in the space where two sets of train tracks come together. So we went there and he slept 40 minutes.

He woke up and played for awhile with his shovel and sand and with a faucet. And he ate his sandoo. I asked him if he wanted to stay and play or go and see the deer. After several more minutes of eating and a little playing, all the sudden he started saying ‘deer, deer, deer’. So we were off.

Walked to Dream Forest and straight to the deer. Spent a long time there. First, he was fascinated by the work crew working with shovels and other tools. So we just hung out on the bridge and he entertained himself and watched, and occasionally watched the deer. Then we headed to the north end, where he started to play with an old fence post, putting grass and rocks into it. The deer were getting closer and getting more of his attention. He spent a lot of time practicing going up and down the set of seven steps at the corner. He did a lot of talking and babbling to the deer.

Finally, we were off. We went to the playground, where another family gave him a peach jelly stick. Basically liquid candy, but very good. He loved it. He did some more eating, and watched kids play, but needed to be changed. So we went inside and changed him.

While changing him, we heard a baby crying somewhere. He looked at me, and with a very serious look on his face, said ‘Baby crying’. He was very proud of himself for the sentence. He would say it a lot during the day.

We went back outside and spent the rest of our time playing in the wading pool. He played a lot with our set of toys and sat down a lot in the pool. When I changed him before we left the diaper was incredibly full and heavy.

We took the bus home and beat Carly by about 30 minutes. He played in the sink, we finished off the day’s snacks, and we did some straightening and cleaning.

Carly came home and nursed him and fed him spaghetti. She blended broccoli up to add to the sauce, and that worked really well. I gave him a bath. As expected, he was tired and went to sleep before 8. He was really hyper as Carly took him in to bed, but he crashed pretty quickly.

New words/phrases: antlers, spots, fence, baby crying

Park: 

Deer: 

At the playground: 

Wading pool (aka mul area): 

Eating spaghetti never gets old: 

August slept late. Past 8. When he woke up, he didn’t make any noise. I was startled to see/hear the handle of the bedroom door opening and he walked out. He asked for ‘mama’ a few times, but then went to playing with the clips on his high chair.

In the morning, we made banana bread and a smoothie together. He helped with cracking the egg, peeling and smashing bananas, pouring milk and stirring, and then helped put fruit in the blender. As he drank his smoothie he looked out the window at the street below. He then sat on the floor and used his feet to spin himself around as he drank it.

We then had a nice extended art time, where he did some coloring, played with play dough, took stickers out of his sticker book (and put some on the arm of the couch), and then made a point of sitting on the couch with Marshy.

His class was at 11:10. As we were getting ready to leave, he had ahold of Marshy. He still had Marshy when I put him in the backpack. He got upset when I took Marshy away, but I was able to trade him for the leopard, err ‘camel’. He ended up holding the camel through most of his class and shopping, and we later clipped it to the backpack and took it when we went to the park.

His class today went well. He likes the more active songs and we got to play with a musical instrument thing after bubble time. The class was about colors, and we got a set of felt objects to play with. August was mainly interested in putting cleaning up and putting them back in the plastic bag. And when the teacher walked away from hers, he went over and picked up all of her pieces and put them away as well. Then, they got these flower hats to put on. He, of course, rejected it. But then I pointed to Jungbean and said that he was wearing his. Almost immediately, August picked up the hat himself and tried putting it on. There are now 6 other kids in the class, and at least 2 of the parents speak English.

We stopped at the rice burger (bap burger) place on the way home after doing a little extra walking since he seemed sleepy (but he didn’t fall asleep). We took our bap burgers up to the apartment and ate them for lunch. August really liked them. Unfortunately, I realized they aren’t nearly as health as the kimbap, but they are easier for him to eat.

He seemed tired, and on a couple of occasions laid down on the floor with Marshy, or went in on the bed when I asked when he was tired. But he wasn’t falling asleep. So I put him in the carrier and we went down and walked over towards the park. That worked. We came home and he slept for 70 minutes, until 3:15.

After he got up, we were getting ready to go to a park. I couldn’t find the camel to take with us, so I asked him where it was. He looked around, then started calling ‘Camel? Camel?’ So funny. We then looked around the house and he kept doing it, or saying ‘bye bye, Camel’. Finally, we found it (behind the bedroom door) and were on our way.

We went to Junghyeong Children’s Park (중현어린이공원 – one of the few not named after an animal or plant, but maybe Google just doesn’t translate it properly). It is the park where I once took a walking video of him in the carrier and he threw up. We played there, mainly in the sand, and then in the bushes. Then he saw some cats so we went and looked at them, but he didn’t try to get really close. Then back to the sand area, where he played with the ball, and was then excited when I started drawing letters in the sand.

A little after 5 Carly let us know she was walking home with Megan. So we walked and met them on the other side of the river and walked home together.

He had spaghetti again for dinner, after which he took a bath. He was awake until about 9. Before that, there was a lot of reading and just a little Nighty Night. In the evening he was randomly saying ‘no more soup’ for no apparent reason. Also, he is really into the Maisy books now, and when he sees Cyril with say ‘hi Cyril’. And when he saw the jam jar he called it ‘salsa’ in his high sing-songy voice.

Earlier in the day, he had been picking up on words in songs we were listening to. Listening to “Puff the Magic Dragon”, for example, he would repeat ‘by the sea’ after they sang it.

New words/phrases: by the sea (Puff), honk (car outside), toucan (goo-cah), hi Cyril, hide and seek, Charley, bap burger, I did it (after Carly said ‘you did it’), Sophie, no more soup, bread (beet), itchy (bug bite on leg)

Fresh banana bread: 

Taking his ‘camel’ to class: 

Class: 

At the park: 

Cats (we saw a total of four): 

Drawing letters and things in the sand. Me, not him: 

Evening: 

August woke up a couple minutes before 7, and by a couple minutes after 8 we were headed to the subway. It took 65 minutes and one transfer to get down to Seoul Grand Park, south of Gangnam. August did just fine. For the second train stint he sat on my lap and we read the two books I brought along (Carle’s ABCs and Plant a Tree for Me).

It is a long way from the subway, up past the parking lots and around the lake to the zoos. We walked this time to check things out along the way, but would probably take the shuttle bus/train thing in the future. The parking lot was being used by the police for motorcycle and riot police training, so that was pretty entertaining.

As we got to the children’s zoo (you had to walk along a fence to the far end), August could hear and smell (he did his sniffing thing) it and was getting excited. We walked into the the zoo and first he was excited to see a sheep statue and sit on it. Then he saw pigs for the first time. It got even better after that as he saw goats and horses and then ‘real’ baa baa sheep. We spent a good 30 to 45 minutes with the sheep, pausing for a snack. After our snack, we bought hay from the vending machine and he loved feeding the sheep. He got to touch their wool and a ram came over and he was touching the horn.

We moved on, looking at the gardens a bit and then heading out and across the street to the big zoo. There, we went first to see zebras for the first time, then the giraffes (he pointed and called them ‘GG’ after his stuffed animal).

He was hungry, so we went to the playground and sat on a platform to eat. He was really entertained by another green bug that crawled on our backpack, then played in the sand. We then went down to the stream and played in the water using the shovel and the plastic boat I’d brought along.

From there we walked up to see about the dolphin shows. He saw a dolphin picture and said pointed and said ‘dolphin’, a word I didn’t know he knew. He had heard me say it in the zoo, but I hadn’t been pointing to a dolphin. So that must have come from a couple of his books with dolphins in them. Anyway, we saw the seals, then stopped for a snack and water. He started laying on the ground at my feet and I thought he might be tired, so I put him in the backpack.

Walked up to the goldfish pond and back and forth a bit and he fell asleep for a 45 minute nap by the pond.

After he woke up we walked back down the hill, headed for camels. Along the way we saw llamas and then spent a lot of time looking at the big birds (he said ‘eagle’, ‘owl’, ‘who’, ‘condor’, and ‘law’ a lot). And we saw a bateleur, which was new to me.

We then went to see the camels, but could only see part of them, since they were in their houses. He was hungry again, so we found a bench by the water birds and ate a Larabar. Another family saw him and gave him a rice cake thing that he loved (called it a ‘cracker’). This is where he said ‘dada eat’ and ‘dada eat it’. The backpack was out of water, so we went to find a water fountain. Took awhile, then headed to the dolphin show. We passed more water fountains and August pointed and said ‘a-ha’. Pretty sure that isn’t exactly what I said when we found the previous one, but obviously I had been excited.

Anyway, we went into the dolphin show (benefit of the backpack: not having to leave it outside in the stroller area) and sat down in the first row. He kept pointing and saying ‘mul area’. When the show started, the audience clapped. He was startled by that, and kept looking at the audience every time they clapped, even after I pointed out the seal. After a couple of times of clapping, he then clapped, but got his sad/overwhelmed look. So I picked him up and he sat on my lap the rest of the show (15 minutes). He loved the dolphins, and was upset when the show ended. For the next 15 or 20 minutes he kept saying ‘more’ as we walked outside. 

Getting out of the park took much longer than I expected. We saw a camel out in the open, then when we got to the hippos August decided he didn’t want to be carried. So we played there for awhile, mainly with the bushes and railing and wanted to be picked up to see when the hippo made noise. I was standing a bit off from him while he played when he turned to me and said “I got my dada” several times and grabbed my legs, then went back to playing.

I got him away from there, but the next stop was the meerkats. Who knew he loved meerkats, so much? He watched them for several minutes, then wanted to go back to them after we started to leave.

We made another pass by the zebras and changed him in the bathroom across from them. From there, we made the long walk back to the subway. He was fine most of the way, but insisted on playing near the parking lots and was a bit upset when I cut that short and insisted we go.

He did great on the ride back. On the first stint on the train he was in the backpack. At one point, he started rubbing something on my neck. I knew he didn’t have anything so was confused. It turns out one of the women around us, I don’t know which, gave him a piece of hard candy. In the wrapper. 

We transferred and managed to score one seat for the entire 40 minute trip back. He was still in the backpack. 3 crackers, some Cheerios, and then reading the books kept him occupied until we got home a little before 6.

Carly made him spaghetti for dinner, which is still his favorite, then gave him a bath. He successfully peed in his toilet again before the bath. Went to sleep around 8:30 again.

So one of the things he was doing today was changing the words to the ABC song. Like he has done with other songs (like Baa Baa), he would say something different to be funny. I was telling Carly about this as he ate spaghetti, and he sang the ABC song replacing the letters he knows with ‘haak-uum’, his made-up word for garbage.  

New words: sheep, wool, giraffe, dolphin, owl, bye bye condor, dada eat, dada eat it, raisins, meerkat

 

On our way: 

Children’s zoo: 

The big zoo: 

He had tried to drink the stream water, so I called it icky water, which he then repeated a lot: 

Waiting for the show: 

Watching from my lap. Note the bit of Larabar still in his hand: 

Sad because the show is over: 

Playing by the hippos: 

Meerkats: 

On our way home. Cracker boy: 

Dinner time: 

Don’t think I’ve mentioned it on the blog before today, but haak-uum is his word for garbage. It can refer to either a piece of garbage or to a garbage can or bag. My dad first figured it out in Everett on the waterfront: