Monaloca

More Tahoe photos to share, plus what Melina’s up to at 21 months. She’s lost all semblance of a baby and seems to have entered the two’s a few months early!

Our girl still LOVES animals. Her favorite books are the ones featuring animals, especially cats and dogs. (Though she’s also suddenly a big fan of Elmo and Maisy, in books and videos, and adores the book “Goodnight Gorilla.”) She’s by far the biggest fan of Thor in our household. She sometimes picks out her own clothes and especially likes a T-shirt with birdies. She’s asked me not to button the top buttons of her coat so she can look down and see the birds.

The other day Melina pee’d in her potty for the first time, just before bath. It feels like a fluke. Joey and I both remember the first time Kai used the very same potty around the very same age. We clapped and got super excited… only to be faced with another year and a half before a truly potty-trained Kai emerged.

She’s now extremely proficient with stairs, as evidenced by her ability to navigate them, over and over and over again and just for fun along with her cousins, at the cabin in Tahoe. She’s also developed a knack for picking up the tiniest piece of anything (a crumb on her placemat, one of Thor’s hairs on the couch) and handing it to me.

Every now and then Meli will spontaneously count to 10 (more or less) when stacking blocks. If I happen to say “seven” (as in, “It’s almost seven!”) she’ll say “eight, nine.” Colors aren’t quite there yet. When we ask her “What color is this?” she nearly always says “blue.”

At a friend’s house the other day Melina had her hands wrist-deep in a big bowl of birdseed meant to sprinkle on peanut butter-coated pine cones. She suddenly stopped playing with the seeds to look at me, a huge grin across her face, and say “appy.” I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly so asked again, then said “Are you happy?” She widened her smile even more and said, “Yeah. Appy.”

1 Comment »

Last weekend we headed to Tahoe with my sister and her family to take the four kids on their first trip to play in the snow. They all liked it, Kai so much that he told us he wished it snowed in Berkeley. (My response: “I used to say the same thing about SJ when I was growing up. Then I did live in the snow. It’s better to visit.”)

Melina liked it so much that she’s wanted to wear her snow boots every day since we’ve been home. I let her get away with it the last two days. After all, shoes are shoes and she looks kinda hip in her own toddler way. She did not like wearing her gloves, though, even when her hands were near popsicles as she sledded down a hill in the middle of a snow flurry.

We had snow highlights both full days of the trip. On the drive up the little ones were so excited none of them napped. We stopped at a state park near Donner for a traipse through deep powder – and for Melina, a ride in the sled that her brother pulled. The next day, we knew a slush storm was on its way so headed out fairly early and followed signs to “sled hill” from the main road in Kings Beach.

Wet snow was falling by the time we arrived so we ended up with the whole hill to ourselves. The three older kids flew down on saucers (Lucas and Noah with an adult), and Melina had a blast sliding over and over again in a baby/toddler sled we’d borrowed from her friend Lily. As Auntie Stacie put it, she never said a word, not a single “wheeee!!!” but just sat their smiling until the sled stopped, then said “mo… mo…” which in the end says it all.

No Comments »

Kids have their own way of speaking, and our 5 1/2- and 1 1/2-year-olds are no exception. Hear what they’re saying (and in Kai’s case, thinking) these days.

KAI

“multiply task” = multi-task, as in “Look! I’m multiply-tasking!” as he carries two things at once.

“tremintary school” = elementary school. We mentioned that he was in grade school now, but Kai insisted that “No, not grade school, tremintary school.”

“devious” = decent, as in “I got a few devious pictures” with the kids’ camera he got for Christmas.

“I’m voting for both teams” to answer to the question, “Which team are you rooting for in the Super Bowl?”

Last weekend Grandma Nancy gave Kai $5 to buy a gift for himself. He looked through an entire toy store, passed on sticker books, balls, even a toy robot, and decided instead to buy his very own rustic baguette at the bakery. Lucky for us, he was happy to share.

MELINA

“daju” = water. It sounds so distant from the real word but must be how she hears it right now.

“shidat” = kikat = kitty cat. This one’s odd, considering cat (or “ka”) was her first clear word, nearly a full year ago.

“dodu” = Totoro. And if you say “Dodu” back to her instead of Totoro she says an emphatic, “No…” (didn’t you hear what I said?) “Dodu!”

“bro bro” or “bo bo” = brother, or Kai. This one is all our doing, since we’ve been referring to Kai as bro bro since Meli was born.

“Mina” = Melina.

She now asks for Jessie, her favorite care provider, by name.

“tankin” = thank you. At long last, she’s learned the other side of “Pleee!”

No Comments »

Melina and I had lunch with the ladies (aka my longtime buddies) in SF the other day, and none of them could believe how big she’s gotten. “She’s all grown up!” seems a common refrain these days. And while she’s not all grown up, she’s fast becoming a “big” toddler, full of personality and will.

My favorite trick of late is when Meli tries to tell knock knock jokes. Out of the blue she’ll say “knot knot,” wait for someone to say, “who’s there?” and then babble something incomprehensible. Without a doubt she’s learned this ritual from her brother, and eventually she’ll get out a full joke.

Kai has also taught her the art of putting on a bed show. He’s been doing these for several years now: He dims the lights, puts “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on his CD player, and dances like a mad man on his bed. Last summer Meli moved from audience member to participant, usually just bouncing while seated on the bed and surrounded by stuffed animals. Now not only does she stand up and dance herself, but specifically asks to do “show.” She’s also picked up on many of her brother’s moves, including a little dance-run, checking the DVD player at least once every 30 seconds, and pausing for a drink of water from the bottle on the bedside shelf.

Mid-month, Melina started to speak small sentences. My favorites so far are “Mama sit down,” “I eat,” and “I dunno,” with raised hands and a facial expression to match. “More apple please” is definitely Meli’s favorite! She’s started calling herself “Mina” (sometimes “Mima”), just like her friends at school do. And she’s begun to tell us when she needs to or has poopoo – though with varying degrees of truth. The toddler potty itself is still a novelty, and a convenient seat.

Our girl has a good throwing arm. She throws overhand with both arms and can get a ball (or small toy – eek!) clear across a room with little effort. And she now climbs pretty much anything that looks climbable. She climbs into the jogging stroller in our entry way when she decides it’s time for a walk. She climbs monkey bars in the tot lot at the park. Slow, steady, determined. She pulls chairs or step-stool-like toys over to drawers so she can climb up and look inside. And she just learned to climb up the bar stools at our counter, which gives her free access to a whole range of things she couldn’t reach before. Time to re-think our baby- (er, toddler-) proofing!

No Comments »

Like most Americans, we found ourselves in a two-day-long celebration of MLK Day and the Obama inauguration. Kai was especially excited about both events, and talked me into helping him make a mini cake for Martin Luther King, Jr. using a mini pan and crazy cake recipe my parents gave him for Christmas. The cake turned out a little funky, but was full of good intentions.

Earlier in the day, we celebrated summer-like January weather at an outdoor toddler painting party. Melina painted paper, a plate, a muffin, and my hair – and somehow ended up with a red and blue mouth as if to honor the national historical significance of the Obama inauguration the next morn.

We all watched the ceremony from Kai’s school’s cafeteria, where parents were invited to join a school-wide assembly. My favorite moment of the day came just before the big event, when Kai’s teacher explained to 20 kindergartners the reasons for this inauguration’s special significance.

“Barack Obama is our first president of color. He’s also a very young president. And, he’s a president for everyone.” Leave it to a kindergarten teacher to have such clarity and diplomacy!

In the spirit of the great men we celebrated, we ended both days with an appropriate nod to community. On MLK Day Kai and Meli played with two newfound neighbor kids at a nearby park, and on Obama Day we had celebratory drinks at a newly opened cafe & wine bar down the street, with our newly formed, newly organized South Berkeley neighborhood association.

No Comments »

Melina turned 19 months on new year’s day and is full of fun new ways to communicate. Of course, she has the age-appropriate exponential vocabulary growth, learning multiple new words each day and specifically asking what things are called. Her current favorite is “tree!” for both trees and anything looking like a holiday decoration.

She’s not a big talker, though. Auntie Stacie recently called her “stealth” because she’s really good at sneaking around entire rooms and into drawers without anyone noticing she’s underfoot. At a new year’s day party she managed to get into a baby-proofed cupboard within five minutes of our arrival.

Beneath her quiet nature lies a strong will. At Uncle Wayne’s house on Xmas day Melina found a closet she wanted to explore but shouldn’t. I redirected her down the hall, where she decided to hurl a toy a good three feet. Of course I went to pick it up, at which time she made a bee-line in the opposite direction, back to the closet. My little girl’s first act of conscious manipulation.

A week later I attempted to redirect her away from a toy stroller she was trying to climb into. She screamed for five seconds, then suddenly turned to me, looked me straight in the eye, and said “buh bye” with a wave. As in “Leave me ALONE, Mom. I’m busy here.” This happened at least three times – not exactly good for reinforcing the redirect but it was so funny I couldn’t help myself. She did the same thing to Joey that night when he was trying to coax her away from a toy for bedtime stories.

On the physical development front, Melina has all four molars and her two top eye teeth coming in, pretty much at once. The bottom molars appeared just after Christmas, the top ones are now starting to poke through, and we can see the large white of both eye teeth heading down. She hasn’t been exceptionally fussy, so either our girl has a very high pain threshold or got lucky in how little it hurts… or the worst is yet to come.

Finally, Meli made her first (accidental) call to 911 while playing with the house phone the other day. It was especially notable because last month Kai walked into the kitchen just before dinner to announce proudly, “I just called 911!” He got a friendly lesson on 911 protocol from both of us, plus the cops when they arrived.

No Comments »

We posted an album of our favorite Hawaii and holiday photos on flickr. Enjoy!

No Comments »

We’ve been back on the mainland for several days now, adjusting to colder weather and real-world commitments. More trip photos coming soon (we took well over 500), but in the meantime, I’ll share a few of my favorites plus some highlights of the second half of our trip.

Thanks to Joey’s Auntie Yvonne we all got to attend a Christmas luau at the Mormon community center in Waimanalo. Melina even tried poi, and made a face so funny that Grandma told the story to everyone she talked to on Christmas day. Since Meli was on my lap I didn’t see the face, but I did hear the hacking, just like a cat with a furball stuck in its throat. Poor thing.

We spent one morning hiking up to Makapu’u lighthouse with Nancy, Maya, and Zeke. The walk up the hill usually takes about 30 minutes, but with four little kids took almost an hour. We all enjoyed a windy view and snacks at the top before a much quicker trek back down. A few days later we celebrated Christmas day with Joey’s brother Wayne (aka Nancy’s dad) and his extended family. Kai got to play Wii and Meli got to explore a new house while trying to escape Zeke’s incessant kisses.

Ever since my first trip with Joey to O’ahu, I’ve never felt like our vacation is complete without a drive to the North Shore. It’s a nice drive, if we’re lucky we see 13+ foot waves once we’re there, and we top off the day with renowned Matsumoto shave ice in Haleiwa. This year the waves were so small that the kids and I dipped in our toes, then full feet, and within 15 minutes Meli’s shirt was soaked (she’s so short, those “small” waves were high!) and Kai was covered in wet sand from jumping and rolling around. Note to self that I vaguely remember making last time we visited with Kai: Always bring spare clothes to the North shore, even if we swear we won’t play in the waves.

We ran into pounding rain on our drive home from Haleiwa, which didn’t seem like a big deal until we sat down to dinner in Kailua that night and the lights went out… which also didn’t seem like a huge deal until we turned on the radio and heard people from all over the island calling in to say they had no power. Yup, an island-wide power outage on O’ahu, all due to four downed power lines on the island’s center. In Kailua it lasted from 7pm until around 5:30am, but we heard stories of residents in other towns not having power for close to 24 hours.

On our last day, Joey and I had an almost-Obama sighting. We were walking to the end of Kalama beach, near his mom’s house and in the direction of the Obama vacation compound, when we hit a small crowd blocked from going further by two Aloha-shirt and sunglass-clad men. Several paparazzi had cameras – with lenses over a foot long – staked in the sand. In the distance we saw two little girls walk from a house down to the sand and sea. Perhaps the Obama daughters?

On a final, non-island note: Melina’s first molar (lower right) appeared the night before we left. Her second lower molar started to show a couple days later, and today we saw a top molar poking through, plus two top eye teeth heading down. All very good news for our little meat-eating fiend, who so far is handling all that teething pain like a champ.

No Comments »

While our family and friends are shivering through uncommon rain and cold on the mainland, we’re happily enjoying a mellow Kailua vacation. Melina has taken to Grandma Rapoza very well. It helps that Grandma has a big lab, Samson, that Meli adores and likes to help her feed. She’s also become an expert stair climber thanks to the small steps leading up to the front porch and down to our room.

We’ve had a couple beach visits and would have had more but the weather’s been off-and-on rainy or windy, which brings out the Portuguese Man o’ War (we saw one wash up the other day). Kai and Meli both love running in the waves and carrying bucket-loads of water back to a sand volcano that Daddy builds. Unfortunately for us, Melina’s still a sand eater. She also likes ocean water. Must be the salt.

Joey’s niece Nancy and her family now live just a few blocks away. Her kids, Maya and Zeke, are close in age to Kai and Melina so we’ve been spending a lot of time with them. Kai and Maya act like old buddies. (They are, really!)

Zeke is obsessed with “Mina.” He follows her around, gives her hugs and kisses at every opportunity (as if she doesn’t get enough of that from her brother), and will even pull her picture off Granny’s wall to stare at up-close. It’s pretty cute. Maybe by the time we leave Meli will return his affections.

Other random highlights:

* A Matthew Fox (from “Lost”) sighting in Kailua town our first afternoon here.
* A visit to the Honolulu zoo.
* A trip to Ala Moana mall and visit with Santa. (Kai smiled politely. Melina screamed. The photo is fantastic.)
* Following Barack Obama’s own Kailua holiday on the local news. We drove up to the private lane where he’s staying the other day, but only saw clusters of American flags and Honolulu police cars as evidence he was staying nearby.
* And of course, oodles of unscheduled time!

The fun continues so we’ll have much more to come. In the meantime, happy Christmas Eve to all!

No Comments »

Over six months ago our friend Kitt commented, “Kai’s all head. Melina’s all heart.” Of course it’s not completely true. (Kai is also full of hugs and kisses and Meli curiosity about how the world works). Yet it does follow that, for example, when they want something Kai’s first instinct is to try to use his own form of logic, whereas Melina’s will pull you in with a cheeky, doe-eyed smile. And I imagine she’ll still ask with her eyes over her words even when she’s five. Time will tell.

Melina is growing more aware of her social surroundings by the minute. She’s started to visibly miss any of her immediate family members when we’re gone outside of routine. (In other words, it’s usually ok when Daddy leaves for work in the morning, but Thor cat better not walk out that front door with him.)

Having Kai be an intermittent part of her routine sometimes throws her. Some days we pick him up after daycare, and some days we head straight home. I don’t dare drive by Kai’s school after picking up Jelly Bean unless we’re actually going to get Kai. She gets pretty upset when we don’t stop.

On days he’s not with us, she often seeks out pictures of him around the house before bedtime, or points at his dining room chair next to hers as we eat. Often she says “bo bo” (bro bro) and points to the door. If we ask “Is Kai outside?” she nods her head. It makes sense: Usually the last she sees him is walking out the door, either with his mom or to catch the school bus.

I’m sure soon she’ll catch on to the sporadic routine of Kai being with us (there is a routine, but not one easily understood by a toddler), and in the end they may end up even closer thanks to forced distance every few days. What sibling doesn’t crave that from time to time?

Luckily the two kiddos will get to spend 12 straight days together starting Wednesday, when the four of us head to Kailua for Christmas with the Rapoza ohana, island style.

Happy holidays, everyone!

No Comments »