Abby . 2 1/2 years old

I can't believe how much Abby has grown up over the last 6 months.  She is still in diapers because she refuses to potty train all the time.  I guess I should be happy that she will ocassionally take interest in it.  At 2 years old her favorite thing to watch was "The Little Einsteins."  Now all she wants to watch are princess movies.  Her favorites are "Snow White" and "Sleeping Beauty."  She loves to dress like a princess, talk like a princess, and sing like a princess.  She also loves to play with all of her princess dolls.  She is definitely more girly in that respect than her sister was at this age.  My all time favorite Abby moment as of late was during dinner one evening.  She just stood up on her chair, clasped her hands together, starting turning around as she batted her eyes all while singing, "Someday my prince will come."  The more we laughed the more she did it.  I think the eye thing she did was the most hilarous part about it.  She is just too cute for words.

Here is part of a conversation we had at the beginning of the month:

Abby:  "Momma, what are you doing?"
Sara:   "I am going downstairs to make dinner."
Abby:  "I will make dinner with you. I am a big girl."
Sara:   "Yes you are."
Abby:  "You are a mommy big girl."
Sara:   "I sure am."

Abby is always excited to help out.  She wants to see what I am doing and be a part of it.  She loves mixing things in the kitchen for me but usually ends up making a huge mess.  She does not want to share the stool with Emma when we are in the kitchen but she does understand about taking turns and she will eventually give in.

Abby LOVES to sing and I am amazed at how many songs she can sing all by herself.  Her favorite songs to sing are:

I am a Child of God
The Temple Song
Book of Mormon Stories
Five Little Ducks
The Monkey and the Alligator Song
The Rabbit Song
The ABC Song
The Birdie Song
The Wheels on the Bus
The Daddy Song
Popcorn Popping
Little Purple Pansies 
In the Leafy Treetops
The Coconut Song
The Princess Songs

Abby loves to read books.  Her favorite books are:

Going on a Bear Hunt
All the Curious George Books
A Bad Case of Stripes (she calls it the Stripes book)
Fancy Nancy
Little Bo Peep Lost Her Sheep
Goldilocks has Chicken Pox
Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do you See
Polar Bear, Polar Bear What Do you Hear
Mother Goose's Nursery Rhymes
If you Give a Pig a Party
No David books
Go Dog Go

Abby has been known to hum while she is eating.  It is very entertaining. 

When Abby is not in a dress up dress she would rather be naked.  It is not uncommon for me to find her in just her diaper laying by the window basking in the sun.  When she does decide to finally get dressed she does not want my help.  Surprisingly she is able to put on her own clothes pretty well.

When Abby tries to read a book to me she very seriously adds, "Amen" when she is finished.  

Abby is always intrigued by our exercise routine.  She usually jumps on in and does the warm up with us.  I will occasionally catch her trying to do some yoga moves.  She is quite flexible.

Abby is usually the first to volunteer to say the prayer and will just raise her hand and say, "Pick me, pick me. I want to pray."  We usually let her pray often at meals because she loves it so much.  She is always quick to bless the boys while they are at school and daddy at work.  She is also quick to add in, "Bless Abby to have fun in ballet."

 

When Abby sees a picture of Jesus with the children she quickly points out who she is.

When Abby wakes up in the morning she comes into my room as says,  "I woke up mommy."  Then she crawls in bed and gives lots of loves.  She loves to give kisses and lately she wants to give them on the lips.

Sometimes when I get in the shower Abby takes off all her clothes and knocks at the shower door to come in.  I do love taking showers alone but sometimes it is fun to have her tag along.  I just can't resist that cute little naked girl.

I love to see Abby's face as she jumps up and down on her bed.  It is like she is having the time of her life.

When Abby doesn't want to do something she says, "No fank you."  Oh how she is so polite.  It is the cutest thing to hear her say.

When Abby wants to play a little bit more before going to bed she says, "I wanna play for second minutes...ok"

It's hilarous when Abby mimicks me when she is serious about telling me something.  She puts her hands on my cheeks and says, "Look at me momma...do you understand?"

Abby loves to tell me stories.  They all start like this: "Once upon a time there was a Abby princess...or...Once upon a time there was a Mommy princess."

When Abby senses anger or frustration in my voice she quickly asks, "Are you mad momma?"  Her sweetness quickly reminds me to pull it together so I can tell her that I am not mad.  What a sweet example she is to all of us. 

New Sanno Adventures

Every month we look forward to our adventure to the New Sanno Hotel in Tokyo. We make reservations to stay there once a month so that Mike and I can go to the Temple while one of the girls from our church up in Tokyo stays with our kids in the room. We spend the rest of the weekend exploring a new part of Tokyo. The kids are always excited for our traditional room service breakfast full of french toast, pancakes, fresh fruit, fresh strawberry jam, whipping cream,and lots and lots of syrup.  This is usually followed by a good time in the hotel pool.  It is probably the coolest hotel pool we have ever been in.  Half of the pool is shallow for little swimmers that can't quite swim yet and the other is for the big kids.  There are usually a couple of kickboards and a beach ball that we play with as well as some of the smaller toys that we bring.   The ceiling is mostly skylights which is nice because it is usually sunny here and the walls are tiled in a big mural of fish in the sea.  Of course my favorite part is the hot tub and we all usually end up in there at the end.  Today the kids had fun playing a game of water volleyball with Mike.  Peter was hilarous to watch as he really got into the game.  We named him the SPLASHER by the end of the morning.  Everytime I looked at him he was splashing in the water.  Emma was named the KICKER as she courageously kicked with the kickboard all by herself...that is, until she started to sink which frightened her and she quit playing in the deep end.  Andrew was the DIVER because he could retrieve any toys from the deep end.  Abby was our FOLLOWER because she followed me everywhere I went including the hot tub. We always look forward to our gettaways to the New Sanno Hotel.

Modeling

Modeling here is quite big.  In fact, many of the foreigners really get into it because the Japanese love to photograph kids that do not look like their own, especially blue-eyed and blonde headed ones.  I knew that it was not something I wanted to be spending all of our time on but something that might be fun to do every once in a while.  I also thought of it as a way to acquire some tips about photography and to save for the kids education.   We ended up signing the kids up with an agency called Sugar and Spice.  Since signing them up a couple of months ago we have taken three jobs for Emma. 

The first one was for Birkenstock.  We had kind of a rough start with the modeling world.  First there was the photo selection and then an audition.  Seeing as this was our first audition we didn't really know what to expect.  Both Peter and Emma passed the photo selection and made it to the audition and so we hopped on the train and headed into Tokyo one afternoon.  I must have taken the LONG way because it took us almost 2 hours to get to our designated train station.  We literally ran for 5 minutes to the meeting place and were still a couple of minutes late.  The most disappointing part about it was that all they had them do was try on one pair of shoes.  We were done in less than 5 minutes.  I was NOT HAPPY that we commuted so far for such a pointless audition.  Riding home in rush hour was not fun either and when we got home I vowed that I was never going to another audition.  It was settled....it was just too much time.  So you can imagine how vindicated I felt when Emma got the job.  She got to wear a couple of cute dresses with some cute birkenstock sandals and pose in a quaint little garden shop area.  It was a little chilly that day so they tried to keep her warm when they were not taking pictures of her.  She had a good time and they spoiled her with treats in between the little sessions.  I was the most interested to see that the photographer was using an OLD film cameras. I am not sure what kind of film he was using but it was a long roll with only 12 frames on it.  I was a little shocked but then realized that Birkenstock's image is that of an all natural look anyways.  So, our first experience ended up way better than it had started.

Emma's second photo shoot was with Senken Kids magazine.  This one only had the photo selection.  We were lucky that this photo shoot was on the same day that we were heading into Tokyo to stay at the New Sanno for the night.  Emma and I left early and Mike met me with the other kids later that day.  There were two other children at this photo shoot.  Again, there was a nice spread of food for the kids.  We snacked on the dried fruit and the chocolate bagels...yum!  The first outfit they put Emma in was hilarous but how they did her hair almost made me burst out laughing.  I did take a picture with my iPhone.  I later realized it was ok to use my real camera so I got some better pictures later on.  This modeling job was located in a small studio house and they had Emma sit outside on the second floor balcony area.  The sun was out and it was rather bright that day so it was kind of hard for her to keep her eyes open.  They eventually had to move her to a different, more shaded, location on the balcony.  The second outfit was a lot cuter and they curled her hair and put on a cute hat.  Observing Emma at home you would not think that she is shy but watching her during her photo shoot I could see her shyness make its surface.  Still, she said she liked getting her pictures taken so we will continue until she doesn't want to do it anymore. 

The last session we did was by far the funnest and most exciting.  Both Emma and I modeled for a store called Afternoon Tea.  The theme was "Lunchtime with Mom."  After taking the train into Tokyo and taking a cab from the station we finally made it to this really CUTE studio.  Inside the studio it was quaint and light with white walls and fun rooms to take pictures in.  There were even skylights with a cute sun room on the back of the studio house.  Lucky for us it was a gorgeous day because our photo shoot took place in the backyard.   They had set up this really fun picnic area with a delicious spread of real food.  There were balloons and even a party banner on the white picket fence behind our cute little picnic.  Emma and this really sweet little British girl were the center of the shoot.  They had the girls dressed in cute skirts with matching Converse shoes and bows in their hair to match their skirts.  My outift was a little less on the cute side as they had me wear leggings and a moo moo type linen dress.  We dragged Abby along this time because I didn't have anyone to watch her and it couldn't have gone any better.  There were so many nice people there that I had people watching her and keeping her happy the entire time.  After the photo shoot was over each of the girls got to eat one of their fabulous cupcakes from the picnic.  The almost looked fake but sure enough they were real.  I couldn't believe how easy going these people were with the kids.  It will be hard to top this photo shoot. 

Tender Mercies

There comes a day in every woman's life when no matter how independent she is there is just something that she needs that she can not give herself.  I believe that there are many moments, both seen and unseen, where we receive help from both strangers and people we know.  I like to think of myself as one of those strong and indpendent women who tries to take on the world without too much help.  That is not to say that I am at all afraid to ask others for help.  Living overseas has opened my eyes to yet more of life's little quirks.  Living overseas has its challenges but I know that the best way to overcome 99.9% of them is to just have a positive attitude.  This has really carried me through some of the crazy parts about living here.  I have been so grateful for the amazing family time that we have had and for the strong bonds that I have with my kids and with my husband.  I can really see our relationships getting stronger.   It makes me so happy.  There shouldn't be any part of me that feels empty yet sometimes I don't feel quite complete.  Thankfully this is not the emptiness one feels when there is a yearning for more children.   The emptiness I feel is my growth as a woman of God.  I feel like I have so much to give and yet it is somehow so hard to find the right friend to bond with on so many levels but especially the spiritual.  For me a friendship is more than the normal chit chat.  It is about how we can help each other grow as women of God.  If I can't talk spiritual with my best friends then that is a problem.  Through His tender mercies Heavenly Father has heard my prayers and has given me the opportunity through Visiting Teaching to meet a really fabulous woman.  It was amazing that with only one visit we both knew that we were brought together for a divine purpose.  I am so grateful to have met my wonderful friend Myisha.  She sees me for who I am and who I am trying to become and loves me as her sister even though we have not known each other very long.  It's nice to have someone that is experiencing similar things.  I think we all need someone like that in our lives wherever we may be living.  I feel like part of my emptiness has been filled.  This has been a huge blessing for me. Since I am in the Primary at church I don't get that many opportunities to be around the other women and be uplifted.  I will be forever grateful for Heavenly Father's tender mercies and how they have brought me to meet such wonderful women.