8th Month Update

Kaito is now 8 months old, and this has been a month of lots of changes! So, I thought it deserved a post of it's own.

He now has 2 teeth! He was teething at the beginning of the New Year, and just 2 weeks ago, a tooth popped out, and just a few days after that, the second one came out. With 2 teeth (not fully out yet) he can chomp into his favorite rice crackers and can eat a little bit chunkier foods. But, he can also bite! Ouch!

We also lowered his crib mattress, because the little guy can now pull himself up all by himself! He doesn't know that he can pull himself up in his crib, but I'm sure he'll figure it out pretty quickly, so we lowered the mattress just as a precaution.

He's also crawling now. . . forwards! So that means that we have to keep an extra eye on him. Gone are the days when I can sit him on the floor in his room and expect him to stay there and play. Now that he can crawl, he's all over the place! If I take my eyes off from him for just a few minutes, he's already crawled under the table to play with the Internet wires. If it's too quiet, I know that he's getting into some sort of trouble. We meed to start setting up gates or some type of barrier to keep him from wandering all over the place.

We had this old shower curtain rod, so I thought I'd set it up in the doorway to his room/living room to see if that would keep him there. At first he thought it was great. . . another toy to play with. He'd just sit there and look at me. . . but then 10 minutes later. . .

. . . he figured out how to escape by going UNDER the bar. HMPH! I guess I'm going to have to lower the bar a bit more so he can't go under. I just hope he doesn't figure out how to go over! We're going to have to set up some real gates soon.

6, 7, and 8 Month Update

Okay, it's been a while since I last updated, so I'll try to sum up the past 3 months in a quick post.

K took us to Disneyland on my birthday, and it was great! Kaito was able to go on the rides too, so it was especially fun watching him take in all the sights. We mainly stayed in Fantasy Land, which is where they have all the calm, kid friendly rides. We went on: the rockets, cars, Toon Town Trolley, carousel, Roger Rabbit, and a few others. I got a perfect score at the shooting gallery and earned myself a sheriff badge!

Kaito also visited his first onsen (hot spring). We were visiting Shizuoka for the weekend and stayed at a small Japanese inn. Usually the hot springs are separated by men/women, but since we were the only guests staying there (it's a really small inn. . . more like a B&B), they said that we could all use the same one, which was really fun! I was a little hesitant to let Kaito go into the bath, since I thought it would be way too hot for him, and he would cry. But as it turns out, he really enjoyed it. Since then, at home for bath time, all three of us squish into our tiny Japanese bathtub. Imagine a regular sized American tub, and ours is about 2/3 the size. Needless to say, we don't move around too much.

We went home to California for the holidays and Kaito did great on his first plane ride! He didn't get his own seat, so K and I had to take turns holding him. It was also Kaito's first Christmas and he got so many gifts from all the friends and family! Thank you everyone! It was also fun to see all the cousins together. They're all around the same age (under 3 years) so I think they had a lot of fun playing with each other. The return flight went good as well. Kei had returned earlier, so it was just Kaito and I. Good thing is that the flight wasn't fully booked, so Kaito was able to get his own seat. I just sat him next to me with his toys and the personal TV set to the Disney Channel, and he was set to go. Hmm, this flying thing wasn't so bad after all!