Hiking Mount Fuji: Where We Are: 5.5 Years, 3.5 Years, and 15 months

Who allowed my children to grow up so quickly? (I posed this very question to Addie, and she said "I think it was Dad?") I swear, they were all babies yesterday and yet somehow today I have a house full of teens. OK, it's not quite THAT drastic, but it feels like every day brings some new skill or challenge to the forefront. And yes, sometimes some serious attitudes, but mostly they are sweet cuddlebugs that love being with their parents.

Graydon came down at 6 AM this morning, which I was SO THRILLED about, because obviously I get up around 5:30 AM every day in order to ~~be by myself and get my game face on~~ spend more time with my children. While I like my alone time to be, you know, actually spent alone, he was so cute and lovingly resistant to my attempts to bribe him into going back to his room, I had to laugh and ended up treasuring the moments cuddling in bed with him and listening to that time that he had a bad dream about Ursula the Sea Witch when we still lived in our "cake house" aka the house in Rochester. (Note: Addie created this name, and said it was because our house looked like it was made out of cream and chocolate, which was ...so true. And now I'm hungry.)

The chances of getting a good picture decrease exponentially each time you add a child to the frame. Right now, we are basically on par with SETI discovering alien life. "So you're saying there's a chance!"

Emilia first, because she is the youngest. And also the biggest tyrant in the house right now. She has red hair. How did this happen? I don't know. I fondly refer to having children as "Darwin's Grab Bag" and THIS is why. I happen to love this process, and insist we need to continue to have children because who knows what will come out next? White blond ringlets and big green eyes? Jet black straight hair with blue eyes and permatan? It's all in our immediate families. Anything could happen! Remember in Grey's Anatomy when a woman would produce a child of obviously different race than the father and accusations of infidelity would fly and drama would ensue only to find out that Character X had a rare genetic condition that caused dark pigment or something equally crazy? Tim and I would probably just be like "Hmmm...well, seems legit" and move on, helped along by the fact that all of children somehow manage to look exactly like their father while looking different from each other.

Anyway, Emilia. TYRANT. And yet her iron fist is concealed inside her adorably pudgy and dimpled hand so we all continue to cosset the baby and say "Oh, look at her tantrums, they're so cute!" I cannot see what could possibly go wrong with this approach. (Note to self: refer back to this post in six months when at wit's end).

The Titian Tyrant

She speaks a fair amount, mostly in mimicry of our tone so far. That said, she does around two dozen words/sounds she uses independently and many of them are in Japanese. "Emi" is a Japanese name, and it fits her. She says "Oiishe" (yummy), "Ohayo" (good morning), "Arigato" (thank you) complete with a small bow, "Sayonara" (goodbye) and "Hai, dozo" (Yes, please). In english she says many words including all our names or her approximations, her animal sounds (because Japanese onomatopoeia is different) and her favorite current ~~demand~~ words "Read!" and also "Read! Again!" The number of children's books I can recite from memory at this point is slightly alarming to me.

She loves to read, to carefully remove all the shoes from our shoe bench and try them on, and to unpack various bags and boxes. She also likes to snatch toys from big brother and start running away as fast as she can. She likes to "help" by imitating various tasks and is convinced that she is just as big as Addie and Graydon. Most, if not all, of her tantrums are caused by telling her she cannot do something that the big kids are doing.

She is a decent eater, not overly picky, but very definite about what she will not tolerate, such as rice of any sort, any non firm fruit, and eggs. If you hand her anything she does not like, it goes straight onto the ground. Sometimes she will even pick it up off the floor and throw it again once the meal is over. Just to make sure you understand she does.not.like.that.thing. On the other hand, she loves pizza, pasta, hummus, corn, edamame, and any type of Japanese noodle from ramen to udon to yakisoba. And anything sweet, including Japanese sweets based on azuki beans.

Graydon is all "Stop, Hammer Time" and Emilia is being choked into submission. Addie is enjoying the power.

Graydon is hilarious and smart and is slowly becoming human again. He still has fits of aggression interspersed with extreme whining and inability to cope with any of life's tasks such as putting on his own shoes or anything else that he has been doing alone for over a year. We've come to recognize both extremes as his need for attention and to bite back our desire to snap or banish him to timeout for his various sins. Two is hard, three is harder, but the good news is that his little mind is fascinating and sharing his worldview is never dull.

His version of the peace sign

I mentioned that he is smart, and I think that's true. We have, in all honesty, made zero effort to teach him anything and yet somehow he knows all his colors, shapes, various letters and numbers, so and so forth, often in two languages. He is our kid that is most likely to think in Japanese, by which I mean that he will instinctively reply to things with a Japanese word or phrase before he uses English. He definitely understands the concept of different languages and will always ask me before we go to play with someone new if they speak Japanese, English, or French. I'm not sure why French gets thrown in there, except for maybe overexposure to Fancy Nancy books? It makes all the worrying I did about Addie's milestones seem like a massive waste of time. I'm not saying that knowing these things makes him a prodigy, just that apparently he picked them up without us sitting down and drilling the facts. Finally, an advantage to being the second child!

He pops up with random non sequiturs (brought to you by the Department of Redundacy Department) all the time, which are invariably funny. Example: Adam and Jordan and I were walking down the streets of Tokyo at night, talking about something, who knows what, when G stands up in the stroller and turns around and says "We have cereal at our house, guys!". Other examples that spring to mind from the last few days include "When you die, your soul will leave your body!" "Sometimes I throw up!" and "When I take off my pants, my penis feels free!" These statements are always announced in a tone of great importance with many dimples flashing. He also asks many questions, some of which I struggle to answer. "Can you fix my hair like Spiderman's?", "What if all the villains in the world got a fresh start but then made bad choices again?", and my personal favorite, "Do YOU ever lie to ME?" with raised eyebrows and pursed lips after being reprimanded for dishonesty.

He loves to be read to, is beginning to be interested in art (the messier the better), and shows a lot of athletic promise, much to his father's delight. He's in the midle of a growth spurt and wants to eat approximately every five minutes. He has become a somewhat picky eater, after being a great eater as a young(er) child, but I hear that is typical for the defiant years and I hope he'll come out of that phase soon. He still loves superheros, still patiently lines up every car he owns in very OCD fashion, and still rolls over people like a small Abrams tank when he is playing with his friends. His favorite Youtube videos involve cats trying to jump on things and missing. In short, he is an Ewald male, in all his glory.

Goofs. Emi is still trying to flee.

And then there is Adelaide. She is full of imagination, and my latest struggle with her is getting her to understand that just because people will believe her stories doesn't give her license to tell blatant lies. She has a gift for fiction and is a total cleverclogs, so she essentially acts like a little puppetmaster in her group. She is basically very kind, fortunately, which offsets her diabolical genius somewhat, but I can see her and Graydon forming an elite "Pinky and the Brain" type duo in the near future with Graydon providing the muscle for her schemes. She does care deeply about other people and what they think and still remembers the one incident where she might have hurt a stranger's feeling with a tactless comment, so there is some hope. Or so I tell myself. :-) If not, then Mata Hari or an Oceans 11 like future might await, which will at least make her memoirs interesting!

Angelic face, undoubtedly plotting something

Addie is a lot of fun to hang out with recently, as she makes clever observations and is a good conversationalist. She is extremely enthusiastic about life and is very passionate about her interests. She loves art, and reading, and playing ~~what used to be my~~ her Kindle. We are reading the Paddington Bear books for chapter books at night, and she insisted upon picking out some marmalade to try and observed that "Adelaide and marmalade sound similar" which illustrates another new passion for wordplay and writing. She is a perfectionist and writes notes to her friends at school and gets very upset if a letter looks a little wonky and will start all over again.

She still loves to dress up, is still interested in princesses, fairies, mermaids, unicorns, ballerinas, and anything else that might come in the shocking pink aisles of the toy stores. Addie has also become our best and most adventurous eater after a very picky start, to which I give all the credit to us basically changing everything about the way we ate food. Though to be fair, she does deserve some credit for being a good sport about all of the changes.

Ads is also a total social animal, at her very happiest when playing with her friends. She wants to host a playdate or go on a playdate every single day, and she often invites people over to our house, or invites herself to their house, without any adult input. As I mentioned, she is enthusiastic about her interests. Fortunately, she is also enthusiastic about her parents and gives us a ton of love and kindness during the day, which never fails to touch our hearts. She will very often say to us "You are my best Mom/Dad ever, and I love more than the biggest, biggest thing you can imagine!" That never gets old.