Normally I love the healthcare system here.  Medical bills are 70% covered and kids are free until the age of 6, and all you need is health insurance,  either private or government provided.  The catch here is that health insurance is mandatory  and if you go to the doc and dont have it  then you have to pay 150% of the bill, yup not just 100% but 150%.   So back at the end of December my husband got laid off,  he found a new job right away,  but they had a 3 month trial period  during which time he would be paid incredibly low wages and not be allowed to enter into their health insurance.  Because of the low pay we couldn’t afford the govt. insurance, but since Yosei is a preemie  he needed once amonth check ups  and shots called Synagis  to help prevent a disease called RSV,  which can be deadly to preemies.  

My husband ended up leaving that job after 3 months anyways,  and ended up getting a new job in May,  fortunately because we have a baby the boss agreed to let us on the health insurance instead of make us wait until August. 

So once we got our cards  I took them to the hospital in the hopes that we might be covered for the previous visits… Well that didn’t happen, and they said they didn’t know the exact amount  but the bill would probably end up being something like $2,500. A lot of money  but  we’d be able to manage it somehow I thought.  Then I got the phonecall,  they calculated everything and it wasn’t $2500  it was $7000><  

Fortunately there was a way out of this, and it was to go to the city hall and register for government health insurance for the 4 months that we weren’t covered.  It’ll end up costing about $1700 for those 4 months  but still compared to $7000 I think we can handle it.

So lately I’ve been trying this super popular beauty treatment here…drinking vinegar :P  Not just any vinegar but kurozu (black vinegar)  This type of vinegar is supposed to be very healthy  and take years to make.  Its become so popular that they’ve started adding flavors to it to make it more pleasant to drink.  I’ve been drinking cassis & blueberry flavor and ume & honey flavor.  Doesn’t taste bad,  supposed to be good for your skin, and if there’s any truth to a new medical study they did here  it can help with weight loss also  (something I desperately need).  Thing is I’m a total slacker when it comes to keeping up stuff like this, so we’ll see how long it lasts…  I’m such a sucker for Japanese beauty/diet gimmicks (-_-;)

So  today  me an Yos took a bike ride up to a clothing store called Shimamura.  They’ve been getting pretty popular lately because thay’re both cheap and fashionable.  And while looking around in the kids section  I found the greatest shirt ever on sale for $5.

It’s still a little big for the littlest pirate,  but at that price  how could I resist?  And besides he’ll grow into it soon.  Incase you have trouble reading it  it says ‘Ahoy matee! How be ye today?’

So unfortnately, as all babies do, Yosei is gettin a bit bigger and heavier and its getting harder and harder to lug him around in the baby sling and walk to the grocery store and home with my arms loaded down with groceries.  On days when I have lots of shopping to do I usually take the stroller along and use it as a baggage cart,  but still the 7kg baby on my shoulders is really starting to wear me down.  So on Saturday I took some money I had saved up  and we went and bought me a new bicycle.  A very nice electric assist bicycle. Since we live at the bottom of a very steep hill, and theres more than a few hills in the area anyways I figured the electric assist is worth the extra few thousand yen (80,300 yen to be exact, roughly $803). 

So now I had my bicycle  but the baby seat was another matter.  There’s two types typically used here,  ones that mount on the back, and ones that mount to the handlebars.  The back ones to me are just yuck,  for one you can’t see behind you; and two thanks to a horror story my husband told me about the time he stuck his foot in the spokes (he still has the scars on his heel from it).  But then the kind that mount to the handlebars…  As anybody who has loaded down their handlebars with groceries and stuff it throws off your balance quite a bit.  Now replace groceries with squirmy child and it just adds to the problem.    Anyhow, did some research and found this one brand of seat that you mount between yourself and the handlebars.  Seems nice, safe, easy to use, and just happened to be for sale on amazon japan.  So I ordered that along with a lovely Yosei sized helmet.

They arrived today, and I’ll tell ya the seat installation was a lot harder than they made it out to be.  The mounting bar all that was easy enough.  Problem lies in the style of handlebars most Japanese bikes have and the design of the safety pad on the front of the seat.  Essentially the pad was resting in a position on the handlebars that was making it impossible to attach the seat to the mounting bar.  So industrious me, determined not to give up (I’d spent $130 on the seat, and if you open a product and return it amazon will only give you a %10 refund, hence the determination) I proceeded to make a few modifications on the safety pad.  Actually I took a box cutter and started cutting away some of the plastic to make it smaller.  The thing is covered by a fabric pad  so really making the plastic part a little smaller really made no difference. 

So nearly $1000 later and 3 hours of baby seat assembly time  and this is my end result

 So we took a test run,  up to the child welfare center to get Yosei’s polio vaccine, and then to the grocery.  And I have to say it’s a great seat  no affect on the balance or the way I pedal, and I can keep an eye on the kiddo in front of me.  He wasnt too sure about it at first,  but by the time we got home and I took this pic he was having a blast!

It’s been exactly one year since Yosei was released from the NICU and able to come home for the first time.  He spent 3 long months in the hospital. 

So today I went to Fujiya and bought a strawberry shortcake and got some strawberry ice cream at the grocery store so we could celebrate. 

This kid has come a long way since we first got him home.  He would only drink from bottles because he was just still to tiny to nurse properly.  He had just reached 2500grams (5lbs) a few days before hecame home, which is the minimum weight the required for babies to be allowed home. The newborn size diapers we had at home actually came up to his armpits.  He would often forget to breathe during feeding time so I had to watch his color carefully  and if his lips started to look blueish had to pat him on the back or blow in his face a little to remind him to breathe.  He also had day a night all mixed up,  this was because in the hospital they never turned the lights off (except when eye tests were being performed)  so he’d never had a day and night cycle.  So after 3 months to suddenly have night come about I think was very unnerving to him, or he associated darkness with the painful eye tests that they put him through 3 times a week.  Either way he would be up and crying from about 11pm to 5am  and there was nothing I could do about it for a very long time.  He’s fine now,  but that first month of easing him into it was exhausting.

So here, in honor of today, is a picture of Yosei the day we brought him home

Well  couple of posts in one today just cuz I felt the need to write about both. 

First off, I’ve actually been meaning to write about this for a few days, just too lazy to pull the pics off my camera.    Its kinda getting into rainy season around here, and all last week was proof of that.  But sometimes you get one of those days when it rains and stops and rains and stops.  Well in between rainstorms on one of those days Yosei and I went for our daily walk to the park.  And on the way our the back door of our building (our building is actually built into the mountain side and the front entrance is on the 5th floor)  I spotted a little tiny crab on the path that leads down to the park.  My husband tells me that they’re called zawagani  and the only live in very fresh water streams and such.  There is a little stream that runs off the mountain side off the path,  and now whenever I go down there I check for little crabbies.  There’s  actually quite a few, funny how I never noticed them before.    I’m not normally a fan of creepy crawly things,  but I have to admit these guys are kinda cute

Next up.. Am I really that delicious?

I’ve always been a favorite snack of mosquitos.  I remember once working at a daycare I went out to a park to help some teachers bring the 2 year old class back to school.  I wa outside for maybe 15 minutes and when I came back (no exaggeration here I swear)  I counted 15 bites on each leg… Yes, 30 bites in the span of 15 minutes.   So now its been getting back to mosquito season and I’ve been doing my best to use bug spray.  I’ve tried 2 different kinds and keep getting bitten.  I thought maybe since its stuff from last year maybe its old and I need to buy some new spray.  So today I did buy new spray, and ya know what??? I got bitten again.  I mean really, am I so delicious that mosquitos will bite poison just to get a taste?  I’m starting to wish there was some sort of ingestible mosquito poison just so I could get the satisfaction of watching them bite and then drop dead from poisoned blood, ya know?  It would be kind of weird though, I can just imagine trails of dead mosqitos in my wake…

In other news our daily trips to the park seem to be helping even more as today Yos took a teeny tiny shuffle step on his own, and then immediately panicked and went back to squat position.  It is encouraging that he tried very very hard to come to me when I called him though.  Actually after the tiny shuffle step I was so happy I cried a little, while picking him up and givin him a big hug and telling what a great job he did.  Lol  I’m such a cheesy mom

Its no secret around here that Yosei is a WALL-E fan.  My sister sent him the dvd for x-mas and he’s been hooked ever since.  It’s his favorite thing to watch  so I usually find myself turning it on to entertain him while I cook dinner and such in the evening.   

He also has a WALL-E blanket and pillow set (a birthday present also from my sister) which he absolutely loves.   So this morning we were hanging out before my husband had to go to work.  He picks up the pillow and asks Yosei ‘これ誰？’ (translation: who is this?)  And to our surprise Yosei starts  going ‘aahh eeee aaahh eeee ’   He’s never put those sounds together before like that so it was pretty obvious to both of us  he was attempting to tell us it was WALL-E.  Wasn’t just a one time occurence either  he’s been saying it any time I mention WALL-E  or he sees the pillow.

On the one hand I’m ecstatic,  on the other a little sad.  The reason for my sadness is he doesnt refer to either of us as mama  or papa properly yet, but man he know’s WALL-E when he sees him.   Yos does say mama  but not necessarily callingme that; usually it just means ‘hey you my walking lunch box I need to nurse’  and his papa… well right now he usually just calls him ‘bap’.  But thing is ‘bap’ seems to have a lot of meanings too, not just papa. 

We’ll see how it goes, but it seems my son’s first word may end up being WALL-E.  Not sure whether to laugh or cry about that…