Anouk has two little teeth. The first one came out when she was 4½ months old. She has a really strong bite. So tonight we'll try feeding her food for the first time…
She's also having fun being pulled into a sitting position. She always wants to hold onto my fingers so I can pull her up.

I decided to study Kanji writing to help improve my reading ability in Japanese. I can barely speak but reading can help open up a whole new world like being able to figure out what is in that package. I'll never accidentally put skin-cream on my toothbrush again (long story).

Saori bought me a Kumon study book for about ¥940 (CDN $9.00). It's intended for 5-7 year old native speakers but it's perfect for me. There are little illustrations to help me figure out what is being written, too. The order we learn the characters in makes sense for how they are written and their relationship to each other.

There is another way to learn Kanji - it's meant for adults and includes more relevant characters for somebody working at an office for example. But it doesn't take as much consideration for the logic of how the characters are written. It jumps ahead sometimes, suddenly.

So even though I get lots of strange looks and complements I'm not sure how to take, like "Wow, you write much better than my 4 year old," - I will continue with this series of Kumon books.

Babička and Děda (Grandma and Grandpa) were visiting today. Anouk was a bit grumpy until she fell asleep on Děda. So cute…

And some more videos:
Anouk 2
Anouk 1

Getting chubbier by the day.

Anouk is learning how to hold onto things and she becomes more demanding.

Here is Anouk - a gaining some weight.

Since we like making things so much, we started to make stuff for Anouk. Creative Baby Crafts is our log of little projects for babies, like "How to make a mobile" or making flash cards. Anyway - we'll see how it goes, but if you have any baby projects let us know. We're happy to learn new things. Really.

Here is the link: Creative Baby Crafts

We decided to name her Anouk. I always liked the name; after Anouk Aimée. Saori liked the name, too - in the end she convinced me it was the right name. The name is actually French and Dutch. What we like about it is the sound and that it isn't obviously from any one culture.

In Japanese her name is あぬく(anuku), it could mean "looking-up" or "warm".

We also found out it means something in Hindi: "pretty" and it's used as a name, too.