2012 Week 2 - January 8-14

Week 2: January 8-14, 2012:

This week started out with another Daddy / Dean day of adventure with some time at the Splash Park at Maui Mall and then a few hours at the park in Wailuku where we discovered Dean will most likely NOT be a basketball star in the future.


Tuesday was awesome because I FINALLY convinced Joel to buy a Vitamix. I heard that Costco had Vitamixes in stock, called him and begged him to go buy one (when Costco gets Vitamixes in stock, which happens about twice a year here, they sell out in about half a day). The only way I got him to agree was through negotiating a deal - I reminded him that Costco will take anything back and I convinced him to buy it and try it for 30 days and if at the end of a month he still wasn't convinced it was 100% worth the $400 price tag, he could return it without a single word of complaint from me. He agreed. And within 3 days of buying it, I totally caught him giving a full-on Costco demo / info-mercial to his friend Vince!! He loves the Vitamix and we use it almost every single day.

Wednesday we woke up to find a beautiful full rainbow directly over our house.


We also received Dean's 2nd Quarter report card this week - he's doing great of course! I love the Kindergarten Report Card, because they include a Self Portrait on the front. So cute!


Friday we had another Family Game Night. Dean loves to play Monopoly (ugh) and is really good at adding and subtracting the money amounts and calculating rent, etc. If only he would learn to lose graciously (or not even necessarily lose, just not have a complete meltdown when things don't go how he's expecting).


Dean's been doing pretty well with the Kindle Fire and not too terribly grumpy when we limit his "screen time". His current favorite games are Angry Birds, Where's the Water, Fruit Ninja (he's constantly telling us all kinds of interesting facts about fruit that he learned from this game), Mazes, and Cut the Rope. He also likes to play with some of the educational apps we've downloaded.


Saturday we went to a Baby Luau at Kam III for our next door neighbor's baby, Alex's, first birthday. Dean had fun playing with some of the other kids.


I made a goal to read 24 books in 2012 and I finished Book #1 this week and loved it - Cleopatra's Daughter. It's historical fiction set in a time that I knew absolutely nothing about. Very good writing. I'll definitely be reading more by this author, Michelle Moran.

Here's some longer journaling that I included in the Project Life Album this week:

This week with Dean has been a rollercoaster of emotions - from hilarious to proud to frustrated. Such is life with a 5-year-old I suppose. Early in the week we purchased a Vitamixer at Costco, something I had been wanting for quite some time in the hopes that it would help in my quest for cleaner eating this year. Dean's a great fruit eater but not a great veggie or protein eater, and I'm not a great fruit eater. So every day this week I've been adding a scoop of protein powder to his beloved fruit smoothies (along with sneaking in some fresh veggies - carrots, spinach, kale, etc). Thursday afternoon while I was still at work he was reading the label on the Protein Powder container and became extremely upset. He asked Joel "Daddy, what does poison taste like?". Joel wasn't sure where that was going and told him he didn't know, why did he ask? Dean started getting very worked up, crying and carrying on about how "Mommy has been putting poison in my Smoothies. I've seen her. And she's been doing it EVERY DAY". Joel said it took quite awhile to figure out what he was talking about and when he did, it was very difficult to keep from cracking up laughing while explaining to Dean that no, Mommy wasn't poisoning him. See, Dean had read this warning label on the Protein Powder: "Warning: Accidental overdose of iron-containing products is a leading cause of fatal poisoning in children under 6. Keep this product out of reach of children". The very literal mind that he has took that information and put it together with the fact that he's under 6 and that I've been feeding him that protein powder daily for the past week and you'd think his whole world was falling apart! Poor kid. Joel was finally able to convince him all was well by explaining that Mommy wasn't giving him the powder by accident, but it was fully intentional, I was doing it on purpose. That, of all things, seemed to do the trick!

We also discovered this week that sometimes there's just no pleasing a 5-year-old! The issue of closed-toe shoes has been an ongoing struggle with Dean since starting kindergarten in the fall (it's required to play on the play structure at recess and during P.E.) and after purchasing SEVERAL pairs of shoes, Dean finally agreed to wearing his Keens to school. Sadly, sometime over winter break we lost the Keens. This resulted in some major meltdowns when school re-started last week and Dean was forced to wear his Crocs, which he said he hated. So I ordered new Keens from Amazon and they finally arrived on Thursday of this week. Friday morning Dean declared he didn't want to wear his Keens to school anymore, he liked his Crocs better and just wanted to wear them. {sigh}.