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Author Archives: taisuke

ooooh yeah its been a long time since i’ve written anything on here. after linking brenda’s instagram account to the blog, everything kind of went on hiatus while we went about our lives in vancouver. i’m not even going to bother attempting to summarise the last two-ish years, except to say that they have been fun. we are about ten days away from our next adventure – three months in costa rica – so i thought it was the right moment to resurrect somewhatslanted.

and what better way to kick things off than with some music! most of you probably already know this, but our family has a band called “the naked bananas”, and we just released our second album last month. click here to stream it in all its glory! that’s the album cover below.

stayfreshbut wait, it doesn’t end there! we also have a video for our song 6-6-36-46. ch-ch-check it out and we’ll be back shortly!

its been a hot minute since i last posted anything, but its not because i’ve been lazy. in fact, for the last few weeks we have been busy working on our debut album! yes, you heard that right – the three of us, with the addition of the lovely sophia from next door, have formed a band. we are called “the naked bananas”, and our debut album was completed tonight. its been a lot of fun making these songs, and i think that shows through in the music. we’re very excited to share it with you! enjoy 🙂

if the player below isn’t working for some reason, you can click here to get all our songs 🙂

[bandcamp width=400 height=406 album=2229279811 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 artwork=small]

while its amazing to be living in a country with a functioning postal system, i have to say that the canadian post is not exactly the speediest service around. several packages we have sent have arrived late, and for christmas this year many of the packages that people had sent to us also arrived late. for the holidays this is kind of good thing though, as it spreads the gifts out so we have time to appreciate them a little more.

this afternoon a package from aunty hana arrived with two fishing related lego sets. one of them is a rare one that we had watched a video for and lusted after. nayou is busily building in the living room as i type, and he wanted me to share this video with you all. disclaimer: there is a random justin bieber reference in there, and i have no idea where it came from.

there has been an explosion of interest in reading and writing in our house this past week. it all began when santa brought nayou a game called pop for letters. being the competitive little boy that he is, having the letters presented as a game pushed all the right buttons. we’ve been playing it daily since christmas and he has mastered most of the letters.

then a few days ago brenda found this thing at a pharmacy, and when nayou basically wrote out his name on it right there we didn’t think twice about putting into our shopping basket. since then we have been having loads of fun writing, reading and doing some math as well.

its interesting to see how learning naturally unfolds when the child is ready. i have to admit that when i used to see four year olds writing their names or reading simple words there was a part of me that wished nayou would do the same. our unschooling/hackschooling approach to nayou’s education requires a huge leap of faith (for me, at least) to let him figure things out independent of any benchmarks. this reading/writing thing is another confirmation that we are on the right track, especially since my attempts in the past to teach him the alphabet failed miserably when he showed absolutely no interest in it at all 🙂

since i’m mostly just reposting photos from brenda’s iphone, and its not like i’m particularly diligent about updating the blog these days, we decided to try something different and do instagram digests from brenda’s feed. so you should be seeing some nice photos here a little more regularly 🙂