earlier this month, sienna and i started swimming at a new swim school.   my first lesson was so boring — all i did was try to float.  at AVAC, i was well beyond floating.  i guess the criteria to advance to the next skill must be different at happy fish.  when mommy told auntie cheryl about my first swim lesson, auntie cheryl suggested that i might be off to a slow start, but that i would probably progress through the rest of the skills more quickly.  we hoped so.

there are 7 skills that you have to master to pass the starfish level.  after my 2nd (maybe 3rd?) class, i finally got ONE of them checked off the list.  then after class today, my teacher pulled out his pen and started checking off more skills.  and more and more and more.  he checked off the entire list!  auntie cheryl was right!  i completed the level and got my starfish ribbon.  now i’m a dolphin.  cool.

while checking out the levels and the skills required to pass each one, mommy noticed that the waterbabies (babies under age 3 who have to swim with a grown up) class has 2 levels.  when we started at happy fish, sienna was well beyond the skill level required to pass both levels.  but she can’t move up until she turns 3, so she’s going to have to be in the same class for a long time.  mommy asked the lady at the front desk what sienna would have to do to get a ribbon for the first level waterbaby level.  she left for a few minutes and came back with a pink waterbaby ribbon (whale) for sienna.

yay!  sienna and i both got ribbons today, and we’re movin’ on up! 🙂

’tis the season that mommy is taking lots of staycation days because she has lots of vacation to burn.  and even though she says that all she wants to do is take a nap, she always ends up planning fun stuff for sienna and/or me to do.

today, sienna played hooky from school.  i wasn’t happy that she got to stay home and i didn’t, but mommy reminded me that i got to stay home from school a couple of weeks ago when i went to work at leapfrog.  oh yeah.  i guess that’s fair.

sienna had a playdate planned with her friend caylie today.  before caylie arrived, sienna kept saying that she wanted to go to school.  can you believe that?  i guess sienna really likes school.

when caylie arrived, they played a little, ate lunch, played a little bit more, and that was it.  after that, it was time for naps.  i forgot how boring playdates were at that age.  sienna and caylie had a fun time though.  caylie likes playing with sienna because she is gentle, unlike the older boys that she usually plays with.  (sienna, gentle?  are you kidding me???)  and sienna likes playing with caylie… well, because she is one of her only girl friends.  plus, caylie is younger, so sienna probably likes having someone to boss around.

well, like i said earlier, ’tis the season.  so if you want to hang out, sienna and i don’t mind playing hooky from school.  just have your people text my people, and we’ll synch it to our iCalendars.

sienna doesn’t like it when mommy holds other babies.  she even tells mommy, almost daily, “i don’t want you to hold other babies.”  but still, she insists that she wants a baby sister.  mommy asked her who would hold baby sister.  “kyden.”  sienna seems to have it all figured out.

well, we went to uncle henry’s house today to meet his newest foster puppy.  sienna loved the puppy.  that is, until mommy held him.  it appears that according to sienna, mommy’s lap is off-limits to everyone.  no babies.  no puppies.  no nothing.  sienna has permanent dibs on mommy’s lap.

i had a dentist appointment today.  sienna came to watch me, so i had to show her what to do so that she’ll be ready for when auntie margaret counts her teeth next year.  sienna got right up in my grill, and watched very closely.  i was extra good today during my cleaning.  and when the dental assistant let me pick a toothbrush, i picked a princess one for sienna.  i’m such a thoughtful big brother.

i got x-rays for the first time today.  while examining my films, auntie margaret thought she saw something unusual, so she had me take another set of x-rays.  oh no.  cavities.  that’s what mommy thought.  but it turns out that i don’t have any cavities.  it’s something worse.  do you see anything weird?

i have extra teeth!  i have an whole extra row of teeth just like a shark (but only two in that row, that we can see).  i outlined the extra teeth to make them easy for you to see.

i’ve always said that koda and i have a lot in common.  well, here’s one more thing to add to the list — we both have extra teeth.  yup, koda had 2 extra teeth, but one of them got badly chipped and had to be extracted.  so now he has one extra.  i’m going to have to have my extra teeth extracted, too.  it won’t be for another 1-3 years (about the time when my baby teeth start getting loose and my permanent teeth start wanting to come in), but oral surgery is in my not-too-distant future.

i guess sienna is not the only mutant in the family.  all of us are mutants — sienna, me, and even koda.

mommy and daddy always say that they never see their friends anymore because their calendars revolve around my and sienna’s social schedules.  it’s true.  but this weekend, we made an exception.  mommy got to hang out with some of her old friends and sienna and i got to make some new friends.

on saturday, we went to see some of mommy’s sorority sisters from college.  i had met all of the aunties before, but not all of the uncles or the kids.  we all met at auntie sandra’s house in danville, which is pretty close to us.  she has three boys, and they have a lot of toys.  i want to go play at their house all the time!  auntie jenny came and met us there.  she has 3 kids.  and then there was auntie di.  her kids are claire and bella.  we knew them the best out of everyone because they’re closest to our age, and we’ve been to the oakland zoo with them a couple of times.  all of the grown ups had a great time catching up, and us kids had fun playing together.  we hope to make this an annual get-together.  this photo was taken my claire and bella’s daddy.  he’s a professional photographer, so i hope i don’t get in trouble for posting this on my blog.

on sunday, some new friends came to our house.  auntie jen is mommy’s childhood friend, and her kids are the same age as me and sienna.  sienna had met braylon before, but that was a long time ago.  they didn’t remember each other.  and it was our first time meeting ashton and their daddy, uncle mike.  we all had fun playing together, and now that we live close by, we hope to see them a lot more often.

see, so don’t let mommy fool you when she says that she never gets to see her friends.  she does.  every once in a blue moon.

i always hear my aunties and uncles complain that they never get to sleep in — even on the weekends — because their kids wake them up so early.  i know how they feel.  i like to sleep in, too, but nobody gets to sleep in around here.

usually, it’s daddy who wakes me up in the morning so i can get ready for school.  but for the past couple of weeks, he has been leaving home really early because he has been in a training class at work.  and actually, he wasn’t even at home from tuesday through thursday of this week because his training class was in oregon.  anyway, since daddy hasn’t been around to wake me up in the mornings, i thought i was going to get to sleep in.  i was wrong. watch this.

auntie alyssa says that cousin zoey sleeps like a teenager, just like me. maybe it’s a quon thing.

sienna and i took school photos for the first time last month. we both wore new outfits and practiced smiling.  mommy even had an idea for a shot where sienna and i would be throwing leaves up in the air and catching them as they fell.  well, it turns out that sienna is not good at throwing leaves on command, and even worse at catching them.  do you see the leaf that landed right on her face?  good plan.  poor execution.

well, we got the prints back last week, and we’ve been trying to decide whether or not we are going to buy any of them.   most of the photos aren’t very good (bad composition, eyes not in focus) but there are a few that are okay.  here are the best of the bunch.  what do you think?  mommy was conflicted.  on one hand, mommy and daddy take so many photos of us that are so much cuter than these.  but on the other hand, mommy felt like she had to buy our school portraits because… well, i dunno.  as a keepsake from this school year?

well, we ended up buying one sheet of photos for 3 different poses — one of sienna, one of me, and one of both of us together.  each sheet has 3 photos.  i figure that one will go to grandma, one to bak-bak, and one will sit in a box somewhere and collect dust.  and then in 15 years or so, when we pack up our stuff to go away to college, we’ll find the box photos and laugh about how dorky we looked back in the 10’s and how primitive 2-D photographs were back then.

oh, and the best part…  as soon as mommy paid for these photos, she found out that we are going to be taking photos again in the spring.  the portrait studios and schools are partnering to milk parents for every penny that they’ve got.  it’s a racket!

sienna and i have been talking about wanting a little sister, but today we got a taste of what it would be like to have a big brother.  since our school was closed today, mommy took the day off.  kai-kai’s school was also closed, but his mommy and daddy had to work.  so kai-kai came and spent the day with us.

kai-kai, sienna, and i had so much fun together.  we helped make persimmon muffins, we took koda to the park and played at the playground, we watered the plants in the backyard, and we played with lots of toys.  and that was all before lunch!

after lunch, it was naptime.  we all decided that we wanted to sleep together in my room, so mommy laid some blankets and a body pillow on the floor for us.  i pretended to sleep (fake snore and everything) to see what kai-kai and sienna would do.  sienna kept creeping over towards kai-kai, and mommy had to keep telling her to move away.  sienna and kai-kai thought my fake snoring was hilarious and they were giggling with their eyes closed.  mommy eventually accepted the fact that i was not going to nap, so she brought me downstairs so that i wouldn’t distract everyone else.  yes, we left kai-kai and sienna alone together.  and they slept.  for a long time.

when they finally woke up, we finished making the apple-pear sauce that we started in the morning.  then we played for a little while longer, and before we knew it, it was time for mommy to take kai-kai home.  but guess what, kai-kai forgot his straw cup at our house.  when sienna saw it, she pointed it out and said that he could use it next time he comes over.  i bet sienna hid it on purpose so that kai-kai would have to come back.

sienna and i had such a fun day and we wish we could have another sibling all the time.  mommy even said that having 3 kids was easier than she thought it would be, and actually even easier than having 2.  but i’m not sure i want to be a middle child, so let’s go back to working on plan A:  we want a baby sister!

on our calendar for today, it said “sharks game”. and since sienna went to the sharks game last time, today was my turn. we all planned to drive down to san jose together. daddy said he was going to drop off me and mommy at the sharks game, and then he and sienna were going to go to grandma’s house. wait, what? grandma’s house? but i wanna go to grandma’s house!

we talked about it for a long time because mommy and daddy wanted to make sure i understood the decision i was making. i understood. i chose going to grandma’s house over a sharks game and spending some one-on-one time with mommy. THAT is how much i wanted to see grandma.

so mommy and sienna got all dressed up in their sharks gear and we loaded up the car. oh! but mommy forgot the sharks tickets. so she ran back into the house, and came back… empty handed. there were no sharks tickets. not for today anyway. our next game is november 29, not november 9!  mommy wrote it on the wrong day on our calendar!

since there was no game after all, daddy thought we could spend a relaxing day at home. but come on… really? doesn’t everyone know that once you get a kid excited about something, you have to follow through. so we all went to grandma’s house and spent the day with her. (grandpa wasn’t home.) we had so much fun playing her piano, feeding her fish, playing with the toys that she keeps at her house for us, and just hanging out. grandma is so silly and makes us laugh all the time. oh yeah, and we picked apples from her tree. we can’t wait to make applesauce!

about a year ago, i got my first gig working as a product tester for leapfrog.  i tested a new super grover game for their handheld gaming system.  that was so fun.

today, i went in to work again, and i was looking forward to playing more games.  but instead, i sat in front of a computer and did some reading exercises.

• Buh + AT = ? (and then i’d say “bat”).  Ruh + UN = ? (and then i’d say “run”).  and so on.  i got all of those right.
• then they changed it to Buh + Ah + Tuh = ? (and then i’d say “bat”).  Ruh + Uh + Nuh = ? (and then i’d say “run”).  and so on.  i got all of those right.
• then they substituted the first letter with a different consonant.  change the B in BAT to C.  (and then i’d say “cat”.)  change the R in RUN to S.  (and then i’d say “sun”.)  and so on.   i got all of those right.
• and then they replaced the vowels with a different vowel.  change the A in BAT to I, and what do you get?  the lady didn’t even give me a chance to answer most of them because this was supposed to be the 7 year-old level.  but sometimes, i said the word anyway and surprised her.

and that was it.  the lady said i was all done and i could go collect my payment.  but then all of a sudden a voice boomed in from… from i don’t know where.  (mommy says it was someone from behind the one-way mirror, whatever that means.)  apparently, i had exceeded their expectations, so they wanted me to try another game.  i agreed.

another lady walked in with her laptop, and she asked me to play some “raw” games.  none of them had any instructions.

there was a game where there was a number at the top of a tree with two branches extending downwards attached to empty boxes.  that’s it.  i didn’t know what to do.  the lady helped me and said that i was supposed to choose the correct numbers to fill in those boxes so that they would add up to the number at the top of the tree.  how the heck was i supposed to know that?

another game showed a path of pipes with some breaks in it.  i had to select the correct pipe pieces to complete the path.  that one was easy.

there were two other games, but none of them were interesting enough to even bother describing.

these games were not as cool as the super grover games that i played last time, but i still had fun.  and as payment, i chose a solar system adventure pack for the leapfrog tag reader that i got last time.  i love maps, and i think planets and stars are so cool, so i can’t wait to play with it.  now if i could only find that tag reader pen…

i like working at leapfrog.  so far, i’ve only worked one day per year, but i hope they call me back again soon.