matt

With so much excitement due to the start of preschool, we didn’t have time to write about the last class of Maile’s first session of soccer. For the last couple of months, every Saturday, Maile and I have attended a SoccerTots soccer program. It was a lot of fun and Maile made a lot of progress since her first class back in June.

Let's do this!

Every session starts out with a stretching session - Maile always goes and stands on the purple dot.

After stretching, we practice our soccer skills - Daddy helps with balance, but Maile is getting pretty good at standing with one foot on the ball...

Rolling the ball back and forth is a little trickier, but Mommy helped Maile Girl out!

Then we do some drills - here Maile is kicking over the cones with the ball...

Not sure what this has to do with soccer, but it is a lot of fun!

About halfway through class, we take a goldfish break and talk a little strategy...

After our snack, Mommy and Maile sing some songs - it helps build team spirit...

We end class with a couple runs through the obstacle course - Maile rocks at the tunnel!

All in all, it was a fun couple of months and an activity that we are going to continue doing. Nice to start the weekend running around outside!

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Maile Girl - all ready for her first day of school!

As we mentioned last week, today was Maile’s first day of preschool. We’ve been talking about it for weeks, so I think Maile was genuinely excited as we got all packed up this morning. (Perhaps too excited as she had one of her worst nights of sleep in months last night – hence all the tired looking faces in the family picture below!)

Family Picture - Maile's first day of school

We, honestly, had no idea what to expect when we got to school. On one hand, Maile is generally pretty sociable, but lately around strangers she was a bit clingy. (Dad note: We decided to leave the cameras at home for the first day – we didn’t want anything to get in the way of Maile getting settled in.)

I have a feeling we'll be chasing her from here on out...

Things went pretty smooth when we arrived at the school. We went a bit early and were the first ones there. Maile instantly started exploring the classroom and met a couple of her teachers (“lao shi”). Maile’s school does a Mandarin immersion program – so the teachers or lao shi speak a combination of english and mandarin. I have no doubt we’ll be exploring this fact more in the months ahead…

Funniest part of the drop off was when Maile found the bathroom. They have a bunch of toddler-sized toilets. Maile went right over and said she wanted to get on the “potty” and started taking off her pants. Sure enough, she jumped right onto the toilet and sat there for about 5 minutes. She didn’t actually go, but afterwards, she grabbed some toilet paper to wipe herself, flushed the toilet and washed her hands. The teachers were pretty impressed that she was potty trained. Of course, that’s the first time she’s ever done that!

There were definitely some tears and clinging as we left, but the school called about an hour later to say that Maile only cried for a few minutes and then settled in great to the class activities.

Chris went to pick her up for a half day at 12:45. Maile was all smiles and tonight at dinner said she was looking forward to going back tomorrow!

Maile's teachers sent home a fun personalized "report" of her first day - definitely a "nice touch"!

All in all, definitely a successful first day of school!

(Dad note: I haven’t fully decided how I’m going to handle blogging about Maile at school – which is why I didn’t link to the school directly. More than happy to talk about it though if you want to ping me directly – we’ve been very happy so far!)

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