Month: July 2007

Nemo

Leilani recently started to be really afraid at certain scenes while watching Nemo – especially when the fish are depicted fearful. The scene that Andy said almost made her cry from fear is when Nemo swims inside the filter unit to jam the pump.

The first scene, where Coral gets eaten she watches very sadly, and sometimes comments on ‘poor Marlin’, ‘crying a lot’, but I assume because Coral is just in the beginning and no attachment is formed to the character, no real fear is shown (Marlin first bosses her in and then gets out to defend her). I told her that poor Coral gets eaten, but she does not seem to empathise with her at all – or at least less than with the average fish on her plate… but then gets really sad in the next scene with Marlin.

Nemo’s initiation scene to the tank gang she likes so much that she re-enacts it – ah-oh-oh-oh a-oh-oh ring of fire ah-oh-oh-oh sharkbait oh-ah-ah. I’ll try to record it so you know what I’m talking about….

We ordered her more Nemo sippy-cups, and – in an attempt to keep her from wearing her Nemo boardshorts all the time – nice Nemo T-shirts and a dress, but so far she just wants to wear the dress or T-Shirt with the shorts….

Ice Cream Yoghurt Essen! and other recent news…

We have given Leilani yoghurt since she was 9 or 10 months, but she never cared much for it. We usually buy maple syrup-sweetened organic goat yoghurt, not very sweet, but very healthy and expensive, says Andy. Only occasionally she eats more than a few bites, mostly when she wakes up in the middle of the night hungry.

Today Andy and I shared one of the sugary (though organic) fruity dessert yoghurts and did not finish. Leilani found the cup, tasted and dubbed it “Ice cream yoghurt.” This after sharing Lappert’s mango sorbet and chocolate ice cream in Poipu on Sunday–come to think of it, the yoghurt was mango flavored so that’s probably how she made the connection. Oddly enough, she’s not a big fan of mangos themselves, she tends to prefer more acid fruit. She finished the yogurt cup, wanted more and then demanded real ice cream. She got a home-made lilikoi-coconut popsicle…

Monday we were at Karla’s playgroup, and the toddlers ran around naked. We have been trying to teach Leilani to go away from other people when she has to pee (and not to wipe herself with a towel). She went way in the back where there was a dirt patch around the coconut tree, turned towards the tree, and when finished, she got Ian’s gardening toys to put some dirt over the wet spot, just like Kiko the cat.

She is pretty good potty-wise, today the morning diaper stayed on and therefore dry most of the day, except for the time when she was wearing underwear, a bathing suit or was running around naked in the garden. Recently when we are in the garden and she is not naked she often has been telling us something like “I chi-chi grass. Diaper take off!” just to be able to run around naked. For Andy’s sake (who has some weird perceptions about having to wear something Wrong, I have weird perceptions about not making fake excuses–I’ll have to teach her to just say she wants to be naked, I have no problem with that) she then squats down and pretends to pee (meaningless, because in the yard she mostly pees standing up). And here I thought she couldn’t relax again in the moment and just wanted to keep playing immediately.

One of the (anti-mothering, so last century, probably permanently damaging Leilani’s whatever but I-dont-think-so) potty training tricks we use are stickers – removable and re-stickable. Doing anything on the potty (almost always) = sticker, dry diaper = sticker, telling us she has to go = more stickers … you get the idea.

We went through a pirate and sailboat sticker album, now have one with whales, one with prehistoric animals (dinosaurs), and another one with objects in the sky. The pirates were not a big hit, but their boats and parrots were. That album had a beach scene poster that we put up next to the toilet, that’s where the stickers go. Boats and whales on the water, pirates and dinosauriers on the beach. Mamoth and homo habilis – she can say that now, first she called them “Affi”(German monkey) – on the wall next to it.

Andy adds: now I know why pirates have hooks–because babies tear their hands and arms off! When Leilani unsticks the pirate stickers, she peels them only from one end, and if an arm or a leg doesn’t pull in the same direction, it sometimes rips off.

Today was air-machinery day. The bats and owls in the sky-things-sticker-book have been used up. There’s a moon to light up the beach scene and a few stars too – so today up went the space shuttle, a jet and 2 helicoptors. She can say “Hubschrauber” (helicopter in German) very well and “helicopter” in English quite well, too. She knew to place them in the sky, and had great fun with them all of a sudden she said “All fall down” (like the song “Ring around the roses…”) ripped off the police helicoptor and put it into the ocean, laughed like mad and ripped it off again, rolled it into a ball and yelled “Trashcan!!!”. I think Andy’s relationship to helicopters has been engrained in her genes (well, I can’t say I like them either… so maybe she has double-anti-heli-disposition Andy wonders if that’s a German word :-]
Yes, I just shortened it a little. The full German word is Autosomale-Rezesiv-Genetische-Anti-Epistatische-Hubschrauber-Dispositions-Präadaption

annika

Leilani loves Pippi Langstrumpf (“Longstocking”), but Annika, the good little neighbor girl even more now. Annika is always orderly, clean, well behaved, never speaks back and tries to keep Pippi from doing really stupid things. Leilani always demands to see Annika; I have to draw Annika all the time; she wants me to sing Annika songs…

pippi

I am pretty happy about that identification… especially … because… ahem… well…

sonja-386
(and that’s a 386, running SCO Unix, so that’s only a short time after they stopped filming Pippi… )

In case you’re wondering, Sonja loved Pippi too, colored her hair the same, and probably behaved a little like her too. But we both noticed in this picture that the haircut is strikingly similar to Annika’s, so maybe she has a split-personality…

I’d just like to add that Andy thinks my stream of thought is hard to follow… I just wonder how other people perceive our blog-alog (from dialog)…

July 6th 2007 – Anahola Beach and Under the Bananas

So many blog articles in such a short time… I think I broke my own record. I uploaded huge amounts of photos to the printers today, and figured as a by-product, I should post them on the blog too…

Yesterday we went to Anahola beach. Leilan enjoyed playing with the water, and dumped several watering cans and buckets full on herself.

You can also see here that her hair is getting thicker and long enough for a half-curl over the ears and above the neck.

Later that day, Leilani was wearing a dress she got from Laureen in Austria!

Happy Co-dependence day

We were invited to Alain and Carey’s 4th of July party and had a blast. Leilani played with all her friends on Raya’s playground. The food was great, I made veggie skewers, there were salmon and gardenburgers and for once Andy got to eat real hamburgers. It was generally a nice and relaxed party, with lots of great people attending.

Disclaimer: Derek, an American citizen by birth called it Co-dependence day and I think it is very funny (and secretly wish I had come up with it). Rather than being a general insult on people, it refers to the Hawaii-US situation.

One thing I noticed: the only 3 people wearing red (not bordeau), white, and blue at the party were Emma, a British lady, Leilani and I.

Fireworks were a big hit with everyone, young and old, but especially for the older kids.

Leilani got to hold her first fireworks. First, we introduced her to snap caps, but she can’t throw them consistently hard enough to make them snap all the time. Then there was a new kind of fireworks that is “perfect for kids”: it’s a wooden stick with a 10-second display of small sparks and flares, it even has a paper fuse. So after watching how these new sparklers behave, I held Leilani and gave her a lit one to hold. She watched it and waved it around a bit, seemed to enjoy it, but didn’t seem very excited about it (I guess I should be grateful for that). Even later when the kids were setting off fountains and roman candles, she watched but eventually got bored and went inside out of the smoke to play with toys.

Playgroup

Since there are no playgroups in the summer, Karla and I have been hosting mini playgroups at our homes. Every Monday afternoon at Karla’s house, and Thursday morning at our house, 5-10 babies and toddlers and their parents meet, have fun, play, eat snacks, chat (the mommies). We tried to do singing circles, but nobody really wanted to lead, so they stopped happening. Summer vacation is almost over for a group Leilani and I are going to attend “Tutu and me”, so there will be only 2 more Thursday groups, one here and one at Ramona’s house. I’ll miss them in a way, but playgroups at home sure are more work than driving to someone else’s playgroup…