Playdate movie

Lil'T and her friends Ben & Dora were playing together today. Yeah, Dora is the life sized stuffed doll. That Dora is a chair hog and almost knocked Lil'T off the rocker. Sheesh!

Play with your food

This morning for breakfast, I made some toast for Princess. While I made her and That's lunch, Princess ate her toast.

Princess: Mommy, look!

She held up her toast. She had nibbled off all of the crust.

Me: What am I looking at?

Princess: It's a guitar.

She took another bite.

Princess: Mommy, now look. It's a fishie. Here's its head and here's its tail.

Another bite.

Princess: Now it's a worm.

And one more bite.

Princess: Now it's a blob.

To me, it all looked like half eaten toast. Does that mean I'm getting old? It is nice to reconnect with 8 year old imagination. Who knew toast could be so versatile?

TheGirlsWedding

I didn't catch swine flu. At least I don't think I did. But I did get a major case of homesickness for Hawaii. When people ask me about the wedding, I tell them that it felt like I was at a garage party in the heart of Waipahu. The only things missing were the mosquito punks, the buckets of water under the outside lights to catch the moths, and the old guys in the corner playing Sakura cards and drinking beer. There was the beer drinking but not the card playing.

There was Hawaiian plate lunch food: steamed rice, teri chicken, fried noodles, kalbi ribs, mac salad, green salad. The cake was so good. It was a coconut type filling and so tasty that I had a piece as big as my head. Well, maybe not that big, but definitely bigger than I would have taken had it not been coconut in the center.

Dawn, Noelle's sister, sang "What are you doing for the rest of your life?" by Na Leo as Noelle and Edie danced. I folded up a dollar bill so small and put it so deep down Edie's shirt that I don't think Noelle had a chance to retrieve it. Oops. Seriously, I wasn't trying to cop a feel on your wife, Noelle. We sang "Dahil Sa Iyo" to Edie. It was a great moment; Noelle, her cousins and me belting it out to her wife. Edie said later that it was the only time she had cried all day long. It was so very sweet. Afterward, her cousins told her, "You're part of the family now, Edie."

During the reception, we had a jam session with guitar and uke playing, stumbled through Hawaiian lyrics that we had to plumb the depths of our memory to find those elusive melodies. We were cracking jokes and laughing. Noelle at one point told us the, "Watch out, watch out, watch out," story that had us all rolling. Music, laughter, free flowing wine and beer, and yummy cake. What's not to like?

I absolutely fell in love with Noelle's extended family. My head actually hurt from laughing so much. We reminisced about going to St. Joe's for grade school. We did the usual, "What school you grad?" stuff that is kind of a given when you gather a bunch of people from Hawaii in a room. And while I was just home to Hawaii only a couple of months ago with my own family, the visit was so colored with grief that I still miss home. The abject joy of hanging out with family, how Dawn's son Aston called me Aunty even though he had never met me before, all the inside jokes, how when I said, "chai wait," that I was understood perfectly (yeah, that slipped out of my mouth at one point and actually surprised me because I thought those Waipahu roots were well buried)-- I miss that.

Oh well, my brothers with respective families, my mom, Hubby's parents and my sister-in-law, will all be here at the end of the month. That means that I need to somehow get it so that there shouldn't be a red plastic wrap on my front door emblazoned with the word BIOHAZARD. I need to clean this house. That's the downside of family gatherings. But the upside is that I get to see everybody -- and we'll be laughing over shared inside jokes and singing loud bad karaoke in the media room.

I can't wait.

Yes, we have no bananas

I live with crazy people. Lil'T is perhaps the craziest of them all.

Me: What do you want for breakfast? There's cereal. There's toast. I can make eggs. There's fruit...

T: Hmmm... Bananas.

Me: We don't have bananas. We have watermelon, apples and oranges.

T: Hmmm... Grapes.

Me: We don't have grapes. We have watermelon, apples and oranges.

T: Okay. I want bananas.

Me: We don't have bananas. We have watermelon, apples and oranges.

This went on for a good ten minutes or so. I was reminded of that scene from Red Dwarf when Holly informs Dave that everybody is dead. Dave keeps questioning if individual people from the crew are dead. Holly resorts to using every permutation of the four words: everybody, is, dead, Dave.

We have apples, watermelon, and oranges. Oranges, apples, and watermelon, we have. Apples we have; oranges we have; watermelon we have. And so on.

Ultimately I let her have spaghetti left over from dinner, canned cranberry jelly and a glass of milk. This was her breakfast.

I have a few errands to run. I'll need to buy some bananas and grapes. Even though tomorrow I've no doubt that she'll want to eat peaches.

I'm sure you can relate

Lil'T still needs some help with the potty. She goes on her own, pretty much. And we have worked out that we get first wipe and then she has a turn (because the other way around is just too messy). She will flush the toilet unless it is too hard to push the lever. She also is in charge of pulling up her pants and underwear herself and then I help her wash her hands.

Today she was dallying in the bathroom -- it takes time to pull up underpants and pants. I was waiting and soon Lil'T became frustrated. She started crying while trying to pull up her jeans. She needed help. Sometimes we all do.

She said, "My pants are freaking me out!"

That just made my day. I don't often get freaked out about my pants but I'm sure that it happens to all of us.

Alphabet -- revisited again

She finally did it!!! Yay!

Spamdemic

Next weekend, one of my friends from my hana-butta days is getting married in Southern California. I'm so very excited to be invited to the wedding. Noelle and I have been friends since I think the 3rd grade. We've never lost touch. Even when I went off to Sacred Hearts Academy and she went to Waipahu High School, we remained close.

Anyway, she's getting married in Southern California where this swine flu has been found. I have to admit, I'm a little afraid about catching it. I'm coming off a nasty flu season when Lil'T got sick every other week. In fact, she's sick right now. But the thing is, I still have that lingering cough you get after you've had the flu. I can't shake it. And now, with everybody being in a panic, I'm worried that I'll be mauled when I get on the airplane next week Friday. I mean, what if I cough and all the passengers turn on me because they're afraid of the swine flu?

Plus, what if I go down to So Cal and end up catching it? I'd bring it back to my island and imagine what would happen. This island is so freaking small that if one kid has lice in one school, all of the schools are on alert. For weeks after the last lice outbreak at an elementary school that isn't even the one that Princess attends, I put the girls' hair up in ponytails and buns so that there would be no chance of transmission. Swine flu would go through this place faster than Chinese Food on a Tuesday night.

My mother is suggesting that I either invest in some face masks (yeah, that will look nice in the wedding pictures) or that I just cancel the trip until the spamdemic passes.

I think I'm going to chance it anyway. I wouldn't miss this wedding for the world.