Thursday, February 13, 2014

January 2014

NYE 2014
The kids are still too little to stay up till midnight, so we put them to bed at the usual time, and started off 2014 relatively well-rested. Grandma & Grandpa left out for the frozen steppes of Ohio on January 4, though, which meant the kids had absolutely wicked grandparent-attention hangovers for the next couple of days — particularly on Monday the 6th, which saw Daddy back to work after a nice long break, and Annika still at home (school didn’t start up again until Jan. 7). 
Annika’s happenings
—Running:
Annika decided she’d like to get into running, particularly to do the Wildflower Run this April with me (she’d do the kids’ 2K, I’d do the 5K) so she can get a medal. So when Grandma and I took the kids to Stride Rite to get properly fitted, we got her a pair of running shoes to go with the running clothes R. already got her, and she and I went for a run nearly every day of the break (and a few times on the way home from school). She takes it seriously, as is her wont, but also there is a lot of leaping, and tangents, and complaining about how faaaaar we’re going, hah!
—Free Dress day: The kids at her school contributed so much money to the fund for victims of the hurricane in the Philippines that they earned a free dress day. Annika, like most of the girls, took that as their opportunity to go fancy; she wore a swishy long skirt, a purple shirt with a big sequined heart on the front, and her sparkly silver shoes. So cute!
—Scrooge McDuck: The kid has some serious Scrooge tendencies. Lately her thing is that she wants to save up $400 to buy her own iPad Mini, which she persists in refusing to believe we wouldn’t let her just use all the time whenever she wants (“It would be MINE, bought with MY OWN MONEY,” she says … but the house rules would still apply, so, dream on, kid). So she’s bugging us for money, bugging us for chores to earn money, and putting all the money she has out on a table or bed and counting it, again and again …
—Bingeing on Lexia/DreamBox: At the computer lab at her school, they do these two programs called Lexia (reading) and DreamBox (math). She got obsessed with the levels (as she does), and badgered us to set her up with the programs at home, which we did; in one weekend, she played for like six hours at a time (while I did the Ace Parenting move of reading an 800-plus page novel, The Goldfinch). Result: She earned dozens of “coins” in DreamBox, and is now up to Level 5 (third grade) in Lexia. 
Brother & Sister together
—Impromptu playdate at Grace & Sean’s: I leaned on my friend Anne to take Lukas while I did the Cornerstone reading (finally caught up! woo!) at Annika’s school, and then when we went to pick him up, we just kind of stayed there for awhile. The four of those kids really do have a good time together (Sean, 4, enjoys playing big brother to Lukas), and Anne is pretty much my best friend I’ve made here in old San Ho, so it was good times all around.
—Passing the Gabba torch: So, judging by her choices when she’s in control of the remote, Annika has outgrown Yo Gabba Gabba! at last. But luckily for R. and me, Lukas has taken it up in a big way. He LOVES it, so so much. I’m really glad we will get to hang out with the Gabba gang for awhile longer.
—Working together: They are friends, and are learning how to depend on each other. The funniest example lately: Lukas leaning on one elbow and saying hopefully, in the car after swimming or whatever, as if they’ve just finished a tough but productive shift at the factory, "Watch somefin on tee-fee?” and Annika nodding thoughtfully, “Yeah, I think so.” 
Lukas His Ownself
—Footstool Follies: Oh my heck, him with his little gray footstool, toting it everywhere like a beloved pet, and chocking it down and reaching for every goddamn thing, it’s driving me NUTS. It increases his reach (and he is already a Gumby octopus), his sight lines, his underfootedness … I mean, I’m proud of his simian ingenuity, I guess, but aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhgggggghhh.
—Numbers: He knows his numbers 1, 2 and 3 really well now; I quiz him on how many (eyes, ears, noses, heads, feet) he has, and he always gets it, plus he can count how many marshmallows or whatever I put in front of him. He can say the next number all the way to ten (if you say “1, 2, 3, 4 …” he knows it’s 5), but can’t do independent counting that high yet. 


The Quotable Lukas
—“Ah-ka OK?”
Whenever she coughs, sneezes, or is out of his line of sight.
—“Daddy go to wuhk.”
When Daddy is dressed and headed out the door.
—“Mommy OWN-leee.”
Demonstrating that he does too know he’s not supposed to do, or touch, or handle, or whatever deviltry he’s currently doing as he says it.
—“Haffit right now!”
Insisting, always.
—“WALK SELF!”
Dog forbid you try to carry him across the road, or anywhere else. FOR SHAME.
—“Curian George” 
The good little monkey, friends with the man in the yellow hat.
—“monster soap”
The Elmo & Friends training toothpaste we use on his baby toothbrush. 

Thursday, February 6, 2014

December 2013

Top o’ the world
We started the month off right — on a dry, warm and sunny early-December day, at the end of Thanksgiving weekend, we took a family walk through the park, and decided to climb the big hill all together for the first time. Both kids ascended the steep slope like champs, and the views were AMAZING. Got lots of good pics, had a great time, kids loved it. 
California Christmas with the fam
This was a non-traveling Christmas (which was good because R. and I were exhausted, ha!). The four of us went to get our Christmas tree on a cold and very windy day (after the only rain we’d had in months); since our usual lot was no longer in operation, it took some driving around, but we finally found a great one and brought it home. This was the year everyone helped to decorate it — even Lukas was more helpful than destructive, ha! Then we all watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas to kick off the season officially. Grandma and Grandpa arrived the next weekend, which meant they were here to attend Annika’s class’s little sing-along presentation (we were all singing “Mele Kelikimaka" for weeks) and get into all the other Christmas prep. Christmas Eve was fun, with hot cocoa, tamales from Chavez Taqueria, and some of the Christmas specials on TV (and of course A Christmas Story for the grownups after the kids went to bed). Christmas morning got going early (but not brutally early as in years past, yay!): stockings, tons of presents (including Annika’s for the rest of the family, which is the first time she’s really given presents — and a very thoughtful list she came up with, too!), candy and cookies more or less unregulated all day long. We did the full Christmas dinner (turkey again!), then in the late afternoon, the cousins came over (probably the ultimate highlight, as far as the kids were concerned). Overall, it was a really good holiday, and a great time to spend together. 
Annika the small grownup
—The little girl is getting into ever more complex pursuits, from crafts to Deep Conversations about things I personally don’t remember even being aware of till I was much older.
—A (hopefully brief) reign as a Mean Girl: For awhile, she was basically shaking down these other kids for their blue Lions’ Pride tickets (given out for good behavior, redeemable for books and other small prizes from the school) so that she could amass a fortune of them herself but still “buy” the books (I only became aware of it when another mom told me — and I just about DIED).
—Rainbow Loom insanity: There’s a thing called the Rainbow Loom, which is a little plastic hellmouth that you use to make bracelets out of ten billion tiny little plastic rubber bands. It is ALL THE RAGE in the K-5 set, and it’s just that eensy bit too complicated for her yet, so at least at first, it was instant frustration dynamite. Annika got one for Christmas, and doggedly pursued the YouTube videos for how to use it, and it is 100% R.’s (and Grandma’s) bailiwick to deal with — the whole thing is total mental Kryptonite for me, I can’t get anywhere near it without a rage stroke in my brain. But she loves it, and has created all these really complex things from it so … I guess it’s good?
—Paint your own ceramics: With the grandparents here and school out till January, Annika and I were able to go by ourselves to Color Me Mine (in the mall). We picked out a couple of things to work on; I made a mug for Mamalah (with a quote from To Kill a Mockingbird), and Annika made a tiny little tea set for herself and a little reindeer for R.’s Christmas present. She has such patience and concentration for this type of thing, wow. It was so much fun! We both want to go again soon. 

Lukas His Ownself
—These days, more than ever before, Lukas does what Lukas wants.
Talk to the hand, cause Lukas ain’t listenin. Persistent and clever, and now tall and dextrous enough to get into a wider range of deviltry, he’ll wait till you’re engaged in something else, and then quietly sneak off; in a single day, I found him — THREE TIMES — sitting silently in the dark bathroom (he can’t reach the light) with the door shut, sitting on his footstool, slathering sunscreen on himself. And that’s just one of the things he thought of on that one day; it never stops. [headdesk]
—”How do dat?” He is very interested in how things are done, so he says this a lot. It’s very cute — and usually when you explain, he’ll say “Oh!” as if he totally gets it now, and finds it quite ingenious.
—He’s expressing himself with complete thoughts; the sentences are sometimes a little out of order, but it’s very clear what he means.
—He loves to perform: When he’s not messing with something, he can often be found dancing and singing with pretend instruments and/or on a platform (e.g. the footstool).
—He’s a mynah bird, and it’s hilarious: For example, we watched quite a bit of HGTV over the holidays, and at one point he walked into the guest room and said, arms wide, “Dis is a very nice room!” So now we all call it the Very Nice Room.