Home is where the heart is...

There are quite a few kids in our condominium and we get together regularly.  Above are Mino's friends, Aina, Maria, Haruka, and Takumi (left to right).  It's been so much fun hanging out with them.  If we hear someone playing downstairs by the pool, we'll come out and join them.  They come up and ask to borrow our shoyu sometimes.  Never thought we could have a little "good ol' days of countryside" here in the midst of Honolulu.

Mino Monster is growing!

Mino just had a field trip with the preschool.  We had so much fun at the zoo.

All the girls took turns pushing her stroller and made sure she was happy by feeding her snack, giving her a water bottle, and teaching her about the animals.  I feel so lucky to have  these little "helpers".  I wish I could hire them to come to our house to help me.  

Mino started preschool in February and it's been such a wonderful experience for her.  She's learned a lot from each one of her friends and now she can speak 2 word sentences.  She can even say a 3 word sentence.  Actually only "I SEE YOU" though.  

Anyways she's learning and growing.  I love her innocent curiosity and it's been such joy just being with her.

Mino and Kai

This is Mino and her friend, Kai.  Mino loves Kai.

Mino calls him "Tai" because she can't pronounce the sound "K".

He's such a cute and bright little boy.

Whenever I drop his name like "Do you want to go see Kai?" she's super excited.  

Yesterday in the nursery, she got frustrated with something and hit him and then she even bit his arm.  I scolded her and told her to say sorry to him.  

He didn't hit her back or cry.  He just waited for her to say sorry patiently and when she finally said sorry, he patted her head and gave her a hug.  

What other one year old boy could do this?  I was just amazed.  

We're still working on her not to hit or bite anyone even when she gets upset.  It's taking a while...  Oh well...

Mommy is a Washing Machine!

We used to wash clothes only once a week and it was enough but since she's been born, the loads of laundry has been doubled or even tripled.  

She loves to dive into a pile of laundry freshly taken out of the dryer.  I sit next to her and fold the clothes while she watches Elmo DVD.  Then she jumps on the clothes that were folded nicely afterwards.  

I like folding her clothes.  They're so little and cute.  

 

Our Little Getaway to Waikiki

We stayed at Hilton Grand Waikikian last weekend.  We live only 10 minutes away from there but it was still a nice getaway.  The beach was right there and the room was super nice.  

They have some really nice swimming pools and they even had water slides.  We got to take Mino on the small slide.  She loved it so much that she kept asking to go back so we went back at least 5, 6 times.  

Then we moved over to the beach which is right next to the pool later on.  We spent 3hrs there I think.  

This is actually a man made lagoon that she's in so the water was a little cold.  But it didn't stop her from having so much fun.  She dove in, jumped around, splashed the water, and drunk some.  She just could not get enough of it.  

 

And sure enough this is what happened afterwards.  And the funny thing was she was ready to jump back into the water when she woke up.  She was asking for more "wa-ta".

There was a big block party in Waikiki that night so we walked around, had some noodles, enjoyed  the music they were playing.  All in all we had a great time.  

So much love!

Here is Mino & Keali'i.  They're exactly 3 months apart and they're buddies.  

They both love Elmo and Anpanman so most of their conversations involve Elmo or Anapanman.  

I love watching them play together and entertain each other.  They're so cute!

Awwwwwwwwww so cute how they cuddle each other.  

Wait!  They're not cuddling.  They're wrestling...

Hope Mino wasn't choking Keali'i.  Sorry Keali'i, she's a little too much sometimes.

I think she scared him when they first met because he was running away from her.  Since they've been seeing each other quite often, it seems like he's gotten used to her being all over him now.

She could be overbearing at times, but we're working on that.  

We love Easter!

Mino was sick for the last few days and we were pretty much homebound.  We read lots of books, watched Elmo DVD's, played her little toy piano together, talked to Baaba (her grandma) on Skype... we pretty much did everything we could do at home and we were bored.

Poor Mino baby.   

On Monday, our dear friends, Pili and David came to drop off this Easter basket for Mino while we were cooked up in the house.  There were home made chex mix and rice crispy treat.  Oh boy was she excited?   They made her day.

"A" is for alligator!

Mino got alphabet and number flash cards from Honey (her grandma) and loves to play with those cards.  For alphabets, there is a letter on one side and the other side is a picture of an animal or food whose name starts with that letter.

So if we show her the letter "A" and say "A" is for alligator, she'll use her hands to make alligator head and pretend to bite us with her little alligator actions.  She knows quite a few letters and it's really cute how she makes all the animal sounds too.

She's an enthusiastic learner and it's really fun to teach her.  I love her innocent curiosity.  

Our little disney junkie

We're going to Japan in May to visit my family and my mom wants to take Mino to Tokyo Disneyland.  So we decided to prep her for this Disneyland trip by taking her to Disney Store and showing her some shows on Disney channel.

She quickly fell in love with all the Disney characters and Minnie Mouse is definitely her favorite out of all.  Every time we walk into Disney Store, she would scream "mimmi, mimmi, MIMMIE!!!!!!!!"  Can't wait to take her to Disneyland now!

how old is he? thank you SHE is a GIRL!!!

I don't know why people would just assume she's a boy even when she's wearing PINK!

I guess nowadays everyone is being metro-sexual and they dress boys in pink and purple huh.    Anyways so many times I had to kind of emphasize "SHE" part when answering to the questions  like "So how old is he?"

The last couple of weeks she's been getting more hair and all of a sudden she's no longer bald.   So we can finally put a bow in her hair.  Thank goodness for the hair.  Now she hardly gets mistaken for a boy.  I guess it was that hair that was making it confusing.  

Field Trip to Lo'i

Mino had her first field trip this week.  We went to Lo'i in Waialua.

We made fish with laohala leaves and sang some songs.  Then off to the mud...

Mino is usually a daredevil when it comes to adventures but I guess she didn't really like this one.  As soon as I took her shoes off and put her down, she started to cry.

Poor Mino baby, I still pushed her in.  

Even though it was a little out of my element walking around in the mud barefoot and diving into the stream to wash the mud off afterwards, but it was still a lot of fun.  I wouldn't be able to do all of these just myself and was grateful for the wonderful experience.  

My Water Baby

We're trying to get more sun while the weather is nice and warm since it's been raining off and on for the last few weeks.  

We bought her some beach toys and she is loving shoveling the sand and sprinkling on her head.  She could do that for hours if I let her...

A few weeks ago we were taking our afternoon walk downstairs.  She saw the swimming pool and decided to jump in.  Even though she's a super hyper baby with endless supply of energy, she knows her boundaries (most of the time).  So she'll wait for me to hold her hands when she goes close to the edge, but I guess she was so sick of being cooked up in the house and wanted to go explore.

Of course I had to jump into the water to rescue her with my clothes on.  Oh the joy of being a mom of one year old!  

Finally a blogger!

Our one year old daughter is a fire cracker that never stops.  So I spend most of my days trying to stay ahead of her.  

Our days seem to go by so quickly and we forget a lot of the cute little things she has done so I thought I should at least try to capture some of her moments by blogging.

Here is our day to day joys with Mino Monster!