Month: January 2007

Aunty Maureen, who helps watch Leilani and plays with her 3 times a week.

Leilani created her first work of art!

Leilani sleeping with all her tigers…

…or just with one

Jaya and Leilani

Still life with roses

Spirulina is healthy! And green.

Teddy Bears!

Leilani’s new train

Makani’s birthday party (picture taken while Leilani snoozed)

Potluck!

Hawaiian Sunset

Saturday, January 20th ago we drove up to the Arboretum, and further to the Jungle hike trailhead. We hiked to the gaging station and weir with a view of the blue hole first, then along the jungle trail to a nice and cold (really!) little pool. Andy and Chris floated through the tunnel, and Adam tested the strength of a rope and a branch.

After scrapbooking and moviemaking I learned matting and framing:

Aditi, Adam with Jaya, Sandy, I with Leilani, Chris with Alex, Amaya with Eden and Andy:

The famous Blue Hole:

Makaleha Mountain:

Andy emerges from the tunnel:

Tarzan:

As recorded, Leilani is really talking a lot now and picking up words almost every day. But I’ve noticed that there’s a lot more than just recognizing objects now. While she’s always had feelings, they were mostly conveyed by crying and other sounds. Now she has a few words to express those feelings and desires.

• No. She said it a few times in that recording, but she really masters it now. We often ask her if she wants to do something (get up, go potty), and if she doesn’t want to, she says no. Since she hasn’t really learned “yes” yet, we have to be careful what we ask and how we ask it. Sometimes it’s better not to give her a choice.
• Down. Leilani used “up” to mean both “pick me up” and “let me stand up” (in other words, put me down). So we kept trying to teach her to say down. Not only did she finally use it correctly, she immediately understood that it applied to anything, and that it was relative. She started squatting and saying “down,” then standing up and saying “up.” She also lifts a toy “up” and then puts it “down.”
• Sissi. This is her way of saying the German “Sitz(i)” (sit down – with an i tacked on for babytalk) and she always sits down when she says it. I thought sitting down and saying “sitzi” was redundant (she often comments her own actions when she knows the word), but recently, I noticed she says it when she wants us to sit down with her, for example if she wants us to read a book.
• Oww. Leilani use to say “aïe” for small pain (big pain is crying), I don’t know where she picked that up. It’s the same as in French, but I never used it around her, and I can’t imagine anyone else would. Recently she switched to “oww” which is what we parents use. What I find incredible is that she began using it for things that can hurt, such as forks and other sharp objects around the house, even if she’s never been hurt by them. She’ll touch or point to the sharp part with her finger and say “oww.”
• Mmmaa. This is her imitation of the kissing sound, and she points her lips in the direction of the kissee. She correctly understands kissing as “I like what I kiss” but she uses it to show the objects that she likes, not just the people. So she makes this sound to say she likes her Bunny puppet (named Mum) or her toothbrush. Still she does use it for people, and it’s quite a moment when you realize your daughter just said “I love you Daddy/Mommy” for the first time.

Not really. But Leilai said her first 3-language sentence today, while she sadly watched the last of the bathwater swirl down the drain:

“Badi all pau!”

Badi is german babytalk for “Bad” which means bath. Pau is Hawaiian for finished, and used a lot on the islands, not only by pidgin speakers.

Now we hope for some French words too.

Leilani loves animals. She doesn’t have mommy’s concerns about loss of freedom and habitat, so the zoo is one of her favorite places to be. These pictures are from the Austin Zoo where we spent a whole day during our recent vacation with Andy’s parents.

Some of the animals do run free:

Wait, that one doesn’t run free, Andy leaned over the safety barrier to photograph through the fence.

Andy had to lean way over the safety fence for this one:

Maybe too far because they noticed, and they didn’t like being woken up:

“Photographers taste gooood….”

The pumas are more realistic, we pretended not to notice who they were watching:

At the petting zoo, the animals are more tame:

Leilani really liked the birds too:

Ooops… too pink.

But in the end, she was most familiar with the cat who came to our picnic:

We thought Leilani would enjoy the zoo train, but it’s just a ride, not really to see any animals:

So we had to find something to photograph:

To quote a song on a CD Leilani received for Christmas: “Well we stayed all day and I’m getting sleepy / Sitting in the car gettin sleep sleep sleepy…”