Mitchell Family - kimberlyandrobert.com

Thanksgiving 2008

Here are the girls dressed for Thanksgiving dinner... oh wait... there's only one of them in the picture? Yes it's true, Mia has an acute case of Photographer's Child Syndrome. Good luck getting her anywhere near the camera, let alone being at all cooperative. Candy bribes don't even work anymore.

We went to a friend's house for Thanksgiving this year and it was delicious! Better yet, we didn't have to do all the work but still got to reap some of the rewards (read: leftovers!). She sent us home with enough for another whole meal (which we already had) plus even more for sandwiches. Fabulous.

Of course we lost no time in jumping head first into Christmas Holiday Spirit. Friday was take pictures with Santa day. As you can see, Ellerie loved it.

And Mia almost got within 5 feet of him this year!

Baby steps... I think Christmas 2009 may just be our year!

I think we're learning Japanese, I really think so

When Mia started school back in April, I realized I was going to have to learn at least a little bit of Japanese. I got a lot of practice with the katakana characters of Mia's name after writing it on every single belonging including each individual crayon.

We were inspired to try harder after that and I learned katakana, Robert learned hiragana. Between the two of us, we could almost read a sign.

In the meantime, Mia has apparently been working on writing her "half a kitty cat" name on her own. Here's the paper she brought me today.

Halloween '08

You may remember baby chicken Mia with Farmer Daddy from Halloween 2005. Well this year Ellerie is the chicken and Mia is the farmer. She loves it.

So much so that she is trying to take it off herself.

Mia actually did have fun as a farmer. We drew some freckles on shortly after this photo was taken. Of course she had already lost patience for any other pictures so you'll have to use your imagination.

And if you're wondering why there aren't more pictures of them, maybe this will answer your question:

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She DOES hear me

We're riding in the car and Mia is messing with Ellerie just to try and make her cry. Mia succeeds and I tell her to stop it. She doesn't stop it and Ellerie cries again.

Me: Mia, if you don't stop that I am going to turn around and we're going to go home. I am NOT going to listen to this the whole drive.

Mia: Well then you're going to have to go to time out.

Me: Me? Why am I going to go to timeout?

Mia: Because you're not listening!

Where does the time go?

So we're sitting around the house this afternoon and Ellerie pulls up on my arm. Then she lets go. Just stands there. Isn't holding onto anything and is standing on her own. For maybe 10 seconds. Seriously, where does the time go???

Two teeth

Ellerie finally did it. Yesterday, her first tooth broke through! Bottom right. Same one as her big sister. Then today, voila! Tooth number two! Bottom left one this time. She's toothful! Stay tuned for the top ones which appear to be not far behind...

Star Spangled Banner

During the Olympics, Mia became quite curious about "what those people were saying" when they won a gold medal. So, we started singing along whenever they played the national anthem. And lucky for us, NBC loves to televise American's winning! Soon enough, she had it down pat. We had to wait for Daddy to bring the video camera back from Bangladesh, but here she is... the complete rendition. Oh, did I say complete? The memory card filled up right before THE LAST WORD. So... just use your imagination!

Babbling Baby

Today Ellerie starting waving and saying "buh-bye". And the video camera is in Bangladesh... Maybe she'll still be doing it next week. Of course the question is, does she have the faintest clue what she is doing? On one hand, it seems more than coincidence that her hand waving seems to coincide with the "buh-bye" sound. Also, she sees her sister spend a lot of time exchanging pleasant goodbyes with her friends after a playdate. She must have seen us tell Mia to say bye-bye and wave hundreds of times. And you can't discount the fact that when I said it back to her she smiled proudly as if excited that I understood her. On the other hand, she's 6 months old. I guess time will tell. Now, if she'll only cooperate with me on movie making day....

Just standing around

Will someone please remind the child that she's only 6 months old? Talk about trying to keep up with big sister. She also has developed quite the attitude when you take something away from her. I know I said before that she was easy going, but lately she certainly has her own opinions and has a pretty loud, high-pitched, shrieky way of letting you know what it is. Now THAT is familiar!

Princess Mia

Here is Mia in her new Belle dress. She has many other princess clothes. But I was informed that she did not have a BELLE dress. Belle's dress is yellow. Belle is a princess. No Disney princess has ever worn a purple or aqua dress such as the ones she has apparently. This one was very special. And it comes with the requisite crown and wand which may be modeled at a later date if the bribe is just right.

As a side note, I haven't really mentioned Mia's potty training progress here on the blog much. When we first started, she was great at it and picked it up right away. She rarely had an accident and was staying dry at night. Then one day it all changed. Suddenly and without any explanation. She wasn't just having *more* accidents. The child had quit using the toilet altogether. She would squat and pee right there in the middle of the living room. Five times in an afternoon. Not cool. It got better, then it got worse. We flip flopped back and forth a few times and tried every trick in the book. The most frustrating part is that I knew she could do it, she just was choosing not to. Obviously, more bribing was in order. If Mia kept her underwear clean every day for 5 days in a row she could get her beloved princess dress. Guess what the child can do if she sets her mind to it?

Mia writes Map

Well at least that is what she says she wrote. It looks like "MAPE" but I say give the kid a break. It's still pretty impressive! She was watching Dora while drawing and then she came over to show me what she did. She said it was a map (not sure to where) and she had labeled it and drawn herself wtih Dora (big hair) and map (pretty good likeness) on the road to... somewhere! This child never ceases to amaze me.

The pianist

This is our FAVORITE pasttime lately!

Penmanship

More Tokyo

I mentioned our Tokyo trip a few months ago, but we never did get the video and pictures from the other camera downloaded. Until now. So here are a few random clips from the trip. Enjoy!

Catch-up

It's summer break in the Japanese school year. But before vacation started, her school held a Bon Odori festival. It's a summer tradition in Japan and it was so cute to see all of the kids dressed up and dancing around. Mia didn't get to participate this year, but she'll be ready for it next year.

Mia started gymnastics this summer after being on the wait list for a year. She had to go to one mommy and me class before she could "qualify" for the older kid's class where she participates on her own. She has been to one of these so far and I was VERY impressed at how well she could understand and follow directions. Between our schedule changes and the teacher's vacation, we haven't made it back to another class yet. So, more pictures soon!

A few weekends ago, we discovered a place quite close to our house that collects salt from the ocean. You can tour the factory and see how the whole process works. We had to guess at some of it because of our limited literacy. The funniest part was at the end where they had a salt-man on display!