Eating - more progress every day!

My friend Brenda, who we met in Beijing, sent me a great e-mail yesterday sharing her experience with her own daughter's feeding issues (now resolved). The breakthrough happened when their feeding specialist smeared yogurt all over her daughter's tray and let her play in it. Her message was encouraging and reassuring and recommended that we relax and let Quinn progress at his own schedule.

Almost immediately, the kid started eating new things! We tried the yogurt trick, but just with a bowl, and after a little fussing he started lapping it up. That encouraged Tom's mom to buy some applesauce, which he started scooping up with his bottle nipple. Today he has had two servings of Japanese sweet beans, also scooping them up with the nipple.

Thanks, Brenda!!! Above, as you can probably tell, are some photos of the yogurt adventure.

New Year's Eve

Tom's mom spent all day New Year's Eve cooking. We started eating the fruits of her labor for dinner on New Year's Eve.


In addition to the many, many dishes she cooked, she took a trip to Japantown in San Jose to buy things like the fresh tofu, above, special fish cakes and o-manju, fancy cakes made with sweet rice flour and filled with sweet beans.


After dinner, Quinn had a bath and we read some books. We put him down a little late in hopes he would sleep in a little on New Year's Day. Wrong!



After Quinn went to sleep we watched a Japanese variety show that I love to see whenever we're here for New Year's. The male singing stars of Japan, both old and young, compete against the women. The acts are everything from an older woman in a kimono singing a very traditional song to a teenage boy band. This year there was even a little girl.

After the show ends we watch Dick Clark's New Year's Rocking Eve for the countdown. At midnight we have a sparkling cider toast - this year we got yummy sparkling pomegrante juice at Trader's Joes.


Then we enjoy the Japanese tradition of eating long noodles at midnight to symbolize long life.


Here is how little Quinn spent the first moments of 2009.

I love my Auntie Bonny

Tom's sister Bonny has worked hard these past two weeks to make sure Quinn knows here, and her efforts have paid off! He especially loves to tease her - she comes up on one side of him to say hi and he turns away and smiles, waiting for her to appear on his other side. When she does, he smiles and turns back to the first side. If he had his way, this game would go on for hours!!

That scary Monterey Bay Aquarium

We spent a day at the world-famous Monterey Bay Aquarium, and let's just say it was not Quinn's favorite place on earth.

We started out at the otter exhibit. First we went upstairs to watch the otters floating on their back, cracking oysters on their chests. Then we went downstairs to watch them swim. Just when Quinn and I got a place in front of the massive wall of glass, two otters came zinging RIGHT toward us. It seriously looked like they were going to attack us. Quinn screamed and never really recovered. Everything looked to him like just another big, scary monster. Poor little guy. Scroll through the pictures below and you'll see a lot of sad faces!

Playing with Grandma Tokie

A very late 50th anniversary celebration

Tom's parents celebrated their 50th anniversary on Oct. 22. We were all supposed to go on a cruise, but then we found out we were leaving to meet Quinn on Oct. 29. So no cruise. Maybe in 2009. But for now we celebrated with a delicious seafood dinner at the Fishwife in Pacific Grove, Calif.

Earlier in the day I bought Quinn a couple of toddler food bowls and brought along one of mac 'n cheese with chicken and veggies. Quinn was pretty lukewarm about it at first, but pretty soon he dipped his bottle nipple into the can and started munching away. He stuck mostly with the sauce, but got quite a few bites of macaroni, veggies and chicken, too. This is the first bonafide solid food Quinn has eaten since we've known him, so that was something else to celebrate!

Hooray! We're eating!

A miraculous event occurred at the dinner table last night. Just as we finished eating, Quinn finished his baby food bananas and started dipping his bottle nipple into Uncle Gary's clam miso soup. He did this many, many, many times, always to enthusiastic applause.

Here's a picture:

After a while, Gary offered Quinn a sip from his large, Chinese porcelain soup spoon. Quinn rejected it, but was obviously considering it. Here's what that looked like:

But Gary hung in there and eventually Quinn stuck out his little tongue and stuck it into the soup. A bit after that he even let Gary give him a few sips from the spoon, even though Quinn never really opened his mouth.

Here's the big moment:

The final step is when Quinn took the spoon himself and brought it up to his mouth several times. He didn't quite have the angle right so I don't think any actually got it, but STILL!

Here's the big boy's first attempt at feeding himself with a spoon:


So glad we caught these moments on film. This is why we have two cameras with us everywhere we go!