We were invited to celebrate Anna’s fourth birthday at Mobu Kids playgym in Falls Church! The girls had a blast and we loved seeing and catching up with Anna, Cara, Pat and Theo. 🙂 Thanks so much for inviting us to be a part of sweet Anna’s birthday celebration — can’t believe she is four already!
At one point, Mirei went under the parachute and got lost under there, which made us panic for a moment:
Dan also captured the funny moment:
Singing “Happy Birthday” to Anna!
Mio is now four years old! On the morning of her birthday, she woke up to her favorite donut for breakfast — quite a treat, since we don’t usually give them to her because they are so sweet!
Conversations with Mio on her fourth birthday:
This year, we decided to have a small birthday celebration at home for Mio with family! (Dan and I have decided that especially now that we have two kids, we can get away with doing the big party inviting all their friends every other year for each of them, so that we only have to do one big party a year, switching off between the girls.) Thankfully, she seemed just as excited as she was when we had a big party for her 3rd birthday!
Mio’s reaction to her birthday cake that I made for her was priceless! It made all the time and effort spent baking and decorating it worthwhile!
Dan made a little pinata for Mio, because she really enjoyed the one at Ellie and Liam’s birthday party a couple weeks ago. Here she is hitting it!
Opening presents afterwards:
Mio loves watching Kinder egg surprise toy videos on YouTube, and her Uncle Ted & Auntie Jackie sent her a package full of their own version of “egg surprise” gifts! She was excited to open all of them:
After pinata and presents, we ended with the birthday cake!
Dearest Mio,
Happy fourth birthday to our precious little sweetheart! We look back in wonder at how much you’ve grown in the past four years. You are charming, animated, playful, funny, thoughtful, bright and curious… and even show a little sass these days!
Three years old has been a really fun and memorable age… you completely potty trained as soon as you turned three, making our lives a whole lot easier (though you still hesitate to go to public bathrooms and will try to “hold it” until we get home), and you have gotten so much more talkative in this past year! While you used to speak more Japanese, you definitely seem more comfortable with English now that you’ve been going to preschool for almost two years — you do still say some things in Japanese, though, and we hope that you will continue to show an interest and appreciation for the language, as well as your ethnic culture and heritage. You have grown to be a more tolerant and loving older sister, and no longer show as much jealousy and irritation towards Mirei — you play well with her, share with her, and even defend her sometimes when we scold her, interrupting, “Hey! That’s my sister. Don’t be mean to her!” You have also learned to joke, and make puns (the most recent one being you calling me “Mommy… moo meh moh!”　(「マミー・・・む・ã‚・もï¼ã€) faking me out to say a part of the Japanese hiragana alphabet!) When we exaggerate or say something funny in front of you, you smartly ask, “Are you joking?” and will say funny things yourself, followed by “I’m just joking!” It’s so fun to see you make these associations and develop your own sense of humor! You continue to love building with Legos, blocks, and structures, and are finally showing more of an appreciation for drawing and coloring on your own. (You stay pretty cleanly within the lines when you color, too!) You’ve been able to write your name for a few months now, and will recognize it whenever it’s written somewhere. You love to sing, dance, will volunteer to pray at dinner, and seem to be making friends and becoming more social at preschool. You are so independent now, and will pick out your own clothes, change out of your pajamas and dress yourself in the morning before coming to our room. The impressive thing is that most of the time, the outfits you pick out match pretty well — you’ve already a great sense of fashion! You’re very helpful and like handing grocery items to the cashier at checkout when we go shopping, and ou make fast friends with new people you meet, whether it be the Trader Joe’s cashier or the UPS delivery man! Lately, you like to inform people, “My name is Mio — it means ‘beautiful cherry blossom! Did you know that?'”
It’s bittersweet to say goodbye to your 3 year old days, but I try not to think of it so much as “already four,” but “still only four” as a fellow mom friend reminded me (「もã†ï¼”æ³ã€‚ã§ã‚‚ã€ã¾ã ï¼”æ³ï¼ã€ï¼‰ Daddy and I adore you with all our hearts, and we can’t wait to see you blossom as a 4 year old! We love you, sweet girl!
Oceans of Love,
Mama
Picking up from Part I and Part II of Mirei’s birthday party posts, the smash cake was the finale of her first birthday celebration! Mirei got a whole cake all to herself, to smash and lick to her heart’s content! The smash cake has become a common first birthday tradition where the child is encouraged to attack the cake with her fingers, fists, or face — no utensils required! It typically makes a huge mess but it’s very entertaining, as it was when we made one for Mio on her first birthday. I usually expect the birthday baby to have a similar method to Mio, where they just go at the cake full force, but I’ve seen other cases where the child only takes a little lick here and there, or just doesn’t want to touch the frosting at all because they don’t want to get their hands dirty! It’s always very interesting to see the differences in personalities and approaches to the smash cake, and we were really curious to see how Mirei would react to her own smash cake!
You can watch Mirei with her smash cake in the following two videos:
We were surprised to find that Mirei’s approach to the smash cake was much more tame than Mio’s, and that she did a lot less damage! (In fact, it was so intact that we were able to reuse the cake for her first birthday photos we posted earlier!) So interesting how siblings can be so different, even though they share the same DNA!
A heartfelt thank you to all of our guests who braved the wintry weather to to celebrate Mirei’s first birthday with us! It is a sweet memory that we will keep with us for years to come, and Mirei is so lucky to have so many people that love her so much. Our first year as parents of two has been challenging at times, but we really can’t imagine a life without our sweet Mirei now, and we look forward to making many more wonderful memories as a family!
The day before Mirei’s actual birthday, we threw a small, intimate birthday party to celebrate the milestone of her turning one! We were admittedly feeling a little overwhelmed (and a little lazy) about doing a big celebration, but we kept the guest list short and decided we’d just do what we could and that helped ease the pressure and stress on us parents. 😉 My brother Ted and his wife Elisa were gracious enough to reserve the party room at their condo for the celebration. Unfortunately, it snowed the morning of the party and some of our guests couldn’t make it because of the weather, but we still had fun with those who were able to make it, and we stayed warm and cozy as the flurries swirled outside!
We had set up our own little “photobooth” with an iPad app, and the kids had so much fun with it! It was really fun to see the collection of pictures at the end of the party:
We felt so blessed to be able to celebrate Mirei’s first birthday with such loving family and friends, and are so thankful that she is such a happy and healthy one year old! More posts to follow with the first birthday activities from the party — stay tuned!
While our actual wedding anniversary was on July 26th, we were at Camp Shehaqua that weekend and couldn’t properly celebrate. We went out to celebrate a week later on Friday with a nice dinner date at Café Renaissance, a local restaurant in Vienna which recently made it onto Open Table’s Top 100 Most Romantic Restaurants in the country. We hadn’t had a date night in a while, so it was nice to just get out and have some time as a couple without the kids for a couple hours! The food was delicious and the service superb, and we had a very memorable anniversary dinner!
It’s been six years since our wedding and over 11 years since the beginning of our journey as a couple. We’re so blessed to have had so many wonderful years and memories together, and we look forward to several more! Can’t wait to see what the future holds. I know it’ll be a beautiful life as long as I have Dan by my side. ♥ Love you, hubby!