“Mommy, what do you want?  Salmon or Salad?” I pondered for a moment and then made my choice,

“Salad, please.  I’ll have salad.”

“O.k.” he said, and set off to prepare the salad for me . . . paper.  “I’ll make you a-r-e salad,” and drew a bumpy, salady line across the paper.  I got lots of a-r-e salad all over the paper.  It was delicious.

We experience some other a-r-e Eian concoctions recently, but I can’t remember what they were.  The A-R-E Salad, just really stood out to me. I’m not sure where he came up with this spelling, maybe Word World, but I love it.  He makes me smile.

I must say my wife did an AWESOME job planning and preparing for Eian’s birthday party. She made a racecars theme cake with 10 individual racecars, one for each of the cousins that came over and a big cake in the middle for the adults to eat. Earlier in the week she made some chex party mix with some kind of syrup coating that Uncle Rich couldn’t stop eating. On top of that she made her own edible arrangements, one with just fruits and chocolate covered strawberries for the other arrangement.

On another note, Cassia is getting bigger all the time. She is now crawling all over the place and pulling herself up and standing next to us at times. She makes all kinds of sounds now and sometimes it’s hilarious just to listen to her. We’ll try to post more recent picks. Unfortunately while doing this blog I realized that the pictures from the birthday party are on the other computer at home. Oh, well, I’ll just try to upload pics from our camping trip to Iron Creek in Randle over the Labor Day weekend.

visit to Mount St. Helens

Our family is growing! We have a new addition, Cassia Sayuri Watanabe. She was born on January 31, 2010 at 3:16am. Cassie is her nickname and she weighed in at 7lbs 5 ozs. Of course this was over a month ago and Cassie has since grown. We hope to load more updated pics soon.

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.

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

See the big picture

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.

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!!).

See the big picture

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.

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.

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.

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.