for awhile now, i’ve been resisting taking my naps. i nap more reliably at school than at home, but even at school, i don’t always nap. the rule at school is that even if you don’t nap, you have to sit quietly and rest. so most of the time, i get so bored sitting quietly… by myself… in the dark… that i end up falling asleep.

so when i told mommy that i wasn’t tired this afternoon, mommy tried that trick.  she told me that i didn’t have nap, but i had to stay quietly in my room.  at first, mommy stayed in my room while i laid quietly in my bed.  but then she got an important phone call, so she went downstairs to take it.  i never came out of my room (which i usually do when i refuse to nap), so mommy assumed that i had fallen asleep.  she was wrong.

i had stripped the sheets and blankets off my bed.  i had tossed the hood from my race car bed.  i had removed and emptied all of my drawers.  i had cleared my bookshelf.  and i had dumped my trash can upside down.  but i followed mommy’s directions.  she told me to stay quietly in my room, and i did.

when mommy came to check on me and discovered the mess, she wasn’t angry at all.  i could have sworn i even saw her smile.  she just told me to put everything back where it belonged — and she didn’t even use her stern voice.  then she went downstairs to make dinner.  i think mommy was just relieved that i didn’t hurt myself, break anything, or set anything on fire.  plus, she must have realized that i did follow her directions.

after i was born, mommy signed up to be a permanent absentee-voter.  so every year, i get to be part of the process by helping fill out the ballot and by walking with mommy to drop it off at our local polling place.

this is an especially big year because it’s my first presidential election.  last night, we discussed the issues, and i told mommy that we should re-elect the president.  (you’ll never guess who i think the president is!)

we filled out the ballot last night, and this morning, we went to drop it off. we almost didn’t make it to our local polling place because look what i spotted on the way there.  real live construction workers and a real live digger!  i don’t often get to see them close up, so i sat there and watched for a long time.  it’s a good thing that they finally drove away because i would have stayed there all day long.

we finally made it to drop off our ballot, and sienna and i got our “i voted” stickers!  i didn’t let mommy put it on my forehead like last time.

usually, our weekends are filled with birthday parties, playdates, and kiddie outings.  but this weekend, the only thing that we had on our calendar was a grown up event.  mommy and daddy planned to go play volleyball at a JACL mixer.  JACL is one of the leagues that they used to play in together before sienna and i came along.  it’s a social league where volleyball players often go to meet each other.  (you sign up as an individual, not as a team.)  and since auntie mimi is just now getting into volleyball, mommy thought it would be a great first league for auntie to play in.  of course, it has nothing to do with the fact that several of my friends’ parents met each other playing in JACL 😉

since we made it a point to keep our social calendar open this weekend, we had time to run errands and do things around the house (like cook, bake, make ice cream, fix my dresser, and play outside in the cul de sac).  and when i heard that isaac was going to be in the area, my afternoon was free so i could invite him over to ride bikes with me.  usually, i ride by myself while mommy pushes sienna in the cozy coupe.  but today, isaac and i rode together, and that was way more fun!  we’ll definitely have to do that more often.  we need a few more riders so we form a biker gang. who wants to join us? 🙂

tonight was the JACL mixer. sienna and i went to watch mommy, daddy, and auntie mimi play, but once we got there, we were way more excited to play in the playhouse.  i remembered the playground from the last time we went to a mixer, but now that daylight savings is over, it was way too dark to play outside.

we met some new friends at the gym and we had fun playing with them, but i kept asking for edison and matthew. mommy said that they might be coming later, but later came… and they never did.  oh well.  daddy might be joining JACL again, so i hope to see them on sunday nights starting next season. 

edison and matthew, meet me us the playhouse!

i have been doing so well using the potty that i stopped using a pull-up during naps. i did great for the past two weeks, then i had an accident during nap time yesterday. but you can’t really blame me for that, right?

well today, i peed on the tile, on the carpet, on a chair… some of those times, i announced that i had to go potty, then i proceeded to go — on the tile, or on the carpet, or on the chair.  it’s only 3:45pm and i have already had 5 “accidents”. i guess you can blame me for those.

mommy keeps asking me why i’ve been peeing all over the house today.  i haven’t been able to give her a good answer.  the only thing that she can think of is that i think i am a dog and am marking my territory.  i am marking the house, and sienna sleeps in a dog bed.  i guess it makes sense that we think we are dogs, because koda thinks he is human.

mommy is so frustrated with me that she roughed me up a little. look at the marks on my face! if you can’t reach mommy after tonight, check the prison. she just might be there.

(STOP!  don’t call CPS!  i was just kidding about mommy roughing me up.)

last year, i decided that halloween was my favorite holiday because it was so much fun.  and this year was even better!

we didn’t carve pumpkins this year, but sienna and i decorated pumpkins at madison and kailyn’s birthday party.  i think they came out pretty good, don’t you?

and since we had so much fun last year, matthew came over to go trick-or-treating with me again.  as soon as he arrived, we scarfed down our dinners.  then we rushed to get dressed in our halloween costumes so we could hit the streets before the storm rolled in.  i was superman.  sienna was supergirl.  matthew was a different kind of hero — a firefighter.  with outfits like ours, you’d think we would be protecting the neighborhood, right?  we pillaged it.

matthew and i are trick-or-treating pros, but it was sienna’s first time.  at the first house, matthew and i knocked.  when the people opened the door in their costumes, matthew and i yelled “trick or treat!”.  sienna cried.

at the second house, sienna didn’t cry, but she didn’t really know what to do.  she just stood there and looked bewildered.  it took a few houses for sienna to get into it.

we ended up hitting 4 cul de sacs, including our street.  that’s a LOT of houses!  at most of the houses, matthew and i knocked and yelled “trick or treat!”  we held out our treat bags and collected candy, then i grabbed sienna’s bucket to make sure she got some, too.  while matthew and i ran off to the next house, sienna stood on the porch and waved.  the people in the houses didn’t want to close the door on her, so a lot of them gave her extra candy (hoping that that would get her to turn around and leave).  she’s so smart!  why didn’t i think of that?

all of our treat bags got so full that uncle alan had to lighten our loads by stuffing his pockets with our candy.  even still, our bags were too heavy, so auntie audrey and uncle alan helped us carry them.  sienna kept dropping her bucket and spilling her candy, but she refused to let anyone help her.  every time mommy tried to take her bucket, sienna protested loudly.

when we got back home, we dumped out all our loot, and the grown ups picked out the candy that they wanted to keep.  (they said something about a halloween parent tax.)  that’s okay, we didn’t care about the candy.  we just had fun dressing up, knocking on doors, and carrying glow-in-the-dark swords and flashlights.  we poured the rest of the candy into our bin.  there was a LOT of candy.  for the rest of the night, we let trick-or-treaters take as much candy as they could grab with two hands.  and we still have lots leftover!

i had such a fun time trick-or-treating that i can’t wait to go again.  matthew, do you want to come over and go trick-or-treating again tomorrow? 😀

(click here to see the rest of our halloween pics.)

today was a fun mommy-and-me day.  first. mommy picked me up from school right after lunch.  she was going to her office to pick up her new laptop and she was bringing me with her 🙂  i was so excited.  daddy’s work may have carnival games and cotton candy, but mommy’s work has the blue button!  on the way to the office, i kept asking mommy if i could press the blue button. she had no idea what i was talking about. but as we started walking from the parking lot to the entrance of her building, i got sooo giddy and started yelling.  “the blue button!  i see it, mommy, i see it!”  then i ran to the entrance and told mommy to stand back and wait.  i did a countdown, and then…  i pressed the blue button!!!

inside mommy’s office, i got to see uncle david and auntie mimi. mama did a little bit of work, then we took auntie mimi with us to go play. we went to starbucks, we went to look at model homes, and we went to the dentist.

yup, i had a dentist appointment. my dentist office is the best — i wish we had gotten there earlier so i could have had more time to play. i’m not sure if they got new stuff or if i just never noticed it before, but they have an electric guitar and a touch screen TV with kiddie video games! i was so brave and sat in the magic chair all by myself during my cleaning.  then auntie margaret (my dentist) counted my teeth (i have 10 on top and 10 on bottom) and painted vitamins (fluoride) on my teeth, like usual. i don’t have any cavities (yay), but apparently, i’m not very good at brushing my teeth way in the back (boo).  i was so good that i got lots of stickers and three prizes from the toy chest.  (i picked out a soccer ball and some new rubber duckies. can’t have too many bath toys, right?)

since i was sooo good at the dentist mommy said we could go get froyo. then we went to watch uncle henry and uncle ritchie play volleyball. auntie margaret was there watching, too. i like having her as a dentist, but i told mommy that i like it much better when we are just hanging out 🙂

we were planning to eat dinner with the whole volleyball team, but i was getting hungry.  so mommy, auntie mimi, and i went to eat sushi and noodles (my favorites). look at the special training chopsticks that they made for me! they were already rigged up like this when they brought them to our table. or maybe those were supposed to be for mommy. i dunno. anyway, i thought that was pretty cool. but even with special training chopsticks, it’s really hard to pick up edamame.

well, that was my fun day with mommy (and auntie mimi). i can’t wait to go press the blue button again. too bad mommy only goes into the office about once a year 😛

remember madison and kailyn, my friends who are twins?  they were born on halloween, so they get to have super cool halloween-themed parties.  we celebrated their 3rd birthday with a costume party at the kona kai  swim and racquet club today.

first, we selected our own pumpkins to decorate.   i chose a perfect round one for myself and i picked the littlest one for sienna. because she’s little.  i’m going to put them out on our porch so all the trick-or-treaters can see them on halloween.

we also played fun games to win prizes.  we fished for ducks and threw bean bags into a pumpkin’s mouth.  i helped sienna with the games so that she could get prizes too.  what a great big brother i am, huh?

with all the fun stuff there was to do, you’d think that there wouldn’t be time to play in the playground.  but this playground is the coolest one i’ve ever been to — it has a digger!  once i discovered the digger, i didn’t want to do anything else.  i could have played on it all day.

i barely ate lunch because i was too anxious to get back to the digger, but i did take a break to sing happy birthday to my friends.  i like singing 🙂

happy birthday madison and kailyn!

i finally got this pumpkin patch thing figured out.  i used to think it was about the pumpkins.  but who wants to carry big heavy pumpkins from the pumpkin patch all the way to the parking lot, which is usually very far away?  not mommy.  not daddy.  not me.  and sienna is too little.  but it’s okay, because i figured out that it’s not about the pumpkins AT ALL.  it’s about the rides.

today, we met maddie and malia at uesegi farms, and i loved it.  it is my favorite of all the pumpkin patches that i’ve been to (spina and lemos farms).  they have the best rides, and the lines were really short, even though it was the saturday right before halloween.  mommy and daddy also liked it the best because it was so pretty, well laid-out (not crowded), and easy to get to.  the only downside is that the rides are pretty expensive.  but i’m worth it.  sienna too, i guess.

we went on a cow train ride, a real train, hayride, a pony ride through the garden (not like those ponies that just walk in circles in a corral), and went through a kiddie corn maze.  i liked all of the rides except for the hayride.  it was too bumpy.  daddy thought that i was getting motion sickness like he was.  sienna liked it though.  she was standing up and leaning out of the truck the whole time.  sienna is fearless.  can you believe that she even rode on the pony?  mama walked with her so she wouldn’t fall off, but at least she went on it.  i was so proud of her 🙂

we only spent two hours there.  we would have stayed longer to watch the live performers (i love live music!) but everyone was too hungry.  we left without even looking at any of the pumpkins!

later in the evening, we went to greyson’s halloween party.  it was a costume party, so everyone dressed up.  even mommy!  (daddy is not in the picture because he was still wearing his clark kent outfit.)  what do you think — do we look SUPER?

sienna and i spent most of the evening in greyson’s play room hanging out with chloe, kaylen, ehren, and emily.  we were having so much fun that we stayed up way past our bedtime.  we were just about the last kids to leave 😀

thanks greyson for a spooktacular time!

i need help.  during sienna’s nap time is when i used to get my one-on-one time with miss denise.  we would play hopscotch, blow bubbles, “wash dishes” (i.e. splash around in a sudsy sink), or whatever i wanted to do.  but for the past couple of months, sienna has been refusing to nap in her crib.  she naps well anywhere else — carseat, stroller, mommy and daddy’s bed, the floor, even on koda’s bed.  and the strangest thing is that sienna sleeps great in her crib at nighttime.

most of the time, miss denise tries to put sienna down for a nap in her crib.  there is a lot of crying (a LOT) and a lot of wasted time.  and that means sienna is not getting enough rest and i’m not getting my fun one-on-one time.  booo…

i remember when i was sienna’s age, i hated napping in my crib, too.  i used to take naps on a big down comforter on the floor in my room.  i can’t remember how i got back into the routine of napping in my crib again.

until we figure it out, maybe we should just let sienna sleep on that big down comforter or on koda’s bed, like she did today.  (of course, koda’s bed is filled with cedar chips, and since sienna is allergic to cedar, we cover it with a blanket before we let her roll around on it.)  that’s better than hearing hear cry all afternoon and her not getting enough rest.

does anyone have any better ideas?  please help!

about a month ago, i wrote about how i was going through a clingy phase.  i had been crying before gym class and not wanting to go into the gym without mama.  well, we’ve found a solution to that problem.

a few weeks ago, mommy picked me up from school and we headed to gym class, like usual.  i wanted to go to starbucks (like we often had in the past), but mommy said we didn’t have time.  i kept begging.  so we made a deal.  we’d stop at starbucks before class (it’s on the other side of the parking lot from the gym) if i would go into class by myself without throwing a fit.  deal.

so we stopped at starbucks, and mommy got her latte.  when we arrived at the gym, i kept my end of the bargain — i went into class by myself, without a fuss.  we were 5 mintues late, but mama said that it was totally worth it.  so now, mama picks me up from school 15 minutes early to make sure that we have plenty of time for our pre-gym starbucks run.  the magic of starbucks has been working like… well… like magic!

mama can’t understand why i love starbucks so much since i never get to order any fancy drinks.  (i always asking to go there any time we go out.)  well, i’ll tell you why.

1. i like to rearrange all the packages of coffee beans in the baskets.  (don’t worry, i put them back where they belong before i leave.  mommy taught me how to match the label on the packaging with the label on the sign.)
2. once in awhile, mommy will buy me an overpriced banana.
3. i get to lick the coffee stirrer that mommy uses to stir the cinnamon into her latte.
4. recently, i’ve started to pay by holding mommy’s phone up to the scanner.  that’s cool.
5. i get to meet a lot of people who seem to really like talking to me.

like today, i was propositioned by an asian lady who looked like she could have been one of my aunties.  she started a conversation with mommy.

lady (to mommy):  how old is he?

mommy (to me):  how old are you?

me:  i’m 3!

lady (to mommy):  what’s his name?

mommy (to me):  what’s your name?

me:  my name is kyden.

lady (to mommy):  what a great name.  how do you spell it?

me:  K-Y-D-E-N.

lady (to me):  you are so cute!

lady (to mommy):  maybe we can arrange a marriage between him and my daughter.

mommy:  how old is your daughter?

lady:  she turned 2 in august.

mommy (to me):  do you want to marry her daughter?

me:  no.

lady:  let me show you one of my favorite pictures of her.  *pulls up a photo on her phone*

mommy (to me):  do you think she’s pretty?

me:  yes.  *smiling sheepishly*

we chatted for a bit longer, and then the lady left without giving me her daughter’s contact info.  i quickly realized my mistake!  “i DO wanna marry her, i DO!”  but it was too late.  and now i may never get to meet my would-be bride.  her name is aria, and she goes to a daycare near my gym class.  if you see her, please tell her that i will wait for her.  not for too long, though.