Further Chronicles

1) Valentines Day as a Low Key Event

As I think everyone in the Western world knows, it was Valentine's Day this weekend. It's a thing in Japan, but not a huge thing, and thus I was blissfully unaware until two days before. Yes, there was Valentine's stuff in the commissary, BX, etc, but it appeared the day after New Year's, so I was basically immune by the time the real thing rolled around.

Thrown for a bit of a loop, I decided not to buy anything, but just to make the day special some other way. I got up early and made a special Valentine's breakfast with pink heart cakes and fruit kebabs. Fun fact: my kids will eat anything if I put it on a stick. Fruit salad, anyone? "Ew, yuck, we hate that!" Fruit kebab, anyone? "Yes, I LOVE these!" This feeds into my theory that parenting is half blind luck, half Vulcan mind meld trickery.

The cakes were strawberry with white chocolate chips and white chocolate icing and red and pink sugar crystals. The kebabs were bananas, strawberries, and red grapes.

Directly after breakfast, we had to report to Belle's school for her Drama Day performance. We had to be there at the cruel and unusual hour of 8:45 AM, but the performance was worth it. Addie was SO nervous on the way to the school, telling us many times that "I feel too nervous. I don't want to do a performance." Happily, all those butterflies vanished by the time she took the stage, as the video below will demonstrate.

The class picture. Formal school uniforms, no shoes, because...Japan.

My Mouse

What was the play about you ask? I have no idea. As far as I could gather, there were some animals introducing other animals and then they all got party hats and songs were sung. It was cute though!

Afterwards we went out for ramen and gyoza at the ramen joint of Belle's choice. Her favorite ramen place has a kid's meal that includes a special sticky jello hand for dessert and a coin you can put into a machine to get a toy. 

Hubs and I are fine with this place as it is close to home and has good, if not superb, ramen. He went for his usual spicy dish, where the noodles are swimming in a broth that is actually red hot. I tasted it and immediately felt the kick right in my palate. That was followed by the sensation of  two separate trails of jet fuel, one blazing down my esophagus, the other clearing my sinuses. It was tasty but a bit too punishing for me. My dish was really interesting, a soft and subtle miso broth swimming with earthy sesame seeds, braised pork, and green onions. It was basically an everything bagel made into a ramen dish. Very cool.

Belle and Biggie get, for roughly three dollars, a dish of fried rice, a bowl of basic ramen, a cup of juice, the jello hand, and the toy. Have I mentioned that I love Japan? They eat every last bit of it. Belle at one point asked Bigs, "Hey, do you want your nori?" (Nori is the sheet of dried seaweed that comes in most basic ramen dishes.) When Bigs shook his head, she leaned over, neatly plucked it out of his bowl with her chopsticks and efficiently bundled the whole thing into her mouth and sent it down in one bite. She then declared "I really love nori." Hubs and I shared a moment of pride right then that led to a spontaneous fist bump. Parenthood. CRUSHING it.

 At least 10% of the time.

After that, we went to our local ice cream place for dessert. Nothing says dessert like some jellied beans, right?

These aren't really that bad. They are sweet but kind of a funny texture, as you might expect.

Or fish. Everyone loves fish ice cream.

We opted for the more traditional flavors, and that was basically our day. We came home, took naps, played outside, watched a movie, and then Hubs and I binge watched House of Cards with popcorn and gummy candy until about 2 AM. It was so much fun, even though we were tired as heck the next day. Totally worth it though.

2) Flora the Mobile

These things are happening now. Leave her unattended for a moment and you will find her doing something questionable, eating something ill advised, or just generally wreaking havoc. Hubs brought her upstairs for bath tonight covered in pink marker that she had thoughtfully used to decorate the nearest wall and herself.  Then she threw it in the (open) dryer. Without a lid on it. Luckily Hubs saw that, or the next load of laundry would have been interesting.

What? Me? I was just, you know, checking out this leak.

We basically try to keep her contained at all times. With varying degrees of success. Belle is hugely helpful here, and has become expert at sweeping Flora's mouth with a finger to snag whatever inedible chunk of plastic she is attempting to swallow. Biggie also "helps" by pinning Flora to the floor whenever possible, preferably with his entire body crushing her whilst yelling at her in Japanese not to touch his stuff. Flora tolerates this about as well as you would guess and has taken to trying to kick Biggie in the head every time I'm holding her and he ventures into range.

Love. It truly is all around.

This is how she takes her baths now. Contained in a laundry basket. Because otherwise she will spend the entire time trying to scale the walls and falling down.

3) Speaking of Biggie...

The astute observer may have noticed that my last post had loving pictures of all my children, but there was only one of Bigs and he was unconscious. That is no accident.

Three year olds are jackasses. Those of you feeling judgment in your heart fall into three camps. 1) You have no children. 2) Your only child is under the age of two. 3) You are a grandparent and selective amnesia is setting in.

It's ok. It passes, and we all appreciate the hell out of four for having survived three. I know this, Hubs knows this, and we remind each other that Belle also used to make us crazy and now she's this amazing little person that only makes us crazy right before bedtime.

Survivor and thriver. This is her version of the peace sign. I can't even deal with how cute this is.

I love my son to bits. His face...his adorable, much dimpled face...fills my belly with fizzy upwelling joy.  Right now, he makes me nuts on a daily hourly minute by minute basis, but I have to remind myself that it is his job in life to figure out how to be himself, whoever that is going to be. That involves a lot of "no" and "I don't like you" and "I'm going to hulk smash your face" (perhaps introducing him to super heroes was a tactical error?) and that is ultimately a good thing, even if the expression of it is questionable. I have to keep doing the counter intuitive thing and loving him when he is being awful.

Braving the Japanese snow. Who am I kidding? This did not even impress my Minnesota born and bred son.

And he starts school full time in April. I do not have a calendar in which I cross of the days until that moment. Because that would be wrong.

I also do not have any good pictures of Bigs from the past few weeks because he is very into nudity or very anti-clothing...I'm not sure which...but they both amount to no "safe for the net" pictures of him. I was FaceTiming my good friend Jen when she started cracking up because Bigs had entered the screen by jumping up on the chair behind me as I sat on the floor. He was nude, of course, because if I want him to wear clothes, obviously he doesn't want to do that. It was special. If you come to my door on any given day, there are better than even odds it will be answered by a naked three year old. Look, I have to pick my battles and right now clothing ranks behind "no physical violence" and "don't pee on the floor". I hope to get him back into clothes before he is four.

I feel like I had more to share in this post, but when I try to recall the days before this weekend, I'm getting a mental flat line. I'd like to pretend that doesn't happen often, but...wait...what were we talking about? Yep, it's time for bed.