Yu Have Come to the Right Place.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Years to you.  If you are reading this, thank you for still coming around to read.  I'm infrequent and don't get around to reading many other blogs these days myself.  Leave a comment and let us know that we should post more frequently.  :-)

We're always sad when the Christmas season ends.  This year, a sudden change in our favorite Christmas music station surprised us.  106.5 fm suddenly started playing classic rock like 1 week before Christmas. What the heck?  No announcement, nothing.  It was disappointing because this year was a first for Taisei.  He started singing!  We have no idea what happened, but suddenly he was on key and knew a lot of lyrics.  We still don't know if it was friends from primary or influence from his 1st grade class.  I think it was probably more the latter.  But suddenly, he could sing practically every Christmas song that came on the radio.  He knew way more lyrics than I know.  What the...?  He sang full blast on stage for our ward's Christmas sacrament presentation.  This is an interesting but nice development for our normally reserved and shy boy.


Also, Taisei's reading seems to be taking off.  Although I know there are still many others that are way ahead, like Amy at church who's nearly a year younger and sits in a corner reading young adult novels.  Taisei has read his first few non-picture books.  He's read three or four of the "Nate the Great" books.

This year was an interesting Christmas for Taisei.  He wasn't sure if he should believe in Santa or not.  He was pretty sure he didn't believe it, especially since he hadn't seen a single convincing Santa AND we don't have a chimney.  He even went so far as to starting to convince his friends at school that there's no such thing as Santa.  That made us sad and we had to tell him not to ruin other kids' dreams.  But a funny thing happened.  Mirei absolutely has NO doubt whatsoever that Santa would be coming and bringing her gifts.  She did ask about the lack of a chimney, but there was no doubt in her mind.  We would be leaving out cookies and milk for Santa.  Here there are doing that.


Taisei wanted to make sure Santa didn't miss any of the plates we put out, so here is his note to Santa.

All quiet on Christmas Eve.


Here are Mirei's latest vitals from her 3 year old appointment:  28.2 lbs (25%) and 36" (25%).  The good news is that she's proportional.  ;-)

Mirei really pays attention to what's going on.  She's always listening to what we're talking about, even if she's busy drawing or doing her own things.  In her once-a-week Japanese daycare, she told teachers about papa.  She told them I drove to the airport, and took the airplane to go somewhere.  For drawing that day, she drew this (airplane on the upper left):



This is papa looking like a koala.  haha

The big one is Mirei.  The little one is papa.  She loves her papa.  ;)



Here are two from Taisei.  A snake thing:

And I really think all boys draw death and destruction at one point or another. Not sure why, but he just did this the other day.  I think he must have seen some commercial or cartoon on TV.

Leina's vitals at 1 year:  17.2 lbs (3%), 28.5" height (30%), and head circumference of 45 cm (50%).

Leina's not a baby anymore.  She's officially a toddler now, clearly with wants and dislikes.  Something she's been doing lately is grabbing mama's face and turning it towards whatever it is she wants.  Today she wanted a drink out of her bottle, so she pushed mama's face to the side towards the bottle and grunted her famous "maa maa!"  We used to think "maa maa" meant "mama", but it really means "I want that!"

Also, the sister competition has begun - a little earlier than we expected.  Leina's 1 year and 1 month.  Today she was sitting on Wami's lap and Mirei immediately came over to take a seat as well, right next to Leina.  Leina did not like that.  She started yelling and pushing Mirei away with two hands.  Another time today, Leina saw Mirei sit down on mama's lap.  Right away she came over and wanted a spot too.  The big competitions right now definitely seem to be over parents' attention.  Mirei has always wanted to get up into my arms when I'm holding Leina.  Now, Leina's starting to do it too.  I remember when Mirei felt like a feather compared to Taisei.  Now, Mirei feels like a rock compared to Leina!  It's going to be some rough times for the next year as Mirei adjusts to a newly sprouting sister (not a baby anymore!) and mama and papa trying to maintain peace around the house.  Taisei usually just ignores what's going on.  haha

Here are some other things about Leina:

• I told her to bring a box to mama in kitchen and she did it.  She's definitely listening.
• The other day, she brought panties to Mirei when she knew Mirei was going potty.
• She seems to want to talk and uses the same inflections.  She just doesn't seem to be pronouncing many sounds yet.  She communication mostly with grunts, pants, and "maa maa!"
• She loves to be chased, especially by Taisei.  She goes crazy laughing, running, and looking back.
• She's very interested in food, and wants to eat whatever we're eating.  But it seems like she's a bit picky.  He she is going bonkers on chicken at... yes, Chuck-a-rama.  We don't like the place, but it's easy for the kids, relatively inexpensive, and I don't have to worry about the mess.  I can't wait until we don't have to come here, but for now, it's easy.
• She comes down the stairs herself.  It's funny how cautious she is.  She gets down face first on her tummy like 2 feet away from the stairs, and then crawls backwards until she gets to the first stair.  She starts so far though, we always wonder what she's doing when she suddenly gets down on her belly and starts scooting backwards.  Funny stuff.
• She likes to climb into the sink in the bathroom.  She discovered that she can climb up the kid's stool (it's a big step from the stool to the bathroom countertop) and several times we discovered her sitting in the sink with the water on.  Yikes!  Edit:  We just caught her climbing in.  We didn't realize it's such a precarious climb onto the counter.  She could easily fall back and bonk her head on the tile!  (Edit to the edit: Uh oh, just now as I was typing this, apparently she climbed up again, climbed over to the light switch, and fell to the ground...!  She seems to be OK though.)

• Leina loves tubes - toothpaste, wasabi, lotion, whatever. She plays with them, sucks them, rolls them around and generally likes to go after any tube in the bathroom, fridge, etc.  Strange fetish.  haha