Ren With Alphabet Toy

This is baby Ren around, oh, October or so, with an alphabet toy. You can get an idea of her language development here.

Ren Watches a Juggler

A whole bunch of new videos are coming. This one is from late November, when I took Ren to my office for a couple of hours. This video is of my buddy Dan, showing off his juggling skills for an appreciative baby. Dan knitted the balls himself.

Dan, now you're famous.

Ren knows her Japanese colors

So...this video isn't going to make a lot of sense if you don't speak Japanese.

What's amazing to me is this is only a couple months old. Nowadays Ren's learning more than a word a day and starting to string them together. Two or three weeks ago I could have listed all the words she knows, but now she keeps surprising me.

Running in Circles

Continuing with the musical theme, here are two videos of Ren running in circles. Which is more interesting than it sounds. Specifically, Ren builds herself a little obstacle course (occasionally using me as an obstacle) and then runs around it. Check it out.

Ren and Music

Ren loves her music. She has lots of toys that play different songs on cue. She knows which key plays which song, and can play the same song on different toys at once, or hear a song on TV and find it on one of her toys.

She loves music with a heavy beat the most, and I've seen her rock out to Zeppelin, for instance.

Here's a couple great vids of Ren playing to music with mommy.

Ren vs. Garden Hose

A video of a happy baby with a garden hose. It's much too cold outside to do this, now.

Water Crayons

The last set of videos from my most recent uploads are two videos of Ren playing with water crayons in the back yard. Don't get excited; neither of these videos is very good. But we have them.

These videos make me miss summer.

Ren Gets Hit With Water

As described. This was at a summer party we were at. Of all my recently done videos, this is my favorite.

Ren Plays With Crayons

Hi,

There are some new videos coming. We've taken some nice ones in the last few days that make me laugh out loud.

Prior to a video, I thought I'd mention that Ren is developing in really satisfactory ways. I can say without equivocation that she is the happiest person I know. She's constantly in a great mood, and seems to really be able to self-manage staying there. She's really a delight to spend an evening with because it's her driving the action, and coming up with new fun stuff to do. The first floor of the house is like a big playground for keeping both herself and us amused. Some stuff from the last few days:

• She's learning some food words and using them to make requests. Prior to this if a food item came into her field of view (say, someone opened the fridge), she'd point, and sometimes she'd pull us to the kitchen. But now she'll just tell me she wants "apple" or "water".
• Hiroko was lying on the floor, and Ren found a blanket, dragged it on top of her, and tucked her in.
• Ren laid out a napkin on the floor, put one of her puppet-dolls on top of it, went and found a diaper, and "changed" the doll. Wish we'd got her on camera doing this, but we couldn't get her to repeat it.
• When she wakes in the morning, she'll sing portions of various songs she knows. She's starting to sequence groups of them together, in particular making progress on "The Alphabet Song".
  
• A couple of nights ago, she spontaneously hit me in the head with a block. I sternly told her no, and she reacted by beating herself a couple times with the block to demonstrate that it didn't hurt. When I told her no to that, she quickly tucked the block away and started playing some music. I could see an adult reacting to being told not to do in just about the same fashion.
• It's probably true of other babies (again, I have no frame of reference) but I'm always startled by how perceptive she is. She knows the moods of everyone in the house and her behavior changes with our moods (even we aren't that perceptive about our moods). She knows when I'm trying to distract her. She has no problem with me roving the house (often when it's just the two of us, we leave each other alone) but if I go into the basement, she becomes instantly upset, even if she didn't see or hear me go...I don't know how she knows.

Since we're talking about behavior, I'll comment on the behavior in these videos. As I'm sure some of you have heard my say, Ren loves to arrange things. She categorizes food when we give her different types. She moves objects (always one by one) between two points, and then back again. I once watched her arrange a big stack of magazines into a complex geometric pattern on the floor.

These two vids are from when I took her to this year's Printers Row Book Fair. They had this kids' area, and I sat Ren down and showed her these crayons. She had absolutely zero interest in coloring (no matter how much I demonstrated it), but was only interested in gathering and arranging the crayons. These videos don't really show the intensity of the behavior we've seen other times, but here they are.

By the way, the band in the background was an alt-rock band specializing in kids' songs (think They Might Be Giants) and they were awesome.

Three Generations of Taguchi

In mid-May, I went to Florida for the weekend. At the same time, Hiroko's mom came to visit. I barely got to see her while she was here, but I did take this awesome film of Three Generations of Taguchi playing with a door. Share and enjoy.

Baby Ren in swing

Sorry I haven't posted after promises. Busy.

Here are a couple older pictures of Ren in a swing. Neither is very good...have to push swing and film at the same time. Right after I took these, we got caught in a heavy downpour.

Ren Dances with her Piano

Here's one my mom requested I post long ago. Ren loves to dance with her piano. This is not a one time thing; she's done this dozens of times. The piano plays 2 dozen songs, but it has to be this song or she gets upset.

Cute.

I'm back

Hi, Okay. I'm back and ready to post up a whole slew of pictures and films throughout the next couple weeks. I finally got around to getting everything off the camera, so now you get to enjoy. Today's set is an unexciting slew of pictures that I don't know when/where they were taken. Here's the set.

Green Ball Redux

Victorious Ren enjoys her ball.


Hey, I just thought I'd mention that this was just some abandoned ball at the playground, and did not belong to those two kids. So it's not like Ren was taking it from them.

Ren vs. Little Green Ball

Well, here it is. This is, in my opinion, the best video I have yet made. It has a story and a happy ending, and everything. Real pathos, here. The weird background sound is me laughing.


Anyway, I thought I'd mention some other words. Ren says "baba" when she wants a banana. She also loves to say "bye bye" at every opportunity. Pretty much any time anyone walks away from her, these days.

What? I'm working.

Isn't this awesome?

Good news: Ren has her first word. Bad news: it's a made up word. It definitely means something to her, and she uses it consistently. Whenever she wants something, she points at it, looks to one of us, and says "Ish? Ish?" Our guess is that she's saying "this".

Video Week -- Ren vs. Playground

I finally got loaded up some videos I've been talking about. This week I'll be posting three of Ren playing at a playground about a mile and a half from our house. This was on a super-beautiful summer day in mid-April when the three of us walked over.

I'll spread these out across the week. Here's the first.

Ren Goes on an Adventure

Continuing the theme from yesterday, here's the front yard. This next video really gives insight into the baby world. If you watch Ren's face, you can sort of see what it's like when absolutely everything is interesting.


And the return trip.

Ren vs. Big Red Ball

Hello everyone. Last weekend (while I was at the grocery) Hiroko took Ren out to the yard to play,a nd took some videos as well. A couple fo these are pretty good.

This first one is in the backyard. Observant viewers will notice that we bought some patio furniture. Also, Ren is learning to "talk" all the time. Also, you can see Hiroko's shadow.


In this next one, Ren notices the neighbor dog. Not so much to see here.


Finally, more of Ren playing freely in the back yard. You can really see her motor skills and sense of autonomy.


Tomorrow or so, front yard.

Walking Baby

Ren learned to walk. Lots of mini-films from around that time. Here we go.

Here's the very first walking video, in which Ren also demonstrates her toybox-emptying skills:


We thought a few steps were a big deal back then...now she walks everywhere. Anywhere, here's a few seconds later. Ren sure wants the camera:


Within a few days, as you can see in the following, she's learned to walk and use a cell phone at the same time. This will come on handy in High School:


And here's Ren stumbling about like a drunken sailor, and attacking mommy:


Finally, just a quick movie I did of Ren playing with a plastic top, which I found funny:

Happy Easter 2008

It's obviously, like, a month late. Hiroko bought a pair of bunny ears around Easter. I would have thought this would just psych a baby out, but Ren loved these, on either us or her. Here are some pictures of her wearing them in this set.

Sickness

It seemed like longer, but I just looked it up.

Ending and including yesterday, our family has just been sick for 28 days straight. In the heart of a very cold winter, and at a time when I had to work anyway.

All of us got sick multiple times, except for myself...I was well throughout, until I came down with a hellish 12-day chest infection. Now except for a final little sniffle, it's all over.

I know in perspective to the hardship of the world, etc., that it's no big deal. But having a sick kid, especially when one is sick at the same time, just sucks. It's been some of the hardest weeks I've had in years.

Summer is coming. We are all well again.

Some Big Firsts For Ren

Monday about 5:30 we were all lying about on the floor of the living room, surrounded by pillows and blankets. Ren was standing on her own, looking at me. Suddenly, she started taking steps forward. I called Hiroko's attention, and we watched as Ren walked a couple feet toward my waiting arms. I thought it was cool the three of us could share this first moment. Even Ren appeared astonished. She repeated the trick one time with prompting, and tried again but couldn't seem to get it afterward. I'm sure it won't be much time now.

Yesterday was Ren's first day in day care. Hiroko has a new full-time night shift job, so there are some times when neither of us is available to care for Ren. Ren will be in day care twice a week.

She hasn't had any significant time under others' care, and we were mutually worried about it. But her first day went smoothly according to her caretakers, and I witnessed a couple hours there. Now between the play, socializing, and detachment from us, we are optimistic that day care will be a positive experience for her.

Ren Plays Peekaboo

This is the last vid for a while, as far as I know. This is one last one from Christmas, of Ren and Grandma playing peekaboo together.

You can ignore the audio, which is my dad and brother discussing the upcoming presidential caucuses.

Ren with Uncle Joe

Ren's uncle Joe came for Christmas, and they got to meet for the first time. They really took to each other and Joe was an awesome and gentle uncle with her. It was really neat to see them together.

Here's a video I made. The audio is rather spoiled by my dad, who I guess didn't realize I was filming. Other than that, this is really cute.

Ren's first standing video!

While everyone was in town for Christmas, I was lucky enough to catch Ren on video standing. She'd been doing it for a couple weeks, but because of her intense desire for the camera, I could never get it on film. Here she's distracted enough not to notice, so you all get to see this.

There's a really funny bit when Ren notices me at the end and instantly needs the camera. Uh oh! As Joe said, "Hey, no paparazzi!"

Ren's first words

Hi all. I'm not going to post a video today, because there's other news, and I'm busy anyway.

The other news is that Ren now says "dada", "mama", and "baby" on cue. She talks constantly and everything else is a stream of nonsense syllables, but if we draw her attention, she'll say these things. It's actually pretty cool.

Also, there are a couple shots from Christmas dinner where you can see Ren, over at this post on my blog.

Ren plays with her new cube.

Sometime before Christmas, a Buddhist friend of ours spontaneously brought by this gift for Ren. she's seen playing with it just out of the box. This is a really cute video. Do you get the impression Ren likes it? There are also a couple (underlit) stills I took, here and here.

Ren's Gifts From Kathy

Hi all.

The holidays have come and gone and I've uploaded all the pictures and photos. That means I'll be posting pictures and videos for the next few days, so stay tuned.

One of the coolest gifts we got was from our next door neighbor Kathy. She surprised us with a birthday gift for Ren! Ren got a nice new outfit and a pull toy. I'll be printing pictures from this set for Kathy right away. Thanks!

Ren at the Center

There will be more updates as soon as I clear the camera. It remains hard to take pictures/video now that Ren is very camera-aware.

Here's a quick picture our friend Jennifer Woods took of Ren with Jennifer's baby, at the Chicago Cultural Center.