House of Hsus

Red Wagon Farm

2011-10-07T06:55:00.000-04:00

Today was another Friday that I had off, and we went to Red Wagon Farm for their Family Fun Friday. There was a hay pile for jumping, a corn maze and a wagon ride. We also visited the market to get popcorn and some pumpkins.

Taiko's stuffie

2011-10-03T06:48:00.000-04:00

A couple of months ago Simi asked me to sew with her, so I got a book and after making a pin cushion and a case for her iPod, I decided to make a small stuffed animal for Taiko.

Taiko in the kitchen

2011-10-02T06:50:00.000-04:00

Taiko loves the kitchen. Especially opening the cabinet with tupperware and getting to our drawer of plastic plates and bowls.

Yuta & Taiko and Taipan & Gizmo

2011-10-02T06:43:00.000-04:00

Gizmo loves to curl up in blankets, and jumped on the chance to take a nap with Taipan on the couch.

Taiko & Yuta hanging out that same morning:

Taiko finds Gizmo's food

2011-10-02T06:33:00.000-04:00

This is the first time one of our kids has gone after pet food. We've had cats since before Taipan was born, but he and Taisim didn't have much interest in the cat food or water. However, Taiko thinks it's kinda fun. When he got there, I debated get him away from the food or get the camera? Camera won of course ... then I got him as soon as he grabbed a fistful of dog food.

More Taiko

2011-09-30T06:27:00.000-04:00

Cute pics Yuta took of Taiko drinking some water.

And me giving Taiko a quick bath in the kitchen sink. I'm not sure why, but he's not so much into baths anymore. One evening he was playing with the faucet water so I took the chance to do a quick fun bath.

Gizmo

2011-09-18T06:23:00.000-04:00

This is our new dog, Gizmo. He is a six year old Jack Russell Terrier mix. Our friend fostered him for a week and raved about him, and I had been waiting for the right time to get a dog, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. He fits right in, and is terrific.

Taiko Exploring

2011-09-17T06:14:00.000-04:00

Taiko has found lots of interesting things lately - the refrigerator, a drawer full of cups, bowls and plates and most recently the stairs! He is fast and getting more comfortable exploring further away from us. We have to be on our toes now.

Park Day!

2011-09-16T06:18:00.000-04:00

I am trying out a new work schedule where I work four 10 (or more) hour days, and have Fridays off. It worked out that the first week of this schedule coincided with a park day organized by one of our homeschool friends. We met up with friends, then Simi went home with a friend of hers, while one of Taipan's friends came home with us to play. We all also went to Menchie's for some yummy frozen yogurt.

Taiko was also there, only in the sling, so he missed out on pictures.

Another Tea Party

2011-09-10T06:06:00.000-04:00

Taipan & Taisim wanted to make food today. We started out making peanut butter toast and sandwiches, and then they got out some cookbooks to make recipes, which turned into wanting to make food and drinks for a tea party.

This tea party featured Danish Do's and Jawa Jive Smoothies from the Star Wars cookbook, and a princess cake, lady bug strawberries and smoothies from the princess and tea party cookbooks.

Star Wars Cookies & Heart Cupcakes

2011-07-29T14:52:00.001-04:00

Taipan choose another recipe from his Star Wars cookbook for us to try. As it turned out, my mom had given us some Star Wars cookie cutters, so we put them to use.

Taisim also wanted to make chocolate cupcakes in our heart-shapped muffin pan, so we did that too (the after wasn't so pretty - I put too much batter in, and the cupcakes overflowed and lost their heart shapes for the most part):

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Swimming!

2011-07-26T14:46:00.000-04:00

We've been swimming quite a bit the past couple of weeks, both in our neighborhood pool and a friend's backyard above ground pool. Both are a lot of fun. I like the neighborhood one because it's warmer and both kids can touch, but while our friend's pool can be quite chilly, it's nice to have a pool to ourselves and to swim with friends.

I'll edit with pics from the iphones later, but this is what I have for now:

Tea & Bead Shop

2011-07-23T14:38:00.003-04:00

I wanted to do something special with my mom during her last weekend in Ohio before she drove back to Orlando for a few months, so we went to lunch at Miss Molly's Tea Room, a place that Simi and I really enjoy.

After lunch we walked down down the block to The Potomac Bead Company. The three of us made bracelets, and Simi also made a necklace.

Taiko bouncing back

2011-07-21T14:32:00.002-04:00

These pics were taken with the first week or so after Taiko was released from the hospital.

I don't know if it has anything to do with the surgery or not, but within a few days of our getting home he started wanting to sample a lot of new foods. He's mostly interested in ones that he can hold and feed to himself. And he's not so interested in swallowing anything yet, but he clearly enjoys biting and chewing and trying out new tastes.

At our neighborhood playground:

In our house, playing on the floor and eating a pretzel:

Chewing on a red pepper:

Post-op update

2011-07-20T17:20:00.004-04:00

I waiting too long to finish my posts with the details on Taiko's hospital stay - it's all a blur now and I can't quite remember the exact timing of some of the things after Sunday. So, I'll have to summarize.

On the Tuesday following the surgery his second chest tube was removed. I think this was also when the pacer wires were removed, but that could have happened on Monday. Same thing for the femeral artery line - I think it came out on Monday, but am not 100% sure.

On Tuesday evening we were moved from the PICU to a regular recovery room. The only thing Taiko had at this point was an IV in his left leg, but it was "just in case". He was transitioned to oral medications - Lasix as a diuretic and regular ol' children's Tylenol for pain. He also had a pulse-ox monitor on his toe (very non-invasive) and leads taped on his chest, and we had a portable box that measured his heart rate (also non-invasive).

We only spent one night here! Our cardiologist stopped by around 10am on Wednesday morning and said we could be discharged. Woo hoo. Less than a week after the surgery and we could go home - it was a nice surprise. We were hoping to be discharged on Thursday, but were prepared in case they wanted us to stay until Friday. Taiko just had to get an echo done, and at 3:45pm we were on our way out of the hospital.

Coming home was nice - I missed Taisim and Taipan terribly. Taiko was happy to see them too. The first few days at home he was a little uncomfortable and clingy, and I was worried that he wasn't peeing enough. But by Saturday he seemed to turn a corner - more energy, more eating, and more pee.

We had a follow up appointment with the surgical team yesterday, and they removed his last bandages and the one suture that was not dis-solvable, and they said he's doing great. We have a follow up with the cardiologist next Friday, and he'll get another echo and then hopefully we're set for a while.

Tomorrow will be two weeks since the surgery and he is nearly 100%.

While he was in the hospital he cut his second tooth (also on the bottom). His sleeping pattern is different than it used to be - my guess it was due to change anyway. Now that I'm back to work we'll see if he falls back into our old pattern, or sticks with his new one.

The last thing I want to say is a big thank you to all of our friends and family that helped us over the past two weeks. My mom, Yuta's parents, my sister, Kathy, John, Erin, Hannah, Jeff, Chi Chi, Kimberly, Allie all helped with Taipan and Taisim and/or came to visit at the hospital and/or brought food. And then a whole host of folks that were providing support via email, video chats, facebook and texts. Not to mention the folks at my work and Yuta's that covered for us and went easy on us both leading up to and during the time of the surgery. We couldn't have done this without everyone's support.

I can't even begin to explain how light and relieved I feel now that we're past the surgery. Looking back on it I feel like it was just a blip - one that seemed insurmountable a month ago, but gets smaller every day.

Update on Taiko

2011-07-11T06:16:00.006-04:00

Today is day #4 post-surgery, and Taiko is progressing pretty well. We had a little bit of a blood pressure scare the day after surgery, but that got sorted out by that evening, and once he went on a pacer and got a blood transfusion he stabilized.

I'm going to recap a bit of detail here to help me remember what's happened.

Surgery, Thursday, 07/07/2011:

Taiko went in the OR at 7:15am. There was a wonderful nurse practitioner who met us every hour or so to give us an update. By 12:30 or so the surgery was complete without any complications and we met with the surgeon (Dr. Kouretas). He was then moved to a PICU room and we got to see him around 2pm (it took a while to get him moved and have all of his tubes and monitors hooked up). When we first saw him he had a breathing tube hooked up to a ventilator, a band around his head to measure oxygen (I think), two chest tubes, an Arterial line in his right arm, a catheter, pacing wires (not hooked up to anything), an IV in his left ankle, an IV in his left arm, and an IJ line in his neck. He was still very sedated from the anesthesia, but was also on morphine and versed. For his heart he was on dopamine and milrinone.

Before the end of the day he had a tube inserted through his nose to his stomach in order to help keep it empty. Thursday night things seemed to be going as expected.

Day #1 post-op, Friday, 07/08/2011

Early morning Friday his blood pressure (taken from the arterial line in his left arm) dropped very low, and his heart was also showing an irregular beat. The irregular heart beat is not uncommon after all after heart surgery. The low blood pressure was worrisome. To better gauge his pressure they put a cuff on him to measure blood pressure. The cuff reading was much much higher than the art line pressure. This was confusing, but because the cuff reading was so strong, they took a wait and see approach on his blood pressure, and for the irregular heart rhythm they put him on a pacer (which is an external pace maker) that would dictate the rhythm and pace of his heart beats.

There was talk of maybe removing his breathing tube, but mid-morning they decided not to. They wanted to make sure they had the blood pressure situation figured out and stabilized. During this mid-morning period Taiko was coming in and out of sedation and was a wiggle worm - we had to help restrain him so that his tubes remained in place. By noon he was sedated again, and the plan was to re-wire his arterial line to see if maybe a kink there was causing the low blood pressure reading. They re-wired it, and it was still giving a low reading, so the next plan was to put a line in his femoral artery in his leg. We had to leave the room while they did that, and less than an hour later they were done, and when we got back to the room we could see that the femoral artery bp was showing low. So now we had three different readings - one from the art line in his arm, one from the fem line in his leg, and one from the cuff - and they were all very different. The art & fem lines were low, but not as low as it had been in the early morning. The major result of the low blood pressure was that his urine output was way down.

The plan was to give him a blood transfusion, and check this adrenal gland & thyroid function in the event that something was off and contributing. As soon as the transfusion was going his blood pressure rose, and it didn't drop at all after that and his urine output picked up, so problem solved! It turns out that his thyroid function was fine, though the adrenal might have been a little low.

Day #2 post-op, Saturday, 07/09/2011
Overnight was great, so he was extubated. He was instead given a cannula which was attached to oxygen in the wall so that they could regulate the amount of oxygen and the rate of the flow.

I got to hold Taiko for a little bit after his breathing tube was removed. He was squirmy and kept trying to get the the cannula out of his nose and was having a hard time settling. We thought that it might help him if I held him for a bit, but it didn't seem to have too much of an effect, and it was very hard to keep his feet out of the tubes and wires, so we put him back in the bed after 40 mins or so. It was so great to hold him again, even though it was brief.

Day #3 post-op, Sunday, 07/10/2011
This day started out great - Taiko seemed like a different person. His eyes were open and he was focusing and tracking people when they walked by. He even gave a couple of little smiles. And while I hate to hear him cry, he even did that around 3:30am. The amount of painkillers he had were down too - overnight and in the morning he was much more calme without medication than he had been the previous two days.

Lots of good stuff happened:

his external pacemaker was disconnected, and an EKG confirmed that his heart was in sinus rhythm
his catheter was removed
he came off of the high flow oxygen and put him on regular oxygen
they will take him off high flow oxygen and put him on the regular oxygen
the left chest tube was ready to come out, but that was postponed in the hopes that both chest tubes could be removed at the same time the following day
he started nursing again, though that didn't happen right away

I first tried to nurse him in the morning, and he wasn't very interested - he was still on the high flow oxygen, and had the chest tubes in, and I think it was hard for us to get comfortable, and for him to figure it out with the oxygen flow. Around mid-morning he got a feeding tube inserted through his nose and he got breast milk through the tube. This was an awful process because it kept getting coiled up in his throat. He had two x-rays to make sure it went to his stomach. Watching him through this, and the in and out with the breathing tube really put me over the edge -and it took a while for Taiko to settle after this too. He was more alert than he had been, and it was obvious when he was in discomfort. He got medication to help, but was very sensitive to noises, and the slightest sound would disturb him.

By 10pm he was trying to reach for me to pick him up, so I got settled in a chair and the nurses helped him get settled in my lap, and he wanted to nurse, so we did! Taiko did not want to stop - it was almost all comfort nursing, though I think he was drinking a bit too. I asked the nurses if I could get a bigger bed so I could lay down with him, which they did. By midnight we were both in bed, trying to get some sleep! Slowly getting back to normal.

Day #4 post-op, Monday 07/11/2011
His left chest tube came out today, and Taiko was taken off oxygen, and his feeding tube was removed since he was nursing again. He started to be weaned off of the milrinone and the dopamine. By the end of the day he was off dopamine, and the next morning he was off the milrinone.

Fourth of July

2011-07-06T09:28:00.004-04:00

We had some friends over to celebrate the 4th this year - about 20 people were here (and some close friends were not able to come due to being sick, and they were missed dearly); there was some Rock Band, a little bit of Bananagrams, some video games, and a lot of running around outside and playing in the basement.

About an hour or two before dusk Muriel, Storm and Taipan helped me bring out the sparklers, smoke bombs and other goodies:

And right around dusk we decided to get things started. Yuta was again our master of ceremonies. We did a lot of smoke makers first, then some noise makers, and then sparklers:

When it got dark it was time to get down to business. My mom picked up some fireworks on her drive from Florida to Ohio. We had three boxes of them, and I wasn't quite sure what to expect, and they were pretty awesome. I took some video, but I don't have any pictures to share. They were louder than I expected, so I was a little nervous that one of our neighbors might not be too happy with us, but the only neighbors we saw were ones that wanted to come over and see them.

I do have pictures of the kids laying down while waiting to watch them:

And my main squeeze, in between lighting the fireworks:

Fashions for Sparkle

2011-07-06T09:20:00.002-04:00

Simi used the scraps from Taiko's blanket to design fashions for her unicorn, Sparkle, and have a fashion show for us. There were 3-4 different designs - these are pictures of one of them:

Taiko's Blanket

2011-07-06T09:12:00.004-04:00

In preparation for Taiko's surgery I decided to make him a cozy blanket tohave with us during the hospital stay. Last year I made Taipan & Taisim fleece no-sew tie blankets, and they've been awesome to have around, so I picked up some fleece to make one for Taiko.

Taiko loved playing with the fabric:

And all three kids humored me by posing on the blanket for a picture when it was all done:

Dancing & Battling

2011-07-01T14:13:00.003-04:00

I got the camera out last night to take a picture of Simi doing a new spin, and Taipan had the idea of punching her while she danced .... only it's not as bad as it sounds. He thought it would make for a cool picture for him to pretend to battle her while she was dancing, and if she feigned getting hurt and had a reaction for the camera. They were both giggling too much to do the pretend injury part, but Taipan threw some nice slo-mo punches, and Simi practiced her new spin.

And no one is hurt - smiling together afterward (taipan still in character with his punch):

Colored Tea

2011-07-01T14:12:00.002-04:00

Check out the pink & blue tea the kids made - they also found out that they enjoyed dipping cherries in the tea!

Bunny

2011-07-01T14:09:00.002-04:00

For the better part of May & June we had a bunny that was living in our yard - we would see it almost daily nibbling on clover in our backyard, and sometimes we'd spot it in the front too (at least we think it was the same bunny). We all liked watching it eat and hop around.

Magic School Bus Space

2011-07-01T14:05:00.002-04:00

A while ago I bought some Magic School Bus kits, and last week we decided to get out the space one. The kids had been talking a lot of a character one a show that is based on a constellation, so it seemed a good time. I think this is something they would enjoy better a few years from now, but we had a lot of fun playing with the planets, and using the flashlight to look at the different stages of the moon. It came with a star chart that was very difficult to read, but Yuta saved the day by quickly getting a iPad app to look at different constellations.

Pineapple cake

2011-07-01T14:02:00.003-04:00

Taipan & Simi like an app on the iPad called Cake Doodle. A couple of weeks ago there was an update with a new recipe for a pineapple cake (among others). Taipan thought it sounded good and wanted to make one, so we got the ingredients and made one. It didn't look too pretty (it stuck to the pan and crumbled up), but it was DELICIOUS! Definitely something we'll make again - it happened to be Father's Day weekend, so this was also our Father's Day dessert.

Little Drummer Boy

2011-07-01T13:55:00.002-04:00

Taiko loves to play with drums sticks. Here he is helping Yuta with Rock Band.

Ant Farm

2011-07-01T13:52:00.002-04:00

I ordered an ant farm online, along with a tube of 25 ants. They're pretty cool to watch, but started dying off sooner than I expected. We got them on June 2nd, and we still have some alive, but they won't be for long - the info that came with the farm said the life span is 1-3 months (there is no queen). It was neat to do this once, but now sure if we'd try it again or not.

Taiko & Tupperware

2011-07-01T13:48:00.002-04:00

Taiko sometimes likes to empty out the tupperware cabinet. The cats, Taipan & Taisim like to help too!

The Basement is Done

2011-07-01T13:40:00.003-04:00

The work to finish our basement was completed in early June - all of us are enjoying it quite a bit. We've got lots of room to run and play down there, and there are two rooms, so Taipan & Taisim has some space to themselves now. Taisim has set her room up with dolls, dress up clothes, a tea party and a play tent. Taipan's room is the base for his battle team, and is essentially an armory.

Surgery is scheduled & other stuff

2011-06-08T17:21:00.007-04:00

The cardiology department called today to schedule Taiko's surgery. It will be on July 7th, and we will plan to be in the hospital for eight or nine days.

Our pre-op appointment will be on June 29th where we will meet the surgeon (Dr Kouretas) and get an x-ray and have some blood work done.

My sister happens to be in town that weekend, which is awesome, and my mom will be here for all of July to help out.

We are loving the sunny weather - it's great to be able to get off work and walk over to our neighborhood park in the evenings. And it's an easier time getting there now that Simi rides her bike and Taipan takes his scooter. Taiko's tried out the slide, but isn't so sure about it. He more enjoyed sitting on the steps of the play structure and watching everyone around him.

Taisim, Taiko and I will be going to Pittsburgh on Saturday for Yuli's baby shower - I'm looking forward to celebrating the impending arrival of this little guy! We're going to leave nice and early to leave time for breaks; I don't think Taiko is quite up to 2.5 hours in the car yet. I don't think we'll have time, but I'm keeping a trip to Ikea in the back of my mind too.

The other big activity around here is that our basement is being finished. They started work on it in mid-May, and will be done this weekend. It's been a hustle and bustle of people in and out of the house, and right now we are overwhelmed with paint fumes, but it's looking great, and we can't wait for it to be finished. This will give each of the kids their own room too. If we can get decent pictures after the weekend I'll post those. We will also have more than enough room for visitors!

All about Taiko & his heart

2011-06-01T12:06:00.004-04:00

We've a had a whirlwind of activity lately with Taiko. As some folks know, about a month ago he had some blood work done, and we found out that he has Trisomy-21 (aka Down Syndrome). As a result of that, he had a cardiologist appointment last Friday, where I thought we were just doing a cursory check to make sure there were no heart issues, as our pediatrician had never heard any murmurs or anything else to cause concern.

While at the cardiologist they did an EKG and an echocardiogram on him. The echo showed that he has an AV canal defect. There is only one treatment option for this: heart surgery. Needless to say I was shocked.

Our next step was to have a sedated echo so that they could get good, clear pictures of his heart to determine the severity of the problem. Our instructions were to be at Rainbow Babies (at the UH Case Medical Center) at 7am, and that Taiko could not nurse after 4am.

So today Yuta and I got up at 5, Taiko got up at 6, and we took him for the echo (and a big thanks to Hannah for coming over to stay with Taipan and Taisim so early in the morning). I was nervous that Taiko would be upset about not being able to nurse after waking up and while waiting for the echo, but he did great. There were a few moments where I know he wanted to nurse, but we walked around, and Yuta played with him and we got thru them pretty easily. The worst part was getting the IV put in, but even then he calmed down pretty quickly once it was in and we were able to pick him up. The nurses at Rainbow were fabulous and couldn't have been better.

They gave him Propofol, and I was able to hold him until he was out, which took only about 40 seconds. The echo took about an hour or so. Towards the end a cardiologist and a resident came in to take a look, and then they paged the cardiologist we saw last week to come and chat with us. While we were waiting, Taiko came to, and seemed happy and rested, though a little groggy.

So, here's the skinny that the cardiologist told us:

Taiko has an atrial septal defect, and a ventricular septal defect. Both of these are holes between the chambers where there oughtn't be. The atrial one is bigger than the ventricular one
His valves (I think two of them) do not close all the way
Surgery will repair both defects and the valves
Next Wednesday (June 8) the cardiologists & surgeon(s) will review Taiko's case, after which we will get a call to schedule an appointment with a surgeon and I think at that point they will also schedule the surgery.
Surgery is likely to happen within the next month or two. Prior to surgery we will have to get some pre-op labs done too.
There is a small possibility that they will want to do a catheterization (where they go in thru the leg to look at the lungs & heart) - they will determine if this is necessary during the review next Wednesday.

A lot of our surgery questions are still unanswered, but hopefully not for long - the surgeon will be able to answer them all when we get that appointment.

I'll post updates as we have them.

Oh - one more thing - Taiko got his first tooth on Tuesday!

We went to Florida and Taiko turned 1!

2011-05-31T21:02:00.007-04:00

Earlier this month we took a week long vacation to the Orlando area. We timed it so that we would be there for Taiko's first birthday - it was nice to celebrate it with my side of the family. My sister, brother, niece and nephew had never met him, and it had been nearly 11 months since my dad and step mom had seen him.

We stayed at the Orange Lake Resort, which we liked quite a bit. They have quite a few pools, some with water slides, a splash pad, lake, beach and water sports. We also tried the Magic Kingdom one of the days. Taipan was lukewarm about it and didn't stay too long; Simi enjoyed it more and was happy to see some princesses and go on some rides with Yuta and Grandma & Grandpa.

Here are some pictures from our vacation (most of these Yuta also put on facebook).

The day before we left, Taiko had first birthday pictures taken. These are some of my favorites (they were taken by Michelle at http://mdleighphoto.com/ - she is fabulous!!!):

April Update

2011-04-26T15:31:00.004-04:00

Well, if only I'd waited a few more days to get around to this I would have gone a full six months without any blog updates. Oh well.

I was inspired to post by the huge amount of pictures we took last weekend. Before that, though, in case you missed the pictures on facebook, here are some from February when we went to Kalahari and celebrated Simi's 5th birthday. And here are some from March.

April so far has been rainy and cold (I believe we've had rain on 22 or 26 days so far). We've taken advantage of the handful of sunny days we've had and gone outside - Taipan spends a lot of time on his scooter, and Simi on her bike.

Easter was so much fun this year. Coloring eggs:

While doing our bunny cake, Taiko realized how much fun foil can be:

We had our egg hunt as usual, and the kids got Easter baskets, and were very excited to see new superhero capes for Taipan & Taisim and a bubble machine for Taiko. We've gone through nearly a gallon of bubbles in the past 48 hours I think. We started with the machine in the basement, but it has since moved to the master bath.

My mom also sent cookbooks to Taipan & Taisim for Easter. Taipan's cookbook is Star Wars themed recipes, and Taisim's is Tea Party themed recipes, and they wanted to make things right away. Unfortunately there wasn't much we could make with what we had in the house already, so the kids planned a Tea Party menu, I made a shopping list, and Yuta ran out to the grocery store for the ingredients.

We also made two smoothie recipes from the cookbooks on Sunday, and then another recipe from each the next day (I highly recommend R2D2 treats - bananas, kit-kats & peanuts = delicious).

Taipan & Taisim ended the day by making a family of marshmallow/toothpick people:

So that was Easter. Taiko is 11 months old now, and is such a happy baby, and his love for Taipan & Taisim is so evident. The pic of Taiko was taken while Taipan, Simi and I were using my scrapbooking tools to cut paper and make cards:

Lots of other pictures from April are here.

Halloween 2010

2010-10-31T21:09:00.004-04:00

Pumpkins before and after .... or actually after and before. Simi chose Jasmine for her pumpkin, and Taipan put an M & L on his for Mario and Luigi:

We had two families come trick or treat with us, so we made some Halloween food to have while they were here: two meatloaves - one a mummy head and the other a creepy gross hand:

And the costumes - Mario, Christmas Girl, a ghostbuster, pirate and baby pirate:

Princess Serena-Nina & Taipan's favorite videos

2010-09-06T08:00:00.000-04:00

Taisim has been wearing one of her princess dresses quite a bit over the past week or so, and when she wears it she transforms into Princess Serena-Nina, and I am the queen. Princess Serena-Nina also has a daughter (Pink Princess Dinosaur), who wears a dress that Princess Serena-Nina crafted out of a blanket.

In these pics the princess is posing, showing us some cookies she and Allie made from a recipe in the princess cookbook, and then going off for a ride on Scootery.

And a quick note on Taipan, mostly so I remember some day. He's lately been very engrossed in walk-throughs of some of the Mario games - mostly Paper Mario and Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. He specifically likes youtube videos that a guy named chuggaaconroy makes - he's great at game play, and his commentary is amusing. Taipan told me that he wants to be this guy's friend on facebook some day, so I found that he has a facebook page and I 'liked' it and now Taipan and I will look for updates through my facebook.

Labor Day Weekend - Parks

2010-09-04T07:56:00.002-04:00

This weekend we had wonderful weather. We called some friends and met up with them at Brecksville Park on Friday and the North Royalton Park on Saturday.

Brecksville Park has a zip line and it's been maybe two years since we've been here, and the Taipan and Simi were in love with it all over again. They were both pleased that they were able to jump on and do it by themselves, though they also loved having someone give them a good push to go faster.

The North Royalton Park was great for climbing and running, and also sand.

Spider food

2010-08-31T19:47:00.000-04:00

The spider's been in his web for at least 3 days, and we noticed a day or so ago that he had moved because his belly was facing us instead of his back.

Today we went to see if he was still there, and not only was he there, but he had caught something. It was pretty neat to see. He left soon after this. The camera kept auto-focusing on the bush behind the spider - gotta figure out how to change that still.

Last week of swimming

2010-08-31T17:05:00.000-04:00

A lot of outdoor pools around here close when school starts. Luckily our neighborhood pool stays open a week or two longer and doesn't close until Labor Day. Which was nice this past week because we had weather into the 90s.

Simi & I went with Taiko one afternoon, and then returned a couple of days later with Taipan, Yuta and a friend.

Presents from Grammy

2010-08-29T07:39:00.000-04:00

My mom sent a package with ZOOBMobile and the Puppy Pursuit Game. The pictures speak for themselves - a good time was had by all!!

Taiko & Superheroes with Upgrades

2010-08-29T07:34:00.000-04:00

Taipan asked me to help him find some things he could put on - I think those were almost his exact words. After a short discussion I found out that he was going to be a superhero, and wanted to have 3 things he could put on as costume upgrades. The helmet, cape and flip flops are all upgrades to his original outfit. He also had different weapons, each one acquired after an upgrade. Simi decided to join in the fun too.

And Taiko was hanging out in the chair taking it all in.

Grasshopper

2010-08-29T07:31:00.002-04:00

We had a visitor on our screen door. It's a grasshopper, but looks nothing like the grasshoppers we had in Orlando when I was a kid. Ours were much smaller an green. To me this guy is a huge grasshopper, though a friend of ours didn't think so, but he grew up in Ohio.

Spiderwebs

2010-08-28T16:44:00.002-04:00

We noticed a lot of webs on a bush in front of our house one Saturday morning. I had only minutes before been reading about webworms, so I wondered if some of them might be from those. Yuta later saw spiders on them, so not webworms. There were three or four clusters of these, and they look thicker and fluffier in person:

Then I saw this web, which was pretty large, and had a spider in the middle of it waiting to catch something. It was there all day and night and didn't move at all from what we could tell (I'll do an update in a later post on this spider).

Space Station sighting

2010-08-27T16:39:00.003-04:00

A friend of ours posted that her family was going to look for the International Space Station, so we decided to do the same. On the night that we looked for it, it was in the sky for 3-4 mins, and we were able to see it go right over head.

Click here to see NASA's sighting information page.

The space station is the bright white light in the sky. We also got a good view of Venus while we were out - it was very close to the horizon, and also very bright.

Amazone

2010-08-26T12:43:00.001-04:00

After two weeks of canceling for various reasons, we finally made it to Amazone. It had been a long while (2 years? 3 years?) since we'd been here. School had already started, so we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves.

Lots of climbing and running, and Taipan & Marcus brought their DS's and did that for a little bit. There's also an arcade, which Simi enjoyed. We're all looking forward to going back again sometime soon.

Snap Circuits

2010-08-24T11:41:00.002-04:00

I think I've said it before, but I love Snap Circuits, and Taipan thinks they're pretty cool too.

Taipan now does quite a bit on his own, following the booklet that came with the set. When we were playing with them he said "I want to tell whoever gave these to me 'Thank you so much - I love these'". So I passed that along to my sister.

He's also told us that he wants Snap Circuits Extreme and new "green" kit that they have.

Stroller walk

2010-08-22T10:38:00.000-04:00

A nice calm walk with the everyone:

Until they start running:

Ack! What you don't see is me running to catch up. Taiko didn't mind, but he's still a little floppy in the stroller, so I didn't like the running.

Party and hanging out

2010-08-21T10:18:00.001-04:00

Today we went to a good friend's birthday party. Everyone had fun.

When we got home, Simi & I played with princesses for a bit. I used old receiving blankets to cut out small blankies for the princesses' sleep-over.

Cute baby.

And it's out of focus, but I love this picture of my guys.

Making slushies

2010-08-20T09:32:00.000-04:00

One of our books had instructions for making slushies with ice, salt & juice. It seemed straightforward enough, and we had all the ingredients, so I thought we'd give it a try.

First, we put the ice in a bowl, added salt to it and stirred it up.

After that, we put a glass with juice in the middle of the salted ice. The instructions were to stir it every 10 mins for an hour, and then stir it every five mins for another half hour.

About 45 minutes into it I could tell that we were not going to get slushies. So I called my good friend who seems to know almost everything and she suggested that we try soda or a juice that had more sugar. We had originally tried with mango flavor Juicy Juice as it was the only juice we had in the house. The next day I got some OJ, and I tried it again, and this time we got yummy orange juice slushies.

A well documented evening

2010-08-19T08:57:00.000-04:00

These are from the evening of Aug 19th. Yuta was out, and I was looking for ways to use our new camera.

Before Yuta left, handstands were praciticed, and I got a few shots of Yuta with Taiko.

Simi's a mermaid - the couch is her ocean, and the blanket might be her tail, but it might just be a mermaid's blanket. Taipan is practicing his battle moves. They're hard to capture; the pictures don't do them justice. And we also watched Fantastic Mr Fox, which they really like. I was lukewarm on it the first time we watched it, but like it quite a bit now. I checked out the book from the library so I can read it and compare it to the movie, though I've already heard it's quite different.

And Taiko was hanging out, having milk, then getting some love from Taipan & Taisim.

And we played with coins and talked about money a bit.

Just as the sun was going down, Taipan & Taisim headed out to play in sprinklers. Fully dressed.

They came in, Taiko went to sleep, and Simi doctored her cat while Taipan played xbox. We ended the evening reading stories, but, alas, no pictures of that :-)

Playing on the roof

2010-08-18T08:47:00.000-04:00

We've had a play house in the backyard for a couple of years now. Only recently have the kids been able to make it to the roof, and now that they can easily climb up there they do it often. Sometimes they're rescuing each other from the roof; sometimes they do "bloopers", where they pretend to fall off and such"; sometimes it's a safe zone for tag; and sometimes they climb and hang out there.

Simi & Taiko

2010-08-16T10:08:00.001-04:00

Taisim hanging out with her baby brother.

Reptile Show & Family Visit

2010-08-15T18:03:00.006-04:00

We've had a fairly busy weekend. On Friday one of Taipan's friends came over to play for the afternoon & weekend. I had a tentative plan to go to Amazone, but I was low on sleep, and we agreed to postpone it until next week.

On Saturday afternoon we had an unexpected treat - a friend of a friend in our subdivision had a traveling reptile handler come to his house and show a bunch of reptiles to a group of kids. We were kindly invited and got there just in time to see the show. There were turtles young and old, snakes, a scorpion, an alligator, a monitor lizard, a salamander and a few others. Taipan and Taisim thought most of it was pretty cool, though I think it lasted just a bit too long for their attention spans.

Later on Saturday Yuli and Keith came over to have dinner with us and visit for a bit. After dinner they played tag, Barbies and watched Taipan play a new xbox game (Monday Night Combat).

Today (Sunday) we went over to my in-laws' house to visit for a few hours - Yuli and Keith are still in town, and after we visited for a few hours, they went with Yuta to see Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. The kids and I are home now, winding down and enjoying our evening.

Lastly, Taiko is 3 months today!! It's hard to imagine life without him.

Oh Baby!

2010-08-10T20:10:00.002-04:00

He's nearing three months, and is going strong. He's an amazing little guy. Very vocal, very happy and very loved.

Those neck muscles are getting strong:

Rolling:

Hanging with his brother and sister (Taipan has also gotten quite good at picking him up and putting him down):

He discovered his hands a week or so ago:

Checking out Sami:

All-around cute guy:

Natural History Museum

2010-08-07T12:00:00.004-04:00

We took a trip the the Cleveland Museum of Natural History on the Wednesday before I started back at work. We chose Wednesday because the museum is open until 10pm on Wednesdays. We didn't stay quite that late, but we did stay past the normal five o'clock closing time.

At first I thought we might not be there long because Taipan and Taisim sped through the exhibits, but during that first walk-through they took notice of what they wanted to go spend more time at.

Taipan's hands-down favorite was an exhibit they had on sound and music. Taisim liked it quite a bit too, but equally liked the hands-on discovery center that is in the basement.

While we were looking at dinosaurs I said, "Hey, let's get a picture of you with the dinosaurs", and they immediately struck the poses that are in the first two pictures below. Taipan is posing to battle the dinosaur, and Taisim is posing as a scientist (I didn't know that's what it was at first, but it was obvious once she told me!):

These are from the music exhibit. Taipan loved the hydrophone and spent a lot of time checking it out and experimenting with it. There is also a studio set up where you can have a jam session. Unfortunately this exhibit leaves at the end of August.

There are also live animals outside:

While we were there we bought a triops kit, which immediately made us all think of the song by They Might Be Giants - Triops Has Three Eyes. Unfortunately they didn't hatch, but we were all excited to get their habitat set up.

Taiko rolls

2010-08-07T11:19:00.003-04:00

Taiko figured out how to get from his belly to his back this morning.

Pilkey Love

2010-07-29T11:52:00.005-04:00

I'm going to the library today to pick up some more books that we've requested. We will finally get to read about the Uranium Unicorns from Uranus, one of the books in Dav Pilkey's Ricky Ricotta series.

We've also got some of the books from his Dragon series on hold.

These are awesome books, and we've read the ones we have numerous times. We might buy them to add to our library. It's espcially fun to hear Yuta read them because he does cool and funny voices for all of the characters.

I'll be looking to check out Dogzilla and Kat Kong next. We've yet to read Captain Underpants, though I have one of the series lying around - they weren't interested when I showed it to them a while ago, but I'll bring it out again at some point.

Nature Realm July 20, 2010

2010-07-29T11:47:00.003-04:00

Last week we went to Nature Realm in Akron with some friends. Here are some pictures from that trip. It was a bit hotter than I expected, but we had a nice time nonetheless. It's a beautiful place and I'd love to go back in the fall.

Ch ch ch changes

2010-07-23T19:17:00.003-04:00

We've been having such an awesome summer. We've been to a few new places, and have gotten to spend a lot of time with friends. And most importantly we've been enjoying each other on a day to day basis. One of the reasons the summer has been so great for me is that I've been off of work since Taiko was born. It's been quite a while since I've so much time with them. It's fantastic. And it's especially nice because Yuta's not working either; it's made the adjustment to Taiko easier for us all.

But it's about to change. I go back to work the first Monday in August. Fortunately I'm able to ease back into a 40 hour week. I'll work 2-3 days a week through August, and go back to five days after Labor Day. I think the transition will go ok, though it will likely be hard on Taipan and Taisim when I go back full time in September.

Enough of that though - now let me talk about other changes, specifically in Taiko. He's over two months old now, and he's growing and changing so fast. Physically he's growing at a pretty good rate - he's wearing 3-6 month clothes now. And he is a very smiley baby - we saw his first smiles around six weeks or so, but it's only been the past couple weeks that he smiles at us all. the. time. And he smiles at Taipan and Taisim too - it's obvious that he enjoys them, and they think he's great too. He's still got his faux hawk going on, and he coos quite a bit. He continues to be a fairly mellow baby. He loves the sling, and has even gotten a few long naps in the Ergo with Yuta.

Here are some pics from the past few weeks. Taipan loves to have Taiko lay on his chest/belly, and Taisim prefers to cradle him.

Fun with dish soap

2010-07-23T19:10:00.003-04:00

One day earlier this month Taipan was looking for something to do, and I suggested a number of things, none of which he really wanted. He eventually found something to do, but I was kicking myself for not pulling out some of our cool books with ideas of things to do - things that are new and interesting that I'm pretty sure would have fit the bill that afternoon. So I got the book out (belatedly), and suggested we try one of the experiments.

The one we did was about surface tension (though we didn't discuss that at all). In a bowl we put water and sprinkled pepper in it, then dipped a toothpick in dish soap and put the tip in the pepper water. The pepper all moves to the edge of the bowl. Then we did the same thing with food coloring in milk, and created some cool swirl effects (not any great pics of that). Taipan and Simi thought it was pretty cool, and each repeated them 3 or 4 times.

WRMRRM

2010-07-23T19:04:00.002-04:00

Yuta took Taipan and Simi to the Western Reserve Model Railroad Museum (WRMRRM) a couple of weeks ago - it had been a while since we'd been to see model trains, and it was a nice opportunity for me to get some rest with Taiko. We'd been to WRMRRM once or twice before, but they've since changed locations, so this was the first time any of us had been to the new building. Yuta said it was pretty cool, and there's some new stuff since the move, most notably a train that kids can ride in.

4th of July

2010-07-23T18:54:00.004-04:00

This year we stayed home for the 4th and had some friends over for a BBQ. We had a ton of sparklers, smoke bombs and a few other explosives that came in a pack from either Target or SC.

Yuta was the master of ceremonies, and had a great pace and flow going. The audience sat in on the lawn, and the kids would get up after each firework to chase the smoke or hoot and holler in amazement. It was a great time.

9 years!

2010-07-08T18:59:00.004-04:00

Yuta and I celebrated our nine year anniversary yesterday. It was a low key day, but a nice one. When I woke up this picture was my desktop background, put there as an anniversary surprise by Yuta (for those that don't know, we were married in Las Vegas on 7/7/2001):

(click on the picture to see it larger)

2nd half of June 2010

2010-07-08T18:34:00.003-04:00

The second half of June was very fun-filled. We've been spending a lot of time doing board games. Some friends of ours were playing Stratego one evening while they were here, which renewed Taipan's interest in the game. It's a Lord of the Rings Stratego game that we've had for a while, and in the past have played with the pieces, but not in the Stratego way. Last month Taipan wanted to play a modified version of Stratego, which is usually followed by some LOTR role playing.

Yuta's youngest sister Ling came to visit with Chadwick, and while she was here Taisim asked Chadwick to play a game of checkers, which led to Taipan asking about chess, and since then he's been playing quite a bit. In addition to playing on our chess board he plays on the iPhone and his computer.

My good friend Kiersten came to visit a couple of weekends ago, and she came with lots of fun stuff. Her son had been asking to do experiments, which she brought to our house. First we did dropped Mentos into Diet Coke - all of the kids enjoyed seeing the huge geyser.

Then she filled sandwich bags with water and vinegar, to which we added paper towels filled with baking soda. We were supposed to shake the bags and drop them and wait for the pop, but the reaction was so quick that we barely had time to zip the baggies up before they popped.

We also: put a string on ice, sprinkled salt on it, and then watched as the string froze into the ice for us to pick up; and crushed up iron-fortified cereal and then picked up the pieces with a magnet.

We had lots of other sweet moments, and here are a couple - the first is playing at our neighborhood pool. We didn't take advantage of this pool last year, but this year we've been a couple of times so far. The kids can both touch in the shallow end now, which is nice, and less physically demanding of me and Yuta. I sat at a table with snacks and towels at the ready with Taiko in the sling while Yuta swam with Taipan and Simi. The second picture is Taipan reading a book to Taisim - it's happened a few times over the past month or so. It's sweet to see. The last three pictures below are of things Simi has drawn. We submitted the giraffe to the one million giraffes project.

June so far

2010-06-19T12:13:00.005-04:00

It's been quite a busy month so far. We had a few quiet days after Memorial Day, and during that week Taisim got out her Pink Princess cookbook and we made a few recipes. The first was a marshmallow smoothie, which we happened to have all of the ingredients on hand for. Taipan and Taisim really liked these (it's a slight variation on our usual smoothie recipe, with mini-marshmallows on top):

Next we decided to make "fortune cookies". These are super easy and turned out really well. It's pie crust dough cut into circles, then folded into quarters, with a fortune inside, then dipped in colored sugar. They were yummy!

Pics of the kids hanging out - Taipan and Taisim both have shorter hair, at their request:

My dad and stepmom came for a long weekend too. They got here on June 11, which happened to be my stepmom's birthday, so we made cupcakes to celebrate. While they were here they took the kids to a bounce house and McDonald's to play, and Simi went to Chuck E Cheese with them. There was also a ton of play at the house - tea parties, xbox games, swinging, bouncey ball games and more! We had a fabulous time, and hope that they'll be able to visit again soon.

While my dad was here, Taipan lost his first two teeth. Here's a picture with the first one gone:

We also had caterpillars for our butterfly garden. This is the second time we've had them, and this batch went through their metamorphoses much quicker than the last ones we had. We hardly got any pictures, but here is one finding its way after being released:

Lastly, a quick picture of our skate-dancers, inspired by the robots in The Backyardigans new Robot Rampage episode:

Memorial Day Weekend 2010

2010-06-03T17:00:00.005-04:00

My mom came to visit us for the long weekend. She got here on Thursday evening, and left Memorial Day weekend. She got a little bit of snuggle time with Taiko and a lot of play time with Taipan and Taisim. And she also helped us pretty up our front yard by planting flowers for us. Thanks, Mom!

For Christmas Mom had given Taipan a tin can robot kit. We hadn't put it together yet, and Taipan brought it out a few days before my mom got here, so we decided to wait until she was here and put it together during her visit.

As soon as we took it out of the box it was pretty clear that this was a project for Yuta. The kids enjoyed watching for a while, and Taipan thought it was pretty cool to play with, and it now sits with the rest of his robot collection.

Taisim and Grammy made one of Taipan's favorite meals - Grammy's noodles (egg noodles with soup, sour cream & bread crumbs ... and optional chicken). We actually made three batches of this over the long weekend.

Mom taking a break from planting flowers:

Yuta's sister Yuli and her husband Keith were also in town over the weekend. The came to visit on Saturday and Sunday. They brought the kids Pumpinators and clip clop stilts (not sure what the offical name of these are, but they're in the picture below). The Pumpinators are a ton of fun - they do air balloons and water balloons. The water balloons in particular have been a big hit.

We have more family coming next weekend - my dad and stepmom - and then Ling will be here the middle of the following week. We're so happy for family visits.

Yuli and Taisim:

Kids with stilts:

Simi and Taipan joining me and Taiko on the big red chair:

Yuli and Taiko on Sunday:

Cute baby pic:

Some pictures

2010-05-25T09:18:00.004-04:00

Hanging out:

Love from siblings, Papa & Mama:

With our midwife, Bev:

Settling in

2010-05-22T10:47:00.007-04:00

So, how was our first week with Taiko you ask? It was pretty darned good. We had a lot of support from our friends, and were able to devote a lot of time to snuggling with Taiko and making sure Taipan and Taisim got a lot of play time.

Taiko spent the majority of his week sleeping - here is a shot of him mid-week:

The first part of the week was rainy and cloudy and pretty yucky outside. Fortunately the sun came back on Wednesday, and I went on my first outing with all three kids. We went to our subdivision's playground, which is a pretty short walk away. The kids rode scooters, while Taiko slept in the sling.

Going to the park has been a daily activity since then, though today is rainy again so we likely won't go again until tomorrow.

Taisim was playing with my sling, when I reminded her that she had one of her own, so we got it out, and she carried her baby around for a bit too:

And here is our precious guy taking a nap. He's six days old in this picture. He sleeps most of the time, and Yuta and I have been able to get decent sleep as well. Our bedtime routine is a bit in flux, but I think we'll find our new normal pretty quickly.

Both of the kids love love love their new brother. Last night Taipan suggested we give him a nickname, and after much discussion Taipan has nicknamed Taiko "TK". They are all very sweet together, and I can't wait to watch their relationships grow.

Taiko Cyrus' Birthday (May 15, 2010)

2010-05-17T21:41:00.010-04:00

Taiko was born at 2:31pm on Saturday, May 15th, 2010. He was born at home with our wonderful midwife, our two children and dear friend Kiersten present.

I'd been having strong Braxton-Hicks contractions for a couple of days, and around 3:00 am Saturday morning I began having contractions that I felt mostly near my pubic bone, and they were strong enough that I couldn't sleep through them. I got out of bed to find Yuta still awake, and he hung out with me a bit to see how things might progress. I told him to lay down after about 45 mins because it didn't seem things were going to move terribly quick.

Around 5:00 am I checked in with our midwife, Bev, and an hour later I woke Yuta up. The contractions were getting a bit stronger and closer together, and I didn't want to be alone. Around 7:00 am I called Bev back and asked her to come over. She got here around 8:00 am, and Taipan and Taisim woke up at 8:30. We had a few friends lined up to help out, so I called one of them and asked if she could head over; I told her not to rush, as we were doing ok, but thankfully she rushed a bit and was here pretty quickly, allowing Yuta and I to focus on the labor.

The labor was the hardest I've ever had - more painful and intense than the other two. Once he was ready and in position though, he came quickly. Things got very intense around 1/1:30 pm I think it was, though I need to double check the timing with Bev, as I wasn't really watching the clock. Bev did tell me afterwards that there wasn't a terribly regular pattern to my contractions - they were sometimes 4 mins, sometimes 7, sometimes 10 mins apart, and would vary in length.

I was in the tub when I had a couple of very intense, strong and close together contractions. After those I felt like I could maybe try to push. I got out of the tub and back into bed. I pushed him out during the third contraction after I got back into the bed - I think it took 2 or 3 pushes, and all in a matter of seconds. He was born facing sideways with his left hand by his head.

Throughout the entire labor the kids would come in to check up on us and see if the baby was ready to be born. They were both extremely respectful and aware of the space I needed, and they were also very sweet and loving. It helped quite a bit that they both love Kiersten and were happy to play with her and check out the fun things she'd brought for them to do.

I'm not sure if they heard me starting to push, or if someone went to get them, but both the kids were in the room when Taiko was born. Taipan saw the actual birth, but I don't think Taisim was looking.

Taiko is perfect. We were all immediately in love with him of course. Taipan is fascinated with him, and Simi is thrilled to be a big sister - she will call him "my baby brother" most of the time instead of by name.

I cannot say enough good things about our midwife or the friends that helped us out this weekend. I feel so fortunate to have such wonderful people in our lives. And my in-laws! They brought dinner on Saturday, and my mother-in-law dropped off lots of fresh fruit and flowers today.

I can't wait for the rest of our families to meet him. My mom will be here Memorial Day weekend, and my dad will come in early June. Yuta's sisters will also be in town over the next month.

Here are some pictures from the birth:

Yuta and I during early labor - still smiling. Though to tell the truth, I was pretty much smiling and talking in between contractions up until he was born. Yuta and Bev were fabulous in helping me work through the pain and keeping my spirits up.

Taipan and Taisim playing outside during labor:

He's here!! Yuta was shirtless to help keep Taiko warm while I got cleaned up a bit:

Meeting his siblings and getting some love:

A few hours after he was born:

The Other Night

2010-05-09T10:22:00.005-04:00

Our house has been so joyful and peaceful lately, and earlier this week I took some photos of a normal evening for us these days.

After I finished work, the kids at first were trying to figure out who was going to use the TV in the living room - Taipan wanted to play xbox and Simi wanted to watch a show. Our brainstorming for solutions wasn't working too well, but after a few minutes the kids ran to the game closet to find games.

Simi chose a Madeline game (and grabbed some Pocky from the kitchen!), and Taipan brought out Snap Circuits:

Yuta and Taipan did Snap Circuits for a very long time, and it came out again later in the evening, and at least once a day since then. Taipan got that for Christmas, but has only recently been interested in it. It's pretty cool.

Taisim and I then moved on to blankets. I've been planning on making the kids fleece tie blankets before the baby is born, and took it right down to the 39-week wire. This is Taipan's almost finished (at the time) blanket. I've since finished his and hers.

Taisim decided to make a blanket too - here's hers in progress:

More Daytona

2010-04-22T13:44:00.007-04:00

We're still in Florida. Our original plan was to leave this morning and get home tomorrow night. But we had the condo for another night and all decided that we could use another day to relax and enjoy the pool and beach, so here we are. Hopefully one day between arriving home and going back to work will be enough for me.

So the past few days have been spent visiting with my family, playing in the pools and brief trips to the beach.

Here are some pictures, with some quick commentary.

Here are Taipan and Taisim in the kids' pool at our condo. We visited this just about every day of our trip, except for one or two days that were a bit overcast and rainy. They love this pool, and it's my all-time favorite for the kids too, and the main reason we choose to stay at the Oceanwalk:

On Sunday my sister was kind enough to host my mom, dad, stepmom, brother and us for dinner. My nephew, Jason, is a month shy of 8, and he and Taipan have a common interest of weapons. Taipan was excited to see Jason's swords, guns and other battle gear. Here they are standing still for a quick picture:

And here they are executing an attack:

Elyse, my niece, and Taisim got along famously. Among other things, they ran a makeover shop (I got nails, hair, and makeup done!), pretended to be horses, hosted a carnival, and had a dance recital. In this picture they are doing a puppet show - Elyse drew characters on their hands, though they're not visible in this picture. Taisim *loves* her cousin!

Monday was an overcast day, and we spent most of the afternoon in the condo, though Taipan and I spent some time on the beach and at the pool (it was drizzling and windy). When the rain was gone, we took a walk and visited some gift shops. We got some cool sparkly key chains as souvenirs.

We spent the evening at my mom's house - more rain, and the kids enjoyed her umbrella for a bit in the back yard, and they loved playing with Grammy's dog, Rosie, and looking for her cats, which thankfully made an appearance before the end of the evening.

Tuesday was another condo day, and I don't have any pictures from Tuesday or early Wednesday because I forgot my camera at my mom's house. But I got my camera back on Wednesday afternoon when we went to my sister's house again.

This is a silly picture of the cousins - I was trying to get a non-silly one, and tried to loosen them up and get Taipan's cooperation by doing silly faces first. Silly faces were no problem. I think this is fun, though not what I think my mom would've hoped for in a framed picture of her grandkids :-)

Next stop was my dad's house. During each visit Taipan was fascinated with and loved playing with all the pets. My sister, mom and dad each have a dog, and at least one cat. He was mostly sweet and loving and gentle with them. He spent a lot of time looking for and loving on them.

Here he is carrying one of my dad's cats, Velvet:

Simi and Grandma playing Operation:

Taipan playing in Grandpa's pool:

Group shot!! Taipan agreed to be in the picture since the dog, Sugar, would be on his lap:

And my (baby) brother stopped by to visit with us too:

This has been a great trip, and we can't wait to do it again, though it will likely not be for 2-3 years, since we'll likely drive again and want the baby to be old enough to enjoy the drive.

Thanks to my entire family for being so flexible and generous during our visit!

Daytona - Friday, April 16

2010-04-17T17:19:00.003-04:00

We made it to Daytona! The drive was pretty great - we left home around 11am on Thursday, and stopped in Columbia, SC around 8:30/9pm, then left Columbia around 10:00 Friday morning. The kids did amazing on the trip - Yuta and I had stocked up on some new and exciting games and DVDs, which I think were largely responsible for how smoothly things went, and also our willingness to take a nice long break each day. We got to our condo around 5:00, checked in, did some quick settling in, got our bathing suits on, and immediately hit the beach.

Taipan liked running around in the (cold) water, and Simi and I built a sandcastle. Then we went up to the pool for an hour or so before my dad & stepmom came to have dinner with us.

Here are some quick shots of the beach. More to come later I'm sure. Tonight the kids and I wil have dinner with my mom while Yuta is out with his best Orlando buddy, and then tomorrow we get to go see my brother, sister and her kids. So far, we're having a great time.

Happy New Year

2010-04-04T20:56:00.004-04:00

Ok, so it's not really the new year, but this is my first post of 2010, so it's a new blogging year.

The year has happily moved along for us. I'm 34 weeks pregnant, so things will change pretty drastically here in the next couple of months. The kids are excited and can't wait to meet the baby, and neither can I. I think we're about as prepared as we're going to be - the only thing we're missing is a name. No doubt we'll have one before his birthday though.

Today I came here to post Easter pictures. I resisted the urge to post them on Facebook instead - the ease of posting there is great, but sometimes I like to rattle on a bit.

Taipan and I had a very early start to our day - he woke up around 7:30, which is 3-4 hours earlier than his normal wake up time. He was very excited to check out his basket and hunt for eggs. Unfortunately he woke up so early that things weren't quite ready yet. Luckily he was distracted for a bit and baskets got ready and eggs got hidden pretty quickly.

Baskets this year had garden tools (gloves, spade, rake & watering can) and a Crayola glow in the dark package that they've seen commercials for and have wanted to try for a while now.

After Taipan found his eggs we gardened for a bit, did glow in the dark drawings (drew at the kitchen table, then took to the bathroom to check out in the dark), all the while Taipan was wanting very badly to wake up Yuta and Simi. Around 10:30 or so we gently woke them up with Easter greetings, then re-hid Taipan's eggs so that Simi could have a partner in her egg hunt.

Pics from the morning:

Our afternoon consisted of making the annual bunny cake, baking a ham, a quick visit from my in-laws, and a walk down the street. Once it got dark we did the crayola glow in the dark again.

All in all a nice spring day!

I leave you with a picture of the bunny cake:

December 2009

2009-12-26T20:54:00.004-05:00

I have not been good about updating this blog, favoring instead to upload pictures to Facebook. It's so much easier - maybe I need to check out Flickr or something to make it easier to get photos on blogspot.

Anyway, we had a great month, and a terrific Christmas. Pictures from the month are here. We got out and about quite a bit. For those of you that have heard stories about Taipan preferring to not go out much, things have somewhat turned around. He's definitely most comfortable at home (and as I typed that it occurred to me that most folks are), but you'll see from the photos that he's adventured with us quite a bit, and we didn't even get pictures of everything.

The next week has my mom visiting, and I'll have most of the week off. We're looking forward to the new year and everything it holds for us.

Happy holidays!

Simi at Luther's Farm

2009-10-14T20:40:00.001-04:00

Yuta put these on Facebook .... these are mostly for my mom to see, so I don't have to repost them here:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=114993&id=548178709&l=8430ae4029

Catch up post

2009-10-09T12:13:00.003-04:00

Eek, more than a month since I've posted. That's certainly not unprecedented, but I didn't realize it had been so long.

We've had a great month - the visit with my brother was fantastic, and I had a quick trip to Cincinnati a for work a few days after he left. This year all of my work travel has been in the midwest - Indy, Cincy and Columbus. Makes me glad that I'm in Ohio and can easily drive to all of those places. And I'm driving back to Cincy in a couple of weeks.

Over the past few weeks we discovered a new place to see model trains - the Western Reserve Railroad Museum. Yuta took the kids one afternoon while I was working, and Taipan was so excited to show me the trains too that we went back the following Saturday. It was indeed pretty neat, and closer than Train-O-Rama, our other favorite local model train place.

We also decorated for Halloween, and in the process went to a Halloween store, where Taisim was excited to see pink hair spray so she could have pink hair:

Along the Halloween theme, last weekend Taisim and I went to get pumpkins, only to discover that I didn't have enough cash for big ones, so we bought two small ones, and she loved pulling the wagon around:

The next day we saw painted pumpkins at the grocery store, so they decided that they wanted to paint their pumpkins too. They each chose their favorite color, so Taipan painted his blue, and Simi painted hers pink:

We've also been enjoying time with our great friends, and Yuta's had the chance to catch up on some movie-watching, which I think he enjoys... though I know he's got a few more on his list that he'd like to see soon.

Some dear friends from Florida were in town for a visit this week. I've got some photos from their visit that I'll post separately. Pink hair and pumpkins are it for this one :-D

Hiking to Brandywine Falls

2009-09-06T09:18:00.003-04:00

My brother, Chris, came to visit us for the long weekend, and we decided to go on a hike. When we first moved here three years ago, I was surprised to learn that Ohio has waterfalls, and I thought it'd be cool to take Chris to see one. For those local to the Cleveland area, we started at the Stanford House, went to the Falls, looped around on the Brandywine Gorge Trail, and then back to the Stanford Trail.

We got off to an adventurous start when I ran over a belt, and the hook got stuck in the tire. I've never learned how to change a tire, so I was glad that Chris was with me. It didn't take too long to get back on the road, and we were able to get the tire patched that afternoon.

The hike was wonderful! The weather was perfect, it was a tad bit challenging with a couple of hills and some stairs, and the falls were pretty. We even saw a couple of deer along the way.

It was about four miles and two hours from beginning to end.

Here's Chris checking out a fallen tree on the way to the falls. About 1.25 miles in, there's a boardwalk & stairs that will take you to the base of the falls:

Posing with the falls behind us:

After leaving the base of the falls, we went up to the lip of the falls, and walked past the Brandywine Inn to the Brandywine Gorge trail, and saw two goats on the way. Both had their heads poking out of the fence. This one was gnawing at some bark:

The trail to the falls was dry - all of the creek beds we saw were dried up. The gorge trail after the falls was along the Brandywine Creek, which was flowing. Chris checking out the creek:

To get back to the Stanford Trail there's a crossing made of quarried stepping stones. The third or fourth one was very slippery and sloping down, and I almost fell off - quite a scare!

It was nice to have some time alone with my brother - it's been a while, and I think we both enjoyed the time! And now I know of another cool place to take visitors. The falls can also be accessed from the top, minus the hiking, which will be a great place to view them with the kids some day.

Cutting shapes

2009-09-06T09:14:00.003-04:00

One of Taisim's favorite things to do these days is to cut shapes - almost always using pin paper.

Here are some cut-outs she made of our family. From left to right, me, Yuta, Taisim & Taipan:

Store

2009-09-03T18:00:00.003-04:00

The party platform box is also being used as a store counter. Simi likes to set up the cash register on it, put on her apron, be "a worker", and sell us stuff. She's got very good prices, and this picture shows how she would sit in between customers:

My favorite people

2009-09-03T17:41:00.004-04:00

A fun picture from last week - not posed. Taipan climed on Yuta's shoulders, and Simi jumped into his lap, so I grabbed the camera.

Simi's party prep

2009-08-27T11:49:00.003-04:00

(I found this unfinished post in the draft file - this is from a week or two ago)

I don't mean preparing for a party for Taisim, but Taisim preparing for a princess party. We first had a party at the bottom of the stairs, and she made art work to decorate the wall by the stairs:

We had a little bit of drama at the bottom of the stairs, so we decided to decorate a box to use for a party platform. I wrapped a box in some pink paper that we used for painting, and then she cut and glued colored shapes to it:

Then Taipan came to join us, and we all played legos - Taipan did a circus train, with a train station, while Taisim and I made a princess house and rode the train:

Cozy kids

2009-08-26T13:32:00.003-04:00

Last Thursday night Yuta went to see District 9, and the kids and I were at home playing. At one point they went into the bedroom and shut the door - I think Simi was being a princess at a princess party and Taipan was protecting her from enemies. I could hear them giggling and chatting from the living room, and after about ten minutes it got quiet. After a bit longer of almost pure silence I cracked the door to see what was going on.

The first thing I noticed was that the bed had been stripped of blankets and pillows, and the kids were not in sight, but I could hear them in the bathroom. I peeked around the corner to find them cozied up on the blankets and pillows on the bathroom floor, with Taipan reading to Taisim. I snuck back in with the camera, and then left so as not to disturb their fun.

I came to find out later that they were pretending that the bathroom was the bedroom, and they made themselves a bed on the floor, and Taipan was reading stories for bedtime. It was one of the sweetest things I've seen them doing together:

Our sunflower has bloomed

2009-08-26T13:26:00.002-04:00

Chi Chi gave us a sunflower plant in early June. It bloomed a week and half ago. It's been so fun watching it grow.

Simi on her path

2009-08-18T14:04:00.002-04:00

The other night Simi was setting up wooden trees in a line on the train table, and she pointed to part of the track and said that she was going to go on that path. I thought she meant that her train or one of her dolls was going to go on that path. Nope. I was wrong. I left the room, and when I came back, this what I found - her walking on her path:

After snapping the pics I let her know that the table might not support her weight for very long, and she climbed down.

Plants vs. Zombies - LIVE

2009-08-18T10:26:00.004-04:00

We've recently fallen in love with a new game - Plants vs. Zombies. It's so much fun, and each of us enjoys playing it. It's like a tower defense game, only with plants and zombies.

Taipan also enjoys *being* the zombies, and he is amazingly good at doing the zombie movements and sound effects. I'm not so good at being a zombie - awkward movements, not so good at dying - so usually Taipan and Yuta are the zombies, and Simi and I do the planting and attacking.

Yuta as the buckethead zombie, and Taipan as the football zombie:

Simi watches from the sidelines and tells me what to plant to fend of the incoming zombies - she uses her map (the DVD case in her hands) for reference:

Taipan as a newspaper zombie, having recently lost his newspaper during an attack from a plant:

Taisim attacking Yuta's zombie ... the horn was a specific weapon, though I can't remember which:

About half the time we successfully defended ourselves, and the other half we got our brains eaten. Here's what our dead zombies look like:

Like I said - we love this game. I highly recommend it - it's a PC/Mac based game, and well worth the $$. At the very least it might tide us over and give us our zombie fix until Left for Dead 2 comes out in November.

Painting ... all weekend

2009-08-11T14:18:00.002-04:00

Late Friday night Simi said she wanted to paint ... and I mean very late ... too late for either me or Yuta to want to bring paints out, so we told her we'd do it the next morning. First thing Saturday morning, before anything else, she said she was ready to paint, so she got to it, joined by Taipan. We have large rolls of paper that we can put on our kitchen table, and we had paper and paints going sitting out nearly continuously. Not until we had company over on Monday were they ready to put them away. And even then Taisim wanted to paint, but on smaller paper so she could give her pictures away.

Here are just a few pictures of the painting - they used many brushes, fingers and hands. This was the first time that they dipped brushes straight into bottles of paint, and it is now the preferred method around here (for me too - much easier clean up).

Taipan's on xbox Live!

2009-08-11T09:27:00.002-04:00

Taipan has for a while liked playing xbox online, and had used Yuta's xbox live account to do so. A few weeks ago Yuta changed his password, and was at work, and we couldn't get online, so I decided to go ahead and sign Taipan up for his own account - this way Yuta and Taipan could play online together .... and I think Yuta feels better not having Taipan using his ID.

Taipan has a local friend who he plays with now, and also a cousin in Utah. It's pretty cool to watch them play and listen to Taipan's end of the conversation. Here he is concentrating on some Castle Crashers:

Seven Hills Homedays (7/24/09)

2009-08-11T09:20:00.002-04:00

We went to the Seven Hills Home Days again this year - the highlight of the evening was definitely watching fireworks with some friends.

When I got home I realized that one of the pictures I had from this year is similar to one I took last year (Taipan is even wearing the same shirt - what a coincidence!).

Below is this year's pic, and the one from last year is here.

Pile (from 7/22/09)

2009-08-11T08:34:00.005-04:00

One evening a few weeks ago, there was a lot of energy and bouncing around the bedroom. We decided to pull all of the blankets and pillows into a jumping pile at the foot of the bed. Yuta got some cool pics (and video, at Taipan's request).

Either Taipan or Taisim will request a "pile" every day or two now ... seems to be a good way to burn off end of the evening energy.

fourth of july pics

2009-07-05T21:58:00.002-04:00

smoke balls, snakes, sparklers

Yuli, Keith, Ling, Chadwick & Akon were here for the sparklers, but you wouldn't know it because we didn't get any pictures of 'em.

Pics are at Yuta's facebook (you do not need to be a member of facebook to see these):

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=89531&id=548178709&l=2add2ebe69

Later that night ...

2009-06-20T22:29:00.004-04:00

As I was taking the pictures of Taipan's play-doh shapes, Taipan and Simi quickly decided that they wanted to do silly pictures, so they made lots of silly faces and poses and goofing around and asked me to take pictures of it all.

For your enjoyment (the last two pictures are a few hours after the rest, taken when Yuta walked in the door and the kids almost immediately wanted him to be their horse):

My day off

2009-06-20T22:17:00.005-04:00

I've got some extra days off this summer thru a cool program my employer is offering. Beginning last week I'll have 1-2 days off each week, and mostly be working three-day work weeks thru the end of August.

Last week I had Wednesday off, and some friends of ours came to visit - they played with moonsand, play-doh, the x-box and dollhouse ..... and some battling in the basement kicked the visit off:

Later that evening Taipan & Taisim did some more play-doh - Taipan did shapes, while Taisim made a snowgirl and snow (she also did a lot of haircuts with the barbershop play-doh set, but no pictures of that):

Father's Day shirt

2009-06-20T22:12:00.002-04:00

Last Saturday while Yuta was at work the kids and I made the annual handprint shirt for him. This year's turned out pretty good.

New weapons and smoke bombs

2009-06-19T08:37:00.005-04:00

One of Taipan's favorite things is the pool noodle light sabers that we made about a year and a half ago. They've not only been light sabers, but also staffs and swords. They're getting quite floppy, and the duct tape on some of them is creasing and tearing, so I picked up a few more noodles not too long ago.

Last weekend we found green & purple duct tape and made a new purple and a new green light saber for Taipan, and also ones that are all silver to use as Wolverine's long claws. I think every day over the past week we've been outside battling.

Taipan with some of the new weapons (the purple w. the green handle is one we made for Simi), and the second picture here is Yuta after being stabbed, and Taipan on the ground with what I think is the weapon he took from Yuta after stabbing him.

During a break from battling we brought out some smoke bombs I got from the 4th of July display at the grocery store - they were a hit! I'm going to buy more before they're gone from the stores. The cool thing is that just that morning Taipan and I watched some jets w. red, white and blue smoke doing a fly-over for the queen's 80th birthday celebration in England, and then we had our own red, white and blue smoke in our driveway:

T-shirts

2009-06-18T17:21:00.003-04:00

We spent an last Friday night and Saturday morning making t-shirts. These are the first two we did, on Saturday night. Iron-ons, inspired by Taipan wanting to do a project he saw on nickjr.com (we did that project too ... pics later, maybe).

Pretend birthdays

2009-06-15T09:41:00.001-04:00

We bought cupcakes at the grocery store last week, and we had candles, and Taisim had the idea of pretending it was everyone's birthday! So we lit the candles, turned down the lights, sand happy birthday and ate cupcakes.

Superstructs

2009-06-15T09:31:00.005-04:00

We got Superstructs a couple weeks ago - they're kind of like Tinkertoys, but better in my opinion. They include gears and some foam pieces, and great instructions (vs. having to figure it out from a picture on the box).

Taipan's ferris wheel:

Taipan playing with Simi's swing set:

Sunflower

2009-06-15T09:19:00.003-04:00

Chi Chi brought the kids a sunflower a couple of weeks ago. Yuta and Taisim planted it on the side of our house, where it could get a lot of sun:

Long time coming update

2009-06-08T11:32:00.005-04:00

I haven't put any pics up in a while, but it's not because we haven't been doing anything. Quite the opposite in fact - I feel like I can't find much time to post these days.

Chalk is a favorite around here in the spring/summer. Taisim loves to draw, and she started drawing flowers, suns and faces. Here's one of the first tries - these are all attempts at heads. She got very frustrated if they didn't come out as she wanted them to, and would try again. I don't know that we got a picture of the one or two that were the finished product.

Below that is a nice surprise I got when I finished work one afternoon - this is the first picture of a person she drew, and it was me! She asked me to add the glasses, but everything else was done by her, on a magnadoodle no less.

Taipan likes for us to draw, while he describes what it is he'd like to see. This is a battlefield from the game Worms, which we downloaded onto our xbox. We played it *a lot* for about a week, but it went by the wayside once Wolverine came into the house.

Our espresso maker was finally shipped back to use about two weeks ago. It came in a box, which was packed in a box, which was packed in a box with styrofoam peanuts. After I got over being anal about keeping the peanuts in the box, Taisim had a great time playing with them. Most of her play was pretending she was a polar bear, in an igloo, and the piece of styrofoam in her mouth here is a fish:

Taisim with "princess hair", playing with a couple of friends that came over, but were too quick-moving for me to get a decent picture of:

Playing with pattern blocks. The ones Taipan has were brought back by my in-laws from a trip to Taiwan. Simi's playing with ones we got about a year ago.

Finally, our new slip-n-slide. I got this on a day when the high was in the low 60s, and the following day it wasn't much warmer, but Taipan & Taisim have a higher tolerance for cold water in mild temperatures than I do. The water pressure here isn't so great, so it works best if someone is standing with their feet on the bumper at the end, so that the water sprays higher from the tube on the side.

I've got more pics in the camera, so maybe I'll get those here soon.

Fun with food

2009-04-29T21:13:00.005-04:00

Both of these things were inspired by things I read on the AlwaysLearning list.

Someone posted this link, and it looked like something Taipan and Taisim would enjoy, so tonight we made them.

They joined me to poke the spaghetti through the hot dog pieces, and Taipan had the idea to put a few pieces of hot dog on one piece of spaghetti:

This was me getting creative - it looked sort of spidery when it was cooked:

Here's our finished product. I put it out with some toothpicks, and we grazed on them this evening. Taipan ended up liking the pasta best, and ate the spaghetti off the hot dogs, so we ended up with a bunch of hot dog pieces at the end ... he likes hot dogs with ketchup, but just wasn't in the mood for them tonight, so I offered to make him more pasta by itself, which he took me up on.

These pictures are from last night, and I didn't realize we did two fun food things in a row until I was starting this blog post. Some folks on the AlwaysLearning list were talking about Pajama Sam being available on the Wii and how much their kids liked it. I was curious and read up on it, and thought it sounded like something we would like, and we got it the other day. One of the mini-games is called "Cheese and Crackers", where you play tic-tac-toe and connect four and connect five, and one side uses cheese and the other crackers.

Last night Taipan said he wanted to play cheese and crackers for real, so we cut up some cheese, got some crackers, drew boards and played a few rounds. Simi liked putting pieces all over the board, while Taipan was focused on getting 3, 4 or 5 in a row. It was also a yummy snack afterwards.

Easter morning

2009-04-15T14:36:00.004-04:00

We woke up on Sunday, and Taipan immediately remembered that it was Easter, and couldn't wait to get going on the egg hunt.

First, though, Easter baskets:

Checking out the eggs after the hunt, and putting them in egg plates (I'm so hoping we have warm enough weather for an outdoor egg hunt one of these years):

And then bunny cake (which my mom says we did have as kids, so I just don't remember it). Taisim was wanting to eat it the night before, but I really wanted to wait until Easter to dig in, so as soon as our egg hunt was over we had cake. Taisim wanted part of the ear, and Taipan wanted the pink bow.

Upside down and tulips

2009-04-14T09:42:00.003-04:00

Two more from Saturday ....

we read some books when we woke up on Saturday - about five books, in sequence about four or five times. One of them was Silly Sally and a couple were Sandra Boynton books.

After a while we all tried to walk backwards upside down (like Silly Sally). Taipan and I managed to do the backwards part, and Taisim managed to do the upside down part.

She's been doing this upside down on the couch and ottomans multiple times a day since Saturday:

I love fresh flowers, but don't have them often - the cost and the cat are mostly why. But on Saturday night at the grocery store Taisim and I dedcided to get some tulips. I love having them around. Taipan likes them too, and it's been fun watching them open up.