Our Japanese-Korean Princess

Abby is one lucky girl. Well, obviously, she has some pretty fantastic parents... good looking ones I might add (objectively speaking of course). On top of the easy life she leads, she has the distinct advantage of being multi-cultural. She is not only celebrating the traditions of our American society (the first outing of her life was to buy a Christmas tree), her grandparents are showing her the old traditions of their respective cultures.

Drooly Abby in a Kimono
Earlier this month, my mother opened a box sent to us from my uncle in Japan. It was a kimono that had been made for my brother and now it was Abby's turn to wear the newborn kimono. Presumably, I wore it as well but I have a feeling that as a second child, this tradition was most likely overlooked (not that I'm bitter). A baby is made to wear this kimono and go to a shinto shrine. Since there are no shinto shrines nearby, we made do with the backyard and took photos outside on the deck and inside our house in the living room. Abby promptly drooled all over the three layers of silk which my mom will have to take back to Japan to get cleaned. The kimono was quite beautiful and had hand embroidering in the back to signify the Miura family emblem. Around the same time was Girl's Day. 20 years ago, my grandmother got me a huge set of dolls depicting the marriage of a prince and a princess. It must have been difficult to find the right one because I used to hate dolls with "scary" eyes. Most dolls had scary eyes but my grandmother found a beautiful set with the friendliest eyes she could find.

Miura Girls
This year, Girl's Day was celebrated with Abby, my mother and Michele (my niece). Three generations of Miura women together celebrated the fact that we were girls by putting up the dolls and eating sweets together. It was wonderful.

100 days old
Albert's mother visited when Abby turned 100 days old. This is called the baek-il in Korea. The main feature of this celebration is that we eat rice cakes called deok. We also had a "birthday" cake. Lucky Abby. She can't even eat cake right now so we were forced to consume lots of really good food for her. She also received a gold ring from her grandmother which she promptly tried to consume. I've put it in safe keeping for her. 100 days! Can you believe it? That also meant I had survived 99 nights. I, too, had reason to celebrate.