Self Esteem

The dresses have arrived!

K-bao, along with sister C-bao, will be a flower girl at her Aunt Catherine's upcoming wedding.

Once the dress was donned, of course, the overconfidence ensued.

Uno Madness

K-bao has earned a few dollars recently, via a generous Tooth Fairy, a variety of chores and some memorized scripture. One of her first investments was in her Aunt Christina's charity run, to which she committed $2 (and, to her credit, would have given virtually her entire savings before her Aunt scaled her back).

The other major purchase - costing her $5, the majority of her bank account - was in a pack of Uno cards. Yes, that's right. A blast from K-Pop and K-Mum's (mostly K-Mum's) past. And since that fateful day, the family has whiled away many a long hour strategizing on skips and reverses, throwing down Wild cards, and dropping the dreaded +4 grenade. As the K-folks have learned, no Uno session is complete until K-bao asks "Can we play one more game?" and is turned down at least four or five times.

Uncle Chris, Aunt Lynn, and visiting out-of-towner Uncle Dave each got a taste of the Uno craze this past weekend, when all were roped into a marathon session with K-bao at Golden Gate Park. Forty minutes and multiple deck re-uses later, an exhausted Uncle Dave finally emerged victorious from the single game. K-bao's first response? "Just one more game? Great, I'll shuffle."

Game On

Let the record show that, after a single weekend of practice with pop-up PUGG soccer nets (acquired at what is undoubtedly an 85% gross margin from the Sports Basement), little K-bao scored four goals in her weekend soccer match.

K-Pop was volunteer coaching / refereeing the game and so couldn't go overboard with enthusiasm, but nonetheless thought it appropriate to throw his arms up and and bellow "GOOOOOOAL" each time the ball hit the back of the net.

Here K-bao puts on her game face before the match:

"I float like a butterfly, sting like a bee"

Sisterhood

K-bao has grown significantly in her "big sisterhood" over the past year. 

While she has always enjoyed entertaining and teaching her sister, more recently, she's taken on a greater caretaker role. On weekend mornings now, for example, she will often usher sister C-bao - both of whom are pre-7 a.m. wakers - into her room to play blocks for an hour or more to let the K-folks get another hour of rest.

"You know I put a "C" on it so you wouldn't knock it over, right?"

One recent Sunday, sister C-bao was clearly feeling anxious about being dropped off at her Sunday school class; her normal volunteer teacher wasn't there. K-bao, who was watching from the door before going into her own classroom, rushed in to comfort her sister. "I got it Dad," she told K-Pop confidently, "you can go now." K-Pop smiled and returned to his service. Afterwards, he discovered that K-bao remained by her sister's side through the entire morning, choosing to stay behind rather than go join her own peers to ensure her sister was comfortable.

Going through the daily lotion and sunscreen ritual together

While her sister can still drive her to the brink, and she certainly isn't beyond appropriating C-bao's snacks from time to time through a combination of charm, deceit and dexterity, to the K-folks' delight, by and large K-bao is a protective, loving, playful force in her little sister's life.

Feeling comfortable

Architect

K-bao has been in a building mood recently, and has spent many a quiet hour laying out her intricately-planned structures (many of which, unfortunately, have been destroyed by a reckless 36" Godzilla).

Here she gives an introduction to a model playground, architected, of course, around her favorite activity in the whole wide world: the monkey bars (which she points out four times in a 45 second walk-through of the playground layout).

Interestingly, she also pauses halfway through to explain the art of practice: picking oneself up after falling, again and again.

Soccer

It's soccer season, and K-bao has joined a young team with her classmates. The first important question for our budding little Mia Hamm was, of course, her uniform number. Here's how the conversation went down.

K-mum: "K-bao, what number do you want to have on your soccer jersey?"
K-bao: "A trillion."
K-mum: "Um, that's too big, it has to be a smaller number."
K-bao: "A billion."
K-mum: "That's still too big, it can only be 2 digits, so less than a hundred."
K-bao: "Ok fine. Ninety-nine."

Go big or go home

We have to admit, there's a nice ring to that when we're hollering at her from the sidelines. "Go get 'em, 99!" "Nice slide tackle, 99!" "Hey get yourself back on D, 99!"

Goooooo.....Team!

Follow me, folks!

So the first game was Saturday against their cross-town rivals. Let's just say that we have high hopes that the play will one day catch up to the quality of their uniforms.

A few action shots below, including the all-important sportsmanship high-five line after the game.

Half Moon Beach

On a whim while paying a visit to Lemos Farm the other day, K-bao stopped by the beach at Half Moon Bay. The weather was a tad cool and the traffic more than a tad unpleasant, so the K-folks didn't stay for long, but it was clearly more than enough time for K-bao to run amok and get her clothes full of sand and seawater.

Sister C-bao was not wearing appropriate footgear so K-Pop picked her up and held her as the family navigated down to the beach. Naturally, as soon as she saw that, K-bao decided that her footgear was similarly ill-suited for walking on hilly ground, and jumped into K-Pop's unsuspecting arms without any notice. K-Pop ended up carrying the girls like sacks of potatoes down to the water, as shown above.

As soon as the family was settled on the sand, K-bao busied herself with trying to get as close to the water as possible without being caught by the incoming tide. Of course, within 5 minutes the little one was soaked (albeit very happily so). And of course, the K-folks had warned her that they had brought no change of clothes.

"You only live once, Dad!"