Listen...

Every night before bed, we read a Bible story with Hana. Then after it has been read to her, she takes her little Bible from me and begins to flip through the pages and pretend to read as well. Tonight Daddy and I were sitting on the couch together listening to her read to us, and we were noticing some of the things she was saying and whispering to each other about it. Hana stopped reading and turned to us and said, "Listen!" and then went back to reading. We both thought that was funny (it sounds exactly like what we say to her when she isn't paying attention during Bible story time) and we giggled about it. At that point Hana stopped again and turned to us and said, "Listen!" So funny!

She said it in a kind voice but it was still funny that she has learned the clear meaning of that word, and she used it so perfectly.

Bye bye, bow-wow

Well Hana had her first death in the family tonight. For Christmas Baba gave Hana a little ceramic dog that barks when it detects motion. I wondered how long he would last. He was supposed to be perched in our entryway to announce visitors, but there was no way I was going to put him there where he would also wake up a little girl all the time. And Hana also would not have stood for bow-wow living in the entryway. For weeks she has carried this puppy around as a toy, feeding him, putting him to bed, giving him baths (in available card board boxes) and just generally loving on him like she does all her favorite dolls and stuffed toys. I was amazed that a ceramic dog was so appealing to a two year old, but she loved him. Probably partially because he was a gift from one of her favorite people. Well tonight while preparing herself and bow-wow for bed, Hana was carrying him and she tripped and fell on top of him. Mommy was at the gym, so Daddy was on hand to witness the event, and unfortunately bow-wow broke! Daddy says she was really upset that bow-wow met with the end of his life as her toy. We could glue him back together, but I think he would just meet the same fate again soon, and I would rather her not keep playing with a cermaic toy (although sturdy it was) so we are going to bury bow-wow tomorrow. Or maybe just let bow-wow disappear overnight.

Gagas and Bam...

Hana LOVES her Gagas and Bam (Gram and Gramps) and we called them this morning. It was so cute. She told them "yubs shuuuu" several times, and talked about what she's been doing, then she took off and I thought she was going to play. I was just chating with Mom and Tracy when Hana comes back YELLING, "MOMMY, GAGAS, GAGAS, GAGAS!!!!!!!!" and I look to see her carrying her family photo album that I made for her. I laminated pictures of as many of her family members as I could from our last trip to America, and tied it into a book for her. She hasn't looked at that book in a while, but she went to find it so she could see Gagas and Bam! I thought that was so cute! Then she proceeds to say, "See Gagas, See Bam!" Rocky and I were like, oh boy we're in trouble now! She wants to go see them! We weren't planning a trip back to the states until early 2008, but I sort of agree with Hana, I want to see Gagas and Bam! hmmmmmmmmm (as Hana would say when she is deep in tought)

Homemade Easter basket...

Well I'm sort of limited on my Easter supplies here in Japan and waited too long to order anything (which would have been outrageously expensive anyways) so we got creative for her Easter eggs and basket! I found a little pattern for making a basket online, and used our old milk cartons to hand make the basket. I printed out some stickers to decorate the outside of the basket. But then came the challenge of coloring the eggs. Well, I found Japanese food coloring but it is all "natural" and not very potent. The red, yellow and green did OK with coloring, but the blue and purple would NOT color the eggs at all! Oh well, we got some pretty pastels. Except for one egg that I left sitting in the green coloring for a couple of hours. It got REALLY green!

Happy Easter to my sweet baby.

Cherry Blossoms!

Our little flower girl enjoying cherry blossoms!!! (Hana's name means flower so we try to get her picture with flowers as much as possible!)


Here is Hana's very first Cherry Blossom season, she was 7 months old!!!


And here is last year!


And again this year... she has grown so much!

Just some stuff before I forget...

I am trying to keep a running log of the things she is learning and happenings, so today I have time during her nap to type and I'm just gonna try to remember all the stuff she has been doing lately.

I am trying to get her to begin to learn phonics but she is completely uninterested. She has a poster on the wall in the bath with the ABC's on it and she has them all memorized, so I thought maybe it was getting boring just identifying the letters so we can start learning what the letters say. She looks at me like I am a complete idiot when I try to get her to repeat that "B says buh". I guess it hasn't sunk in that B is more than just a B, it stands for a sound. Oh well, I'll keep trying!

Our car can seat three in the front and three in the back and the middle seats will adjust on a sliding rail, so that they can be pushed back. This means that Hana can sit in the front with us, and her seat is just slid back for safety (so the airbags won't get in case of a crash). Until now we've always had her in the back but recently we took a short day trip with friends and we put Hana up front with us so our friends could be in the back with their child. She loved it and we were surprised to enjoy having her up front with us in the middle. So we've left her there, and it is amazing to see how much she observes as we drive around and how much she knows. We didn't know that she knew the names of so many shops or could identify so many letters and numbers, etc. This girl is one smart little cookie.

She is speaking English almost exclusively with us and other English speakers and switching to Japanese with Japanese speakers. I am trying to figure out if this is just a learned/conditioned response or if she knows the difference between the two langauges. I don't think she knows that they are two totally different languages yet, although she does know that most everything in her world has two names. It's kind of hard to explain why I think she doesn't totally understand the difference yet, but it is still amazing what her mind is doing with the two languages. I have read that they don't consciously know the difference until the age of four. I am just soooo relieved that I have been able to condition her to respond to me in English most of the time. Many of her words that were automatically coming out in Japanese EVERYTIME, are now coming out in English OR both. Like she'll say, "Mommy, mite, look look" or something like that. Now we'll throw another kink in the formula when she starts going to preschool three days a week in May! UGH!

When either Rocky and I turn on the "oh boy your in trouble" tone, her response has become so cute. She'll immediately look up at us and in the sweet voice say, "Ok Mommy!" And stop what she is doing. That little "OK" sounds so sweet.

We borrowed a Little Einstein DVD from friends and she LOVES this show. I downloaded a season of Dora on iTunes but I'll probably be downloading Little Einstein sometime soon too. This show is so educational, in Art, Music and Science. I am amazed that she loves it so much, and it teaches majorly big words, like metamorphosis and metropolitan and stuff. She's gonna sound like a 40 year old at 4! No wonder kids these days blow me away with their vocabulary. They learn it from CARTOONS!

Right now in Japan is election season and one of the ways they campaign is to drive around in vans with big signs on them, and a loud speaker. They wave at everyone and yell their name a million times a minute through that speaker. Talk about distrurbing the peace. Anyways, she always asks "What's that?" when she sees them and Mommy always tells her, "Those are politicians, they are campaigning." So today we were driving around and saw one of those vans and she said "Mommy, ticians!" I've been teaching her to wave at them cause if you do the person yelling on the loud speaker gets all excited and thanks you for your support and everyone riding along waving gets so excited too and they wave real big and smile! It's funny to watch and it must make their day after so many people ignore them all day long. She won't wave with me yet, maybe tomorrow!

She is GREAT at saying, "Thank you" "You're welcome" "please" and other polite little things. She is so polite and we didn't really work hard to make her say these things, she just does it.

I'm sure there has to be more but that is all I can think of right now!

OH wow!!!

This is a gorgeous picture, our friend took this weekend at the wedding. WOW, it is so precious!!!!!!!!!

Our little comedian...

Hana has a Veggie Tales DVD she got for Christmas that is a sing-along. She loves watching and one of our favorite songs on it is Pizza Angel. For all you out there who don't do Veggie Tales or don't know this song, basically Larry is lamenting over the fact that the pizza he ordered is late, very late, and he's craving it. The chorus goes like this...

Pizza Angel please come to me
Tomato sauce and cheese so gooey.
Pizza Angel I'm on my knees...

and so forth! Hana loves it. Well the other night we were going to treat ourselves to dinner out and Hana immediately started yelling "Pizza! Pizza!" as we were headed out the door. Daddy and I had already chosen the restaurant and we knew they had a little pizza on the menu, but it was not our normal pizza restaurant. So we told her she could have pizza and she must have assumed we were going to that restaurant. When we pulled into the parking lot of a different restaurant, from the back seat we heard this lament...

OH NO! Pizza Angel!!!!!!!!!

What a nut!

Then last night we got personal entertainment at dinner. We had Afureru worship and the staff always goes out to eat together afterwards. After Hana finished eating she was playing around the table with everyone and she grabbed the two little menu stands on the table and propped them up on the water pitcher. She proceeded to stand behind it and begin to babble away. We soon realized she was pretending to read a Bible story like we do for children's time at church. We always have the picture posters with the story on the back. She was even switching out the two menus as she read the story, pretending to move to the next poster and next portion of the store. It was so cute! Here is a picture...



She had the whole table entertained. Before it was over she was actually calling out menu items as a part of her story. What a riot!

Note to self...

When teaching your daughter how to say "gas station" be sure to emphasize the "G"!!!

Video

I got some video of Hana tonight. She was telling me a HUGE story and speaking mostly in Japanese in one video. There are only a few recognizable words, but she is telling me some story about putting something inside of something small. The other video is of her speaking some English, she was mostly protesting to Daddy singing anything which she does sometimes these days! She's funny, sometimes she wants us to sing and sometimes she doesn't and when she doesn't want us to she REALLY doesn't want us to! Anyways, here is the link to snapfish.com. You have to join to see them but it is free...

http://www1.snapfish.com/share/p=19941173014034459/l=245608412/g=9950766/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

She LOVES to be wrapped up inside our coats, and she puts her babies inside her clothes and carries them around the same way. You'll see that in the video.

The little character that poots...

In our city, there is a city bus system and they have a little character painted on the side of their bus. He looks like this...



As we drive around town, every time Hana sees him she giggles and says "Mommy, boy pooting!!!" She must thing the little shadow below him represents gas! I think it is incredibly smart that she came up with that on her own but also hilarious!

What a riot!

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!!!!!!!!

A long awaited update...

Well, I finally put aside some time today to download pics off of the camera and put them here for y'all to see!!! She's growing up so fast, she is 2 years and 5 months this week! I can not believe it. I was looking back through all her albums on the adoption website the other day and times has flown by so fast, but it seems unreal to me that she was ever that small.





She has gotten so independent. Poor thing gets so frustrated because she wants to do things by herself but can't yet! And Mommy is the bad guy when I force her to let me help her (like when she needs to go teetee and get can't her pants down and get up on the potty by herself). It's funny but frustrating at the same time. But Mommy really loves the fact that she is so determined to do things herself! That's a great attitude to have! She has mastered putting on her shoes by herself, and can sometimes put on pants. She is pretty good at undressing alone. But Mommy's favorite part, she eats all by herself now!!! Next step, making it herself? (that's year away right!)





Her vocabulary is beyond what I can keep up with now. She is picking up lots of words a day, and sentences are getting longer and longer. There are days I think her English is stronger and days it seems like all she speaks is Japanese. I bet that means there is a pretty good balance. Her knowledge of the alphabet is amazing and can identify them randomly if you point to any letter anywhere, and she recognizes a few words (because of a video she watches). We continue to do preschool, and lots of other activities for learning. She loves to learn and that is great! She sang along with me on the ABC's the other night in the bath.





Here's the pics for ya, enjoy!

Gig Em Aggies!!!!!!! (a cheerleader for Mommy's college! Thanks Gram and Gramps)

A wedding we attended recently. The bride was name "pretty, pretty" according to Hana!

Let's go home Daddy!
Hana had to have an apron and head cover for her preschool class this week so Mommy made them for her. It is sooooooo sweet when she wears it. This is Hana baby doing the dishes for Mommy!

Vocabulary EXPLOSION!!!

This little girl is talking up a storm. And so much of it is in English, this Mommy has finally put her doubt about whether she'd be totally bilingual to rest. She is speaking a whole lot in both languages, and is beginning to be able to seperate the two languages if told to say something in one or the other!

She is so hilarious though. Get what happened the other day. We were on our way to eat with some friends. She was asking if they had arrived and I said, "no, nobody is here yet." Well lately Hana loves the word nobody, she'll open the door to an empty room and say "nobody?" and then loudly proclaim that nobody is there! Well our friends were not at the restaurant but other people were here and there, so she asked again, and I said, "nobody is here yet" and she said, "Mommy! No, No, Yesbody!" This inteligent little muchkin made up her own word for "somebody" and I think it is just about the most creative thing for such a little mind to come up with! So now Rocky and I have decided to replace the word somebody with yesbody in our speach!!! LOL! and now, when she sees babies, she says, "babybody!" What a riot!

She is really beginning to express so much and it is so fun. I especially love that when I have been away from her for a little while likes to try to tell me what happened while I was gone. So fun to try to figure out what she is saying and she gets so excited when I understand!

She is becoming such a loving affectionate child. She randomly tells us she loves us. She sometimes runs to us and wants a hug, and when we pick her up she wraps those little arms around our neck and tightly as she can and squeezes. She scrunches up her face when she does it too! So cute! she is also saying "I missed you" when we've been away.

She is also a very helpful, very generous little girl. She loves to help out, so we have no problems with disobedience when we go to the store or out in public. I just get her to help me, gathering up groceries or whatever. She loves it! and she loves to help me wash dishes or clean up the room. She wants to help so much, sometimes I have to ask her not to, because it can make the job more difficult for Mommy sometimes.

So very very precious!!!!!!

Watching Mommy and Daddy sing...

Our friend June caught another great shot of Hana. This is Hana watching us sing. I saw June taking this picture from the stage and thought it might turn out cute, and it is SOOOOO adorable. I know I am Mommy and I am partial, but it is amazing to me how a two year old will sit and watch a concert and take in all that is going on. She is especially observant and it shows in her personality! It is so fun watching this little girl grow up.

Christmas Eve 2006!

Today at church was a blast! Hana was also ADORABLE! (did you expect any less) Thanks to Gram and Gramps (Gagas and Bam) for the BEAUTIFUL dress that everyone thought looked gorgeous on our baby girl. Enjoy the pics...

Reading a book with Uncle Paul

you know what... I don't really want you to take my picture

I'd really really prefer that we not take my picture right now, I'm SLEEPY!

Ok, did I not make myself clear, I DON'T want my picture taken...

I SAID DON'T TAKE MY PICTURE!!!

Unfortunately we waited till after the service and lunch to try to take her picture and she didn't want to stop playing AND was getting sleepy. So it was not a great success, oh well!

I will happily take a picture if Mommy will hold me!

And I am REALLY happy to take a picture with Mommy AND Daddy!

My good buddy Mia looks almost as cute as me! ;)