The leaves have been turning colors and falling to the ground, there’s a chill in the air… it’s definitely fall, and the girls have been reveling in it the past few weeks.
Temperatures are quickly dropping and as Thanksgiving nears, we’re definitely starting to experience more wintery weather!
On November 3, Mirei went to the doctor for her 9 month wellness checkup. Her pediatrician asked me a bunch of questions, and it looks like she is doing great in terms of her growth, health, and is ahead of the game in hitting a lot of milestones!
Dan and I had thought that based on her past measurements and how heavy she has been feeling, Mirei would for sure be over 23 pounds by now, but we were wrong! It looks like her growth in weight is slowing down a little, as the nurse weighed her at 22 lbs 9 oz! That puts her in the 96th percentile for weight-for-age.
She measured 29.5 inches tall, putting her in the 96th percentile again for height-for-age.
Her head size is now 18 inches around, which is in the 91st growth percentile based on head circumference-for-age.
We are so fortunate that Mirei has been growing so well and is so healthy. I can’t believe she’s only 3 months away from her first birthday. Time sure does fly, especially with the second child!
Our local youth group organized a Halloween party and Trunk-or-Treat for the kids, so we took the girls to be a part of the fun on Halloween night! Dan decorated our trunk for Trunk-or-Treat, and was excited to show off his creation while handing out candy.
Crawling and walking in the kitchen:
They had a photographer at the party, who took photos of everyone against a backdrop… Mio took full advantage — she kept going back in front of the camera, and even jumped in front of other people getting their photo taken and ruining their photos! She was so hyper at the party! (Special thanks to Yuseki Ota Photography for the pictures below.)
Thank you to Owin and all the other youth group members who did such an awesome job planning and organizing the Halloween party! Our whole family thoroughly enjoyed it — Mio didn’t go to sleep until 11pm that night because she was so excited from it.
Happy Halloween! Our girls’ costumes this year are nigiri sushi: Mio is salmon, and Mirei is shrimp! They are just so cute that I could gobble them up…
This was my first time making their costumes and while it was a long and challenging process because I don’t have a sewing machine and had to hand-sew everything, it helped that Mio was really excited about the idea of being sushi for Halloween and kept excitedly exclaiming “Mio going to be SAH-MON SUSHI!!!” during the weeks leading up to Halloween. She was definitely my cheerleader and motivator to get the costumes completed and not give up! I’m pretty pleased with the final result, and the girls (well… Mio at least) seem to really like it! I don’t know if I’ll attempt to make another costume on my own again, though, until I have a sewing machine… I kept getting frustrated towards the end that it would have been faster and cleaner-looking if I had one! For those who want to know, I followed this awesome tutorial (note: it’s in Hebrew, so you’ll need the help of Google Translate!) that I found via Pinterest, and added some customizations of my own (I sewed the “rice” body from some white chenille fabric, and added green felt “baran”/grass to the headband, behind the wasabi and ginger). The costumes have definitely been a hit at the Halloween parties and events we’ve gone to this year, and it was a welcome departure from the typical princesses and fairies that we dressed Mio in the past couple years.
Hope everyone has a safe and fun Halloween weekend!
Mio had such a great time going to Trunk-or-Treat around town last year, so we definitely wanted to take her and Mirei again this year. Mio has been looking forward to Halloween for a while now, and had been carrying her pumpkin bucket around practicing shouting “trick-or-treat!” I’m pretty certain that Halloween is her favorite time of year. π We went to both Vienna Baptist Church and Emmanuel Lutheran Church again this year. Here are some photos of all the trick-or-treating fun!
Mio had such a great time at Trunk-or-Treat, and she’s been admiring her candy loot in the days since! She likes to dump all of it out on the floor, carefully examine, comment, and count each one, and then put it all back and select a couple to eat every day. She’s surprisingly been pretty good about not trying to eat all of them at once, and has been exercising admirable restraint for a 3-year-old in listening to us when we tell her she can only have one or two treats a day. And the best part of it is that she’s willing to share, much to our delight! π