4 Months

E is four months old now, because time flies when you’re having fun or you’re just plain busy.

Another one month old!

E became one month old on March 27th.

Miss E

She’s now on the outside 🙂

Two!

Mr K is two and I’m not quite sure how it is we’re only here but here already.

Mr K. loves to run and he loves to get into things, especially the fridge. He’s noisy and energetic and eats everything well except vegetables. He speaks much more English than Japanese now, though still lots of single words and stock phrases (cars, Mama, Dada, juuuuuice, more, OH NO, how are you). He understands both languages to some degreee and we all keep figuring out how to understand him. 
He loves Thomas the Tank engine, but all trains really, cars, dogs, fish and flowers and “The Twirlywoos” are probably his favourite TV show, for now. He sings the Japanese version of “Twinkle, Twinkle” incessantly and he adores going outside, picking things up, dragging his umbrella around whatever the weather, and will go up and down the slide over and over again. His favourite toy depends on what day it is but he sleeps with his stuffed pig, Piggy, every night, he lugs his rubber ducks wherever he can, his car collection and battery-run Percy train provide no end of amusement and his ride-on Thomas is in no danger of losing his interest any time soon. 

We celebrated yesterday with presents, balloons and cake. He likes his new toys but the latter two were the big hits. He also got a typhoon to mark the occasion!

Happy birthday, Mr K. “Proud of you” doesn’t quite cover it.

Pink lines

It was supposed to be a yeast infection.

Big baby, very small boy

 

 

Some of the supermarkets here leave out kid-sized baskets for the children to use. This is very evil of them.

My son is nearly 20 months old now and recently, I’ve started having startled moments where I look at him and no longer see a big baby but a very little boy. It’s not a huge change and he doesn’t metamorphose into something else overnight.

 

And yet he does too. All the time. Little changes and then they’re big changes after all and time goes so quickly really.

Latest catch-up post!

A view of the harbour from outside our Golden Week restaurant

Once again, I’m behind and, once again, I’m playing catch-up with my blog.

Mother’s Day 2017

Yesterday, I successfully navigated my second Mother’s Day. My own mother is lovely and R, despite not even noticing the occasion until a morning radio segment brought it to his attention, came through in the end and picked up some flowers and chocolates for me on Mr K’s behalf. 

I’m always a bit baffled by people who get pissy about these as a present choice. No, it doesn’t require much thought or effort. But flowers and chocolates are two of my favourite things!

I feel like I’m reading a lot more analysis of the whole Mother’s Day phenomenon this year, in defense of it and criticizing it. I suppose that’s unsurprising, given society tells us that mothering is the bestest, most important job in the whole world while simultaneously devaluing it at every turn. I wonder the whole working/stay at home thing is such a mindfuck. 

A lot of it has been frustrating to read, on both sides. I wish we could all just accept that parenthood is a big deal but not the only, all-defining deal. That mothers are people, no more and my God, no less. That working rights and sensible hours would be good for everyone, parents or not. That Mother’s Day is hard for some people and the reasons for that might vary greatly and be intensely private. That most of us know that it’s an overcommercialised load of bullshit, deviating far from its humble origins and that an epilator or – I’m looking at you, department stores of Japan – an apron are not the greatest gift ideas. 

I know.

But I’ve had only a handful of good nights of sleep in the last two years, wiped up a lot of body fluids and juggled a whole brunch of things that become a lot harder when you constantly have to work out what to do with a very small, dependent person in the mix. I just want to enjoy my cheap flowers and nice chocolates.

1 year old

On Saturday (29/10), Mr K finally turned one.

I seemed to run the full gamut of emotions in the lead-up to the big milestone, golden fuzzy warm nostalgia all the way down to bleak, dissolve-into-tears mess with no idea how the hell I’d made it this far and certain that I couldn’t manage it for much longer. Extreme, yes, but the year has encompassed both those feelings and all that lies between, so why not?

And here we are. 

Mr K is 12 months old, but we should really say one year now. I don’t know if I can still call him a baby? He still acts very much like a baby, though. He babbles at length, crawls everywhere, and finds inane objects utterly interesting. He stands up a lot but only when holding something, and he has taken a strong liking to opening and closing things, pulling things out and putting them in different places entirely. He doesn’t walk yet, but he is determined to skip that and climb on things instead. 

The time has been, and still is, so very distorted. How can one year have passed already, yet how can it have been only one? The days are long but the year(s) are short indeed.

Baby-carrying

My name is Lyssa and I’m a baby carrier convert.

This afternoon, Mr K was grizzling after lunch. He was tired following his unwilling participation in an ESL class and the broccoli I had presented him with as finger food with was not to his satisfaction. After trying to settle him elsewhere, I gave up and wrangled him into his carrier, slinging it onto my back like a backpack. He immediately calmed down and, ten minutes later, he was asleep.

The baby carrier is a relatively recent acquisition. Up until Mr K was 10 months old, we lugged him around with our arms and I his pram. Shortly after we moved into our new house, though, a neighborhood earthquake drill happened and we were told to make areangementS for something with which we could carry Mr K on our backs. I grudgingly went out and forked over five thousand yen for a carrier that looked like it might do and we proceeded to participate in the drill.

And something else happened too. We fell in love with the carrier.

It’s relatively easy to use, it frees up my hands, and most importantly, Mr K is happy because he’s still nestled close to me. Yes, it hurts my back and shoulders a bit, but back pain is part of this baby gig and you get used to this particular version and the pay-off is very, very worth it.
I have to admit I’m a little frustrated with myself because I knew all this before he was born. I bought a secondhand carrier because not everyone else entirely sold on it, and it didn’t work out very well, not least because carriers just are kind of awkward for very little babies (you’re better if with some sort of sling, apparently). I bought another one that I didn’t really like, and then I gave up.

 And I really wish I hadn’t! I could have saved myself a lot of anguish if I’d just stuck to my gunson this instead of letting my eroded self-esteem get a little bit more so.

Anyhow, we’ve got it now and Mr K and I are both a little happier for it.