Little Raindrops

Posts Tagged ‘Mama’

Christmas is just a few days away and now it finally looks like it! Our tree is up and decorated, along with our nativity, stockings, some random decorations on the wall, and the advent calendar. The advent calendar is one that my parents have had since I was little, that my brother and sister and I used to look forward to every December morning. It’s a garland of numbered burlap mittens and stockings to hold treats. It was passed down to me this year and I put it up for the boys. We picked up lots of small goodies from the Daiso, ¥100 store. Rhino’s figured it all out and comes downstairs first thing in the morning and heads straight for the corner with his treat! Next year Heron will be old enough to enjoy the small bits of chocolate and tiny toys, too. We also have stockings for the boys hanging on our wall, along with mine and Matt’s. Betty, an old friend of my parents’, made my stocking for my very first Christmas. I know it isn’t an adult’s stocking, but I love it and still want to hang it for myself each year. My mom made Matt’s stocking a few years ago to match. She’s been commissioned to make them for the boys as well, but is falling behind a little! So she sent us these cute store-bought stockings as place holders, until she’s finished embroidering new ones for them!

Pretty much everything has been up since Thanksgiving, the only problem around here is that the weather has been so nice! We got a little dusting of snow last month, but hadn’t seen anything since. Well, it’s finally happening. We’ve got enough out there for Matt to shovel! Rhino is excited about it, looks out the window and says snow (in a cute little nasal voice.) I’m looking forward to snowballs, snowmen, and snow angels in our near future!

It was nice to have Mama and Ron in our home. They stayed in the Misawa Inn on base at night and we had a good time at home or out and about during the day.

We were able to take them to church with us on Sunday morning, which was wonderful! It happened to be a special visitor’s week too, so yay – we brought visitors!

We did the temple and shrine thing down in Tokyo, but we went to the temple here in Misawa, too. It was closed for renovations when we arrived, so we just toured around the cemetery.

We went to the Towada horse park. It was a nice drive out and we all went down the giant roller slide and pet the horses. Every time we visit with Mama and Ron, we play boardgames, whether at their home or in the hotel room in Santa Barbara. We picked up Pictionary this time and it seems like we must have played 100 games in the few days that they were with us. It was too much fun!

We took them to our favorite restaurants around town. We went to Global Kitchen, the new 100 yen sushi place, udon at Matt’s favorite noodle house, and Viking for yakiniku. I did cook some, too, but not nearly as much as I had planned on cooking.

We went up to Aomori to visit a Buddhist temple and Japan’s largest statue of Buddha, Showa Daibutsu (or as we call it, “the big Buddha.”) It was beautiful up there and I loved temple grounds. Stunning! We also relaxed at the beach and had some ramen in a very small, cramped ramen house with absolutely no trace of English anywhere. It was delicious!

Their trip was, of course, too short. They had ten days from leaving Colorado to returning home. I wish they could have spent a month, but it’s just not possible. I know this will be the only time they will be able to visit us in Japan and it is unlikely that we will be back to the states before we move again. We’re hoping to meet up in Hawaii at some point, though I’m not sure if I should count on it. I love being in Japan, but definitely do miss being able to see family even a little regularly. When this tour ends in 2012, we’ll at least be back for a visit! Spending time with Mama and Ron all week was wonderful and I can’t wait to see them again!

Mama and Ron came to visit at the beginning of October and I just haven’t gotten around to blogging about it. We did so much, it’s a little overwhelming knowing it will be such a long post! I’m actually going to try to keep it a little short though and just highlight the great memories.

It was a Tuesday when we all got on the train to go down to Tokyo and meet Mama and Ron. The trains here are wonderful and it was a great trip. We take a 10-minute train to Hachinohe, where we then get on the Shinkansen. It’s about a 3 hour ride to get to Tokyo Station and is very comfortable. It stops a few times in the major cities along the way and we get to see a lot of buildings and rice paddies. When we got to Tokyo Station, we took the Narita Express train to the airport (about an hour.) I was a little worried that something would go wrong — someone would get lost, someone would be late — and we wouldn’t meet up. But everything turned out fine and we met them just as they were exiting from customs. It’s so exciting seeing loved ones at the airport, when they’re exhausted after a 12 hour flight and have been awake much, much longer! We exchanged their dollars for yen and got on the train to go back to Tokyo Station. From there, we got on the subway to Minato, where our hotel is. It was a lot of walking, stairs, dragging luggage, and hauling babies, but we finally made it. That was the end of that day!

We spent two full days in Tokyo, seeing what we could, before taking the Shinkansen back to Misawa on Friday morning. On Wednesday we slept in, had a fantastic breakfast at the hotel, took the subway to Asakusa Kannon Temple, explored that in the rain, and then walked through Kappabashi, the kitchen district. This was really interesting, it’s a street where pretty much all the restaurants go to buy furniture, stoves, pots, dishes, fake display food, etc. I didn’t get anything, but there were plenty of wonderful cooking supplies that I’d love to go back for! We had tea and toast in a sweet little shop along the way. This is where Mama and Ron learned about the fancy toilet seats we have out here. We made our way back to the hotel and everyone was all ready pretty exhausted. We went out for a great dinner at a nearby yakiniku restaurant, which was fantastic! Matt and I love yakiniku, but we have a fairly cheap, buffet-style restaurant that we frequent. This one was much nicer and SO delicious! Then we said goodnight to Mama and Ron and Heron and I nursed down in the super-comfy hotel bed and Matt and Rhino snuggled up on the also-comfy sofa bed.

Mama, Ron and I woke up very early on Thursday to make our way to the Tsukiji Fish Market. This is the largest seafood market and also the largest wholesale market of any kind in the whole world. We arrived around 5am and were there to see the vendors setting out their catch. We made our way to the far end of the market where the large tuna auction takes place. Every day there are 1,000 tuna auctioned off. We watched while the fish were inspected and labeled, before the bidding took place. It was crowded and we wanted to see the rest of the market, so we didn’t stay around for the auction. A lot of the stalls hadn’t yet opened. I guess there is a time line to the whole market that we just didn’t get right away. We had been told that this was the best place in the world to get the freshest sushi, so of course Mama was interested in some breakfast! Ron and I are not sushi fanatics, so we found a nice beef bowl restaurant while Mama had her sushi breakfast. The three of us headed back to the hotel where we met up with Matt and the boys. Then we took the subway to Meiji Shrine, which was absolutely beautiful! We walked around the grounds, fed the fish, saw some spiders, examined beautiful flowers, and got a little lost. Then we found the shrine, which was fantastic as well.

Mama and I got a chance to go out alone to Akihabara on Thursday night. It’s really nice to just hang out with her and catch up. It’s been almost a year since we were last together and even though we talk on the phone every week, I still miss her all the time. We walked a lot and had some coffee. We weren’t really up for shopping, we just went to see sights. We didn’t want to be out too late though, because we had a train to catch in the morning!

Now it’s up to Misawa!

A year ago I posted some pictures of me from when I was Rhino’s age to compare. Everyone who sees my baby pictures (or knew me as a baby) thinks he looks a lot like me. Here are some toddler-Melissa photos that kind of look like my little Rhino! The jury is still out on who Heron looks more like.

I was 19 months old

Potty trained, self-taught!

Me in Holland with Mama

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!

I’m always gradually scanning in photo prints and today scanned in some more of my baby photos. I hadn’t compared them to Rhino since he was born (where he kind of resembled me as a newborn, here), but I’m seeing more of them now that he’s a bit older. Here are a handful where I think he looks like me as a baby.

And then one my favorites, just for the fun of it. Four Generations: Grandma, Mama, Melissa, and Oma:

I added a little clock at the top of this page, right below the blog title. This clock is set to Japan time, so any of you who want to know what time it is when we’re in Misawa can check here if you don’t feel like doing the math.

My mom said once that it’s going to be tough thinking about all her kids’ different time zones and will need a bunch of clocks set to different times. So I made up another little page that shows all our family members’ times and weather conditions.

Dearest Rhino,

Today you are now one month old! It has definitely been the most amazing month of my life. Your birth was the most beautiful event I’ve taken part of. Labor was hard, but Daddy and I were well prepared. The very second you were born all the pain drained out of me and I was filled only with love and joy. Daddy and I screamed with excitement and cried tears of happiness as we held you for the first time. It was definitely love at first sight.

The month has flown by so quickly. Daddy had ten days off work when you were born so he could take care of us. And you had a lot of visitors! Aunt Jen, Daddy’s sister, was also here to help out and spend time with you. She decorated our apartment for your arrival, took a lot of pictures of you, and helped Daddy and I out a whole lot. When you were almost two weeks old Grammy, my mommy, came to visit you from Colorado. We took you out to a restaurant for the first time (Chinese food), went to Santa Barbara, had your first bath, and had your two-week pediatrician visit. Grammy also helped Daddy and I out tremendously by cooking some yummy dinners and doing lots of cleaning. While she was here, you went to church for the first time and were dedicated to the Lord. There was a little ceremony in front of the whole congregation where our friend and church elder, Jim, said a very nice prayer for you. Grammy had the video camera to record the whole thing. She did a terrific job and we were very pleased to have a video of the event to share with people who couldn’t make it. But when we got home to look at the video, we found that Grammy never actually was recording! She felt very bad, but it funny now and there will be plenty of videos of you in the future! The day after Grammy left, Grandma and Grandpa (Daddy’s parents) flew in from New York. They brought lots of gifts from family and church members back there. While they were visiting you were held and played with all the time. A bunch of ladies from church also threw you a party where you got so many clothes and nice things! When Grandma and Grandpa left, we got a little break from guests to just spend time with you alone. Then yesterday Pop, my daddy, came in from Texas to meet you. You, Pop and I took another trip to Santa Barbara to pick up your birth certificate and go out for pizza. We also visited the base where Daddy works. Today is my 25th birthday, so Pop took us all out for a nice dinner where you were very good! Pop will be here a few more days before going back to Texas. Other than family members, my friend Denna and her 18-month old son Tyler came to meet you. Tyler loved spending time with you, holding you (with me), patting, and kissing you. You also met people from church who have come over and you have been to our weekly Bible study. You sure have had an exciting month of meeting new people!

You sleep a lot and don’t cry very much. Sometimes you sleep in the bassinet, but usually you sleep with us. I didn’t used to think we’d want you to sleep in the bed with us, but now I wouldn’t want it any other way. I love cuddling up together as you feed, then drift off to sleep. I love even more waking up with you as you stretch and grunt yourself awake. You eat a lot and have grown so much! In the three days you were in the hospital when you were born you lost 10 ounces. By your one-week appointment, you gained it all back and then by your two-week appointment gained 9 more ounces! Everyone thinks you are going to be very tall, just like Daddy. Most people also say you look just like Daddy. I think it’s because you have dark hair like him. We looked at some pictures of me when I was about your age and were very surprised that you look a lot like I did. So now we think you look like both Daddy and I — you have the best of us in you!

Daddy and you are getting along very well! He was worried before that he wouldn’t know what to do, but he is an expert at taking care of you! He is a pro at diaper changes (and asks to do them to give me a break!), holds you in the shower while we clean you (yes, you take showers now!), and talks to you and plays with you all the time. You are very lucky to have such a wonderful, loving Daddy and we are so lucky to have such a sweet baby!

It is a very exciting time for our new family. Daddy was supposed to be transferred to a new job just a couple weeks after you were born! The job is in Japan and that isn’t a good idea to move right away, so we asked to have it bumped back to the end of March. So now we are getting ready to move to Japan for about four years! Your grandparents aren’t quite as excited for us, because they just met you and now they are going to miss you a lot because you’ll be much farther away. We will take lots of pictures and videos of you for them and you have all ready used a video camera over the internet to talk to your grandparents. We will visit when we can and they will even come out to see you! Japan should be a very neat place. Daddy has always wanted to visit there and now we get to live there and see lots of new and exciting things!

We thank the Lord every single day for blessing us with you, such a beautiful, healthy boy. You have made us so happy and we are so excited to get to know you better and grow with you. We will do our very best to take care of everything you need, to love you completely, and to help you grow healthy and strong in body and in faith. We love you, Rhino. Thank you for making us a family!

Love,
Mommy

Mama (“Grammy”) came to visit on Friday night and left this morning. It was so nice to have her around and to meet Rhino. It was really great to have her help out with Rhino and take care of some cleaning and cooking. She brought some adorable outfits, a few of which Ron picked out (including the very cute firetruck/police car PJs below) and one from one of her real estate clients. We had Wayne and Rena over for a lasagna dinner one night. On Tuesday Rhino had his second pediatrician visit, so we took him down to Santa Barbara. He is up to 9 lb 3 oz and is in excellent health. We cruised up and down State Street in his snazzy stroller and stopped for a nice lunch. He’s been doing really well in car trips, but he got a little fussy with hunger at the end of our trip. It will be a while before I see Mama again, so it was really nice to get to spend some time with her before we leave.

Rhino had his baby dedication at church today. We have been without a pastor, so we had Jim, one of the church elders conduct the ceremony. Jim also held the first small group we attended a year and a half ago. Because we have grown close to Wayne and Rena, the hosts of our current small group, Jim suggested that Wayne participate in the dedication as well. It was really nice, Jim introduced us and talked about how he knows us. Then Wayne talked about our relationship, Rhino and his name, and read a verse. Then Jim prayed over Rhino. We planned the dedication so Mama could attend. She videotaped the whole thing with our camera. She couldn’t see very well and apparently never actually turned the camera on when she thought she did. So she “filmed” the whole thing, but it never really took. I felt really bad telling her it wasn’t on the camera, and I’m disappointed but not upset. It would have been a nice memento and something to share with other family members, but there will be other important times that we’ll capture. A while ago Mama had sent some clothes that my great grandmother had knitted and crocheted for my baptism when I was a baby. I thought it would be neat if Rhino wore the same clothes for his dedication. Yes, they’re a little girly with the lace and the ribbons, but he’s a baby, so it’s okay! The dedication was really nice, even if we didn’t get video.