winter holiday!

December 24th, 2009 | By Kyoko

Immi and I are decorating gingerbread cookies (I got inspired by my friend who was building the most amazing gingerbread house. Hi Allie!! I didn’t bake these though, and they are person shaped because they were sold out of gingerbread house kits…). Immi is not much help, she just wants to eat the cookies.

Here Immi looks like she is being a perfect little holiday cheers (photo deception!), but actually just picking off frosty candies off the cookies as I try to replace them as fast as I can

fruit tart

December 17th, 2009 | By Kyoko

Todd brought me home a fruit tart! …and immi is dismantling the prettiness by picking off all the blueberries.

going glass :)

December 11th, 2009 | By Kyoko

Immi is having rice with kastuobushi and soy sauce for snack (it’s her favorite food!!).

Over past few years, we’ve been trying to gradually reduce the amount of plastic we ‘consume’. We’ve replaced all our plastic tupperwares for glass ones, minimized drinking plastic bottled water etc. etc. but immi’s dinnerwares remained plastic. Now, there’s obvious reason for this (accident prone toddler!) but seeing that immi almost never drops her plastic bowls/cups/plates, we decided to just let her use our regular ones (I’ve seen special pyrex-ware for kids that are supposedly drop tested, but considering the price, it would makes sense to buy these only if she’ll be breaking like 10 bowls in a few months!). We’ll save those plasticware for immi’s brother for when he starts feeding himself (…until he learns not to throw them!). We have yet to have broken items

croissant

November 26th, 2009 | By Kyoko

The WholeFoods near by is HUGE! It makes immi look really tiny.

Immi and her croissant. It’s become one of her favorite food.

happy halloween!

October 31st, 2009 | By Kyoko

Happy Halloween!

We are going to the market.

Immi is trying out some pickles!

Immi’s tutu, witch’s hat, bag, and the black kitty all came in the box packed by her grandmom in Reston (Hi!!! She really loves the Meow!). I’m not exactly sure what her costume is with the sweatshirt and pink legwarmers (cute witch? 80’s inspired witch?) but no one was about to deny her candies:D

We managed to forget to eat breakfast so we are grabbing sandwich at a cafe nearby the market. Immi is of course primarily interested in the pickles.

Immi is patting her brother to make him feel better about being stuck in the car seat (he really hates his car seat!).

friday

October 22nd, 2009 | By Kyoko

Moving truck is still not here. There’s only so many days you can sleep on the floor so we got a bed. Immi seems to think it’s comfortable.

Immi can easily open the fridge door here (we gotta go get fridge lock probably…). She helped herself to some pickles. She put on her pink polka-dotted sweater and mint-green shawl presumably because it matches her PJ.

frozen yogurt

September 22nd, 2009 | By Kyoko

We just went to Ashland’s 2 month check up and stopped by for frozen yogurt. Immi is mostly going fot the gummy bear topping, her brother only gets to watch, but he seems to be quite content.

Immi is playing at the play area of the yogurt place.

blueraspberry

July 14th, 2009 | By Kyoko

Today is one of those days that can be much improved with a yummy bowl of phở, so that’s what we are doing. Immi fell asleep on the drive here and when the food came to the table, her dad sat her in the highchair. …But she fell back asleep in less than half a second!

After 20 minutes or so of snooooze, she did wake up a good appetite and had some phở and spring rolls. When she was done eating her dinner, she got out her lollipop she stashed at the doctor’s office earlier.

Our weekly appointment with the OB went fine. Everything is normal and good. I’m still at 2.5 cm-ish, so I guess the baby decided to stick around for a little while longer. The big quetion is weather he’ll be a Cancer (“grumpy, secretive, passive-agressive grudge-hoarder, with bipolar mood swings and a positive genius for pointless worrying”) or a Leo (“vain, arrogant, condescending sopipsist with imperial longings and an all-pervasive addiction to unconditional sycophancy”)! [ATTN: If you think that these descriptions are mean and unfair, complain to Stella Hyde of the Darkside Zodiac!]

legos and lollipop

June 23rd, 2009 | By Kyoko

We are playing with legos this evening. These days immi seems obsessed with stacking things in a *neat* pile (even with things that doesn’t naturally stack neatly like legos…).

The No.2 and I had appintment with our OB today. He said that every thing looks good and that the sonogram result is a good news. I even measured normal and not too small this week. The doctor said that I’m a PERFECT patient:) I’m at 35 weeks today, so I have just a bit over month left till the due date. And here’s immi enjoying her biweekly lollipop from the appointment (It’s after dinner and she remembered about the lollipop in her purse). Somehow I don’t think that it’s very ‘kid-like’ to stash her candy in purse for later…

Oh, and immi’s grandmom got her little brother a lot of cute clothes last week! He has a wardrobe now:D (thank you!!!) She even got immi many dresses and sparkly pink shoes which immi seems to adore. Anyway, now I feel good knowing he won’t have to be naked. We just need few more things, lots and lots of organizing, and bunch of paper work and we’ll be ready…

noodle soup

June 23rd, 2009 | By Kyoko

Todd left for a business trip in Denver today. He is at Peaceful Valley Ranch getting certified in Change Management. He’ll be home late at night on Thursday and so immi and I are planning on enjoying the last of the girlie-nights in the foreseeable future:)

We made noodle soup for dinner (we had big-ish lunch of chicken and rice). …and some ice cream for dessert.

lollipop and no.2

June 15th, 2009 | By Kyoko

We had another sonogram appointment today. And guess what? The dilated portion of the baby’s bowel is shrinking! The doctor said that it’s only half the size compared to 2 weeks ago. …so *hopefully* it’ll keep shrinking and that it won’t be a problem. Otherwise, everything is as usual, he is still a boy:| And the really good news is that I only have to go back every 2 weeks instead of every week.

Only bit of these appointments that immi enjoys is the bit where she gets a candy. She is still chewing on the teeny bit left on the stick.

…and with all these sonogram appointments, we’ve accumulated a huge number of printouts. Quality of the images vary even though they are scans from very very good equipment because they spend most of the time looking at his stomach area. But if the technician is nice, I do get to see his face quite clearly in 3D sometimes.

boardwalk

May 23rd, 2009 | By Kyoko

We can’t come to this beach and not get  Britt’s Donuts, so we are at the boardwalk this morning…getting the famous donuts. I like them, but immi won’t even try it.

There is various festivities going on at the beach due to Memorial Day weekend. Here’s a mini carnival set up at the boardwalk which was filled with much much more people then we’ve ever seen at this quiet beach last night (we just drove past by yesterday). It’s quiet and a bit deserted now,I’m guessing people are sleeping-in!

wednesday

May 13th, 2009 | By Kyoko

We braved the pollen and are outside for just a bit. This is immi’s favorite spot on the playground.

Immi has been really into pickles lately. I have no idea why she likes them. She eats the squishy whiter bits first, and then the rest.

Uhmm, this is totally not very important, but I seem to have caused some confusion about my weight gain and microwave statement in the previous post so I thought I’d clarify. The month before, 6lb was a tad too much and the 4lb I gained this month is actually perfect (1lb a week!). As inconvenient as it is, not having microwwave does promote healthier eating for me since it cuts out mac&cheese out of my diet:) Incidentally, 4lb a month is TWICE as much as one should be gaining if you are seeing OB in Japan! Isn’t that weird?

saturday

March 28th, 2009 | By Kyoko

Todd is at an all day event yesterday and today but Auntie Junko, Immi and I are having fun time having strange assortment of food at home today! One of the things we made is oden and here’s immi trying out quail egg. She didn’t like the egg much, but she really liked other stuff in oden (especially the fluffy white ball thingie).

When Todd got home, we went to get phở. Today, immi insisted on using chopsticks today. She was actually quite good (despite that these ones are really big!) and she managed to get the noodles between the two sticks and then into her mouth occasionally.

…though quite often she resorted to placing noodles on the chopsticks by hand or using them one stick at a time.

bread

March 20th, 2009 | By Kyoko

Immi’s Granddad got back from business trip to San Francisco and brought us back a yummy loaf of sourdough bread. Immi looooooves sourdough bread. Here she is munching on her 2nd slice.

treats

March 3rd, 2009 | By Kyoko

Todd had a craving for ice cream (he is having more pregnancy symptoms than me!) and we came to a bizarre realization that we don’t know of any ice cream place in or near Reston! After few minutes of googling, I discovered 3 places all located in the Reston Town Center. I picked Iceberry for our first in-town ice cream excursion because it’s all natural frozen yogurt (more or less healthy!).

Immi is picking sprinkles off Todd’s plain yogurt. Immi didn’t even want to try mine (honeydew melon yogurt with fresh mangos!) because it didn’t have any candy toppings.

My mom sent me a goodie parcel from Japan (thank you!!!)! Immi found a package of arare and she wouldn’t let go of it since it was in a pretty pink packaging (immi thinks that everything pink and/or has Hello Kitty on it is her’s). Arare is a sweet rice crackers for Hinamatsuri (Girls’ Day festival in Japan) which is very timously  today!

birthday cake video

February 9th, 2009 | By Todd

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhoi4zHTX50

Mmmmmm the first taste of Immi’s 2nd birthday cake ever!

baby doggie

January 21st, 2009 | By Kyoko

Only thing Immi wanted to wear when I took off her soggy sticky clothes (she spilled my juice on herself when she tried to drink it stealthily) was her fuzzy white fleecy jacket (it’s from last year and it’s still much too wide, but have gotten too short!). She wanted me to help her zip up her doggie in her jacket with her. I think she got the idea to do this from when her dad wraps her up in his jacket when we go outside and it’s really really cold out. Immi liked having her doggie close to her so much that she kept him in her jacket for a long while and didn’t want me to take him out even for a celery snack.

feeding adah in bed

January 19th, 2009 | By Todd

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJDSrNVHKTA

Immi likes to share her food and it does not matter where or what with.  

She even has an immi-kisses-for-food exchange program. If you have soemthing she wants, she will come up to you and give you kisses.  Then if you don’t give her what she wants she gets very very grumpy!!!

glam banana immi

January 14th, 2009 | By Todd

Little Immi insisted on putting on her pink sunglasses and boots before bedtime.

Nobody can be totally glam without a plastic banana!

“Mmmmmmmmmmm it’s so tasty”

Mr. Oskar looks a little grumpy because he didn’t get pink sunglasses!  How sad