Malia Facts

While visiting my family in San Jose for the 4th, I thought I'd share some Malia facts that I've learned.

Malia Fact #1
Never pack while she's awake. Especially when it involves Pink Horsey, Purple Tiger, Mermaid Blanket and Mermaid Pillow. Yes, all of the aforementioned items came with us to San Jose. These were the last items we needed to pack as we left Thursday at 2:00pm. For obvious reasons I didn't pack them the night before. So while Kael was in school, I did the final packing of toileteries, pillows, books, etc. Malia FREAKED OUT when she saw me take Mermaid Blanket off her bed, fold it and stuff it in the duffel bag. Can you image her reaction when (while yelling at me) she pulled MB out of the duffle bag... to discover Horsey and Tiger in there too? She about shat in her pants. She then emptied the duffle bag to make sure I didn't have anything else of hers in there. It was a mess.

Malia Fact #2
She will always pick the brighter colored article of clothing to wear. Doesn't matter what it is. Given a choice between a white zip-up jacket and a red jacket, she will always pick the red jacket. Over the course of 4 days, she will always pick the red jacket so you better make sure it remains clean because she will wear it even if it's covered in food, milk and mud.

Malia Fact #3
Fact #2 can be trumped if you can convince her with a "Mermaid colored" item. Meaning something usually in the shades of blue, green or aqua. Say something like "Ohhh! Look it's a Mermaid Blue shirt! How pretty! Just like a Mermaid!" Then she will usually opt for the blue, green or aqua item.

Disclaimer to Fact #3
While this tactic will work with a lot of different colors (i.e. Mermaid Pink, Mermaid Yellow, etc.) its success rate is about 60%. We have hair clips in multi colors (to go with any outfit) but she will only wear the Mermaid Clip (the aqua ones). Unfortunately, out of the 12 clips we have, only 2 are aqua. And since she knows that she's got the aqua clips, she won't wear anything else. I have been able to convince her a handful of times to wear Mermaid Pink and Mermaid Red, those colored clips always come off within 15 minutes with a request for the Mermaid Clip. I'm screwed if I lose those 2 clips.

Malia Fact #4
Malia is the most chatty right before she sleeps. Since she's no longer sleeping in isolation in the closet, I have to lie down with her otherwise she will roam the room at my parents' house. Luckily for us, our schedule up here has been so screwy (with no to little nap) that by the time it's the kids' bedtime, it's really late (9:30 - 10:00pm) and they are dead tired and go down with little to no fuss. Today (Sunday) is the first time since Wednesday that we've had a real set nap for Malia. I suppose you can count the car nap (90 minutes) Thursday afternoon but in terms of a nap in a room in a bed, today was the first. I didn't think she'd actually nap because of the rate of words coming out her mouth. I actually was going to give her 30 minutes to fall asleep otherwise I was going to toss her in the pool with the older kids. Luckily for me, her chatting peaked at 10 minutes and then 2 minutes later she was dead to the world. I've noticed this at home too: she's the most chatty right before she drifts off. Like she's got to get all the words out of her head to clear it before she can sleep.

Malia Fact #5
Her purple Crocs are the only things she will wear. If you try to put anything else on her feet she will eventually kick them off and ask for the Crocs. This is quite irritating especially when we are at the park and don't have the Crocs in my back pocket. She will prefer to go barefeet or in her socks across wood chips than wear feet gear that are not her purple Crocs.


Well, that's all I have time to blog for now. Kael and his cousins have been horsing around in the pool for about 2 hours now so I think it's about time to bring them in. Kael is going to be dog tired which is good and bad news. Good because that means he will sleep well tonight. Bad because until he actually goes to bed tonight, he may be in a horrible mood because he's so dog tired.

I hope you all have a great 4th of July. I'll post about ours later.