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!

grown ups are always asking me if i know how to speak chinese or japanese. umm… no. i am still working on english. i am fluent in kyden-language, though. i guess that makes me bilingual. most people don’t understand kyden, but baby sister does. you can hear/watch me read “goodnight moon” to her in this video.

i’ve always liked playing the piano.  i have a little baby piano.   i have a bigger piano in my activity table.  and i have a giant (grand) piano that i keep at grandma and grandpa’s house.  i forgot all about my little baby piano, but mama recently brought it out for baby sister to play.

baby sister likes to play classical music.  you’ll have to listen carefully because she doesn’t play very loudly.  and she only plays left-handed.  do you think she’ll be left-handed like i am?

i play more current songs.  in this video (recorded a few weeks ago), i’m playing “itsy bitsy spider”.  you can tell from my finger motions even if you don’t recognize the tune.

so, who do you think is the better pianist?

guess who cut her first tooth today.  no silly, not me.  i already have 20.  it’s baby sister!  and it’s about time.  baby sister is already more than 4 months old.  i was less than 3.5 months old when i got my first tooth.  she’s slow.

she’s not a drooler though.  i didn’t drool nearly as much as my friends did, but baby sister barely drools at all.  she doesn’t even wear a bib.  and i thought that girls like to accessorize.  i guess it’s just not ladylike to drool.

mama sure hopes that baby sister isn’t a chomper like i was.  yeah, i used mama as a teething ring while she was feeding me.  sorry mama.

baby sister is always tagging along on my playdates, so i crashed one of hers over the weekend.  friday, we went over to keira and megan’s house for lunch.  more twin girls!  i’m a lucky guy, huh? 😉

baby sister and her friends have boring playdates.  all they do is lie around and sleep all the time.  but… keira and megan have a super fun house.  they have a magic garbage can.  it’s SO COOL — you just wave your hand over it, and it opens!  actually, they have two of them, but one is for diapers.  i didn’t want to open that one and let all the stinkies out.  and, they have squirrels and birds.  at first, i just meowed at them from inside.  (everyone thought i was trying to scare the squirrels, but actually, i meow at squirrels because i think they’re the same as cats.)  and after lunch, i even got to go outside to play with them.  it’s just like when i go to the park, but they were right there in the backyard!

i guess baby sister’s playdates aren’t so bad after all.

baby sister crashed my playdate today.  i guess she couldn’t really help it because it was at our house.  and it’s not so much that she played with us as it was that she slept nearby while we played.

isaac came over to eat lunch and play trains with me.  and now that i think about it, i’m pretty sure that he likes playing with my toys more than he likes playing with me.  but that’s okay.  i’m still happy that he moved back to the bay area (from atlanta) so we get to see each other a lot more.

before i tell you about my thanksgiving, lemme say this:  two thanksgiving celebrations in one day is TOO MUCH!

we started off the day at cousin zoey’s house.  auntie alyssa is a vegetarian and cousin zoey is allergic to eggs.  so… guess what was on the menu.  tofurkey, vegan stuffing, and vegan pumpkin pie (made with tofu).  dada was very scared.  but uncle jamie took pity on dada and also served a real turkey, a real pecan pie, and lots of other yummy stuff like dungeness crab and brie mac and cheese.  i didn’t eat much, though.  cousin zoey and i were too busy playing with all her toys.  i made the wheels on her pink bus go round and round, and we made coffee and baked pies in her play kitchen.  good thing i’ve had so much practice making real coffee and baking real desserts.  (baby sister just sat around all day in zoey’s bumbo.)

one thing that i did take time to eat, though, was magic cream.  i watched auntie alyssa pour milk into the mixer.  then it turned into bubble milk.  then it turned into magic cream!  she called it whipped cream.  i call it delicious on top of pumpkin pie.  or on jello.  or by itself.

after lunch, uncle jamie thought that we might like to play at the park near his house.  actually, i think he just needed to work off all those pumpkin pie calories, so we went for a wagon ride to the park.  that was fun.  baby sister wanted to come too, but there wasn’t enough room for her.

i was having so much fun that we stayed until 4pm — way past my nap time.  so i slept in the car and we went straight to grandma and grandpa tanaka’s house for dinner.  i had a few bites of food, but i was having too much fun playing the piano and running around in circles (literally) to eat dinner.  but once again, i took a timeout from playing to eat dessert.  there was a real pumpkin pie, cream puffs, seven layer jello, and coffee cheesecake.  uncle randy made the cheesecake, and it’s best darn cheesecake i’ve ever had.  it might be the only one, but it was the best!

i always say that one of my favorite parts of thanksgiving is seeing family.  but now, i think that it’s a tie between family and desserts.  i only got like three tiny bites of dessert, but that’s more than i’ve ever had.  okay, i’m crashing from my sugar high now.  zzzzz…

kailyn and madison came over today.  i hadn’t seen them in a really long time.  they said they were coming over to give sienna some of their old clothes.  how nice of them, right?  but they never even met baby sister before.  why would they be bringing stuff for her?  i’m pretty sure that they just used that as an excuse to see me.

the twins sure are chatty.  they wanted to talk all day.  talk is cheap, though.  i’m a man of action.  i just wanted to play.  kailyn really liked my jumpy trampoline and playing on my piano.  madison was more into playing trains with me.  yay.

when mama was getting ready to take a picture, i climbed on the couch to pose, but mama said it was a girls only photo.  but look at it!  isn’t it obvious that none of them wanted their photo taken?  i, however, love being photographed.  (mama had to promise to take a photo of me so i would get out of the girls photo.)  i dunno why i wasn’t allowed in the photo.  i’m pretty sure that they were here to see me.

wait a minute…  is baby sister trying to steal them?  she is trying to steal all my friends!

happy 4 month birthday to baby sister!

things she likes:

• rolling from tummy to back.  when she does it, she gives a big smile and celebration dance.
• being tickled.  she is sooo ticklish!
• grabbing and holding things.  she’s getting better and better at it.  she can even hold her own teething ring.  sort of.  i still help her sometimes.
• watching me.  sometimes i dance, sometimes i read to her, sometimes i’m just minding my own business and watching videos on my iphone.  but whatever i’m doing, baby sister likes to watch me.
• my cheater chair.  it helps her sit up like a big kid.  and now that she’s using it, i like to sit in it too.  so we share 🙂
• her fingers.  she sometimes sucks on her thumb when she’s sleeping, but she prefers sucking on 2 or 3 of her fingers when she’s awake.
• the dr. seuss crinkly paper at the doctor’s office.  she smiles at the cat in the hat and tries to grab him right off the paper.  one day, she’ll be traumatized by crinkly paper, just like i am.

things she doesn’t like:

• rolling from back to tummy.  she doesn’t like it because she can’t do it yet.  she gets frustrated because she can’t quite clear her shoulder.

what kind of monster is flat-headed, toothless, and hairy?  baby sister!  haha, i’m so funny.

baby sister went to her 4 month checkup today.  her flat head is less flat, which is good.  the doctor said that she probably has a mild case of blah blah blah and not blah blah blah.  actually, she said it’s probably positional plagiocephaly, and not craniosynostosis, but that’s the same as “blah blah blah” to me.  what that means is that baby’s head is probably flat because she lays on the same side all the time.  hopefully she doesn’t have prematurely closed sutures, and hopefully she doesn’t need surgery.  she is gonna see a specialist just to be sure.

here are her stats:

• weight:  13 pounds 3 ounces (41 %ile)
• length:  24.75 inches (68 %ile)
• head circumference:  40.0 cm (24 %ile)

just like me at my 4 month visit, baby sister  drank some yucky medicine, got two shots, cried for two seconds, and then was done.  unlike me, she doesn’t have any teeth yet.  i already had two teeth by the time i turned 4 months old!  yay, i have her beat in the teeth category.  (she had me on hair from the moment she was born.)