Saturday, May 21, 2011

I want to be the smile...

Elena's favorite song right now is the Friendship Song (by Carbon Leaf) and she and Clara can both sing most of the lyrics - we will try to get them on camera doing so soon. But the beginning of the song goes: "I want to be the smile, I want to see the change, I want to be a friend from the start and once it starts it never ends..."
Although they definitely have their challenging moments, they are really being quite sunny, smiley, and friendly lots of the time lately. They do this with each other, they do it with new and old friends alike, and they are really growing as little social beings.
These photos are the girls playing with their friend Chkai's dogs.  They had such a great time this evening with the puppies, and with Ckhai and his parents.  Earlier today, Elena recalled all of our instructions on how to meet a new dog while she was playing a bit away from us in a grassy park near the Farmer's Market.  She went up to the owner, asked: "May I please pet your dog?  What is her name?" and held her hand out backwards for the dog to sniff.  After petting, she said: "Thank you!" and the owners of the dog told us how impressed they were with her.  She is growing up so fast.
Clara's here playing with Chkai.  Her imagination is growing in leaps in bounds, and she will tell us stories all the time.  The other day she said: "You want to come to my house?  Is in Arizona.  You have to get on a big plane to get there.  I have a pool there.  It has lots of starfish.  And crabs, but they don't have hard things to pinch, only soft things, so you put your finger in and it doesn't hurt.  You want to come to that house?"  Indeed, we do!
The kids made up a really funny game while we were grilling things up for dinner.  They grabbed this exercise ball first.
Then one of them would throw it up at the plum tree, which is heavy with blossoms right now.
Then the blossoms would come falling down, and they'd run to get under them so it would "snow" on them.



Elena could not get enough of being in charge of this puppy.  She'd walk around and say: "Ask Miss Mandy (her current alter ego) if you can pet this puppy!"  
Although the dog gamely stayed on a leash for quite some time, it wasn't always clear who was walking whom.
   Puppy love!


We haven't really posted pictures yet of the girls' new bikes.  This was a bad time to get them to pose for pictures, as they were intent on playing with their friend, but at least you can see that these are their bikes.  Christina was inspired by their love of bikes to get one as well, so now we have a Yoshimura bike gang.  We bike down to our local pub/brewing company, and hope to bike to the Farmer's Market soon.  Christina and Steve have both been regularly biking in to work, but the girls are a little young yet for that distance!



One more sweet saying before we wrap up.  Today Christina was missing her grandparents, parents, and siblings, and said out loud in the car: "I'm really missing my family!"  Elena piped right up from the backseat saying: "We're your family, silly!!"  How lucky that they are.

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