It’s far too long since I wrote a blog entry in English, so I’ll have to write about Mayuki, or large portions of my audience will never forgive me.
She’s still fine, still cute, and still lovely. Of course.
My Dad was in Japan last weekend, so she had a chance to play with her Grandad. I was working on Saturday, but joined everyone on Sunday, and could see that Mayuki had no problem with Dad. Apparently, she was shy for about two minutes when they first met, and perfectly happy after that. It looks as though doing iChat every week or so has a good effect in terms of her comfort levels.
Today Yuriko took her to look at another possible playgroup. This one is bilingual, English and Japanese, although the teachers are from places like India and the Ivory Coast, so they aren’t putting a great emphasis on standard native pronunciation, which is largely a good thing, I think. Unfortunately, this place is a bit too far away and, because it is in Yokohama and we are not, it is also likely to be too expensive, but it’s a bit more useful information.
After they got home, I played with Mayuki while Yuriko made dinner. Mayuki decided to sit in front of the television and stare at it for a while. We are not encouraging her to watch television, which is why it was switched off. Clearly the war against television is unwinnable; even the off switch does not guarantee victory.
Fortunately, she also showed an interest in playing with her glockenspiel, picking up the sticks (well, one of them) and heading for it, and then playing it quite enthusiastically when I got it out for her. She’s definitely into music; she now has three different toys that play music when you press buttons, one of which is a picture book that Yuriko bought today, and she very much enjoys all of them.
At dinner time, Mayuki did a good job of eating. She ate quite a bit by herself, with her fingers, which is, I think, the first time she’s done that consistently at a proper meal. She eats the baby prawn crackers by herself quite enthusiastically. She even managed to get a spoon full of rice into her mouth with only minimal assistance from Yuriko, but she only managed that once, so obviously there’s still a bit of time to go there.
Towards the end of the meal, she decided she wanted a drink. There was some barley tea in her bottle, which has a drinking spout, and in Yuriko’s glass. I held up the bottle, and Yuriko held up the glass, and Mayuki sat in her chair, looking from one to the other, before finally stretching out to the glass. She’s started making her own decisions.
Right now, I hope she’s deciding to go to sleep.
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