by Papa K on December 18, 2013
Tuesday through Friday, Maile takes after school classes at her school. She’s taken soccer, gymnastics, Lego class, art – but lately her favorite is the Chinese Dance class she takes on Fridays with Lily Lao Shi.
Our little Chinese dancer...
Last week, Christine and I were invited to attend the last class of the semester – a performance! It was pretty awesome – and Maile did a great job listening to the teacher and it was clear she had picked up some of the moves over the past couple of months.
Maile Girl is pretty good with the ribbon!
Fair warning, the videos below are a bit longer than normal, but I think you’ll enjoy 🙂
Bring on the ribbons!
And, of course, Maile’s solo:
Proud daddy!
And Mommy too!
(Click here for the first video.)
(Click here for the second video.)
(Click here for the third video.)
Three days a week Maile stays at school for an extra hour for some extra-curricular activities. On Tuesdays, she does soccer, Wednesdays she does (gym)nastics, and Thursdays she does art.
Tonight after dinner we went outside and she demonstrated some of the ‘nastics moves she’s been learning…
(Click here for the video.)
On Friday, Maile Girl completed her first year at Presidio Knolls School! The school threw a wonderful party for the entire school and each class also did their own mini ceremony. We had a blast watching Maile and all her classmates walk up and get their graduation certificate. One of the teachers said something about each student. It was very touching.
Presidio Knolls is a Reggio-Emilia school – which among other things means they are big on documenting the children’s experiences. That’s music to my ears – as I received a DVD with 400+ photos of Maile throughout the year! Of course, this weekend, I made a video collage of the photos (thanks to Jack Johnson for the musical accompaniment!)
Christine and I can’t believe it’s been a year. We had a lot of fun flipping through these pictures and thinking about how much our little girl has grown over the past year. She was excited most every day about going to school and made a ton of new friends (as did we). Her teachers compiled a book that contains a bunch of her artwork and it was incredible to flip through and see how she’s progressed. She learned some gymnastics and soccer, picked up a decent amount of Mandarin (enough that Daddy is in a lot of trouble), mastered the sandbox and water table, and can now sing many, many new songs. Along the way she also learned about mailing letters, taking care of plants, cleaning teeth and the Chinese New Year. We couldn’t have been happier with her first school experience at Presidio Knolls!
(Click here for the video.)
Our neighbor, Lizzy, heard that Maile was a soccer player and invited us to one of her games. On Saturday, we went to check things out. Maile and Mommy made a “Go Lizzy!” sign and Lizzy’s team won 1-0!
After the game, Lizzy gave Maile some pointers…
Lizzy taught Maile some great moves and reinforced the "no hands" rule!
… and then she schooled Daddy with a great drive to the goal!
(Click here for the video.)
About a month ago, I discovered a pop up deli here in the city called Wise Sons. We went and checked it out and instantly fell in love with the sandwiches. Jewish deli is non-existent in San Francisco and these guys were the real deal. They are only open on Saturdays and if you don’t get there early, the line gets pretty long (we tried to go last weekend, but arrived 15 minutes after they started and there was already a 45 minute line).
As some of you know, Maile is a pretty good eater, but one area we’ve struggled is with meats. She’s more of a tofu kind of girl. Apparently, corned beef is a distant cousin of tofu, because Maile absolutely loves it.
This weekend, we headed over early after Maile’s soccer practice and hung out for a bit until they started serving sandwiches. We were sitting at the bar watching the area where they were preparing the sandwiches. It was fun because we got to talk with the owners – great guys and they even have ties back east to Swampscott/Marblehead which is cool (their family used to own Beach Bluff). There was a professional photographer there and he asked if he could take some shots of Maile eating her corned beef. He was kind enough to send over the pics – all side shots, but still pretty cute…
We will definitely be going back again soon and encourage our San Francisco friends to check them out – just get there early!
Mommy showing Maile how it's done...
Maile's latest move is to shove as much food in her mouth as possible before swallowing - hence the full cheeks. Hopefully, this too is a phase...
Man, that's some really good corned beef ... Maile is a happy girl!
(Special thanks to Jake at Intense Imagery for sharing the photos with us.)
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.)
by Papa K on September 14, 2010
As some of you might already know, we live across the street from a high school. Last year they installed an amazing new football field with FieldTurf – its basically a grass carpet. It literally bounces when you walk on it. I remember playing soccer games in high school on fields where there wasn’t a blade of grass in sight. This is basically the opposite.
Maile and I decided to go check it out after dinner tonight. I’ve been realizing that living in the city means Maile spends a lot of time on cement. This was a nice change of pace and it was great for her to practice walking (and even some “running”?) on…
(Click here for the video.)
