Little Raindrops

Posts Tagged ‘Matt’

We had our first family Christmas at home this year. It is a little lonely being so far away from family, but we had a beautiful Christmas with the boys and our friends. We had lots of lovely snow for Christmas, cinnamon rolls and hot cocoa. Rhino ran downstairs in the morning after we read Luke 2, excited about his advent treat that he’d gotten for the past 24 days. He completely overlooked the tree and presents and ran straight for the empty advent calendar. We had to turn him around and set him straight before he saw all the presents and pointed with a great big “WOW!”

Rhino enjoyed unwrapping the gifts. He’s much better at it this year than he was last year, when he’d only peel a tiny little scrap at a time! Everything unwrapped received another “WOW!” and he was just as excited about Heron’s toys as he was his own. Heron liked to just lie under the tree and gnaw on his toys, then eventually fell asleep on the sofa from all the excitement!

We received so many wonderful gifts from our family. We really are blessed to have such wonderful people who care about us. I only wish they all could have been with us to share in the festivities. I would love it if all our family, both Matt’s and mine, could come together for the holidays, but I don’t really see it happening anytime soon. We’d love to go back to the States to spend future Christmases with family, but while we’re stationed in Japan, it is too much of a trip to trek all over the country for the holiday. Maybe someone will want to come out here with us one of these years!

Matt took leave for all of Jen’s visit with us, plus a little extra padding on each end of her trip. I’m sure there are other men like Matt, who would rather never shave their faces. He had two weeks of leave and wanted to see how much of a beard he could grow in that time. Usually I at least have him shave for church, but I had never seen him with facial hair and wanted to see how this turned out. Too bad military regulations won’t let him keep more than a neat little mustache, because I wouldn’t mind if this goatee stuck around for a while!

How are moms supposed do this? I’ve spent the last three days on the brink of death (not really, but you know, I felt like it) and absolutely no opportunity to recuperate. I had a low fever, lots of aches, sore throat, constant headache, upset stomach … and a teething baby and insanely wild toddler. They didn’t seem to get the message that Mom wasn’t feeling up for dealing with their moods. Matt works all night and sleeps all day and we have very few hours together where he can lend a hand. One night Heron sat up pretty much all night screaming for an hour, drifting off to sleep for 10-20 minutes, screaming for another hours, etc. I’m doing everything I know to do to soothe his achy gums (I’m assuming that’s the problem even though I don’t see any budding teeth yet.) He’s doing a little better now, but the peak of his discomfort seemed to be at my peak as well. And Rhino … Rhino! He knows just when to act out the most. Right when Heron finally calms down enough to nurse or fall asleep in my arms, that’s when Rhino causes the most damage. Do I drop the baby, upsetting him all over again, to give Rhino a swat? Or do I whisper-yell at him from across the room and give him lots of Mean Mommy looks. Yeah, he knows when he can get away with tearing all the DVDs out of the stand or pulling all our condiments out of the fridge. It’s been a long, long week and I am ready to go to sleep for a month.

We have been planning for weeks to go hiking. Matt gets home from work at 7:30 in the morning and the boys and I were all ready to go. We had the baby carrier packed, the mei tai, hiking boots, jackets, diapers, and snacks! The first place we hiked when we moved here was Oirase Gorge up to Lake Towada, so we decided to go back there since it has been a year since our last visit. I’ve either been pregnant or carrying one or more small children since we arrived and it has squashed my motivation to hike much.

The weather wasn’t so bad here in Misawa at 8am, but by the time we arrived at our destination, the rain was really coming down. I’m not entirely opposed to hiking in the rain, but we don’t really have a good way to keep the boys dry. Rhino’s carrier has a flimsy little rain roof, but it doesn’t help much. I carry Heron on my chest and wasn’t equipped to keep him dry either. So, we took a nice drive around the lake and admired the changing leaves before they fall off and give way to snow. We had lost the mood to hike and Matt usually goes to bed around noon or 1, so we just decided to drive home.

Matt and I plan to hike Mt. Fuji before we leave Japan. We are in no condition to tackle this feat right now, so we really want to get some hikes in before then. I think the Spring ‘10 will mark the beginning of our hiking training. Heron won’t be so little and we’ll just make time to get out more. I hope to leave the boys in Misawa for two days and summit Mt. Fuji the summer of ‘11. We’ll see! In the meantime, it’s getting cold and damp, so I’m thinking we’ll stay inside a lot until spring. At least we got a nice drive in, though.

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!

Yay, it snowed this morning!!

Really, it snowed just a tiny bit yesterday, but I didn’t see it. We woke up this morning to a little dusting on the cars and the grass. It didn’t last long, though, but I know it will be back soon! We took Rhino to the window to check it out and he kept pointing with a very concerned look on his face. Matt decided to get him dressed and have him go take a look! Heron was sleeping and has been sick and fussy lately, so I didn’t want to bother him. Soon he’ll get his first snow experience, too!

Check out last year’s first snow. This year’s was 16 days earlier!

I’ve been told over and over again that we’ll have so many pictures of Rhino, our first child, and about half as many of Heron, our second. If we have a third, there will be even fewer photos of them by themselves. In a way I felt challenged to defeat this and have at least as many pictures of Heron so he didn’t feel jipped some day. So far, I’m a complete failure.

I wear Heron in many different baby carriers when we go out. I often take dozens of photos of Rhino playing on the slide or running through the grass, but it’s very awkward to point the camera down my chin and toward Heron, wrapped tightly against me. I hate saying it, but at home Rhino does all the cute things. Not that Heron isn’t cute, but he’s cute when he sleeps and he’s cute when he just sits there. He is unfortunately upstaged by all of Rhino’s craziness!

I am trying to fix this. I’m learning my camera a little bit better and get itchy to try out new things and Heron is such an adorable subject for my photos. He has such a great smile and is getting more interested in his surroundings. Be on the look-out for more Heron photos!

Matt brought home flowers, which he never does! He says they’re for no reason, but I’m taking it to be a new baby present. I’m not sure what this cool flower that looks like a pineapple is, but I like it!

On Thursday evening I finally went into labor! Matt was at work and I started noticing regular contractions, about 15 minutes apart, at 6:30. He came home for dinner around 7:30 and by then I thought it might be a good idea for Matt to stay home rather than return to work for the rest of the night. Things were going great and we got Rhino down for bed, got the bags ready, and called Charren. When contractions got about 3-5 minutes apart, around 11pm, she came over to spend the night here for Rhino. That was so much more convenient than waking him up to take him over to her place and have her try to get him back down in a strange place. Thankfully, he didn’t wake for her or complain the whole night. He never even knew we were gone!

I got admitted at the hospital around 11:30 and was hooked up to the monitor and checked. Everything looked good, but I was only 4cm dilated. So at midnight I Matt and I walked the hall for about 30 minutes until things got too uncomfortable and I wanted to lie down and relax. The pain started getting worse and worse and I even broke down and tried to convince Matt that maybe having them break my water would be a good idea and that I had changed my mind about the epidural, that it was no longer a big deal to me and we should probably call the anesthesiologist! Well, I’m so glad that he was supportive and didn’t let me give in because it didn’t last much longer! At about 1:30 my water broke and I started to panic a little from the pain. The nurses checked me again I was at 9cm but feeling ready to push. They called the doctor and told me to try not to push, which was pretty much impossible. By the time the doctor arrived, Matt announced he could see hair and the doctor told me to give two good pushes. I did, but the baby’s shoulder got stuck and I needed to try a little bit harder. Compared to when Rhino was born, I think I lost my cool a little bit more and was yelling at the nurse who was yelling at me.

Our little boy was born at 1:56 and was put directly on my chest to feed. The doctor waited to clamp the cord until it stopped pulsing, as we requested, and then Matt cut the cord. I spent about a half an hour with our little guy to feed him before giving him up to get weighed and measured. He weighed in at 9 pounds, 4 ounces and is 22-3/4 inches long. What a big guy! Matt gave him a sponge bath to clean him up as the doctor and I finished up. I had the same issue as I did with Rhino where I lost way too much blood after he was born, so I needed to stay in bed for quite a while. Around 4:30 I was fine and taken to our room. Matt decided to go home and relieve Charren before Rhino woke up rather than room in with me, which was fine. Between feedings, nurses coming in to check the baby’s vitals, and then coming in to check mine, and other interruptions, I never got more than 10-15 minutes of sleep at a time. All the endorphins probably kept me awake too, as I was just really giddy for the next 24 hours.

So, all of you who know us personally probably all ready know Baby’s name. For the sake of his online privacy, we don’t want to use his real name and picked a nickname for him. I think Rhino’s nickname is super cute and appropriate and really wanted an animal nickname that was on the same level, but I’ve had a difficult time finding one. Tonight Matt and I came up with “Heron”, in part because of his height. It’s not as cool and masculine as “Rhino”, but herons are cool and and I need to pick something to call him online!

I was discharged from the hospital Sunday morning and am very glad to be home! It was nice to relax a little bit in the hospital, but I did miss Matt and Rhino and got a little bit bored hanging out with Heron. Today has been nice, although he’s pretty much spent the whole day sleeping. Rhino enjoys having him around and always waves to him, cuddles up next to him, kisses him on the forehead, pats his head, and pokes at his hands and feet. So far he hasn’t seemed too crabby about anything and is probably just enjoying having a new “toy” around. I love sitting around, feeding Heron and having Rhino snuggle up next to us. He’s curious about what’s happening when I’m feeding the baby and just likes to stare and point a lot. Our boys are super sweet and I am so in love!

I read this blog post over at Tea & Cookies a while ago and thought these dandelion muffins look so delicious, I had to try them sometime! The recipe is over at Fat of the Land, which I bookmarked and set aside for later.

Well, later has come! Today was the first day Matt was to go out and finally mow our grass. All the snow melted quite a while ago, but them we had that weird day of snow at the end of April, so we’ve been putting off lawn maintenance just in case. Now that everyone else in the neighborhood is cutting our grass and Rhino is almost getting lost in it’s height, we decided it’s time. Our yard has been overrun with dandelions, so I wanted to take advantage of the weeds before Matt cut them all down.

We all went out with some little baskets to pluck the heads off the dandelions. I’m so thankful I have such a sweet husband to go out and do things like this with me! Rhino was more interested in the budding dandelions than the blooming ones, but he did pick a couple of good ones. Mostly, he just wanted to put things in our baskets.

Matt and I are suffering from springtime allergies lately, so this was a good test of our over-the-counter antihistamine. We did just fine, but I think Rhino was suffering a little bit!

I brought all the dandelion heads inside and rinsed them. We live in a clean, rural area and I’m not too concerned, but it’s good to get all the dirt, bugs, and all that off them. I don’t want to think about it all too much more than that.

The most time-consuming part of making these muffins is separating the tiny, yellow petals from the green parts. The greens are bitter, so we don’t want to eat those. The recipe said to twist the petals from the stem, but that wasn’t working out so well for me. I’d split each blossom in half and use my thumb to sort of scrape/pull the petals out. I collected four cups of yellow dandelion fluff (I only needed three for the recipe, but it seemed like more was better) and called it quits, though I probably could have doubled even that with all the flowers we picked!

I mixed up the flour, baking powder, salt, and petals in a large bowl. Then comes the honey, milk, eggs, and oil. I added a couple extra squirts of honey because I have a sweet tooth! I tripled this recipe because we have so many dandelions. Hopefully they’re good enough to eat or share, because we’ll have a ton of muffins!

I baked 24 muffins at 400 for 25 minutes, then let cool. I cut open a warm muffin to butter it, set a few out on a plate, and couldn’t keep Rhino away from them!

He got his own muffin, which he devoured right away! They aren’t too sweet (unless I add extra honey – yum!) and came out fluffy and tasty. I wouldn’t think that they taste like flowers. They just have a “muffin taste”! We have four dozen of them now and hopefully some of our friends will want to try them out. If not, I’ll have dandelion muffins for breakfast for a couple of weeks!

Maybe we’ll make this a yearly tradition. The first lawn cutting of the spring we go out and pick all the dandelions for some yummy muffins. It will be a little more fun when the boys want to pick the flowers and help out with the baking (and definitely with separating the petals!) I’m finding all sorts of information on the fantastic health benefits of dandelion greens, but nothing specifically about the petals. It doesn’t matter; they’re yummy and there’s got to be something good in them!