Excuse my shadow Mr. Treetrunk

Hana recently discovered her shadow. She loves watching it. Today on our sunny day outing to the park she had a blast following her shadow around. But she did the funniest thing. Once when her shadow hit a tree trunk, she turned to the tree and said "Gomen!" Which is like "excuse me". It was so cute! She does this when she is trying to get past us and has to push us or if she bumps into us while walking. So her shadow bumped into the tree and she felt compelled to appologize to it! So funny!

Bright, sunny day

Just some pictures to enjoy...


brushing teeth!


She loves climbing steps and running around outside, she did not want to be carried or ride in her stroller! Such a cutie!


Is it just me or could she be a fashion model!? Minus the belly maybe?


A soccer star in the making! She is so agile, she walked all over the park, climbed hills and flights of stairs, all by herself and only fell down once!

I one two...

I have been having the HARDEST time getting Hana to say certain things in English. She has her things she always says in English like, "hello" "mine" "eat" etc. She knows her ABC's and 1,2,3's in English only, and some other things. But most of the rest of the time (it seems to me) she speaks a lot of Japanese. It is driving me NUTS! I have been doing my best to make her say things in English before I will respond appropriately. My biggest project right now is to get her to say "I want to ___." instead of saying the thing she wants and following it with the Japanese "shitai" which means I want. So EVERY DAY a MILLION times a day for example, she says... "Teetee shitai" and I say, "SAY - I want to teetee", and she says "want to teetee" and then we go.

FINALLY today, a couple of times she has said "I want to ____." on her own OR at just a stern look from me, she says it OR if I say "how do you say that?" she'll say it in English. And at dinner tonight she was asking for more toast with butter and she said, "more butter shitai" and I just looked at her and she goes...

"I one two three... I one two butter!"

Rocky and I both died laughing! No wonder she won't say "I want to..." she thinks I am asking her to count or something! It was soooooooooo hilarious!

Rocky was like, "she must think we are always asking her to count and say ABC's, just think about it, we make her say 'I want to see ____' when she asks for a video. She must be thinking we are making her say 'I one two C _____'!"

What a riot!

Pick your battles....

Someone told me once about child raising, when they are young you have to pick your battles. If you discipline them on EVERY single little thing, you'll often spend all day in battle. I loved this advice, and I think it is great. There are days where I have to back off in SOME areas because it seems the more I discipline Hana, the more out of sorts she gets and the worse she behaves. So I sometimes have "pick your battle" days. When I would have normally not allowed her to get out toy after toy without putting some toys away, I might let that slide on "battle days". Or I might not make her go back and close the door she just opened on "battle days". You know, small things like that, which in the whole scheme of things are not really disobedience, and don't have to be knit picked on days when she and I both are on edge.

But it seems that Hana took this advice from someone too. She has chosen her battle. She is a pretty obedient child, when we tell her to do something MOST of the time she does it. However, Hana's chosen battle seems to be picking up toys. She does not want to pick up toys for some strange reason. I had to discipline her FOUR times the other day before she would pick up her refrigerator magnet alphabet letters. I didn't know she could be so hard headed. FOUR times! And the same thing has happened several times since then. Several rounds of punishment before she complies! oh man!

As a parent, you just want to say "Why? In the end you had to pick up the toys anyway, so why do we have to go through all that just to have to pick them up when it is all over!?" And if anyone could get that through a two year old's head, we would not need parenting advice now would we!? This is what parenting is all about, isn't it. They try to figure out when and where they can win the battle. If they don't test the limits they'll never know if they can win the battle, right! Someone ought to send Hana a telegram which reads...

YOUR Mommy and Daddy will ALWAYS win the battle!

She hasn't figured it out yet, but we are more hard headed than she is!

Snow and preschool!!!

We had some snow! Just a couple of days of cold weather and one morning of snow on the ground seems like all the winter we've had. And you gotta be QUICK to get out and play in the snow or it will melt, FAST. We didn't make it out to play till 9:30 and it was already melting away. But we had plenty of fun, here are some pics...

What's this white stuff???

Cheese!!!!

I made a snowman!!!

Then there is preschool. Preschool of all kinds. On Wednesdays we have Strawberry group at one of the private kindergartens where I teach English. It is for two hours, they read stories, sing songs, play with lots of toys, and play games. Hana enjoys it for the most part, although she is still getting used to structured play. Then there is our English preschool. Twice a month now we meet with a group to do about an hour of English preschool, then let the children play together while the Mom's hang out and talk. It's fun, and this last week we met at our house. Unfortuantely only one family could make it this time, but we had fun. And since it was here at our house Daddy was able to take lots of pictures for us!!! Enjoy...

We always start with an ABC chart, and place ABC cards in the right place on the chart. Then we sing the ABC song several times.

Then we color the letter for the day.

We sing songs like Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes; If You're Happy and You Know It; I'm In the Lord's Army, etc.

And we do a Bible story and craft. This day we talked about creation and we made a "creation dice" which was a cube with the days of creation represented on the six sides.

Fun fun fun!!!!!!!!