Field Day

Big sister K's school had Field Day yesterday, where all the kids got to go outside and participate in a variety of games.  I took the day off and volunteered to help out in the morning.  Each parent was assigned a "station" to give instructions to the kids on what they needed to do.  My station was the "Re-Lei Relay" race, where each class was broken up into four groups: each group lines up at a cone.  On the signal, the first player runs down and picks up one lei and places it around their neck, then runs backs and places it around their cone without using their hands.  When the lei is on the cone, the next player runs down and grabs a lei and repeats until all the leis are used up.  First team to finish wins (though this was all for fun so no prizes were given).  The task proved to be quite difficult, especially for the girls with pony-tails since the lei kept getting stuck in their hair.  We ended up either helping them or allowing them to use their hands if they were having too much trouble.

It turned out to be a beautiful day for Field Day.  Temperature was in the low 80s with little humidity (unlike the previous two days).  It was fun watching all the kids try out the various activities and having such a blast.  My biggest joy was seeing big sister K's bright smile when she saw me; she was so excited to have me there that it made baking (and burning) in the sun totally worth it.

I managed to catch big sister K in action for some of the activities:

Big sister K and friends:

Somerset Patriots

Big sister K had gotten two free tickets to a Somerset Patriots ballgame for reading a certain number of hours of books a few months ago.  Unfortunately, we were limited on which games we could use those tickets for, and most of them didn't work with our schedule.  Since the weather had cleared up and no more rain was expected for the rest of the night, we decided to go to the game today.  (Yes, heaven forbid, I took my kids out late on a school night!  How I am not living up to my tiger mom reputation!)

The kids didn't pay attention to the ballgame at all, but they enjoyed being there and watching the activities go on between innings. They even managed to grab hold of Sparkee and Slider, the team mascots, for a picture.  Too bad I couldn't get them both to look at the camera at the same time.

Men In Uniform

I find it funny how baby M is fascinated with people whose occupation has a certain air of authority.  Classic example is a police officer.  Our church in Chinatown is on the same block as a police precinct, so when we walk by there every Sunday, baby M always looks up at whichever police officer happens to be standing by the entrance, and would wave hi and shout, "HI POLICEMAN!"  Sometimes the police officer would smile and wave "hi" back, other times he might strike up a conversation with baby M, at which point my little boy would all of a sudden be overcome with shyness and not know how to respond back.  It's actually quite amusing to watch.  Despite the fascination, baby M is also intimidated by law enforcement (and rightly so).  Here's why: a few weeks ago, I was getting incident reports every other day from daycare about him scratching (or somehow causing injury to) his friends in class.  I told my sister-in-law about it during one of our family get-togethers.  Her husband is a police officer with the New York MTA, and as we were having lunch on Mother's Day, he came over to where baby M was sitting, slammed down his badge on the table, and gave baby M a pep talk, basically threatening to lock him up in the back seat of the police car (also known as the "cage") if he continues hurting his friends.  Baby M was scared senseless I was surprised he didn't pee in his pants.  It worked though, because there has been no incident reports since then.

Baby M's interest in men in uniform extends to construction workers.  Though they're not quite dressed in uniform, the hard hats and neon-colored vests are good enough to peek his interest.  As a treat, I took baby M to McDonald's on our way to school/work one morning (I get my $1.00 decaf coffee and he gets two small bags of apple slices), and there were some construction workers having breakfast in there.  On our way out, baby M waved and said "Bye Construction Worker!".  They were too engrossed in their own conversation and didn't pay any attention, but I was surprised at baby M's boldness.

M was home late tonight and big sister K had her ballet lesson, so I didn't have time to cook.  We went to pick up Chinese take-out for dinner.  A soldier from the US Army walked in as we were on our way out.  Baby M goes, "HI ARMY MAN!" and asked, "Are you an army man?"  The man responded yes, so baby M further questioned him, "where's your army truck?"  He told baby M he wasn't driving an army truck today; he's just in a regular car.  Then big sister K asked if he was in the navy.  I told her no, his uniform indicates that he is from the Army.  I told her to thank the man for serving our country. He was really friendly and gave both my kids a handshake.  As we walked out of the restaurant, baby M shouted, "BYE ARMY MAN!"  My little boy can be so darn cute when he's not a little devil.

Baby M is also a fan of firemen, anyone in the military, train conductors, and pilots.  More than just being men (or women) in uniform, I have a feeling he likes them because they have cool modes of transportation.  I mean, police cars, diggers/ cranes/ dump trucks/ bulldozers, tanks, firetrucks, trains, planes... what's not to like?