Da Keiki Blog

Carey and Alain had a Halloween party again!

Joy’s husband Casey as a hula dancer and Alain as a pirate:

Cookie decorating (and sugar sprinkles eating) for the kids:

Angel and Daya (left and far right):

3 little monkeys jumping on the bed…

Casey, Daya, and Elsa:

Leilani loves horses and unicorns – and rides tham at every chance.

Our friend Thelan was here, from the Bay Area. He dressed up as a tourist…

Adam, Aditi and Andy are wearing paper maché masks that we made the week before. Andy is “Herr Nielson”, Pippi’s pet monkey.

Jaya came over to “Trick-or-treat” in the Houselots dressed as a princess:

I was a fire spirit. Some people said I am a hothead…

A few days before Halloween we had a full-moon party at the beach.

No relation to Halloween. Just a nice picture from Kealia.

Leilani loves us to read to her from a kid’s dictionary – it has really pretty pictures and she enjoys learning about the world.

Sometimes she surprises us by using big words. Today on the toilet she said: “Don’t touch Doo-doo. Don’t touch feces.” another suprising one was when we served corn that was still in the husk. “Take off husk dady.”

She remembers things from long ago – she looked at a picture we took on the Big Island over a month, in a lava field (among 30 other photos that show lava fields), near where my Mom had stumbled, and immediately commented: “Oma fell down.”

Usually she goes mute when we visit Dr Ancharski – he doesn’t have a nurse and does all the poking and proding himself, but yesterday, Halloween when we were almost done and she started to relax she told him. “I going trick-a-treating, I get lollipop.” (And she really did. hope I’ll post soon).

She got very emotional today while watching Heidi: Heidi’s aunt Dete had dragged Heidi to Frankfurt, and left her with the Sesemans, where Heidi was extremely unhappy. After her kitten was confiscated by Fraeulein Rottenmaier, Heidi decided to run away. When she was caught by Fraeulein Rottenmaier before she even reached the train station Leilani cried, all the way to the end of the episode, even though she knows from the book that Heidi eventually gets back, and even though I sat with her all the time and explained that Heidi would be sent back once Clara’s Oma saw how unhappy Heidi was…

When I read Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See? she finished the sentences from memory…

I read “Panda bear, panda bear, what do you see? She replied “I see a bald eagle soaring by me” – I said “Bald eagle, bald eagle what do you see?” She continued: “I see a water buffalo charging by me.” … (The picture of the next animal is on the next page, so when she said this she didn’t even see it yet.)

[modified from a comment I left at mothering.com]

Maybe fear is the key. The Dr Sears “The Discipline Book” has a good section on how to help toddlers to be safe around traffic, by letting the young toddler play in the driveway (while watching him extremely closely) and showing strong, even over-acted emotions, especially fear when s/he is going close to the road (screaming, grimacing, carrying him away).

For us something totally different worked to get even stronger fear, Leilani is deadly afraid of traffic.

We live in a quiet neighborhood with very little traffic, but her beloved kitten Kiko was ran over after she just had it for 3 months – she saw the body, saw my grief including tears, the “funeral” and heard the explanation “He played in the road, a car ran over him” hundreds of times (we did read “Cat Heaven” probably hundreds of times too)

While at the time we were very worried about traumatizing Leilani, who was only 19 months old, and we still are sad about loosing the kitten, the results now are a blessing (thank you Kiko).

We can walk at the quiet street without holding hands, when Leilani hears a car (still 2 blocks away) she comes running to me and I need to hold her until it is past. On busy streets and when crossing she wants to be carried. I have a feeling that this created a totally thoroughly lasting impression, and we’ll have a lot less traffic worries than other parents.

I noticed there were a lot of posts without photos of the star of the blog. That must change

Leilani in the swing, on Oma’s last day here

It’s Halloween (almost) Thanks Grandma for the costume

Leilani’s playhouse

At Lydgate…

…with Oma

Leilani took this photo at the Bellstones (while Andy was trying to get them to sound)

Mom planted these while she was here the last time. In the meantime we harvested and ate that bunch – some are still frozen, waiting to be a smoothie

Every year we meet Lisa’s parents Donna and Wolfgang, who have a timeshare here for Wolfgang’s birthday

I made some (food)-colored playrice for leilani

Tutu and Me is a free preschool prep program that Leilani and I attend. Free means the federal goverment and other sponsors are paying a lot – and want to see results. Literacy is one of them.

They have a library of a lot of kids books, unfortunately they do not select them for quality, some of the worst kid’s books I have ever seen are there too (Can I Bring My Pterodactyl to School, Ms. Johnson? ** and a lot of books where people are drawn as pigs).

Some are nice books though. Whenever you borrow one of them you are asked to have the child retell the story and write it down, so their “sponsors” know that the money is spend in a good place. I tell Leilani that’s her homework.

So we brought home “Smiley Shark” – which is just one notch above the Pterodactyl, but Leilani loves sharks. It’s fun to read, “Far away in the deep rolling ocean lived Smiley Shark. Smiley Shark longed to dip and dive, jiggle and jive, dart and dash with a splish and a splash with all the other fish…” I read the story twice, and Andy probably read it too, and when Leilani retold it I was surprised to see she had missed the point of the book – Smiley Shark is a nice guy and just wants to play with the other fish, but they are so afraid, only when he saves them from a fisherman do they start trusting him and become friends and all are smiling together. That’s a pretty dumb story, maybe that’s why Leilani didn’t understand it. She knows, sharks are dangerous and eat fish.

So that’s how she told the story, looking at the pictures

Eating, fishes eatin, swimming scaring fish. I am scaring fish. Splashing fish splashing other fish. Shark playing with angelfish. Shark eating, fish eating, angelfish eating (not even prompting got her to say he only wanted to play – which according to the words and the pictures of his friendly face with the big smile he did – anyway, angelfish darted off, and puffer on the next page was blowing bubbles and pricked Smiley in the nose.)
Blowing bubbles pufferfish. Pop on the nose. What is that? Am shark. Shark eating starfish, pufferfish, fishi. (no, he just wanted to play… but I stopped the prompting.) Fins. Jellyfish. Two jellyfish. One two three Jellyfish (well one of the three was an octopus…) Octopus. Fishingboat. Going in net. Have eat in mouth (???) Going in net. Shark! Shark! Shark eating! Shark flying. (Shark jumps out and scares the fisherman). Fisherman out. Fishes going outside too. Going outside this one. Octopus. (On the last page there were all the fish playing together with the shark, smiling, and the text said they were all friends, and even though I tried to get Leilani to say that she would not comment on that page beyond the word octopus.)

* Just because I know people are going to ask me why I think this book is ridiculously stupid, here a quote: “If I brought my Pterodactyl to school and there was a blizzard and our classroom was freezing (even though Franklin Elementary’s furnance was working hard) and we were all turning blue with everyone’s teeth chattering nonstop, my Pterodactyl could wrap his wings around us. All of us. Around you too Ms Johnson. Then we’d be comfy warm. (My Pterodactyl would be the COZIEST SNUGGLIEST blanket Ever)”

I mean – books are supposed to make kids smarter not dumb them down.