Fair warning, this is one of those posts where a daddy brags a bit about his daughter. I try not to do this too often (although some may say that having a whole blog dedicated to one’s daughter renders that attempt moot…) But I digress…
When we were in NYC, Maile really liked Maggie’s Hide-n-seek books – the Where’s Waldo? type books where you need to find different objects. Grandma Jill was kind enough to send along some of the books for us to have at home and finding the objects has become a part of our morning routine. As you’ll see in the video, Maile is pretty good. When she needs help, she asks for it. And then Mommy narrows down the area to look. If she still gets stuck, she holds out her hand and asks Mommy to show her the object. There is nothing Mommy likes better than helping Maile find the “green trumpet” at 6:30 in the morning 😉
And since it’s the end of the week, here’s a bonus of Maile singing her ABC’s (and Itsy Bitsy Spider)…
Talk about some fun new tricks!
(Click here for the first video.)
(Click here for the second video.)
On Friday, we headed out to New Jersey to visit Maile’s good friends Maggie and Jane and their respective families (including new baby brothers for each that we hadn’t met yet, Sean and Dean, respectively!) Uncle Ryan and Aunt Diana also came up from Washington, DC to see everyone – so we had a full on reunion.
Due to the new babies this was our first time getting everyone together since our trip last year. It was awesome seeing how much the girls have grown up. Maggie and Jane are both a little less than a year older than Maile. Maile wasn’t even walking on our last visit – this time she was able to run all over with the girls – and run they did!
Highlights included: Maile taking her first boat ride (as we joined Uncle Matt for his commute home from work on Friday), baby Sean getting his first kiss from Maile Girl, conspiring with Maggie and Jane, reading stories with Auntie Diana and Uncle Ryan, visiting the New Jersey swamp refuge (Maile swears she saw a bus out there, but I’m dubious) and enjoying some great food and laughs with our favorite New Jersey friends…
We took a ton of pictures, too many to post directly, so enjoy the slide show below of the highlights…
One of our favorite parts of our annual New York trip is our play date with Tanner. Long time readers might remember the cuteness overload the last time these two got together in the Big Apple. Maile and Tanner are exactly one month apart in age, so it’s always fun to check in and see how they are progressing.
Things started off with some sharing issues (basically they both wanting to play with the same toy at the same time) and we had to remove a horsey from Tanner’s room since it scared Maile, but after about 20 minutes the two started to warm up to each other. Given that they are both hapa too, by the time we headed out for dinner, it felt like we had twins on our hands!
Tanner (20 months) and Maile (21 months) - yes, they are holding hands - more on that below...
At the restaurant they were running all over the place so we taught them how to hold hands. (Dad note: I realize Maile is a bit young to be holding a boy’s hand, but Tanner seems to be an upstanding young gentleman – daddy approves.) They took right to it and spent the rest of the evening dragging each other around. Chris caught a bit on video – a little bit dark, but really, really adorable…
And yes, that’s Tanner going in for the hug on Maile. Those who know Maile, know she is a pretty affectionate little girl. Tanner puts her to shame though in that category. (On second thought, maybe that hand holding thing wasn’t such a good idea… 😉
We can’t wait to see Vanessa, Tanner (and hopefully Tyler, who was traveling for work) again really soon.
We’ve been in NYC for one full day and we’ve going non-stop since we landed on Saturday afternoon. Here’s some highlights from our first full day…
We started things off right by hitting the new Shake Shack location in Times Square, just a few blocks from our hotel.
Maile couldn't believe the line, so she whipped out her crayons and started taking orders from the line...
Sunday morning Maile and Daddy got the day going by coordinating some plans - well Daddy, coordinated plans, Maile Girl watched Sesame Street...
We hit Chelsea Market in the morning and Daddy thought it would be fun to have Maile try chocolate milk for the first time at Ronnybrook Dairy.
Two straws. Chocolate milk. NYC. Couldn't get any better, right?
"Nobody drink the chocolate milk! The chocolate milk has gone bad!"
Any body get the reference? (If not click here.) Maile Girl wasn’t a big fan of the chocolate milk. Probably a good thing…
It was a bit too cold for a full exploration, but we briefly checked out the High Line before brunch. A very cool addition to the city that was added right after Christine and I moved to SF.
Mommy, yes, cute picture, but please take this off me now - it's "heaveee."
Another new addition to the city is the playground in Union Square - when we lived here it was a bar. Daddy version of Matt thinks this is a great new addition - 2002 version of Matt would be pretty disappointed.
What is up with the swings in NYC? This thing looks like the chair they kept Hannibal Lecter in...
Luckily, the slides still seem to work the same!
If you can believe it, these pictures don’t even cover everything we did. We had a great brunch with Uncle Ben and Auntie Gwen at Collichio & Sons. In the afternoon, Grandma Jill and Grandpa Mike arrived. We walked all down to Madison Square Park and had a fun dinner at Eataly – which is a really cool Italian eatery/market.
A couple weeks ago, we went to Target and Maile Girl picked out her potty.
Since then it pretty much sat in our bathroom unused. Maile would eye it nervously every once in awhile, but mainly ignored our entreaties to take it for a spin. That is until tonight. I was doing some work on the computer when I heard an excited yell from Christine. Maile was ready to give the potty a try!
With her bunnies keeping her company, Maile Girl tries out the potty for the very first time!
A short time later, Maile actually tried the potty out bare-bottomed, no actual potty was made, but definitely a first step! (Sorry, no pictures, we had to draw the line somewhere…)
Mommy thought it would be fun to do an art project with Maile so they headed off to Paper Source and found a really cute Paper Bunny Kit in honor of the Year of the Rabbit.
Bunny by Maile
Can you tell which one Maile did and which one Mommy did?
It turns out that the art project was a learning process for both Maile and Mommy. Maile learned how to make bunnies and Mommy learned first hand how artistic Maile is (most of the art gets created with Megan when we are at work).
Here’s how it all went down (this one is a little longer than normal, but I’m guessing not too many of you will mind):
(Chris had the day off from work so she and Maile had a Mother/Daughter day of adventure. We’ll be covering some of their fun over the course of the week.)
First up, this morning Chris got a small cut on her hand. As the video below demonstrates, Maile was quite concerned. Just look at her face – you can see the compassion. Then she tries to make Mommy feel okay by saying that she too “had an owie” in the exact same location. Maile Girl has Mommy’s back…
A little while back, my friend Scott sent me this article about a dad who gave his son an old camera with a wireless memory card that automatically uploads his pictures to Flickr. I thought it was a pretty cool idea and put it on the backburner. For Christmas, Uncle Steve actually gave me one of the wireless memory cards so I started thinking about the article again (even though I knew Maile was way too young). We decided that some lessons might be in order before we set Maile loose with a camera.
Here are some of her pictures – needless to say we won’t be auto uploading these to Flickr quite yet. We’ll work on her framing a bit first…
