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In the morning:

Then we headed downtown for both the Hi Seoul festival and a celebration of the holiday, Foundation Day.

But first we explored the city hall building, which has an archeological exhibit: 

And we found another great changing table. This one plays “It’s a Small World”:

We then went to the Hi Seoul lounge and watched a guitar player. August was very attentive:

We then went outside and enjoyed the festival:

The Foundation Day celebration included everything from traditional flute playing to cheerleading:

We took a break from the noise and crowds by sitting on the grass just north of the King Sejong statue in Gwanghwamun Square. It looks peaceful, but it is kind of the equivalent to just sitting down in the middle of Time Square (if there was a patch of grass). It is pretty much the exact center of everything in Seoul. Palace, Bukhansan National Park, and the Blue House (equivalent to he White House) directly north, American embassy to the east, ginormous performing hall to the west, and city hall and Namdaemun Gate (National Treasure #1) directly to the south. Hundreds of people are walking by and taking their picture with the palace/Blue House/mountain in the background. You plop a blue-eyed baby on the grass in the middle of that and you draw attention. And then he was waving a balloon, peeling a banana, and eating a banana, which only drew more attention. So August met a lot of peoe and had his photo taken several times. 

As if that wasn’t enough, we still hand time to check out the big Buddhist temple in downtown Seoul. August slept through all of this:

His was given to us at the Hi Seoul festival on Friday. Made it home with us and has continued to be a toy. 

Starting to play with two toys together…

Some highlights of our morning. August played with the rope some more:

And watched the washing machine:

We then went to Home Plus for groceries. The highlight of the trip, if you can call it that, was August managing to take off and lose one of his socks. In fact, I took this photo in the park on the way home. I didn’t notice the missing sock on his right foot. You can just barely see the yellow of the sock that is still on his left foot:

By the time we were home, August had been awake for over 3 hours and was tired. However, after some milk and a few stories, he decided to be hyper and silly for the next 40 minutes. Good times:

After he woke up, we had some more play time. Here he is being funny in the bouncy chair:

Carly had a professional development day, so I went to PT an hour later than normal. It is cooling down, so you will notice long sleeves, socks, and longer pants creeping into his outfit. Here was his basic outfit today (sans socks):

No photos of it (for obvious reasons), but the most dramatic thing to happen today was that, as we were walking across the bridge over the river, a bus barreling over the bridge hit a huge puddle and soaked is pretty good. Actually, there was a woman walking the other way that got it much worse, but it was still quite a bit. Despite the splash of cold water (and me and the woman both emitting cries of shock/anger), August didn’t cry. We got to walk and talk with the woman for the next few minutes as she headed back to her apartment to change. So there was at least that. 

 

In in the evening, Carly fed him some apple sauce: 

And the exercise ball seems to be winning…

He’s played with this rope several times since I gave it to him a couple days ago. 

August woke up really early, and woke up early from his first two naps, so he was sleepy much of the day. As a result, he did a lot of lounging in bed:

Here he is, just relaxing on mom’s pillow for five or so minutes:

And playing around the house:

When we went for a walk in the afternoon, we stumbled across a park with some interesting play structures:

In the evening we went out for a little walk as well. August really, really wanted Carly’s dessert:

 

I got a good video of August waking up:

In the morning he played with the salad spinner:

And with the toys in his toy box:

For our adventure, we went to hike a ‘mountain’ four subway stops to the southeast of us. On the short walk from the bus to subway, August really liked the wind in the ivy:

When we got to the park we spent a few hours there hiking around and seeing the sights:

Looking towards downtown Seoul:

This was a site of one of the city’s old smoke signal defense posts:

Here he is enjoying the bench wat the top of the mountain that we used as a changing table:

A lot of stairs:

And when we got home he got to eat some apple sauce and sweet potato: