conversation

We are getting ready to go to our PEPS meeting and Anya insists on wearing her new princess dress. It's way too cold for her to just wear that (was snowing today, even), so I give her 3 choices.

1. Put on a shirt and pants and wear princess dress over them.
2. Wear another parent-approved outfit
3. Wear princess dress as-is, but stay home from PEPS.

After much complaining and about 10 minutes have passed, I ask again what choice she has made. Her response:

Anya: I want to make my own choices.

me: Oh? What choices are these?

Anya: Number 1 Wear nothing and go to PEPS.
Number 2 Wear my princess dress and go to PEPS.
Number 3..ummmm...wear something else.

While trying hard to stifle my laughter, we finally made another compromise. Wear shirt, pants, and princess dress to PEPS, but change into just princess dress as soon as we get there. Problem solved. Little stinker.

Maui

Back in November, Chris' parents oh-so-awesomely took us on a trip to Maui (Kihei)for a week. I had never been and neither had Anya, so it was pretty exciting for us. We had a relaxing and fantastic time. Some highlights: daily swimming/playing at the beach across the street and the pool at the condo complex, checking out Haleakala, Iao Valley, surfers at Honolua Bay, and other spots on the island, doing a helicopter tour of the island with Chris, ziplining with Chris, having enough relaxation time to read 2-1/2 books (!!), lots of Mai Tais and Pina Coladas, body surfing poorly and getting knocked around by the waves, and of course hanging out with Lynn and Steve.

One other neat highlight was that we got to have a playdate with one of Anya's new school friends, Ella J. Her mom and I got to talking one day and found that we were going to be in Maui at the same time - overlapping by 2 days. So we met up at their lovely resort and played for an afternoon. It was great getting to know Julie and Todd and Anya and Ella had a good time playing.

Thank you, Lynn and Steve, for a wonderful, special experience!

view from our condo balcony

Iao Valley - escaping the jerky parking lot attendant that was trying to rip off tourists


Iao Valley


Anya, Steve and me (and some unknown person in the background)


Steve helping Anya warm up at Haleakala (it's cold up there at 10,000 feet!)



on our helicopter tour

Helicopter view of Haleakala

Wall of Tears

our romantical ziplining adventure

The adventure continued after we returned to Seattle. Chris, Anya, and I returned a few days earlier than Lynn and Steve. The day after we got back, Seattle was hit with a snowstorm, referenced in this post http://anya-marie.blogspot.com/2010/11/snow-day.html

Santa Visit

Grandma and Grandpa Lodwig took Anya to see Santa this morning. According to them, this year went better than last year. Last year, she was pretty nervous and untrusting of Santa, but obliged us with a picture (perhaps she was just frozen in fear?). This year, I hear she was fairly excited and spoke to Santa. She told him that she wants "wind-up dinosaurs" for Christmas. She saw these cheap, plastic little dinosaurs in a catalog about a month ago and has been stuck on them ever since. Easy enough for us, though.

parent/teacher conference

I remember Chris telling me that he looked back at report card comments from his earliest teachers and would think yep, that still pretty much sums me up. One of the comments was "Chris loves his projects." And as his wife, I can attest to the truthfulness of that (and he's pretty darn good at them too).

We just had Anya's first preschool parent/teacher conference earlier this week. It was weird for me - I felt both nervous, as if I were in trouble and going to the principal's office (again) and "oh my gosh, I'm a GROWNUP doing grownup things!".

Anyway, it was neat to see what Anya's teachers say about her. She seems to be just like she is at home: very, (very!) active, sweet, curious, independent, but not very willing to listen. So here's her first conference notes. I'm curious to see how much of herself she will recognize in this when she is an adult.

Anya Plays Wii

Yesterday Anya asked to play wii yoga with me. What self-respecting dad wouldn't let his daughter do yoga? I'm sure everyone will be surprised to find our exercise session quickly turn into playing Wii Fit's Penguin Slide game. And what self-respecting dad, when seeing something like this doesn't post it to the web?

little ballerina

after her first ballet class (with the addition of fairy wings and an extra tutu) helping me make cinnamon toast.