We’ll end our milestone week updates with Maile finishing her second year of preschool at Presidio Knolls.
Maile's Certificate of Completion - we love how they did this, each child painted with water colors over the certificate - Maile's came out beautiful!
The teachers and kids put on a really nice end of the year ceremony – with some Chinese songs and then the teachers calling each child up one at a time and saying a nice, very personal blurb about them and giving them a certificate. For Maile, her teacher said:
Maile is an artist. She loves art, loves dance, and enjoys good music. It’s a pleasure to see her humming and start dancing in the middle of the playground. She would say, “Look Ruth Lao Shi, this is my ballet concert.” And then she starts twirling.
I have to add that Christine and I couldn’t be prouder of our little girl. My guess is there will be many years like this one where we reflect back and are absolutely amazed at how much she has grown. She really blossomed this year at school – the art and writing she comes home with on a daily basis floors us and it’s clear that the Chinese is really setting it. It’s become more than just a cute trick where she knows some songs and colors – she really can communicate in Mandarin now and it’s so cool to see that.
She’s still a little girl, but she’s also grown a lot emotionally and how she interacts with her friends. She still has her moments to be sure, but she also has those moments where you can’t believe how much she has matured in such a short time.
Maile Girl on her last day of year 2 of preschool - just one month shy of her 4th birthday...
Mommy does my hair every morning. You may have noticed some of her creations in various pictures. I always feel so beautiful when she does my hair. She’s really good at it.
Daddy, on the other hand, is not as good at it. And, unfortunately, when Mommy goes away (like she did last week to New York), I’m subject to Daddy doing my hair. Let’s just say, the kids at school know when Mommy is out of town.
On Day #1, Daddy went with the pig tails. Not totally balanced, but passable...
On Day #2, he just simply forgot to do anything to my hair - yeah, in my face all day long. Thanks Dad.
On Day #3, he tried a few pig tails, but then resorted to the ol' pony tail. I think it stayed in for about 5 minutes when I got to school.
On Day #4, he added some clips to try to get things to stay put for longer. Let's just say those clips didn't come home with me.
On Day #5 - looking good, right? Yeah, Mommy came home that day.
Things got a bit more exciting for Lauren around meal time on Friday PM – we started her with some solids, specifically a very un-solid rice cereal!
I've been watching you all eat for so long now, it's a pleasure to finally be joining the world of solids!
She took right to it – in fact, on night #2 she practically licked the bowl clean! She eats like a champ and has a very willing helper in Maile Girl…
(Now this is pretty weird, I went back to find when we gave Maile her first solids and it turns out we did it around the exact same time and also during a series of blog posts titled “Weekend of Firsts” – I guess lots starts to happen once the rice cereal is introduced. Here’s the blog post about us feeding Maile for the first time.)
(For some reason a bunch of things came together this past week and it ended up being full of milestones for both Maile and Lauren. We’ll cover them here over the next couple of days…)
Saturday was Maile’s very first ballet recital! She and her Tutu School classmates performed a recital at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco (a beautiful venue btw).
To say Maile was very, very excited is definitely an understatement. Maile absolutely loved her red tutu that was special for the performance (and especially the heart tiara that went along with it!)
Maile Girl, the Ballerina
They organized the show expertly – our session was 1 hour long and Maile’s group was the last one to go. It was a finely oiled machine with one group waiting while the other group went. Maile loved watching all the other dancers and when it was her turn, she ran right up with her friend Sophie and got right in line without a second though – our girl was ready to get on that stage!
On stage and ready to rock!
I’m including two videos of the performance – one from the actual performance and one from a practice session the week before – it wasn’t so easy to capture the video the day of (plus I was more focused on watching than recording
Here’s the actual recital:
And here’s the practice session:
(Click here for the first video.)
(Click here for the second video.)
Grandma Jill and Lauren had some serious bonding time in NYC this week. Grandma watched Lauren all week while Mommy was at work. Papa was in town too for Sunday and Monday. They hit museums, ate at restaurants, did their far share of shopping from running some wedding errands for Auntie Elyssa to searching far and wide for rainbow socks for Maile.
Traveling across the country for work with a 5 month old certainly isn’t ideal, but Grandma Jill made it super easy for Christine and we couldn’t be luckier and happier that our little girl got to spend so much quality time with her grandma.
Lauren Girl here. I’m on a BIG adventure and thought I’d check in. Mommy and I headed to New York City early this morning for a business trip! Nice of Mommy to accompany me while I take care of some business, right?
Today was a full day of travel – Mommy documented our adventures all day long – here’s what transpired…
First we had to wake up super early and take a car to the airport ... well, Mommy had to wake up early anyways
When we landed in NYC, we had to wait for the luggage. Mommy said she appreciated my company, but I wasn't so helpful with the bags.
The taxi line was really long so we had to wait a bit (Mommy told me this later when I woke up)
Then I took my very first NYC taxi ride! (Mommy also shared this with me later).
Finally, after all the travel, we were in New York and we had some Mommy/Lauren quality time.
Then Grandma and Papa Boston showed up!
And they took us to Morimoto to dinner, where I have to say, the milk was fantastic!
