These are a few of Reina's favorite things...

Now that we're down to one computer, I find it even more challenging to post.  Hopefully with summer right around the corner (three weeks!) I'll get more motivated, since I"m sure I'll step up the picture taking.  

Playing with Sylvania animals.

Anyhow, Reina has really learned how to express herself.  Her current favorites are:

• Rice 
• Onigiri 
• Olives
• Purse & hat from Grandma
• Sylvania family animals (mine when I was little)
• Slippers from Grandaddy and Romeni
• Bunny from Japanese friend
• Blocks from Grandpa
• Most books!

She likes lots of things.  These just top out her, "play with everyday" list.  

Reina's comprehension of language continues to amaze me.  The rate at which she adds new words is amazing.  She mastered the ABC's a few months ago, and has more recently started adding prepositions to her sentences.  She still mixes a lot of Japanese with English, however, most of her full sentences tend to be in English.  Reina also is understanding some rules.  For example, if you add "ing" to the end of a verb it becomes present participle (I believe). So, Reina will add "ing" to random words.  For about two days Reina was saying "stuhkin." I assumed this was some Japanese word that I didn't know.  As it turns out, I realized that she was adding "ing" to the word "stuck," to indicate that her purse (or whatever) was currently in the process of being stuck - "stucking." She also does this to the word "sick." In Japanese, she has learned that by adding the character "no" to the end of a subject, it becomes possessive.  So, if it is Reina's doll, she will say, "Reina-no." She does this for Chris and I as well. Ah, language, such a tricky thing.

Ako's party and the bag.

This past weekend Ako turned 5.  We were invited to her birthday party, which was my first (and Reina's) Japanese birthday party.  There were some significant differences between what I would consider a "normal" American birthday and what we did at Ako's party.  First, there was no cake with candles or signing.  Ako opened her presents as SOON as you gave them to her, which seems what probably most children actually want to do.  We also had a pinata (although I think this was unusual, as Ako's mom kept asking me how to do this!).  All of the kiddos made bags and added stickers so they could collect their candy.  Days later I threw this bag out, only to find Reina following Daddy around saying "Reina's bag."  I felt really bad after I realized what she was upset about.  It was too late to retrieve her bag out of the trash so I quickly took her upstairs to my bag stash to appease her.  I thought the guilt had passed until the next day, when we were putting the bags of trash in the cans, and Reina saw her bag and brought it up again. It was probably the first time I've ever felt bad about something I had done to Reina.  I will think twice about throwing things away from now on.

This is closer to 13 weeks.

Typhoon Songda just went by us last night.  It was a super typhoon south, in the warmer waters near the Philipines, but as it traveled towards us (directly at us) it lost a lot of speed, and was only a category 1 - 2.  Despite it being small, it was REALLY loud.  There was quite a bit of debris this morning, the garden is pretty much gone, and we even lost power last night - which made sleeping a bit tough (course none of that was happening with the noise anyhow). Somehow, Reina slept through it all (phew).  I am sure we'll all nap when she goes down this morning.

Baby bump #2 (I think this picture makes it look small - I feel huge!).  I have my 16 week check up on June 9th and then hopefully will find out the gender on June 28th.