Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Right whales

We watched an IMAX on the deep sea tonight. Leo was fascinated by the right whale, which was huge! He said, "Maybe that is like you (mommy) and me and daddy and Leify and Jose all put together!"

His favorite part was the octopus eating the crab. Lots of good family fun!

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Sexy poopy eyeballs

Apr 5
Leo likes to parrot his father. He listens to Paul saying sexy Mama and practices saying the same thing. This morning, Leo came up to me and said, "Sexy poopy eyeballs" and kissed me.

Today I asked Leo if he liked being in Hawaii I thought certainly he liked the personalized attention of the nanny and the thrill of a new place. He said yes. I asked if he liked Boulder. He said he liked Boulder better. I was surprised and asked why. He said, "because Leify is there". Leif is the caregiver at the daycare in Boulder. Leo likes to describe Leif as "this big guy with a bald head and a big beard. He looks scary. But all the kids like him the best."

I'm Leo, I'm 3 and a half...

Now that we live in apartments, Leo’s gotten used to riding elevators, pressing the buttons, opening and closing the doors, and, most of all, entertaining a trapped audience.  He’ll smile at anyone in the elevator and start talking at them: “I’m Leo. I’m 3 and a half years old. My birthday is July 6. Do you want to know how I lost this tooth? I was chasing Joylin. I fell on Pop-pop’s hard tile floor and knocked my tooth out. The dentist had to STRAP me in and pull the pieces out!” Most people find it quite amusing and some even join in the fun - “have a nice life!”

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

The prettiest one

Leo drawing a picture: "I'm making this for Emily. She always is not nice to me, so I'm making her the prettiest one."

Sunday, April 12, 2009

New home!

Yesterday, we spent the whole day moving to a new home! You would think it would be trivial to move since we only came with ourselves and a bunch of suitcases. Somehow, we had ended up accumulating a lot more stuff than we thought though.

Our new apartment is amazing and disappointing at the same time. We have this incredible view. You could sit all day and stare out the window at the beach and the sailboats and the wide expanse of ocean and up to the Diamond Head crater. We look 46 floors below us to the street and the mall and the pool and the tennis courts. We have two balconies and with the doors wide open, we get a nice breeze most of the time that cools us off and eliminates the need for AC. These are twin towers, so we look out across to the sister tower and it feels like you ought to just jump over to the neighboring apartments and say hi to those folks.

It's a new apartment. They joined two regular units to make this giant 2200 sq ft unit. Apparently, they were trying to sell this apartment for $2.5M, but no one bit, so they rented it instead. It's the crappiest $2.5M place I've ever seen, but the nicest place I've ever lived in. The finishing needed help, there's paint on the carpet and the cleaners didn't really clean up after the contractors. They didn't get the window shades up in time, and one entire side of the apartment is floor to ceiling windows, so Leo hasn't been napping and the sun wakes us up in the morning and everyone gets to see us parade around naked. The doors open up into each other in awkward ways. We rented furniture because it came unfurnished (furnished would have been $1000 more each month). So we have some beds and a couch and a kitchen table. It turns out our stuff arrives this week, so the furniture was pretty pricey for a week rental.

Yesterday Leo and I wandered the nearby streets to find lunch. We walked up and down the streets, looking for something suitable. There's a shabu-shabu (hot pot) restaurant that smelled yucky (to Leo), a Japanese grill that was closed, a pancake house, several strip clubs that were open at the time?, and then finally, we found the cheap takeout sushi/convenience store. Woohoo! A fresh tuna poki roll for $2.

Today we shopped AGAIN. The Walmart is a zoo. The Costco is worse. The Target is a lot more reasonable but 10 miles out of town. The Safeway is a zoo, even at 9pm at night, and it has very little worth buying. We've given up on a lot of organics. Parking takes forever even though the big boxes have parking garages. Everything is expensive and its amazing how crowded it is at all times of day and night. Shopping is darn unpleasant. We'll have to start growing our own food. (The Costco did have a Poki bar, however, which was a nice redeeming quality!)

I made the mistake of leaving Leo's chocolate easter bunny in the car while we shopped. Tonight, Leo and Paul scraped the melted bunny off the package and ate it. I'm hoping to redeem myself as a Mommy tomorrow by taking Leo snorkeling out in Hanauma Bay.

We scoped out our pool and recreation deck. There's a small playground structure that occupies Leo for 10-15 minutes. The pool is unheated (unlike the toasty warm pool at the hotel) and quite chilly, but it's big and I did a few laps after forcing myself to jump in. There's a good temperature hot tub that's pretty small. A couple tennis courts, a driving range, a putting green and some BBQs. There is a theatre that we want to reserve at some point soon, just to test out.

We live next to a design store. Fancy furniture and cool design. They have a restaurant too, where you can buy dinner entrees for $40-something.

Happy Easter everyone!
Love, Debbie, Paul and Leo

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Labor saving device

Tonight we were leaving a sports store when Leo wanted to buy some kind of kid's collector cards for Pokemon or Bakugan or something like that. I said, no, we weren't buying anything and besides, I didn't even know what it was. So we left the store with Leo saying, "it's a labor-saving device!"

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Black holes

Leo and I were arguing who loved the other more. Leo said he loved me as high as the sky and big as the ocean. I said I loved him as high as clouds and as big as redwood trees. Leo said he loved me as high as the moon. I said I loved as high as the sun. Leo said he loved me as far as "tiny Pluto". I said I loved him as far as the Milky Way. Leo said he loved me as far as a star. I said I loved him as far as the edge of the universe. Then he said he loved as far as the end of a Black Hole.

I said, "ok, you win! This is the edge of my knowledge." I concede to a three-year-old.

The ocean

After several weeks, we finally made it to the ocean. We'd been taking Leo to a calm lagoon/pond that was closer to the hotel. Leo hooted and hollered and squealed with delight. It was finally warm enough to swim and I floated him around in his life vest. He kept trying to stand and got knocked over by the "tidal waves".

On Sunday, Leo must have gotten tired of our pestering him to put on swim goggles. He put the swim mask on in the bathtub and looked at my feet and counted my fingers. I gave him a snorkel and let him practice in the bathtub. It worked so well, he snorkeled on Monday in the lagoon and practiced using the mask in the pool. We're so excited we will take him to Hanauma Bay this weekend to see some real fish! Paul has alreay snorkeled at the beach here and reports great fish but no coral.