Da Keiki Blog

We went on 2 easter egg hunts – I can’t find the photos of the first one at Aunty Joy’s, Leilani’s preschool, I suspect Andy must have the memory card, and will post them later.

Here are the photos of the second one, that we had today in the morning in our yard. When I woke up Leilani, I whispered “The easter bunny was here” and she jumped out of bed like I have never seen before and ran to the door.
I thought she wanted to look for gifts right away and tried to get her to dress, but she wanted to see the bunny – she would not calm down until I let her open the door and peek out and see that the bunny was already gone… we got dressed orderly, and went into the bathroom and within 5 minutes (!!!! her regular morning routine is about 30 minutes until the start of breakfast, and that is only because I hurry her along every step…) we were out in the yard. There Leilani took her time, and opened the plastic eggs at the spot, tasted the candy, and unwrapped the presents. She also read most books – to find all her nests took more than an hour that way.

“Look what I found. I found JoJo, Ei-Ei Jojo” Eastercat slightly disturbed

Eastercat happy again, rolling in the cilantro

We dyed Easter eggs – Leilani helped. To decorate them, we put Easter stickers on them. Then I noticed that these were the 20-year-old stickers (maybe 30) that my brother and I used to have, and that Leilani inherited recently. Notice they are made in the USA, in Framingham, Massachusetts, not far from where we lived there. I like the retro look of the decorations, that might even be trendy.

Leilani is going through a Nemo revival phase – and Rainbowfish comes in as a close second

She really likes Rudy, she always decorates him, and kisses him, and when we have visitors introduces him

I spend a day on the Big Island and met with Serge, and also saw the new lava flow

Mikey has completely forgiven us, and sleeps in the bed again. Actually Leilani sleeps in her own bed more and more often now :-)

She did not build this all by herself…

And our house still has some of the nicest sun and moon rises

Leilani received her first Credit Card offer:

I have been working crazy hours and not blogging much… I worked on a new site Life Beyond Death and informed many of my customers that I might be working in a regular job* , and that increased my workload quite a bit…

Leilani is not grounded anymore!!! She agreed to wash her hair, and did not cry a bit when we actually did it. We celebrated by having a big piece of chocolate before breakfast, a lollipop and a popsicle with breakfast and watching Cinderella for about 3 hours…

We found a great babysitter Tammy, a grandma who misses her grandkids, youngest one same age as Leilani. Leilani loves her and her friend and roommate Sandy and her dog Lea. We left her there 2 evenings, and are planing to see a musical, South Pacific Kauai next week.

*no I probably won’t, still have not heard back from them

The good news is that Leilani is becoming much more aware of her emotions and able to express them without tantrums.

For example, on a short hike last weekend, she found a stick and played a while with it and saw that it looked like a crocodile. Then Raya who was with us wanted to play with it too, and while they were playing nicely, somebody got bonked on the head (I don’t remember who now, it was very minor). On of the parents took the stick away, and since we were leaving, just put it on the ground.

We put the kids in the backpack carriers, but the whole way back Leilani was talking about her crocodile. I hadn’t seen her play with the stick so much, so I just told her we leave sticks and rocks in nature for next time (which isn’t always true, because we parents pick up things such as seashells and beachwood—oh the hypocrisy of being of parent or the difficulty of explaining the difference [and sometimes admitting there is none and the kid is right]). But about 5 minutes later and half-way to the car, Leilani said she was “upset” about the crocodile, without any acting out. At the car, after further communication, we determined she really was emotionally upset about not having her stick, and since she had expressed it so well, Mommy got some exercise and jogged back to get it for her.

So in a way, Leilani is starting to learn the big lesson of delaying gratification. The flip-side of this is that she is also learning to delay punishment. So we now have to teach her about consequences of choices.

The big issue of emotional self-control right now is hair washing. Last week, we had her in a bath and tried to wash her hair. She has gotten soap in her eyes and it stung her, so she really doesn’t want to wash her hair. She started throwing a tantrum in the bath, which just made it worse. We explained to her how badly she behaved and why we wash her hair and how we promise to try not to get any in here eyes, but she still calmy refuses the idea of washing her hair.

Since we can’t really force the hair washing without a dangerous repeat performance, we have essentially grounded her until she does. Grounding for a 2-yr old means no candy or ice cream, no DVD movies or cartoon shows, and no games on the computer. At first we said no baths either, just showers, because she likes playing in baths, but we realized that would keep her away from the possibility of washing her hair.

So every time she asks for these things, we ask if she will wash her hair. What has been so unexpected is that she has never thrown a tantrum about not being allowed these things now. She calmy refuses to wash her hair by saying “I’m not ready yet,” and we say she can have/do the desired thing when she washes her hair, and she accepts that.

During the stick incident above, one of the conditions of for getting the stick back was that Leilani would wash her hair. She fully understood what we meant, and she agreed to it. But that night, she calmly refused to wash her hair again. So we told her how disappointed we were that she broke her promise, and we learned not to give any rewards for promises.

And before you think we’re negligent parents, while her hair and scalp are a bit dirty, we do manage to splash some water on it at the beach and when she plays with the sprinkler in the garden.

Dear Mr Google and Mr Yahoo:

Please crawl the site AndyKass.com, index it nicely and give it a good PR. I personally endorse it.

To whom else it may concern:

Andy is a great writer, recommend him as an employee! You can download his resume as a PDF or a Word Document as well.