Enjoying this week of Indian summer with a dip in the pool…
I love her squeals of delight while splashing in the water!
Videos
Spinning with Daddy
Dan was spinning Mio round and round in various ways, and was having a hard time keeping up with her… but in the end, found the best solution to tire her out without getting exhausted himself!
Tech-Savvy Tot
With two tablets in the household (Dan’s ASUS Transformer Prime and my iPad), Mio knows tablet technology all too well. Combine that with seeing us using our smartphones, she’s gotten to be such a pro at knowing how touch-screens work. She’s even sat at my desktop computer and tried to swipe the screen on several occasions!
Here’s a video of Mio learning about animals through a couple Japanese children’s apps on my iPad. She’s a pro at switching between apps and touching things on the screen.
It’s a very different age that children are growing up in these days! There’s so much technology surrounding them everywhere. We still want Mio to appreciate books and tactile toys rather than get addicted to the screen and all things digital, so we try to limit the time she spends playing on the tablet and watching things on the screen. (I usually try to wrench her away and distance her from the screen to save her eyesight….)
On a somewhat related note, I found this video from last December, when we celebrated Christmas with Dan’s family in California, before leaving for Virginia. We surprised Dan with the ASUS tablet that he’d been wishfully admiring — I rallied both sides of the family to chip in to get it for him for his birthday! I love how stunned he is by the gift, and was glad that we could get it on video. 🙂
Not sure what to get for his birthday this year, though. I kind of dug myself a hole by raising the bar too high – now almost every gift I give him will pale in comparison…
Oktoberfest Reston
We spent Sunday afternoon at Oktoberfest in Reston Town Center! Dan’s new office building is right in Reston Town Center, so it was a nice opportunity to go see the area he works in and also enjoy the good eats/drinks and carnival rides that the festival had to offer! It was pretty cold and misty, but we still had a great time! 😀
Mio’s learned how to do “cheers!” and clink her cup against another person’s, but she’s so into it that she’ll do it with every type of food she happens to share with you, and multiple times (as in every five seconds). So when she and I both had Peruvian french fries in hand, she insisted on toasting and bumping them together… over and over. Here it is on video!
As a finale, we took Mio on the carousel. She doesn’t really understand the difference between horses and cows yet, so she kept mooing and making cow noises while waiting in line and riding on the carousel. I corrected her the first couple times, but it was pretty cute so I just let her moo the whole ride through.
Like with the Marin County Fair, there were a lot of rides Mio couldn’t go on because she wasn’t 36 inches tall, so that was kind of a bummer. Maybe in a year or two, she’ll get to enjoy more of the rides! 🙂
Kisses on the Playground
Today, we went to nearby Borge Street Park for a couple hours as a little family outing and to give Mio some time to play on the playground to her heart’s content. As usual, as soon as she saw the playground when she got out of the car, she squealed in delight and ran towards it!
I mentioned before that Mio is getting more affectionate these days, and we caught one of such sweet moments on video! Here she is, giving a kiss to Daddy and then blowing Mama a kiss.
