Posts Tagged ‘church’

Even though we decided not to celebrate Halloween, I am not against a good, candy-filled party! Our church, Faith Baptist Church, puts on a harvest festival, as many churches do. Matt had to sleep, but I brought the boys so Rhino could get some fun in. It was a good mommy break for me too as I got to hand off Heron to some ladies who have missed holding a little one. And right now Heron loves strangers and didn’t seem to miss me at all!

A lot of the games at the festival were a little old for Rhino, but we adapted them so he could enjoy them. There was a “Fishers of Men” game where you had to hold a fishing rod with a hook on the end of the line and pick up tiny plastic men out of a kiddie pool. Rhino got lots of help. There was also a Jonah game where you’d put a golf ball into a whale’s mouth. Rhino got down on his tummy and placed the ball in the mouth, but I eventually got him to roll the ball. He did successfully knock down the “walls of Jericho” (stacked cardboard bricks) by throwing a tennis ball. He couldn’t use the Nerf slingshot to shoot a ball through the hole in Goliath’s head, but he did slam-dunk it in if I held him up! I didn’t even want to bother with the “Blind Bartimaeus” game where you are blindfolded and feel around in a bowl of rice for tiny safety pins. I could just imagine the mess! There was a face-painting station and Rhino looked at the sheets of clipart and pointed to the colorful train engine. He sat still the whole time while it was painted on his face and it was so cute! The last game we played was by far his favorite — the cake walk! What’s not to love? There’s music and cake, two of Rhino’s favorite things ever! We walked around a few times as I held his hand and he kept trying to walk away. Soon enough all the little kids walking around in a circle wanted to hold his hand too, so I got to sit back. He got a little bored of trotting in a circle and would break free to dance in the middle of all the numbers. Whatever he likes! We did win a cake and he picked out a white frosted cupcake and ate that while dancing for the cake-walking kids. It was a great time and went on for seven hours, but we didn’t stay nearly that long.

Afterward, we headed to the Weasel’s Den to crash a birthday party my friend Sarah had driven down for. We met some new people and Rhino had a great time eating grapes and playing! I had found Sarah’s blog a year ago and really enjoyed reading it then found out that she comes down to Misawa (from the Aomori area) once a month, so we arranged to get together. We haven’t hung out much yet, but I enjoy chatting with her when we have and look forward to her future visits. Her blog is a great read, too!

Matt and I both grew up trick-or-treating, dressing up, gorging ourselves on candy, attending Halloween parties, and doing all those festive things that normal kids do. Now that Rhino is walking, most people have assumed that he would be going trick-or-treating this year and ask me what he will be. Well, I’m all for tiny kids dressed up in sweet little costumes. Rhino has the greatest monkey pajamas that make me just die of cuteness overload! But, he’s not dressing up for Halloween. No, not even as something nice like a puppy dog or a super hero. Or even as Moses or an angel.

Matt and I have been talking about it on and off all year, actually. Should we celebrate Halloween? What’s the harm? We both did and we turned out okay. It kept coming up again and again though because it just didn’t sit right with us. A lot of people in our church don’t celebrate Halloween and until last year I had never questioned the holiday. I know just because kids trick-or-treat it doesn’t mean they’ll grow up to worship Satan. I know that plenty of good people see nothing wrong with Halloween. I wanted to do some research and see what it is exactly that we have been participating in.

Well we did a lot of reading and found some interesting history. We were given a tract about Halloween a little while ago that pretty much sums it all up. Some of the points are not as important to me or I see as a little extreme. We have decided that it’s not something that we need to participate in. Even if we dress up, put up creepy decorations, and trick-or-treat without intending to be sinister, it is still imitating a tradition that definitely not Godly. There are plenty of opportunities for our boys to have fun and we will enjoy other traditions, but I think this is one that we can do without. Plus, all that candy? Hoooboy! I know, we’re such a killjoy!

The women in our church had a nice Ladies’ Fellowship last night, hosted by our pastor’s wife. The theme was friendship and it’s always uplifting to read and share about good friends. We had some delicious snacks and a jewelry exchange, which was done White Elephant-style (but we are all way too nice to steal from each other, I guess, so we just took turns grabbing something pretty!) I got a cool silver bracelet, a black Hawaiian beaded necklace, and a silly pom-pom hair tie (mostly for Rhino to play with, haha!) We also drew names for our Secret Sister, which will run until August. I haven’t participated in one of these before, but it sounds like lots of fun! At church we can leave each other little anonymous notes of encouragement or small gifts, pray for our Sister during the week, and try to (sneakily!) get to know her better! We’ll see if I can keep the secret well enough or if my Sister will figure me out in the next three months!

Hooray, it’s Easter!

Usually I like to make a bigger deal out of it than we did this year. I don’t know, I just wasn’t up for it. Our plans were to go to church, brunch at the club, and do an egg hunt and chocolate with Rhino. Well, I haven’t been sleeping well and woke up feeling horrible this morning. I started getting what Matt describes as pre-migraine auras (but I’ve never had a migraine before and thankfully, didn’t today) and was really sick to my stomach. So Matt went to the Easter service at church and I tried to sleep, but Rhino stayed home with me and had WAY too much energy for me to rest, haha! Well, of course I didn’t feel like going out to brunch after Matt got home from church either, so we just sort of sat around all day. We read in our bible about Jesus’ resurrection, read Rhino his “The Best Thing About Easter” book. I made a cute little Easter basket for him out of an woven basket with handles we had in the bathroom and one of his play silks as a little strap. I found a bunch of colored paper from old church pamphlet inserts that we ran through the shredder for basket “grass.” Then Matt hid eggs out in the back yard. Rhino still isn’t too interested in walking around in the grass (it’s not even enough for him? Is it too dirty?) So he wasn’t really into finding the eggs. He did see his cool car he likes to ride on, and there was an egg hidden on that, which is the only egg he actually found on his own. He did put all the eggs in his little basket, though! I think next year he’ll be a lot more interested in this sort of thing. We didn’t really do lots of candy or anything for him this year. He likes ducks a lot and I found a cute little candy duck (which looks like his rubber duckies) for him. At first he’d just play with it, until Matt bit the duck’s head open. Then it probably took Rhino 2 or 3 minutes to devour the whole, sweet mess. I’m sure he thought this Easter was a success! I wanted to get photos, but my old camera (Sony) won’t power up for some reason (I can’t wait to get the new replacement camera in!) So no pictures or anything. I feel pretty guilty that I didn’t go to church or prepare a nice meal or get any photos, but there will be more Easters for me to do all of that when I’m not pregnant, icky feeling, and feeling down. At least it was a beautiful day that I got to spend with my two favorite fellows and think about how awesome our Lord is!

Hello, darling!

Your mommy has been a little lazy about writing your letters the few months! So much has happened, but I’m going to only talk a little bit about it this time.

9 Month Letter (Nov 13, 2008)

During your eighth month you started to “army crawl”: pulling yourself forward with your arms while lying on your stomach. You got around for about three days like that before you figured out you can use your hands and knees to move, too! Now you are all over the place!

You didn’t have a doctor’s appointment this past month, but we did weigh you in. You still haven’t gained any weight since we checked when you turned 8 months, so the doctor did want to see what is going on. You were a little sick for a week and you’ve been getting more exercising with crawling, so the doctor isn’t worried at all.

You’ve been trying more solid foods lately, too. We haven’t yet found anything you won’t eat! You are great about eating your vegetables and this month tried steamed broccoli, which you had lots of fun with. You also like mangoes, kiwi slices, and cottage cheese.

This month you traveled a little bit to the towns around us. We went to Rokkasho for their yearly Salmon Festival. You got to see lots of big fish swimming in the river and also in the pools at the festival. Daddy was hoping to get to catch a salmon with his hands, but we didn’t get to the festival early enough. You had fun snuggled up with me and looking at all the Japanese people, fish, and food.

The big news of this month is that Daddy and I found out that you are going to be a big brother next summer! This is very exciting for us because we knew we wanted you to have a little brother or sister that was close to your age to play with. You went with us to my first doctor’s appointment, where we got to hear Little Baby’s heartbeat and even watch a little movie of him or her! It would be neat if you were a little older and knew what was going on so you could be excited too, but I know when the baby comes you will be such a fantastic brother and you two will have so much fun together!

10 Month Letter (Dec 13, 2008)

Now you’re 10 months old and the last month has been very busy! You are crawling around everywhere and starting to get into things! Daddy and I have to put more thought into what we leave around on the floor or what doors we leave open so you don’t get into something you shouldn’t. It’s a lot of work!

In November you saw your first snow fall. It was exciting for Daddy and I because it was our first snow since we’ve been here in Japan, and we haven’t seen any in quite some time! We took you out in the backyard so you could get a closer look, but you really just wanted to eat it. I’d walk you up to the snow on the tree branches or pick some up in my hand for you to get a better look and you’d just reach forward with your mouth to get a taste!

This month we also started our vacation back to the US to see all our family for Christmas. You got to take a couple of trains to get to Tokyo, then fly from Japan to California and were really good, considering how long you’d been up and how long the flight was! In the airport in Tokyo, waiting for our delayed plane to California, you started “cruising”. Daddy was eating some french fries and had them sitting on the chair and you were crawling around on the floor. When you saw those french fries, you pulled right up on a chair and walked yourself down to get a bite! You poor thing, you worked so hard to get over to the snacks, but of course we didn’t let you have any! Food seems to be your biggest motivation to try new things! We spent a little time in California where you got to see some people from our old church, who you’d met before (but you were just born and definitely wouldn’t remember!) We went to see our friends the Lasleys and their little girls. Unfortunately, when we stopped by the girls were asleep, though it would have been fun to see you with them! I know we’ll see all of them again though, and you’ll have a good time when you get to meet up with them then. We took another plane from California to Texas, to see your Pop (my father), Dandy (my grandfather), and GG (my grandmother) as well as all your great uncles & aunt, etc! You turned 10 months in Texas and had a nice trip meeting and visiting with lots of people.

When we’re at home, I usually feed you some baby food that I made or pieces of our meals and rarely ever use normal baby food. We thought that for the long trip, we’d pick some up in case there were meals that we couldn’t give to you or we were unable to cook for you. I was a little worried that, since you don’t eat baby food at home, you wouldn’t really like it. Boy, was I surprised! You ate lots of baby food from jars on the airplane, in the airports, in California, and in Texas and loved it! You’ve become a lot more demanding for food lately, too! When you see me start to get food ready, you’ll whine and hold your fists out and shake a little. Sometimes you even yell at me to “hurry up!” I know that you just get hungry, need to learn a little bit of patience, and really, really like your food!

11 Month Letter (Jan 13, 2009)

You spent your tenth month mostly back in the states, still visiting over Christmas. After we finished visiting my family in Texas, we flew to New York to see Daddy’s family. It was much colder there and you met even more people who were very happy to see you! We spent most of our time with Grandma, Grandpa, and your Aunt Jen at home. Other family members and friends would come over to visit and everyone enjoyed just watching you crawl and cruise around the room, eat your meals, play with toys, and they took lots of pictures of you! You got so much attention and really seemed to enjoy it. We visited at Mom-mom and Pop-pop’s (Daddy’s grandparents) home and they had lots of people over to visit. We got to meet another baby boy, Mitchell, who is just 3 weeks older than you (Daddy’s cousin’s son!) You two had fun pointing at and touching each other and playing peek-a-boo around a chair! Mom-mom and Pop-pop have a staircase, which you hadn’t ever seen much of (right now we live on one floor.) We wanted to see what you would do with stairs, and to our surprise you took right to them! You zipped up eight stairs and then weren’t quite sure how to get down.

We weren’t in New York over Christmas, but we had an early Christmas so we could all celebrate together. You received lots of wonderful toys and handsome clothes and are having so much fun playing with everything. One of the best gifts you got was a little baby piano that plays notes and songs, lights up, and is just your height. Now that you can pull up to a stand on things, it’s so much fun to watch you play with this. One of your cutest recent developments is “dancing” to all kinds of music. While at the piano, you will play a couple notes or start a song, then rock back and forth, and repeat this over and over. You had so much fun with the piano!

We noticed your dancing skills last month when I would sing to you or put on music. It started out with just rocking back and forth, but you’ve developed all sorts of new “moves” since then. Anytime someone would sing a song to you (Grandpa would sing “yummy, yummy, yummy in my tummy, tummy, tummy” while you’re eating), put on Christmas music, or play a toy that makes music, you’d immediately start “be-bopping” (this is what Daddy calls your dancing!) We love it and can’t get enough of it!

After New York, we flew to California to see Grammy (my mother.) Your Aunt Andrea, Uncle Michael, and cousin Amelia, as well as Uncle Matt and his girlfriend Adria came to visit at the same time as well. Amelia is just a week younger than you are and we were all very excited for you two to meet! You guys were so cute together and seemed to have quite a good time! In Colorado you met Jack and Tilley, Grammy’s two little dogs (you also met Jasmine and Mugsy at Grandma and Grandpa’s, so you had seen dogs before.) You didn’t like when they’d lick at your face, but you did enjoy being around and them and petting their fur. We had lots of fun at Grammy’s, going out to eat, making lots of food in the kitchen, relaxing with your aunts and uncles, and having Christmas!

Christmas with you was a great time! Daddy and I went to church on Christmas Eve and Aunt Andrea and Uncle Michael stayed to watch you. When we came back, you sat up with Daddy and I as we opened some gifts. Then when we woke up on Christmas morning, you and Amelia got to dig around in your stockings for some neat books and car toys! We had lots of presents under the tree for the two of you. Neither of you seemed to want to tear the paper off the gifts, but you really did want all the bows! Once the paper was off, you did have fun with it and the ribbons. You both got some wonderful new books, stuffed animals, Little People toys, and some very nice clothes. Even more people came over Christmas afternoon to meet you and eat more food! After Christmas we did more fun things like going to see a cave, which you really enjoyed. When we were in a big, echo-y room underground, you would babble and make all sorts of cute sounds!

You were extra-good on the flight back to Japan (it was an even longer than the flight to the States!) and on the three trains to get back home. You were wonderful to travel with, but we probably won’t go so far away again anytime too soon! You can read more about our December visits in the US in an earlier post I made.

Sorry, baby, for the long letter that covers the last three months! I will be better in the future about not skipping these so that you can learn about what your life was like as a little boy. As always, Daddy and I love you so much and are having the best time of our lives getting to know you better each day!

Hugs and Kisses,
Mommy

I see that my last post date is in October. I’ve been stopping by to write something for weeks, but really, I’ve just been intimidated. So much has happened in the past three months, I’ll never find the time to write about it all! Well, now that I’ve gotten down to it, I’m giving you the extremely abridged version!

I’m really not remembering much about November! A few things stick out, though. Rhino started crawling around, we got our first Misawa snow (and Rhino’s first snow ever!), we had two nice Thanksgivings (one with the church, then a second in our home with our friends), and we discovered we’re going to have another baby in July ’09! This of course is very exciting and just the age spacing we were hoping for. Thanksgiving was nice, too, and not very hectic at all. Liz, Nicole, and I split up the responsibilities. Really, all I had to do was make up some cranberry sauce and veggies and provide a clean home. The food was all wonderful and we had a terrific first Thanksgiving in Japan!

December will take a while to describe. I had my first prenatal appointment and we saw the ultrasound of our 8 week-old little bean! Heart’s beating, there’s only one in there, everything’s looks fine, that was about it! Two days later we began our trip back to the States to visit with family for Christmas. This was wonderful, but tiring! I’m so glad we got to see all our family (though not as many friends as I had initially hoped. Everything was getting too hectic!) and have Rhino meet the rest of the folks that didn’t get to come out when he was born.

Matt wrote up a big post about the horrible details of the travel itself. He pretty much covered it all, though he didn’t mention how uncomfortable a 9 or 12 hour flight is for a pregnant woman with morning sickness. Airplanes definitely were not my friends. I won’t take this space to complain further about travel and how we never want to step foot on an airplane again (we can stick out Matt’s career here and retire in Japan!) All our destinations made the flights more than worthwhile.

We flew into LA, so we decided to rent a car and drive up to Lompoc to see our friends and recuperate for the weekend. We left at 10pm on a Friday evening and it’s an overnight flight across the international dateline to California. When I booked this flight, I just assumed: leave Friday evening, overnight flight, land Saturday morning. I know, now that I think about it, it doesn’t make any sense. When we landed in CA and the captain said that it was 2pm on Friday, I was so confused! I hadn’t planned to arrive on Friday! So, it was my first time going back in time! We picked up our car and, 3 seconds off the lot, Matt almost gets into an accident! We’ve gotten quite used to driving on the left side and very slowly in Japan. When we got on the freeway, Matt felt all nervous that he was going so fast! Well, “so fast” is 45mph and he definitely needed to kick it up a bit, as everyone else was going 80! It was scary interesting watching him get used to driving in the US again. We arrived in Lompoc, called everyone we knew, didn’t get through to anyone, so we stayed in a hotel. It was nice to just relax and decompress from the long trip by ourselves. On Saturday (the real Saturday, not the Saturday in my confused head) we met up with Wayne and Rena, the wonderful couple from church that took us in as their “kids” (theirs had all moved out) and led the Bible study we attended for 2 years. It was nice to spend the weekend with them, have a little group reunion with some other church people, and show Rhino off. We also met up with our friends Denna, Adam & Ty. We went out to for an Italian dinner to catch up and gab. They ordered a plate of pasta for Tyler (2), but we discovered Rhino is nuts for pasta, and pretty much ate Ty’s whole plate! That was the first we saw of Rhino vehemently demanding table food and it was quite amusing, though slightly embarrassing to be out in a restaurant with a baby who yelled for food as if we hadn’t given him any for months! After church on Sunday we went over to Jody and Roy‘s to see their sweet baby girls, have some lunch, and catch up. The weekend was so short and we were fighting to stay awake during the day, so we didn’t end up doing all that I had planned. I couldn’t get a hold of Danielle and would have loved to stop by work (it was drill weekend), but it just didn’t happen. We drove back down to LA on Sunday night, got another hotel (oh my, another whole big terrible story, too!) and caught a flight to Dallas the next morning.

These descriptions will probably get shorter, now, as there’s still plenty more. Texas was nice. Papa was the only one to have met Rhino, back in March, so it was wonderful that all my uncles, aunt, grandparents, etc. got to meet him! Unfortunately, Rhino hadn’t gotten used to the time zones yet and had just started teething again, so he was pretty grumpy a lot of the week. We kept busy, though. We had a nice Mexican lunch out at the Tupinamba, a restaurant that my family always goes to when I come to visit! We got to see my brother, Matthew, who also lives in Dallas and finally meet his girlfriend, Adria. The five of us went to Ripley’s Believe it or Not, had lunch at Chili’s, and went over to their apartment for dinner and board games. Over the week we got plenty of gaming in — Sequence, Clue, Phase 10, Scattergories — and watched a couple of movies (Eagle Eye, The Other Boleyn Girl, As Good As It Gets). I also went with Grandmother and Aunt Pattie to a quarterly ladies’ luncheon at their church, which was really great! We had a delicious lunch, browsed through second-hand goodies to buy to support their Friendship House, and listened to a wonderful pianist and singer perform Christmas songs. Then on Friday, Papa took us out to the Granada, sort of his second home, with Matthew and Adria to see Bruce Robison & Kelly Willis. It wasn’t exactly our style of music, but it was nice to get out and see the theater and hang out with my dad and brother. We couldn’t bring Rhino, so it was his first time with a babysitter, Papa’s friend Kay. I was really worried that I’d get him to sleep at her house, leave, then he’d wake up and cry and never go back down for her. He did wake up a couple hours after we had left, and he cried for a little bit, then fell back asleep — I was quite impressed! Rhino got a few cute gifts from the Texas family. Papa got him some clothes, including a cute Dallas Cowboys onesie. Rhino also got a Bible stories book and a 2008 coin set. It was a nice time visiting with all the family and I’m glad they finally got to meet Rhino! We left Sunday morning for the next leg of our trip: New York!

Okay, so these aren’t getting much shorter! Well, not to New York. We flew into Buffalo and Matt’s parent’s were there to take us down to Obi. Matt’s sister, Jen, was waiting at home for us and everyone was so excited to see Rhino (and us, I guess!) We got in pretty late, so we pretty much went straight to bed. The rest of the week was filled with a lot of family (Matt has a lot of family close by!) visiting and staring at, taking pictures of Rhino! We went over to Mom-mom and Pop-pop’s one night to meet up with lots of aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.! Rhino got to meet Mitchell, a little boy just 3 weeks older than him. They were so cute together! Another night the church pastor and his family came over one night for dinner and games. Jen and I got a “sisters only” afternoon one day to go get lunch and tea and browse Jo-Ann’s. Jen, Mom and I had a cookie-decorating day! Matt’s brother Jason and his fiancée came over so they could meet Rhino and we could meet her! Later that week, they were married!! I got really sick the night before and couldn’t go to their wedding, though! It was tough, I spent about 36 hours curled up on the sofa or huddled in the bathroom. Rhino pretty much had a full day without Mommy, but he did really well with Grandma and Aunt substitutes! I was bummed to not be able to attend the wedding, but at least I recovered before our flight out. We also watched some movies (The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Wall-E, and lots of MST3K.) We also had an early Christmas on the 17th. Matt got more MST3K, some anime, books, cross-stitching stuff; I got some great knitting books and some others; and Rhino received so many cute clothes and toys! They’re all wonderful, but the thing he definitely loved the most was Jen’s gift: a very cute little baby piano! Rhino had recently started really enjoying music and dancing anytime any song started: a commercial jingle, someone singing, 3 notes on a piano, someone whistling, etc.! So he would stand up at the piano, bang out a few notes, dance to his music, play a few more, dance, and on and on! Everyone loved watching him play! It was a fun early Christmas! We did it again a few days later at Aunt Ginny’s with Aunt Connie & Grandpa, too. Rhino got more wonderful outfits, toys, and books. Thankfully, Mom and Dad shipped everything to our home so we didn’t have to pack all the gifts out! We left for the airport Saturday afternoon, but our flight out of Buffalo had been canceled. We made the long drive back home to sleep, and got on an early flight Sunday morning for Colorado.

Originally we had planned to arrive in Colorado two days early, rent a car, stay in Mama’s condo in Denver, and visit with friends in Fort Collins and Denver. By the time we got to Colorado, we were running out of money, car rentals were really high, I was lazy and hadn’t recently been in touch with any friends, we’d lost a day due to our canceled flight, and we were feeling pretty run down. Mama and Ron just picked us up from the airport and took us down to the Springs. I feel like a terrible friend, but it was nice to just relax at “home.” Plus, my sister, her husband and daughter were flying in just a few hours later so I’m glad that we were around to spend more time with them. We had planned to spend time with our friends Carol and Derik, who live in Omaha (and we used to work together. Matt went to tech school with both of them.) They drove down to the Springs for the weekend to see us, but it only turned into an hour that they came over and chatted after dinner on Monday. It was so nice to see them and of course I would have liked more time, things just didn’t quite work out. I’m so glad we at least got to visit for a little bit. Hopefully we’ll have another opportunity before too long! So with my sister in town, I finally got to meet my niece, Amelia! She’s 8 days younger than Rhino and I was so excited to see the two of them together. It was so interesting, they are such different babies! Rhino is a lot more vocal, interested in music and crazy about food. Amelia is all ready running around!! She likes to do her own thing a lot. They both play so differently, sleep differently, eat differently, cry differently — it was quite an experience! She is so beautiful and such a sweetheart. At 10 months, the babies weren’t really interested in playing with each other, but they did play next to each other! We joke that Amelia is sort of a “bully” — they would both be playing with toys, but she would always want to take whatever Rhino had instead! Rhino was very laid back about the whole thing and never really seemed to mind, haha! I wish we could have spent more time with Andrea and her family, but hopefully we will get to see them next year (when the babies won’t be babies anymore — waah!) Aside from watching babies in Colorado, we did actually spend time with Mama and Ron, too! Their dogs, Jack and Tilley, are very high-strung little wild dogs (but so sweet!) and we were nervous about how they’d act around the babies. We were all very surprised though, they were SO good! Whenever a dog would come up to Rhino, we’d say “dog” a lot and eventually Rhino would look at the dog and say “dauh” — he just wouldn’t say the ‘g’. I’m not counting it as a first word, but it was really close and he would do it everytime he’d see a dog! One night we were there, we went out to the Golden Bee, an English pub at the Broadmoor hotel. It’s sort of a Christmastime tradition that my Grandpa started years ago. The babies were really well behaved and loved eating crackers. We drove around afterward and looked at the light displays. We spent a lot of time at home, just relaxing, chatting, hanging out in the kitchen, watching TV, etc. Mama made some great meals that Andrea and I tried to help out with! Andrea made a delicious spinach tofu lasagna one night and Mama and I made a copy of the Olive Garden’s Zuppa Tuscana soup (my favorite!) Andrea and I made multiple visits to the Whole Foods — it was like Grocery Heaven for us! I wish we had more than our crummy commissary selection and expensive Japanese produce out here. Andrea found a Buddha’s Hand and was so excited, she bought it as decoration (I thought it was more appropriate as a Halloween decoration!) We never did use it for anything, but in the future she wants to make candied peels out of one. I found a kiwano that I had wanted to try since I found this sorbet recipe on one of my favorite foodie blogs. Well, we didn’t make a sorbet, just ate spoonfuls from it — and it was less than enjoyable! Matthew and Adria flew in on the 23rd, so now all us siblings were together with our significant others! It was quite a full house, but tons of fun. We had a great, salmon Christmas Eve dinner and filled up on Christmas cookies (Mama went overboard with the date rolls, oatmeal chocolate chip, pinwheels, hazelnut cookies, ricotta cheese sugar cookies, etc, etc.!!) before heading off to the candlelight service at First Pres. It was a beautiful service and I was so glad Matthew and Adria joined us as well. When we got home we opened all of the “grown-up presents”. Mama and Ron got each couple an awesome digital frame, which I love! We did stockings and “baby presents” Christmas morning, which was lots of fun! The babies got some adorable clothes, wonderful books, and some very cute Little People toys! Andrea, Michael and Amelia flew out the next day, so we got some time with Matthew and Adria. We all went to Cave of the Winds, which was amazing! With all the time we lived in Colorado, none of us had ever been and it’s just a few minutes from home. We left from Denver early Sunday morning for our long flight back to Japan.

The whole month was filled with such nice visits with family. I’m still getting all the photos from each location together, then I will post them to the gallery and include links in this post. I didn’t really take many pictures at all, though! I guess I was too busy with Rhino and visiting that I just didn’t think much about photos. Thankfully, other people got a few! The whole trip was very tiring and expensive (see Matt’s post!), but was definitely worthwhile! Unfortunately, it very well may be our only trip back to the States while we’re stationed in Japan. Mama and Ron, Jen, and Matt’s parents are all planning trips out to see us within the next 18 months, though!! I can’t wait to show them all the wonderful things out here!

Edit: Here are links to the vacation photos from California, Texas, New York, and Colorado!

Hello, sweetie!

In the last six months, you’ve grown up quite a bit! You weigh 21.5 pounds and are 27.95 inches long. You are getting very sociable with other children now. We had a church picnic at Leftwich Park on base where you sat with 1-year old Samantha. You like to reach out and touch her head and babble to her! We have also spent time with our friends the Armstrongs and their kids, Josh and Aimé. Josh likes to tickle you (though I don’t think you’re ticklish right now, but Josh has fun!) and talk to you. Aimé likes to pat her head and you have pulled at her pretty little curls more than once! She always giggles and says “Baby Rhino likes me!” which you seem to very much. There are also other babies in the church nursery that you like to look at and reach out for. You are also very interested in certain adults. We were at the food court at the BX recently and there was a table with some Japanese men in front of you and you kept smiling and calling out to them with your screeches and babbles. They enjoyed your attention and would wave and laugh and you really liked the interaction. You are quite a friendly little boy!

You recently started pulling yourself to your knees and also to a stand. You have strong legs and stand very well with our support. We no longer pull you because you can bring yourself up! You are enjoying your play time in your crib more now that you’ve discovered you can hold onto the railing, kneel or stand, and chew on the wood!

You aren’t crawling yet, but I get the feeling you’re going to take off any day now! When you’re sitting on your own, you often lean forward and get on your hands and knees. It seems like you don’t know exactly what to do from there, though! Sometimes you plop down to your stomach and push yourself in circles with your feet or try to walk your feet forward so your diaper is in the air. Sometimes you just push yourself back to a sitting position. You seem like you’re ready to get moving, though!

You also started clapping for us this past month. You are very good with your hands and had been touching them together excitedly, but it never quite made a clap. Now you clap along with us when Daddy and I clap for you or you do it on your own when you’re happy and playing.

You make all sorts of silly noises, too! You’re continuing to string together “ba”s and “da”s, but lately you’ve been doing a whole lot more “ma”s and “na”s. The first time I heard your “ma” was when I walked in the room you were in and you looked up at me and squealed “mama!” I know you aren’t speaking yet and still just experimenting with sounds, but it made me smile! Now it seems like when Daddy is holding you, you repeat “mama” over and over, but when I hold you, you say “dada” all the time! You’ll figure it out soon! You are learning to recognize some words now. If you are lying down or sitting and I want to pick you up, I will say “up.” Now most of the time when I say up, you will look at me and lift up your arms for me to pick you up!

You love playing with your toys, especially some Japanese blocks we got you, your Bright Builders, and my yarn! You like to bang your toys together and sometimes get so wild with them that you scrunch up your face and lean back away from your hands because you seem like you’re going to smack yourself! You also like playing with your food. You are really getting good at pinching the sweet potato puffs and getting them in your mouth and you love the baby toast, both to eat and play with! You are still eating a lot of peas, sweet potatoes, and butternut squash baby food that I make as well as baby oat cereal. You don’t love being fed and always want to hold the spoon yourself. Sometimes you do a pretty good job, but most of the time you make quite a mess! You also like to chew on raw baby carrots and will demolish one very quickly. You chew it all up very well and leave almost no mess. You’re my little rabbit baby!

We are having such a wonderful time together and I have fun seeing all the new things you learn every day. It amazes me how quickly you grow and I am really enjoying helping you discover your world!

See some other photos and videos of the past month!

I love you,
Mommy

I don’t know why I’ve been so lazy about blog posts lately. Oh wait, yes I do — I’ve been knitting! I found an amazing site for crocheters and knitters: Ravelry.com. Over at Ravelry, yarnies share projects, patterns, yarn, chat, have knit-a-longs, etc. etc. etc. Looking through all the patterns and seeing everyone’s projects has been so inspiring and motivational — I have about 100 projects queued up for the future! I’m working on matching winter hats for Rhino  and Amelia since we’ll all be in Colorado together for Christmas this year. I’m also knitting a wool diaper cover for Rhino (or maybe it will be too small, in which case it will be for Amelia.) Rhino’s legs are so chunky and his current PUL covers dig into his thighs and leave ugly red marks. He’ll outgrow them and his medium sized diapers pretty soon, so rather than buy the next size up, I’m just going use prefolds and sew up some fitteds and knit wool covers. Right now I’m just doing a cover, but in the future I want to knit up some super-cute shorties and longies for him to wear around. With all the recent knitting enthusiasm, I’ve had to pick up some new yarn, of course! Liz and Drew took us to Shimoda mall last weekend and I visited the craft shop there. I got some needles in sizes I needed and some wonderful pretty new yarn. It will be a challenge staying away from there! My stash just grew quite a bit and I need to use up what I have!

We’ve had some recent get-togethers with new friends at our home. Last weekend Liz & Drew & kids, Nicole & Mike, and Catherine & Tyler came over for pizza, Wii, and MST3K. We’ve had them all over before for lasagna or shish kabobs and anime, games, and MST3K previously as well. It’s nice to spend time with other couples and I’m so glad we’re getting to know people over here. Mostly everyone we spend time with right now we know from church. Everyone has been so great to us there and I’m really enjoying getting to know other people in the church. Matt’s ushering and I’m working in the nursery now and we’ve opened up and are being more sociable than we ever were in California. There have been some fun picnics and fellowship potlucks lately that have been really good times.

Rhino is doing well. He’s making a lot of really funny faces lately and flashing us huge, toothy grins. He flails his arms all the time, both in joy and frustration. I think he’s getting ready to get mobile — he thrashes around more when he’s on his stomach or tries to climb up me if I’m sitting with him. He sits up on his own flawlessly and is now gently leaning forward and getting onto his tummy on his own from the sitting position. He’s eating yummy mushed peas, butternut squash, and sweet potatoes mostly along with some baby oat cereal. He’s practicing pinching and self-feeding with sweet potato puffs. He’s doing really well with picking them up between his forefinger and thumb (or thumb knuckle) and putting them in his mouth. I had also been giving him chilled baby carrots for a while to teethe on. He really enjoys holding the little carrot, holding it up and showing it to me, waving it around like he’s conducting an orchestra, etc. He’s getting so much better at chewing, he will pretty much demolish (and eat!) a baby carrot. Of course, I’m always sitting with him to make sure he doesn’t bite off a chunk that he could choke on, but really he just kind of grates the side of the carrot with his teeth so the pieces are really small and he can swallow them easily. He really has the best time with the carrot, too — I think they’re his favorite toy!

We haven’t really been doing too much else lately. Matt is back on a day schedule. His new term is starting up this week (he’ll be taking a math class online and hopefully tomorrow will be signing up for another class to satisfy his CCAF requirements.) Tomorrow through Sunday our church is having a world missions conference, which we’re looking forward to attending. School is going slowly for me, but it’s going. And that’s about all! We’ve been pretty dull lately. It’s been raining a lot, so we haven’t gotten out too much. I’m really itching to go on a hike soon and get some pretty pictures before it starts to get too cold. Hopefully we have a nice, dry weekend someday soon!

I was waiting to post anything about this until I got photos (just because I like to accompany my posts with photos when I can!) Well, our pastor gave me the photos from his camera last night so now I can write about it, haha!

I was baptized by sprinkling as an infant, saved when I was ten, and confirmed my baptism when I was twelve, also through sprinkling. I had some pretty rocky times since then with my faith. It wasn’t really until tech school in Georgia that I realized the importance of God in my life. When Matt and I began dating, we started going to church together. I have always felt so fortunate to meet and fall in love with a wonderful Christian man. When we were married we started going to a baptist church where everyone was baptized by immersion. I talked to the pastor and some other members of the church about the difference between “their” baptism and mine and never felt too satisfied with any explanations. I didn’t really have any motivation to be re-baptized. For about a year now it has been on my mind. When we started going to the church here in Misawa I wanted to talk to the pastor about his thoughts on baptism by immersion and why they do it. I feel so ridiculous that I had never even looked to the scripture about it. That was the first thing Pastor Monteith did with me and we talked about baptism as burial and being raised and everything seemed to make so much more sense to me. Of course I wanted to be baptized! Pastor Monteith had to go back to the U.S. the next day for the whole summer on furlough, but we have a pastor filling in for him who would baptize me the following Sunday. I have a few photos of my baptism by Pastor Van Dyne on June 8th here.

Well, I don’t really want to be a big whiner or anything, I’m just a little disappointed. The solid food issue is important to me and I’m trying to do what I think is best for Rhino and his diet. There are a lot of differing thoughts on when to start baby on solids and what they should be eating. The decision we came to was around 6 months to see if he can self-feed. Many parents take small chunks of mushy food (cooked carrots, ripe banana, slices of avocado) and give them to baby as is to pick up and put in his mouth. That’s what we decided to try at first and also see about making our own fruit and vegetable purees. I’ve done a lot of reading about how the bacterial flora of baby’s intestines matures and why it’s a good idea to delay and just be exclusively breastfed, at least for the first 6 months. Anyhow, that was our plan.

It still is. When we went into the nursery this morning, Matt noticed Cheerios under Rhino’s chin. I thought maybe some other child had spilled them on him and just kind of laughed and said “he didn’t eat those, did he?” I was kind of shocked when one of the ladies working there just looked at me and said “well, yes … Was he not supposed to?” Our church is small and everyone knows each other pretty well. They don’t do child-information sheets on the kids in the nurseries, you just tell them. Maybe I should repeat it every time he goes in. I was pretty sure everyone knows that when he’s acting hungry, come get me and I’ll feed him. That’s usually the way it works. Well, apparently he liked his half a Dixie cup of cheerios and ate them all up. I guess technically it’s his first food, but we’re still going to say this doesn’t count and stick to our original plan. Of course, I was disappointed too because I wanted to be the one to feed him! We were planning on having the video camera and the bib and all that jazz. We still will, but I feel like I missed out a little, and I am quite annoyed because we have reasons for why we choose not to give him solids yet and what we want to feed him. And apparently Cheerios are a 9-month and up food usually. I know Rhino’s a chunky guy and maybe looks big for his age, but she still should have checked with me. I handled it well and of course didn’t get upset or mad, because really, what can be done? Inside I was pretty bugged, though. But that’s the way it goes. Since Rhino  seemed to have done so well with chewing and swallowing maybe we will see how he does with some veggies soon.