Brothers at scenic spots around Hokkaido, about 2005

These first two were taken by my husband, near Niseko somewhere:

Five-colored Lake Onetto:

At Japan's highest mountain pass:

Pic

My younger son, age 1.

Random pics

Here is big son, age 22 mos.:

Here is little son, about age 12 mos.:

Biology creative story by unnamed 10th grader

(the topic was fixed - no choice in that matter, but he did the best he could!!)

Do you know anyone who grew up for 16 years without moving or talking to anyone at all, when there were thousands of others around him/her? Of course not right? Well now you do. Hi, I’m an egg. I live in my mom’s Ovum. I’ve been in this sand bag for over 15 years now, growing up, maturing, and waiting for my chance at life. Now, thank god, I am at the front of the line, waiting for my escape. There are a whole lot of others bunched up behind me, but if everything works out fine, I wont have any of them bothering me while I’m on the move. Very soon, I’ll be making my way to the outside world, where all the walls are full of nutrition, and I can have a chance at mating. I just hope that the guys are strong enough to make the journey at least.

Oh! My protective sack, the Ovum, has just ripped open and all of my nutrition is leaking out. Aaah! Here I go! Ah! I’m out. Surrounded by my Ovum’s contents, I stick around for a little while, before being pulled toward the fallopian tube. It looks like a giant hand grabbing for me. I am engulfed, and pulled along by the walls of the tube, which look like they have hairs pushing me along. I know I have not much time to live, because my lifespan is fairly short, so if there are any males anywhere near here they’d better start getting a move on.

I’m beginning to remember, what I was told by my teacher as I was growing up, all the troubles they have to go through just in order to see me. First of all, thousands and thousands of sperm enter through the vagina at one time. Then their numbers are first diminished by the acidic environment. After that, many of them are caught in the gateway to the Urethra, also where I am now headed. The few hundred that do survive and move on still have to swim against the current to reach where I lie in wait. Next after that… Whoa! There they are! There are about 50 sperm swimming toward me. They start ramming at my outside shell, trying to break through. I can feel that a few of them are almost to me now. Using their enzyme-tipped heads, they struggle to enter. Yes! One of them is in. I don’t want anymore of them to come, so I make my shell impenetrable to the remaining bunch of sperm. Very soon my mind will combine with the mind of the sperm, Sam. I can now have my chance at building yet more life. I wish for he/she to become a successful person. Sam’s tail has just fallen off. This is my time. See you in another life.

Health Topic: Urticaria Pigmentosa

Don't know why, but I like health topics :)

I've been meaning to write about this one for a while. It may not really be of interest to any casual readers, but could be useful for anyone who visits when googling this term, etc.!

The words "urticaria pigmentosa" literally mean "pigmented hives". However, this skin condition is not hives, but one of the several forms that mastocytosis can take. Mastocytosis is the name for problems involving abnormal clumping of mast cells in the body -- they are the cells that produce histamine, a chemical that is produced by the body during an allergic reaction. As far as I know, though, mastocytosis does not cause allergies -- however if a child has both allergies and mastocytosis, then they will have extra problems. Also, mastocytosis can react to a wide variety of triggers, and can cause problems not normally associated with allergies.

My younger son (now age 10) - here called "Jiji", has/had a mild case of this problem. It is pretty rare, enough that many doctors have not heard of it (except for dermatologists, of course). It may effect somewhere between 1 to 6 /10,000 people (according to the internet - a few sites estimate 1/10,000, and http://www.mastokids.org/ has a video which estimates there are less than 200,000 people with it in the U.S., which would be less than 6.7 people/10,000).

Urticaria Pigmentosa (I'll abbreviate it as UP) is the form of mastocytosis where the mast cells form little clumps here and there in the skin, and for some reason these clumps draw in melanin, leading to the formation of brown spots which are semi-permanent (they take several years to fade, after the problem has subsided). UP is often found in children, and has a good chance of going away by adolescence.

Health Topic: H1N1 (Swine) flu

I think our city was one of the first ones in Japan to have a proper outbreak of swine flu. The school had to be closed for 3 days in mid-September, but the teachers still went to work as normal. It was also one of the first schools in the city to be hit. We had a kind of seige atmosphere, with just teachers working in the teachers' room, all of us wondering if we had already contracted swine flu. In the end, only one teacher caught it. The kids returned in due time, in good health and spirits.

Drawings

Okay, here are a couple more of the things from Jiji's jiyuuchou:

I couldn't scan Acorn Master in the end, but here are 3 more that did come out. This one is Ten-face.

Autumn Master.

Part of a random color drawing with various characters like SpeedDragon, DrD and UltraDragon.

More Jiji quotes

We have had a nice summer - with some new "pets", as always seems to happen. We kept a stag beetle for a couple of months, and just released it yesterday. The main reason I wanted to release it is that we have about 30 marine hermit crabs (from the size of a walnut to the size of a small pea), that Jiji and Dio gathered on our camping trip to the Shakotan Peninsula a week ago. They are a lot of work, as I have been trying to make a nice, clean environment for them. So King, the beetle, has been released back into the wild.

Jiji continues to give big brother Dio a run for his money, in the memory department. The other day, cool big brother (now a full-fledged teenager with long, straight-permed hair!) was asked to write "cereal" on the shopping list. He wrote - "cerial - the Greek name for the goddess Demeter" (something they are learning at school). Dad saw the misspelling and called to him to fix it. He erased "cerial", forgot what he had written the first time, got mixed up, and wrote "cerial" again. Dad called Jiji - "Jiji, spell cereal!". "C-E-R-E-A-L - what, Dio, you can't spell cereal?? What is this you wrote here, the Greek word for Demeter?" Dio - "Oh, so I couldn't spell cereal. I can spell lots of words!! How about this - can you spell Aphrodite?????" Jiji - "A...P..H..R..O..D.." (Dio is looking really worried now, and Mom and Dad are looking back and forth laughingly) "Y..T..E?" (Dio looks so relieved, and Mom and Dad are saying, "Ouch, he almost showed you!! Don't underestimate him next time!!" ) Jiji - "Well, I'm only 10 and I go to Japanese school, and I'm not even learning about that in school. Shkamo [and besides], what you wrote [about Demeter] was jiman [bragging] and a waste of space." I had to laugh at that... "jiman and a waste of space." :)



Another funny one recently -

Jiji - "Can I go on the com?" (computer)

Dad - "Kiss my ass!"

Jiji - "... I'll take that as a yes!"



Jiji's summer project (jiyuukenkyu) was a super easy project - his uncle (my husband's big brother) who visited us for 2 weeks had found a piece of driftwood shaped like the head and neck of a swan, so all Jiji did was paint it in white, black and yellow. The kids in his class liked it and started saying, "Aflack!" (with a quacking voice).


But Dio has had a really nice summer as far as projects. His school has no jiyuukenkyu, but he and a neighbor boy/classmate have been visiting our 81-year-old next-door neighbor every Weds. all summer, and are still continuing it now that school has started. He is teaching them how to play "Go", and they really like it!! He has also started trying to teach them various things about life and his own life, etc. (which includes almost having to fight in WWII, but the war ended when he was about 17 and just about to join) . He is a really nice man, and they enjoy their Go lessons. Then another neighbor, a lady about 50 years old who is into weaving, had us in her house briefly and Dio was looking with interest at her loom. So she invited just him over one morning for more than 2 hrs., and he wove a wall-hanging for our house! When I came home it was hanging on the wall in the genkan. She said his "souzou" was "juunan" (I think that was it - anyway his imagination is flexible) and he had a lot of ideas so it was fun teaching him. So, he has been having a lot of valuable experiences with our neighbors!



One more thing (since I know I will not be bothered to post for another month or more) - I want to test out my new scanner, to bring you the Acorn Master - a weird drawing by Jiji in his jiyuu-chou. The indispensible "free-drawing notebook", that they are allowed to have in school (for rainy days, I guess), and that he cannot do without. Just a minute while I attempt to work my new scanner...



Hmmm - this is taking way longer than I'd hoped, and I have to go and do some dishes etc.  So instead of the Acorn Master, here are two little characters - a fruit guy and a guy with weird eyes.



Hope this is not all too much "jiman and a waste of space"!!!

poems in typing

Jiji has been doing some typing practice recently. He goes to Japanese school and doesn't really get enough English writing practice, etc., and besides that, his handwriting has never been so good (in English or Japanese). I think it's a mild hand coordination problem - just his weak point, I guess. Ironically, the thing he writes the most neatly is kanji. I think it is because of all the straight lines. English letters and hiragana have curves and he seems to have more trouble writing them neatly. Anyway, if he can type then there is less pressure on us to improve his handwriting! So I have been letting him type for 20 minutes at a time. He loves it! Some of his best efforts have been:

June 3, 2009:

Monkeys eat apples. Elephants eat bananas. Dogs eat fish. Cats eat bones. Anteaters eat sweet stuff. Ants eat ants.

That was the food chain.

Detective Jiji.
Jiji looked for footprints.
He found handprints.
Jiji looked for handprints.
He found footprints.
Jiji is an inexperienced detective.

June 7, 2009 (this one's about our dog, Toby):


As black as eyes as black as a nose the thing he’s afraid of are pure black crows who am I typing to? Noone knows. That was a poem about Tobias D----.


June 17, 2009 (another one about Toby):

Big big whirlpools, robots grabbing scruffs.
Zombies grabbing paws, giant bugs chasing dogs.
A giant grabbing for Toby’s neck---.wu—wu—wu—wu—.
Toby just woke up from his nightmare whimpering.

He also enjoys playing around with the fonts, colors & sizes. The other day I thought it might be nice to see what all our family's typing speeds are. I knew mine more or less because I sometimes used to work as a temp in the States and England. Anyway, the results were:

Me - 74 wpm
Husband (I was amazed he actually took the test!) - 34 wpm
Dio (age 14) - 32 wpm
Jiji (age 10) - 4 wpm. It took like 30 minutes for him to complete the 1-paragraph-long test... he did it until the end, though! I told him he can try again in a year!

Lovely Toby

A Valentine's Day post...

We all love our dog Toby, and have so many nicknames for him. Yesterday, I heard Jiji saying, "Hello Toby my little Love Fuzz Bucket." My husband calls him things like "Love Penguin" and "Captain Cuddles." I call him "Tobiliboo" or "Herr Toblepooper", etc. We make up many new nicknames all the time, in a similar vein.

Valentine's Day news from kidland...

My big son recently had to do a standardized test involving writing a fictional story (among other things). The start-off picture was of a shadow of a man or something. He made it into a Valentine's day story, which also involved a mysterious living shadow, and proudly told me that the very last word of the story was "love". I was happy he finished the story, because last year (or 2 years ago?) he took the same test, started a rambling story, got only half-way in the time allowed, and got a very bad score for that part of the test! This time I told him, "Just try to make it a *normal* story, and FINISH IT IN TIME!!" It sounds like it was maybe pretty good this time. He seems to have romance on his mind a lot lately.

Report from no. 2 kidland...

I was driving my younger son back from his karate class last night, with a Japanese friend from his class (3rd grade in Japanese elem. school). They went into Seiko-mart to get some snacks, and were talking about something. When they got in the car again, the friend, "Ryota" (who claims to be receiving about 5 Valentine's chocos from girls in their class!), said,

Ryota - "Nee, kitto... Mika ni 'suki' tte yuttara, Mika mo Jiji no koto suki ni naru to omou yo." (I'm pretty sure if you tell Mika you like her, she will start to like you, too.)

Jiji - "Sou? Doushite?" (Do you think so? Why?)

Ryota - "Datte, ningen tte souiu mon da." (It's human nature.)

Jiji - "So na no." (Oh.)

It just sounded really cute... does this mean he likes Mika now? Before, he liked Emi and Natsuki (names have been changed!)... All of them are small, cute girls, and Jiji is the second tallest in his class.

For about 2 years he was the tallest kid in his class, but on the last measuring day (in Jan.), he came home and said a girl classmate called Kokoro (=heart) had edged just taller than him, and he is now the second tallest! Everyone was surprised. He was happy to not be the tallest, for a change. I told him he is now entering the stage where girls grow faster than boys, and a few more girls might pass him in the next couple of years. Three times a year, they are all measured to the millimeter, and they figure out the exact height order for the whole class. Then they frequently line up or stand in that exact order, for a multitude of reasons (standing on bleachers to sing, standing in line to walk somewhere, etc.). So every child who is anywhere near either the shortest end or the tallest end will be able to tell you, "I'm the 5th shortest in my class," or "I'm the 3rd tallest in my class."

The cat was out of the bag last year, but...

... but he still believes.


My little guy R ("Jiji") is 9, and sometime last year he seemed to have figured out that the tooth fairy, Easter bunny and Santa Claus were not real. It seemed to happen quite naturally, and about the same age that our big son K ("Dio") figured it out, so everything seemed normal.

So, we were very surprised this Christmas to find that Jiji is now making a conscious effort to "believe in Santa". He seems to be going to some effort to preserve this belief, and he chooses to overlook evidence to the contrary.


He complains if Dio goes on too much about how "Santa isn't real, you know." He says, "Dio doesn't believe in Santa, but I do, and I'm right, aren't I." Last night (Xmas Eve) he was very excited, and told Dio several times, "If you wake up during the night and Santa is there, be sure to wake me up!!".. He also left out milk for Rudolph and Coke and cookies for Santa. Also a large bowl coated with leftover frosting from the Christmas cake we were making (a Japanese Xmas activity). With these things was a note written in his best cursive (I have been teaching him cursive this year):



Dear santa

here is some yumy cookies and cola.

oh and some frosting.

don't get sick!
from r----

He was so happy to see that these snacks were gone in the morning, and Santa had left a thank you note. He enjoyed opening his stocking, and getting several Twix, mini-Toblerones, and a mikan (mandarin orange). But in the late afternoon, in the kitchen, he came across the original larger bags which held the Twix and mini-Toblerones -- open, and about half empty. "Oh, so you guys are the ones who put the Twix in my stocking." Me: "Oh, why do you say that?" R: "Datte, the bags are here." Me: "Oh... ... well, those are just the leftovers that Santa left with us." R: "Ah -- so nanda!" (Oh, I see!)


After a few seconds' pause he then said to his brother, "It must be nice for Mommy that one of her children still believes in Santa Claus. ... You should believe in Santa, too."



By the way, here is the result of our Christmas-cake-making. Instead of strawberries (expensive!) we made snowmen for the top, as seen on A Tale of Three Beans (well, our snowman aren't as well-made as theirs, but anyway, it was fun!). Those red berries you see are a handful of raspberries from a bag of frozen raspberries I got at half-price a while back.

More funny

Jiji said something else funny the other day...

We were riding the bus on the way to his weekly swimming lesson, and he started talking:

"In the world we have a lot of questions that we can ask scientists. Like, how did trees grow before there were people? What, did monkeys plant them or something?" :)

He did have a point though, because when I told him that the trees just grow naturally from the seeds of other trees, he asked, "But what about the VERY first tree?"

The other day when I was posting about funny things he said during the last year, I forgot to mention that recently he has sometimes been using English that sounds like an adventure story or something. I don't know if this is because a lot of his English input is now coming from books and movies, not from other kids, since he speaks Japanese at school. Anyway... for example, my husband got him a new bronze-colored thermos a few months ago. Later Jiji referred to it as "My golden flask". Another time I asked him, "Can you watch my bag for me while I go to the bathroom?" -- he said, "I am the guardian of the bag." And another time he found two dead woodlice (potato bugs? fake roly polies? warajimushi? Anyway, they were those fake roly poly bugs that can't roll up), under a floor-sofa in our house. He said they were "travellers in the house of death." Really looking at things from the bugs' point of view!!

Happy birthday Jiji!

(here age 1 and 1/2)

My little guy Jiji is 9 -- Happy Birthday! He is enjoying his 3rd grade year at Japanese school. He has recently joined a baseball team, but is not so sure yet about the long hours involved, so I've been letting him skip about half of it! He would really like a Gameboy Advance for his birthday (even though they are old), because there is this one small part of this one Gamecube game that gives you something extra if you hook up your Gameboy Advance - nice going, Nintendo. Well, he will not be getting one! We have prepared a few other presents, though.

Some funny comments by our 8-year-old over the course of the year...

- "Can humans eat grass?" (while walking in the park)

- "Are midgets rare?" (he quietly asked me, a few seconds after catching sight of a very small person in a crowded department store)

- When I was discussing with my parents whether to send some of my used books via them to my sister (who had recently had her 4th child)... "Well, she doesn't have time to READ, with all those BABIES!"


He loves writing memos to the other people in our family... some memos we have found (usually on the kitchen counter) over this year...

- "Not to be tuched. Drying beetle. " (found on the kitchen shelf, next to a dead beetle)

- "To enybody From Jiji" (taped to this was a piece of dried red chili that he had found in his food, which his daddy had told him he didn't have to eat... so he left it taped to a memo paper, for "enybody" to have)

- found on my dresser, a memo tucked into one of those name-and-address tags for luggage ... "to Mommy or daddy (どっちでもいい）". [=either one] Unfolding the memo, it said inside, "I don't know what this is But I found it on my Desk"

- next to a folded tissue: "Do not throw away (this is Jiji's to ) (はがぬけたっていみ）" --- he meant to write "tooth" instead of "to", so lucky there was the explanation in Japanese, [=it means my tooth fell out]

- "ecsperiment DO NOT TOUCH" (found next to a cup of mysterious purple liquid)

- "this is for Jiji warning - (Jiji Has already Sucked on it)" -- a memo found next to a lollipop

- "I dident know what to do with the Krust So I left it Here" -- a memo found on the kitchen counter next to some bread crusts

edited to add: I forgot about 2 of the cutest ones, that are attached to our fridge. This one showed up clipped to the fridge a couple of weeks ago, after I bought Jiji some of his favorite milk (MegMilk):

- " to Mommy or daddy thank you so so SO SO So much for the Meg MiLK ♡♡ from Jiji"

- The cutest memo appeared on the front of the fridge a few months ago - "always Need to use the seceret ingridient. (Love♥) "

Daddy liked this one...

Yesterday Daddy was hugging older son (age 12), and started joking around and pretending to dance with him, imitating a girl ...

Daddy (with girl's voice): Oh, where have you been all my life? I love you! Do you love me too?

Big son: No.

Daddy (with girl's voice): Why?? Is it because I'm fat??

Big son: Partly.

Funny kids' language

I love the way my kids speak in Japanese now! They sound just like elementary school boys in Hokkaido. This is not the same as the Japanese you will learn in a textbook. Sometimes they say things I have never heard of!

I cannot translate for "sense", so I will only translate for meaning - sorry, but this means this post will not mean much to anyone who cannot speak Japanese...


Dio (now age 12, in 6th grade):

- speaking to his younger brother: "Sassa to ikeya, mireya!" (Quick, go and look!) - he said this so quickly I didn't get it at first (and I had never heard of this -ya), but brother understood, so I was surprised!

- when dismayed or sympathetic: "Arama..." (Oh dear...)

- after asking Daddy if he ever looks at Mommy naked (Daddy said sometimes), and asking Mommy if she ever looks at Daddy naked (I said I try not to): "Eroda! Futaritomo eroda!!!" (accusatorily) (sexy! both of you are naughty!)

- when told he cannot do something because of such-and-such reason: "Ii-ssho betsuni" (It's okay isn't it)

One of my Hokkaidoian friends who is my age heard him saying "Ii-ssho" and so on, and was happy that he is speaking in Hokkaido dialect (-ssho instead of deshou), and asked him if he ever says "Namara". Apparently when she was younger it was a trendy word for "very". I had never heard of it, but he said a couple of the boys in his class (a bit rougher boys?) do use it. After that conversation, he suddenly started using it now and then, too - a bit of posing? Like, "Namara hayee" (really fast), etc...

- To me when I was in his classroom and he wanted me to look at his football robot: "Mite mina." (have a look)

- When I mistook "Tonkatsu" on a bento-shop menu for something else, and asked the girl at the cash register if it was chicken - Dio said quickly, "Tonkatsu-tte kaiteattara, futsuwa tonkatsudesho?" (well, if it says tonkatsu, it usually means tonkatsu, doesn't it?) ...


Jiji (age 7, in 1st grade):

- "UssSO! UsSO ja nee ka kore!" (No way! What a lie!)

- (last year, learned in kindergarten): "Daamenanda, damenanda, sensei ni yuccharo" (in a singsong voice, "that's bad, that's bad, I'm telling the teacher!"). When he first told us this it was garbled and we couldn't make out what he was saying, but when we asked him about it he said he didn't know the words, but it is what people say just before they go to tell the teacher! So we worked out what he was saying.

- "SuggE! SuggEE kore wa!" (Wow! This is great!)

- to his big brother when big brother is posing: "Kakkou tsukeruna." (quit posing) He was trying to shout something like this down from the chair lift several times, when he saw Dio just nicely practicing his snowboarding turns, down below.

Anyway, I just get a warm and happy feeling when I hear them saying these things. It is just so cute that they have learned to talk like school-age boys. Dio gets plenty of practice in "official" or "adult" Japanese from Kumon, anyway (he takes "Japanese" for foreigners, mostly targeted towards teenagers or adults, not kokugo - the poor thing has to read these endless example sentences about "Smisu-san" - Mr. Smith - and his friends, who are visiting Japan for business and tourism. I think they are trying to make the foreign students feel more connected by putting plenty of nice foreign characters in the stories and examples, but it gets a little wearing because it is about a world of Tokyo "fresh-off-the-plane" Anglo-Gaijin that my son knows nothing about! Complete with sharp-looking noses and friendly Japanese helpers... he keeps plugging away, though - maybe it is entertaining for him to read about the adventures of the hapless adult gaijins... ?).

Odd dates

Younger brother Jiji (7) likes to write on our calendars when we put them up at the New Year. Last year we were surprised to see that he had confidently written "Critsmas" on December 5.

Today I just looked up at our 2007 puppy calendar (from the 100 yen shop), and learned that Feb. 28 is "Leap Year". :)

He has also put "Lucky Day" on every Saturday, and "RKT Day" on every Friday (well, up through mid-April on the calendar, anyway, when he seems to have tired of this project).

Saturday is the day of the week they sleep in our bed (one of us has to go elsewhere, as there is not room for 4 of us), and Friday nights if it is convenient, big brother Dio sleeps with Jiji in the lower bunk bed. I'm not sure what the "T" is for, but R and K are their initials. "Together" maybe?? We found it convenient to set a day of the week for these two special sleeping arrangements, because without a fixed day they were always asking just in case, "Can we sleep in your bed tonight??" and it was annoying being asked this all the time. They do well having a fixed day.

Baby's tooth

Jiji finally lost his first tooth! He's nearly 7 yrs. and 5 mos. old, and he is one of the biggest kids in his class. His baby teeth were looking smaller and smaller, and spreading out. One bottom tooth had become very askew, and stayed that way for a couple of weeks. On Wednesday he was eating some apple in his school lunch, and thought there was an apple seed in his mouth. He found it and it was his tooth! Then he got some blood on his hand, and went to wash his hand, and lost the tooth in the sink. So he came home and asked us for some money, since the tooth fairy wouldn't ever know he had lost his tooth. Then big brother told him point blank that the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny too are all Mommy and Daddy. Mommy and Daddy lied when they said it was someone else. We had been skirting around this issue for some time. He would say, "I don't understand. Magic isn't real, but Santa Claus does magic, and Santa Claus is real..." I would say, "Well, some people think Santa Claus is not real, either..." Reply, "Well, I know Santa Claus is real." "Oh, okay... but some people think he's not real." Etc... at least he didn't seem to mind finding out the truth.

Anyway, since he knew for sure that the money was coming from us, now, he spent the rest of the day reminding me periodically, "Mommy... money?", until I finally gave him a 500 yen coin. He was happy with that and went to put it in his Doraemon piggy bank, where it sits with a few 1 yen coins and 10 yen coins (he doesn't get an allowance yet, and we hardly ever give him money).

So the big question was: "Mommy, but why did you say that you saw the Easter Bunny?" Er, well, I always say I saw the Easter Bunny once, but what I really saw (or think I saw... it was so long ago) was a small gray bunny hopping around the back of the family student housing dormitory, in the middle of the night Sat/Sun. on Easter weekend, at the university in Germany I was attending for a few months when I was 19. The only thing weird about this story is: why would a bunny have been hopping around in the middle of the night? I guess that is why I always say it was the Easter Bunny. It is certainly appropriate that it was near the family student housing dormitory, anway.

Son no. 2 now talks with a bit of a lisp, and now we call him by a new nickname, "dunda-bora" (it means toothless in Punjabi).

Son no. 1 is going to have his graduation ceremony soon, for finishing his baseball team! He's in 6th grade, the season is over, and his team is just for elementary school kids. He will have to read out a 3 page speech that he has written in Japanese. Actually, I was surprised at how well he can make sentences now. It must have been the Kumon. I don't think they practice writing actual sentences much in school. We are so relieved that baseball is finally finishing, because it has been just work, work, work, 3 weekdays and BOTH weekend days every week, with no weekends off (except one for Obon in mid-August) from April to November, for the last 2 1/2 years. And around here, that pretty much destroys any chance of doing anything at the weekend, ever, except having dinner together or (in winter) skiing! It has been great for him and fun for all of us, but now we're really looking forward to doing some other things on the weekends (of course now winter is starting, but anyway... soon!).

To-by!

This is Toby.
Also Toby with his biggest brother!

He's our new baby, and is now 5 1/2 months old. He is a really good boy, who tried his best to hold in his peepee and poo until he is able to go outside. One thing that really surprised us is that he slept through the night on his very first night here! When we got up in the morning, he was quietly sitting in his bedroom area (a large cage under the stairs, where he can see through the door into our bedroom, and see us sleeping!). He had a habit of biting or nibbling at our fingers at first, but he seems to have learned not to, now. When we let him run around the house, he gallops (like a horse) around and around the table, and the children enjoy lying down in his path, so that he jumps over them. He's a Jack Russell Terrier, and we got him in early August, when he was almost 3 months old. The poor little guy had to wait in the pet store for us for 2-3 weeks, while we sorted out a problem with the paperwork and changed our guarantor for renting the house, since our old guarantor would not sign the paper for us to get a dog, although we had assumed that she would. We had already found him and put a small deposit down on him, and we didn't want to give him up, so we did a rush job and found another guarantor (our old guarantor had been asking us to find a new one, anyway). He waited in the pet shop throughout that process.

Our favorite song to sing to him is "To---by!" This is modeled after a song that is famous here, called, "Yuu---ji!", which is sung by a man who is apparently like a Japanese version of Bruce Springsteen. This song "Yuu---ji!" is from the 80's I think, and seems to be about a past friendship with a man or boy called Yuuji. This song is now sung at our pro baseball team's games, whenever one of our players (named Yuuji) comes up to bat! My older son goes around the house singing this song... "Yuu---ji! ..... kaeritai, kaerenai... dadada,dadada, etc..." "I want to go back, but I can't go back, .... "

Jiji words age 2 and 1/4

A sheet I typed up for a babysitter one evening, in England. Jiji was 2 yrs. and 3 mos., and Dio was about 6 and 1/2. Nini and Dudu are real baby words for sleeping and milk in Punjabi, not made up! Jp-jp is the sound of the light sabers, of course.

Here are some words [Jiji] says that may be hard to understand (28/9/01)

“Shishi” or “Jiji” = [Jiji] (he will shout this if someone takes a toy away, or if he wants to do something too, etc)

“Dio” = [Dio]

“too” = me too, I want to go too, etc …

“bed” or “nini” = bed, sleeping, etc.

“dudu” = milk

“bikit” = biscuit

“birim birim” = sweets and snacks

“poo” = he says this after he’s done poo, or sometimes for no reason

“rehreh” = duckies, raisins, or Tweenies (these 3 all sound the same). He’s not allowed too many raisins, though.

“deddy, deddy, do!” = ready, steady, go!

He says a lot of things like “baby happy”, “hello Dio”, “blue car”, “Jiji too!”, “Jiji no bed”, “no nini”, etc. He also says “yes”, “no”, “ta”, “sorry”, etc, quite a lot.

Some of his favourite videos are: “E.T.”, “Jp-Jp” (=Star Wars), “Woody, Buzz” (=Toy Story), “Tory” (=The Neverending Story), and “Asah” (=Arthur). [Dio] can usually find all these videos. Feel free to watch your own T.V. shows too! Put away all the videos then, or he will just sit there trying to put them in. He might whinge for a bit, but he has to learn he can’t watch his own shows all the time.

He likes to do his ABC puzzle, and knows a lot of the letters. Also he likes books, his blocks and choo-choo sets, etc.

He normally has about some milk before bed. This is in his yellow cup, about ½ full with full-fat milk. He doesn’t always finish it, though.

Don’t worry about his potty – he can’t use it yet. If he wants to sit on it he can just sit on it with his clothes on. He should need just 1 more nappy, before bedtime.

Jiji best quotes

Here are some best quotes from my son #2, Jiji (this is not his real name, but what he called himself when he was two). He is 7 now. The other day, he said to his Daddy,


Age 7: "Maybe we are not real after all, but just toys in some big giant's game."


That reminds me of this one. I don't remember the exact wording, but:

Age 6, when shopping with Mommy in a home center: "Is all our life just a dream? Maybe we are just sleeping somewhere in space, and we are dreaming everything." (and no, he has not seen The Matrix!)


Best quote from age 5: "What about Pluto?"

My husband had been reading a novel set in Ireland about 150 years ago, or something like that... in that novel, a way of remembering the planets was described: "Mary's violet eyes make John stay up nights." My husband liked this and told the children about it (big brother Dio was about 9 then, and I was in the room listening, too) -- "You can use it to remember the planets! Mary is for Mercury, Violet is Venus, Eyes is Earth, and so on. So the next time you need to know the order of the planets, just remember that sentence! Me: "Wow, that's really useful, kids!" Dio: "Oh!"
Jiji: "What about Pluto?" Um, oops, none of the rest of us had noticed that Pluto was missing.


Best quote from age 4: "Aktrakjers was a keeper of farm animals. He was born there."

This was on our trip to Barcelona, 3 summers ago. He was pointing to some modern sculpture thing up on a hill. He had mentioned his made-up hero Aktrakjers (pronounced "Actractus" as in some sort of Roman name) before that, but only for a couple of months I think, since just before he turned 4. Aktrakjers is a sort of mythical hero. A lot of the stories remind me of Hercules and the Greek myths, etc... When we moved to Japan (soon after our trip to Barcelona) and started hearing people speaking Japanese a lot around us, he suddenly came up with Bubblippo language and then Bubblippo planet. It's a planet where a lot of things happen differently from here on earth. Except that some of the things are actually found here on earth, too (or have been in the past), but Jiji doesn't know that. For example, "On Bubblippo planet, you can be married to 10 people at the same time!" or "On Bubblippo planet, if somebody does something bad, they will be killed." He made up a whole bunch of other characters and monsters that live there, too. For example, a Finafone is a giant creature that balances on the planet with the tip of one very sharp toenail. The toenail is so sharp, and the giant is so large, that people on the planet can't see him. The size of the planet to him is like the size of a piece of sand to us -- like balancing on a piece of sand with one toenail. Zyn (pronounced "Zene") is the king of the baddies on Bubblippo planet, and he is a heart killer. A heart killer is someone who can make a good person turn into a baddy.

The playcocos are the heroes of Bubblippo planet, and each one has a person power. For example, Aktrakjers's person power is metal. Aktrakjers can do all sorts of incredible things, like climb a mountain that is as tall as the moon, and then ski down it (all in one day), and so on. Aktrakjers is 14 years old, and got his powers when he was 4. He has a little brother Moltred who is about 10 now (I think), and another littler brother, and a couple of big brothers, one being Spike Horn. His daddy's name is Uniclown. All of them have the surname Horn, actually. Uniclown Horn, and so on. His mommy was killed by a Tombodesawatta (a monster like a giant dragonfly), a long time ago. Actually there were no women or girls in the story for a long time, but recently one appeared -- the daughter of Ko Nor, and she will maybe be marrying Aktrakjers in the future.

Aktrakjers used to live on Earth, and he made Bubblippo planet (somehow making it in his chest and then spitting it out), and then he got a rocket and took a lot of Australians to live on it. Sometimes Jiji just goes on and on about Aktrakjers and the other characters and happenings. Often they relate to something happening around us. For example, on a very windy night in a mall parking lot, he said, "There is bad news from Bubblippo Planet. There's a big storm, and a little boy was blown away to Fly Planet, and there are almost only baddies on Fly Planet, and only 8 goodies." etc... There is also Gorilla Planet. Fly Planet and Gorilla Planet are just outlying planets, and not so important in the story... just used whenever another planet is needed. But they do have baseball teams, which play in a league with the teams from Bubblippo Planet. Recently Aktrakjers was injured in a baseball game between his team, the Rhinos, and another team. He was batting, and he hit the ball so hard that the bat shredded into a million tiny pieces, and then he started to run and fell down and broke his leg, or something. Nothing to do with the pieces of shredded bat...

One time last summer we were walking along and he was talking and talking, and I stopped listening for awhile, but then when I tuned back in, he was saying something like, "And then Aktrakjers made a sign in ant language, that said Please do not eat this cheese, and then .... " Later at the park, Jiji did write something scribbly (in ant language) on a bit of paper, made it into a sign, and put it up in the sand box for the ants. A couple of hours later he went to the sand box and couldn't see his sign. He was upset and came to tell me. I said, "Well, don't worry -- ants can't read, anyway!" and he seemed surprised and angry - "What?!".


Best quote from age 3: When his daddy stood him up on top of a barstool in our kitchen -- "This is not a safe place to put me."