last season, the 49ers played football in a new arena called levi stadium.  i asked daddy to take me to a game, but he said something about how i would have to sit still in my seat for 3-4 hours.  that doesn’t sound fun at all.  so needless to say, i’ve never been to levi stadium.  and neither had mommy or daddy.  until tonight.  tonight, they went to see the sharks play hockey at levi stadium.  weird, right?

in the days leading to the game, mommy and daddy talked about it and seemed really excited.  sienna and i discussed which one of us should get to go, just like we usually do when it comes to sharks games.  but then we found out that they had 4 tickets to the game.  that means that the whole family would get to go, right?  yippee!  but… no.  it turns out that mommy and daddy went to the game with auntie cheryl and uncle greg.

they said it was really cool to see the sharks play in front of such a large crowd.  they enjoyed seeing levi stadium.  and there were real shows (not just sharkie running contests with fans) during intermission — live performances by melissa etheridge and john fogerty, a laser light show, pyrotechnics, etc.  so, like a half-time show but not.  “intermission shows”?

BUT… they also had to park really far away.  their seats were so high up that they couldn’t see the action on the ice.  they were sooo cold.  (mommy and auntie cheryl drank wine to keep warm. that’s their story and they’re sticking to it.)  they sat right under the lights, and moths kept flying into the lights, getting fried by them, and dropping right at their feet.  bleh.  and, the sharks lost.  but the worst part of all…  they lost to the kings!!!

mommy and daddy had a fun night out, but they said that if the sharks play in another stadium series next year, they probably wouldn’t go.  i guess sienna and i had it pretty good watching the game on TV in our warm house with gung-gung and uncle henry.  but i still wanna see levi stadium when the 9ers play next season!

so, you know how i work at leap frog?  i’ve tested products for them at least 4 different times.  well, i haven’t been asked to test products in almost a year, but sienna got the call today!  she stole my gig!

today was sienna’s first time working at leap frog.  she tested a video game where you ride a train, play mini games at the stops, and pick up letters along the way.  this train game helps you practice your alphabet.  mommy said the game was too easy for me, so that’s why they needed a little baby like sienna to test and not a smart big kid like me.  i heard sienna did a really good job working and she had fun, too.

after sienna’s day at work, she and mommy picked me up from school and we hit a nearby BMX park.  we got the idea from logan and mason who went riding last week — uncle greg shot video.  it looked fun, so sienna and i wanted to try it too.

we started out in the kids’ track, but that got boring really fast. we dropped right in to the big park, but some of the jumps were so big that i would try to ride up, and then i’d lose momentum before i reached the top and then roll backwards and fall down.  i got really frustrated at first. i eventually got the hang of it, and it was really fun. also, i found some smaller rollers that were more my speed.  sienna was fearless from the start. she would fall down, dust herself off, and just keep on going!

we were so mad when we mommy said it was time to go.  we had to leave because a lot of grown ups were starting to hit the park and they were flying over us on their bikes (literally).  it didn’t bother us — it was actually really cool to watch them — but mommy was afraid that we were going to get killed.

here’s video of me and sienna during our first time out at the BMX park.  i hope we get to go again soon!

today is president’s day.  it’s a holiday.  my teachers didn’t work.  sienna’s teachers didn’t work.  daddy didn’t have to work.  uncle warren didn’t have to work.  but mommy had to work.  i think mommy was the only person in the whole world who had to work today.  so while mommy worked, the rest of us went to rockin’ jump.  it was isaac’s first time there, so we showed him around.

sienna and i spent the morning bouncing off the walls (literally) with isaac and then went to lunch at fresh pixx.  yummy!

what had such a fun day.

at night, mommy didn’t have volleyball, but she went to auntie judy’s house for dinner.  auntie cheryl and auntie char were there too.  they called it “girls’ night in”.  that sounds boring — we eat dinner at home all the time.

we celebrated gung-gung’s birthday today.  we went to a sort of fancy restaurant which was not really “kid-friendly”, but we were definitely not the only kids there.  all the other kids were all sitting quietly in their chairs and eating nicely with their silverware.  cousin zoey, sienna, and i needed constant reminders to stay in our seats, speak with our inside voices, and use our utensils.  it reminded mommy of the times when we ate with grandpa at the country club and all the kids there were amazingly well-behaved.  daddy pointed out that those kids “grew up in the country club” so they didn’t know any other way.

see, that’s the problem — we don’t go out to fancy places enough!  even though mommy and daddy teach us to have good table manners (even at home or at causal restaurants), it’s just not the same.  and to be honest, sienna and i are just messy eaters, and cousin zoey just brings out the silly in me.  i’m not sure if years of training could fix that.  but i bet we have way more fun than those country club kids. 😛

happy birthday gung-gung!  “40 is not old if you’re a tree” (says a sweatshirt that he’s been wearing a lot lately), but 67 is old no matter what you are. 😉

today is valentine’s day.  sienna and i both celebrated at school earlier this week, which is a good thing because nobody seems to know about valentine’s day here at home.  no candy, no hearts, no cute cards — except for the cards that sienna and i made for mommy, of course.

but today is special for another reason.  we had a special visitor!  daddy’s friend, auntie miho, came to visit all the way from japan.   she and daddy went to high school together, then she moved all the way to japan and has lived there ever since.  she says she met me at auntie lisa and uncle nelson’s wedding 3 years ago, but i don’t remember that.

auntie miho, uncle mike, and auntie judy all came over.  auntie miho brought lots of special japanese cookies and candies that we had never seen before.  (something tells me that sienna and i won’t get to eat all of them.)  we ate the yummy dinner that mommy and daddy made, then we hung out all night.  i guess you could say that we were each others’ valentines. 🙂

valentine’s day is fun because you get to be a mailman (or mailwoman) and deliver cards and treats to all your friends!  last year, i spent a lot of time writing names on all my cards and carefully selecting the right card and pencil for everyone.  but this year, we were instructed to get gender neutral cards and to leave the “TO:” line blank.  i thought that was weird, but sienna’s class (at a different school) got the same instructions!   so i guess that’s a thing.  sure, it makes for faster distribution, but it takes some of the fun out of it.

mommy took us to the store to buy gender-neutral cards, but there weren’t a lot of options.  there were some cards with cats on them, but we didn’t like them.  we insisted on getting spiderman and sophia the first cards.  (one of the sophia designs did not pass mommy’s QA standard, but luckily, we had leftover minnie mouse cards from last year to replace them.)  we made treat bags for our friends with the card, a pencil, and heart-shaped chocolates in each one.

sienna had her valentine’s day activity at school, yesterday.  they didn’t really have a party, but they sat in a circle and took turns passing out cards and treats.  it turns out that some of the kids went to school with a sealed box of valentine’s cards.  mommy was planning to stay just long enough to watch sienna pass out her cards, but she ended up helping the teachers prepare other kids’ cards for distribution — opening the boxes, separating the perforated cards, folding the cards and tucking them into the pre-cut tabs, and sealing them with a sticker.  whew!  all the kids were instructed to bring the cards and treats home and ask their mommies or daddies for permission before eating them.  but when mommy picked sienna up from school yesterday, sienna got busted because of the traces of chocolate around her mouth.  good thing it was a kit-kat and not something with peanuts (which she is allergic to)!

at my school, valentine’s day is a big deal.  it’s one of three big parties we’ll have this year (the others are halloween and end-of-year).  we did valentines-themed crafts and activities, and we even got to frost and decorate a sugar cookie.. and EAT IT!  school policy only allows healthy food, so i guess that cookie must have been healthy.  it was delicious (and according to mommy, NOT healthy at all.)

during the party, we delivered cards and treats to everyone’s beary special buckets (we made those in class earlier in the week).  at the end of the day we all got to bring our buckets home, overflowing with cards and goodies from our friends.  my favorite card that i got was from elle — not because i have a thing for her but because it was a paw patrol card!  i also brought home the special mother’s day card that i made for mommy.  i can’t wait to give it to her tomorrow. 🙂

mommy and daddy often say that sienna is a mean girl (and she is!), but she can also be very sweet.  every day, mommy reminds sienna to be a sweet girl at school.  and when she picks her up in the evening, she asks her if she was a mean girl or a sweet girl that day.  usually, sienna says that she was a sweet girl, but she sometimes struggles to come up with an example of something she did that was sweet.

today, when mommy asked asked if she was sweet or mean, sienna admitted that she was a mean girl. nobody believes that a little girl with such a sweet face and silly personality could ever be mean.  but hey, at least she was honest about it.  that counts for something, right?

(sienna admitted to pushing her friends because she was the line leader and they were cutting in front of her.  i say that is justified.  nobody messes with the line leader!)

on most mornings, mommy drops me off at kids’ country.  she parks in one of the designated spaces in the parking lot, and walks me just a few steps to my on-campus before/after care program.  that’s much easier than the days when she walks me to my classroom because we have to find street parking and walk (sometimes pretty far, sometimes uphill) to my school.

today, mommy had a lunch meeting, so she was sort of dressed up (not wearing yoga pants) and wearing funny shoes.  and her meeting schedule worked out so that she could walk me to my K1 classroom instead of dropping me off at kids’ country.  so mommy walked me to school, up the hill, wearing those funny shoes.

me:  mommy, why are you wearing funny shoes like that?

mommy:  like what?

me:  <pointing to her shoes> like that!  they’re high in the back and they make you walk on your tip toes <walking on my tip toes to demonstrate>.

mommy:  you don’t like that?

me:  they make you bigger.

mommy:  yes, they make me look taller.  cool, huh?

me:  no, i don’t want you to be taller.  i like you just the way you are.

uncle henry got a new TV a few months ago.  it was big news.  so big, that he even wrote about it in his annual holiday letter!  it’s a big TV.  bigger than ours.  so obviously, the super bowl party was at his house this year.

we were all excited to watch the big game — especially me.  i had been talking about it and looking forward to it for weeks.  mommy ran her prop bets pool like usual, and this year, daddy kicked it up a notch by putting it online.  everyone entered their predictions in a web form, and as mommy entered the actual answers, scores were tabulated and ranking were displayed online, in real time.  everyone who played could keep tabs on how they were doing right from their phones!

i don’t think many people actually cared about the outcome of the game, but the pool kept them engaged.  all of us kids were in another room playing a game that logan brought, and we didn’t watch much football at all.

uncle greg was the winner of mommy’s pool, and the loser (who also won money) was somebody’s wife of a friend who i didn’t really know.  but i guess that the real news is that the new england patriots won the superbowl.  my prediction was totally right!  i was a little off on the points, but maybe i got confused and thought that mommy was asking about the over/under rather than the spread.

i don’t have any photos from the day, so here’s a completely unrelated video of sienna cheering. you can pretend that she was cheering for tom brady. 🙂

yesterday, mommy had a parent-teacher conference with… well, sienna’s teacher. mommy expected to hear that sienna is developmentally on track but that she is a mean girl. mommy knows that i am super smart, so she makes a conscious effort not to push sienna to be a smarty pants like me. well, guess what. it turns out that sienna is ahead of her peers academically, confident, and actually participates a little too much in classroom discussion. like, if the teacher asks a question, and nobody but sienna knows the answer, sienna will sometimes blurt out the answer before the teacher can help the rest of the class get there. so i guess sienna is a smarty pants. and guess what else her teacher said. sienna isn’t a mean girl.  she definitely stands up for herself, but doesn’t usually start trouble. whoa.

anyway, one of the things that came up in the conference is that sienna’s class, as a whole, doodles/scribbles a lot but doesn’t really draw objects or people.  and after mommy thought about it, she had never seen sienna draw a person.  so today, she asked sienna to draw a picture of herself.

<– this is sienna’s self-portrait at age ~3.5 years.

for comparison’s sake, this is my self-portrait at age ~3.5 years. –>

i don’t think i started drawing people with a body, hair, ears, and fingers until i was almost 5 years old.  i’m not sure if sienna is amazingly artistic or i am just… more into abstract art.

in any case, you know how child psychologists analyze kids’ drawings to get some insight into their self-perception?  i wonder what they would say about us.  mommy and auntie cheryl determined that sienna sees herself as dhalsim (with super long arms) juggling her own ears, while i see myself as a snorkeling spider.  auntie cindy pointed out that both sienna and i have smiles on our faces, which  means that we are happy.