Life With Ella

Today I took Ella to Pump It Up for a classmate’s birthday party.  Ella hadn’t seen some of her buddies for a while and it seemed like she had a great time.  Ella went on every bouncy thing there and had a lot of fun.  We spent some time together on my favorite wall with small squares of velcro.  You’re supposed to run up and put a flag on one of the little squares and then also be able to get it down.  I tried and tried and could not get the flag that I wanted!  After the birthday party, Sunny and Ella took a scooter ride all the way down the channel.  They ended up on the sandy volleyball court and Ella had fun playing in the sand.  Tonight, when Ella was going to sleep, she told me that she didn’t want to go to camp tomorrow.  I asked her why and she said that she wanted to stay with me.  I told her that it’s true, we have had a lot of fun this summer and had some great times, but she had to remember that she has so much fun at camp and school.  Ella is going through a transition and we’ll just have to ride it with her.  Hopefully the drop off will be ok tomorrow. On the way to Jun-Yen’s party at pump it up. THis is the wall that kills me.  Ella has fun putting the flags on the bottom row and taking them off, but she gets really angry when other kids take them off.  I told her that it’s all part of the game. Ella and her buddies working the wall.  Brickelle had a cool method of climbing up the side sideways.  Sam was really sweet and shared his flags with Ella. Here I go trying to get the blue flag… Oh – so close…but I never got it. Ella and some of her classmates. Having a drink after a hard hour of working out. Brickelle, Bella and Ella.  They will all be in different classes next year, but I’m sure they will stay buddies.

This morning, we met our friend Erik for brunch at Sears for some great pancakes and stuff.  This evening, we met Debby, Toby and Rachel for a delicious dinner at Liberty Cafe.  It was great to see them – it had been a long time.  The pleasant surprise is that Sunny took Ella to observe a Taekwondo class at our gym.  I stayed home because I had stuff to do around the house.  About 10 minutes after the class started, Sunny texted me a photo of Ella bowing with the rest of the class.  The teacher invited her in and she was totally into it.  I took the train down and observed her in the rest of the class.  First of all, she’s the youngest, and she’s the smallest, but I have to say, this kid has focus.  She knew nothing about the taekwondo in the beginning of the class.  In an hour and 1/2, she really learned a lot and worked hard.  She was so cute.  The teacher invited her back so it looks like Ella will be doing taekwondo every Saturday from 3 – 4:30.  Sounds like a nice time for me to play squash.Here are a few pictures and then a video from today. Ella busy in class.Now here’s the video…notice the improvement in just one hour.

Today was a sunny beautiful day – not so hot, but at least it was Sunny.  I went into work for a little while to check in and see if I had a job and then Ella and I took her scooter around our neighborhood.  First we went to tall mountain and then we went around the track.  Ella had a lot of fun on Tall Mountain, jumping down it, climbing down it, and rolling down it.  Ella took the camera and started taking shots or birds and stuff.  She took some great shots.  Tonight, Ella went to Stella, Juliet and KJ’s for dinner and a movie and Sunny and I went to the ballgame with Alicia and her husband Allen.  We had a lot of fun.  It was great to just hang out and talk and watch the game.  The Giants didn’t have such a great time, however.  We need to win the next 2 games this weekend. Ella riding her scooter down Berry Street. Rolling and jumping. Ella’s nature shots. Me and the wonderful Ms. Alicia. Sunny and her new boyfriend Allen – Alicia’s husband. Alicia and her favorite parents.

On Wednesday night, Sunny and I went on a date to the baseball game.  The Giants were playing the Cubs and a friend gave us some very special tickets.  We were literally sitting about 6 feet from the on-deck circle.  It was a magical night and the Giants won.  Today, Sunny, Ella our friend Mary and I went to a Giants vs. Cubs day game.  Again – what an exciting game and the Giants came out as winners.  Ella was great during the game and went over to the Coca Cola slide with Sunny.Tonight, the 3 of us had dinner at home and then watched E.T.  I don’t know how Ella even learned about this movie, but she has been talking about it for about a month so Sunny got it while we were back east.  We had a talk with Ella about the movie and that there was going to be a part where it seemed as if E.T. was dead and that it could be sad but he didn’t really die so the end was happy.  We told her that if she wanted to turn it off at any point, we would happily do it.  We all watched the movie and checked in with Ella during the movie.  She had a lot of questions…mostly “where is E.T.?”  “Is that Elliot?”  “What are those people doing to E.T.?”  “What does examine mean?”  and it went on and on.  She was so interested in the movie.  At the end, E.T. is all better and his ship is waiting for him and he looks at Elliot and says “come” and Elliot is crying and says “stay” and Ella said, “You mean E.T. is going to stay?” and she was so happy.  Then E.T. left.  All of a sudden, the movie was over and Ella started weeping.  It almost didn’t sound real – but we looked at her and she was crying.  We asked her what was wrong and she just kept crying.  It was about 10:10 so we thought she was tired but she said that she wasn’t.  Finally, I said, “Can you please tell us why you are crying?  We want to know so that we can help you.  Can you spell what is wrong?”  She looked at me and made a sign language “L”.  Ok – so I went through all these L words and they were all wrong of course.  I asked her for another letter… Ella said, “E and another E” so now we had LEE.  We were scrambling to figure it out and I said, “Leave – you didn’t want E.T. to leave?”  She said, “Yes!  Why did he have to leave?”  We all had a conversation about #1, it being a movie and #2, that in the movie, E.T. couldn’t  survive on earth so he had to go back to his own planet.  Nothing was really good enough for Ella but she did stop crying.  She put the E.T. box right by her bed.  She is a sensitive little creature.  It was both beautiful and painful to watch. Some cool pics that I took from our seats on Wednesday night. A beautiful night outside of the ballpark. Ella and Bug before the game. Heading over to the slide. Yup – tall enough to go on the little slide. Happy Ella coming out of the slide. FUn on the cable car.