Christmas Treats

Akemi must have been a very good girl this year because she got all kinds of presents and they weren't from us!

I noticed (or I should say I've been told...) that it's been a while since my last posting. There's been a number of developments recently. She's been cruising the furniture regularly, but for distance traveling it's still the tried and true bum shuffle.

She's good at going up the stairs by herself and hasn't fallen down yet. Most of the time we let her go up the stairs herself when it's time to go to bed, but today I carried her up. It's been a while since I carried her up. I usually go up slowly one step by one step, counting each one as I go. Just for fun really, and to slow down the pace for bedtime. Today when I was going up I noticed that she was saying something at each step. Silvina was saying she was counting so I listened more closely - four, five. She did count to five - and she was counting each one before I was saying them! She couldn't go past five, but I was pretty impressed.

A day in the life...

Shodo Master

Akemi has been expressing herself with the doodle pad. She is equally talented in erasing her masterpieces.

Action Photos

This morning at breakfast Akemi was laughing having a good time when I noticed several new teeth in her mouth. A cuspid at the top is coming in, and I saw some molars in the top and bottom that I hadn't seen before. They're easy to see when she throws her head back and opens her mouth, but she wouldn't do it for the camera.



Here she's just hanging out playing with things.


See if you can guess what she's doing in this sequence of pictures:

Thanksgiving Chow Down

We had Thanksgiving at my brother's place in Hamilton. I was showing Akemi the finer points of being a carnivore, but she didn't seem impressed.

She had a good time with my folks though.

Daredevil

Akemi has turned into quite a daredevil so we have taken to put a helmet on her for safety.

Here she is imitating a woodpecker.

But wait, if you thought that was something, she wants to show you something else...

Look at her go at that corn!

Standing up for herself

Akemi has been dabbling with the vertical posture with mixed success. Sometimes I practice walking with her. I think she was doing better in the beginning because I was sliding her feet forward with my own. It could have been a dance exercise for me to learn how to lead. Anyway, now she steps by herself, but she takes such huge steps so that her leg protrudes 90 degrees in front of her.

Sometimes she tries to climb up the stairs. She sits on her bum, lifts her foot to the stair, and tries to pull herself up. Today we were pretending to go up the stairs. It was so funny. She was kicking her feet up to take each step. One time she lifted it enough to take two steps!

Road Trip!

For the Civic long weekend we went to the Briars near Lake Simcoe. It was the first time we took Akemi for an overnight stay anywhere. When we told her we were going she was in good humour, but when we told her that she had to pay her own way, she got serious.


These following pictures are from the Briars where she's modeling mommy's hat. It was a good getaway for us all - no cooking, no cleaning, and spa treatments. What could be better.

Holy Molars!

After bath tonight Silvina was drying Akemi when she noticed a molar coming in from the top right. The systematic sprouting of teeth now follows a logic incomprehensible to me.

Entry happy

I hope my burst of entries today makes up for the long dry spell. Here are some more pictures of Akemi at my folks place last weekend. She amazed them with her song and dance routine and then called her agent about her next booking.

Pictures from the Bachan Picnic

Here are some pictures my brother took at the Bachan Picnic last Saturday.

After the photo shoot we had to put a disguise on her to make our way through the crowd.

Before and After

This first picture was taken on July 8. The second picture was taken the day she came home with the booboo (July 17). The third picture was taken on July 21 at my family's picnic. The last picture was from Monday morning (July 24). You can't see it very well, but the scab is all gone.

Cut me Mick!

We've enrolled Akemi in a baby-boxing competition. It was brutal, but she survived. You should have seen the other kid!

Actually, last week she had a spill at the daycare. It's amazing how quickly she heals. You wouldn't know that she had a scrape if you looked at her today.

Happy Birthday!

Today Akemi turned one year old! In this first picture she's telling us to move the cake closer to her. When we didn't she tried to do it herself.

Of course mom and dad had to jump in the picture. She wasn't too happy about that though because she was eager to get at the cake. If truth be told, she was eager to go to bed and the cake was really for mom and dad.

I finally got around to writing her name today. When she was born we took some time deciding on her name, and by that time I had other things on my mind than writing her name. Over the year I've had a chance to see the seeds of her personality and I tried to capture some of them in this piece.

Happy Canada Day

I've been negligent lately in posting - no posts in June :-(.

I meant to post this Father's Day card I got from Akemi. Her first artwork!

This other picture Silvina took this morning. She thinks Akemi is starting to look more like me. I think she's looking like her own person.

Happy Canada Day!