SPL's Blog

End of Summer Fun

Afternoon foot fun
Originally uploaded by khowe

As part of our end of summer transition back to school fun, we did some special activities (it was also excessively hot for the Bay Area so some involved water ;-). Here are some photos:

• picking our heirloom tomatoes
• playing in our homemade water slide over and over and over
• going to the SJ Giants game on Labor Day with Daddy
• checking out the pigs and saying hello to a chicken at Hidden Villa
• eating yoghurt
• making ice cream in a bag
• "play and play and play all day" together (that's SPL's favorite quote if you ask him what he's going to do during the day :-)
• take shadow photos on our walk to breakfast together
• KEH and SPL with the iphone
• washing the car
• building a digger with dad
• playing with balloon and stomp rockets non-stop (balloons in the house AND outside!)

We're glad it's fall again but will miss summer too!  Happy back-to-whatever you've got going on!

Outdoor Preschool Day 1

Goat scratching foot on fence
Originally uploaded by khowe

SPL started preschool on Wednesday and while he will also be attending a "regular preschool" starting next week, this one is exclusively outdoors. Teacher Wendolyn Bird (interview with her ) is the spirit behind Tender Tracks, the name of this preschool.  The classroom is local, unmanicured Bay Area parks and farms like Hidden Villa, Ardenwood, and Foothill.  The school is grounded in the philosophy of Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-deficit Disorder, and Hooked on Nature.  I heard Louv speak at Foothill College when SPL was a baby and my friend and former Preschool Family mom, Lacy, introduced me to Teacher Wendolyn and Tender Tracks (many thanks Lace!). 

The class is made up of 8 three-year olds and 2 teachers and they spend 4 hours each week in nature, rain or shine (we bought SPL a rain suit :-).  They learn about animals, learn about plants that are native to CA, paint with blackberries, and chase lizards -- and they get all kinds of dirty!

If Wednesday is any indication, SPL is going to love this experience -- his mom is only bummed because it's not parent participation (but we did get invited for the first day so I snapped a few photos :-).

on the bus ready to go

more photos

Auntie Suchi visits!

Telling Auntie Suchi a story
Originally uploaded by khowe

Still catching up on posts...

Aunt Suchi was in town for work the first weekend and week of August and she stayed with us for a couple of nights. SPL showed her all his toys, Suchi taught mom some things about Indian cooking, and Copper the dog came to live with us (Suchi made this dog for SPL's birthday!).

It's always fun having her around!

Visiting KY

Gram reading Ki-Pat to SPL
Originally uploaded by khowe

The last week in July, SPL, Aunt Beth, and I went to KY to visit my grandparents (SPL's great-grandparents) (mom flew out from TX too :-). They had moved from their house of 40+ years to a new apartment in a retirement community. It was wonderful to see their new place. My aunt Barbara, Uncle Jim, and Aunt Gingy had taken special care to make sure my grandmother's paintings were displayed in the new apartment (see flowers in photo) and had bought some new dining room chairs that were red leather -- perfect for my "red and purple" Gram :-)

SPL was a super-star and happily played on the floor with Grandpa (thanks for the toys Barbara!), tossed a squishy ball with Gram, and watched with amusement as Gizmo (my aunt Gingy's dog) did tricks like sneeze on command (his command no less :-).

SPL also made new friends in my cousin Daniel and his fiance Erica (didn't get a picture of her sadly).

We also made it out to the Kentucky Horse Park where SPL rode on his first pony. Their were many beautiful horses to look at and we had fun wondering around.

Favorite photos:

Family photo

SPL, Daniel, and Abby

Daniel and Gram

My grandparents, Margaret and Clarke

We had a wonderful weekend -- thanks to everyone for making it happen!

These were harvested from our garden Saturday 8/23

These were harvested from our garden Saturday 8/23
Originally uploaded by khowe

Yummy!

love the garden in August and living in CA all the time :-)

Flickr Uploadr & work

Sorry I'm so behind in the blogging -- I'm going to blame it on Flickr Uploadr which for some reason hasn't been working, but it's also because the last 2 weeks have been back-to-school time and I've been working many of the days.

Hopefully next week we'll settle into a routine.

Imaginary play

I'm not totally sure what I just agreed to but it involved calling the button truck to order 5 buttons for the money shredder that SPL is building in our living room.  It doesn't work because there are no buttons.

that was the assignment handed off to me by SPL as he and John left go get haircuts.

gotta get on the phone!

Triple w00t for dad!

who bought a timer for brushing teeth -- awesome!  Last night SPL happily watched the flashing light on the timer as I brushed *each section* of his teeth for 20 seconds!  Definitely unprecedented and we'd tried a bunch of strategies.

hooray!

This was the post that I was writing originally...

.....when I got distracted by overhearing the funny conversation that SPL was having real-time with Emily.

This was our lunchtime convo:

SPL: "Can we get 5 mangoes @ the store, mama?  One for Emily, one for Chun Hua (his other babysitter), one for Wednesday, one for me, and one for Monday?"

and then:

SPL:  "That's what's inside feet (pointing to his pink boo boo on his toe (the first layer of skin is removed)."
and then immediately after that he said -- "Let's look at what's inside the blueberry (and he bit it in half and said "it's green inside" in Mandarin)."

I thought that was a pretty cool application of knowledge -- both the looking inside the blueberry and the use of Mandarin to describe what he saw :-)

what SPL is now saying to Emily (babysitter)

"That's where I threw up on the airplane." (no doubt pointing to the carseat that Beth and Scott just dropped off over the weekend which is now sitting in our living room.  I can't see him right now but I'm listening in from the office down the hall :-).  We took Beth's carseat to KY 2 weeks ago as it was much lighter.

"Too much yoghurt -- I ate too much."  (which is true but maybe not the exact cause of the vomitting on the descent to Midway and again on the descent to Louisville.  Now you ask yourself why you haven't heard the vomitting story yet and the answer is.......I'm totally behind on story-telling.  And I'm vaulting over the list of log-jam of blog posts again to tell you this real-time one].

And come to find out that even after 20+ years of knowing John and the Lilly family, I had no knowledge that John, at 3 years old (and up until 7, or so he reports) also yacked on airplane descents.  Of course on this inaugural yacking flight, where was John!??!?!  At Whistler, BC for a conference!  :-)

And now SPL is busy sprinkling his conversation with Emily (non-Mandarin speaking) with his newly mastered Mandarin vocabulary, including red, blue, green, white, black, orange, yellow, and also apple, spider, and hat.