This Is Our Blog

Morning:

I’m starting to see early signs of being able to play with August using an object together. Before this video, we both had ahold of the rope and we’re taking turns tugging on it. When one of us would tug, the other would laugh:

But he was very indifferent to be one dollar beach ball:

We then went for a walk and went to the Buk art museum in the park. We were looking around the museum at the same time as about three dozen girls from Changdong High School. They paid more attention August than the art. 

At one point there were about 10 of them gathered around us. One started speaking English and was quite fluent. It turned out that she had been and exchange student in the United States. In Washington. At Bonney Lake High School. it was kind of cool to talk to her although we didn’t talk for long. 

Before we left, I was feeding August and the students started walking to the entrance to return to their bus. There are 15 to 20 of them surrounding us in this picture, although you can’t really tell: 

Needless to say, August really enjoyed that trip to the art museum. He did spend at least a little time looking at the art:

This was the piece he was looking at:

Here’s the group as they moved outside to leave:

 

After his nap, we took the #9 bus, a bus we had never been on that goes right by our apartment, and went to the Seokgye neighbohood. We ended up walking along a stream. There were a lot of birds and fish to look at:

This was a cool tunnel that the path and stream went though for a couple hundred yards. It is S shaped, so you couldn’t see an entrance for most of the distance. The acoustics were quite nice:

In the evening we walked across to Home Plus and bought August some socks and warm pants. It was also an opportunity to show off his bear hat:

We took a long bus ride (90 minutes) to a complex of parks on the west side of Seoul. Kind of an amazing area on what used to me a landfill:

Waking up in the morning:

Sleeping on the bus ride over:

Lunch:

Walking:

We circled much of the park first, then found the long staircase (over 400 steps) to the top. We walked around, stopping in two places to rest, have a drink, and play. He really loved the second spot because of a broom that was swaying in the wind:

The view of the Han was quite spectacular and there were some cool sculptures:

Back down another side of the hill we came across a Seoul Art Museum residency program that has a little sculpture garden. We made our last stop to drinks/change/play:

We had fun tapping this sculpture with our hands to make noise and looking at our reflections in it:

And he enjoyed feeling the texture of the trees and other sculptures:

As August touched the last one above, I realized his hand was a foot and a half away from this spider and my head was closer. The spider was 3 to 4 inches long. We will practice looking before touching from now on:

On our walk back to the bus, we walked past a power plant (I think it might run off of gasses from the landfill – I need to look into that). We found one of August’s favorite things, a fountain:

Carly had beaten us home, so we Skyped with her for a couple minutes while walking from the bus to home. This was the first time we have Skype with August where he could really get excited about seeing the other one of us in the screen:

Stay tuned for our next exciting episode as August tours an art museum with three dozen high school girls. 

He has loved this thug ever since I first got it and I let him have a sip of water when we were up on Bukhansan with my parents. This is from Noeul Park, where we went today (Tuesday). Plenty of other stuff to post from today when I get that article done. 

We went for a nice walk in the neighborhood and shopping trip to Home Plus, but I apparently didn’t take any photos along the way. But there were olenty of highlights from our time in the apartment:

 

He lounged on the changing pad: 

We finally put batteries in the keyboard toy: 

And Carly cooked him his first tofu, which he ate with carrots:

And he made some good noises during the meal:

He wore this outfit for the first time:

Watched the washing machine:

Spent some time being silly and cute on the bed before a nap:

Zoned out on the bus because he woke up early from his nap and was still tired:

And wore his monkey pajamas for the first time:

We stopped at Toys R Us yesterday and Carly found these nesting/stacking/linking cups:

A busy weekend! On Saturday we went to Children’s Grand Park, while on Sunday we hopped a bus and explored a part of our own neighborhood (Junggye-dong) we had never seen. 

Saturday:

Before going to the park and zoo, we walked around Sejong University, bought some lunch, and ate it by the pond in the university:

The park was packed, but we still had a lot of fun (and people watching was a major part of that). August’s favorite part, however, was watching the fountain:

Just hanging:

Getting silly as we are leaving:

We had our most insane baby entourage experience. It started in te station as we waited for a train. Out of nowhere a crowd of a dozen people or so people formed, with people sort of competing for his attention. 

Much of that crowd joined us on the packed subway for the entire 30 minute ride. Luckily, these kids were really quite nice and kept August entertained. The two girls were his biggest fans, and the boy in the blue shirt didn’t seem to mind August playing with his hair: 

There were festivities in the park when we got home, so we hung around and spent some time up on the museum:

Back home that evening and the next morning August continued to work hard on crawling and playing and eating:

Sunday:

 

Sunday, we hopped a bus headed northeast to the neighborhood at the foot of the hills. We hung out in a little park next to the performing arts center and wandered a nice set of windy streets: 

This is a school. How is that for the setting for a school?

More fun back home:

He has been saying ‘da da da’ more and more regularly over the last couple weeks. To the point that I kinda sorta think that he is sometimes using it to refer to me. 

‘Ma ma ma’ has suddenly shown up more regularly the last couple days, with the same sort of proto-word feel: 

First, his first bite of broccoli:

Then, we went up to the hills northeast of us, and wandered the roads/paths up to Seoul Trail. We found a very secluded and quiet spring where we set out the blanket, ate lunch, and played for an hour or two.

We then hiked up an insanely steep road, then some stairs, to get to a Buddhist temple. We were running late, so had to turn right around to head back down. 

Our site:

Our view from the blanket:

View from the Buddhist temple:

Holding onto my headphone cable while asleep on the bus home:

Back at home, he got to sit up on his own in the bath for the first time, splash in the water, and play with some bath toys: