Da Keiki Blog

I had almost finished that post… I’ll post as is, might be the last for a while…

Last weekend we went camping. We had planned a weekend with friends, but ended up by ourselves, which was nice too for a change. (Except for the feeling guilty part about probably having spread the virus that got Leilani so sick 2 weeks ago )
We did 2 nice hikes, Leilani loved hiking, camping and the wildlife (just rats and chickens, all good for chasing).

On Sunday, Carey and Raya came to meet us, but we didn’t get to do a hike with them. First the trail had brambles, then it was blocked by fallen branches, then it rained. Instead we went to the Waimea brewpub, and had really greasy (but tasty) snacks. Leilani was extra cranky and also peed while sitting on my lap – which made me extra cranky. We picked up a sick young bird, that we intended to nurse back to health, but it had died by the next day. I lied to Leilani and said it had flown off.

Look at all that camping stuff:

A pretty valley on an unused dirt road:

Camping on the edge of the forest:

Leilani and Raya:

Hanalei 2 weekends ago (last weekend too, but no pictures yet):

Even older:

Our poor little Kiko got run over by a car last night, 10 days after our Mikey dissapeared. I am very sad, Andy takes it a little better, and Leilani was more affected by Mikey not being there than by Kiko’s death. I am not sure she understands the permanence of death. Actually I am quite sure she doesn’t.

We read up what to do with small children, and decided to treat her as a 2-3 year old, as she is way ahead in verbal and other development, so we involved her in the funeral and showed her the dead cat.

He was already in his “casket”, only the back of the head and the ears showed. She petted him and called out as if trying to wake him up, dangled a toy and tried to make him come out of the box, while I struggled to explain to her that dead means he can’t hear her and can’t see the toys. She then called for the “Uncle Doctor”, but again we had to explain to her that it was too late for the doctor.

Then she went to pick flowers, her “Heil-vendel” (Ger. Heil=heal, Lavendel=lavender) – she named the Lavender this because whenever she is sick or upset she has to be carried to this lavender plant, and it makes her feel better instantly. Usually while doing this we sing “Heile Heile Segen, morgen gibt es Regen, Uebermorgen Sonnenschein, und dem Kind wird besser sein” (Heal, heal, blessings, tomorrow it’s gonna rain, the next day the sun comes out and the child will be better) and she started singing that song while we were crying at the grave.

She threw her flowers into the grave after a little prompting, and when Andy started to close the hole with shovels full of dirt she picked up a few dirtclots and threw them in, and then yelled “Bye bye Kiko, upstairs, come Mommy, comme Daddy” and except for twice really briefly has not mentioned him since.

There is absolutely no news from Mikey, the catfood is untouched in the morning, there are no catfights going on in the neighborhood, and I pretty much lost hope there too. Andy is checking out the animal shelter today again.

source: NASA

Hurricane Flossie (of all names…) is approaching fast, fortunatelly it just slowed down to a Category 3 hurricane (which is still pretty bad, see below… Iniki was a 4, Katarina a 5) in case you are interested the tracking is on wunderground

We will probably loose power on Wednesday, hopefully we will be hit by a strong storm and not by a hurricane. We have all food, water, and are working on tarping up and boxing the valuables. We have bought plywood sheets for 2 of the windows, we expect the new windows to hold, but will board up the old ones, and the big sliding glass door. If a strong hurricane hits us don’t expect us to be able to get in touch for a while, the last time it took 3 months until power was restored. Andy might have to fly to California for his job as soon as airtraffic is restored.

The definition of a Category 3 Hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale is:
Winds 111-130 mph (96-113 kt or 178-209 km/hr). Storm surge generally 9-12 ft above normal. Some structural damage to small residences and utility buildings with a minor amount of curtainwall failures. Damage to shrubbery and trees with foliage blown off trees and large trees blown down. Mobile homes and poorly constructed signs are destroyed. Low-lying escape routes are cut by rising water 3-5 hours before arrival of the center of the hurricane. Flooding near the coast destroys smaller structures with larger structures damaged by battering from floating debris. Terrain continuously lower than 5 ft above mean sea level may be flooded inland 8 miles (13 km) or more. Evacuation of low-lying residences with several blocks of the shoreline may be required. Hurricanes Jeanne and Ivan of 2004 were Category Three hurricanes when they made landfall in Florida and in Alabama, respectively.

The biggest news is that we don’t have childcare at the moment. Poor Maureen had a death and severe sickness in the immediate family and decided not to come back from her vacation. It was very sudden for us, but Leilani doesn’t seem to miss her, which is very surprising to me, considering how much Leilani talks about cousins, and Oma, and Grandma, and other people she has not seen in a long time.

Maybe it is a blessing in disguise though that she left us, potty training and discipline are so much easier now that everyone watching Leilani is on the same boat, and Leilani made great progress doing puzzles in the last 2 weeks. We were also forced to organize our lives better, Leilani is on a much more reasonable schedule now, and last but not least we finally are checking out Auntie Joy’s toddler school (in Lihue, hello commute). While I wish very much that Leilani will be able to attend right now, she seems a little young… we’ll keep trying and report the progress.

Potty training is going great, although we went back to night-time diapers. We go everywhere (including Papayas :-) with her, have full day outings, and even start being confident on friends’ carpets. Her accidents usually are a few drops in the underpants and a distresses cry “I need potty”. Sometimes (when she’s having fun playing) we still need to remind her, when we notice her knees being presses together. She still makes us stop the car and goes by the side of the road sometimes (I think it’s a bit of manipulation, but who want to risk washing a car seat). The biggest issue is that she can’t really go on command, so in cases like these (excited or by the side of the road) she gets off the potty/toilet to wander around naked until she remembers she had to go.This happens mainly at the park, and I think is a relict of Maureen not ever putting her on the potty at the park

Saturday we went snorkeling at Tunnels (Haena), and later kayaking at Pinetrees in Hanalei. Leilani talked about going kayaking all day, since we had the kayak on the roof of the car. She loves to sit in front with Mommy while Andy gets his exercise paddling in back. She sits quitely and looks for fish, turtles and sharks (“Bruce” from the Nemo movie) but there were none to see in Hanalei Bay. The destination of the kayaking trip was to see the big sailboats anchored in the bay, the biggest being a two-masted wooden sailboat that we told her was Pippi’s (father’s) sailboat–it looks like an old boat, and we actually vaguely know its owner . We finished by watching part of the ocean film festival outdoor on the beach, Leilani lasted until 9:30pm (always hoping for another fish or turtle movie–there were enough to hold her attention, and she likes to watch surfing).

Julian was there with us, and patiently tried to teach Leilani gemetrical shapes, that he drew into the sand with a stick. A circle, a square and a triangle, then he asked her to stomp one of them. A few days later Leilani took a wooden spoon, raked a V on the carpet, and said: “Triangle. Stomp triangle…” We emailed that to Julian, with a subject lien “Impact” and the answer was:
> wow! ai in young lifeform.
> symbolic notation.
> wish we had computers that could do that.
> aloha
> julian

Sometimes when Leilani is really dirty she gets a bubblebath (keeps the bathtub clean :-)

A few days ago we went to dinner with Cristophe – Leilani was playing with his daughter.

Andy took a cool photo:

Sunday we went to the Lawai International Center. Early Japanese immigrants created 88 buddhist shrines on a steep slope, and recently the Lawai International Center restored the sacred space. Shrines like this are very rare outside of Japan.

The place was site of the Hawaiian heiau, a Taoist temple, a Shinto shrine, and a Buddhist temple.

Leilani called the shrines Buddha houses, and peeked into most of them.

Leilani was really sick, started vomitting at 3am (still parts of her undigested dinner), and then every 15-30 minutes until 10am. She was awake until about 4:30, and then was so exhausted that she fell asleep as soon as one bout of sickness was over, slept for a few minutes, only to be woken up by another wave of nausea. Every little sip of water or milk came back up.

She got up at 7:30 or so, asked to go potty (she had been on the potty in the middle of the night too) and didn’t really have diarrea, just a little too soft. Later she was quite lethargic, and just dozed with open eyes in my arms.

We had called a nursing line earlier, and they told us not to go to the emergency room, but wait and see her pediatrician in the morning [Andy says: I wonder if they could tell that we were first-time parents–next time we probably won’t take her to the doctor unless she shows other signs]. We got a 10am appointment, and just before we left I found some homeopathic Nux Vomica, and gave that to her. Within minutes she started talking and smiling again, threw up one last time, but in the doctor’s office she was fine and happy, playing, demanding books and commenting on the pictures there.

Needless to say he found her totally healthy and send us home with the recommendation not to get the prescription he had given us just in case. We did suggest that maybe the sugar in the homeopathic pills had something to do with Leilani’s improvement, but maybe that was just for the doctor’s benefit.

We had promissed her an airplane book or stickers, so we went to Borders, and waited for 1/2 hour (spent 50$ but got an airplane book, a sticker book, a coloring book and 2 huge books on animals). When the pizza place next door opened Andy went and ordered pizza, and that’s all Leilani talked about the last 15 minutes at Borders. She ate an entire slice of a large pizza (according to Weightwatchers 6 points, 300 or so calories) and part of another one. We briefly panicked when she burped, but she was fine. She fell asleep in the car and did not wake up when we put her in the bed.

P.S. Even though we did have a diaper on her today, it stayed dry and clean through all the sickness, and yesterday there were no accidents at all either (and no diapers).