you remember that baby sister has big kidneys, right?  so she’s getting regular ultrasounds until the issue resolves itself.  she went back to stanfurd today for one of those kidney checks.

it was her 5th kidney-related procedure so far — 3 ultrasounds, the VCUG, and the x-ray.  and that’s not even counting all the ultrasounds that she had before she was born!  she is getting to be a pro at it.

as expected, everything checked out just fine.  it’s actually not her kidneys that are big, but the collecting system on the left side.  she has hydronephrosis — about a grade 1.5 (4 is the worst).  the doctor said that it won’t cause long-term kidney damage and that there is nothing to be concerned about or even to watch out for.  all she has to do is go back for another ultrasound in 9 months.

while she was there, they took her stats.  she weighs 14 pounds 13 ounces (42 %ile) and is 26 inches long (77 %ile).  her blood pressure is a little high, though.  nothing to be concerned about, but we’ll keep an eye on it.  if i had to worry big kidneys and a flat head, i would have high blood pressure too.  poor baby sister.

today, i went with matthew to the bay area discovery museum (BADM) in sausalito.  it was matthew’s first time.  i had been there before, but today was a whole new experience for me.  for one thing, some of the exhibits had been updated since my last visit (last april).  and, i didn’t even go into the tot spot at all — that’s for kids who are little (like i was earlier this year).  i’m a big kid now.

we started the day in bay hall, i had fun crawling under the pier, climbing up to the wharf, and of course, playing with the ginormous train set.  those trains will never get old.

then we walked through the wave workshop.  eh.  not much for us there.  although, we did happen to be there just in time for story time.  matthew and i actually sat through an entire story.  can you believe it?

then we moved on to the art studio.  we made stamp art masterpieces and painted the windows.  i still think that’s so cool.  where else do you get to paint on windows?  mommy thought i would like the sculpting clay since i love playing with play-doh, but i wasn’t all that into it.  baby sister got in on some fun, playing with toys in the mirrored crawl area of the art studio.

after lunch we checked out discovery hall, which had a new exhibition: “out on a limb: adventures with nature and art”.  there was this awesome treehouse that was fun to climb up.  inside it was this talking tube that mommy talked into while she was on the ground, and her voice came out of the tube all the way up in the treehouse!  how cool!  i also liked banging on the drumheads with big sticks in the forest jam exhibit.  they were supposed to make forest sounds, but it all just sounded like banging to me.

we finished off the afternoon in lookout cove.  i showed matthew the fishing boat, then i brought him to to the shipwreck to dig for artifacts.  we took turns shoveling sand into the sifters, then we tried to “shake shake shake” the sand out to see what cool things we found.  turns out that we ended up dumping all the sand out instead of sifting it.  oh well.  the shoveling with the best part of it, anyway.

by 3pm, matthew was ready for his nap.  i wanted to stay longer, but i think mommy and dada wanted to go home and take a nap too.  party poopers.

so, remember how baby sister has a flat head?  today, baby sister went to a special place to find out just how lopsided her head really is.

she went into this room where there was this black box.  doesn’t it look just like those boxes that magicians put their assistants in?  a guy, who i’m assuming is a magician, told mommy to lay baby sister into the box.  i swear i thought that he was going to saw her in half.  but instead, a red laser moved across the length of her head.

you can’t tell from the photo, but baby sister is wearing a do-rag!  HAHAHA!  she looked ridiculous.  i wish i got a better picture of that.  and that green flashlight-looking thingy that looks like it’s electrocuting the top of her head isn’t actually attached to her.  it’s just a toy that’s used to distract kids who don’t want to lie still.  baby sister had no problems staying still — she got a perfect scan on the first try.  i’m tired of everyone always saying what a good baby she is.  what’s so good about being still and quiet all the time?  that’s boring.

anyway, a 3-D image of baby sister’s head instantly popped up on the computer.  HOW COOL!  the magician took a bunch of measurements and declared that baby sister’s head is “in the normal range”.  the difference in the diagonal diameters should be less than 6mm.  baby sister’s is 5.7mm.  i guess whatever magic he did, worked!

the magician made some suggestions about how to keep baby sister from laying on the flat side of her head, and ordered a follow up scan in one month.  i can’t wait.  i’m definitely getting a photo of the do-rag next time!

i never understood why everyone says that christmas is the best holiday.  sure, i like seeing all my family.  sure, i like staying up past my bedtime.  sure, i like eating “special occasion” foods (like a bite of pie or a few crumbs of a cookie).  but those things happen on lots of holidays, right?  well, i finally get it.  on christmas, i get presents!  opening presents is SO FUN.

last year, i needed a lot of encouragement (and a little help) to open my gifts.  this year, i figured out how to do it all by myself.  i take off the bow and ribbon, find the seams of the wrapping paper, then rip the paper off.  if the paper is taped to the box, i make sure to remove every single scrap of paper before opening the box.  i was going to help baby sister with her gifts, but i was taking so long to open my own that mommy had to help her instead.  unwrapping presents is so fun — it doesn’t even matter what’s inside.  although, i do love (and appreciate) all the gifts that i got.  and i got a LOT.

we hosted christmas at our house this year.  we had 24 people over for dinner.  there would have been 26, but uncle mike and auntie z couldn’t make it.  uncle mike was nice enough to send along the tri-tip that he cooked as well as some mystery goodies in a little plastic bag.  mommy asked auntie cindy to try the goodies to see what they were.  auntie cindy passed them off to auntie barbara, who thought they weren’t half bad…  until we realized that they were crickets!  crickets!!! *gahhh* auntie barbara gagged.  everyone else laughed.

we all had a really fun time.  and i totally get christmas now.  although, i’m still not sure about the santa guy that i heard my cousins talking about.  i think that’s the guy i saw on the train ride last weekend.  it seems like everyone knows him except for me.  i wonder if i’ll see him next year.

merry christmas everyone!

for the past few years, we’ve been celebrating christmas twice — once with dada’s family, and once with mommy’s family.  this year, we decided to invite everyone over to our house for once big giant celebration.  i can’t wait!

our house is almost ready.  the lights are strung around the outside of the house, the stockings are hung above the fireplace, the tree is up and lit, and our christmas decorations are on display.  i trimmed the tree today.  what do you think?  (baby sister didn’t help out at all.)

i like to count ten ornaments on the tree.  that’s right, ten.  there are actually more than that, but i only count to ten because that’s my favorite number (and also because i don’t know what number comes after ten).  even if there were fewer ornaments, i would count some of them twice so that i could say “TEN!” very enthusiastically.

happy 5 month birthday to baby sister!

things she likes:

• rolling over.  sometimes she rolls around and kicks me in the butt.  i don’t like that.
• sitting up.  when i was 5 months old, mommy and dada said that i looked like an orangutan because i planted my fists on the floor to balance.  baby sister doesn’t look like a primate.  i’m not sure if she just has better core strength than i did or if she just has a short torso like mommy.
• doing backflips.  she lets mommy spot her even though mommy is not a good spotter.
• interactive toys that make noise and/or flash lights when she pulls/spins/presses/taps them.  she is not as into the exersaucer as i was at her age, though.
• sleeping with mommy and dada.  no fair.  when i was her age, i was already sleeping by myself in the co-sleeper.

things she doesn’t like:

• not having mommy nearby.  sometimes when baby sister is crying, nobody can do anything to console her.  but as soon as mommy touches her, she smiles.  she is definitely a mama’s girl.  dada says that i was the same way when i was her age.

this is the time of year when mama and dada go to lots of parties, drag me (and baby sister) along, and make me stay up past my bedtime.  we went to two holiday parties this weekend, and mama took baby sister to a cookie exchange.  the cookie party was for girls only, so mama brought baby sister along while dada and i went christmas shopping.  what a busy weekend!  luckily, matthew planned a day out just for us kids.  matthew, logan, and i went to see thomas the train as he chugged through santa cruz.

if you think that thomas is an imaginary train, you are wrong.  he is a real, life-size engine.  he pulled a passenger car that we rode through the town.  the whole train was decorated with pretty christmas lights and wreaths.  however, our train car has one fewer light now — i leaned over the side of the moving train car, unscrewed the bulb, and dropped it to the ground.  i could only get to one before dada stopped me.

on the train, there was an old guy with a white beard, red suit, and black boots.  everyone called him santa.  i gave him a high five, but i didn’t want to take a photo with him.  why would i?  matthew and logan seemed to recognize him, but it was the first time i ever saw him.

in addition to the train ride, there were lots of other “thomas & friends” activities — train tables, ornament-making, face-painting, and lots more.  thomas & friends took over the entire santa cruz boardwalk.  matthew, logan, and i ran all around the place wearing our thomas conductors hats.  i refused to wear my hat forward, so everyone else switched theirs around too.  mama said we looked like thomas-the-train gang members.  good thing we didn’t get kicked off the boardwalk — there’s a sign that says no gangs allowed.  (really, there is.)

what a fun day.  i wonder when thomas is going to chug past our house.

for the past few months, baby sister has been going to gym class with me every week.  but since my class is for big kids like me (“beasts”: 19 months – 2.5 years), she just hangs out in the lobby or sits along the wall and watches me.  but today, baby sister went to her own “bugs” class with kids her own age (4 – 10 months).

when i went to my first class at the little gym, we mostly sang songs and did some exercises on the mat.  but there’s a new curriculum now, so baby sister got to use a lot of the gym equipment.  she went for a ride on the parachute, did forward rolls on the “cheese” (foam wedge), stood between the parallel bars, and did pull ups on the uneven bars — all with mommeee’s help, of course.  mommeee wasn’t a very good spotter though, because she let baby lean forward and conk her head on the bar.  bad mommeee.

we are an asian kid, baby, and dog in search of new parent(s).  they should like skating, doing the hokey pokey, and cooking (for me), singing, reading, and making milk (for baby sister) and hiking, furminating, and baking (for koda).  it’s not that we don’t love mommeee (that’s what i call her now –  no more “mama”) and dada, but something bad happened to them.

over the weekend, mommeee and dada signed up to run the san diego rock ‘n’ roll 1/2 marathon.  they’re running in 2-person relay teams.  it’s the tanaka girls (mommy + auntie barbara) against the tanaka boys (dada + uncle randy).

• mommeee hates running.  the only 1/2 marathon she ever ran was in 2006.  no training.  12.8 min/mi pace.  she says it was a slow time because she stopped to listen to uncle jamie’s band play, but i think she would have been slow regardless.  since then, she hasn’t run… at all.
• auntie barbara doesn’t run, but she does workout and hike regularly.
• dada doesn’t run.  the only time he ever went running was when he was trying to trick mama into marrying him.  they ran 1.4 miles together.  he says he nearly died.
• uncle randy loves running.  he only started running a few months ago, but he is addicted.  he has been entering races all over the country.  his last 1/2 marathon was just last weekend, and he ran under 8.9 min miles.

so you see…  mommeee and dada have either gone insane, or they’ve been abducted and replaced with very human-looking aliens.  and even if they are alive and well, they won’t be after this race.  either way, we need new parents.  please let me know if you are interested.  and by the way, all three of us are a package deal.

(so who do you think is going to win the race — the girls or the boys?)

a couple of nights ago, miss denise found a stray puppy running down the street by her house. the next day (yesterday), miss denise’s husband was gonna bring puppy to a shelter, but mama said NO WAY! so instead, the puppy came to our house

i love puppy. i played with her all day long. anytime she wasn’t in sight, i ran all around the house calling “buppy? buppy?” until i found her. i liked holding her in my lap and hugging her. baby sister loves puppy, too.  don’t worry, we still love koda.  i hug koda all the time, but i just can’t pick him up and hold him in my lap like i did with puppy.

when i woke up from my nap yesterday, mama crated puppy so that she could carry baby sister upstairs and come get me. i heard puppy crying, so i ran downstairs and freed her.  i just wanted to hold her, but she wanted to explore the whole house.  she even started climbing up the stairs!  i yelled for her to come back, but she didn’t listen.  uh oh.  MOMMEEEEE!!!

during dinner, puppy tried to eat my meatloaf. i stuck out my hand and told her “back”, just like i tell koda. but she didn’t listen. i need to train her better.

so when i woke up this morning, i looked for puppy so we could start our training, but she was nowhere to be found. buppy? buppy? where are you, buppy? come out, come out, wherever you are!