When Maile was born, Christine and I agreed that we wouldn’t let distance and the difficulties inherent in traveling with a little one curtail us from seeing our family and friends. We love living in San Francisco, but with family in Boston and Hawaii, it means we have to travel a fair amount. A couple weeks back, we took our last trip with Maile Girl as a lap child.
I think it's safe to say we are ready for Maile to have her own seat!
On the way back from Detroit, Christine made a list of all of Maile’s travels in her first two years:
Whew! Seems a bit crazy when you line it up like that. And to think this is how we started…
Maile Girl's first plane ride - September 5, 2009
Through it all Maile was a great traveler and we are excited to continue our plane hopping going forward … just with Maile in her own seat (and earning some miles!)
As we discussed yesterday, this weekend kicked off the Paci Wars with Mommy and Daddy claiming a first battle victory with a swift elimination of the purple paci. We decided to take a different tactic with Maile’s green paci.
Auntie Elyssa recommended having Maile Girl give away her paci to a baby – a passing of the torch if you will. This is also the technique employed in one of Maile’s favorite books, Knuffle Bunny – so you’d think she’d be familiar with the approach.
Lucky for us, we had a baby visitor on Sunday. Cordelia (and her big sister Maddie) came to visit from New York. After some snacks and coloring, we gave Maile her green paci and asked her if she wanted to give it to Cordelia, a baby in need of a good, trusty pacifier. As the video shows, we thought she was going to go for it … until she didn’t.
Back to the drawing board…
(Click here for the video.)
Saturday, June 11th, will go down in history as the start of the Paci Wars. We had been telling Maile that her paci was going to go away by the time she was 2 and we kicked things off a bit early with a mid-morning sneak attack in her 23rd month.
The final straw was Maile stopping half way through soccer practice and whining for her paci. As far as I’m concerned there are no pacies in soccer! When we got home, I grabbed some scissors and snipped the end of Maile’s purple paci. A little while later when Maile asked for her paci, we gave it to her as if nothing was wrong. The look on her face when she went to suck and air just came through was absolutely priceless. This video is from a few seconds later when she was still in total shock that her “paci was broke”…
Overall, the tactic seemed to have worked. Over the weekend she still asked for her paci like normal, but when she realized it was broken, she pretty much stopped bothering with it. Of course, I only snipped the purple paci so far – Maile quickly realized that she needed to be more specific and started to request her “green paci”…
The first battle definitely goes to Mommy and Daddy, but after the initial shock, Maile recovered and returned fire with a string of 5:20 AM wake up calls. A bold maneuver that has Mommy and Daddy reeling. This war is far from over – stay tuned…
(Click here for the video.)
Maile Girl all decked out in her soccer gear!
Saturday was a day that I’ve been looking forward to ever since I found out I was going to be a daddy – Maile’s first soccer practice! I actually thought I was going to have to wait awhile longer, but some friends told us about SoccerTots – a soccer program here in the city for toddlers 18 months and older. Perfect!
As you know we had a rough week being a little sick, but Maile started shaking the bug on Thursday and by Saturday morning we were ready to rock. We had a lot of fun at our first practice (well, at least for 2/3rds of it – Maile started to lose interest towards the end). One of our neighbors asked us to let us know when Maile had a game, so they could come watch – I’m not so sure we’re quite at that stage yet 😉
And how do we know it was a good practice? I think this picture tells it all…
Nothing like a good nap after hard work at soccer practice...
(Click here for the video.)
Relaxing on a Sunday morning with the New York Times
We’ve documented many times, Maile’s affinity for the iPad and all things electronic. However, it’s not all bits and bytes. Maile likes to go old school on Sunday mornings with the Sunday New York Times. I imagine its only a matter of time before she is competing with Mommy for the crossword puzzle…
Maile zoned out watching Elmo while she takes her medicine...
Poor Maile Girl has had a rough week. She came back from Michigan with a pretty hearty cough and on Monday afternoon developed a fever. She couldn’t kick the fever all week and after two trips to the doctor, they finally diagnosed her with a slight case of pneumonia and gave her antibiotics and a nebulizer to help with her cough.
This is all a bit of deja vu for daddy – I’m afraid that Maile Girl has my genes in this regard. If I was a betting man, I’d say that Maile had some asthma/allergies from all the playing outside and the mucus that got stuck in her lungs led to her finally getting sick. Pretty much the story of my life when I was a little kid.
The good news is that Maile is aces when it comes to taking her medicine. The nebulizer is a machine that basically creates a mist of medicine (which I believe is like albuterol – the stuff that is often found in inhalers). The machine is a little noisy and one could imagine that the tubes and everything would scare little kids – Maile eats it up though. She has to breathe it in for 10 minutes at a time. We let her watch Elmo and she is a rock star.
Maile is feeling much better. The fever broke on Wednesday night and she was back to her self on Thursday morning. I feel a little guilty that she’s got my sickly genes, but hopefully we can get out ahead of this stuff based on my own experience.
Finally, hat tip to Mommy – I had an incredibly busy week at work and so the brunt of caring for Maile fell to Chris. She earned her Mommy stripes for sure and I love her for it.
(Click here for the video.)
We took advantage of the family reunion get together to snap some family pictures at 23 months.
Mommy, Daddy and Maile at 23 months
Grandpa Mike, Stephen, Daddy, Auntie Elyssa, Mommy, Maile and Grandma Jill
(Note: Poor Maile Girl started to feel a little under the weather on Sunday – too much excitement from the weekend perhaps. Not as smiley as she normally is, but hey, the rest of us look pretty good 😉
Auntie Elyssa, Mommy and Maile enjoy a hay ride (Daddy opted out due to his allergies ... truth.)
Swimming(!) with Daddy - not quite Hawaii waters, but we still had fun!
What is mission impossible? Corralling 9 kids under the age of 10 (and one adult over the age of 90) for a group picture.
Working on the lineup - all the cousins in descending order of age from left to right...
After a few minutes of effort we got everyone lined up. We were just about to snap the pictures … and Maile lost it.
Maile Girl doing her best to stand out in the crowd 😉
(Dad note: the tall “kid” on the end? That’s my Uncle Lloyd. He has three generations on all the kids lined up in front of him – the oldest living member of my family. Still has his wit and he smoked everyone in ping pong. Truly a gift to spend the weekend in his company.)
Hmm... what's this thing I just found on the ground. Looks like it's a plane or something, but it's damaged. I wonder if I can find someone to help me fix it?
Cousin Paul, you look like a handy dude - can you help me make this plane fly again?
Thanks, Cousin Paul!
Wait. What do I do with this thing now?
This weekend we headed to Michigan for a family reunion (daddy’s side). We just returned home and there is lots to catch up about … but it will have to wait until tomorrow as we are all exhausted!
We’ll tease you with a shot of Maile learning about a new mode of transportation – the kayak!
So this is like a personal bus that goes on the water? I can dig that...
