I am sitting at Joy’s Orchids Preschool while Leilani is off to the library with Joy and her daughter Elsa. Joy is nice enough to let me use her computer. We have been coming here 2 days a week together for almost a month, and yesterday was the first time I left Leilani alone with the whole group – 9 kids, 3 adults. During the summer time the preschool turns into a childcare.
She was not doing excellent when I left, but at least reasonably well. I told her 1/2 hour before I planned to go and notified her a few more times in between. When it was time to say bye-bye she requested a hug, held me for almost a minute (longest hug ever) and then just ran off to play with Benjamin and the toy cars. She cried 4 times during the next half hour, every time less than a minute and was easily distracted with a new activity.
To speed up the process – and to make for a smoother start of the actual school year – Joy and Elsa came over to our house for a play date last Tuesday, and today the 4 of us played here and now they are at the library.
Leilani and I really like both, Joy and Elsa, and all other kids coming here are so well behaved and seem so happy, playing, exploring, learning, it’s a great place.
Leilani’s crankieness and cold symptoms are gone!!! No new teeth either. We got a book about “Cat heaven” from the library that I have to read daily, and Leilani points to all the cats in the book that are gray and says “That’s Kiko.” “Kiko sitting angel lap.” and similar things.
Potty training is going excellent. We still use night time diapers, but they stay dry almost always, and during the day there were virtually no accidents anymore. (lessons recently learned: never tell her to just squat down and pee, assuming that she doesn’t wear underwear under her beach dress, and always listen to what she is saying before she runs off towards the bathroom)
She can hold it much longer, and also urinate when the bladder is 1/2 empty (or less when it happens to be late, after bed time and she wants to get up again).
In the home improvement department I finished putting together her bed, decorated her room (with fish, turtles and rays), switched all wall decorations and pictures and moved most of our stuff (stuffed the stuff actually) into other areas of the house.
Andy was really busy and couldn’t help much, so things are slow (Thanks for getting the paint out of the garage though :-).
Saturday I took out our bathroom console table, a little shelf, and several miscellaneous screws and nails, sanded, primed and painted and prepared the area for a huge shelf (48inches wide, holds 1000 pounds or so) that I hauled home from Cosco and intend to build soon.
I filmed Aditi’s brother’s Anthony’s and Alice’s wedding last Thursday, and messed up the sound badly enough that they had to redo the ceremony (I got to remember never to link to the baby blog from my professional websites…). At least having double the footage is going to make for an awesome end product, and I spent a lot more time on finishing the sound up than I normally would because I still feel guilty. I am also still a beginner on Final Cut Pro, but it seeems so much more powerful that I can’t imagine going back to iMovie (which is what I used on all my previous movies).
Andy was busy demonstrating against the Superferry (big congrats on winning the battle), and writing about it and other interesting things on his blog – check it out!
Leilani is sleeping pretty nicely in her bed – she wakes up for nursing (briefly around 2am) falls back asleep within a few minutes, and then comes to our bed around 4 or 5 for a longer nursing. I wake her up at 7:00am.
During weekdays we leave the house around 8am, and Monday, Friday, and from now on Wednesday too we come to Joy’s preschool until 12:30. Tuesday and Thursday we usually go to Tutu and me in Anahola, it’s another preschool-like toddler activity for kids and their caregivers, it keeps us out of the house and Andy gets more work done in the mornings.
This week we didn’t go to Tutu and me, Tuesday the car was in the shop (700$ – maintenance not repairs, another 400 to go…) and Joy and her daughter Elsa visited us, today we are here at their place.
After lunch Leilani is supposed to take a nap (ideally falling asleep in the car already because she eats at Joy’s or at Papayas or Jamba Juice) I have been waking her up at 3:00pm no matter when she falls asleep, because that seems to be the only way to make her go to bed at night. Dinner is around 7:00, after a little quiet play and brushing teeth and putting on a diaper she is allowed to watch 20minutes of Heid, Pippi or Nemo (she always chooses Heidi, or switches after a few minutes to Heidi). Bedtime is between 8:00 and 9:00 (at least we try very hard to put her to bed around this time). Missing her tiredness period usually results in her being up till midnight, a while ago we babysat one of her friends until 9:30, and she had started to ask to go to bed at 8:00 – she was up until 1am, and ultra cranky for 2 days…
Leilani got a few very nice gifts recently – the last times I did not have the microphone handy, but this time was perfect – I found the microphone and recorder in an instant, and Leilani was so happy with the book, it is one of her favorite books.
Fledermaus is the German word for bat, one of a few words she always says in German…
I won’t do a complete transcript, but just comment a little: First Leilani thanks Grandma, and then runs off to show the book to Heidi (a drawing) and Rudi (her red horsie) and then reads the book. She actually commented on almost all pages, but I cut a lot out. Later we unpacked the magnets.
We went to the fair on Saturday:
We met Carey, Alain and Raya, went on wild rides (at least the women did), on baby rides, to the petting zoo (one of us had to leave) ate TONS of junk food and Andy won a plush Nemo for Leilani. It was fun!
Right after we looked at the photos with Leilani and let her comment. It is pretty hard to have her talk into the microphone from the correct distance, she almost sticks it into her mouth, sorry about the bad sound:
She was on a sugarhigh, and is pretty hard to understand. Transcript (interupted by the photos she was looking at:
I want some – I want some – I want some – Num-Num!
What Num-Num would you like?
Ahm… pizza … junk food
You would like junk food???
Ja! Sugar high, sugar high, sugar high. Too much junk food, pizza.
We are happy to announce that Leilani is not half as addicted to junk food as he mom is…
Andy and I were debating which photos to delete and what to keep, and Leilani got bored and started singing.
Vidirallala, vidirallala…
Heidi, Heidi … trying the french version I think :-) … all done
Can you sing the octopus song for us?
Octopus, feeding (should be swimming though) in water. Done.
No, no, what happens then?
Oh, no, got eaten. Humongus whale. Bruce (the Nemo shark) eaten. Bruce eaten.
Bruce ate the octopus?
Ja. Bruce shark, Bruce swimming in water. Nemo swimming in the water (*real text below)
We looked at more photos and prompted her to speak German.
Leilani fliegen
Mit was fliegt denn die Leilani?
Luft, Flugzeug, Hubschrauber (this one was right :) Hubschrauber, blau Hubschrauber
Laut, Nau(?), Laut, noise, [macht Laerm wie ein Hubschrauber]
Flugzeug, Leilani Flugzeug fliegen Daddy!
After the last photo of the fair iPhoto showed us this one:
we were still recording:
Gil!
Ja that’s right, and who else?
Nemo, swimming.
Swimming where? In the ocean?
Dory ocean!
Dory is still in the ocean. Where is Nemo.
Fishtank!
In the fishtank. That’s right Leilani.
I want Bruce. I want Bruce. Jellyfish.
More fair photos, no more Leilani comments…
We rode on the Ferris Wheel twice
The first time Carey, Alain and Raya joined us:
Proud winner!
The morning before the fair we saw the most amazing sunrise, and all day long the clouds were awesome:
*Real text of the Octopus song:
Octopus Octopus swimming in the water
Octopus, octopus
Chomp,Chomp,Chomp,… oh no He was eaten by
a Great white shark,a Great white shark, swimming in the water
a Great white shark,a Great white shark
Chomp,Chomp,Chomp,… oh no He was eaten by
a Humongous whale, a Humongous whale, swimming in the water
a Humongous whale, a Humongous whale
Our last potluck happened at the Islander at the beach. For once we went in the pool instead of the ocean:
On the left are our new friends Angel and Daya, right Aditi and Jaya
