Funny family turkey day

Dear Maya and Emi,

Well, this Thanksgiving was one of the most poorly photographed holidays of your sweet little lives and you know what? That's a really good thing! Mommy was a little burnt out from doing a lot of photographing this fall and spent this holiday relaxing and enjoying it. Hooray! A quick recap...

• Adorable embroidered dresses, adorable uninterested faces

• Delicious food! Turkey and stuffing courtesy of Aunt Rhi, veggies by Grandma, and sporty tiramisu by daddy!

• Family! Grandma and Papa Stan stayed for a week and Kelsie, Shawn, Grace and Will came over on Thanksgiving night. We love them!

Well, mommy's under the weather and needing some sleep. Love you both!

Christmas in New York

Dear Maya and Emi,

Well, mommy has a good reason for not posting last week!

We had a very full weekend starting off with pictures in the park. Mommy was taking photos of other families and then Aunt Rhi took ours. It was so much fun and we got some really cute shots for our Christmas cards. Mommy is saving the best ones for the cards, but here are some great outtakes:

 

 

 

Thanks for these pictures, Auntie Rhi!

Mommy took a bunch of pictures of you guys with the photography props, too.

Then we headed to New York City! Emi, it was your first time on the train and you were so good. Once there we checked into our lovely hotel room (great view of the Empire State Building!) and then headed out to the Central Park Zoo and Rockefeller Center where they were decorating the tree.

 

 

 

 

The next day we headed to the Japanese Consulate (our reason for the trip) and got lost looking for a Japanese bookstore. We walked around a lot! Well, actually mommy and daddy walked around a lot. Emi, you were in the stroller and Maya, you got tired and had daddy carry you several times. It was a great trip but we were all so tired out by the time we got back home. New York City with two small kids is not something we want to do on a regular basis!

And now we're less than a week from Thanksgiving and Grandma and Papa Stan arrived today! It's going to be a great holiday!

Love you both!

It's the little things

Dear Maya and Emi,

Lately mommy's blog posts seem to have been all about the bigger events and traditions in our lives. Of course, those are what stand out in my mind at the end of the week, and the things I have the most pictures of. Recently, though, mommy has really been noticing all the little milestones I've gotten away from posting about. Starting with this post, I'm going to try to get back to that place of noticing and recording more of the little things--for you two, myself and friends and family who read this!

First off, here's an excerpt of a November Thankful List mommy posted on Facebook the other day:
1. Maya is absolutely loving school. She got the best progress report I could have dreamed and is making us so very proud. Even better, she's proud of herself, too.
2. Maya also has suddenly become so thoughtful at home--helping make dinner, cleaning up, minding her sister, anticipating the next thing to be done and doing it—and after a year of power struggles since becoming a big sister, it is so beautiful to see her wanting to help.
3. Emi is such a little nut and keeps us laughing all the time--especially with her comical timing using the Japanese word "kusai" (stinky).
4. Emi, like her sister, is robust and healthy, and (knock on wood) doesn't get too sick too often. In the last few months she's gone from middle-of-the-road height and weight to 75th percentile. I know that those standards aren't the be-all, end-all, but having seen how one sickness can cause dramatic weight loss, a little extra chub in a toddler is certainly welcome. And adorable.
5. My husband. He works himself to the bone for us and sacrifices so much. He's so busy and so tired and still takes the time to be playful and sweet with the girls and me. I couldn't ask for a better partner.

To that I'd like to add a few more things about each of you:

Maya, lately you get really aggravated when your sister tries to get into whatever you're playing with. You whine to us and you yell at her. Sometimes you even pick her up and put her somewhere where she can't get to you--like on top of the coffee table she can't get down from. But you also love her so much that you never intentionally hurt her. You protect her when it looks like she might get hurt and you get angry when we joke about eating her up. You notice when her diaper basket is running low and replenish it. You love making her laugh and kissing her. You are such an amazing big sister!

Emi, you have a few other Japanese words you use often--one is choudai ("please") though you don't always use it correctly. This morning you picked up Maya's cup, and instead of drinking it yourself like mommy expected, you took it across the room to her and said douzo ("here you go") and gave it to her! And another amazing tidbit is your singing. For a week or two you've been trying to mimic the very difficult "Habanera" from Carmen which you've seen the Muppets version of many times. And today you were singing a great duet with mommy to the song "Skinnamarink"! So proud of you!

Okay, that was a lot more in depth of a post with a lot fewer photos than usual. Mommy will try to balance the two going forward, though it might be a challenge with the holidays coming up. I love you two so much and am very proud to see the thoughtful, caring people you are becoming!

Love you!

*sorry for the photo quality, but this is how you guys like to eat dinner lately--
pushed up right against each other at the table, Maya giving Emi her food a little at a time