dotty

* recently when I look at the clock it seems to be spooky times, like "11:11" this morning.

* L turned 2m.o. yesterday - TOO fast!! Am loving every minute of him, and so now trully understand when other mummy friends say things like "I want another BABY". Me too...already, lol! I can't believe he is growing so fast.

* am feeling very blessed having found such great friends here in japan - this week I managed to catch up with several mummies from playgroup I used to go to. It has been ages since I had seen them, since we moved, and I now realise how much I miss them, but it is great to be able to meet again after 6months or so, and still have a great time.

* niku-jaga for dinner. With lots of hoku-hoku potatoes in there. YUMMO

* 2months after giving birth. I really need to stop on the excuses and start getting myself BACK. Unfortunately, not only do I have flummy to deal with, I have some serious flighs, and flarms that need blasting! I know you should never say "I will start tomorrow" but I am going to. Actually, am gonna say I am starting from July 1 - that means NO MORE COOKIES (well, not as many as I am eating now at least ;D and being serious about drinking water.) In general, we are eating ok, I think, trying to keep the vege intake up. It is really just the sweets and snacking that need to be dealt with. And I also need to start to get serious about some excercise.

* did several loads of washing today. Lots of early morning starts this week has meant that I couldn't get the washing hang out (the balcony is off the room where K and J are sleeping, so I wait until they are up to hang it out.) But with rainy days and then yesterday we left the same time as J, the laundry has been building up.

* now I just gotta fold up several loads of washing (ok, I dont mind doing this)

* then I gotta put it all away.AAAARRRRGGGGH. not my favourite at all.

* been looking at pre-schools, scouring for information. Am going to the closest pre-school for I guess what equates to a trial day/open day. Also signing up for lots of classes for K, like "リトミック”and a swimming class next week. I am not sure if we will be putting K into pre-school from next year or not. 3years of pre-school kinda sounds like a lot to me, and I am keen to keep her English language ability up as much as possible, so would prefer her to stay out of the all-Japanese schooling environment at this stage...... Anyone gone down the non-3 years pre-schooling route? Any comments?? I know she needs some kind of stimulation other that just playing with me, so I would like to find something that we could do instead of regular Japanese pre-school (maybe not every day, but 1-2 times a week). Although sometimes when she is giving me the shits with some temper tantrum or disobedience, I feel like I wanna put her into boarding school, let alone pre-school every day.

* K watching Dora, L asleep on my lap. Thurs afternoons are great!

no car, no tv and no husband

Well, the no-car and no-husband thing go hand in hand - J has gone surfing for the weekend in Chiba, staying at a friend's house, with several mates. I couldnt be arsed going, dragging the kids there only to sit in someone else's house. As it turns out, I wasn't even invited (by J that is, the other friends were asking where I am...)

AND as it turns out, I am stuck at home without a car - obvious, but it only hit me on Fri evening before J was leaving that he would be driving, so I would be carless. And I had planned a big weekend of hitting the shops (trying to get presents for some parties this week). Had also waited until Sat to do the grocery shop, as the supermarket has 5times the points on Sat, until 3pm. We needed rice, so a big buy like that is worth waiting to get the extra points (which you get cash-back vouchers for). Unfortunately, I ended up having to lug a 5kg bag of rice home in the stroller...together with a 14kg kid in it, while carrying a 5 kg kid on self, as well as the 8L of milk and juices I ついにbought, since am so used to always shopping by car, and kinda forgot that I still had to get them home. We walked down to the shops this morning, but with all that load, I caught the train back - even that was hard enough in itself trying to manouver the overloaded stroller on and off the train. Kinda shows me how much I have become used to the big weekly shop (as opposed to daily or every other day "picking" like I used to do when we lived less than 5mins from the supermarket....)

And the no-tv...well, of course everything happens at once, and when J is away. With the wind and rain last night, I got woken to a big thud about 3am - the bloody antenna had come clean off the roof!!! It was only supported with a single pole screwed in with 4 measly screws into the side of the wall near the roof, actually, and it all came crashing down last night. I was out there in PORING RAIN at 3am trying to somehow tie it up to the clothes line on the balcony to stop it from bashing into the wall with the wind (the antenna cord was still attached, so the antenna was seriously just dangling there). What fun. Rang the co that installed it for us last year, but they wont come out before Monday, so we are tv-less over the weekend. Not such a biggie as dont really watch J-TV that much any more, but it does mean that I will miss the Japan-Holland game tonight, boo-hoo.

But it also means that we have had 3 big walks today - r got a walk this morning, before we headed out to the next station to do some shopping (and window shopping, more miles) then we even took R out for an afternoon walk, after K woke up from her nap to take advantage of the non-rainy day while we can.

And I am keeping myself entertained with tv-shows online (current show in favour is "Being Erica"), although I really should just go to bed and try to do some catch^up sleeping while I can...but I have always been more of a night person, and find it hard to get to bed much before midnight most nights. Unfortunately L usually wakes for another feed about 1am, (then 3am, then 5am, then up for the day at 6:48am, or so he has been the last few days, seriously, can almost set my clock to the morning wake up) so not much catch up can happen unless I go down when he does after his 9pm-ish feed....

And tomorrow is (self-appointed) clean-up day, so an early night would be a good idea. Maybe after just another episode....

day 2 of the 5am challege

and I totally flaked it.

Just went straight back to sleep (sitting up in bed with L in my arms!! lol)
Looks like I am with you, Nay and Lulu and the "not before 7am biz" haha.

I don't feel bad though - I must have been on some spring cleaning high yesterday, and actually got more cleaning and househould stuff done in the afternoon too, so today I kinda feel ok to just vege. This is always my problem but - try to do it all one day, then crash and burn and then spend the next week veging, then have to do a mammoth clean the next week. Oh well. Baby steps.

Today we are heading to the local ymca for a free kids concert ("with all your favourites from Okasan-to-issho", or so they say on the flier), which starts at 10:30am. It is a bit overcast though, so not sure if we should ditch the idea of walking and drive instead. Hmmm. Anyway, gonna make some onigiri to take with us.

early morning wake up call

For the last few nights the little fella has decided that the hours between 3am and 6am are to be his "fun time". Lets just say not so much fun for mummy... But he is back to "normal"(??!!??) today with sleeping through until about 5am, then wanting to be awake. Sooooooo, I have had a bit of a revelation: instead of just sitting around in the bedroom trying (in vain) to get him back to sleep, that I should actually GET UP!

yep

start MY day at 5am too!!!!

crazy way of thinkin', ain' it! lol.

I am NOT by any stretch of the imagination a morning person, but I have realised that if I put my mind to it, I can get up and actually GET SOMETHING DONE while the kids (or at least one of them) is still asleep. I have even done it once or twice before today, too ;-). And obviously now that it is nearing summer, it is light outside from about 4am or something rediculous anyway!!

So this morning, it was a 5am wake up call. And a very productive one at that: I got a load of washing hang out, and another put in the machine; took the dog for a walk - there is my morning exercise too:-),managed to get a blog post in, and even got a cuppa, all before 7am!

And on my walk, I saw several houses with their washing already hanging out too - so obviously this revelation of getting up early to do things has hit others too (insert cheeky grin) coz of course no on in Japan would hang out their washing the night before or worse still not bring it in overnight (insert cheeky grin times two).

But one thing that has me baffled: why is it that 99.9% of the time, babies will wake up anytime you try to put them down quietly after being in the sling or held when you DONT want them to wake up, but if you put them down somewhere innapropriate (like on the sofa, where they can possibly roll or fall off) for just a second so you can get the baby bjorn ready, then why is it that the STAY in a DEEP sleep only then? When you can't even really leave them there for fear of them falling off the sofa??)

Anyway, still got a bit of time before the fam wakes up (although I assume that all my "tiptoeing" around has probably woken J up at least) and we head out to playgroup today. What fun thing can I do for the next 45mins or so of my new-found FREE TIME? haha.

maggies and crows (and bears).....oh, and turtles

I remember when I was at primary school, we had to walk through a park along the waterfront on the way to school that has these huge trees in it, and there were nesting magpies there. They used to swoop down on you if you walked under them during nesting season. Magpies are notorious for it!

There is even a list of magpie HOTSPOTS to be avoided! (fwiw, I just love "Dave's" comment there about how he "was intending to go for a walk to loose weight but I gained a PHOBIA !!!",
and also the response from Matty D who writes: Next time he swoops you, bash that little once with your sunday mail! It will be the last time he bothers you! No need to use excessive force. Just a reminder of who’s boss! )

anyway, when we were growing up, a friend's younger brother always seemed to be picked on all the time by the maggies. We used to wear special "hats" (ice-cream buckets on our heads with little eyes drawn on them) to try scare the maggies off. Dont know if it really worked or not, but cool hats, and a great excuse to eat more ice cream!!

(But as Geoff writes: a friend told me that placing an ice cream container on your head is good protection, but be sure you have all the ice-cream out first ! Otherwise you will look like the Magpie got ya ! ) Of course there is always the suggestion from a commenter on this site who writes: i prefer to wear a fashionable tin pot on my head whilst out and about. that way they see the shiny metal, go for you, but you chuckle to yourself cause you know you have adequate protection and once they swoop it'll be 'THWACK' on the beak for them fuckos.


But I digress....



Anyway, over the weekend, we were walking out from PIL house to the train station, going past a big uni with lots of trees in the grounds, and all of a sudden a young lass coming towards us was swooped on my a crow! At the same time, another kid on a bike was yelling out to his mate that "someone else has got attacked by the crow". I so didn't know that crows swooped like this during nesting season. But now that I do, I was shit-scared walking down to the park yesterday morning as there was one m-f*ker of a crow watching us the whole time.... I was swinging my arms around mine and L(in the baby bjorn)'s head as well as K's head too, freakin out that the crow was gonna get us. Luckily we escaped unharmed!

So of course in my twisted logic, this all made me think of the mighty brisbane bears (follow the logic: AFL teams Adelaide Crows and Collingwood Magpies), who seem to be not so mighty this year, and are actually no longer bears, but in fact lions. My brother sent over a super cute Lions supporter onesie and bib for L! Now if only we can get back to Aus during footy season one year to go to a game (sigh). And now both my niece and nephew are playing AFL too. To think when I was growing up, if you even hinted at any ball sport other than rugby (=league in primary school. Union in high school was acceptable, lol) you were laughed at. Now AFL has such big support even in Qld.

As for the turtles? Well, we visited friends over the weekend, and there was a small matsuri going on at their local shrine, in Kamata, Ota-ku. We went to have a peek, and I was stunned by the number of food and game stalls that were set up for this tiny shrine. I swear there was at least 500 stalls! But the most interesting one was the turtle scooping/fishing (亀すくい）stall. Catching goldfish has always been associated with matsuri (and even with the Ekka back home in Bris when I was a child) but TURTLES! I SO wanted to have a go, but J wouldn't let me - he said they were "green turtles" and they grow up to be quite big in size. Bummer, they looked so cute, and I reckon I could have scooped up a few ;-)

beating the flummy with Mr Donuts

After a restless night, where SOMEONE (no names being mentioned, but it was a very small SOMEONE) decided that the hours of 3am-6am were going to be playtime, I woke up feeling suprisingly ok and almost energetic. It was looking overcast, so thought should rush out for R's walk - we only got as far as the bottom of the stairs (although there are something like 108 of them) to the park, when the rain started. We turned back once, but I had to post a letter, and K had her umbrella with her, so decided just to keep going to the letterbox. It started getting heavier on the way back though - well, bigger blobs of rain more than lots of it. Still, not that wet.

OMG - just as i sat down, DD has woken up from her nap. Lets see if this post ever gets finished. for now, it's play time.

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5 hours later
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Kidlets 1 and 2 are asleep (well, in bed at least for K, and out for the moment for L anyway), J is at the gym and I have 5 seconds to myself (to either clean the living room of all the paper that K has simply "cut" - she is INTO scissors at the moment, or finish clearing the dishes in the sink, or put in that load of washing to be washed overnight....or just sit here.) I actually just filled in my calendar for this month...there seems to be a lot going on! I love summer, with all the meet ups with friends etc. Am hoping to have several bbqs here over coming weekends too (now that we have GRASS in the backyard, whoo-hoo) - just gotta get ourselves organized.

Um, so cant remember what this post is supposed to be about. I think the main thing I wanted to say was that I well and trully deserved my donuts from MR DONUT today. After our morning walk in the semi-rain, we dropped R off at home then basically headed straight out again (by this time the rain had stopped) and walked all the way to the next train station,about 25mins away, to go to the bank and just have a general looksie around. I got some french bread to bring home for dinner, and some onigiri for lunch (as the bread shop didnt have anything much to my fancy for lunch) and sat down at the shopping mall to eat it before dropping in to MR Donuts for a special treat of a donut each, and 4 to bring home for dessert (yes, they are well and trully eaten up by now). And just to make sure I really deserved hte donuts, we walked home! UP the continuous slope. Dont know how long it took, but pushing a 14kg kid in a stroller with a near 5kg kid strapped to your flummy body has to be doing some good, right?!?

And now that I seem to still have a few seconds (fingers crossed) I am gonna tidy the monthly budget and finances. Tomorrow is supposedly rainy, so we are gonna CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN (well, that is the PLAN anyways....). Feeling kinda motivated for a bit of spring cleaning, actually!