Favorite movies

A-chan's favorite movies are all Ghibli films. Particularly My Neighbor Totoro, but she likes Kiki's Delivery Service and Whisper of the Heart as well. If you've never seen a ghibli film, you have no idea the wonder and goodness that you are missing! We were introduced to Totoro by A-chan's godparents S & L and were all enchanted right away. Totoro has been a huge obsession for us all every since. Ketu and I are also fans of Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle but they are a bit too scary for A-chan right now.

The violin in Whisper of the Heart inspired our girl to buy a toy violin at the toy store the other day. We were pretty sure that she was going to zero in on the trains like usual and she did for a moment. But as we explored the store her eyes and then her fingers lit upon the SWtoys violin. It's bright red and comes with a purple bow and when you run the bow across the appropriate part of the strings it changes the music. It's awesome! That was yesterday. This morning she asked to watch WotH and when it was time for the violin scene ran to get hers to play along. I just couldn't believe it. (Of course, her playing didn't in any way resemble the song on the tv, but still...) Just before the holidays I had dragged out my tiny old violin from the closet to check on it and let her play it a bit, I have to wonder if she remembered that too. When I was three years old I took violin lessons (for a while) and I still have the tiny violin. It would be too cool if she wanted to play it when she is a little older. I don't want to force it on her or anything, though so we'll just have to see if she is interested. She already loves to play both my big and little harps. In fact, I think she gets to play them more often than I do!

The Negative World

My family are the most negative people you can imagine. You cannot say anything that they will respond to in a positive way. I want so much to protect A-chan from them and the cloud that they voluntarily carry over their heads. I don't want her to be forced to look at the world the way that they do, and I'd prefer that she never even get a glimpse of that world. To give examples of what I mean...

My aunt: "I wish people wouldn't use splenda, it messes up your brain. Everybody is hooked on splenda and it makes me so sad." (this was her response to my description of a good diabetic casserole recipe that happened to have splenda in it)

My grandmother: (in response to a supposed-to-be-heartwarming-story about the deer and fawn that lived in our front forest this summer) "I wish your windows were higher up. Deer crash through people's windows and attack them, you know."

My mother: (entertaining my uncle and grandfather by pointing out all of the stuff wrong with our house) "See, all they have to do to fix this spot is cut off this bit of wall, but they just won't do it."

My uncle: "We'd better leave now so that M doesn't die driving over the mountains tonight."

It's scary to realize just how negative they are and know that no matter what I say they will not like it. I feel like I just can't win. Is it wrong for me to not want A-chan exposed much to these people and their negativity?

Accessorizing

So the last time we visited with M, F and E they had fun dressing up in play clothes - fancy shoes and sashes and the like. I thought that A-chan might enjoy doing the same, especially since she's always trying to wear her squeaky shoes in the house (omg the noise) or wear my shoes which are way dangerous.

We went to Target on a mission to find fancy shoes that a) wouldn't be too dangerous on our tile floor and b) weren't disney or barbie. There were a few pairs of shoes that we found, but not far away was the Star Wars aisle. A-chan found a purple light saber. When given the choice between the "pretty shoes" and the "purple light sword", which were the same price, A-chan instantly chose the saber. (good girl! hehe) She then commented on the fact that she already had pretty shoes, pointing to her new squeaky sneakers.

The light saber was played with all afternoon and evening until we took it away at bedtime. Phrases like, "I like star wars" and "purple light saber, A-chan" rang through the house. When it was time to watch our evening bit of video A-chan requested Star Wars (big surprise, lol) which we watched together. She is old enough to start questioning the movie and we've been getting a big hit out of explaining it all to her, though it's all been distilled into toddler-understandable form.

The Negotiator

A-chan eating a sweet bean mochi.

A-chan will ask me to read a book to her. I will say, 'okay, one book'. She goes to her bookshelf and picks out two books, brings them back. She says, 'mata read two books, okay?' I say, 'no, just one book.' We read one book. Then she grabs the second book and says, 'mata read one book, okay?' and so on. If I agree to one more book after that she says, 'mata read three books.' I say, 'that's right.' thinking that she has been counting the ones that we've already read. A-chan then brings me 3 more books from the shelf.

Ten minutes later A-chan comes and asks, "two pretzels?" I think you can imagine how that one goes. It's gotten up to twelve pretzels...

I can imagine what she will be like at 5 and 16. It scares me. We need to practice saying 'no' every day for at least an hour to start preparing. In multiple languages. Maybe two hours a day. Because we're suckers. That's how we got 17 cats, you know. I need sugar now.

Words of the week #6

breakfast all gone, a-chan full up tummy
I put yellow bowl on my head, nice hat
that's impressive
what happened?
I like star wars
Mata, your drawing impressive
I need pretzels, please
I brought you a book, for you
Here you go, Mata, I give you blanket
yes, ma'am ( I have no idea where she learned this! It isn't something I ask her to say or that I say...)
big mama grape, little baby grape
I have pocket! Put in my pocket. (you wouldn't believe the stuff we found the next time we changed her diaper, lol)
Are you happy?
Are you happy again, Mata?
Dada, are you happy?
A-chan happy now!

R2 the hero

This morning there was a huge train crash in our house. And R2 rescued all the people and animals. They were all happy, the end.

No matter what kind of catastrophe A-chan's toys get themselves into, R2 is always there to save the day. I love it!

Today is the second time that A-chan has insisted on going into the coumadin clinic with me. The first time I took her on my own but this time Ketu came along which helped a million! She knows that I'm going to get a finger stick and my finger will hurt and it apparently really upsets her. But maybe it will help her if she sees that I don't mind it at all. Of course once we got in to the clinic she wouldn't let me hold her, oh no, she clung to Ketu like a squirmy, shy monkey.

Downtown, doggies & blue buggy

Today was grocery shopping day. You'd never have guessed that it was winter-time here, the temp was at 60 degrees before noon. After the icky cold yuck that we'd had for a couple of days walking into the sweet balmy sunshine was just too good to pass up. So we all voted for walking around downtown and grabbing a bite of lunch before the grocery shopping. As always there was an amazing mix of people, many of whom enjoyed the novelty of A-chan's shoes and the cuteness of her waving around a folding fan. one fellow remarked as he passed us on the sidewalk that he was glad to know it was the shoes making the squeaks because he'd thought it was ketu's utilikilt at first, lol!

And of course most of the dogs were very interested in her shoes. There was one surveying it's kingdom from a second story window who looked like it was just going to leap out to come and get the squeakies. The window had no screen in and luckily the owner was there to grab it and keep it from jumping out. We felt kind of bad about that, what if the owner hadn't been in the room? But it was so cute to see A-chan wave to the doggie in the window and have the owner help the dog wave back :)

One of the greatest things about grocery shopping for A-chan is the blue buggy. The one that looks like a car and is hideously difficult to steer and has no room underneath for huge diaper boxes, but that has cute little steering wheels that the baby goes gaga over. The last time she accompanied Ketu to the grocery store there wasn't one available so we promised her that she could ride in one today. We'd been hearing about how much she wanted to ride in blue buggy all week! Ketu was a great dad and searched all over the parking lot til he found one for her. Riding around the store she said, "I love blue buggy". Awwww. :)

Brand New Squeaks

The new squeaky shoes arrived this morning! She had grown out of her last two pairs (in 3 months, can you believe it?!) and we hadn't worried about it too much since she only needs to wear shoes about once a week on average. Yes, that is how often we leave the house in a usual week - scary isn't it? But the new pairs arrived today and I even planned ahead: one pair is the next size up, weeee!

As soon as she knew that there were new shoes to try on, A-chan was delighted. One of the new pairs is sneakers instead of maryjanes and thwarted her attempts to put them on "all by self!" But once they were in place she went happily squeaking here and there, round about and back again. We finally convinced her to take them back off with a team effort of reason (let's not get your new shoes dirty, okay? please take them off now...) and distraction (look at the game on the computer, doesn't that look like fun? but you have to take your shoes off first...).

The pair that she enjoyed so much today were actually defective shoes which meant that we bought them for $2.99. The defect was backwards embroidery on one shoe. It reads A2U instead of USA as the other shoe does. I think it's amusing and cute. A-chan couldn't care less and we're all happy not to spend a huge amount on shoes that she will outrgow in 3 months.

The squeaky shoe revolution happened because of the difficulty in finding shoes that don't have leather on them but are not too slippery to wear on our tile floors. We have 3 different shoe types that we rely upon: the squeaky shoe for winter and crowd conditions, the Teva for summer and backyard wear, and geta for fancy shoes (although her current pair of geta are pretty small and I need to order more of them too). A-chan absolutely loves the squeaky shoes. I think that she would wear them all the time if we let her.

Hot Stuff!

We are a household with one spicy food lover, one spicy food hater and one yet undecided but leaning towards loving spicy food maybe. I love hot and spicy food. As hot as I can get it. I am known to add cayenne pepper to everything from mac'n'cheese to soy-turkey sandwiches to tomato soup and brownies. Ketu is more conservative and prefers mostly bland to relatively mild foodstuffs. He always tries to order mild food at the Indian restaurant and regrets it horribly when he lets the older women who take our order talk him into getting medium.

So far A-chan has a penchant for hot and spicy food. *yay!* She loves salsa and will eat it to the exclusion of what one might otherwise consider to be 'real' food. When we went to the mexican restaurant recently I noticed that she was refusing her salsa. Uh-oh, I thought, it was too good to last. But after I stole her salsa bowl for my own nefarious purposes, adding lovely bunches of the hot sauce they keep on the table, she asked for it back and ate the whole thing! The next time we went to the restaurant she asked me to add the hot sauce for her.

Ketu and I both like hot mustard, though. Give us Dijon or Gulden's brown mustard and we're happy. I had held off on giving A-chan any, thinking that it might be too much for her. The other day I added tiny drops of mustard to her lunch tray as part of the design and she ate some, liked it and every bite of hot dog thereafter had to have mustard on it in order to get eaten.

Although she seemed to like spiciness in salsa and indian foods, I hadn't yet tried any asian foods with spice to them. At dinner last night she came and asked to try what I was having (Thai green curry with spice almost to the spoon-melting-point, rice and fried tofu with szechuan hot dipping sauce - which was very different from what she and Ketu were eating). I warned her that it was hot and spicy rice and did she still want to try it? Indeed she did. I gave her a small mouthful and watched her eat, then had this conversation:

me: "Was that good? Do you like spicy rice?"

A-chan: "mm-hmm, yep."

pause

A-chan: "make mouth feel better. drink punch."

me: "would you like more spicy rice?"

A-chan: "okay!"

me: "are you sure?"

A-chan: "like spicy rice, a-chan yes"

pause

A-chan: "make more punch, please?"

Words of the week #5

scuse me dada; I got to move
make tongue feel better
i love you toastie, i give you hug
wash a-chan lady, all by self!
i sit on my couch
what's wrong?
dada happy, mata happy, a-chan happy, all happy!
dada likes tofu (he'd asked for a bite of her pickle so that maybe she would eat the bit of tofu on her fork, but she switched and gave him the tofu instead...)
I love blue buggy
A-chan, Hello Kitty ride blue buggy at grocery store
tickle you? you funny!
eat cake blue
look, 'S' in book, look
got scratch, blue (she just noticed the vein on her wrist)

Dog toys

Today was our local humane society's rabies clinic where people bring their animals to get rabies shots, flea & tick treatment, nail trims and microchiping. Ketu and I have been working at the clinic as volunteers for about 3 years maybe? I'm not sure how long, but A-chan has been going almost every month since she was 2 months old. It's held in a pet store with a huge variety of pet related merchandise including dog toys that sound exactly like A-chan's squeaky shoes. As an effort to keep track of our girl we put on her two-squeak shoes (ie both feet squeak as opposed to her 'quiet' shoes where only the right foot squeaks). This proceeded to drive dogs nuts as she ran around the store and they heard toys. One poor dog had been abused by a previous owner and was scared to death of squeaky toys. Of course that was the one A-chan wanted to pet and would try to run towards! Her shoes help us to keep track of her soooo much, I don't know what we would do without them. She also wore her Thailand hat today, the one with the bells on. All in all we were the noisiest people in the whole store even over the barking dogs, lol.

A-chan has been a lot more inter-active with her dolls lately. Hello Kitty gets to wear her hats and sunglasses and had the privilege of being introduced to all of the disney princesses tonight. Hello Kitty also got to each tortilla chips at dinner, thankfully she was not offered salsa. The Totoros get hugs and kisses, a teddy bear gets to take a bath in a basket which is actually a cat bed. Her Little Tikes bike got to wear a bib the other day. The cutest thing was when she tried to explain the round-a-bout cat toy to Hello Kitty this morning and have her play with it. It's very interesting to watch and incredibly cute.

The Hug, for L :D

Han Solo wears a necklace

Gender roles are fun things, aren't they? I'm so glad that I had a girl because girls get the best of all worlds. They can play with dolls and cars, but boys only get cars. Teaching gender in our house is more of a challenge, I think, than most households.

Mata wears skirts and has long hair.
Dada wears a kilt and has long hair.
Dada generally wears more jewelry than Mata. (He wears a torc, armbands, 2 rings while I only wear one ring and some earrings though I wear more when I'm dressing fancy.)

The easiest identifiers for gender have been taken away. All that's left in the easy category is facial hair. We do, however, have very clearly defined gender roles. They are very similar to what could be termed "old fashioned". I cook. Ketu takes out the trash. I clean everything but the toilets and the litterboxes, Ketu cleans those. I weave, sew, embroider and Ketu does all the driving. But I don't want my girl to be stuck on the idea of gender defined by work roles. Even if it weren't a silly way to teach gender, most of the world has changed and that is no longer a good identifier.

So what is? How do I teach her who is a boy and who is a girl? The issue is not exactly pressing, but it will need to be addressed eventually. Though I must admit it's funny to hear her say "good girl, dada", lol.

The issue was originally brought to mind when A-chan was playing with one of her necklaces, the kind that needs the clasp opened and won't fit over the head, and not being able to wear it herself she decided it looked good on her Han Solo figure. Now that isn't bad or anything, in fact Solo does wear a necklace (well, a medal still looks like a necklace to a 2 year old...) at the end of "A New Hope". But then she stepped back and pronounced, "pretty girl".

Kiki

Here is a pic of A-chan playing Kiki from "Kiki's Delivery Service". She doesn't playact Kiki as often as she does Totoro, but when she does it's adorable. Especially when she quotes the "fat, fat, FAT" scene. I'm not sure if she actually knows what fat means. I've tried to explain it to her in terms of the cats - who is fat and who is skinny - but I didn't think it clicked. Is it wrong to worry about her self-image and body-image this early? I don't want her to be obsessed with her weight, etc. Am I being too paranoid?

Edit 01-05-06

We believe that we have proof that A-chan does indeed know the meaning of the word fat. Yesterday she went and put a huge ball in her basketball net and when it wouldn't fit through she commented, "purple ball fat". Later on in the day she found my stuffed faerie cat who admittedly is a bit portly and named him, "fat cat". So I guess we can start worrying now :)

A year ago today

It was the first day of the new year in 2006 that our lovely baby girl decided to walk for the first time. There was no preamble, no warning, she just stood up in the middle of the dining room, saw her Dada in his office and went. She walked all the way over to him through one and a half rooms! We were flabbergast and just overjoyed - we'd been very worried about her since she was never interested in crawling and didn't seem interested in walking either. And what a day she chose to show us that we needn't worry, lol. It is so incredible to think back on that moment of unexpected happiness.

This year she learned how to operate a mouse on the computer. We provided some incentive to wow us with a late holiday gift of her own computer. (Technically it's Ketu's computer that doesn't get used much, an old monitor that we already had but a new toddler keyboard and mouse and games) We've been hoping that this will save our sanity in terms of being able to do work on our computers without her enthusiastic assistance. So far the Little Bear toddler game is doing a good job of providing a mouse-learning environment. She certainly seemed to enjoy it and after some encouragement and assistance from us in the beginning started to get the hang of the mouse.

Around ten o'clock last night I decided that I wanted to watch the Rose Parade today (George Lucas, stormtroopers!!!!). Ketu was happy to try to oblige me and spent a while last night trying to get tv through the antiquated antenna on our roof. What was truly amazing is that he succeeded! We were all set to watch it today until we woke up this morning and found that the cloud cover (here last night and gone this morning) was what allowed us to get tv reception. I hurridly called my mother who was very nice to rush home from Walmart to tape the parade for me. And then Ketu ran out to get the tape in time for us to watch it over dinner. whew. So much work for so fleeting a moment, but it was worth it! I've always loved the parade and always loved Star Wars and the two together were just wonderful. A-chan loved it as well, she thought all the stormtroopers were pretty awesome and said wow about a couple of the floats. And most amazing of all...she actually sat through dinner AND ate all by herself!!!

Being a complete Star Wars fangirl and geek, I have to say, "Star wars is the best thing ever, ever, ever!! (I tried to get A-chan to say this, even offering her a cookie in return but she said 'oh, nope'.) It was so neat to see all the stormtroopers, etc. because they all come from different places and different backgrounds but they have this common interest in (dare I say love of) Star Wars and that allows them to become comrades and this is incredible to me. I loved it. I love that my baby girl wanted to be a stormtrooper for halloween. I love that she asked Ketu to be in the 501st.