As you know, on Thursdays I like to click back through the archive and see what was happening on this day in history. Tonight my first stop was January 15, 2013 and I found a keeper right away – Grandma and Papa Boston meet Lauren for the very first time…
First meeting between Lauren, Grandma Jill and Papa Mike
One year earlier – and we have this smile of Maile’s lighting up your day…
Just a Maile smile to start your week...
And the year before that? Some silliness with Maile and her dollie in the stroller…
And we end our trip with this one…
I love you, daddy. I love you too, Maile girl.
A good day indeed.
Google came out with a new Translate app today that has a cool feature where two people can have a conversation in different languages and the app acts as the translator. So person #1 speaks in English and the app translates into, say, Chinese. Then person #2 speaks in Chinese and the app translates into English.
I thought we’d have some fun with Maile and try it out – she’d speak Chinese, I’d speak English.
As you can see, we had a little trouble from the start. Either Maile really doesn’t know Chinese and this whole thing is a farce – or perhaps Google’s technology just can’t understand her high-pitched voice. Or maybe she was just goofing too much. Any way you slice it, the app had some trouble with Maile Girl’s Chinese…
And the difficulty absolutely slayed Maile…
(Click here for video #1.)
(Click here for video #2.)
(Click here for video #3.)
I don’t blame her really, they do kind of look like shoes.
And don’t worry, for those of you who later get to enjoy a home-cooked meal from us – we threw both measuring cups in the dishwasher 😉
(Click here for the video.)
I stumbled on this video from January 9th, 2011 and it cracked me up…
My goal for this weekend is to find this book and teach Lauren the same. Stay tuned.
(Click here for the video.)
Christmas and birthdays means lots of … boxes. Which as we know are typically much more fun than the gifts that came inside them 😉
Evidence submitted:
(Dad note: The Lauren shrieking at the end when things don’t quite go her way is a nice addition to her two year old arsenal.)
(Click here for the video.)
Today was Lauren’s second birthday! Will cover the festivities here in San Francisco a bit later this week, but before we left Hawaii on Friday, we celebrated Lauren’s birthday with Grandma and Papa Hawaii and Katie, Emily and Uncle Steve.
Yes, Lauren, that present is for you!
Mommy made the cupcakes and the rest of us took care of eating them ... after Lauren, Grandma and the girls blew out the candles.
As the video shows, Lauren hasn’t quite mastered blowing the candles out yet … maybe next year!
Per tradition we took a picture of Lauren in her kimono in front of the kadomatsu.
Previous kadomatsu pictures are here and of Maile here.
(Click here for the video.)
by Papa K on December 16, 2014
We had a lot of fun tonight celebrating the first night of Hanukkah. Our celebration actually started a couple days ago when Mommy whipped up some delicious latkes. Tonight we lit the lights and had fun opening and playing with our presents from Grandma and Papa Boston, Aunt Suzy and, of course, Mommy and Daddy. (We’re packing the presents into a shorter number of days this year due to our impending trip to Hawaii.)
Happy Hanukkah!
(Click here for the video.)
by Papa K on December 10, 2014
If you haven’t heard, we apparently have a big storm coming our way tonight and tomorrow. This led me to go searching the blog for old posts I’ve written about the girls playing in the rain.
And while I found some good ones, I also found this video – which gave me a good laugh…
(Click here for the video.)
Earlier in the summer, Christine heard about this new dance studio opening up right near our house in Japantown called Nagata Dance. They were offering Hip Hop class and Maile said she wanted to take it. All fall, Maile has been going on Wednesdays after school – I never really get a chance to see her dance because I’m still at work, but Christine has raved about the class and the teacher. The class is currently really small (only 4 kids), but the main teacher, Ms. Nagata, is fantastic with the kids.
Today they had their first dance recital … and it was fantastic. It just had this great down-to-earth quality to it, but we also saw all the kids had learned and I was floored by Maile’s routine. You could tell the kids were having a lot of fun too – but that they also respected their teacher – all good things in my book!
I think you’ll enjoy it too.
Here is Maile’s Hip Hop routine:
And at the end they did a final number where each student was able to bring a parent or friend onto the dance floor – Maile, of course, chose Lauren 🙂
And, finally, here is a longer version of the recital – we’ll call this one the “Grandma cut” 😉
(Click here for the hip hop routine.)
(Click here for the final number.)
(Click here for the full routine, aka the Grandma cut.)
I can now confirm that teaching an “almost” two year old to play hide-and-seek is one of the great joys of life. First Maile, now Lauren – both are absolutely hilarious. It looks like Grandma Jill and Mommy had a lot of fun with Lauren!
(Click here for the video.)
