Love Poem

A couple of days ago, in a moment of affection, K-bao was inspired to pen a spontaneous verse for sister C-bao.

She uses quite sweeping language in her description of her 4-year old sister: wise, generous, kind.


Of course, a few minutes later, all the inspiration was quickly forgotten and the sisters went back to their normal, um, less loving routine. 

Bopomofo

Who still learns bopomofo, the ancient Chinese phonetics system?

Sister C-bao, of course, courtesy of Teacher K-bao!

"Come on Sis! I taught you that one already! Get with it!"

Performer

It has become abundantly clear that little K-bao is a natural born performer. Whether it be singing, dancing, piano recitals, athletic events, or literary performances, K-bao enjoys being on stage and in the limelight.

Below she writes a few versus and gets on stage - her IKEA children's table - to share her musical creation. Sister C-bao joins her with an inspired accompanying performance on the ukulele.

Beach Weekend

Back in February K-bao enjoyed a couple of days at the beach with sister C-bao. The weekend was sunny but not particularly warm, so as a precaution K-Pop insisted on the girls wearing their full winter coats.

Not exactly beach attire

K-bao led her sister in singing, dancing and digging ditches. Finding water under the sand was met with as much excitement as one might expect in a discovery of fine pearls.

The presence of the ocean brought to mind of course one of K-bao's favorites, Rachel Platten's Fight Song, and she quickly broke into the relevant lyrics: "Like a small boat, on the ocean...sending big waves, into motion..."

Here she demonstrates how to create a tower of sand, and promptly delegates the task to sister C-bao.

Overall, the first day was fun enough that the sisters made a return trip the next day to do pretty much exactly the same thing.

Superbowl City

On Super Bowl weekend, K-Pop took the girls downtown to see the sights and hear the sounds. K-bao had started to hear about Superbowl City and was eager to see what the fuss was all about.

The girls took a bus downtown, which they thoroughly enjoyed.

Of course, the very first thing the girls declared upon entering a public space with no bathrooms was that they needed to use the potty, so K-Pop had to trudge the girls up to his office downtown to use the amenities.

Unsurprisingly, downtown was horribly crowded. Alicia Keys was apparently about to take the stage, so once K-Pop and the girls were in the vicinity the sidewalks became impossible to navigate. The girls had a birthday party to get to later that afternoon and couldn't get into any long lines, so they had to content themselves with watching the spectacle of the crowds.

We did manage to snap these pictures a little further away from the action.

All in all, not a very satisfying trip, but at least K-Pop got a few kisses out of it.

Gingerbread

A few weeks back, K-bao's school held their annual Winterfest, a school tradition that brings parents, students and friends of the school together to celebrate the community. Events include pet rescue information sessions such as Wags & Whiskers, book fairs where parents can purchase various books for classrooms and teachers, and of course the famous Gingerbread Workshop. 

In the Gingerbread Workshop, children decorate their own candied houses using the provided fresh gingerbread base, frosting, jelly beans, chocolate, twizzlers and other assorted sweets.

"Notice the three jelly beans I have in my mouth"

Sister C-bao somehow snuck her way into the workshop and convinced K-Pop and K-Mum to let her decorate her own house, which of course was a real triumph for the the little one.

Comparing the sugar volume of the various houses

Inevitably each year, just about as much candy is consumed as is used in decorating, and participants typically leave the workshop in a haze of sugary sweetness.

The big question for the K-folks, of course, is what in the world we are going to do with our 2 sugary gingerbread houses!

"All we need is sweet love, love love!"

Scary Song

K-bao performs a couple of spooky songs for Halloween.

Sister C-bao gets roped in for some theatrical dancing while K-bao takes care of the vocals.

K-bao did of course make sure to train C-bao to jump in with the "Boo!s" and scary cackling at the appropriate times.

Grace

Today the girls, while sitting side by side in a Costco shopping cart, got into a scrape, as sisters are wont to do. In the midst of it, however, young C-bao expressed her frustration in a highly unacceptable manner, and K-Pop was forced to intervene.

Pulling C-bao off the cart and after giving her a very stern talking to, K-Pop promised severe consequences for our 3-year-old after we returned home. C-bao walked meekly and sadly beside K-Pop as we came back to the cart.

That's when K-bao sprang into action. Though she was technically the victim in the altercation, she asked to come off the cart so she could comfort her little sister, who burst into tears as she ran into her older sister's arms.

Later, when we arrived home, K-bao intervened on behalf of her sister. "Please Daddy," she asked. "Can you not punish C-bao?"

This demonstration of grace and good sisterhood could not go ignored, so K-Pop took it easy on the little one, making sure to attribute his leniency to K-bao's advocacy. What started as an unfortunate conflict ended as an incredible relationship builder.

Later, when K-bao was getting ready for her shower, K-Pop observed little C-bao run into the bathroom to shout, "K-bao, I love you!" out of sheer gratitude.

#ASisterIsForever

Cool Biking

Now that K-bao has learned to bike, her latest hobby is zipping along the Golden Gate Park bike lane (veering recklessly, one might add), with sister C-bao scootering behind her, and K-Pop huffing and puffing on foot in third place, trying to keep up.

Too Cool for Bike School

Shake It

"Higher, C-bao. Lift it higher"

Whenever K-bao visits K-Grandmum & K-Grandpops in LA, she feels the urge to put on a performance. Perhaps it is the long, grand staircase, so perfect for presenting to an adoring crowd below, that inspires her. Perhaps it is the untiring enthusiasm and unending patience displayed by her long-suffering grandfolks and great-grandma for K-bao's every initiative (see here, here and here - or even this post from 2009).

Recently, K-bao's proclivity to perform has been further enhanced by her infatuation with all things Taylor Swift.

Below is one scene among many that the K-Grandfolks and K-Great-Grandmum witnessed. The first video below is only the introduction to the show; K-bao insists on properly "Setting the Stage," including allowing her co-performer, sister C-bao, to also have a few words.

The second video captures most of the actual performance - set to Swift's Shake It Off, of course - including K-bao spending a good amount of time with her back to the audience observing her own moves in the reflection she sees in the television set. A few gymnastics maneuvers are also thrown in for good measure.

Biking & Scootering

K-Mum recently declared that K-Pop had been entirely derelict in his duty to teach young K-bao to ride a bike. This was a charge that even K-Pop had to concede was well-founded.

K-Mum decided to take matters into her own hands. Last week she bought our budding 1st grader a bicycle, and then over the course of only a day and a half, over by an empty school playground near Balboa Park, lo and behold she taught K-bao to bike without training wheels. And K-bao, quick learner that she is, took to it like a fish to water.

Not to be outdone, young C-bao has picked up scootering in an equally short timeframe, as shown below (though the turns could use a little tightening).

Summer

Here's K-bao with sister C-bao after church on a recent Sunday.

The girls are growing quickly and both K-Pop and K-Mum have noticed some real changes this summer. K-bao in particular seems to have shot up a couple of inches in the last few months.

It won't be long before holding a girl in each arm won't really work for K-Pop anymore (without first doing some iron pumping to build up those biceps, that is).

Quick, before my arms fall off

Stages

The girls have entered a new stage. Now that sister C-bao has turned three and (1) is physically able to keep up with her sister on the playground, at least with most play structures; (2) knows enough English to beat K-bao from time to time at the "What's this English word in Chinese" game, and (3) will no longer take smack lying down (and in fact initiates the smack herself), the sisters are relating to each other increasingly as peers.

This has benefits as well as costs. For example, as laid out on these pages before, on any given weekend morning, the girls are generally the first ones up, and will now happily entertain themselves for as long as the K-folks want to snooze in. (Granted, the running, laughing and shouting that immediately ensues guarantees only very light snoozing)

On the other hand, there are now real fights to break up. Daily. Wait, hourly. The pinching, shoving, and tongue-stick-outing goes both ways. The sass comes right back at ya, in spades. Some form of tattle is told dozens of times a day, by both parties.

But the good news is that the smiles and giggles return quickly - generally within seconds - and before you know it, the tale of woe is forgotten and the next adventure is embarked upon.

These pictures (and the video below) were all taken this weekend as K-Pop took the girls to various restaurants, parks, coffee joints and church. Whether it be silliness on the street or a spontaneous wagon pull after church, in this current stage at least, the girls are genuinely enjoying each other's company.

Fob

Frustrated that sister C-bao hasn't fully gotten her fobby fingers right, K-bao conducts an intensive class with her younger sib.

And there it is!

Straw Wars

"Draw thy straw, sister!"

While hanging out in the Outer Sunset last weekend waiting for K-Mum, who was attending a friend's baby shower, K-bao lunched with K-Pop and her sister at a local Chinese joint on Noriega Street, and then stopped by Bubble for afternoon tea and dessert.

Spotting the wide angle straws commonly used in such locales to enable suction of tapioca balls, K-bao naturally wasted no time in challenging her sister to a public straw-saber joust.

"On guard, little one!"

While it has always been somewhat ironic that K-bao and her sister are grandchildren of a career diplomat, who in his retirement has taught such university courses as International Etiquette (emphasizing the proper behaviors one might demonstrate in public settings such as restaurants), recently K-bao has really been taking said irony to a new level.

Saturday

A typical Saturday for K-bao.

1. Wake up earlier than the household. Burst into sister C-bao's room, rousing everybody. Convince sister to jump out of bed and begin running around raucously.

2. Plead for sugary cereal for breakfast. Get turned down. Handed a bagelwich on the way to her soccer game.

3. Join her school club team, the Lions, for the first soccer game of the new season. Score a couple of nice goals. Enjoy a ton of snacks (madeleines, clementines, yogurts, juices) after the game, which appears to be the point of the whole thing for the majority of the girls.

4. Head to the chess club downtown. Play a couple of games with K-Pop. Lose game 1 due largely to watching every other game going on in the club other than her own. Dominate most of game 2 before losing concentration in the endgame.

5. Visit the mall for a late pizza lunch, followed by clementines and froyo. (After stuffing a half clementine in her mouth in one bite, exclaim loudly, "Don't think that's aggressive - I've had a whole clementine in my mouth before!")

6. Walk around the streets of San francisco. Create altogether too much noise with sister C-bao while playing with balloons and striking silly poses.

7. Shop for groceries. Serendipitously run into a kindergarten classmate. Create havoc (such as breaking into a spontaneous limbo dancing routine using checkout counter equipment).

8. Come home, quick shower, quick dinner and bedtime routine. Another full day tomorrow!

Dance Routine

Active from birth, K-bao loves to rope sister C-bao into many of her high energy shenanigans.

Wild chases around the house, Ring Around the Rosies at all hours, indoor jump-roping, inappropriate climbing of any and all furniture - all these are the hallmarks of K-bao's sorority leadership.

The below indoctrination of her sister into the Feraba Tap Dance routine (which K-bao invented early in life) - complete with loud, unmatching footwear - is illustrative.

Happy Recessional

One of the more touching moments of our trip to Singapore recently for XGG (Aunt Catherine) and WZ Shu-Shu's wedding occurred at the end of the ceremony.

Once the marriage was officially declared, the music coordinator started blasting Pharrell Williams' hit "Happy" and the happy couple began leading the wedding party recessional, dancing down the aisle toward the exit. The flower girls, K-bao, C-bao and Cousin Elizabeth, were also supposed follow along.

Little sister C-bao, though, was unsure what to do. The wedding party was moving fast, and once some separation was created, she felt even more hesitant to move forward.

That's when K-bao sprang into action. Looking back, she motioned for C-bao to join. When that didn't work, she came back up the aisle part-way, and demonstrated more actively. Finally, seeing C-bao still rooted to the spot, she came all the way back, took her sister by the hand, and led her back to join the group.

Leave no sister behind!

Happy new year!

Happy new year everyone! Thanks for a great year and look forward to an even better 2015!

"Looking hot, sis!"

The Ceremony

It's finally here!

Aunt Catherine and Uncle Zech's magnificent wedding ceremony in Singapore is documented beautifully in the above highlight clip.

The bride was stunning, the groom handsome, and of course the little ones did their best to play their part.

The girls make their entrance at 3:19 in the video. Sister C-bao led off the procession, striding resolutely down the aisle without bothering to dispense too many petals, as if late for an appointment. K-bao, on the other hand, took her time, solemnly and gracefully.

In between them was a young lad, a relation of WZ Shu-Shu's, whose gleeful, clearly intentional pitches of the ring pillow was more than made up for by sheer adorableness. And of course, stately Cousin Elizabeth made up the rear, ushering her young cousins ahead.

The bridesmaids then made their appearance, with Matron of Honor Da Goo-Goo (Aunt Esther) finally preceding the bride.

All three young ladies were beautiful in their flowing white gowns. In all, a fantastic experience for young K-bao and her sister.

Below is the original invitation from Xiao Goo-Goo from many months ago: