Da Keiki Blog

L: Hi. My name is Leilani, and what is your name?

A: I am Ariel.

L: Oh like the Nixe (Leilani used the correct word but in German an I could really see that she was trying to find the correct english word mermaid)

[no answer]

L: Look I have turtles on my dress.

[Ariel is starting to warm up]

A: Oh, nice. Look I have an octopus.

L: Beautiful. I like this dress to go and dance in.

A: You like to dance?

L: Yes, very much. This dress dances nicely. (means it swings great when she spinns) Does yours dance?

A: It is a very pretty dress.

(2 hour long break)

L: Oh like the mermaid (The background job had finished processing and found the correct english word). Ariel, Ariel like the mermaid.

(I think Arial had heard that a few times before but she forgave Leilani and they played a little)

L: Would you like to come to my house and play (the party had turned a bit stale, the bouncy castle had been picked up and most of the bigger kids were gone)

A: Yes

S: Ahhhm, Leilani we will invite Ariel to our Goodbye party…

L: Noooo! I want her to come to my house now.

S: We really need to get going…

—

Ariel is 7 or 8 btw, and I thanked her a few times for being so nice to Leilani.

A few weeks ago I realized Leilani had surpassed my mom in computer skills (sorry mom) but now I realize she has surpassed Andy and me in smalltalk abilities…

In the morning we went to Gaylords on a trainride – Leilani promissed to be good at the nursery afterwards where we picked out new plants to replace the hard to maintain Bouganvilla and passion fruit vines (and she really was good.)

The highlight of the day was to feed the wild piggies

Leilani is showing off her Halloween spider

The Gaylords train. We rode on the waggon called Wailua… Leilani kept telling me how much she wanted daddy to ride with us, and today she finally talked nicely to hime on the phone again.

After the nursery and lunch we went briefly to the museum. The dead otter has been surpassed in popularity by the great plantation playhouse.

Watering the Ti plant

Would you like some tea?

I am serving rice now

Potluck with Delfina

Sunrise Sept 10

Leilani is in a really bad mood. She hardly ever smiles, and is unsocial with other children, grabbing things and refusing to play with them (she still plays nicely with their toys…). She does not talk on the phone, neither to Andy nor to her friend Raya. I feel sorry for her and cut her a lot of slack, but she still throws horrible tantrums, and seems to be generally on strike – mainly a I’ll-waste-mommy’s-time strike. Today it took us more than 2 hours from her getting up (breakfast was on the table already, the breakfast I had picked out that is… not the beets with ravioli which she ultimately ate) to getting into the car to go to Joys… yesterday was not much better. We arrived at Tutu and Me at 9am.

Snacktime. Children learn to pour liquids and eat very nicely with spoons.

Leilani is figuring our a 7 piece stacking puzzle

She really likes to glue and make crafts

Here she is doing more puzzle, first one is probably for the 1 year olds but she really likes to do easy things. The other one is hard, because it involves quarters versus thirds of a circle, and this is the first time that I saw Leilani do this one fast – less than one minute.

Cleanup and tumbling on the floor

After that it’s story time:

And then we hug the aunties!