Begin 2014!

Here are some scratch notes on the kids.

Leina the copycat

• This drives Mirei crazy.  Whenever Mirei is trying to talk, Leina starts talking as well, even though it's about nothing.  She's keep going as long as Mirei's going.  Leina's very animated and determined.
• Good manners - Arigatou, Gomen ne, "How are you?"
• Bad manner - "booboo-head!"
• Still does a lot of "yes, yes yes" without really hearing the question.  Sometimes she listens after the fact and will revise her answer.
• Does things and then says "i just wanted to try" or "I just wanted to look".  For example, "Mitai dake"  She seems very aware about what she's saying and doing.
• Likes to use scissors
• Loves to dance - tries to do it whenever she hears music, and tries to turn on music when she wants to dance
• Likes to jump off of things
• For the past year, hates getting in the car seat.  Always wants to sit on Taisei's booster seat.
• When she's with mama, she always asks "Papa は?  Taisei は?  Mirei は?"
• When she's with papa, she always says "Mama go" which is a direct translation for "Mama 行く"
• When she's asked how old she is, it's always the same answer "Oppai ni sai."
• She's a candy fiend - always on the prowl.  When she goes quiet, she's either looking for it, or has already found it.
• Discovered pizza, grilled cheese sandwich.  At least this is more variety than white rice and sugary foods.
• She's in the "mine" stage.  It's normally "Leina の! Leina の!"

Mirei

• She's our smarty pant.  She's got both the Japanese alphabet (Hiragana) and the English alphabet alphabet down.  She not only can recognize, but can write some of both.
• Peacemaker, and defender of the other kids and dog (from parents, mostly).  Once when we were mad at Taisei about something, she went in the bathroom with him and barricaded the door with everything she could find so that we couldn't get it.  She used the stool, heater, etc. and vehemently denied our entry.
• She's gets very rebellious stage now - definitely tries to do the opposite of what we want.  Often, this can be outrageously bad - breaking things, screaming, etc.
• To be funny, she often will purposely do outrageous things.  This is somewhat related to the previous bullet.  
• She very interested in makeup.  Even noticed Taisei's teacher has braces and declared that she wants some too.  Loves manicure, wants to do lipstick and eye shadow.  We let her color only her toenails for the time being.
• She's still the most cuddly out of the three - that's her love language, apparently.
• She likes having Taisei read books to her.
• She's very quick about finding things, eg in Where's Waldo books.  She can actually compete with Taisei and his friends on the game "Spot It"
• She's also our most empathetic kid.  She will randomly ask about and pray for Grandma Lin, who passed away last year, and our neighbor's cat, Cosmo.  She's genuinely concerned and wants them to come back again soon.  The dog park near our house is next to the cemetary.  One of our friends, Bunny, was killed in a car accident and buried there.  Mirei also often asks about Bunny when we pass near there.

Taisei

• He feels like everything should be fair with his siblings.  "How come they don't have to do homework?  How come they get to play?"
• He's in a more sensitive and emotional stage lately.  Especially when he feels he was dealt with unjustly, he will break out in sobs - something he never did when he was younger.
• His Japanese writing is starting to really look good now.
• His teacher rated him all 5s (out of 5) on his class behavior, which is a first for him!  Mrs. Benevento said "he is a model student in our class."
• He's getting into music.  He likes Katy Perry's "Roar", One Direction's "What Makes You Beautiful"
• He's started fixing his hair and putting gel and things like that.  Still picky about what he wears.  Won't do jeans still.
• Getting better at skiing
• Turns out to be very good at basketball.  He was one of the top 3 players on his Jr Jazz team this year.  Good defense and dribbler.  Shooting isn't bad - his best shot was one from just inside the arc during a game.
• He also learned to throw a nice spiral with the football.  We watched a YouTube video and that's all it took.  He can put some juice on his because he has the footwork learned from baseball.
• His piano is really coming along.  He can now sight read single notes quite well.  Has a little trouble when timing is tricky.
• He's started to sing out loud particularly in primary.  He can now carry a tune and sing on key, so apparently this will self develop. :)

The kids now play very well together, often playing make believe.  Taisei enjoys taking a break from his work to play with his sisters.

All three kids still LOVE natto.  That's the one meal they want if they don't like what's for dinner.  The backup would be rice with rou song.

Weekly schedule:

• Mon - Taisei school, Mirei dance, Mirei/Leina Japanese playgroup, Taisei piano lesson
• Tues - Taisei school, Mirei preschool
• Wed - Taisei school, Taisei Japanese school, Taisei basketball practice
• Thur - Taisei school, Mirei preschool, Mirei Japanese school
• Fri - Taisei school, Taisei skiing
• Sat - Taisei basketball game
• Sun - Church 11-5

Hiro has grown to trust the kids more.  On the way to school, Hiro now will sit on the rear bench between Taisei and Mirei.

Girlie Post

I've been meaning to post for a long time now.  One day we're going to find that there's a lot less about Mirei and Leina's early years than Taisei.  It's no surprise that we're just a LOT busier now with 3 kids than we were when Taisei was the only one.  Most of this documentation is turning out to be just for us now, especially on Abajoo!  It might be time to go private.  Does anyone read this and would like to stay on the list?  Let me know and I'll invite you.  I'll leave it open for a while longer


Mirei started preschool this year.  She actually did a year of Japanese class with a 1-year older group last year when Wami was teaching.  So Mirei was 3 and she was in the 4 year old class.  This year, she's re-taking that Japanese class and it's lame-ly easy for her.  Oh well.  So now she's going to the Japanese school (1x per week) as well as Expanding Horizons twice a week.  Today we had a parent teacher conference.  (Pretty funny the do that in preschool.)  They were great.  Gave me lots of details on Mirei (which they pronounce mih-RAY).  I figured that would eventually happen.  Here were the teachers thoughts:

• "She LOVES arts and crafts.  She chooses to do that every day."
• "She's an amazing artist.  Draws with incredible detail and accuracy."  There's a profile of mama that she drew, and I have to admit that it's pretty good.  Other kids are still just scribbling on paper.  Mirei's had eyelashes, lips, pupils, etc.  Maybe she got some of the Lin genes.  :)
• "She loves the sensory table, where they have sand, water, or other things to play with."
• "She's generally quiet, but when she starts talking, she talks a great deal."
• "Her English is so good."  Duh.  I'm not sure if they're saying that it's good as a second language, or it's just good in general.  We already know that she's a very good communicator and understands things well beyond her age.  They noticed that as well about her understanding.
• I told them that sometimes she doesn't want to go in the morning, but then afterwards she explains that she was tired and just wanted to make a big deal about it.  She understands that, and the teacher was amazed that she could express that to me.  The teacher says Mirei has always been fine in class.
• "She knows the ABCs better than anyone else in the class."  Thanks to Starfall, we haven't done a thing.  haha  There's a good chance she could be reading before next  summer, I believe.  We won't push her, but we'll see.
• "She doesn't initial social interactions with her classmates, so that's one thing they want to work on with her.  See if she can play with her classmates a little more."  My guess is that she feels like she's much older.  She has no problem talking down to River, who's 7 now.  haha

Big happy birthday to Mirei. She just turned 4!

Leina is now the age that Mirei was at when Leina was born.  It's hard to believe our kids are growing up so fast.  Leina definitely knows what's going on now and it's snuck up on us.  We kind of hoped she'd stay a baby forever.  Right now she is at the super super cute age where she has strong opinions, can't talk well, but likes to make her presence known.  She has a few funny habits:

• She likes to put things down her one-piece.  Grapes, small toys, my phone, whatever. When she first started doing it, we would sometimes think her diaper had malfunction.  Still not sure why she does it.  Sometimes she'll put it down our shirts as well.
• She loves her gauze blankets and always wants to hold those when she wakes up for a nap or is feeling grumpy.
• She looooves to hold a bottle of nail polish in her hand.  When she's doing things in the house, when she's getting in the car, when she's taking a nap - she always wants to hold one.  It scares us because it's glass, but she hasn't broken one yet.  We just don't know how many bottles she's probably lost already.
• She WON'T sit in her high chair.  She pretty much never has.  Looks like she never will.  Mirei wasn't that bad about her high chair, though she fell out of it probably 3 or 4 times.  Mirei's deal was not being willing to sleep in the crib.
• She spends all day looking for candy.  She goes through everybody's bags and eventually is able to find something.  She's pretty much addicted to candy.  She would eat nothing but candy all day if we let her.  Scary.
• She LOVES natto rice.  That's pretty much the only thing we can get her to eat consistently.  Anything else, and it's a crap shoot.  When we went to southern Utah over UEA weekend, Wami froze rice and natto.  Luckily she did, because that's all she would eat.  That, beef jerky, and candy.
• She sleeps all night.  She has rarely ever woken up in the middle of the night.  Maybe once or twice in the past year, and even when she was a baby she rarely woke up.  Woohoo!  The kids are all sleeping at night!  What a big milestone, now that I think about it.
• Also, she likes to sleep.  When she gets tired, she asks to go to bed, usually around 8 or so, she's ready to go to bed.  She does the same thing in the day for naps.  Probably is, she insists on her mama taking her to bed.  We'll have to break that habit to give Wami a break.

The other two girls in my life.

I think there's more to update you on, but I have to take a break now. Gotta get back into this blogging thing gently.  ;)  Let me know if you want to go private with us.  There's probably like 3 of you reading this.

ps.  Uh-oh, I didn't realize that our template got broken.  Gotta decide if it's time to go to the new blogger format...

Mirei's Mayhem Continues

Today was another one of those days for Mirei:

• She purposely wrapped her chewed gum around her head and got it all tangled up.  Eventually, I yanked out a tuft of hair around shower time.  She thought it was pretty funny and laughed.
• She fell backwards and banged her head against the ground.
• She had the usual walking into walls and door frames.
• She jumped on her bed and hit the bedframe or something.  Looked like it hurt.
• Lastly, right before bedtime, she was fighting Taisei over turning off the lights for bedtime and grabbed the socket while it was half unplugged.  Yep - she electrocuted herself briefly.  That one was kind of nasty. I just did it a few weeks ago and it bites.

Sleeping

Edit:  I wrote this a long time ago and decided to post it just for our records.  I wish it would have posted with the original date though.  Argh.

This was a huge week for our progress with Mirei.  We didnt do a great job with her sleep training and kept hoping that because she has Taisei that she would somehow sleep train herself.  We hoped she would simply learn to soothe herself, or at least rely on Taisei and learn to sleep.  Neither things really happened.  That's partly good and partly bad.  Finally, we had to put Taisei downstairs to sleep by himself in the office.  Funny thing was he happily did it.  He was so fed up with Mirei screwing around before bedtime that he was happy to get some peace and quiet.  It was kind of a pain, but Mirei finally got used to sleeping by herself.  The funny thing is that she doesn't care whether Taisei's in the room with her or not.  She's not scared.  She's just unwilling to go to bed.  We had to go through patiently listening to all her excuses, listening to her bang on the door (since she hasn't slept in the crib since 8 months, remember?), and all kinds of the typical stuff before she finally realized that we're serious.  Then, she finally did it.  It's not consistent every night, but she'll go to bed after one or two times of soothing, usually.  If she's tired, she'll just go right to bed.  The good thing now is that she's finally learned to understand when she feels tired and sometimes she'll even tell us.  She'll say, "I'm tired, papa."  And I'll say "You're tired, Mirei?"  "Yeah."  "Do you want to go to bed?"  "No."  At least she's totally honest.

Mirei doing homework

Another email from Wami.

-------
From: Wami
Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2012 1:50 PM
Subject: Mirei doing HW

Mirei has been doing well in her Japanese class without Mama.  Now she
has homework. This is one of the HW, practicing writing lines. I'm
quite surprised she can hold pencils well.  She is pretty happy to
have her own HW like Taisei : )

Injury Report

Week of January 8th.

Monday, Mirei fell down almost all the way down the stairs.  She was sitting on nearly the top step, and according to her re-enactment for us, fell forward and then rolled sideways until her head hit the railing.  Her account was verified by both one eye-witness, Taisei, and by the bruise on her forehead.

Tuesday, Taisei was walking up the stairs in his pajamas that are too big, and at the top of the stairs fell over backwards!  He stepped on the pajamas and as he tried to stand up straight, the pajama pants pulled him backwards off balance.  He luckily missed Mirei who was on his right behind him.  Unfortunately, with all his weight behind it, his head went right into a corner on the main supporting railing.  That was a scary moment.  Wami walked in just as it happened and saw his head ricochet.  He had a HUGE, 1/2" by 2" bump on the upper back part of his head.  It was a bit scary.

Yesterday, Mirei ran diagonally across her futon and jumped (or possibly tripped?) face-first right into the wall.  Yep, that hurt.  I have no idea what she was thinking on that one.  I was sitting right there next to her when it happened.

Tonight, Mirei was running around with her latest Chipmunks McDonald's Happy Meal toy and jumped (or tripped) onto her futon bed, with her eye ramming into the toy in her hand.  When she went to bed, she had a big welt above and below her eye.  When she closes her right eye, you can actually see the line going over her eyelid.  Yikes.  Lucky she blinked.  Again, another scary moment.

This really is only the major stuff.  Most of the more minor incidents that happen nearly every few moments it seems, was not included.  For example, Mirei probably has 2-3 head bumps on cabinets, door frames, hallways, and just the plain ground each day.  Anyway, welcome to our world.  And to think we have a newborn that we're trying to protect at every second of the way.

Little Smarty Pants

It seems to us like Mirei has an advanced comprehension.  These are little anecdotes from the last 24 hours.

Today, Mirei grabbed one of Wami's cute USB memory sticks and knew what to do with it.  She plugged it into the USB port on the front of the computer.  Then, she pointed to the monitor immediately after that.  So not only did she understand the mechanical connection, but to some extent, the significance of plugging a device into the computer.

Yesterday night, Wami pointed out the stars in the sky, Mirei nodded and pointed down at the necklace she was wearing, which was a Mardi Gras type necklace with stars mixed in.  So she understand the symbolic meaning of the star and its connection with the lights in the sky.

Yesterday evening, Wami told Mirei that in the morning she would be going over to Erika's place because mama had to go to a doctors appointment.  Right away, she asked "Taisei wa?" ("What about Taisei?")  When mama told her it would be just her, she broke into tears.  It breaks my heart to see her do her sad cry.  But yet so cute.  :)

There are now several games Mirei can actually play on the iPhone.  I recommend My First Puzzle for the really little ones.  She's been able to completely operate it by herself since I showed her about a month ago.

There's one more funny thing she does often, including today.  She was naughty and grabbed one of the Lego structures that Taisei was building.  This is something that will greatly upset Taisei every time.  So Wami told her to go to her red chair, which she knows is her time-out spot.  With a happy face, she happily responded "Ii yo!" ("OK!") and proceeded to go to the other room to sit on her chair.  She'll sit there til she's bored or we tell her it's OK to come back.  When Taisei's in his timeout, Mirei will go to Taisei and tell him "Ii yo!" ("OK, you can get up now!")  We have to tell her that only Mama and Papa are allowed to release Taisei from timeout.  Silly girl.

Last funny for now is she copies people when no one's looking.  She'll often have one of Taisei's reading books open and be mumbling to herself, turning the page from time to time.  Lately, she holds up Wami's flashcards used for teaching a Japanese class, and flips them one at a time, mumbling some words like she's teaching something.

This is right after Taisei got out of class.

Taisei's such a good boy. Each morning, he neatly folds his pajamas after he gets up.  Wami always tells me I need to be more like him.

Brother and sister.

I'll get more on Taisei next time when it's not so late at night.