mama gave up her ticket for last night so that i could go to the sharks game with dada!  i guess my petition worked.  thanks to everyone who signed it 🙂  mama said that i was going to be good luck for the sharks just like i was during the first playoff game that i went to when i was 6 months old.  i guess that’s why she gave me her ticket.  well, that, and also because she’s the best mama in the whole world!  (she made me write that.)

when we first got to the shark tank, it was a little scary.  the lights were off, and the shark head was laying on the ice.  his eyes were glowing red, and smoke was coming out of his mouth like he was breathing fire.  plus, it was loud  inside the tank.  and i mean LOUD.  good thing i had my earmuffs.  and then, the shark head levitated and stayed floating up there up there near the top of the arena.  creepy.  i stared at it for about 10 minutes to make sure it wasn’t going to float on over and chomp me.

once the lights came on and the game got going, i had a blast.  i like cheering GO SHARKS GO and doing the shark chomp.  and even though i like sitting in mama’s and dada’s laps, it was so cool to have my own $100 seat for the first time!

when we got home, mama asked me if i had fun at the game.  i told her i did.  i also told her that the sharks won.  (they didn’t.  they are now down 1-3 in the series against the blues.)  i didn’t want her to be disappointed in me.  i wonder if she believed me.

this morning at breakfast, all i could talk about was last night’s game.  i asked to go to more sharks games!  mama said that she sure hopes there will be more this season.  i don’t get it.  why wouldn’t there be?

ever since i went to the bizarro sharks game a week and a half ago, i have been telling mama that i want to go to another game.  and just in case she forgets, i tell her every day.  like, 20 times a day.  the sharks are in round 1 of the playoffs now, and we have tickets to game 4.  the game is this thursday.  mama and dada are planning to go and they said that i have to stay home because i’m too big to sit in their laps.  something about me feet kicking the person’s head in front of me.  i think they just want me to stay home to take care of sienna.

but here’s the thing…  i have been to a playoff game every single year of my life.  i can’t break my streak now!  i’m even guaranteeing a sharks win.  (see video.)  don’t you think that mama or dada should give up their seat so that their adorable first-born sharks-loving child can go to the game?  please sign my petition by leaving a comment.  thanks, in advance.

two months ago, sienna went to see a dermatologist because of her peeling hands and feet. the doctor said that it looked like a mild case of normal run-of-the-mill eczema and that she would probably outgrow it. okay, fine.

but when everyone came over for easter a couple of weeks ago, mama found out that grandpa also has peeling hands and feet. what?! obviously, he never outgrew it. so mama decided to take sienna to the doctor again to see if she might have whatever grandpa has.

the doctor said that it’s too soon to tell what is causing sienna’s condition. it still could be eczema, but it could also be something hereditary (ichthyosis or some other chronic condition). whatever it is, there isn’t a cure — the idea is to treat and manage it. so he gave sienna a bunch of free lotions to try so she can see what works. (i never get free anything when i go to the doctor. how come girls always get free stuff?) the doctor also said that grandpa should go with sienna to her next appointment — that could help him make a diagnosis. so really, he has no idea. great.

so now, mama is all stressed out, looking up every possible cause of peeling palms and soles. she has ruled out kawasaki’s disease and scarlet fever, but now she is worried that sienna is turning into a lizard. please tell mama that sienna is going to be fine. at least, i hope she’ll be fine. although it would be cool to have a lizard sister. or what if all of her skin comes off and she turns out to be an alien. or an android. that would make her the coolest sister ever!

i started soccer classes today with a program called kidz love soccer.  before i tell you about it, i have a few things that i need to say.

1)  to the girl who is almost as tall as mama (see photo of the girl bending down in the net, below):  this class is for 2-3 year olds.  you are either in the wrong class, or you are playing the wrong sport.  try basketball, or some other sport where you can put your freakishly tall height to better use.
2)  to the girl who showed up wearing a full on soccer uniform, shin guards, and with your own ball:  umm…  never mind.  i don’t want to talk to you.

there was something else, but i can’t remember right now.

okay whew.  now that i got that out of the way…  soccer is so much fun!  it doesn’t make sense, but it is fun.  today, we learned that you can’t use your hands.  that’s weird.  my whole life, i’ve been practicing how to throw and catch balls.  you can’t do that in soccer.  and another weird thing we learned is called dribbling.  you have to kick softly to dribble.  i want to kick the ball hard so it goes far!  and you also have to kick with the inside of your foot.  that’s weird, too.  oh, now i remember the 3rd thing.

3)  to my coach:  dribbling?  seriously?  i am lucky if i make contact with the ball when i try to kick it.  forget about kicking softly and with the inside of my foot and alternating feet and looking straight ahead while i’m doing all of that.  hellooo…  i am 2!

if you haven’t guessed, i’m no david beckham.  based on my first class, mama is not holding her breath for me to go to college on a soccer scholarship.  but you know what?  I LOOOVE SOCCER!

oh, and by the way, even though i am left-handed, i seem to be right-footed.  or maybe thaaat‘s why i wasn’t a natural.  i’ll try using my left foot next time and see if that improves my soccer skills.  i can’t wait for soccer class next week!

the first time i went to the children’s discovery museum, i was ony 2.5 months old.  i liked it so much that we kept going back, and we eventually bought a family membership.  CDM was THE place to be on the weekends.  i used to go there at least 1-2 times per month!  and then all of a sudden, we just stopped going.  hmm, i wonder what happened.  well, let’s see…

the last time we went to CDM was in mid-july.  sienna was born the following week.  and then our membership expired shortly after that.  hmmm… i have no idea what happened.

anyway, i was excited to meet matthew at CDM this morning.  i hadn’t been there in such a long time, so i knew there would be lots of new things to see and learn.  plus, it was going to be sienna’s first time there, and we were excited to show her around.

when we arrived, i ran off into the museum to check the place out.  it looked exactly as i remembered it.  fire engine…  bubbles…  stoplight…  fake pizza…  there was a scale that we tried to use to weigh fruit, but it was broken.  weak.  and last year, we were too little to make corn husk dolls, so we tried that today.  it was cool that i got to play with scissors, but they didn’t have lefty scissors for me.  discrimination!

a few of my old favorite exhibits caught my attention, but i lost interest in each one in just a matter of seconds.   i’m over it.  i decided that CDM is pretty much for babies.  sienna hung out in the crawler room for a little while, but then she fell asleep.  we did NOT get a new membership.

we need a new hangout for this summer.  any ideas?  maybe gilroy gardens?

i learned early on that holidays are pretty awesome around here.  i get to spend time with family and i get presents on every holiday — not just christmas.   this easter was no different.  grandma and grandpa brought a big box of clothes and puzzles for me and sienna, uncle randy brought an easter cookie decorating kit, uncle jamie gave sienna two big bags of clothes, and even though auntie barbara wasn’t here, she had an easter fruit bouquet delivered.  some would say that sienna and i are spoiled.  i say that we are well-loved 🙂

on most days, i do some kind of arts & crafts.  my usual medium is crayons on paper or chalk on concrete, but yesterday, my art project was frosting on cookies.  yup, the ones that uncle randy brought for us.

i squeezed the icing onto the cookies, and i carefully placed each candy dot, sprinkle, and every piece of duckie/bunny candy.  i decorated cookies in the shape of eggs, flowers, and butterflies.  and to make sure the frosting set properly, i sneezed all over them.  AAACHOOO!  they are works of art.  i titled the collection “sugar high”. 

gung-gung encouraged mommy and dada to eat my cookies to show me that my hard work was appreciated.  they refused.  i guess they don’t appreciate my art.  gung-gung saw me sneeze all over the cookies, but he ate one anyway.  if that’s not love, i don’t know what is.

there are still 5 cookies left.  who wants to come over for dessert? 🙂

i was traumatized by the easter egg hunt that i went to last year.  remember?  all those cheaters took all the eggs and left none for me.  and then there was that easter bunny who stalked me and photobombed me and maddie.  so this year, we decided to steer clear of bunnies and egg hunts.  (plus, we had max’s birthday party yesterday and we were in monterey last weekend, so there just wasn’t time!)

so just like always, we spent easter with family.  grandma, grandpa, and uncle randy came over for lunch, and we hung out all afternoon.  then we met zoey and uncle jamie for dinner.  (auntie alyssa was at home because she wasn’t feeling well.)  i was so exhausted from last night (i was up ’til almost midnight because of the sharks game) and i hadn’t napped all day, so i passed out on the way to the restaurant.  i hear it was a good time.

so that was our easter.  no eggs.  no bunnies.  no cheating egg-hunters.  just quality time with the family.  who could ask for anything more?  i guess i wouldn’t have minded having some chocolate eggs…

happy easter!

a couple of months ago, mommy invited auntie judy to a sharks game and let her decide which kid to bring.  she picked sienna.  ever since then, i’d been asking mommy to take me to a game.  she never listened.  i had also been working a guilt trip on auntie judy for choosing sienna over me.  and guess what — it worked!  i was just about to give up hope because tonight was the last game of the regular season, but auntie judy invited me to go!  we snuck mommy into the game too.  if anyone asked, we were going to say that she is under 2 years old.

i was so excited to go to the sharks game.  i even got a new “sharks game shirt” (jersey) to wear!  but when we got to our seats, i was all out of sorts.  i was in bizzaro world.  first of all, we weren’t in our usual seats in the lower bowl.  these were tickets that auntie judy got, and they were “upstairs”.  i’m not complaining about the view — i was just freaked out because i was eye level with the floating shark head.  that, plus the fact that i was sitting on the aisle with my legs hanging over the stairs.  if mommy stood up too fast, i was going to tumble down all those steep steps.  and to top it all off, mommy forgot to bring my earmuffs.  all of that was enough to bring me to the verge of tears.

well, mommy went and got me some ear plugs from guest services, and that made me feel a little bit better.  but it wasn’t until halfway through the second period that i started to relax and get into the game.  but once i got into it, i really got into it.  i did the shark chomp during power plays and i extended my arm during the cheers.  one time, i accidentally cheered when i was supposed to boo (sharks penalty).  oops.  except for that, i yelled at the right times… i think.  i was having so much fun that i kept kicking my feet into the seat in front of me.  good thing nobody was sitting in it!  i was a little concerned that the shark head started smoking each time the sharks scored, though.  i thought it was going to catch fire.  i kept one eye on it, just in case, but i didn’t let it distract me from the rest of the game.

the sharks finished strong and pulled out an OT win to end the season.  at the end of the night, i was feeling great and asking to go to more sharks games.  yup, i knew that playoffs were just around the corner.

on our way out of the arena, i was just thinking that sharkie didn’t try to eat me, like he usually does when i go to games.  and then i ran right into sh—  wait a minute.  you’re not sharkie, you’re a bull!  wth?  a bull at a sharks game?  mommy said he was there trying to recruit fans for his new ECHL team, the san francisco bulls.  whatever.  i kept both eyes on him until we got out of the arena and the door closed behind us.  bizzaro world, i tell ya…

thanks for the game auntie judy!  GO SHARKS GO!

today was max’s birthday party.  remember baby max?  he’s the one that made that giant poo explosion the first time i met him.  well, he just turned 1, and he had a party at curiodyssey at coyote point.  when we first arrived, max started crawling toward me, and i quickly backed away.  you’d think that i would have forgotten about that first impression that he made on me (or should i say “explosion that he made near me”), but not a chance.  auntie sophie promised me that it was safe to enter, but i proceeded with caution.

it sure seems like i’ve been going to a lot of 1 year old birthday parties lately.  i think this is the third one this year.  i’m realizing that i’m too old for baby parties.  most of the kids at the party were still crawling, so there was a huge play mat set up with inflatable toys to play with.  snooze fest.  sienna had a blast though.  she crawled around, made friends, and flirted with the boys.  i didn’t get why she kept feeling one of the boys’ butts, but auntie explained that she was checking to see if he had a big wallet.  i’m telling you, my baby sister is a genius.

while sienna was making friends and screening for sugar daddies, i explored the rest of the museum.  there were a fun exhibits where you could create a vortex, make objects fly, spin gears and gadgets, and lots more.  i especially liked turning the gears to make the bell ring.  there was also a, tree filled with bees!  real live bees!  outside, there were lots of animals, too.  the bobcats were cool, and i was completely mesmerized by the river otters.  that’s right, not sea otters, but river otters.  i wanted to stay and watch the otters all day, but dada said we had to go back to the party.

by the time we went back inside, the party was over.  sienna was already on her way out.  we stayed at curiodyssey for another hour and i showed sienna all my favorite exhibits inside the museum.  then, i took her out to the animal habitats to meet the otters.  she squealed while she watched them.  i guess she liked them too.

at first, i felt bad that i didn’t spend much time with max and his friends, but then i realized that the party wasn’t really for me anyway.  sienna was max’s party guest, and i was just her chaperone.  i have a feeling that this is how it’s going to be for the rest of our lives.

remember how my rock star uncle has been playing with a new band since last year?  we went to watch them play again tonight.  it was SO FUN!  at the beginning of the show, i went right up to the front to get a mosh pit going, but dada made me sit back down so i could eat my dinner.  so i rocked out in my chair… ALL… NIGHT… LONG.

sienna started getting tired around 9pm, so we had to go home after only one set.  what a party pooper she is.  i can’t wait to get see uncle jamie play drums again — i am his biggest fan.  well, maybe gung-gung is.  even after we left, he stayed for the entire show. uncle jamie brought him home after midnight!

gung-gung, sienna, and i were rockin’ out to the music the whole time we were there.  sienna has pretty good rhythm, but she definitely doesn’t have moves like i do.