Chissus

Sara surprises us a lot these days. Today, she pointed at the baby cross hanging near the door to her bedroom.

“Chiss,” she says.

I am surprised. Sure, I make reference to it from time to time, telling her Jesus loves her, but it’s hardly a regular topic of conversation. On a separate note, “chiss” is normally what she calls cheese. Hm… Jesus and cheese.

“Chiss,” she says it again.

“Jesus,” I say. “Jeeeee-zus.”

“Chissus,” a toothy grin follows. “Chissus.”

This alone almost made up for the otherwise trying day we had.

Book!

Sara can say words these days, cave-man style. She has gotten quite good at gesturing and funny facial expressions to get what she wants too. Little manipulator. Anyway, one of her favourite words is “Book!”. She has great interest in books, but not reading. She likes carrying them, flipping through them (upside down sometimes), but she doesn’t have to patience to read them or be read to. Ah well. I’ll worry about that later.

In the meantime…

The whole family’s reading this book

Easier to read sitting up

Dammit, where’s my bookmark??

Elsehwere today, check out my designer dress sense. Cute Japanese pink top, hot pants and fuzzy rattle rabbit shoes!

Sleep deprivation

Danny rolled his eyeballs at me today. Okay, so he does that pretty often, but this time, I think I deserved it. Because of my recent return to work (sort of), I’ve been up late editing. Last night, in an act of defiance – it was a Saturday night after all – I decided not to work. So I read our newly acquired The Da Vinci Code paperback till 3am instead. Sara proceeded to wake me at 3.30am. To top it all off, we were off to mass at 7.45am because I was lectoring this morning. So, in a nutshell, the man, in one eloquent move, expressed his disbelief at my insanity. Rolled his eyeballs.

Anyway, I’m back to editing again this ungodly hour. I’ve yet to use my Strivectin. Perhaps it will perform miracles with my eyebags and I will once more look youthful. Or not.

Rain, rain, go away….

It is … GROAN…. summer here in Japan. Or the start of summer. We just passed the summer equinox, the longest day in the year. The weather is MISERABLE. I’m sorry, did I say that loud enough? M-I-S-E-R-A-B-L-E. Rainy season is upon us and it’s been pissing rain every other day or so. Sara has reached the age where staying in is like torture worse than hell. Which means, staying in for me becomes torture worse than hell. I have to take her out, preferably twice a day. So if it’s raining, I just pack her in the car and go. If it’s not raining, we have the wonderful muggy humidity to deal with. Best of all, this is ONLY the start of summer. Do I seem like I’m complaining here? Well, I am. Summer in Tokyo is like none I’ve experienced. They say the humidity in Hong Kong over summer makes the walls sweat. Here, I see no sweating walls, but man, it really does feel like a whole new level of mugginess.

Anyway, I don’t really have much to say at all about anything at this point. Fortunately, we do have an afternoon engagement today. Baby group. Alleluia. I’m so glad I managed to chip this thing together with a few friends earlier this year. Baby groups are effectively sanity breaks for stay-at-home moms held hostage here in Tokyo. The moms actually converge upon one corner of the room and nibble anxiously away at food while our young’uns run amok. Yes, now that they’re all about this age, they run. And boy, do they run fast. Sara has decided that no matter who’s house we’re in, she must run laps around the kitchen and the living room. Better yet if the host’s child has an indoor gym or kitchen set. She raids all toys like she owns them. Of course, when roles are reversed, she gets all possessive and nasty. When the other babies come round to our place, she is naggy, complainy and annoyed at others raiding her treasures. Talk about generous. Ah well, life is tough, my child, tough.

In other rants today, I am officially dead beat. My non-existent job came back to life this week and my, when it rains, it pours! I was up late two nights in a row editing translations. Danny remains curious why I actually find this work invigorating, but as I explain to him, it makes me feel like I’m achieving something. Not much, yes, but at least, SOMETHING. Anyway, given how things have panned out in the last 6 months on this job, I figure it could be a while before the next job lands on my desk.

I mentioned to Danny some time last week that I’ve been feeling nostalgic about work. Nostalgic, you say? Yes, exactly that. I don’t miss work, but I feel nostalgic about the times when I was working. It’s all kind of sad, but it was triggered by a scene of people rushing home from work at the end of a work day somehwere near Shinbashi. Curiously though, I can also remember how I hated my life leaving work at that gross hour (past 8pm normally) to have a little sleep at home and then head back again early next morning. So why am I feeling nostalgic? As Danny puts it, the grass is always greener on the other side, even when you KNOW it’s not all that green. Ah, the life of a full-time housewife – I actually get to feel nostalgic about work, of all things.

Okay, I’ve finished with my afternoon of rants. Gotta get going to my sanity break soon.

*Sniff*

You know how parents always rave about that patented baby smell? Not the clean smell of baby soap, but the familiar, comforting smell of a sweaty infant’s head. Well, Danny has put forth this theory:

• Everyone has, at one time or another, a smellie. Either a smelly pillow, an old stuffed toy, a well-used blanket or even a disintergrating T-shirt.
• One man’s smellie is another man’s poison.
• People, however, tend to enjoy and savour the whiff of a baby’s head, regardless who’s baby it is or how clean the baby’s head actually is.
• Therefore the following equation must be true, i.e. baby’s head = “generic” smelly pillow smell. Why else would people actually enjoying sniffing a not-clean smell?

Danny and I are big fans of Sara’s stinky head. That said, I wouldn’t touch Danny’s boyhood smellie with a 10-foot pole. Hypothetically, of course – he’s assured me it doesn’t exist anymore.

Photo evidence

Many thanks to Lynn and her trusty camera for the wonderful pictures from our hike almost two weeks ago.

Into the wilderness

Riding on Pappy’s back

Trike!

We bought Sara an AnPanMan trike a month ago. She loves to squeeze AnPanMan sitting in the middle of her handlebar – he makes squeky noises when she does that. She can’t peddle and doesn’t balance too well, but heck, her parents get a big thrill out of it.

A-hiking, we will go….!

Sometime in the last few weeks, we decided we should really try to make the best of our stay here. Life has settled into complacency and we find we don’t really do much on weekends, other than grocery shopping and errand-running. So, in line with Danny’s love for hiking and nature, I agreed we would do just that on our weekends.

So yesterday, we went hiking. All thanks to Lynn and Jason who found a place to hike, drove us there (and back), kept us dry when we were caught in the rain and tolerated Sara’s tantrums. I don’t actually know the name of the mountain we went to, other than its location (somewhere between Tokyo and Yamanashi-ken) and the Mandarin translation of its Japanese name – Three Head Mountain.

Okay, so here’s the deal. Tw0 and a half years ago, Danny did the Trailwalker in Hong Kong. For those who don’t know what that means, it means he can trek 100km worth of mountainous terrain at one shot and he managed to do it under 20 hours. Me? I last trekked I-don’t-know-how-many-years-ago and it was a massive failure. After 15 minutes of trekking in the New Territories with our friends, I called it quits and turned back. I haven’t trekked again till yesterday.

Lynn and Jason were so kind as to choose an “easy” trek – 6 kilometers with minimum elevation. Except, in my case, any elevation is tough. As we trekked, it came crashing upon me why I don’t do it very often. It really winds me. But I trekked on, refusing to give up. It would’ve been mightily embarassing to do so.

Sara was a real trooper. We had bought a hiking baby-carrier for her and she was happy to be strapped into it on Danny’s back for the first half of the hike, on our way to the peak. She chatted a lot and was thoroughly fascinated by Libby.

Coming down, however, was a whole different kettle of fish. Just our luck, but it started to rain on our way down. A gazillion thanks to Lynn and Jason – we had to borrow Jason’s raincoat to keep Sara dry. The little one, however, wasn’t particularly grateful, trying to get the hood off and wailing blue murder. Finally, she gave up yelling and fell asleep, hands and feet all dangling out in the rain. I was feeling like a crummy mother, putting my baby through such nasty conditions, but when she woke up, she was all sunshine again (for a while). Got her into dry clothes when we got back to the car and for a moment there, she was happy again. That, until she decided she hated the car seat and wanted out of the car pronto.

Little wonder if she successfully confirmed Lynn and Jason’s worse fears about babies.

Anyway, we were totally zonked on our return home – we all slept like logs last night.

Yep, another eventful weekend for us.

ROTS

To the unintiated, this is an acronym, not a seemingly out-of-place complaint about deteriorating wood that’s been in the sun and rain for too long. I watched the final Star Wars installment last week, in some unknown cinema in Balestier, in a mostly empty theatre. It was fantastic. Danny, unfortunately, hasn’t had the privilege of watching ROTS yet – it hasn’t come to Japan yet. Surprise, surprise. Anyway, when he does watch it, sometime middle of this month when it opens, he can be assured of his wife’s undying devotion and willingness to suffer a repeat watching. Except suffer isn’t the word. Heck, I can watch it again and again and again. It’s NOT that it was that great, but it is, after all, Star Wars. I can watch any Star Wars film a few times over. Yes, even The Phantom Menace.

Anyway, ROTS stands for Revenge of the Sith. And yes, Sith happens, as Hayden Christiansen so aptly puts it (or so says his T-shirt). Kudos to Hayden and Ewan (McGregor) for the amazing lightsabre fight scene. Loved that. A thousand sighs and regrets to the otherwise magnificently talented Natalie Portman. I KNOW you can do a gazillion times better than this – you were just stuck with the crapiest lines in the whole movie. Not the mention, the crapiest role. As one reviewer so aptly put it – barefoot and pregnant, cried and died. And that hair – puh-leeeze. We know you’re Leia’s mother – no need to belabor the point with a precursor headphone hairdo. Then again, my sympathy has its limits – she was paid a lot of money to do this.

Storyline works reasonably well. Action is good. Sure, the reason for Anakin turning to the Dark Side can be considered a little fragile, but it works well enough for me. And yay to Obiwan for cutting that rude boy down to size.

So bottomline: I am not an unbiased reviewer. I loved it. Not because it was good, but because it was Star Wars. George Lucas had me at the opening rolling prologue. He will make even more of my money when I get the boxset for the prequels, when it finally comes out. Sucker…

Shady’s back

Okay, so this time, I promise (myself) I will not spend ridiculous amounts of time on this. I am also planning/hoping to send Sara off to school soon *heh*, so technically, I have the time….

Shady’s back, back again…