Friday was our last day of school! So now, we are off for about eight weeks - woo-hoo. Friday, we had a half day of school. We left Maximo in daycare because he was already napping and we decided to go get lunch. We went to a little Mexican place in Sannomiya which kinda helps with our Mexican fix then came home took a nap, then picked up Maximo from daycare. It's been a gorgeous couple of weeks, so after we headed to the River Mall and a bunch of my students were milling about after a hanging out there all afternoon. About five of them surrounded Maximo and played with him in the water for about two hours. Subway takeout for dinner, and our day was done!
We're watching the Wilson's lizard (a lemon-tailed gecko) for the summer and Maximo is in love.
Otherwise, we plan to have a pretty relaxed summer. We know of no other teachers staying for the summer - we're taking Japanese classes for a few weeks, my mom comes for a few weeks and we're just going to explore and hang.
It's finally feeling like summer, to me at least. The weather has been consistently beautiful for over a week now - about 75 and sunny. Report card grades were due last week and now we just have 4 1/2 days left with our students.
The weekend kicked off with an all-faculty TGIF. We went and got Max, then hung out for a while. When woke up the next morning and he came in our room saying, "Mommy, party fun."
I had a doctor's appointment yesterday which was a part of our busy weekend, but I'll post about that later. The baby is fine.
After the doctor's appointment, we headed to the Kobe Club for their BBQ celebrating the opening of the pool and for us to say Sayonara to a family that is leaving. Max was super happy in the pool with his friends and fell asleep in the stroller about five minutes after we left - and continued to sleep for almost 3 hours!
Today, John went to the high school graduation and then we all met up for a little Sayonara Party for Marilyn (who is my former principal and came to Japan to be a long term sub for a maternity leave). We had a Peruvian feast - aji de gallina, papas de huacaina, guacamole, pseudo-anticuchos (kabobs). Everything was delicious. Making the papas de huacaina today made me a little homesick. I love summer in Peru and I miss all the yummy food we used to eat!
Marilyn has been here since January and it's been nice having her here! We've gotten in a couple of games of Euchre and she's been here to hang out with the rest of the Peru Crew and our chaotic get-togethers with all the kids. Surprisingly enough, though, for a fairly small school, I rarely see her at work. She's working in the middle school and I'm over in the elementary part of the building; we once in a while have lunch at the same time.
Anyhow, here are a few pictures from the weekend:
Marilyn & Max
Denis, Max and Ally destroying Marilyn's bed... with love
Max getting ready to go in the pool.
(Note: I'm staying up past 7:00 pm at night, so hopefully I'll be able to blog a bit more!)
This is the reason I haven't posted in so long. I'm sorry, really. But, most days I'm barely getting through.
This is what my days have been looking like: 5:30 Wake up with Max Get ready for work, get Max breakfast, dressed, packed... 7:30 Drop off at daycare then head to work 7:45 - 4:30 Work 4:30 Try to make dinner - but mostly John is making it because I can't stand the smell of food 5:30 Eat dinner 6:00 Start bath time 7:00 Max goes to bed 7:02 I go to bed I have been ridiculously tired this pregnancy. And I have much more "morning" sickness than I did with Maximo. John has been really helpful with making most of the meals and doing almost everything around the house. I was taking a course on Tuesday nights which just finished this week and we now have two weeks until the end of school. We can't wait! The end of work for a while and hopefully I'll feel better because I'll be at the end of my first trimester.
So, what else... The due date is Dec 26th. I'll probably going in for surgery in 3-4 weeks for a cerclage to help prevent what happened with Maximo. I'm already beginning to show! YIKES!We're super excited and a little nervous.
Hopefully I start to feel better soon (and am able to stay up past 7) to post about this experience and our summer!
I know I've been horrible lately with my posts... both mother and mother-in-law have voiced their complaints (nicely, of course). This year continues to be a challenge - the l-o-n-g and wet winter/spring and the continuous - someone-in-the-house is sick business.
Luckily, we just had a 5 day weekend for Golden Week and it was five gorgeous days of relaxing, being with friends and POTTY TRAINING!
Max is doing exceptionally well on the P-P front, but as far as the #2 business - he prefers to poop everywhere else but his diaper. I'll spare you of more poop on the floor videos - but let's just say I'm glad our floors are mostly hardwood. I've updated a few more photos to finish off the April album, here.
Since it is finally warming up, after Maximo's baths in the evening, we've been letting him run around naked, partly because he's cute, and partly to prep him a bit more for our potty-training venture in a few weeks.
As soon as I stepped out of his room to answer the phone, I had a feeling it was just the right mood and silence he needed to do his business. I was only on the phone with Kirsten for about two minutes - she was cackling away about some wacky Georgian democrat. (Who after YouTube "research" turned out to be entertaining and quite an ignorant nut-job.)
If you're squeamish about poop, you may want to not hit "play". Otherwise, enjoy. We did. And we do plan to save this for his first prom date, or future wife or for another time we really need to blackmail him.
I'm not sure I mentioned it before, but when we moved here we both got iPhones. Soon after accepting our positions, we received an email from the school laying out the phone plans. It was nice to get that email because the phone was handed to us as soon as we arrived on the island. In Peru, we rarely used our phones. We shared one before Max and then each had one after Maximo was born, but they were cheap and we always prepaid our minutes. The only time I really wanted one, was when we were out to dinner or away from Maximo, especially when he was little and then it would lay in my lap while we enjoyed dinner out.
Then, we became Almighty iPhone users. Oh, it is so much more than a phone. You can watch podcasts and videos on it, you can listen to music, you can take photos and video. You can search the internet. You can use the Google Maps option and find your location or drop a pin on a restaurant or store you love and want to find again sometime. I can access all my personal files on it. And the list goes on and on...
It's almost always with me, so it's fun to have the photo/video option to capture moments when I didn't have our large (but wonderful) camera with us. Unfortunately, I often forget I've taken pictures on it, until I'm sitting on a train by myself, wondering what I should do and start thumbing through the photos. (Note: this does not happen often.)
Today, I took the day off of work because Max has seemed to have a mysterious illness - which goes and comes, which makes him cough, and often times leak vomit and diarrhea. What fun! He first got sick when we were in Cambodia and we chalked it up to something bad he ate. But, it seemed to go away, then come back again, but a little different. We waited. I planned to take him to the doctor last week, but then he seemed to recover. But, this weekend, we ended up doing about 20 loads of laundry, most of which was covered in puke. Anyhow, the doctor says that he thinks he's at the end of a bad stomach virus going around and he has a respiratory infection as well. After a successful doctor's visit and an uneventful train ride, we came back, I got Max to take his medicines (mixed in a chocolate jelly - which he loved) and then we giddily sat on the back porch so he could eat a popsicle and enjoy the warm weather. This is when I started scrolling through my phone and found these...
Vietnam Air - better than it sounds!
John and Maximo's firsts steps in Cambodia
Max and D riding their imaginary bus!
Max and Flavi in the backyard - used CameraBag Application on iPhone
Max and Flavius playing in the garden
Flavius and our tulips!
Max in the yard on top of the water table.
Our garden looks 100% better than when we moved in, although the grass looks like crap!
On the way to the doctor's today - a beautiful cherry blossom at the shrine.
SAKURA! The cherry blossoms are peaking this week and look gorgeous!
And all was fine and dandy, until Max tripped, fell off the back porch steps (3) landed on his face and got a bloody nose. He recovered quickly, ate a decent lunch, and is now sleeping. That gives me time to blog, make homemade benne wafers (YUM!) and enjoy a cup of tea. I could get used to this staying home bit.
And... here's a gem from my iPhone archive. I took this after wine and chu-his and then forgot about it. John and Jon singing "Y Control" by the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs at a karaoke bar after dinner one night:
It has been a long winter. Not ridiculously cold, but l-o-n-g and wet. When you're living in a small Japanese apartment, wet and cold weather really, well, sucks, especially when you're living with a two year old.
Today, the sun finally shone and it was in the 50s. We had big plans for the day, so after boiling a few dozen eggs and getting some laundry on the line, we headed for the "Tulip Festival" on island. It was a small little plot with a few hundred tulips planted on it. Maximo loved walking through the rows and surprisingly enough, he just looked and smelled and refrained from touching or romping through the flowers.
After that we headed off island (barely) to check out some cherry blossoms and go to the home goods store to buy some more flowers for our garden. Maximo loves the "animal" section of this store - it has a huge fish selection and also quite a few (expensive!) puppies and kittens for sale. He bought a toy (a bag of balls) for Flavius and was so proud of himself that he even carried the bag the whole way home. When he got home, he couldn't wait to get out of his shoes and jacket to bust open the package to give to Flavius. He was frustrated at first when Flavius didn't show much interest in the balls, but I think two of them had catnip in them, so Flavius was soon kicking them all over the house which pleased the pants off of Max.
After a nap, we colored Easter eggs with our dear neighbors, Kai, Luka and Eiko. Maximo is in love with Kai and Luka. Unfortunately today, he was a bit fussy and puked while they were here, but I think everyone was overall happy with their eggs.
My mother confessed that this was another one of those trips that she worried about. She always worries - and of course, I have inherited that gene, but some trips we've taken, coincidentally, those beginning with "C" - Cuba, Colombia and now Cambodia have put her a little more on the edge, than say a trip to France or Canada.
This photo montage is of Maximo's highs and lows in Cambodia. Surprisingly, it was a great place to take kids, especially a two year old who likes nothing more than rocks and dirt.
Kansai Airport - checking out the planes with Daddy.
The pool and floaties! Necessities for our 95+ ° days!
Romping around Ta Prohm - our favorite!
Silk worms at the farm!
We got to watch the whole process,
but Max liked the caterpillars the best!
Either a stomach bug or something
he ate started to get to him...this night was spent naked
in the bathroom with lots of bodily fluids,
let's leave it at that.
The elephant ride up the "mountain"
to Phmom Bakheng.
He loved it!
Future Explorer entering Angkor Wat
On Pub Street, playing with the
"dead-skin eating fish" while waiting for dinner.
John titled this well...
TEMPLE TANTRUM! Too hot!
But his dump truck got him through.
He does not handle the heat well.
We were out one day and some tourists
were gushing over him, and one said,
"El esta el color del tomate!"
He's never really had jewelry before and
he covets this soccer ball bracelet we got at the old market.
THIS IS MAXIMO'S FAVORITE THING TO DO RIGHT NOW! He has finally gotten good at it and he just loves tooling around on his little bike. Last weekend, we went quite far with him riding his bike.
I won't be posting this week, not that that's a big change from any weekday since we've move to Japan. We're heading off to Cambodia tomorrow, and I'm leaving my computer at home.
Friday, we had a half day of school. We left Maximo in daycare because he was already napping and we decided to go get lunch. We went to a little Mexican place in Sannomiya which kinda helps with our Mexican fix then came home took a nap, then picked up Maximo from daycare.
