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!"

First Day

First day of kindergarten! #TooFast #Timeflies

Arms up

More thrills on roller coasters for little K-bao, this time at her beloved Happy Hollow.

As one can see, K-bao now has no fear on these rides, and in fact insists on riding alone. Her video below from this past weekend should be contrasted with her last recorded video on the Pacific Fruit Express at Happy Hollow, at age 4, when the first few seconds of the drop still had the capacity of inspiring a little bit of fear (unfortunately, as one can see below, sister C-bao wasn't quite as happy with the experience).

Chinese

K-bao is not quite at the point yet where she grasps the fundamental importance (not to mention future practical usefulness) of being fluent in Chinese. And yes, the K-folks know that that realization may not happen for another 15 years. A long road ahead indeed.

While she entered preschool with Mandarin as her dominant language, after spending most of her waking hours at school in an English-language environment with English-speaking friends for the last three years, English has clearly become her default. That train is unlikely to turn around without more direct intervention.

Nonetheless, the fact that sister C-bao only speaks Chinese is reason for daily practice. In addition, she has obediently acquiesced to the K-folks' requests that she practice her characters once in while. Thus far, she has learned a couple dozen, earning her numerous stickers in the process. K-Pop recently picked up some additional practice material in a Taipei bookstore. Hopefully the parental resolve - and student discipline - will persist in the years ahead.

Tiger Trek

As we know, K-bao loves her thrills. Here she is at her beloved Oakland Zoo, riding the famous Tiger Trek rollercoaster, hollering and giggling with glee. And yes, K-Pop was also responsible for perhaps more than his fair share of hollering as well.

A moment in time: