Month: November 2011

After months of talking about, worrying about, and wishing for a wiggley tooth, then several months of forgetting about it, Leilani got her first wiggley tooth last Thursday.

I don’t know if it was the stories of the tooth fairy or just her older friends loosing teeth, but for the longest time, Leilani wanted to start losing her baby teeth. She would feel all her teeth and talk about the subject all the time. I was actually afraid she’d push hard enough on her teeth to make them loose too soon.

But out of the blue last week, she felt it while eating and jumped up from the table to dance around. Sure enough, once we looked at it, we saw the bigger tooth coming under the gums below. I have never seen her so genuinely excited so I had to take a picture of that big smile, one of the last still full of baby teeth.

Leilani spent the weekend showing the wiggley tooth to her friends, over and over. I’m sure you’ll hear more about this tooth (and I wonder what the tooth fairy will give her).

Alissia is back from Europe, it stopped raining on the North Shore for two days, and so Leilani could go riding again.

She’s been anxious to go, especially because she received an early birthday present from Grandma and Grandpa: new riding boots and a pink riding helmet. Somehow, she managed to find purple, lilac, and/or pink clothes to match. You can’t see it in the photos, but like her old boots, these flash and sparkle with little light inside. I wonder what the horses think of these colors.

For some reason (I, Andy, wasn’t there) she rode on Bill today:

Leilani learned a new trick (I think Bill knows it already):

Here’s how you do it: first you show the horse where to put his feet, then he steps up, then you pet him.

The rest of the lesson:

The 99% on Kaua’i held a couple of demonstrations today in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement that is spreading across the country.

We went to the one on Kuhio Hwy, in front of Safeway in Kapa’a (there was another one later in Puhi, by the community college). There were about 150 people spread along the sidewalk on both sides of the road to show our support for the causes and protesters in New York City.

We made signs, Leilani even came up with her own slogans. After Andy explained the Occupy Wall Street protest to her in kids’ terms, she came up with “NO More Tricks, Occupy Wall $t” and painted the sign herself (hence the pink and turquoise, with a heart over the i). The other side of her side said “No more stealing the money”

The back of Andy’s sign says “Make Wall $t Pay for Toxic Greed,” in reference to the toxic derivatives and mortgage-backed securities that Wall Street cooked up and burned the economy with. But in the end, I like the “Green Not Greed” message much better.

And mine just said “Make Corporations Responsible”

“Get Up, Stand Up” refers to both the Bob Marley song (next verse is “Stand up for your rights”), and stand-up paddleboarding which has taken over the surfing world, at least here in Hawai’i.


Andy reused his sign from the No-Ferry protest and just added another layer of cardboard:

The Sleeping Giant is both the mountain near Kapa’a and the 99% in America. Hopefully, the Occupy Wall Street movement will lead to some real changes on Wall Street, but together we can move mountains.

We visited Kerrie on her very beautiful land. Maybe she will start a school here.


Best starfruit ever. And we eat a lot of them.

We went to Tunnels beach with Julian. Sadly we did not take any photos of people. The beach was really pretty…

And there was a monk seal. Sonja had to yell at tourists who approached it.

We then went to the Blue Room for a quick swimm


Luggage

Leilani’s second to last school day was a field trip to Fern Grotto
With her buddy Brianna

Leilani was sad for a while, there were many aspects of the school she didn’t like, but she also enjoyed all the enrichments and the social life there. I go back and forth between thinking I made the right decision and questioning myself….


group shot by the grotto

Leilani’s best friend Julia


Walking back to the boat