coffee house chic

i unearthed this video that jon shot at one of my favorite breakfast places (venus in berkeley). sometimes, at places that serve soy milk (hana can't drink regular milk) we ask for them to steam it and get it all foamy and serve it in a little espresso cup. hana loves this, and though we call it "special milk", she sometimes calls it "special coffee". there's no coffee in it mind you (what, you think we're crazy?!), but she just gets such a kick out of drinking "coffee" like mommy and daddy. in the video, she's having special milk and doing some people watching. she's always trying to see who's attention she can capture from across a crowded room. but in this case, she also did a lot of kicking on the guy sitting next to her. he was mercifully forgiving as he was brunching with his two young daughters as well. incidentally, one of those girls is who she's gloating to when she says "no, my milk" as if to say, "you just have regular milk in a glass... so sad for you".

and on the special beverage note: one thing with hana that we have tried to do is not use cutesy names for grown up beverages. for example, wine is not "mommy juice", it's wine. beer is not "daddy's medicine", it's just beer. we did this because the very first time she noticed, which was many months ago now, that we all had different beverages at the table, she was calling them out in some sort of libation roll call. she asked, "this is hana juice?" to which we replied "yes". and then to daddy's wine, she said "that's daddy juice?" to which he also replied affirmatively. but then she said she wanted to drink "daddy juice" and that pretty much did it for me. i declared, no euphamisms for that stuff. she would know beer, wine, margarita, whatever... and know that they were grown up drinks and she was not to have any. she's a smart and industrious kid. i didn't want her thinking "well, if it's just juice, why can't i have any?" she seems to get there's a difference and will say as much when she points out that one of us has a grown up beverage. let's just hope this carries through the teen years!