Today we had a playdate with Yosei’s NICU girlfriend Yui.  They live in the same town as us and Yui and Yosei were hospitalized together in the same NICU, which is two hours away from our town.  What a coincidence huh?   We’ve been trying to set up time for them to play together, but I always forget to bring a camera.  But today I remembered ^^

The Pirate in Training puts on his best pirate face - aaaarrrrrrgggghhhh!

sharing snacks in the park

playing with tickle me cookie monster ^^

Also a bit of a blow to my ego I’m afraid.  Last night Yosei gave us a sign that he may just be taking this talking thing at his own pace and we don’t need to worry too much as he started calling our cat, Riri ( or Lili depending on how you prefer to romanize Japanese), by name. Most of the time it was more like ‘e e’ but a few times he also got the actualy name out.  He would walk up to her pet her and say ‘ e e’.   As anyone who has read my blog before might recall he also says ‘awweee’ his pronunciation of WALL-E. 

So now he can call our cat and WALL-E each by name,  but still in his eyes neither me or his papa have names quite yet.  I’ve been outranked by a robot and a cat o_O 

Soo happy, I worked extra hard this week. ^^

-26 lbs

Last week Yosei had his 1 year 6 month check up.  Gave me alot of things to think about, which is why this post is so much later than the checkup itself.  Mostly everything was pretty good, motor skills, teeth, height and weight.  Unofrtunately one thing that didn’t go well for him was the language part.  They asked him to point to the picture of a puppy and he wasnt able to do it.  However being a preemie he’s got a 3 and a half month handicap (minimum) on the other kids and he’s being raised bilingual; hence we don’t use the Japanese word for puppy (wan wan) we call it a puppy.  So I’m sure that also confused him.  But they made a big deal about it and made me go talk to a speech therapist who told me I should stop using English with him and speak only Japanese because ’some kids just arent able to handle two languages and Yosei is probably one of those.’  Yeah right fat chance of that happening.  If anything it would make more sense to drop Japanese and let him pick that language up when he gets to preschool.  But I don’t plan to do that either.

In any case after I thouht about it I realized the therapist is like 60+ years old and seems to have a very old way of thinking.  There was another couple we were waiting with to see the therapist, the mom sounded to be Korean but spoke only Japanese to her son (and this wasnt their first visit to this therapist). So this leads me to believe she tells every bilingual child thats a little behind to stop and use only Japanese. 

Fortunately,  I’ve gotten some advice from other preemie moms, and also speech pathologists in the US too.  So for now I’m going to do what I can to help him and if by 2 years old he’s not any better  I’ll be seeking out a therapist that specializes in bilingual kids

So if you find I’m making myself scarce in game and on the blog  its because I’m doing my best to help my little guy

This weeks update - nearly lost all the baby weight from 1 1/2 years ago - now time to start on a the pre-baby weight too

-23.1 lbs

This last weekend we took our first family trip to DisneySea, it was so much fun.  Right now they’re doing their Halloween Celebration so I made Yosei a costume just for the occasion.  They don’t do trick or treating or Halloween parties here in Japan  so really this was my only chance for some Halloween fun. 

The costume I made was kind of a punk rock demon sort of thing.  I made some wings, punk rock pants with a fuzzy tail on the back, and got him a cute hat.  Unfortunately the wings didnt last a very long time (maybe an hour or so), and oddly enough it wasnt Yosei that broke them but my husband.  He says it was an accident and he didnt even realize he broke them, but I’m pretty sure he thought they were in the way and kinda tried to ‘accidentally’ break them >< Oh well.  So without the wings his costume became more of a punk rock puppy  but it was still pretty cute.

We were only able to go on a few of the rides since Yosei is still so small (no roller coasters this time around ><)  And with the exception of Sindbads’ Storybook Theatre, and the steamboat tour of the park he was afraid of all of them, even the carousel :\   Though I think his favorite thing was probably the playground inside Mermaid Lagoon,  they had a water play area for kids where water would squrit up fro the floor  and from various charcter statues too.  He was soaked by the time we had to make him stop running through the water ^^;

water play at Mermaid Lagoon

 

end of the day family photo

So the other day I was cleaning out my purse when I came across something I don’t remember putting into my purse, and had actually never remembered seeing before… a spoon.  Not just a spoon but a dirty spoon at that, it looked kind of rusty but found out later by washing it that it was just dried food.  

Anyways I waited till my husband got home and asked him if he put the spoon in my purse, which of course was a ‘No’.  He kind of chuckled as he said it though, so I knew he knew something and wasn’t telling me.   I finally got it out of him  and turns out the culprit was none other than Yosei.

Apparently it happened on my birthday.  My husband took us out for steak (they have soup, salad, and bread bars so perfect for Yos) and I guess while I was either getting Yos some soup and bread or while I was in the restroom Yos decided it would be fun to drop his spoon into my purse.  Only 17mos old and already a budding criminal it seems ^^; 

Actually I’m glad it was him. I was freaked out for while wondering who would stick a dirty spoon i my purse.  Kept picturing some weirdo like behind me in line at the store or something.  So obviously a big relief there, and hey now Yosei has a new spoon to use too ^^

So ever since my younger sister came to visit from the US at the beginning of August I’ve been on a bit of a blogging hiatus.  She  actually went home nearly three weeks ago,  but I still couldnt drag my self back to blog.  Takes effort when you’ve been away a while I guess.

Her visit was a lot of fun, and I have to say I’m missing her like crazy.  We’ve not always gotten along well  and this is probably the first time we’ve spent any amount of time together without getting into a huge fight.  Because I had a helper we were able to go out and do girly things like clothes shopping and get manicures (something you can never do on your own with a 1 year old). 

Changing sujects here… Yosei has finally madethe jump from baby to toddler it seems as he’s finally getting the confidence to toddle off in his own.  Up until a few days ago he would only do it if I held one of his hands.  But for some reason the lastweek he became very confident in his ability (especially if he has a rock or stick to carry in one hand). Even went and took a vid of his toddling around the park last week.  And he’s getting better every day,  he walks around the house most of the time now instead of crawling.  He’s getting so big ::sniffle::

Today its been a bit rainy,  but in the afternoon the rain let up so I took Yos outside to play for a bit.  he walked around for quite a while before finding a nice big mud puddle and sitting right down in it ><   I went ahead and let him splash around in it for a while,  kids should be allowed to get thoroughly filthy and caked in mud occasionally right? 

My flithy street urchin at the park last week (and no thats not chocolate that’s dirt ><)

Officially a Toddler

So yesterday, since we’re right i the middle of a sticky hot summer I got Yosei all dressed up in a swim diaper, tank top, and sun hat and took us for a walk down to the river right outside.  There’s a very nice shallow place where Yosei wasable to cool his bottom, splash around, and play with rocks; all while I sat on a big rock and took pics and soak my feet in cool river water ^^

He had a lot of fun,  even learned to stack on rock on top of another (even clapped for himself if he got the rock to stay in place)  So needless to say  he was not happy with me when we had to head home.

This time its not my bath ghost but my mother’s bath ghost.  She told me on Sunday she was sitting in the bath  and my dad was in there talking with her (I try not to picture that too vividly :P)  when suddenly this weird vibrating and noise started coming from the faucet of the bathtub.  My mom described it as sounding like a trumpet playing morse code. Really weird right?  The noise wasnt stopping so my dad got up and put his hand on the faucet,  but it didnt stop then either.  Not until my mom stood up and got up out of the bath did the noise quit.  Little bit creepier than my light flickering ghost isn’t it?

Thing is hearing this brought back memories of my childhood imaginary aquaintence Mr. Space.  I wouldn’t call Mr. Space  a friend really as I never really played with him like my sisters did with their imaginary friends.  Infact I found him a bit intimidating and kind of scary; though my dad says even though Mr Space made me nervous I still thought he was probably an ok guy.  I don’t remember a lot of him  but I do remember that he lived in a dark place; which I’m thinking was either the crawl space under our porch or in the attic (possibly both).  I was about 3 during the Mr Space days so I dont remember a lot (its was near 24 years ago afterall)  But my dad remembers I would sit in front of dark places  and kind of call to Mr Space, ‘Mr Space… Mr Space?  Are you there?’ 

But  anyhow it got my thinking wouldn’t it be really freaky if my old imaginary aquaintence wasn’t really all that imaginary, if he was the one making the weird trumpet noise in the bath.  At least as far as I know most kids dont have imaginary friends who live in only dark places that they’re very nervous about being around…  My sisters never did one had a friend named Buckweed and the other had a friend named Sheena.  They used to talk about their imaginary friends and play with them and all that…

I dunno maybe I’m just weird  but stuff like that in a 150 year old house does get you wondering sometimes.