hawthorne fair

August 15th, 2010 | By Kyoko

We were invited for coffee and donuts at our friends’ who live in Hawthorne area because there’s a street fair going on there. Immi is absolutely in love with their garden (the backyard has a little gate that leads into the veggie garden).

We stopped in Fat Straw for bubble smoothie to cool off because it’s actually (unusually for Portland this summer) hot out side today! Immi is guzzling up honeydew melon smoothie with tapioca pearls.

Immi seems to be enjoying the festivities (lots of people, live music, free balloons!) and now she is playing in the hula hoop corner.

Ashland’s Birthday

July 22nd, 2010 | By Kyoko

We are celebrating immi’s little brother’s first birthday! Immi is having some chocolate milk, french toast and bacon (one of very few meat type food she actually eats!).

Immi and I are making for Ashland some pancakes because it’s his special day! This was immi’s idea, she pulled out the pancake mix and demanded we make it.

Immi has been totally obsessed with pouring beads into different containers with a spoon for various pretend purposes. Right now she is pretending to put coffee beans into the grinder to grind it. Making coffee is not immi’s favorite activity she enjoys with her dad. She thinks that it smells good, and she demands to make it every morning!

dress-up

July 20th, 2010 | By Kyoko

Immi suddenly seems to have decided that culinary-chic is the new direction in fashion. See, I’m assuming that most kids wear apron and oven mitts to play at the play kitchen…not Immi though, she is just hanging out and asking me often if her outfit is “cute”.

play time

July 18th, 2010 | By Kyoko

Oskar sat on the shelf and watched immi shred paper into tiny pieces to make tiny mails to fit the tiny mail boxes of doll houses for entire hour or so (they are both patient!).

Immi is still shredding paper (it’s been  like 4–5 hours now?). At this point, they are no longer tiny mails, but snow! She is making it snow on top of her Carebear (polar bear?).

sunday

June 27th, 2010 | By Kyoko

Immi is relaxing reading some magazines.

I’ve noticed that immi’s imaginative play is getting more convoluted lately. She doesn’t just want to do things (i.e. feed, bathe, put to sleep) to the stuffed animals but she wants *it* to do things to her other smaller toy animals. I see her often trying very hard (with infinite patience!) to get her Carebear to give her tiny cat a bath, or put her tiny monky to sleep…and as you can imagine — stuffed animals not having hands that can grab things — it’s quite a painstaking task!

play

June 16th, 2010 | By Kyoko

Dr. Immi is giving Mr. Little Bear a health exam.

When we went out for a walk, we stopped by the thrift shop (the place we regularly donate truck load of stuff to). Immi found this little doll house and of course wanted it. She has more than a dozen (I think, I haven’t counted) of various little houses but she does in fact enjoy playing with every single one of them…so I thought what’s a one more? It looks durable and compact enough for travel. As it turns out, one toy is FREE per every child of a customer, so she got it for $0! We also got a practically new denim jacket for Ashland — $1, cute black skirt for me — $3 (since I’m getting fatter and I hate spending a lot on maternity clothes), and totally fabulous soap dish for the kitchen for — $1.

Look, it even lights up and makes lots of annoying sounds, and been keeping immi busy for hours (totally priceless!).

hat and cat

June 5th, 2010 | By Kyoko

Immi is wearing her daddy’s hat and having some tortilla chips with melted cheese on.

Immi has been obsessed with the “horseback riding” concept lately. …In this case a bunny and a lion is riding a cat!

playing together

May 19th, 2010 | By Kyoko

Immi helping out Ashland in the kitchen.

…Because obviously he is doing it all wrong.

wednesday

April 14th, 2010 | By Kyoko

Immi wants more waffles!

Immi has been really into building pillow forts in various nooks, this one is built inside the side table.

lego

March 5th, 2010 | By Kyoko

Immi and her brother are totally into legos. Ashland keeps grabbing a piece and poking immi with it (I think he wants immi to help him stick it on) but she is too busy building her faery princess castle.

The sun has set, and immi is still playing with legos.

Immi made this diorama type thing — she took it to the kitchen, I think because she didn’t want Ashland to take it apart. It’s a princess tea cake party with circus entertainment.

plastic things

March 1st, 2010 | By Kyoko

Immi is making a bracelet.

I got out nesting plastic cups that immi used to play with for her little brother. She is far too smart to enjoy nesting/stacking now but she found new use for them! It’s a field of plastic flowers for her twin Hello Kitties to sleep in…or something like that. She is quite specific about where each cup goes, so it’s like an installation right?

And here’s the variation this time created on a kitchen floor.

painting

February 16th, 2010 | By Kyoko

Immi is having lots of fun painting.

Immi going Jackson Pollock on her paper.

Here’s the finished piece. Just so there’s no confusion (i.e. You offer her $8000 for this painted piece of paper — several pieces of notebook paper stuck together actually — and then tell me she didn’t possibly do this on her own, I take the credit for purple dots on the left hand corner. I did those when she had just started on it ).

Here’s another one:

giraffe

January 27th, 2010 | By Kyoko

Immi riding her giraffe with her monkey and the cat wearing her princess shoes.

museum

January 22nd, 2010 | By Kyoko

We are at the Children’s Museum with our new friend and her 3 year old girl from a meetup group. We wanted to come here while they had Clifford the Big Red Dog exhibit because Immi LOVES Clifford (she is the one who pointed out about this event in the Portland’s newsletter!).

Immi, her dad and her brother are learning all about the history of the Big Red Dog.

Immi is playing with the translucent shapes on the light table. She is, for some reason, obsessed with the isosceles (she won’t even look at the equilateral…). She stacked up all the isosceles triangles into a neat pile and won’t let anyone else touch them.

Here’s immi at the kid-sized [pretend] grocery store.

It’s been interesting having more opportunity to watch immi interact with other kids. Immi is quite specific about what she will share and what she won’t. She is willing to share most things actually, but not the very few selected items (…like the isosceles triangles).

nap time

January 19th, 2010 | By Kyoko

Immi got her immi-sized HelloKitty pillow, HelloKitty and HelloKitty-sized HelloKitty pillow and appropriately sized blankets for each of them for a [pretend] nap time.

ice cream shoppe

January 18th, 2010 | By Kyoko

Immi loves making play-doh ice cream. She is just getting started here, prepping her little factory.

She loves making swirls in ice cream cone and making cup full of sprinkles!

dress up

January 15th, 2010 | By Kyoko

Immi is playing dres-up. Tutu and princess cape and faery wand!

tea time

January 5th, 2010 | By Kyoko

Immi and I are having tea-and-making-things party!

breakfast

November 30th, 2009 | By Kyoko

Immi made us breakfast!

paper blanket

November 29th, 2009 | By Kyoko

We have most of the boxes unpacked but I was working on some of the last ones (except for the entire closet full of boxes of books…) Immi loves those big packing papers, she can think of  many different things to do with it, like use it as bedding.