The great leaf hunt of 2006

Thanksgiving... the time of year when all number of strange creatures emerge from the woods and onto lawns, covering the fading green grass and taking over lush green space. Luckily for us, we had professionals on the job this Thanksgiving, and while there was no actual raking done or anything like that, those nasty leaves sure did get an earful from Mika and Kiyomi, the greatest leaf hunters of all time!



Cousin Mika came to stay with us this Thanksgiving (oh ya, her parents and grandparents came too), but really for Kiyomi, it was all about Mika. The girls met for the first time, and Kiyomi got to spend time with uncle Martin and aunty Miyo too. The house was full, and we all loved it. We ate well, laughed a lot and many, many, many… many pictures were taken. The weather was phenomenal - warm and sunny everyday. Excursions to Mer Bleu Bog, the Experimental Farm and the Farmers' Market were interspersed with a never ending stream of games, dances, and general merriment coming from the girls.

Kiyomi and Mika got along famously (or at least as well as a 3 year old and a 1 year old can expect to get along). Mika tried to teach Kiyomi a few new things, and treated us all to wonderful performances from Beauty and the Beast (complete with princess dress and full musical score). Alas, we didn’t think to video tape one of these fabulous performances for posterity.

Kiyomi did show a wee bit of possesiveness. Not over us, of course, but over KT the cat. Anytime poor Mika tried to get near the cat, Kiyomi would barge in, stand in front, and pretty much plant herself, arms reaching out to the poor cat, and grunts espcading from her that had the unmistakeably tone of “mine”, even if the word sounded nothing like “mine”. Needless to say, KT was none too impressed.



Kenji and Aya (Kohji’s brother and sister-in-law) took charge of Thanksgiving dinner itself and put on a fabulous spread with a scrumptions… and ENORMOUS … turkey. Aya’s family also came for dinner, so there was a huge spread for 12 adults, 2 kids and a rather traumatized Nicolai the cat, who was likely much relieved when the Tasmanian devils known as "the nieces" left.

Other developments since my last post was a return trip to the International Adoption Clinic at CHEO, where all tests came back perfectly fine. Although we weren’t expecting otherwise, it was nonetheless a relief to have a clean bill of health confirmed.

The latest craze in the house is stair sitting. For incomprehensible reasons (to us anyway), Kiyomi loves just sitting on the steps. She only needs to go up a couple steps, and she’ll turn around and plonk herself down, and sit there happily for quite some time. She sometimes seems to be singing to herself, but it’s hard to tell if it’s song or babble.

Her babbling seems to get more and more elaborate everyday. No discernable words yet, but her babble has a great deal of expression and intonation to it. We have no idea what she’s saying, but it is obviously vital information and we’ve become convinced that she’s trying to communicate the solution for global warning, and occasionally rolls her eyes at us cause despite her best efforst, we just don’t seem to get it. Her comprehension seems to be growing by leaps and bounds, however. She can do all the regular toddler things like point to body parts, point to the giant giraff in our family room, nod and shake her head in response to some questions, which amazes us given that she’s only been exposed to English for 4 months. No way I’d be learning Mandarin that fast, that’s for sure!

She's also taking more and more to utensils, although we're not at the stage where she insists on feeding herself all the time. However, every meal seems to involve multiple utensils, and mutiple projectile-like food items. The cat has been very, very happy lately.

We’ve also had a few “bad mommy” moments. A couple weeks ago, she took a tumble at playgroup. When I scooped her up, she was in the middle of the ‘silent-building scream’, so I whisked her into the kitchen where she promptly bled all over her dress, my hand and the paper towel that I grabbed in a panic. Somehow she had hit her mouth, but with the crying, the blood and the drool, I couldn’t see where the injury was. Three days later (yes, you read that right, 3 whole days), I noticed a gash on her tongue that was exactly the shape and size of her 4 front teeth. We didn’t worry about it too much, as she didn’t seem to be having any trouble eating or drinking, but man, did I shutter everytime she stuck out her tongue.

The cure (or conversely the continuation of) these bad mommy moments seems to be Toy Story II. Not sure why, but she seems to love the scene where Buster the dog comes charging into the room (you’re all forgiven for not knowing this scene, as no reasonable person should be expected to have watched it a dozen times). She stares enraptured at the screen, barking her little heart out. Not sure if she thinks Buster is talking to her, but she’s happy.

On that note, I’ll call it a night, and put her to bed (Kohji’s been entertaining her as I write this, and I can here definite fatigue in his voice). The parting shot for tonight needs no explanation or introduction, it speaks for itself. Good night from Ottawa.

Busy, busy, busy...

Well, you've heard it said before, toddlers are 'busy, busy, busy'... and Kiyomi is no exception. It's been a busy few weeks around here. At least that's my excuse for not posting in a while and I'm sticking to it.

Walking is the word of the day. Now that Kiyomi has figured out how to walk, it's officially the preferred mode of locomotion. She pretty much walks on her own, and has left the crawling thing behind. Crawling now is exclusively reserved for playing. She's even started to master uneven ground - preferring to walk across the sand at the park. That said, she will still reach out for a hand when she's feeling a little unsteady and still spends a great deal of time on her butt as a result of falls. Luckily, the original mode of falling (i.e., launching herself backwards) has been replaced with a rather ungraceful butt-drop, but it's better for all.

Of course, she's also had a few head bonks - some traumatic, others nonplussed. The worst was when we were rushing out the door to go to the doctor for Kiyomi's first set of shots. I turned to put on my shoes, and then heard an ominous 'clunk' behind me, followed by silence. You know that eerie silence, the one where you know that when you look, you'll see a toddler with her mouth wide open, eyes shut, face all scrunched up as she prepares to release a blood-curdling wail that is specifically designed to convey not only displeasure, but a great big huge helping of guilt for mom who could actually allow something like this to happen. Yup, that one! Of course, it took awhile to calm her down, of course, we were in a rush, and of course, when she finally started to perk up, I plopped her down on a table to have needles jabbed into each arm by a strange man in a lab coat. Needless to say, it was a multiple cookie day.

Kiyomi's fascination with books continues, which has me pleased as a peacock. She now toddles over to her pile of books, picks one out, brings in to you, and says "ah". This, of course, is Kiyomi speak for "sit down, so I can climb onto your lap, and you can read this book to me."

Her understanding of English seems to be getting better and better every day. No words - other than the oft used 'cat' - but when asked "where's mommy?", "where's daddy?" "where's the giraffe?", she'll smile and point, and usually gets in right. Although I've been occassionally confused with the giraffe. She has also picked up a few fun tricks, like putting her hands partially over her eyes and looking at you to say "peek-a-boo" and then lifting her hands away and grinning or holding out her hand when you say "gimme five".

The most useful trick she's picked up though - at least useful for her - is the whine. Yup, our darling, quiet little girl has discovered that if she squeels at just the right frequency, her wishes will be granted. It's not particualrly high pitched, but combined with the finger point, it is rather effective. When she gets tired, she's even started resorting to the cry - real tears and everything. This culminated last night in a very strategic exit last night from a Chapters. We had stayed a little later than expected - although given my love of book stores, it wasn't that unexpected - so she was getting a little tired. Kohji was entertaining her with plastic dish set on sale there that she found particularly fun. So fun, in fact, that she decided she didn't want to leave and everytime we tried to take it away, she started to whine/cry. Knowing it couldn't be avoided, I paid for our books, we put on our coats and then we quickly wrestled the toy from Kiyomi's hand and ran! The result was the ominous silence described above, as she prepared to let us know exactly what she thought of our little operation. We almost made it out of the store before the wail commenced... but not quite.

She's also learned to shake her head vigorously when she doesn't want something, usually food. This has resulted in more than one spoon full of something or another on the floor, and the subsequent wrestle with the cat to prevent KT from gobbling down what hits the floor. The cat now positions herself rather strategically under the table for just such occasions.

We've also had some fun visiting lately with family down from London (uncle Brahm, my cousin, Aleson and her family). I got to meet Aleson's little girl, Macy, for the first time and she's a real cutey, with huge, sweet eyes.

A few of the moms from our travel group also got together for a playdate last week. It was great to see the girls and find out how they're all doing. They have all changed so much in just a few months. They've all gained weight, filled out, and are really coming out of their shells. I don't think they recognized each other, but we all agreed that it'll be great to get the girls together regularly - both for them and for us.
Included in the group was Kiyomi's little buddy from China, Hailey. Of course, at their age, buddies means the toddler whose toys Kiyomi was most prone to stealing. Kiyomi and Hailey are now almost exactly the same height, weight and at very similar stages of development, and it was a blast watching them 'talk' to each other.

The last couple weeks have also seen the start of a couple of organized playgroups and swimming lessons. Kiyomi likes the play groups. There's no actual interaction with the other kids, but their presence is enough to get her going. The Glebe Community Center play group is a riot, with every conveivable toy imaginable dragged out into this huge hall, where about 30 toddlers can happily go out of their minds. Kiyomi was particularly taken with a riding toy that she would push from one end of the room to the other, yelping every time she hit a wall to get me to turn her around.

Swimming has been a little less successful, but I suspect it's because the pool is too cold for her. The first lesson was great, and worth the price of admission to see the look of utter shock on Kiyomi's face when I kept dunking my head under the water and come up laughing. She didn't know what to think, especially for the last dunk when I brought her down with me. The pool was warmer at that first lesson though, and since, she's just found it too cold to relax, so she doesn't seem to enjoy it much. However, I still like going as Kiyomi's 2nd cousin (I think it's what she'd be), Lola, goes. She's 5 months old, and has this fabulous little smile, and seems to really like the pool.

The parting shot is another of Kohji's live action photography. You'll note that these pics were taken from her crib when she was supposed to be napping.

Of grandparents and hats

Well, I may have proclaimed victory on the hat front a little too soon. After a summer of struggles, Kiyomi has finally relented and no longer fights me when I try to put her sun hat on. I thought it was resolved, that I had finally convinced her of the wisdom of my approach... until I pulled out the winter hats... She no longer saw the logic in the idea of having someone on one's head. And alas, some of the tricks I perfected in getting her to wear the sun hat - like waiting until she was facing directly into the sun and then sliding the hat on to show her how much better it is with the sunhat - can not be used with winter hats in mid September.


Kiyomi may have won this initial round, despite the attempted bribery (with grapes no less), but I survive to struggle on another day however. Rest assured, victory will be mine in the end of these ongoing hat wars (if for no other reason than I can tie a knot in the damn thing if I have to). Of course, if getting a hat on is this much of a struggle, I'm more than a little terrified of what's going to happen when I try to wrestle her into her snowsuit!

Kiyomi had a great time this week visiting with her grandparents - Ojiichan and Obaachan. She learned some new songs and seemed to be always able to con Ojiichan into reading to her whenever she wanted. They seemed to see eye to eye on a number of topics and had some great little chats.

Obaachan taught her some wonderful new songs on the piano, and Kiyomi has found another willing adult to assist her in one of her favourite passtimes - banging the piano keys. Maybe she's the reincarnation of Theloneus Monk?


Kiyomi also had her first appointment at the International Adoption Clinic at CHEO. It was a rather lengthy appointment, and quite useful. She was a trouper throughout and managed to charm the medical resident and rather green med student who were sitting in. The only time she let out a peep was while they were taking blood. They seemed to take an awful lot of blood from her little body, but the nurse assured me it would be fine. I guess I must have looked like a typical worried mom.

The parade of faces also continues. She seems to find new and more innovative ones every day and loves trying them out on whoever is nearby. Her latest is lip pursing. Not sure how it started or what she's trying to convey, but she seems happy enough to get a reaction of smiles and giggles. What a ham! She cracks herself up I tell ya.

The parting shot for tonight pretty much gives you the idea of who holds the reins in this here family... and just to be clear, it's no one over 18... Good night from Ottawa.

My turn!

Last week, Kiyomi may have been showing signs of taking after her dad with all that climbing, but this week, it's all me baby! She's showing us her more studious and contemplative side. She has become fascinated with books over the last few days. On one or two occasions, prefering to leaf through her book rather than chase KT cat. You know if it beats out the cat, then it's held in high esteem. Grad school, here she comes (ok, ok, I'm getting a little ahead of myself). Those weekly trips to the library are paying off though.

We took advantage of the long weekend to take Kiyomi on her first road trip - or a facsimile thereof. We headed up to Mont Tremblant for the September long weekend - an annual pilgrimmage with some friends. Alas, it was a bit of a rainy weekend, but Kiyomi had a great time hanging out in the 'hot tub' - which was really more bathtub temperature - and goofing around with her buddy Ella. In fact, Kiyomi and Ella had the run of the place, and even managed to deliver some pretty command performances from the loft!

There was some general hanging out, and lots of playing and eating. We were a little unsure how Kiyomi would take to a new environment, but she settled in perfectly happily and even slept better than she does at home! Perhaps it was the several hours in the hot tub or the 300 or so trips up (and down) the stairs, but she slept like a rock every night.

Speaking of sleep, Kiyomi's peaceful nights have been a wee bit disturbed of late. It's not too bad, but everynow and again, she starts to cry in her sleep. We don't think she wakes up when she's crying, so we wonder if its nightmares. All in all, she doesn't seem any more tired the next day, so we're not too worried about it. Other than the fact that she looks pretty sad as she snorfles back into more peaceful dreams.

The parting shot for tonight is a classic - every kid has a spaghetti shot, and now so does Kiyomi. Good night from Ottawa.

First steps

Here's a video of Kiyomi's first solid steps that she took a couple of nights ago...

Time to break out the baby gates!

http://www.mediamax.com/kojtam/Links/8FA49B83AB

She's a climber...

She could have been a fine pianist, or strong at the sciences, or even a fast runner... but nope, Kiyomi has decided to take after her dad's climbing obsession!

I knew I was in trouble when I noticed she seemed to prefer crawling over obstacles rather than around them. There were other indications as well. Like as she was starting to walk with support, she would have a tendency to lift her foot high in the air when she came upon a step... or really anything else that looked like it would be good to stand on.... lean backwards and vault forward. Sometimes successfully, sometimes not. However, we learned it was game over for sure just last week when she spontaneously, with no prompting and minimal assistance, started climbing the stairs. Yup, Kohji watched helplessly as our little darling headed straight for, and then started to crawl up, the stairs. I wonder if MEC makes a climbing harness for a 13 month old?

Her climbing hasn't been contained to the stairs either. It seems to extend to pretty much anything. Which was a little bit inconvenient when our friends Catherine and Lauren came by with a fantastic little kitchen set, and before opening it, Kiyomi felt a need to summit it!

Of course, yet again, it is not her parents who spurred on her ingenuity, but the cat. It would seem any new trick she learns is more than likely to be a result of trying to talk to, catch, pet or otherwise get in the way of, the cat. The cat, meanwhile, has determined that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, and she too has taken to poking, following or otherwise pestering Kiyomi. They are quite the pair, and while it seems likely that one of them may regret the partnership, for the moment, they seem to be partners in crime.

There has also been some interesting developments on the walking front. And for once, it's not motivated by the cat. I suspect the primary motivation is the "tot lot". Kiyomi and I go there regularly. It's a small little park with pint size play equipment, often crawling with fellow parents and tots. There's a interesting little dynamic with tot clicks, parent clicks and probably a million and one stories a day. Kiyomi and I are slowly becoming regulars, recognizing the other regulars, making some friends. I, for one, have become the bounce-lady - the mom who can get conned into bouncing the kids on the bouncy bridge for up to half an hour at a time. It's actually a pretty good workout as I can feel my calfs burn after 10 minutes. Kiyomi LOVES sitting on the bridge with the other kids and bouncing helplessly. There seems to be some sort of thrill in the ragdoll effect that I don't understand, but hey, I'm over 30 now.

Anyhow, the "tot lot" has been a really strong walking motivator. Let's just say that nothing cramps your style like having to drag mom around the whole place. Especially when you want to walk through the tunnel or chase the other kids tearing around. Everyday, Kiyomi seems to be able to take more and more steps on her own and they are steadier each time she tries to walk. So, in summation, it won't be too long before she's running away from us and tearing up the stairs. Hmmm, another baby gate may be in order.

Another milestone this week has been some new words, or at least word recognition. She's been pretty good with cat, but we also noticed that everytime she saw a dog, she's yelp out "daw". Wow, we thought, cat and dog. Not bad. Oh sure, there was a little confusion when she looked at the giraff in our living room and said "daw", but eh, when you look at a giraff, it kinda looks like a dog, other than that whole neck thing!

So, this was the theory until this week! I took her to the experimental farm. Our first stop... the cow and cattle barn. She took one look at King the Clysdale, and yelped out "DAW!!" Hmm, I guess we need to work a little more on the word recognition thing. However, there is hope as just tonight, we asked Kiyomi where her belly was, and she patted her tummy with both hands and grinned wildly. Now, as long as we don't interfer and confuse her (as we did when we showed her her toes, and asked her where they were. She wound up grabbing her toes the next time we asked about her belly), we seem to be on our way to learning body parts and animals.

The parting shot for tonight is one I couldn't resist - the wee one with a wee bit of hummus on her face (which she loves by the way)!

Good night from Ottawa!

Cruisin'... the next frontier

I've been told before that you spend a great deal of time hoping your children will talk, crawl, walk... and then after they've been doing it for awhile, you pine for the days when they couldn't!
So it is in our household. I had a few precious weeks where I was reasonably certain that if I left Kiyomi on the floor and stepped out of the room for a second or two, I would find her in the same place I left her. Those days are already a distant - albeit plesant - memory.

Not only has she pretty much mastered the crawling thing, she has now taken to cruisin' around furniture - her high chair being the favourite piece. In fact, she spent about 3/4 of an hour last week, cruising around it, and singing to herself.


She's also been spurred on by a gift from our friends Tim, Alison and Tessa - a rather nifty Fisher Price walker-contraption that actually starts to sing when she bumps into things. Unfortunately, Kiyomi hasn't quite figured out that when you hit an obstacle, you have te reposition the walker to get around it. Rather, she's taken to backing up and having another go at it. Either that, or she just wants to make it sing again! Good mommy that I am, I pretty much wind up laughing at her until she gets a little frustrated, and then I redirect the wheels.

Other than working on the walking thing, we've been partaking of typical summer activities - wading pool, park, library, walks, runs to see the ducks. The highlight of last weekend was a trip to the fair. The SuperEx is in town, and just happens to be a couple blocks from our front door. So we headed there to see what Kiyomi thought of the lights, rides and general fanfare. It was kinda like letting a gambler loose in Vegas! There was a combined awe and barely contained excitement that came out every now and again with a few yelps and squeels. Unfortuantely, she was a little too young to get on any of the rides, but she had a blast watching her friend Ella on the ferris wheel and merry go round. She also really enjoyed watching the cops give a hard time to some teenagers who had been smoking pot right around the corner from the merry-go-round... but that's probably a tale for another day.

I have also been through my first full week 'solo'. Some things are easier than I thought they would be, others are harder. Needless to say, I have now been introduced to Teletubbies! I don't understand it, and that baby in the sun still freaks me out, but it buys me 10 minutes or so to get dinner started.

Kiyomi has also become a rather consistant ultimate fan - largely against her will. She's made it out to every game (thanks to relatively good weather, Nana, and a couple teams worth of willing baby-sitters). She seems to enjoy it, especially when Nana or aunty Sue are there to run her around. We'll have to see how this week goes as we're now into playoffs and have 6 games in the next 7 days. Hopefully, she won't add any more bites to her growing mosquito bite collection (bad parents, baaad parents)!

This week has also marked the next step in the paper chase with the citizenship application finally filled out and in the mail. The government has a test for assessing its employees' capacity to learn a second language. I've never taken it, but I've been told that the test is effectively in Kurdish and a large part of it is testing your ability to retain new words. I've decided that the government actually writes up all its immigration and citizenship forms in Kurdish first, and then gets someone who only speaks French to translate them into English. That is the only possible explanation for the vagueness of the questions and the strange rationale for the needed supporting documentation. I actually had a CIC employee tell me on the phone that a passport is not a sufficient proof of citizenship. When I asked - and it was in fact quite politely - whether it was indeed the case that only Canadian citizens could get Canadian passports, and whether that would not be proof of Canadian citizenship, she responded - no word of a lie here - that a Canadian passport was insufficient documentation for a citizenship application! I think she was a little offended by my giggling.

Just a little side note for those of you in the process - if you don't have one already, invest in a small home photocopier/scanner thing. It's been invaluable with all the paper work.

The parting shot for tonight (if I can get it to work since blogger's been giving me trouble) is a little priceless (apologies to uncle Kenji, but it had to be made public). Good night from Ottawa.

Locomotion and puppets

Well, really a pretty average week in the household... crawling, standing and puppets!

Yup, you read right. In the last week, Kiyomi has started standing on her own for longer and longer periods of time. She has also, unfortunately, picked up this really fun game where she free falls backwards with the full expectation that someone will be there to catch her. She laughs, while she's doing it! We're not sure if she's laughing because she's in free fall, or because out of the corner of her eye, she can see an adult or two dive across the room to make sure she is indeed caught. All I can say is that this does NOT bode well for her teenage years!

Impatient with the fact that she can't actually walk yet - and eager to get her hands on the KT cat's tail - Kiyomi has started to crawl. Who knew that a four legged creature could create a four legged creature out of our little girl?!

So, we now add crawling to her expanding repetoire, which at the moment consists primarily of wanting to walk (assisted of course), launching really messy foods like spaghetti across the room, saying "cat" (although we have no idea whether she actually associates it with the cat since she called a dog "cat" the other day) and generally making all sorts of crazy, funny faces. I tell ya, what's not to love!

The standing has also created a new challenge for bedtime, as it seems she's mastered the ability to pull herself to standing in the crib. Now, normally, this wouldn't be a big deal, but for the fact that she's extraordinarily proud of herself when she does this. The bedtime routine usually has Kohji or I laying on th ebed beside her crib reading and waiting for her to fall asleep. We try to ignore her rather than interact so she settles in with Elton. Well, it's hard to ignore it when you glance over and are eye to eye with this huge grin. Once you laugh, you're sunk because she takes that as a sign to giggle at will!

We had a great visit with Nana. Not only did she help with the baby, she helped put together Kiyomi's room, including making curtains. Much appreciated by all, but especially Tamara. It was a nice way to transition into full time "on my own". Mom, you'll be missed!

Yesterday, we headed off to the Puppets Up! Festival in Almonte - a pretty little town about 45 minutes from Ottawa. Now, it's not that we wouldn't have considered the driving 45 minutes to a puppet festival before Kiyomi (usually at the prodding of uncle Phil). But let's face it, we probably would not have spent a warm, sunny Saturday afternoon driving to Almonte for it. My how things have changed... Of course, it would seem there isn't much we wouldn't do for this little face (see again comment above re: teenage years).

The Festival itself is quite fun, although probably more interesting for the older (4 and up) crowd. All of Almonte gets into it. They close the main street to traffic and puppets rule the roost. There are a number of theaters set up, all within easy walking distance, and puppeteers from all over spend two days entertaining. The highlight is the puppet parade down main street.

We've also discovered that Kiyomi seems to really like music (thanks in large part to the musical potty that Nana got for her). You haven't lived until you've heard the "Toilet Paper" song over and over and over... and over.

However, throw in a couple of baby maraccas, and it doesn't seem to loose it's charm ... quite as quickly.

On that note, the parting shot for today is a little baby boogie. Good afternoon from Ottawa.