Tofu-bunnies!: May Days

If you just want to see pictures, you can scroll past the print. They are all at the end.

Sorry, Maggie and Arthur! I have been delinquent in keeping up with all the cuteness running rampant around here. Your Papa left last Friday on deployment, and in addition to missing him, I have been doing lots of things to get ready for us to vacate this place for the summer. For one thing, Arthur needs some stamps in his passport that we just got so he can come back into the country after we leave. These will require a trip to the embassy in Tokyo and a trip on base. For another, Buttercup needs a home while we are gone. This search has already incurred multiple trips to the base with an unhappy kitty and all of her kitty belongings. Mew!

Excuses, excuses. Let's get down to business.

Maggie Meyers! Where to begin... You are quite the early-to-bed-early-to-rise little bunny. A stickler for your 7 o'clock bedtime, you buried your head in a sofa pillow and brought me my flip-flops when we tarried at the neighbors just past 7:15. Even though you were having the time of your little life! You just can't wait to get in your crib with one binky in your mouth and one in hand. I guess it's a good thing, because we can hardly count on your sleeping past 5:15AM no matter when you go to bed. When you wake up, you are so happy to see whomever it is that rescues you from your crib.

When we get downstairs in the morning, you love to greet your little brother Arthur. An attentive big sister, you rush to his side as soon as he starts crying, offering him any comfort you can: your binky, your bottle, perhaps a cherry tomato you found on the floor, bouncing and rocking him (rather vigorously at times).

You can hardly be kept at the Tanaka House past 8AM. Once you have exhausted the playing possibilities inside the house, you move onto the yard, and eventually you grab your favorite sandbox toys and head for the gate. You are the most adorable thing to ever happen to a playground. It used to be that you only liked to climb the ladder and attempt to go up the wrong way, but all of the sudden you have discovered the thrill of a good slide and can't seem to get enough of it, even though some of the slides around here like to give your mommy a heart attack. They are sooo tall. I do what I can to keep both hands on you until you are safely seated and on your way down.

You have been mimicking the sounds around you for a few months now: crows, airplanes, puppies and kitties, sometimes people, too. Just these last few days, though, you have actually been attempting to repeat words and names: whale, Arthur, Mama, and Nemo. You are also getting better at making signs. "More" and "Bottle" and "Flower" and "Fish" are a few of your favorites. You have understood many words and phrases and signs for a long time, but it is new and fun to see how you initiate them yourself!

Oh and you are sitting on the potty now and insist exclusively on pull-up diapers. All we've ever gotten out of you on the potty is a fart, though. Baby steps...

Arthur Christopher Meyers! At two and a half months, you still wake me up a couple of times a night, but aside from nursing at 11PM and 2AM, you sleep pretty consistently between the hours of 7:30PM and 4:30AM. When you are awake, you love to look up into my face and smile and coo. You are discovering your limbs and have a pretty tight grip. You don't hate tummy time as much as Maggie did, but it is clearly not your favorite. You take some pretty good naps both swaddled in the criblet, as well as in Mommy's new BECO Gemini, which is sooo much easier on my shoulders than the Bjorn. Especially since you've been known to push a three-hour nap strapped to me. All of the sudden your eye isn't gummy anymore. Yay!!!

That's all for now. It is definitely bedtime for a Tofu-Mommy!