Tooth Fairy / Santa Claus Double Header!

This is going to be a very big night for Annabel. She lost her second tooth today, so we are expecting evening visits from both the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus tonight if you can believe it! It's going to grand central in here for childhood figures bearing gifts.

As you can see from the girls thoughtful note, Santa is still a very important figure at Christmas. In case you can't quite make it out, that is a potholder that the girls made for Mrs. Claus. Annabel seems to have some interesting suspicions. She is often quiet when the topic comes up around me, and she has asked Kristin if Santa Claus is really your parents. Kristin of course said no. Gaby is 100% on Santa and can't WAIT for tomorrow morning.

They are both off to bed and we just finished getting the house ready for tomorrow morning. Merry Christmas everyone, we are missing out extended family this year. We hope you have a wonderful holiday and a peaceful New Year!

Lost Teeth, Thanksgiving and Paying The Bronco, Dude!

From ThanksGiving

It's been a very busy few weeks for Annabel.

She lost her first tooth on November 13th. She said she was playing with it at school and it came out on her tongue. She said that it didn't hurt and it only bled a little. She also got word to the tooth fairy (using her Mom as a trusted go-between) that she wanted to keep the tooth so she could show her grandpa who had said that he wanted to see it.

Much to my surprise, Kristin told me that the tooth fairy agreed to let her keep it! I also heard that the tooth fairy is now paying outrageous amounts for first-time teeth. I think there must be a shortage of teeth in fairyland or something.

Shortly thereafter I started to notice some changes in Annabel. She seems suddenly a bit more playful and a bit more at ease around strangers. She was practically performing for our house guests on thanksgiving.

"Pay the Bronco, dude!" she would say in a very funny western accent, holding out her hand, as if to accept payment. Everyone was laughing at the performance and she was eating it up. Kristin and I have never seen her so outgoing. We were also surprised that she was (apparently) the Bronco and needed to be payed.

She has also been reading much more readily. Last week she read practically all of fox in sox fluently and without problems. There is some talk about the fact that losing teeth and reading frequently coincide. That is certainly the case with Annabel.

Here are some recent pics from Thanksgiving which we had here in San Francisco and then our weekend in Lake Tahoe.

From ThanksGiving

From ThanksGiving

Thanksgiving play

Here's the video from Annabel's thanksgiving play. She played the horse (Kristin did an awesome job on the costume).

Her line in case you can't quite hear it is:
"I prefer Cherry Pie, myself. When is Cherry Season?"

It's at about 7:00 in the video if you want to skip ahead. : )

First Soccer Game

A Venture In Lemonade

First day of school

 

I know its been forever since I've updated this spot. I have a huge backlog of posts that I will try to fill in, but I just saw this picture that I took last week on Annabel and Gaby's first day of school that I thought was so cute that I just had to put it up right away.

So far both girls seem to be loving school this year. :)

Annabels 6th Birthday

I can't believe that Annabel is 6 already!

Kindergarten graduation

I can't believe I didn't put these up earlier. They happened almost a month ago now. As you can see it was quite a production. It featured inspirational speeches, gifts for the teachers and administrators, three songs and two dances including one with prop sunglasses, a diploma ceremony and a potluck lunch afterward.

Getting a new tooth

Annabel is getting her first tooth before losing one. It's her right rear molar. Just coming in now.

(click on the pic for a bigger picture).

Camping with K-White

The girls and I went camping with Annabel's Kindergarten class last weekend. We all had a blast. Here are a few shots.

Fathers Day

Sleeping Bags

The girls got sleeping bags today in advance of the official kindergarten camping trip that is scheduled for next weekend. We are going to be camping here in petaluma.

They were so excited about the idea of sleeping in them, they decided to give it a try tonight on the floor of their room.

Surfing

Kristin decided she wanted to try surfing last weekend. I was delighted! We went down to Linda-Mar, which is the main surf beach in Pacifica.

We rented wetsuits for everyone and headed over to the beach. The girls aren't strong enough swimmers yet to even walk into the surf, so I carried them in and let them feel the waves splash up against their wetsuits.

Kristin did get out into the water, which was awesome. She wasn't quite able to paddle out past the breaking waves, but she says tat she enjoyed being in the water, and I think we might be able to find some smaller waves up north in Bolinas next time.

I managed to catch a wave or two.

The Annabel and Gaby Show

Last weekend I noticed Annabel running around the house with the Video Camera making movies. I wasn't exactly sure what she shot until just a few minutes ago when I downloaded everything off the camera. Turns out that she has shot several segments of "The Annabel and Gaby Show".

This is a milestone for her: Her first explicit contribution to her own blog.
Annabel plays a great straight-man host and Gaby plays the role of the comic cut-up. It's sort of a Felix and Oscar type-thing, but with a younger twist. I think it has real potential...

There is a good 20 or 30 minutes worth of these videos. Here is one of the shorter ones:

The Life Cycle Of A Butterfly.

Annabel has been learning about the animals in her kindergarten class, and she has been checking animal books out of the school library at her weekly library visit.

She now regularly whips out Animal fun facts that surprise me.

The Onza is a long legged panther for one example, and the Coyotes that live around here are nocturnal for another.

A few weeks ago, I came up for breakfast and saw this sitting on her drawing table. Kristin pointed it out to me. Apparently Annabel had drawn it earlier in the morning. (She still gets up at about 6:30 no matter what). Kristin had asked her about it and she said:

"It's the lifecycle of the Butterfly. That's the egg, that's the caterpillar, that's the cocoon, that's the butterfly coming out of the cocoon and that's the grown-up butterfly."

"Wow!" said Kristin. "And what about these guys?" pointing to the butterflies up in the corner and the one under her very fancy signature.

"Those are her friends." Annabel said.

Holidays 2008

Annabel had a blast this Holiday season.

She has been in full-on Holiday mode for about a solid month. It started with a Hanukkah celebration at her school and ended last night with a sprite toast to the New Year in a real champaign flute.

She absolutely loved the holidays. Watching her was like taking a lesson in Jolliness. She pranced, danced and sang her way around the house.

She still believes in Santa Claus, but senses that there is something strange about the knowing tone that people use when they talk about him. She ran into Mrs. Claus this year at the Christmas Tree farm and immediately snapped into her best behavior. After Mrs. Claus walked away, she ran over to me and asked me if I thought she had been good this year. I assured her that she had.

On Christmas eve, she set out a plate of cookies that she made for Santa and then surprised us by putting the plate on a small end table near our window, then getting a chair and some pillows and setting those up so that Santa would have a place to sit and eat his cookies.

Then she had the great idea of putting her tights out for Santa instead of a stocking because there was more room for presents in the tights (2 legs worth!).

She was the first one up on Christmas morning at about 6:30am :( We woke up everyone else and went up to open presents. Annabel ran over to the chair and found the note that Santa left. It said that the tights were too small for his hands so he left their presents in stockings, but that it was a good idea.

Annabel was delighted with the whole thing.

Annabel is Reading!

It is now official: Annabel is reading.

She has been able to sound out a word or two for quite some time, but she hasn't really liked doing it and after a few would get frustrated and ask you to just read it to her. Well, this weekend we got her the The Bob Books, and all of that changed.

The first book, "Mat" was easy enough for her to master on the first try. The text of the entire book is as follows:

Mat. (Page 1)
Mat sat. (Page 2)
Sam. (Page 3)
Sam sat. (Page 4)
Mat sat. Sam Sat. (Page 5)
Mat sat on Sam. (Page 6 with hysterical picture)

Sam sat on Mat. (Page 7)
Mat sat. Sam sat. (Page 8)
The End.

Here are some pics from this morning's performance of Mahalo (That means Thank You in Hawaiian) at Annabel's Kindergarten. It includes a dance solo featuring Annabel as well as photo of her with the microphone. She said

"My name is Annabel. Mahalo for my family"

Someway to make it seem more airplaneish

From Halloween

One morning last week Annabel told me that she wanted me to help her build an airplane.

"A paper plane, you mean?" I asked.
"No, a real plane. We can make it out of stuff we have in the garage. And then Gaby and I can fly up to a rainbow and get some colors to paint with."

I looked at her, a bit incredulous.

"Did you see something like that on TV?" I asked.

"No. Can we do it Daddy?"
"Yeah, can we?!" Asks Gaby now suddenly involved as well.
"Well, we can't make a real plane." I say shaking my head.

"Lets go to the garage!" Annabel suggests.
"Yeah!" Gaby seconds the motion.

Now it's about 7:30 in the morning. They need to leave for school in about 10 minutes. "Okay, really quick." I say.

We go to the garage and Annabel immediately grabs Kristin's yoga mat and the old plastic baby wash-basin that we had for when the girls were infants.

"This is the runway!" she says rolling out the yoga mat.
"And we can attach wheels to this, she says pointing to the wash basin."

Now I have to admit to having had this exact same impulse myself when I was a kid. I remember thinking that it should be possible to just throw a plane together out of extra junk. So I did want to make this happen for them even if only slightly. So I am thinking of ways to build wings and attach them to the washbasin to make it seem more airplaneish.

"I'll tell you what." I say "We'll do it this weekend, okay?"

"Yay!" they both readily agree.

Saturday rolls around, and I have to remind them that it's time for the airplane work. I think Gaby had forgotten completely and it was not top of mind for Annabel either. We go outside and I start to explain that first we need to make plans. We have to measure some things and then go to the store.

"No, lets just make it." Annabel says.

"Well you can't just make it" I say. "You need to do some work first, then you can make it. We can probably have it made by tomorrow if we work hard."

"No thanks." Says Annabel lets do something faster.

"Well we can go to walgreens and get some toy planes there or I can make some paper planes."

"Perfect!" they say.

:)

D-A-D, I need something to drink!

It's been a while, I know. Lots of updates since the last posting.

Annabel is still really enjoying school. She is on her way to reading and can sound out many words if she wants to put the effort into it. She know how many three letter words are spelled and she has taken to calling me D-A-D, and Kristin M-O-M. She will sometimes call out that way from downstairs "D-A-D, I need something to drink!".

She is maturing by the minute. Her vocabulary is expanding quickly. She will say things like "I'm considering it" or "It's really very sad that Jaguars are endagered."

She loves going to the school library ckecking out books. Last week was "How and Why Mammals Hide", a non-fiction book about cute little animals and the crazy places that they find to hide. It features fieldmice, turtles and ever the star-nosed mole, which hides in holes in the ground, of course. It's due back tomorrow.

We went to ride bikes in the park this weekend, which I haven't done with the girls in several months. We talked about taking off her training wheels this week, but at the last minute she decided to keep them on just a little longer...