Local Election Results

NaBloPoMo#4: One of the big reasons we moved to this city was for the schools, so I am encouraged by the results of Tuesday's election. I am excited that the Measure to directly support the schools that I voted for passed with 75% of the vote, and the 3 School Board members I voted for were the top 3 vote-getters. I think it was an all white and male school board previously, and now there are 2 women, including one woman of color with endorsements from people I know, two have a green agenda with a strong background of social justice.

Click for School Board results
Click for Measure EE results

And in other political news, last night I heard State Assemblymember John Perez speak in Little Tokyo. He was very impressive. I went to visit his office on Early Learning Advocacy Day in Sacramento a few months ago to get his support on early childhood education, but this was the first time I heard him speak.

Election Day & Nishi Halloween

NaBloPoMo#3: Don't forget to vote! My first Culver City election (Tony still registered in LA I think). Learning about very local politics is pretty interesting. It wasn't hard to figure out the people I support. I thought I would miss LA more, but actually I don't.

And here are some pix from Maiya's preschool Halloween. Again this year, of the girls' costumes, only 3 were non-princessy/girlish (Maiya-Dinah the Dinosaur), a lion and a Silver Surfer (comic character?). I'm pleased that my girl really wanted to be a dinosaur... yet another year that I dodged the princess bullet. So to the many who have told me that the princess phase is inevitable, it isn't. Not that Maiya doesn't like pinkish girly things, jewelry and dresses, but it's all a part of who she is, which includes the girl who turns maracas into numchucks (no thanks to all of Daddy's Bruce Lee YouTube sessions). But I am glad that I haven't yet heard, "Mommy, I want to be a princess."

Hikaru (Batman) and Rockett (Picachu)

LTSC/Nishi kids line up!

Dinah the Dino and Snow White

Teachers dress up too!

45

How the heck did 45 come so quick? Man, it is hump year... halfway between 40 and 50! For my birthday, went to Green Peas for dinner and then got my favorite dessert, and Organic Red Velvet Cake from Wood Cafe. Yum.

and there is NaBloPoMo#2!

Halloween Prep 09 - Part 1

NaBloPoMo#1: Well, maybe I "might" do NaBloPoMo09, but more likely I won't. I sure have plenty of photos to share. We took 116 photos this Halloween. So, I'll share a few of them here. If I post 4 photos a day, that would give me 30 entries over the next month.

This is the first year I bought Halloween decorations. Actually I bought some last year after Halloween. And since it was our first year in our new house, I spent a lot of time looking at Halloween decorations this year. Last Saturday, Maiya & I spent about 3 hours decorating our front yard. Alas, only 1 group of teenagers came to our house last night. I was pretty bummed about that. But, I will still do it next year because me & Maiya had a lot of fun, and we enjoyed putting on the lights every night the last week. Funny because I'm used to not being into stuff like Halloween. Nothing like living with a preschooler to bring back the fun.

NoBloPoMo

Regarding NaBloPoMo for 2009, I'm thinking NoBloPoMo.

That's National Blog Posting Month, where you blog an entry every day in the month of November, I just don't think I can do it this year. Too much going on. I'm on FB, if you really need to hear from me. Or, here is a link so you can re-read NaBloPoMo 2007 or NaBloPoMo 2008.

But, never too busy to share another Maiya photo. After almost 3 years, I finally got my girl to wear pants, and jeans too! She said she's getting tired of always wearing dresses (but not skirts). I was so thrilled. So if you see her wearing pants, give her some positive feedback.

Paper Maiya says "Save the Earth"

You've heard of Flat Stanley, right? Well, here's Paper Maiya. It is the backside of some paper that had been hanging in our old house with me & Maiya's outlines last year. A few months ago, we decided to draw Maiya's outline, then color it in together. I did the shirt with the "Save the Earth" shirt that Maiya was wearing and she did the rest.So far Paper Maiya has only been in our house and our backyard to take pictures. For a long time she was waiting on the door to Maiya's bedroom for Maiya to come home from school. She has recently moved into the hallway. Soon, she may head out the front door. Maybe for Halloween... or maybe Earth Day.

Pose-U (That's Japanese for Be-Cutesy-Its-Picture-Time)

Visiting the Aloha Market Mural

Maiya in front of the "Aloha to the Neighborhood" Mural

Maiya & I went to LA Vegan for lunch yesterday on my furlough day after running errands in our old hood. We parked in front of the old Aloha Market mural. When we drive by, she knows it's "daddy's mural," but she's never seen it up close. It was a community mural project "Aloha to the Neighborhood" that Tony, my partner Ayako & I organized oh about 10-11 years ago. As I touched the wall, to see how dirty it was (not too bad), memories came flooding back to me. I remembered some of the areas I had painted. I remembered the more than 100 volunteers who came out to paint, all the community meetings and design team meetings, and how many of those kids are now in college. I remembered Ethel, the lady who painted the red tomato with a toothpick to get the paint into those stucco crevices. I remembered Tony & Sergio walking across the street to Mago's at the end of each painting day to get a milkshake or teriyaki avocado taco or burrito, and to get a big picture look at the progress. I remembered the great Unveiling party we had... with performances by our friends, such a long time ago. I remember those who said that it would be hit with graffiti--we've been lucky, a few taggings over the years, but nothing that the city couldn't remove with an email request here or a phone call there.

I'm a little embarrassed to share because it's so antiquated, but anyways, there's a lot of content, and it's still out there on the www for probably not much longer since the Great Leap website is undergoing a long overdue redo... one of the first websites I designed 9 years ago:

http://www.greatleap.org/aloha/

I took a quick picture of Maiya with my cell phone and we got back in the car to finish our errands. Oh, it's on Centinela between Washington & Culver.

(Newer) Biker Babe in Training

Goodbye $5 thrift store bike, Maiya has moved up to a newish bike Tony found on Craigslist this summer. Since she still primarily only wears skirts with very few exceptions, we use the you-don't-want-to-hurt-your-knee-excuses to get her to wear pants or legggings every once and awhile. Here she is with leg warmers instead of pants.

New training wheels

Staycation: More Unschooling Fun

I had blogged about the list of fun things to do at home last month when we were on vacation.

Making Playdoh food and pretending to eat it. Check.

Maiya's really into making things from construction paper. Tony & Maiya went to the library and brought home the coolest book by one of Maiya's two favorite authors, Leo Lionni, "Let's Make Rabbits." So we made rabbits out of construction paper and origami paper, kind of copying the rabbits in the book. Maiya made the white one, which we drew together. Check.

Playing with blocks. Check. She got out the blocks and the Asian American doll family that I got at Lakeshore when she was a baby. I figured if the girl is going to have dolls, then at least they will be dolls of color.

Dinner with Tony's Aunt Liz, Eddie, Jacob & Rebecca visiting from Idaho. Not on the list, but check!
And finally, not on Maiya's list, but definitely falls under cultural and family ritual. On Friday night, we lit our Grandpa Larry memory candle, talked a little about Grandpa, and had Challah bread for the sabbath. Bubbe & Zeyde would be proud. I'm sure the peanut butter and jelly were kosher.
And, that's the last you'll hear of my summer vacation.

Remember Easter?

This afternoon on our way to swim class, Maiya said, "Mama, remember Easter?" I actually didn't. But I remembered that I had some pictures from Easter that I just saw recently in our unblogged photo collection. Now that we have a new computer, I just downloaded over 2,000 photos from our little photo card, and have been categorizing them.

Other fun things we're doing with Photo Booth on our new computer. And don't even get me started on the apps on our iTouch. I wrote a Haiku on it this afternoon watching Maiya's swim class. Lily wants to give me 1,200 games. I got enough games. Between FB, Bejeweled Blitz and YoVille, and playing on the new computer, I am barely getting any sleep. And to prove how bad it is, I was telling a story to Tony & Maiya at dinner the other night, how I greenly used the same boiling pot of water 3 times, to boil edamame, broccoli & pasta, Tony said, "You should blog about it." Then 4 year old Maiya said, "You should Facebook it!" So of course I had to do both. On another note, I donated blood today for the first time, so at least I'm doing something useful with my time.

Let's do "Surprised!"

Staycation: Doing Origami

Maiya loves origami. She has decorated her bedroom windows with paper cranes and ribbons. We've been doing a lot of origami at home lately, including 3 times during our recent stay-at-home vacation.

Over the years, we have collected quite a few books and instructions on origami making. There are some complex ones with impossible photos, where you can create all kinds of animals with googly eyes. We have one for Jewish Origami that we've had for years. We recently got a vintage (old but brand new) origami kit and book from Auntie Keiko that is very kid friendly. I am still searching for a detailed and easy set of instructions for the crane, because after all these years, I still have trouble with the cranes.

Jewish horn, dreidel and Jewish star of David necklace

Since I'm on the subject of origami, I'd like to give a quick plug for the book 1001 Cranes, written by our friend Naomi Hirahara. It's written for the young girls, but darn it if I didn't just love it for its cultural references and sweet coming-of-age story. I read it cover to cover really quickly, tears reserved for the end of the book. I know, I know. Anyways, highly recommended for all ages, and a great gift for the tween.

Staycation: Making Playdoh

The top things on Maiya's vacation list of fun things to do at home was Playdoh, Green Playdoh and Clay. So, we made baker's clay (recipe in a previous blog post here). It was fun, we made a half batch and split it in half, making one pinkish and another blue green earth.

Snow Cone with Mochi Bits

After playing with the clay for almost 2 hours, we decided to make snow cones. I have a great hand cranking snow cone machine that I got back in college that is fantastic. Yummy delicious.

Want some?

Staycation 2009: Unschooling

If I wasn't working full time and then some, I'd be an unschooling mama. Unschooling is like homeschooling, except that sometimes homeschooling implies duplicating a teacher or parent-led formal classroom, with curriculum, textbooks, workbooks, assignments, etc.

The concept of unschooling--as I understand--is following your child's interests, and allowing them to play, create and learn about the world through experiences rather than through memorizing facts and figures. So if a child wants to make brownies, then then by finding and following a recipe, measuring the ingredients, would foster reading, math and science... and it is something they chose to do so they are more motivated learners.

To me, unschooling is a natural progression to attachment parenting, natural parenting and connection parenting, all of which I've embraced in my parenting journey. It also aligns with the developmental approach, that I've learned in my child development and early childhood education classes, and that we do in our childcare program at work.

So, a few weeks ago, I had a week of vacation, but we stayed home. So on the first day of the vacation, or staycation, I asked Maiya to make a list of things we could do at home that were fun. Here is the list she came up with (when I remembered, I marked the days we did each one):

Things We Can Do At Home That Are Fun This Week

• make playdoh (Tues/Fri)
• green playdoh (Tues)
• clay (Tues)
• play games (Thurs/Fri-Memory Game/Candyland)
• a little bit of TV (Wed- actually it was a lot that day)
• origami (Tues/Thurs/Fri-she wanted to do it every day)
• construction paper (Fri)
• water painting
• coloring
• play in my room a little (daily)
• play outside a little (Fri)
• ride my bike a little
• play in my little house
• drawing
• build some stuff with blocks (Wed)
• do some magnet toys (Wed)
• cook some pretend food (Thurs/Sat)
• make snowcones (Tues)
• read books (Fri, a few mornings & nightly)

Other things we did:

• Nisei Week Ondo (Sun)
• swim class (Tues/Thurs)
• climb the steps/Baldwin Overlook (Tues)
• Aunt Liz & Family for dinner (Wed)
• Culver City outdoor concert (Thurs)
• Jewish Shabbat Dinner (Fri)
• Ballona Festival (Sat)

By the end of each day, I was exhausted. The first day, Monday, I had a nice day of pampering, going to lunch, a movie and the spa with Lily. I also read a few books, did some work on the house, and worked out a few times. I did enjoy kind of floating through our days without much agenda, and letting Maiya choose our activities from her list. I also took the Monday off of the next week, but we sent Maiya to preschool that day--I needed a day off from my "vacation." Pictures on many of these events to follow over the next several days.

Cross Posting on the LT

I wrote a blog entry Remembering Far East Cafe on the Little Tokyo Unblogged, sharing an old poem