Friday, November 20, 2009

Halloween. (Yes, I know, it's almost thanksgiving.)

This year's halloween challenge: create a festive Halloween-y atmosphere, without spending Any Money At all. So Rosie and I cut lots of spooky halloween-themed shapes out of her already-used but not worth saving for posteritydrawings. I love her very creepy many-legged spider in the lower left corner.

As you can see, my kid is a full-body-contact-artist. Below are her very vibrant and exciting "tatoos." Good thing there was a hose nearby. (What, art is fleeting.)



We had a huge pile of dried coconuts mouldering on our front step-- we painted them into shrunken heads instead of getting a pumpkin.


And.... Rosie is a swing-fiend.

And.... a dress-up Princess fiend. Everywhere we go, she heads straight for the dress-up pile. Each outfit lasts about 2 seconds, or however long it takes to twirl once.

Daddy Love






Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Puffy lip post-dentist girl

How unfair is it that this poor kid has already had 5 cavities? There is only one pediatric dentist on the island. It's a dark little cave of an office-- wails of the damned echo on blank walls, and the TV in the waiting room is tuned to the 24 hour Flashing-light-seizure-inducing-cartoon channel. They have a special little kid "papoose" thing-- a toddler Hannibal Lector strait jacket. As soon as they see Rosie, they get it out. It is nightmarish. And this last time, Rosie came away from the experience with this shockingly puffy lip. Poor ting!



But... she's obviously still herself.







And... here her fingers are "Fighting eachother!!!" complete with dialogue in different funny voices.

Monday, November 09, 2009

Kauai Pow Wow




I wonder what these Indian folks from the West think of the Pow Wows in Hawaii. Notice the huge stone Japanese lantern in the background of the second picture? And this odd little park is right on the beach.
I wonder if Pow Wow tourism in the West in any way resembles Pow Wow tourism in Hawaii...
I've heard rumors on the wind about formal connections between Indian groups on the mainland and Native Hawaiian groups-- working together to gain a stronger voice for indigenous recognition here and there... I'm such an outsider peering in.

DIVE


By the way, here is our favorite Kauai Dive, Tony and Harry's.
And I mean D-I-V-E. Like, gummy floors, sticky booths, dodgy food, and suspicious scowling service. GOTTA LOVE IT!

In the background, I hope you can see the bizarre hand-lettered signs saying things like, "Absolutely no outside food or drink allowed. It is RUDE!!!!!!! :) :) :)" in all caps sagging down the page. And "Enjoy! Coke!" cut out of construction paper and stuck to the wall.

Yaaaay!

Sunday, November 08, 2009

Taily Po Woods


Rosie was on a Taily-Po stories kick when we went on this hike. Each story begins, "When I was a little girl, my grandpa told me never go into the woods at night, because there's a Taily-Po out there!"
I started telling her these stories because I was thinking about the way we tell ourselves about Badness in the world-- how it's safer to think of it as some foreign creature in the woods-- easily defeated or avoided if you just wield the right weapon or have the magic words. And how badness isn't really like that-- it's not Elsewhere, it's right here, in us. The cannibalism in families and friendships, the piracy at work, the villainy in the cereal aisle. Not in some creepy original-sin or pitchforked angel sort of way, but in the vague, ambiguous human amalgamous way of being sort of good and sort of rotten, depending on the day and the company.
Anyway. Taily-Pos.
So the Taily-Po stories started out as very cut and dry cautionary sorts of tellings-- don't stray from the path, or Else! But gradually they've morphed into a cycle that is much more complicated than black and white. Rosie has rescued baby Taily-Pos when they've wandedered out in the day time, returning them to their Taily-Po daddies at great personal risk. From there, she's forged friendships and alliances with the little ones, and negotiated the terms of engagement with the big ones.
On our walks she catches baby taily pos that then sit on her shoulder for a while, crying for their families. These stories are hard work for her-- even when all the Taily-Pos are nice and nobody is threatened, the stories are a bit edgy and dangerous. So she asks for them again and again.

Anyway, here she is, sword fighting with Taily-Pos in an actual woods.