Happy Birthday

Hannah had another birthday back in Tokyo with Kyoko.

Kyoko bought us all a nice cake. (And this time we remembered to share it with her).


This is me with Hannah and Kyoko

1 Year Old

Hannah has just turned 1 year old and to celebrate we took her down to Ikadaba to visit her grandmother.



This is Hannah in her new 'Deuter' baby carrier, which replaces the Baby Bjorn which Hannah has almost outgrown.


Hannah's 1st birthday party.










Relaxing in the pool at Ikadaba








Meeting the neighbors. This is Otoho-chan (2yrs 4 months) and Kanade-chan (8 months) from the house next door.






Borrowing Rika's mum's phone. Hannah worked out how to play the answer-phone messages and played them again and again.


Birthday presents.




And in case you were wondering how the rice is coming along - this is how the rice-field at Ikadaba looks now.

Cat Massage

Hannah has been further developing her cat-massage skills.



When we went to Ikadaba I was surprised to see the fearsome Musashi lying down near Hannah and inviting a massage. He clearly enjoyed her attention.



You can see Hannah is now incorporating shiatsu techniques. Here she is pressing Musashi's 'mimi no tsubo' (ear pressure points)

Meal-times

Hannah is now very active at mealtimes and increasingly wants to feed herself




Last month she started demanded a spoon to play with while we fed her. Now she wants to try feeding herself. These 2 videos are from 12-Jul when Hannah was practicing how to use the spoon.




This is a more recent one of Hannah feeding herself with help.




She also has a new trick of spitting out food when she doesn't like it , or perhaps just for fun.


And feeding the cats.



Now that Hannah is more mobile and active she is a lot more challenging to take out for restaurant meals. This video is from a relatively easy time at our local Chinese. In this case Hannah is safely tethered to a chair and sufficiently entertained by the mirror on the wall.

Baby Signs

Over the last 2 months we have been trying to teach Hannah sign-language. She now actively uses the ASL signs for 'more', 'eat', 'milk' and 'drink' as well as 'bye-bye'. This is really useful and reduces stress when we are out since she can just tell us what she wants.

Here Hannah is telling mum that sne wants some milk, (and would prefer draught rather than bottled). You can see her do the sign for 'milk' with her right hand.



This is Hannah signing that she wants some food.




This is Hannah signing for 'more'. We taught her this sign using bread - since she often wants more of it - so she might think it means 'bread'



We are now working on the signs for 'water', 'bath', bed', 'nappy + change', 'no + touch', 'where' and 'hurt'.

Music and Dance

One of Hannah's favorite pastimes is music and dancing

She has been given several song books that play songs. Recently she has figured out how to operate them and which buttons to press to hear her favorite songs. So she plays songs a lot and sometimes dances along.



Oninopantsu




We also bought Hannah a drum and sometimes she likes to bang out a rhythm





This is Hannah doing the actions to the 'Big Drum / little drum song'. In this case the big drum is my tummy and the little drum is her tummy.


Sometimes Hannah and I have a dance together in the morning before I change her nappy.