Monaloca

We had fun celebrating Thanksgiving with the Weiss side this year. We hosted turkey dinner at our home on Friday, since none of us wanted to drive in holiday traffic. It worked out great, because it meant we also had Kai. Melina got all dressed up in her new, pretty pink dress from Auntie Sharon.

She’d been waiting for months to wear it, since it arrived over the summer but we hadn’t had a dress-up occasion until now. Bonus for the adults: The kids are finally all old enough to entertain each other (while making a huge mess, of course), and to sit at their very own kids’ table.

We rounded out the weekend with a visit to Grandma and Grandpa’s house in San Jose so that I could attend my 20-year high school reunion. Yikes! I ended up bringing Stacie instead of Joey as my guest. Excellent call. She had way more fun than he would have had. Amazingly, we both lasted til after midnight without turning into pumpkins. But we arrived back at our parents’ house without a house key and had to knock on Mom’s window to have her wake up and let us in. Oops.

No Comments »

Last week Kai lost his third tooth in as many months, but the first at our house. He was ecstatic at the thought of the tooth fairy visiting him that night. “She’s going to leave two whole dollars under my pillow!” As he put his tooth in a sandwich bag and tucked it under his pillow, Melina suddenly said “I want tooth fairy too!” She pretended to pull out her top front tooth and handed it to me.

“Here, Mama.” I asked if she wanted to put it under her pillow and she said “I need baggie!” so I went to the kitchen for a bag, plopped in her fake tooth, and helped her tuck the (empty) baggy under her pillow.

Kai woke up to find two dollars under his pillow, and Melina found a folded picture of Dora dressed as a fairy princess. Yup, a princess for our burgeoning princess.

No Comments »

We had a busy Halloween weekend, and now have a house full of candy to keep us sugar-high for weeks if we so choose.

The fun began Friday morning, with Melina’s preschool Halloween parade. As I dressed her as a ballerina that morning she was already giddy and kept saying “I wanna be ballerina in parade!” She barely sat still for me to do her pony tails, but did insist on adding three pink barrettes. I think she was tired from all her excitement before we even walked out the door.

Joey and I both took her to school that morning and walked with her and 60 other wee ones as they paraded up and down the block, collecting candy from merchants along the way. The two-year-olds held onto a rope the whole way, most of them wide-eyed with all the activity.

Meli’s teachers let her wear her costume all day – she was thrilled! That evening we had neighbors Max and Kendall (and their parents) over for pizza, cookies, and Halloween videos. All the tots wore their costumes, but Kai decided he was just a “student” in his school T-shirt. Kai was also the only kid to pay attention to “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown,” but they all enjoyed a Dora Halloween special.

Not surprisingly, by Saturday Melina seemed a little Halloweened-out until Kai started talking up trick-or-treat and all the candy. We double dipped on Halloween night, first stopping by Max’s house for a party with popcorn and cider, and then going to friend Lily’s house in the hills for a potluck party and trick-or-treating with play group friends. The kids all collected so much candy their pumpkins were almost too heavy for them to carry.

Melina spent the latter part of the party emptying all her loot from her pumpkin into a bag then back again, at least 20 times. She did ask to have a tangerine she’d collected, but didn’t try to eat a single candy until Sunday morning. I don’t think she knew exactly what it was.

We polished off our Halloween weekend with a Sunday Dia de los Muertos celebration at a neighbor’s house. And now, on to Thanksgiving!

No Comments »