music

December 30th, 2008 | By Kyoko

Immi loves music, she always has. What’s interesting to me is that she seems to think that music is synonymous with dance. She usually asks for music by gesturing that she wants to dance. And she really only like music that she can dance to one way or the other.

She definitely has quite well defined ‘taste’ already. When we are driving and immi is strapped in her car seat, she always wants music on. What is unfortunate is that, it has to be music that she approves of or she’ll be grumpy — what we listen to is being dictated by the taste of not-quite-two year old!

saturday

December 28th, 2008 | By Kyoko

We woke up this morning to a fridge full of nothing, so here we are at Starbucks. Happy immi playing with her pony.

I built the stroller immi’s grandmom got for immi (luckily this only took about a minute!) and immi loved it immediately! …but the only one she is willing to push around in the stroller is her red puppy. I also caught her giving this puppy a pretend bath, something I haven’t seen her do with her baby doll…

kitchen

December 26th, 2008 | By Kyoko

I was suddenly not sleepy anymore at 4:30 am, so I gave up trying to go back to sleep around 5:15 am and decided to put together the kitchen immi got from her Grandmom yesterday. It took me nearly 4 hours! …anyway, immi seems to enjoy it a whole lot, she is still just a bit too short for it, but that’s what pillows are for

Immi’s favorite thing to cook up is hot water! She fills up her cup at the sink…

…and then microvaves it for a minute or so.

When immi gets the cup out of the microwave, sometimes it’s not hot enough — she puts it back in for few more moments. And then other times, it’s apparently very hot because she blows on it to cool.

We are currently in the process moving around a lot of furnitures so that immi can have her own room (we’ve moved the living room to the smallest room, and then moved in todd’s office and my studio into the biggest room to free up one room for immi). We thought this works better for all of us since immi has almost as much stuff as we do already! Immi’s room isn’t ready for her to move in yet, but we really like our new small and cozy living room and our office/studio.

…I gotta build that highchair and stroller for immi’s baby doll next. It feels like such a strange thing to do since I feel like it hasn’t been long enough at all since I put together immi’s real stroller and real high chair.

bath

December 26th, 2008 | By Kyoko

Immi is taking a bath in her baby doll’s little tub. She put rubber ducky in it, just like  a real bath.

happy holidays!

December 25th, 2008 | By Kyoko

We are at immi’s grandmom’s and we just finished brunch. We are hanging out in the living room and Immi is opening gifts.

We are now in the kitchen having some cookies. Immi is playing with her new baby doll from her grandmom, sort of. At the moment she is busy washing her own face with plastic pretend soap for her baby doll.

Immi is modeling her new faux fur her jacket. She seems to like it a lot.

Immi also got a big pretend kitchen (and huge amount of accessories for it) and an entire nursery for her baby doll from her grandmom. We have to build them though before she can play with them. Tired from running around all afternoon (powered by sugar!), immi fell a sleep and her dad joined her too.

In the evening, we headed over to immi’s grandparents for dinner. For some reason, I didn’t take any photos here! You’ll just have to take my word that we had a very nice time. Immi spent the entire evening after dinner organizing and reorganizing her big box of new crayons (she got a big tub full of art supplies, stickers and activity books from her grandparents).

eve

December 24th, 2008 | By Kyoko

We are at ToysRus to get some diapers and to watch people do last minute holiday shopping. It’s really crowded here even though the store is closing early in less than an hour. Immi fell in LOVE when spotted this big plushie My Little Pony on the shelf. She dragged her off the shelf and zoomed around the store gleefully. Several customers asked us where in the store we found it (immi-dvertisement!). …And, no, we didn’t buy it.

When we got back home, there were three huge packages waiting for immi from her Great Aunt Marla,Great Uncle Charlie, and second cousin Alisa (It’s already been two summers since we last visited them!). In it, immi found some musical toys, Clifford the Dog, and wooden play center.

For some reason Immi really really loved this red doggie (even though he is a dog!) and spend the rest of the evening carry him around, giving him many squeezes and saying “wruuuuuf!”.

dinning

December 23rd, 2008 | By Kyoko

There are many  things going on in our lives right now, and we are celebrating endings and beginnings of things with Chinese at Cheng’s It’s really crowded here, I’m guessing due to holidays. We are waiting for our table watching koi in the indoor fish pond.

Immi got quite good with her utensils and now she can have soup without spilling much at all. Immi loves egg drop soup!

An elderly couple walked over to our table on their way out to tell us how precious immi is and that they were enjoying watching her for a while, and asked us how much we’d sell her for!

pink shoes

December 21st, 2008 | By Kyoko

Immi seems to have figured out that we were getting ready to go out. Anxious for an adventure, she put on her pink shoes, which were the only ones she could reach by herself. When I told her that the shoes don’t really match her outfit, she left me, and then came back with a pink hat on! …I guess the shoes sort of match now?

Immi can now jump up and down without assistance! She also got much better at spinning and can do many of them without getting dizzy.

friday evening

December 19th, 2008 | By Kyoko

It’s been a *blegh* kind of a day so we are getting coffee at starbucks. Immi is trying out her dad’s hat.

…and now having some treats.

bling!

December 19th, 2008 | By Kyoko

Immi loves her sparklies!

sleepy

December 19th, 2008 | By Kyoko

Immi was still sleepy when she woke up this morning. She followed me into the bathroom, flopped on the rug and fell back a sleep!

dinner

December 18th, 2008 | By Kyoko

I made Chinese take-out (I wouldn’t go so far as to say Cuisine!) inspired steamed veggies&shrimps in white sauce (I made up this recipe based on what I thought it tasted like. I put ginger, garlic, chicken soup stock and corn starch. Is that right?). And Immi loved it: I think that she likes things that are flavorful. She ate almost as much as she did at Sushi Taro.

No. 2

December 16th, 2008 | By Kyoko

We are at our Obstetrician’s office for the very first check up! Here’s immi having some munchies with while waiting for the appointment.

Here’s immi being her usual self.

Immi got to see her sibling for the first time! (They gave me a print out of the screen but honestly this photo todd took is actually much better!)

Immi’s little sister/brother is still very very small, but we saw that s/he has a beating heart that looks like a tiny twinkling star on the screen.

immi says…

December 16th, 2008 | By Kyoko

“What are you doing??”

…to her dad when he was cleaning his desk with  Mrs. Meyers (I’ve been Mrs. Meyers fan for many many years now!).

I guess immi is going to spill her speaking skills one sentence at a time. It’s really funny when she talks in English: it sounds very intelligible and her intonation is just like an adult’s!

pizza

December 14th, 2008 | By Kyoko

We are trying to get huge amount of things done today…and I had a brilliant idea to order in pizza to save time! (We hardly ever order pizza.) Here is Immi enjoying her pizza. She is making a big mess by eating only the the cheese and tomato sauce and leaving the bready bottom.

Immi is now playing with her Hello Kitty magnetic book. She loves this thing and plays with it everyday.

mushroom cafe

December 12th, 2008 | By Kyoko

We didn’t think that we’d get to see Auntie Junko again before she left to Japan for the month, but she came over tonight so that we can send her off to the airport tomorrow morning. Immi is converting her faery mushroom house into a cafe/bakery and Auntie Junko is watching. Immi is now pretending to drink tea out of a very very tiny tiny tea cup.

green beans

December 10th, 2008 | By Kyoko

Immi is walking around with her kitty and a box of animal crackers while eating left over green beans from lunch.

problem solving

December 9th, 2008 | By Kyoko

When immi was done with her apple juice box, she went to throw out the empty container (she shook it to make sure it was more or less empty). She took out the straw to put in the recycling bin (she has been able to identify plastic trash for recycling for months now) but then when she opened the recycle bin, she seems to have realized that it hadn’t been lined with a bag yet (bad parents!). Instead of stopping her from chucking the straw into the unlined trash can, I watched immi to see what she would do (I was curious!). To my surprise, Immi paused to think about it for a moment, changed her mind about putting the straw in the recycling, and put both straw and the box in to regular trash which was lined. …very pleased with her accomplishment, she clapped and said “yaaaay!”.

Immi is still refusing to talk to us in English much. At the moment, she seems perfectly happy speaking her own language and her invented sign language (my favorite one is for ‘music’, she holds out her hands with her palms facing each other and make air clapping motion). She did say “Okay!” the other day and also “Goodbye!” (she usually says “bye!”).

noodles

December 8th, 2008 | By Kyoko

It’s cold out so I made some dumpling and noodle soup.

sushi!

December 6th, 2008 | By Kyoko

We drove in to DC to see auntie Junko since she will be traveling to Japan and will be out of town for the several weeks. She is treating us at Sushi Taro as a early holiday gift! This place is by far our favorite Japanese restaurant, and Immi absolutely enjoyed their food today! She loved the avocado rolls, pumpkin tempura (with most of the crunchy stuff taken off), yakitori, miso soup and some fresh veggies in the salad. She ate happily for the entire 1.5 hours we were there.

After dinner, we headed to Starbucks for a warm drink. Here’s immi and her favorite aunt.