Philip, now totally versed in stay-home-dadness, went to get Yuki from a nap the other day and noticed the hair on the side of her head was flipped up. Doesn’t seem like anything to blog about, but Yuki doesn’t have much hair yet.
Things like this are exciting to some of us.
We are amazed sometimes when other babies a lot younger than Yuki have full-on pigtails. You might think her lack of hair is from the white gene, since most Asian babies have an abundance of hair but no, it is in fact my gene.
Mimi at age 1. She had just spent five days in the hospital.
Don't worry, she's fine now.
Yes, we did take our shoes off before getting on a picnic blanket.
I always envied my friends with thick straight black hair, for that is the pride of Japanese women—long, shiny, Pantene hair with which you can lure men. Well, at 2nd grade I was not thinking “luring men” per se, but I started taking ballet at age 6 and couldn’t get my hair into a bun, let alone a pretty ponytail. In my school (Japanese Catholic School) if your hair touched your shoulders, you had to put it in pigtails, and if it was longer still, you had to braid it. Needless to say I lusted after braids. The teacher would come around and check your hair length and I used to shrug my shoulders to try to get my hair to touch them. So in third grade, when I finally got my hair to be that long, I let it grow.
Totally didn't care that everybody else was wearing their hair short.
By 5th grade, I had hair down to my mid back. But my friends used to laugh at me because my braids were half as thick as theirs. When I came to the U.S. people (hair dressers in particular) commented on how nice and straight and thick my hair was. I wished they had said this around my 5th grade friends (some of whom are still my friends, like the girl who is next to me in the photo above) but no such luck.
So Yuki’s bed head was a big deal. She now has hair long enough to be messy. I will not give her a Dorothy Hammill hair cut. Though I will probably give her a Christopher Robin hair cut.
In non-hair news ... Within a week of Yuki turning one, she started doing a bunch of new stuff as if she was just waiting until her first birthday to try it all. She has been in the phase of emptying every container she can get her hands on but now she is showing interest in filling them back up which, I’m sure you can guess, delights me to no end. She still empties things far more than she fills them but hey it’s a start.
She also likes to put things on her head. Go know.
Then she started napping longer. Well, this has happened once or twice, but during the past couple weeks, she has taken more naps that last longer than 45 minutes. Sometimes even two hours like a regular baby, which means Philip has been able to shower (thank GOD!) and get some stuff done. Then she started climbing the stairs. Thankfully, she doesn’t do it on a regular basis yet, but she has figured out how to transfer weight onto a foot that is placed higher than her stomach. She climbed 4 or 5 of them in a row …
... then looked back, then turned and started pulling all of the “things that need to go upstairs” off of the steps. Guess we have to find a new spot. We installed a gate at that top of the stairs but still haven’t been able to find a gate that fits our banister at the bottom of the stairs so we now have to do that—or we’ll just watch her closely, but WHO HAS THE TIME TO DO THAT?
Then the other day, when I returned home from work, Philip brought her into the kitchen to greet me and she looked at me and said, “MAMA!” Like she meant it. Philip and I gasped—I almost wept. Every day when I come home, Philip yells, “MAMA!” and brings Yuki and Trixie to the door. He used to come running and sliding in with Trixie B.Y. (before Yuki) but now this is the new format. It’s the best. Anyway, Yuki just put it together at that moment that what he has been yelling is my title. (It was less dramatic, yet perhaps just as moving version of the “wa-wa” moment in The Miracle Worker when Helen Keller figures out that there are names for things. But without the water pump.)
Oh yeah, and she walked.
This is the little jig she does that sometimes turns into walking.
She went from squatting to standing, then took about three steps to the next piece of furniture. This was the same morning when she climbed the stairs. She has been walking from furniture to furniture since. She can now push a walker properly without lying face down on the floor because she leaned on it too much without moving her feet.
This little push toy is quickly becoming an ankle buster. Fun!
It is true that the moment your kid takes the first step is miraculous. They just somehow figure it out and it’s the most amazing thing to watch. She now does the Yuki Dance of plié and relevé without holding onto things. In six months, I will teach her to tendu. Then in two years, she will be at Pacific Northwest Ballet. I can keep going here and say, “and in 17 years, she will be drinking black coffee and smoking non-stop,” but I’m not going to. La, la, la…
Also, Yuki is now done with formula. This was our doing and not hers. The one book I haven’t chucked, which is the food book, suggested we switch her to cow’s milk at around age one so we did. And she loves it. THAT was monumental. Mostly financially, because formula costs like $25 a can, which only lasts about a week. We did discover the knock-off Target brand, which was about $12 and kept saying, “are we bad parents?” but didn’t stop buying it.
She’s also mostly done with the bottle. She only has a small bottle at bed time and now mostly eats what we eat, and drinks milk or water or tea from one of her 800 sippy cups (not sure how we ended up with so many). This was all in the last two weeks. What will she do between now and the summer? Trixie is preparing by staking out her safe zones now.
Safe. But for how long?
Things like this are exciting to some of us.
Mimi at age 1. She had just spent five days in the hospital.Don't worry, she's fine now.
I didn’t have long enough hair to tie it into pigtails until I was in 3rd grade. Okay, that might be because my mother kept trying to give me the Dorothy Hammill haircut. So it may very well be that I had the ABILITY to grow hair. But I definitely didn’t have much hair in kindergarten.
Yes, we did take our shoes off before getting on a picnic blanket.I always envied my friends with thick straight black hair, for that is the pride of Japanese women—long, shiny, Pantene hair with which you can lure men. Well, at 2nd grade I was not thinking “luring men” per se, but I started taking ballet at age 6 and couldn’t get my hair into a bun, let alone a pretty ponytail. In my school (Japanese Catholic School) if your hair touched your shoulders, you had to put it in pigtails, and if it was longer still, you had to braid it. Needless to say I lusted after braids. The teacher would come around and check your hair length and I used to shrug my shoulders to try to get my hair to touch them. So in third grade, when I finally got my hair to be that long, I let it grow.
Totally didn't care that everybody else was wearing their hair short.By 5th grade, I had hair down to my mid back. But my friends used to laugh at me because my braids were half as thick as theirs. When I came to the U.S. people (hair dressers in particular) commented on how nice and straight and thick my hair was. I wished they had said this around my 5th grade friends (some of whom are still my friends, like the girl who is next to me in the photo above) but no such luck.
So Yuki’s bed head was a big deal. She now has hair long enough to be messy. I will not give her a Dorothy Hammill hair cut. Though I will probably give her a Christopher Robin hair cut.
In non-hair news ... Within a week of Yuki turning one, she started doing a bunch of new stuff as if she was just waiting until her first birthday to try it all. She has been in the phase of emptying every container she can get her hands on but now she is showing interest in filling them back up which, I’m sure you can guess, delights me to no end. She still empties things far more than she fills them but hey it’s a start.
She also likes to put things on her head. Go know.
... then looked back, then turned and started pulling all of the “things that need to go upstairs” off of the steps. Guess we have to find a new spot. We installed a gate at that top of the stairs but still haven’t been able to find a gate that fits our banister at the bottom of the stairs so we now have to do that—or we’ll just watch her closely, but WHO HAS THE TIME TO DO THAT?Then the other day, when I returned home from work, Philip brought her into the kitchen to greet me and she looked at me and said, “MAMA!” Like she meant it. Philip and I gasped—I almost wept. Every day when I come home, Philip yells, “MAMA!” and brings Yuki and Trixie to the door. He used to come running and sliding in with Trixie B.Y. (before Yuki) but now this is the new format. It’s the best. Anyway, Yuki just put it together at that moment that what he has been yelling is my title. (It was less dramatic, yet perhaps just as moving version of the “wa-wa” moment in The Miracle Worker when Helen Keller figures out that there are names for things. But without the water pump.)
Oh yeah, and she walked.
This is the little jig she does that sometimes turns into walking.She went from squatting to standing, then took about three steps to the next piece of furniture. This was the same morning when she climbed the stairs. She has been walking from furniture to furniture since. She can now push a walker properly without lying face down on the floor because she leaned on it too much without moving her feet.
This little push toy is quickly becoming an ankle buster. Fun!It is true that the moment your kid takes the first step is miraculous. They just somehow figure it out and it’s the most amazing thing to watch. She now does the Yuki Dance of plié and relevé without holding onto things. In six months, I will teach her to tendu. Then in two years, she will be at Pacific Northwest Ballet. I can keep going here and say, “and in 17 years, she will be drinking black coffee and smoking non-stop,” but I’m not going to. La, la, la…
Also, Yuki is now done with formula. This was our doing and not hers. The one book I haven’t chucked, which is the food book, suggested we switch her to cow’s milk at around age one so we did. And she loves it. THAT was monumental. Mostly financially, because formula costs like $25 a can, which only lasts about a week. We did discover the knock-off Target brand, which was about $12 and kept saying, “are we bad parents?” but didn’t stop buying it.
She’s also mostly done with the bottle. She only has a small bottle at bed time and now mostly eats what we eat, and drinks milk or water or tea from one of her 800 sippy cups (not sure how we ended up with so many). This was all in the last two weeks. What will she do between now and the summer? Trixie is preparing by staking out her safe zones now.
Safe. But for how long?
Comments
...and now I might start it again. YAY! FOR MEANINGFUL MILESTONES!!!!
Also: I can't get over how freaking CUTE that photo of you in kindergarten is. Do you want to go on a picnic right now?
There's a slight chance I maybe might be in the North West this summer!! I'll keep you posted.
Love,
Erika