Happy Thanksgiving!

For Thanksgiving this year my friend Angie invited us over for dinner, which was nice. She knows we don't have a full size oven and took pity on us. We made stuffing, cranberry sauce and rolls and relaxed a bit in the morning before heading over there for good Thanksgiving food.

We also played Toddler Monopoly. This is a five minute game of rolling the dice, counting out spaces and getting property cards just for landing on a space. We learn things like colors, counting, taking turns and get to use words like "train," light bulb" and "doggie." When Matthew starts to lose interest we pull out the "houses" and put them all over the board. And then the game is over. Matthew's favorite part is putting the little hat and thimble game pieces on his fingers and then showing them to us. I think he's trying to eat one of the pieces in this picture. Close supervision is required, of course. Matthew and I play this sometimes during the week and Scott was amazed by the excitement level of the game. :)

Matthew and I made this Thanksgiving turkey craft a few days ago. See how thrilled he is with it. He doesn't want me to notice that he is really playing with a car in his other hand. :) That was a very drooly teething day...that's why he's wearing a bib.
I hope everyone had (or is having) a great Thanksgiving!

Tonkatsu

One of our favorite restaurants here (so far) is Tonkatsu Taro, a breaded chicken cutlet (and pork, fish, shrimp etc.) place that we love. Thanks Angie G. for introducing it to us!! We're hooked. :) We went there for lunch yesterday and ate lots of good stuff. Here's Matthew attempting to grind some sesame seeds for our Tonkatsu dipping sauce.

Looks like he's doing a decent job of it

And here's the meal I always order. The House Special: breaded pork and shrimp that comes with rice, miso soup and a big cabbage salad (hiding behind my BIG shrimp). Yes I am one of those people who finds something on the menu they like and then sticks to it. Maybe I should branch out and try something else soon.

And here's Scott wishing I would stop taking pictures of his food so he can eat it (he doesn't want me to take a pic of him eating, you know). Matthew looks anxious to start eating too. Sorry guys...please dig in.

Please sir, I want some more...

Matthew and I have been learning about numbers lately. We count things and read counting stories, but I didn't think much of it was sinking in.

Today Matthew came up to the baby gate outside the kitchen and asked for a "cookie." Usually he doesn't ask for snacks by name (he just uses "snack" to cover all the bases) and he's never asked for a cookie before, so I was impressed by his specificity and I let him in to help get a cookie. I gave him one and he held it in one hand and then pointed back at the bag and said "two?" Of course I was charmed by his cuteness and his counting abilities so I gave him another one - two hands, two cookies. It just makes sense. But then he pointed at the bag again (cookie in hand) and said "three....three cookie" I thought he was so adorable and gave him a little hug and kiss - but no more cookies. I've heard him try to count before (1...2...3...5!!) so I was afraid things might escalate quickly if I kept meeting his demands. :) Hmmm, I think I need to teach him to use his counting abilities only for good...never evil (like manipulating mommy with cuteness).
Needless to say, Scott and I think he is exceptional. :)

Weekend adventures...

Our lunch
Onigiri (above) and Sushi rolls (below) from the local grocery store

Over the weekend I finally got brave and tried onigiri for lunch. They are like the Japanese equivalent of a sandwich. People take them in their lunches and I've seen them sold on the street. They are just rice with some kind of filling (salmon, tuna, miso paste...stuff like that) and then sometimes wrapped in seaweed. Most of the ones I've seen are triangular like this and I've been afraid to try them 'cause I wasn't sure how to tell what the filling was. Finally I looked up the characters for all the different fillings and wrote them down on a cheat sheet. Scott went to the store (with the cheat sheet) so he could pick me out one of the kinds that I wasn't too afraid of...like salmon. Of course, he got to the store and found them, and those onigiri had English writing on them, so we didn't even need a cheat sheet. Oh well. He got me one with salmon and one with miso paste and they were really good and very filling. Scott, who is much braver than me and often buys his lunch from the local grocery store, got some sushi rolls...and also shared some of my sandwich...I mean onigiri.

And for dessert we got the biggest sno-cone I've ever seen. Yes, it IS bigger than Matthew's head!!

I think Anna and Matthew both had sore throats this weekend and were extra fussy/whiny. I was trying to calm Anna by gently bouncing with her on our exercise ball. One of our childbirth instructors in Monterey recommended this for calming crying or colicky babies, so we did it with Matthew all the time and it really worked. Matthew wanted to get in on the action here so he pulled up a ball of his own and bounced on it. Here you can see the hole that has been poked in our rice paper door by a certain toddler. I want to get it fixed but since I know it will probably just get poked again, I think I'll wait a while...maybe til we move. :(

And our weekend ended (as all weekends should) with Anna waking up every hour of the night to SCREAM like a banshee. She also required several wardrobe changes (here she is in the middle of one) and soiled our new clean sheets, which I was sad about. :( She was also very offended when I tried to feed her in the night and screamed even louder. Luckily Matthew didn't wake up and by the morning she seemed to be feeling much happier and ate a lot (and tried to look super cute by smiling at me a lot) to make up for her night time antics.