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Lately Zara has been biting her brother to solve some of their disputes. This afternoon Maxwell adopted this technique when she was annoying him and bit a scab off her knee causing blood to drip down her leg. Zara was very excited about touching the blood from her "boo-boo" and proudly showed it to me after Maxwell was shuttled to his room. Maxwell was clearly disturbed that he had made his sister bleed and quite remorseful, but stubborn as an ox when it came to eliciting the formal apology from him to Zara. Cara asked him to say he was sorry, and he refused - addressing Cara with Zara's wrongdoings that required him to bite her, rather than interact with his sister who was trying to hug him and make up. Zara believes "sorry" is a universal make-up word that carries no admission of wrongdoing, ergo she uses it freely in such settings. For Maxwell, however, this only provided further evidence that she, not he, was at fault. Eventually Maxwell did give a perfunctory apology, but it was clearly not intended as an admission of wrongdoing. Nevertheless, Cara found this satisfactory and went back to work on her computer. Maxwell and Zara went back to playing, but I fear his initial reaction of remorse was erased by the justification logic he created in his head to defend himself. Would he bite her again if he thought he could get away with it? Insisting on such formal admissions of wrongdoing rather than focusing on the reconciliation between the children seems only to pervert their natural responses, especially with a child as stubborn as Maxwell. At Maxwell's age, Alora & Brittan were on equal mental footing, so saying sorry really worked to bring about the reconciliation process. However, saying sorry obviously doesn't mean the same thing to Zara as it does to Maxwell. Hence my rumination about taking a different approach with Maxwell when he has harmed her in some way. Perhaps acting as a guide in the reconciliation process rather than as a judge might elicit a more positive response from the boy. We shall see . . .

Today Brittan got cut by a piece of glass on her foot and Maxwell informed us all that he was a nurse just like Nanny. Then he proceeded to give Brittan copious advice on proper wound care.

We've been back from Hawai'i a couple days now, so I thought I'd share some little tidbits with yall about the Hawaiian language:
1). ' is actually a consonant (glottal stop) in Hawaiian.
2). Hawaiian is historically a Polynesian language, but has accumulated a plethora of loan words from English by translating them into the much smaller Hawaiian phoneme set. For example my name Bradley -> Palakali or the one everybody knows, Merry Christmas -> Mele Kalikimaka.
3). Hawaiian, although one of the two official languages of the state of Hawai'i, has only about 200 native speakers who mostly live on Ni'ihau - a private island owned by the Robinson family. Since the closure of the Robinson Ranch in 1999 the residents have been struggling to find a way to keep the island closed and still make ends meet. If the island is opened to tourism, the use of Hawaiian as a primary language there will no doubt come to an end.
4). Around 2000 people speak Hawaiian fluently as a second language, a number the Hawaiian government is trying to increase by offering Hawaiian immersion programs in the public schools.

Today we went to Moloka'i, a little underpopulated island west of Maui:

We've done a lot of boogie boarding this week, but today we finally took some video:

We also took a short jaunt up to Iao Valley to see the famed phallus of Keao?, Hawaiian god of ???

The Road to Hana, and beyond:

It rained alot today, so we did the nearby Whaler's village and Lahaina.

Today we took a nice long hike down into the Haleakala Crater and had a picnic lunch on the rim of the Ka Lu'u o ka O'o cindercone. Along the way we made a silly video:

11 March 2007 Today Cara & I started our first vacation together just the two of us (no children!) I got up this morning at 2 AM Hawaii time though, so it has been a long day. Hawai'i is closer to the equator than the rest of the country, leading them to opt out of daylight savings time. After our just under five hour flight we landed in Kahalui to start our vacation. For our first meal on Maui we dined at the fancy and expensive restaurant our friend Marcy recommended, Mama's Fish House, just past Paia on the Hana Highway. While the cuisine was superb and deserving of the prices, the service was rather lackluster. After that it was time to check in at our hotel in Kā'anapali, where we're staying for the week. Cara and I spent the rest of the afternoon romping in the waves, which was so completely exhausting that we got some food at Safeway and ate in our room. We crashed rather early Hawai'i time, but we've got big plans for tomorrow . . .

Cara sips her first Mai Tai

Tonight I've been uploading more retro videos like the one below. To see all our family videos (and not my other tarded ones) check out www.youtube.com/groups/wogsland

This past weekend was a gold medal day for Brittan as she competed at San Jose's Level 1 gymnastics competition:

Happy belated birthday Amir!

You won't believe what we found in the Mercur this evening . . .