Whee! The dentist.

Not necessarily in that order.

Ryanne loves "Whee!" now. She says it when we go down hills (or other random occasions, but mostly hills) in the car - I started that. She also uses it when I swing her up in the air or help her do back flips off my chest/legs. She even says it as she dismounts her high chair. It's a fun word and she has fun using it.

Oh, and the girl can eat. She has changed from her diet of mostly rice/bread to a diet of mostly proteins and veggies. She will happily down most (if not all) of a regular serving of whatever meat we're having for dinner or lunch. She'll gobble down most veggies (though not as many as we eat). She'll pick at the rice, but still eat 1/4 to 3/4 of an adult portion, averaging 1/2. Unless, of course, I'm serving spaghetti. That she'll eat til she should explode, even if she gets lots of meatballs first.

She also now asks for 'wa' instead of 'dat' (pointing at the cup) about 50% of the time. Slowly we cross of the 'dat's and life becomes easier on mama and dada.

Her latest thing (yesterday and today) is to grab her box of diaper wipes, say 'dida' and then fill her pants. Yesterday I had no idea what she was doing. Today, I didn't get enough time to react. Slowly, this may evolve into the early stages of potty training. *shhhhhh*

The other *shhhhhh* (which she says now, thanks to Silly Parts Elmo and his "Shhhhh, Elmo's in disguise") is that we're almost night weaned. Last night, she woke at 2a, but went back to sleep in my arms without issue and didn't want to nurse until 6ish and was up for the day at 6:30a after nursing and cuddling. This is tremendous progress as, with the move and travelling, we'd worked ourselves back up to 4 feedings a night.

Today was her first appointment with the dentist. At this age, they count teeth and watch us/her brush and talk about habits. He agreed she had 7 teeth, though we had to point out the 2 side top ones as they're not all the way down and she didn't like having her mouth pried open. We brushed and she brushed, all to the cooing of the dental techs (women). We talked about habits - she doesn't eat candy, she drinks only water and breastmilk, we brush 1x a day, she gets fluoride in her water. We were told that we were doing very well and that they will skip putting fluoride paste on her teeth for now. (Japan's water supply isn't flouridated so SOP is for the dentist to apply fluoride to emerging teeth. Since we talked to the ped/dentist in the US before getting here, we are super prepared compared to Japanese parents - thanks to B.I. for the head's up).