Before Maile was even born, Harold’s parents gave us a present and told us we couldn’t open it until Hanukkah. The present ended up being a pretty funny book called The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming – A Christmas Story by Lemony Snicket. Maile was too young last year to really enjoy the book, but this year we started reading the book with her and pretty quickly she started participating. What do I mean by participating?
If it’s not clear from the video. Basically, ever few pages in the book there is a picture of a latke screaming “AAAHHHHHHHHHHH!” – whenever Maile sees the latke, she screams, and mommy and daddy crack up!
(Click here for the video.)
When Maile was born, Grandpa Mike and Grandma Jill put dibs on the opportunity to send Maile her first bike (I have a feeling they’ll be handling bikes #2-5 as well…) Having pretty much mastered the whole walking thing, we thought Hanukkah would be a perfect time to get Maile some wheels.
Unfortunately, Grandma Jill and Grandpa Mike couldn’t be here in person, so we decided to film the big reveal for them. I think it’s safe to say that Maile LOVES her new bike!
Thank you Grandma Jill and Grandpa Mike!
(Click here for the video.)
by Papa K on November 28, 2010
When we arrived in Boston, Grandma Jill was all excited to give Maile an early Hanukkah gift. Grandma Jill had been searching far and wide to find a doll that looked like Maile – meaning that she wanted Maile to have a hapa doll. She finally found the perfect doll – it was a Lots to Cuddle Babies doll. As you are about to see, these dolls are scary realistic (some might even say creepy).
Hey Maile, check it out - Grandma Jill bought you a present...
Fun, fun, let's open it...
Mommy: Wow Maile, it looks like your very own baby! Maile: Do all babies come in boxes for Hanukkah? Mommy: Umm... let's go with "yes" for the time being...
Hey Mommy, this doll kind of looks like me...
Seriously, this doll looks just like me. Come check it out.
I mean, it's uncanny.
I love my Mini Maile!
Grandpa Mike, let's show Mini Maile how much we love her...
Maile and Mini Maile
A short while later…
What do we do with this thing? You got me.
Maile Girl here. My mommy and daddy rock. I mean they are normally pretty cool, but on Sunday they took it to a whole other level.
First, we get on a bus – and well, you know how much I love buses (and the wheels going round and round, and the people going up and down, the whole thing…)
In any event, we take the bus for a little bit and then Daddy tells me he has a big surprise for me and then we walk into this BIG room and then someone hands us these black glasses (that looked oddly familiar) and then I look up and I see this big screen that looks just like the screen when I watch the Yo Gabba Gabba TV shows … (breath) … and THEN Daddy tells me I am going to get to meet DJ LANCE ROCK and the Yo Gabba Gabba crew! We were at Yo Gabba Gabba Live! (A little confusing because they always seem “live” to me… but I wasn’t complaining.)
The show was awesome – they dropped like a million balloons from the ceiling and they had bubbles (I almost caught two) and these long colored ribbons that mommy said were “streamers”. And all my favorite Yo Gabba Gabba characters were there and they sang and danced and THEN Biz Markie came out and did his beat of the day (Daddy really liked that part).
So fun! Thank you Mommy and Daddy!
Me and Mommy before the show starts - I was so excited I could hardly sit still!
Check it out we're a family of DJ Lance Rocks!
The show was A-Mazing - I don't think I blinked the entire time...
Oh, I almost forgot. At intermission I met this really nice boy sitting right next to us. I chatted him up a bit. He's a bit older. Then Daddy came and got me. That's all.
by Papa K on November 18, 2010
Last Sunday a Curious George exhibit opened at the Contemporary Jewish Museum. The actually opened the gallery an hour early and invited kids to come meet Curious George, make some art projects and basically have the run of the place. It sounded fun and figured it would be a good excuse to put Maile back in her super adorable Curious Maile outfit to meet a new friend.
Maile had a great time at the museum, but I think it’s fair to say she wasn’t quite as excited as we were about meeting Curious George himself…
Hmm... I'm not so sure how I feel about this Curious George guy. What type of money doesn't have a tail?
Okay, Curious Maile let's go meet Curious George...
You know what, Daddy, I think I'm good right here.
Scratch that. GET ME OUT OF HERE!
Maile, there is nothing to be scared of. Scared? I'm not scared. Well, maybe a little. Look, let's have mommy come with me, cool?
Is this close enough? Can we just take the picture and get out of here? Sure thing, Maile Girl, sure thing.
So I just wait up here, huh?
Hello? Anyone home?
Gotta be honest, daddy, not really getting the gist of this quite yet...
Hey, up there, there are a lot of houses to hit, let's do this!
Tick tock.
(Dad note: our neighbors finally came down and gave us some awesome candy – of course, I missed the picture of that part 😉
Mommy, check out my loot. Pretty good, right?
Awhile back we joined a local kids club called Peekadoodle. Its about 3 blocks from our apartment and its a great open space with lots of cool stuff for Maile and Hannah to explore. They absolutely love going there. They have the place figured out too – the Halloween party on Friday was the first time I’d been in a couple weeks and Maile showed me all around to her favorite things: the cable car, the play kitchen, the slide. She loves it – man, is she going to be disappointed by her own room when she gets a bit older!
The Halloween Party was great fun. In addition to the normal games and activities, they had a room where you could decorate your own pumpkins (which were actually orange paper pots), a photographer (who took the great picture of Maile we posted yesterday) and even a live band, Basho & Friends!
Curious Maile and Tinkerbelle Hannah - ready to party!
Maile Girl decorating her pumpkin...
We took a time out for a tea party. Hey Hannah, where are you going with that milk!
Dad, you couldn't get better seats for my first concert? I can't see a thing.
Madness. Absolute madness.
Daddy: What are you doing Maile? Maile: I'm waiting for the lead singer, I want his autograph. He's dreamy. Daddy: Yikes.
Telling Mommy all about the awesome concert!
They didn't have balloons for the Class of 2031, so we just stood next to daddy's 2000 ones.
This weekend we headed down the 101 to Stanford for Homecoming and my 10th Reunion. We decided to stay in a hotel to avoid driving back-and-forth all weekend – so it turned into a mini-vacation for all of us. Megan helped out on Friday and Saturday nights so Chris and I could enjoy the festivities with the Stanford crew.
Despite the fact that all these pictures are of Maile Girl, we actually did see lots of friends (including baby reunions with Maile’s friends Tanner and Brennan). It had been several months since we had seen the boys, so it was fun to see how grown up everyone was. Unfortunately, we just didn’t take too many pictures – too much fun and chasing around the little ones I guess…
As soon as we got down to campus, Maile's blackberry started blowing up. She's very popular.
I'm all ready, I have my name tag, I have my red pants - let's get this reunion started!
Hi. Maile K. I'm a stay at home baby. Nice to meet you.
There was glass all over campus and Maile made sure she left her mark on all of it...
Maile meets the Tree. She was actually a little frightened by him - good practice for Santa though.
The grass here IS THE BEST!
Good bye Stanford for now - we had a great weekend!
Ever since I first went there, I’ve been excited to take Maile to the California Academy of Sciences. The Academy has an aquarium, planetarium and natural history museum all under one roof. (Oh, and Christine wants me to mention that they have penguins too!)
On Sunday we were originally going to head to Half Moon Bay for the Pumpkin Festival, but bad weather had us calling an audible and we decided to see if Maile was old enough for the California Academy of Sciences. The answer was a resounding “yes”! We only really took in about 1/3 of the academy, spending most of our time in the aquarium. The aquarium is great – they let you get right up to the glass and they have rooms where it feels like you are in a fish bowl with the fishes zooming all over the place. Hard to get good pictures due to the lighting, but we did our best…
Maile Girl taking it all in...
Mommy, do these bars mean I can't go play with the fishies?
Not sure who is more fascinated here, Maile or me...
Daddy, there are so many fishies in here I can't even point to them all, but I'm going to do my best...
Maile wasn't even scared of the snake!
Maile really seemed to enjoy herself. She’s at this age now where she is a total sponge taking in everything – and the aquarium certainly had a lot to take in. We bought an annual pass on the way out and we’ll definitely be back sometime soon to check out the rest of the Academy (we didn’t even go to the indoor rainforest which many people say is the best part).
Last week Maile decided she no longer liked to sleep in her crib. And by “decided” I mean that she would scream every time we tried to put her down in it. She actually ended up sleeping on the guest bed for a few nights. It didn’t seem right (or particularly safe) for our 15 month old daughter to sleep in a full size bed.
So we decided to experiment and with Grandpa Cal’s help we switched Maile’s crib to the convertible bed.
As the video shows, Maile liked the convertible version MUCH better than the crib. Unfortunately, I don’t think the switch really enhanced our chances of getting her to go to sleep in it…
[vimeo clip_id=”15829923″ width=”450″ /]
Needless to say, Maile’s crib is back in full effect… just being used slightly differently. Maile is back on the full size bed with the crib up against it as a barrier. Hopefully, we’ll get her back inside of it this weekend!
(Click here for the video.)
