"I can't believe I got wings!"

Yep, I had Masaki get me some maxi pads when he was at a Costco warehouse, he tried to get the right thing, but missed it, and was saying "I can't believe I got wings!" for a full day. It was just stinking hillarious to hear him say it.

Our weather has turned towards summer with a nice cool 88 F and 67% humidity. This is typical July weather, usually we are in the middle of rainy season now, so this bodes to be an EVIL summer. Ah well, despite this, we went for a walk/jog in the forest this morning. Yes, you read that right, jog. Despite my long hatred of running, it just seems so fun with the baby stroller that I just bust into a nice stried every half mile or so. I'm sure the novelty will wear off soon, but right now it just seems so nice to be able to run after almost a year of NO running whatsoever. Plus I did this on a night where Clark woke up at 12 and was awake until 1:30, and then woke up at 4:30 to nurse. It was a fun night. Hopefully I can hit my second weightloss goal(I'll miss my first, which ends on July 11th) with this weird exercise stuff. Though making THESE doesn't help.





Oh! I got barley flour from my dad(he bought the barley in the US and ground it here) and so I was able to make Clark some barley banana pancakes. It worked really well, he seems to enjoy them, and his arms don't turn red after eating them. Now if I can just find barley here, ugh!




Here is a picture of a close encounter of the yogurt kind. Clark likes to suck food off of his try by putting his mouth down in it, this is what happens when I spill yogurt in the right spot. If I don't feed him fast enough he lunges for the bowl with his mouth wide open and just sucks down whatever I'm feeding him. It is somewhat like how he goes about breastfeeding. When he knows it's time to nurse he starts to laugh and whine, then when he sees it he starts laughing and hyperventilating and just lunges for it with his mouth open. Crazy kid! Oh, and water, yeah, he likes to drink like Mork (from Mork and Mindy). It is an adventure every meal time.

Respect the Body

Ok, so I just need to vent real quick, sorry no pictures since yesterday. I know, we are horrible parents, but please listen.

As often happens at church in Japan, we have a food party after our main meetings. Well I was in another meeting, and came down to the kitchen looking for my men when it had finished. Daddy was eating, and baby was being cared after by a sweet sister. She is wonderful, and great with kids, but very much lives up to her Latin American roots. Clark was upset when he saw me, because, well, I wasn't holding him, so she automatically assumes he's hungry. This would be a possibility if I hadn't just nursed him 30 minutes earlier. It was obvious to me he didn't really want to eat, especially since he refused the rice I proffered him. I said he wasn't hungry and continued to get my own food. He would have none of it, so sweet sister kept looking after him. Here is the horror part to me, she comes over to be near us, and just takes some cookie thing and feeds it to him. I don't know how I saw it, since I wasn't paying any attention, but I did, and just about died. Why? First, he's allergic to eggs, and his body doesn't tend to agree with wheat flour all that well. Second, I'm trying to raise him a refined sugar free baby until he's three. Thirdly, she didn't even ASK, she just pops it in his mouth, which I then had to fish out with my finger with considerable protest from the baby.

In the grand perspective of things, it really isn't a big deal, but I needed to vent. It just means I need to watch him very closely, and understand that a lot of people aren't going to immediately think 'Hey, should I maybe NOT feed sugar to a young child that is already really active, and probably doesn't need it'. Le Sigh. Ok, and just so everyone knows, I'm not pushing my baby's diet on anyone else, but it is a decision that we've made, ok so I made, but Masaki supports whole heartedly for our kiddies.

We were nice about it, and she was nice about it, so it is all good, but DANG, people, respect parent's dietary needs and choices for other people's kids.

Thanks for letting me vent

p.s. I have a mango pit growing in my kitchen sink.

...because I can..

Yep, I'm posting, just because I can. Clark is sleeping, most of the housework is done, and I can relax for a bit...YEAH! Plus, everything I needed to order from the States to send to my mom before she comes out has been ordered, so we are totally good to go. I'm even feeling a bit more loquacious than usually, maybe it is a good thing the PMS is finished for the month. Though I am afraid the chocolate I consumed last week will leave a lasting impression on my butt. We've had a lot of fun this week, plus Obaachan came over on Thursday night, so we've had an extra play pal for the last two days. She works super hard too, so our house is BEAUTIFUL! Clark is turning into the super walker, he's started using those push toys, so I'm sure he'll be moving on his own in a few weeks. Though his skin isn't doing so well, so I need to figure out what he is allergic to now...oy!



Oh and one more 'me' thing, my yogurt finally worked! Muahhahahaha. I put it out on a warm, not too hot day, and by the end of the sunny day the yogurt was solid...not like cheese solid, but like storebought yogurt solid. It even tasted like real plain yogurt. I think we did it!

Masaki is giving it a go at installing MacOSX on his Windows computer, so we'll see how that goes, and tonights baking project, pumpkin chocolate chip cake with cream cheese frosting.




Clark has some new favorite foods like cheese, pumpkin, green peas, and mushrooms. He doesn't like mango, kiwi, and he tends to be a bit wary of fruit. He spits out his apple juice and makes his 'this is gross, mom!' face. He has also started to dance while he plays his baby piano, it is stinking hillarious. Our plan today is to buy him a new pair of shoes, since he has outgrown his current pair. Good job baby boy!

One last thing, crazy this from English class. I was teaching on Tuesday night, as I am often wont to do, and one of my students starts telling me she was looking up the word consume on her cell phone dictionary and she scrolled down a bit and came to the word consumate. She was surprised, but it reminded her of the word I taught them the previous week, 'shotgun wedding'. The other students we're very confused as to how she came upon this word, and it took some explaining, but they finally understood. It made for an interesting class. Hey, I'm used to it, Masaki used to learn his English from Bevis and Butthead and college boys.

Changing again

Ok, so I promise to stop changing all of this blog stuff around. This will be the last time for a while. I may tweak the design of this site a bit, but, I'll stay at this URL. It is
http://nicole.kaimori.com/blog/

I was just annoyed with the lack of customizability of the iWeb program. So as much as I am loathe to not use something made by Apple, I'm making the switch to blogger. Also, this will hopefully allow me to post while away from home, which will be especially useful as I'll be giving my laptop away at Christmas time!




Anyway, not much to report(I think of 5 million things and then go blank once I start to type), other than Clark has become super duper mobile. Three weeks of crawling, 1 week of climbing and now he can get into almost everything. He has also been able to feed himself a bit with a spoon. Most of the time he misses, but it is the few hits that make it all worth it.




He has also waved bye bye a few times, and is starting to dance. It looks more like he is shaking his head 'no' but since we don't typically do that, and his head shaking often coincides with music, we're pretty sure it is dancing. Masaki and I are, of course, thrilled, especially since we are both dance enthusiasts.



Last, but not least, I want to show off what I made Masaki for Father's Day. Yes, it is a shirt, but I plan to put new hand prints every year, and more as we have more kids, so it is a long term present, and I don't need to think of anything for a long time now. Plus it only took like 5 minutes (including running downstairs to wash Clark's hand before he could eat the paint).



Ok, time for bed, I just wanted to share real quick. Oh and any suggestions on design, font, etc. let me know...things like 'I can't read it the font is too dang blasted small!'

Test baby, test baby

1,2,3,4!

Unofficial Winner

Ok, so first and foremost the unofficial winner is PAMELA! The reason she is unofficial is because she got her second guess in on July 1st, a day after the due date. Now I don't want to be mean, but I can't break rules for family, so that is why she is the unofficial winner, because her second date of the 11th was post due. The stats on the little guy are as follows

C Y K
born: July 11th, 2006 @ 4:57am
size 3094 grams and 49.2 cm or
6 lbs 13.3 oz and 19.3 inches

Black hair and black/blue eyes(seriously not a brownish black, but a blueish black/dark grey)

we've discovered he likes to chew on his shirt and he likes to have his hand held when he cries. He eats a ton and doesn't seem to have mongolian spots(blue butt). Dad(007) says he is extremely cute, which I second. Here have a look!

The birth story

Ok Masaki posted a half post for me, so I'll make a condensed version of the labor story. So I end up getting back pain with my contractions around 5pm ish and call Masaki around 5:30 to tell him to leave work a few minutes early. I also eat since I figure that it might be the last time for a while. So after that I hopped in the bath to help ease the pain. Afterwards I rest for a bit, but the contracts are pretty frequent so about 9 pm I start having Masaki time them, and it finally got too bad around 10:45 and I made him call the hospital. They told us yes definitely come in, since contractions were about 6 minutes apart then, and I couldn't talk very well anymore. So we got here on one of the most painful car rides of my LIFE and checked in. This time I let them wheel me up to the maternity ward in a wheel chair. I lay down there and deal with stuff the 'hypnobirthing' way for a while, which started to not work as well as it got worse. Ohh yeah I was only 3 cm when I got here too, which I wasn't too happy about, but oh well I can wish for more, right? Well time actually passed pretty quickly, but painful. I was begging Masaki for some drugs. All I gotta say is why choose natural when you can have an epidural? Well we didn't have the choice, so natural it was.
Masaki says no pain no gain. I'd hit him if he wasn't holding the baby. Anyway back to the story. After throwing up ALL OVER the place, and getting another shower, I didn't even bother standing anymore. I was shaking too bad. The other lady was taken to delivery and I was able to calm down a bit with less distraction. It still hurt, but I could focus better. Though I started noticing my body was starting to push, which I thought was odd. I tried to resist it but after a while it was just too strong, so we called the nurse over and asked her what was going on, and she said not to worry the baby was just dropping, and so she left to tend to the other lady who'd just delivered, and not a minute later my water broke, so we called her back and she checked me out and said the baby was coming. I had like 5 minutes of strong contractions, and that is when hypnobirthing went out the window and what the lady was telling me made more sense, so I followed her lead in the delivery room. We weren't there for even a whole hour when he finally made his entrance into the world. I was doing as ok as can be expected, but I thought Masaki was going to pass out. His hands were turning white(not from me), and he was shaking. It was a mixture of a freaky, fast experience, fatigue and cold he says that made him shake. We all got a nap after a few minutes of staring at the baby. We just slept on the delivery table. We finally had to part at 7 when dad got to go home and take a nap and so did I, but a lot shorter one. So that is the story of Clark and his entrance.