Sorry haven’t blogged in a million years. Things are kind of settling here in Washington after the big move from Hawaii. We just uploaded a bunch of pictures from life here in WA. We had Eian’s 1st Birthday party a while back but didn’t get a chance to upload any pics. San is still looking for a job and Tam is 15 weeks and 4 days along. Just 171 days to go. We haven’t gone to the doctors yet until she reaches 20 weeks and hopefully we’ll have medical insurance by then.
Eian is just as active as ever and talking a bit more. He says “momma” pretty well but still needs to work on “dada”. He does some sign language for things like “food” and “more”. It’s such a joy to see all the things he picks up on and imitates. He is definately watching and learning from what we and others do or say although we’re not quite sure yet how to stop the screaming at times when he wants something. Oh, well, that’s parenthood for you. I guess we’ll learn a lot as we go along.
August 11, 2009
Eian’s 1st Birthday
June 5, 2009
At 6 weeks we have a Lentil Bean!
As I read this weeks developments in our new baby, my mind filled with wonder. For such an incredibly tiny being, he or she is teeming with so much life and development! Blood flow, heart beat, arms and legs and features in the face beginning to form. Eyes and intestines and lung tissue, brain, bones all in the works. It’s incredible! And this child was only, really, conceived 4 weeks ago! Four weeks ago there was nothing and now there is someONE beginning to form!
I know this is probably redundant and not a very original thought, but I couldn’t help but think again how mind blowing to me it is that this rapidly developing life is viewed by some as an insignificant, blob of flesh. It almost brings tears to my eyes. How the enemy of life, the herald of death has deceived the understanding of many. How the one who has come to kill, steal and destroy has wooed, entranced and taken captive the Sacred Place of men and women. That place deep within, where God instilled in us a Reverence for Beautiful, Awesome, Simple Things. That place which once we guarded securely and forbade the entry of Violence or Impurity or Lust. But he comes as a Thief in the night and he clothes his mission in white, so that the hearts of many may be stolen away into a state of denial and deception. Denial of deception. Let your heart leap at the miraculous development of this small child. At 6 weeks old, our new child’s development is astounding!
Your pregnancy: 6 weeks
How your baby’s growing: This week’s major developments: The nose, mouth, and ears that you’ll spend so much time kissing in eight months are beginning to take shape. If you could see into your uterus, you’d find an oversize head and dark spots where your baby’s eyes and nostrils are starting to form. His emerging ears are marked by small depressions on the sides of the head, and his arms and legs by protruding buds. His heart is beating about 100 to 160 times a minute — almost twice as fast as yours — and blood is beginning to course through his body. His intestines are developing, and the bud of tissue that will give rise to his lungs has appeared. His pituitary gland is forming, as are the rest of his brain, muscles, and bones. Right now, your baby is a quarter of an inch long, about the size of a lentil bean.
May 29, 2009
Our New Baby!! A Seseame Seed. Perfect for half Japanese babe!!
I’m so sorry about not blogging. Facebook has taken presidence over wordpress in our lives, but it’s time to begin again with blogging . . . because there is a new baby on the way!! Yay!! And with a new child on way, as well, we begin again with the baby center bulletin updates.
With this baby, I was aware of Baby Center earlier on, so I am learning new exciting things that I hadn’t read about with Eian. And it’s so exciting. I hope that you don’t find my blogging too dull, but as I read about the development of this child I am already amazed at how quickly life begins to spring into action inside of us pregnant women. God is a magnificent Creator! Ugh! That adjective just simply falls too short of the speechless thrill ringing inside of me as I contemplate what He has done and what he continues to do in creating life! He is beyond incredible, beyond amazing! He is holy and awesome! And I fall so short of being worthy to call Him my Father, but still he says, “Come unto me!! Be my child! I love you with an everlasting love!! You are mine! I called you, I placed my seal upon you and I will never leave, nor forsake nor reject you! You are loved!!” What a wonderful God we serve, for those of us that do and for those of you that don’t, may you be drawn to know more of Him and his passionate, jealous, holy love for you . . . as you read about the development of our new child (my 5 week old baby already has a heart beat! LIFE RESIDE WITHIN ME!!).
How your baby’s growing:
Deep in your uterus your embryo is growing at a furious pace. At this point, he’s about the size of a sesame seed, and he looks more like a tiny tadpole than a human. He’s now made up of three layers — the ectoderm, the mesoderm, and the endoderm — which will later form all of his organs and tissues.
The neural tube — from which your baby’s brain, spinal cord, nerves, and backbone will sprout — is starting to develop in the top layer, called the ectoderm. This layer will also give rise to his skin, hair, nails, mammary and sweat glands, and tooth enamel.
His heart and circulatory system begin to form in the middle layer, or mesoderm. (This week, in fact, his tiny heart begins to divide into chambers and beat and pump blood.) The mesoderm will also form your baby’s muscles, cartilage, bone, and subcutaneous (under skin) tissue.
The third layer, or endoderm, will house his lungs, intestines, and rudimentary urinary system, as well as his thyroid, liver, and pancreas. In the meantime, the primitive placenta and umbilical cord, which deliver nourishment and oxygen to your baby, are already on the job.
March 28, 2009
Father & daughter
We finally got to see Beka, Donald, & baby Puah. She is such a cutie and a sweet tiny little girl as you can see from the picture here with her daddy. Beka is still sore but doing well. It’s such a joy to see a newborn. Ahh, the memories and how they grow so fast. We remember how little Eian use to be and now he is ALL over the place. It’s getting more challenging keeping up with him.
Today we’re off to breakfast with Grandma and Grandpa Nash then dinner at AJ’s. The days are going by fast!! Eian is beginning to stand on his own or periods at a time. Soon he’ll be walking up stairs instead of crawling up them. Hoping for more sunshine too. The weather here has been okay so far and San’s cold is almost over although he’s still coughing a little. Aloha for now from Washingtion.
March 23, 2009
Aloha Auntie Maja & Uncle Wes!!
We had to say Aloha and Mahalo to Uncle Wes & Auntie Maja. They were such wonderful hosts and took excellent care of us while we were in Portland. It’s such a lovely place that we don’t mind living there . . hummm . . . now that’s a thought. More later on Portland. We have to pack and be on our way to Chris and Jenni place in Concrete.
March 8, 2009
Eian and Daddy
What a joy this boy is. We were having a ministry fair and Eian just loved the balloons floating around so he started kicking his feet and flinging his arms. Daddy got him this yellow one. As you can see he is just loving it! Such a big boy already. He’s eating more of the organic pea’s we got him and loves it, still crawling all over the place and beginning to stand AND balance on his own more (of course he holds onto something while he’s doing it) but still we think he will walk before he’s one. Can’t wait to see everyone in Washington this Spring break.
February 22, 2009
I’m 7 months old!!
Sorry we haven’t been blogging lately and you can see why. Our bundle of joy is taking up most of our time, but we enjoy it immensely. We took these pictures at the Aiea Heights hiking trail above where we live on February 16th. Eian made 7 months that day and we thought it would be fun to take some pictures. He seemed to like it, although we had to work sometimes at getting his attention him so that he would look at the camera.
He is growing so fast! I (Tam) took him to the doctor last week, (because I thought he had an ear infection, no ear infection) and he weight 18 pounds even. San measured him today and he’s about 29 inches long.
He’s changing so much, too. He’s starting to point at things and people or gestures with hands. . . just stick his arm(s) in the air in the direction of something. He’s started opening an closing his hands, like he’s making the sign for milk in sign language. I don’t know if that’s what he’s doing or if he’s just discovered he can move his fingers like that. 
I’ve been teaching him that sign when I nurse him, so maybe someday soon he can ask me to nurse when he wants to. 
He’s really becoming mobile these days, too. He is soooo active and busy!! We know he will be an athletic person. He’s been pulling himself up to anything and everything. He’s cruising along the edge of he couch. He climbs up on the couch if there’s a big cushion up against it. If he could, we can tell that he would be climbing up on things that would be very dangerous. He stands up at things and pulls himself up onto his tippy toes. Sheesh! He stands at the shoe rack and pulls all the shoes off the rack. We have a metal rack in the entryway with 4 shelves for shoes, and bags/purses on top. He ventures all around the condo now. It’s so fun to see him exploring all over the place. He’s so fast, too. I love it when he comes to find me if I go to another room. Our place is small enough that I’m only a couple steps away from any of the rooms. No worries, I’m not leaving him unattended.
He started saying “da da da” I think last month, now he’s added “ma ma ma” to his verbal repertoire. Someday he’ll associate those verbalizations to HIS da da and mama. Oh! And San and I will be useless, melt your heart! He’s saying a lot of other consonants and vowels, but no hard vowel sounds yet. For consonants, he says the b, d, g, m, n, s, t?, v?, and w sounds. It’ so fun to hear him use his voice!
As you can see, he’s got four teeth now, and he knows how to use ‘em! I’ve been trying to get him to understand what it means when we say “no, no”. We usually exclaim pretty loudly when he bites our fingers or shoulder or arm or some other body part. It really hurts! He doesn’t use much control, he just lets her rip! But, he still hasn’t gotten the picture yet. He usually smiles at me yet when I say no, no. I’ve started giving him some little swats on the leg for some things, but not much yet. He’s not using his teeth very much to eat yet, except paper. We’ve tried introducing new foods and he’s no too interested yet You’d think we were feeding him mud or soap or something else really horrible by his facial expressions. So, I’ve taken a break for a little bit. We’ve tried poi, rice cereal (which he enjoys), carrots w/ rice cereal (he liked that more), and potatoes (he really didn’t like). Next I’m going to steam or bake some butternut squash for him and see what he thinks of that.
He’s expressing so many different emotions. It’s so wonderful to watch his emotions, not so much the not so nice ones , but we love him through it : joy, surprise, excitement, relief, questioning/pensive, satisfaction, and then there is frustration, sadness, pain, uncertainty. I love watching his reaction when we come home after a long day. When we set him down on the floor or on the bed, he just squirms around with so much excitement, as if to say, “Yeah, we’re home! It feels so good!” He’s such a happy boy. He loves to be around people and it’s so fun to watch his reaction to children that walk by. Sometimes he calls out to them or reaches toward them. If a stranger doesn’t give him their attention or notice him, he calls out to them until they notice him and start talking to him. . . then he pretends he’s shy and drops his head or buries his face him my shirt. It’s so cute! I think he serves as a huge distraction in church sometimes for the people sitting behind us. I can tell people are smiling and playing with him, because he’s looking over my shoulder, sporting a huge grin and bouncing in my lap.
We have an evening routine that we hold to loosely, depending on what is happening on a given evening. It consists of playtime after dinner, a bath, a story, prayer and nursing (or I pray while I nurse him). We rarely fit all of those things in, but occasionally, it just works out. Usually by the time we get him out of the bathtub, he’s simply too tired and ready to call it a night. We don’t wash him with soap everyday. Most evenings we just put him in there to play and wind down in the warm water. He sleeps in a crib in our room. He’s not sleeping through the night yet, though. After I lay him down, he usually wakes up a couple times crying before I go to bed. After I go bed, if. . . no, I mean, WHEN he wakes up, I bring him to bed with me (I just coaxed him back to sleep for the 3rd time. I’m taking too long to write this .
Well, I think I’ve covered all of the developmental changes that I can think of. We feel so blessed to have this little man in our lives. He is awesome. He has such a pleasant personality and people enjoy him so much! Oh! One last thing, I left him in the nursery for the very first time the other night!! San and I went to a meeting at the church and there was child care provided. I knew and trusted the Auntie that was watching him. It was nice to leave him that night because he was close by, just a couple doors down, so when he got a little fussy, she brought him straight over. It was nice to be by ourselves for a little while, too. San had met me there and brought us some dinner. It was so nice to eat together.
So, anyway, I’d better close. We really enjoy parenting and look forward to bringing our next child into the world. No, not yet. But before he makes.
Oops. My battery is dying. Thanks for reading. If you think I’m too wordy, well, I am. I want him to be able to look back and read about what we thought about him and what he was like as a baby!
Aloha!
January 1, 2009
Happy New Year!!
Happy New Year everyone!! Here’s to a prosperous and blessed 2009, a year for conquering giants and celebrating wonderful things to come. We are thankful for the birth of our son Eian Makana who brings so much joy to our lives. As you can see from the picture, he was awaken just before midnight to all the noise and fireworks so we took him out on the lanai and welcomed in the New Year. San has a cold so we decided to stay home that night and missed the traditional celebrating at the Goyas place in Mililani. Both of us have come down with a cold but thank goodness not Eian. He’s just been as healthy as ever. Enjoy the pics and God Bless 2009!
December 27, 2008
Power Outage
Friday, December 26th, about 10:00 p.m.
Earlier this evening Sanford and Eian and I watched in amazement as brilliant flashes of lightning lit up the sky . . . followed by the deep, hollow roll of heaven’s thunder. I love a good lightning storm! The first flash I saw was actually behind me. I was sitting in our chair that I use to nurse Eian, which has it’s back facing the sliding glass window. So, in my peripheral vision, which was hardly peripheral, I saw the electric flash! Wow! I felt a twinge of excitement run through my skin! The flashing continued for quite a while. Then . . . the lights flickered!
“Did you see that!!?” I asked.
“Yeah!” Hmmm. Nah. . ., I thought, the power won’t go out. Sanford went to look for a flash light.
The thunder and lightning continued, so close, as if it were knocking on our front door! The the lights flickered again. We looked at each.
“I hope the power goes out!” San said.
“Yeah! Me too!”
Minutes later . . . poof! Out went the lights!
Then, as if her job was complete, the lightning subsided, as if to say she were moving on to another unsuspecting island.
In a flurry of excitement, we began lighting candles and sprinkling them all around our apartment. I dug a few more out from under the bed; slowly we discovered more and more forgotten candles, until soon we were surrounded by the steady flicker of golden light. Our home began to glow and emit the sweet smells of blueberry and pumpkin and the earthiness of verbena and thyme. Before lighting the candles we contemplated going out to eat since we didn’t want to open the refrigerator, but quickly we discovered that it wasn’t just our building that was without power; the mall had lost power, too. From our 17th floor lanai, we watched a great exodus of headlights streaming from the Pearlridge parking lots, filing slowly in all directions. So, I guess there would be no eating at the mall tonight. Besides, what if the power didn’t come back on? We’d have to climb those 17 flights of stairs, carrying our little bundle of goodness! I’ve done it before with him, but not late in the evening. He was much lighter than, too. Anyway, so first, we read to Eian from his new Rhyming Storybook Bible by flashlight. We read about the Lost Boy. It’s the story about Jesus being engrossed with talking to the teachers of the Law about the Word of God. Then, we ate some cold Tofu Casserole, which is actually quite good cold (San prefers it cold . Then, we watched The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion, the With and the Wardrobe, until the battery went dead. Eian fell asleep, so I put him to bed. Meanwhile, Auntie Boni had texted me asking if we were o.k and if we were home. She was offering her spare room if we didn’t want to climb. But I couldn’t reply or call. It must have arrived to my phone during a short period of coverage, because I had tried to use my phone a few minutes prior and couldn’t make any calls. I decided to use San’s phone to call her back since he had a signal. Weird, huh? We have a family plan, why would he have coverage and not me? Go figure! So, from speaking with her I discovered that she didn’t have power either! Incredible! She lives on the other side of the harbor from us, literally!
Well, I was enjoying the quiet and San wanted to learn more, so he dug out our radio and we then discovered that this outage was bigger than we thought! It’s island wide!! We also discovered that our water pressure was very low! Yikes! And San needed to use the restroom! He decided it was necessary enough to use what water we had hanging out in our pipes to squirrel away for flushing the toilet, so we had some water on hand.
Whoa! The power flashed on for just a minute, and now it’s down again.
This is so nice. I think we should have our own self-imposed power outages, maybe once a week or a couple times a month. There’s no TV, no computer, nothing to do but read or play a game or talk to each other or write, like I’m doing right now, with pen and paper. I really like this. It’s also exciting to me that Sanford enjoys this, too. As a child I loved it when the power went out. There’s something special about candle light and the removal of technological distractions. I hope it stays off for a lot longer, but it’s difficult to find something to eat, since everything is in the fridge. Also, from listening to the radio, we are forced to think about those who need power to support their well-being, their life!
So, I will set aside my selfish wishes to pray that Lord, you would help those HECO workers to be efficient and intuitive and to get our power back on just as quickly as possible, in order to aid those who really need it to survive. But, I do thank You for these sweet quiet moments by candle light.
December 27, 2008
He is so happy!
Look at this smiley boy!! I love it! He is such a kick! He’s so much fun! He’s been changing pretty rapidly lately. I already said that he sat up by himself, which was so stinkin’ cute I was simply beside myself! On Christmas Eve, however, he started taking his first crawling steps, on his hands and knees!! Ahhh! That was just as equally as cute! He’s becoming more physically active quite quickly. He now climbs up onto our bellies while we are lying on the floor and even pushes himself up onto his feet! Like a little bear crawl move. Didn’t Moglie do that in Junglebook? Isn’t the little boy’s name Moglie or Mogly or something like that? Anyway. . . He’s becoming quite the climber. He’s not satisfied to just lay there anymore while I change his diaper either. And he’s a strong little 5 month old, so keeping him still is getting difficult. However, giving him a diaper to play with keep hims still long enough to get him cleaned up and dressed again. I don’t know how long that is going to work. I know at some point he’s going to understand when I tell him to sit still or what “no” means, so I’m going to have to start disciplining him. Does anyone have any suggestions?
Well, it’s time to hit the hay! Good night friends and family!
