Performance Day

The big day is all over and done with.  It was really long and exhausting and of 11 different items on the programYosei was only in 2, but it was all totally worth it.
The dance number was first.  They put all kinds of cute little embellishments on his costume and it was even cuter than I imagined it could be!  I cried.

After every class did their dances there was an 1 1/2 hour lunch break.  The kids actually only got like 45 min before the teachers took them back to get ready for their plays.   Of course we brought a bento,  nothing fancy. Well, Yosei got a fancy one I figured it was easier to make Yosei his own lunch than to have him share with me or his baba (Japanese grandma) and his baby sister.
After lunch the very first item on the program was Yosei's class' play.  Again really incredibly adorable.  Yosei was the cutest little brown puppy ever.

After this there were plays by the older classes as well as a performance by the marching band, which was really amazing when you realize that they range from 4-6 years old.  Yosei was not a part of the band,  but he will be next April :)
It was a great day and I can't wait to see next year's performance day.

The Countdown to Performance Day

It's nearly here!  Yosei's first big preschool performance day.  In just 2 days I get to see all the dancing he's been doing and the lines he's been saying over and over again all put together with music and costume and make up :)
It turns out that either his teacher told me wrong that first day or they changed his part but now in the play he's going to be a puppy instead of a kitty.  The story is 'The Giant Turnip' all about this little old famer and his wife that grew a turnip so big that can't pull it out all by themselves so they get all kinds of help from lots of animals and such to pull it out of the ground. 
I found out they'll also be doing a dance,  the boys and girls will be doing separate dances.  The girls will be dancing to the Sweet Pretty Cure theme song. Yosei and the other little boys will be dancing to the Gokaija theme song.  Pretty Cure is basically Sailor Moon for the little girls of now, Gokaija is the current 'Power Ranger'-esq  series.  The name of the ranger series changes every year. This year its the Gokaija, who are apparently pirates (naturally the boys will be wearing piratey costumes; which I know because I was asked to wash, iron and return it to school) ;)  The song can be heard here

Anyhow my mother in law is going to be coming to see the big performance too.  Kiyo,unfortunately has to work so unless some awesomemiracle happens he won't get to go with us :(   Luckily I get along pretty well with my mother in law.  She's going to help me make a bento to take to performance day.   It'll be a good learning experience for me since I have no idea how to do a big group type bento for family outings or anything.
I'm hoping Yosei pulls off the actual big day as well as I've heard he's been doing during practice at school. I'm so excited and nervous, can hardly wait for the big day!

Christmas in Japan

Like so manythings here Christmas is one of those foreign things that got brought over here and they got so close but didn't quite get it right.  There is of course Christmas Cake and the Kentucky Fried Chicken Holiday pack (which needs to be reserved a month in advance by the way).  Statues of the Colonel out side each store all dressed up like Santa for the season ( every KFC here has a statue of the Colonel outside of it). Actually for some reason fried chicken, not just the Kentucky variety, seems to be a Christmas tradition here.  I still don't really get it :P
The last couple of years I went all out on my own Christmas dinner with roast beef, yorkshire pudding, and all that stuff.  Last year I even tried my skills at a red velvet cake, not perfect but it was good for a first try :)  Kiyo enjoyed the whole non Japanese traditional take on a Christmas dinner.  Last year was also our first family attempt at Christmas cookies.  I tried to let help Yosei help with every single bit of it, cutting and decorating.  In the end I think he ended up with half of the dough and sprinkles in his tummy :) 
This year I ended up doing cookies a little earlybecause we were invited to a party at one of Yosei's classmate's house and I volunteered to bring the Christmas cookies and brownies (just to give them something a little American :D )  To avoid last year's dough disaster I decided to cut and bake all the cookies on my own first and then let Yosei help with the decorating.  In all it took 3 hours to decorate somewhere around 70 cookies  (40 of which went to the party).  Surprisingly enough Yosei didnt start chowing down on the sprinkles until the very end when he started to get bored with the whole decorating aspect.
One thing did occur to me while I was baking the cutting out cookies,  I've got a really sad assortment of cookie cutters,  no candy canes, mistle toe, stars, snowmen.....  I did eventually find a star cutter and a holly leaf looking cutter,  but I think I need to do some cookie cutter shopping when I'm visiting home during New Years.
Now that Yosei is old enough to kind of understand the whole Christmas/Santa thing this'll be the first year I'm actually going all out and doing wrapped presents, cookies and milk, carrots for reindeer,  stockings filled with snacks and small toys.  Kiyo totally isn't getting this either since in Japan kids typically get one present from Santa and that's it you move on with your day.  It's not really a big family event.  We don't have much money now so I was only able to get two presents each and a bunch of little stuff for the stockings.  Though I do wonder  if, when he gets older,  Yosei would start telling the other kids how much more Santa likes him cuz he got way more stuff than they did, haha.
Anyhow my little train butt (yes I call him that) will be getting a new Plarail plastic batter operated train, the exact model of the train that runs on our local line (he's gonna be so excited about getting an 'orange Ome train') and a cool railroad crossing that the gates automatically close on  when the train rolls over it.
My baby K is going to be getting her very first baby doll, a doll called Mell-chan and Mell-chan's pet puppy.  Hope she likes it,  she's been really into throwing and kicking balls lately so I'm a little worried ^^;
Oh and the Christmas Party with Yosei's friends, by the way, turned out to be really awesome.  A  fun time for the kids to hang out and play and pig out and for the moms to hang out and relax and chat while all the kids did their thing :D 

Yosei decorating cookies 1 year ago in 2010

Yosei's 2010 cookie collection

Decorating cookies this year



Yosei's 2011 Cookie Collection

My Preemie Story Pt 2

I started writing this days ago but preschool and Christmas preparations have kept me way too busy ><

I guess this is the toughest part of my story,  the toughest part for any preemie parent really, the NICU.   There's a saying  that the NICU is a rollercoaster ride full of ups and downs.
I HATE that saying.
I love roller coasters I find them to be really really fun, and the NICU was anything but a roller coaster ride in my opinion :P 
The first person to visit our son in the NICU was his dad.  Thanks to issues with low blood pressure and pain medication after my c-section I had to wait until 2 days after my operation before I was able to make the trip to the NICU.  The pain meds affected my legs so I had no strenght to stand on them (something that wasn't supposed to happen), and the blood pressure thing... I stood up and everything went kinda woozy and black and I nearly fainted.
Anyhow, after Kiyo came back from visiting in the NICU I asked him how the baby was (being 3 months early we had not yet picked a name) hoping to hear something good.  Instead all he said was 'he's too small.'  But he told me about the visit and how he got to take pictures, how the doctor opened up the diaper to show that we indeed had a boy, how just as the doc opened his diaper he peed :).  And then his biggest surprise of all, he was allowed to touch the baby.
After this we started discussing names,  went through a few different ones Kyosuke, Seiya, Ryusei, Kaito...Eventually settling on Yosei  written like 陽星 meaning sun star.  It was also during this time that Kiyo and his mother (both devout buddhists) started telling me (the devout athiest) that I shoudl pray for Yosei by chanting namyohorengekyo, also known as the lotus sutra.  I didn't really believe it but I figured it really couldn'T do any harm so I did.  The first step in my eventualy conversion to buddhism a couple years later.
We also read over the policies of the NICU.  There were two policies I was really not fond of. 1 - because its considered a biohazard they cannot save the umbilical cord for the parents to bring home,  and 2.  There was a max 1 hour visit per day in the NICU and 1 1/2 hour visit in the step up unit the GCU.  They also had three different set visiting periods during the day you could chose from.  Completely different from the NICU's in the US where parents can pretty much camp out at their kids' incubators. 
The day after he was born Yosei's Dr. came in to let me know that his digestive system was working and they would be starting him on 1cc of milk 8 times a day.  They also asked for my permission to give him milk that some other mother had pumped until I was able to start pumping enough for him.  That was of course a big yes.  Woo finally some good news!
The pumping though....  I was already dreading it,  but nothing prepared me for what happened when I was taken to the nursing room... I was given a glass baby bottle and told to start squeein'.  No pumps,  they make you express by hand (and I thought pregancy made me feel like a cow...) I eventually ended up having my mother send me a pump from the US  as they only sell cheap crappy pumps out here (no wonder the advocated hand expressing).
Then there was the lecture they made all  new moms attend and going home with your new baby.  There was me and one other preemie mom there all the other moms had babies.  They made us watch cheesey videos on how to hand express milk and on bring our babies home.  All this talk of bringing babies home nearly made me insane,  oh how I wanted to scream at everyone who forced me to attend this thing.  I didn't even know if Yosei was going to make it through the night and here they're making me watch these things witha bunch of moms with full term babies????  The woman leading the lecture noticed my lack of enthusiasm and actually though it was maybe because I didn't speak Japanese....  You would think  the fact that I'm not toting a baby around might give her a clue....  Nearly 4 years later and I've still got a lot of anger over this.  Well, anger over that and the creepy night charge nurse that I had ended up complaining about before.  She was still just awful , she even walked into the NICU once and interrupted my visiting time to tell me I needed to go move my crap because I was being moved to a different room to make more room for pregnant women,  horrible horrible woman.
My post birth hospitalization lasted 9 days, that hospital's standard for a c-section.  I was so anxious to get out of there that rather than wait for Kiyo to get off work and come pick me up around 7 p.m. I opted to take the 2 hour train ride, alone, carrying 2 weeks worth of clothes and crap, a little more than a week out of major abdominal surgery. It was probably a little crazy,  but I needed to get out of there.  Kiyo picked me up at the train station.  And we headed home to drop all my stuff off before going out to dinner.  Upon arriving home Kiyo received a phone call from the hospital.  I though maybe I had screwed something up in the checking out process or something.  But no,  they called to inform us that there had been a measles outbreak in the maternity ward and until I could obtain a measles test to prove to them I wasn't carrying it I would not be allowed  to visit Yosei.   So it turns out  during this time there were measles out breaks all over during this point in time  and there was a ridiculous wait time to get the results for a measles test.  The fact that I was fully vaccinated (better vaccinated than most Japanese infact as they don't do the booster shots for measles here like we do in the US)  didn't have any sway over them, even though they agreed there was very little chance that I could actually get the measles.  In the end I ended up having to wait 9 days for the test results.  9 days without seeing or hearing anything about Yosei (they refuse to give updates over the phone because of privacy issues).
In that 9 days though Yosei changed so much it was surprising.

Yosei, just before I was released from the hospital

Yosei, a couple days after I was finally allowed back to visit him.

I really wish I had kept a journal during this time because from this point on each day just kind of blended into the next.  I ended up buying a 3 month commuter train pass because it was so much cheaper than buying a ticket every single day. Most mornings I would chant for a few minutes before leaving the house and making my 2 hour train trip. I noticed that they days that I took the time to do this I often got good news,  sometimes no news, but never bad news.  But the days I was just to busy, or forgot to do it there was always some setback. 

Yosei was on the ventilator for about a month, and he was doing really well atfirst but he started doing worse and worse on it,  and oddly enough the Dr. thought it was simply because he no longer wanted to be on it.  So they extubated him and he did very well on the room air, I saw his face witout all the tape and stuff for the very first time.  If I remember right this is also around the time we found out he was anemic (a common preemie problem) and they had started him on medication for this.

This unfortunately last only a day.  And while he didn't need to be intubated anymore,  he did have to wear this awful thing on his nose that made him look like an elephant.

Luckily the elephant mask only had to be used for a few days.  and at 1month 1day old (April 14th)  I finally got to see this.

It was around this time they discovered he had developed ROP or retinopathy of prematurity.  He was stage 2 in all zones of his eye meaning he was borderline for needing surgery.  I had to sign a consent form stating that they could perform laser treatment at any point in time should his ROP get even a little worse. 
Now that he was off of all the oxygen they decided he was stable enough for us to do kangaroo care with him.

Kangarooing with papa.  He had to wear a nasal cannula just incase.

Shortly after this we were moved into the step down unit, the GCU.  Babies here were no longer kept in incubators but in the plastic boxes like regular newborns.  Unfortunately because they were short on space once a baby moved to the GCU they could no longer be kangarooed since they could just be help normally.  All in all I think we were only able to kangaroo for 1 week.

 It was dring his time in the GCU that he learned to feed orally, we even practiced nursing (though it ended being several month after we got him home before he would actually be able to do it.)  We had some issues with reflux during this time, thanks to an immature tummy and valves.

A couple weeks before home coming we got the news that his ROP had cleared itself up!  And on June 5th, after 83  days in the NICU he got to bring our little guys home!

Of course bringing him home wasn't perfect, far from it. We were still dealing with reflux,  I was giving im medcation for that and anemia 3 times a day ( for 2 months).  He had day and night reversed for about a month (awful and exhausting).  Then there were the constant Dr.'s check ups checking for delays or abnormalities, monthly synagis shots to make sure he didn't get RSV.   He evenutally did grow out of all of this but it was a tough first few months.  Now this biggest thing lingering from his preemie days are his size (he's a terrible eater) and his expressive speech delay (though we were told no therapy necessary).  Now he's a happy 3 year 9 month old preschooler, that is totally wild about trains. In large part thanks to preschool he's really starting to overcome thye language, and the eating (and in turn the size thing).

My Preemie Story pt1

This is something that's taken me a while to figure out exactly how to write.  My oldest Yosei (as some reading this already know) is a preemie.  He was born 3 months early at 26 weeks gestation, weighing only 980 grams (just over 2lbs).
I guess I should start the story from the beginning.  About a month after getting engaged I got pregnant (found out I was pregnant 2 months after getting engaged).  At the time we weren't planning on getting married till April, after I had finished out my one year contract with the school I was working at; but the baby news changed that and we moved those plans up some, moving in together right before New Years  and filing all the necessary paperwork to get married after the New Year holiday.  In Japan weddings don't make you legally married regardless of whether you have one or not you still have to go to city hall and file the proper paperwork.  
Anyhow until we moved in together I still had about 3 months at which I had to continue with my normal life going to work and all despite horrendous morning sickness.  Then one night when I was around 12 weeks pregnant I had some really heavy bleeding, so heavy infact that I figured I must hav miscarried.  The next day I went to the nearest ladies clinic prepared to hear the worst only to find out everything looked just fine  and the couldn't figure out any reason why I would have been bleeding.  I was told that if any dayI had bleeding I needed to stay homeand stay one bed rest.  I told my employer what the doctor said and was told ' Yeah, we'll see about that.'  in other words don't even think about calling in sick.  It was an incredibly busy time of year, we were preparing for the big performance day right before winter break.  Normally if you listened to to the Dr. and refused to go in to work the worst that would happen would be you might lose your job.  Bt since I was not in my native country and working on a visa sponsored by my employer, the possibility of being fired, having my visa pulled, and being deported was actually a very real possibilty.  So I toughed it out until the beginning of February,  I had to keep working until after I got married because I still had to transfer my visa froma work one to a spousal one.  After the performance day was over I was allowed to work part time 2 days a week rather than the full time I had been doing,  good thing too as I had moved about an hour further away from work than I had been living. 
I'd had light bleeding all throughout that time,  but no heavy bleeding like that very first scare.  And then, on the evening of March 5th 2008, at 25 weeks gestation, everything went downhill.  I honestly had no idea what had happened,  I though I was having some embarrassingpregnant lady problem and wasjust uncontrollably peeing.  So I put on a pad hoped it would stop and then went to bed.  I woke up about 3 or 4 in the morning and had realized it most definitely hadn't stopped.    So instead of doing what I should have done (waking up Kiyo and insisting he take me to the hospital) I got on the computer and googled to find out exactly what the heck could be going on.  Even after realizing that its very likely my water may have broken I went back to bed and waited till the hospital opened at 8 a.m. to call while Kiyo left for work at 6 a.m. like always. 
Once I called the hospital they told me to come in right away,  unofrtunately for me Kiyo was at work, and having just moved in I didn't really know anybody around here yet and so rather than get somebody to drive me, I walked 45 minutes to the hospital. 
They got me in for an exam right away and I was told I had nearly no fluid left and also that  they couldn't help the baby at their hospital. I was catheterized and put on bedrest while the called around to find a hospital with an NICU that had also had an open bed in the maternity ward.  It took a while but I was finally able to get a hold of Kiyo and let him know what was going on.  He left work right away and came to the hospital.  It ended up taking over an hour before they found a hospital that was willing to take me.  It was 2 hours away near a downtown area of Tokyo called Ikebukuro.
I was loaded up in an ambulance along with Kiyo and my Dr. and we made the trip down to the hospital.   At the hospital I was given steroid shots to help the baby's lungs develop faster and put on an IV of antibiotics (for an infection) and some stuffthat was supposed to keep me from going into labor.  I was on strict bedrest, not allowed to sit, not even allowed to go to the bathroom. 
I was told they were going to try to keep me there for 3 months if possible, this made me so depressed,  the thought of having to live that way for 3 months....  I later found out they really thought I'd be lucky to make it a week.  I don't know if the three months thing was supposed to motivate me to be strong but honestly I would have prefered to hear 'You might make it a few days if you're lucky'.  At least for me that would be more of a motivator to prove them all wrong, to make it as long as possible.  As it was, though I feel horrible about it now,  I really just couldn't wait to get the whole thing over with.  My night charge nurse also did nothing to help me feel any better.  I honestly realize changing an adult's bedpan is like a million time more disgusting than changing a diaper, I really do get that.  But to leave a patient sitting in their own filth because you couldn't be bothered  to do your job and clean them up properly?  Well that's another million times grosser than the changing of said bedpan. 
Needless to say after that night I raised hell with my doctor and was allotted one trip to the toilet a day. 
So my bedrest hospital life went on for a week and on March 12th was told that it was going to be necessary to deliver the following day and I was scheduled for a c-section. 
The operation went pretty much as expected (except that the meds made me puke my guts out during the operation.  The biggest shock though was getting to see the baby,  I didn'T know what the gender was going to be because in Japan they won't tell you until 27 weeks :P  So here on the operating table I find out its a boy,  I never did hear any crying and after a very long time (10 minutes at least) they brought him over so I could see him.  But only very breifly as they had to run him up to the NICU.  But seeing him was the biggest shock.  It was all wrong, he wasn't supposed to be that small,  2lbs had to be bigger than that...

This is the photo Kiyo took of Yosei as they were leaving the operating room and heading up to the NICU.  Not the standard happy very first photo you'd usually get.

This is his first photo after being brought to the NICU.

This is getting pretty long, so I'll continue the NICU experience part of the story in my next post. 

Nothing Special

There haven't been any super special occasions to write about this week.
Our next big event is the yochien's performance day on Dec. 23rd.  I found out this week that Yosei is going to be a cat in the play his class is putting on, though I don't know what play they're putting on.
Other than that this week I received some really adorable clothes and toys for Keia from one of my new yochien mom friends,  got invited to a Christmas party at one of Yosei's classmate's house  (I'm bringin' the Christmas cookies!). Went to my twice a week buddhist prayer meetings (I'm not a very good buddhist but I'm trying).  And, I made Yosei some new leg warmers  following some DIY tutorials I googled.
Oh the leg warmers...  The whole reason for these really is simple, the kids wear their shorts or skirts even in the winter and while the girls have it easy and can wear tights the boys can't because of the way their uniforms are made.  If they did wear tights they wouldn't be able to use the toilet or would have to take off nearly all of their clothes to do it, not ideal in a potty emergency situation.  So either the little boys pull their socks up as high as they go and deal with the cold legs (which I think they all do) or in my case you go with leg warmers. Yosei was not willing to brave the cold, he practically had to be dragged outside to play the other day.  The only problem with the leg warmer approach was color.  Yosei's got an awesome pair of jolly roger print Baby Legs  but (and this is a big one) at this yochien all socks, tights, etc. MUST be white.  I've searched probably 10 stores and the internet before finally coming to the conclusion that children's white leg warmers are incredibly rare and ridiculously expensive.  This is where my brilliant thinking and google skills came into play and I found out how to make some leg warmers out of knee high socks. 
Anyhow, yesterday my legwarmers were not yet complete, and  I've been putting his awesome baby legs on him to keep warm during the bike ride.  When I dropped him off at preschool I was going to take them off of him but one of the teachers said that as long as it was only for one day it would be alright if he wore them at school, and she said she would let the principal know what was up too.  Woohoo! cold legs crisis averted till I could finish the white warmers.
I finally finished them last night around 1 a.m.,  I don't have a sewing machine nor do I know how to use one so I did all the sewing by hand :P  They turned out pretty awesome I must say.  Yosei liked them too.  So we went to school new leg warmers and all, and I was feeling pretty darn please with my handywork.  We were in the classroom and I was helping Yosei change and suddenly it became one of those moments.  You know those moments where just the tiniest thing can ruin the mood for the rest of the day cuz you keep playing it out over and over going 'WTF?' and also wishing you had not been so totally caught off guard that you had had a better response?  Yeah those....   So Yosei was getting changed and the principal sternly warns me ' You need to remember that the children are only allowed to wear white socks,  they can have little designs on the but the need to be white.'  Of course at this moment I'm thinking what happened to the teacher explaining the situation telling me that it was ok for one day? 
I talked to the other mom that was there for the initial 'its ok'  conversation  and she told me not to take it personally,  that she's just that kind of person (even if she was told the situation she would still feel the need to chime in type of person) , and that there have been issues in the past with other foreign moms who didn't speak Japanese.
Anyhow  as I'm trying to write this Yosei is trying to kick me off the computer so he can watch videos of people opening snacks on Youtube.  He kept saying to me 'Yosei using! Yosei using!'  I told him I was blogging so he needed to wait and his response was 'Yosei  blogging!'  :)  Nothing like your babies to put a smile on your face after a rough day.

Mochi Tsuki

Life has kept me pretty busy for the past few days and kept me away from here,  but it's also given me new stuff to write about.   So, pretty sure that's a good thing.

This past Sunday Yosei's preschool held their Mochi Tsuki Taikai. Basically its a big event in which we smash sticky rice into a stick paste with a big mortar and pestle  and then turn that sticky paste into mochi (sticky rice cakes). 
They decided to have the event on a Sunday to makes sure the dads could come (rice smashing requires somemanly muscle). A lot of the dads, my husband included, have to work Saturdays (We're actually lucky because he gets the 2nd & 4th Saturdays of each month off).
Unfortunately, even though it was a Sunday the timing was the same as any normal school day :P  I was up at 6:30 getting breakfast ready and got Kiyo and the kids up around 6:50.  After  toast and coffee it  was time to get dressed.  Yosei knew we were going to school but he was very upset with me because he wasn't being dressed in his usual uniform, but rather in his P.E. wear.  He kept on insisting he needed to wear his jacket and his blue hatto go to school.  A rough start to say the least. 
Finally a little after 8:30 we got the kids loaded up on the Momcycle and Kiyo followed us on his bicycle allthe way to preschool.   This was actually Kiyo's first time to see Yosei's classroom and his morning  routine and all,  he didn't say anything nice about it  but I'm pretty sure he enjoyed seeing it.
So after the morning routine and the singing of good morning songs the kids were brought out into the playground, told to wash their hands, and then were brought over to the rice smashing stations.  The dads got to start with the smashing (some very heavy labor indeed) and once it was nearly done they kids were each given a turn (assisted by a parent) at some good ol' rice smashing.  There were 3 smashing stations: 1 for the oldest class, 1 for the middle and youngest class, and 1 for older sibs and kids who plan on joining next year; and each station went through the smashing process twice.
After all the smashing was completed the kids were all brought over to sit down and enjoy some of that mochi they worked so hard to make.  There are lots things they put on or in mochi to give it some flavor: black sesame seeds, anko (sweet bean paste), soy sauce, etc.  This time (and as far as I know every year) our yochien makes kinako (soybean flour) mochi. They mix the kinako with a little sugar to make it sweet, it was delicious and a little disappointing that they didn't give out more.  At the very end though everybody was given anko filled mochi called daifuku to bring home.  Exhausting but all in all a fun day.

 Free play time with Haruki First thing in the morning.

 Keia getting her fill of free play time too.

 Time to wash hands

 Kiyo (on the right) doing his fatherly duty of smashing rice.

 Kiyo helping Yosei make mochi

 Waiting to eat 

 Yummy!

Keia got some too!

    

All About Bento

During my high school and college years I had really wanted to become and animator or comic book artist, sadly that was not to be :/ However,  after becoming a mom I finally realized my artistic calling in life must actually be to make adorable lunches.  For those whoaren't familiar with bento believe me when I say I'm not exaggerating about it being an artform all its own.  Google 'chara ben' and you'll come up with some photos of some pretty amazing boxed lunches. 
I've been making my husband's bento every day for quite some time now; but he doesn't want cute, that's way too embarrassing.  So its always something functional not too fancy for him, half the box filled with rice topped with a pickled plum or furikake and the other side filled with a few little side dished to go along with the rice. Boring...

A pretty typical example of what my husband gets for lunch every day



Thankfully Yosei has saved me from bento boredome by entering preschool.  He only needs a bento 3 imes a week as Mondays they have a school lunch and Wenesdays are only a half day so we eat lunch at home.  As far as I know I'm the only mom in the entire preschool that actually enjoys making bento.  All the other moms say its a pain in the ass and they wish every day was school lunch.  Needless to say they think I'm insane ;) 

I had been using a blue plastic Thomas the Tank Engine bento box that I gought at the 100 yen shop (Japanese equivalent of the dollar store) But last week had to purchase a new aluminum box as it was announced the kids would be having their lunches heated starting December 1st and they didn't want us to use anything that might melt in the lunch warmers.  I will just say that the aluminum box cost about 14x more than the plastic box I had been using.   Today is going to be his first heated bento day since yesterday (the day after the feild trip) he came down with a fever and had to stay home. 

Posted below are some of my bento creations for Yosei.

 Elmo bento not very pretty, one of my first creations 

 Supposed to be a train but looks more like a bus bento

 Shinkansen (Bullet Train) Bento - This was his firstday of preschool lunch

 Adorable polar bear bento

Todays bento made in his new aluminum Cars bento box.  Made especially with being heated in mind.  Lots of cheese to get nice and melty, even the rice ball is filled with cheese :) 

Puro Land

Today was our first preschool field trip, and we went to Sanrio Puro Land, possibly the cutest place on earth :)
Of course preparation began yesterday with none other than laundry!  Yosei's uniform was so muddy it needed and actual washing with the washing machine (I don't know how he managed that in a day).  The blazed had to be put into a delicates net; good thing too, turns out Yosei had filled his pockets with sand so when I pulled it out of the net sand was falling out all over the place (><)
Anyhow this morning began with a 30 min walk to the train station,  I wish they had chartered a bus like most schools do, but sadly not.  So Keia in the stroller and Yosei walking next to me (he's pretty used to that though it's how we got around up until a month ago when I put some new child seats on my mom-cycle.
Yosei was pretty excited though because he absolutely loves trains, we even got to ride the monorail :)
After about a two hour ride we finally made it.  They had us take a photo all together outside Puro Land.  I haven't gotten a copy yet,  I'm kind of wondering if we'll have to buy them or not :P
So anyhow we headed inside and first thing I was told is I need to check the stroller at the info desk and put any baggage I didn't want to carry around in a coin locker.  So I put all our coats and such in a locker,  but with a 1 year old the heavy clunky diaper bag is a necessary evil (-_-)
After stashing all our stuff we met up with Yosei's best friend, Haruki, and took a picture by this Sugarbunnies Christmas Tree thing  (see photo below)

Right after taking this photo is when probably my most favorite part of the day took place.  Two Korean girls (erly 20's ish) walked up and asked if they could take their pictures with Yosei right in front of the tree too.  I keep getting told my kids should be models.  Haha maybe I should have told them $5 a shot.

In any case after that was potty break and then lunch time.  Since it was a special preschool trip they had bento prepared for all of us.   

This was the children's bento.  Adorable right?  There was fried chicken, star shaped hashbrowns, a meatball, a mini hotdog with kello kitty printed on it, and some veggies (which of course Yosei didn't eat),  along with the rice with ground chicken and veggies you see here.  Oh and there were little mini jellos (we call them jellies here) for desert.

My bento was not that cute so I didn't bother,  but check out my adorable bottle of tea ^^  After lunch we wandered around the various attractions to see what they had on offer.  I was a little disappointed, seems that in Puro Land their main thing is musical shows, but really how long can you keep a couple of 3 year old boys and a one year old girl interested in Hello Kitty song and dance numbers.  They did have a boat ride that was like the Sanrio equivalent of 'It's a Small World' at Disneyland.  They thing I really wasn't a fan of though is after every single attraction they try to sell you ridiculously priced photos of your fun time.  Considering the price of admission it would be nice if one or two of these was a free gift :P
Also I'm kicking myself  as I walked off and forgot the camera, so all photos were taken on either my phone or on Haruki's mother's phone hence the not so awesome quality.  Enjoy the rest of my Puro land photo gallery!  Also all photos with Haruki are posted with permission ;)

 Haruki, Yosei, and Keia on a sofa in Hello Kitty's house

 Also inside Hello Kitty's house

 Hello Kitty has a ton of sofas in her house

 Keia having a blast in Kitty's bathtub; Yosei, standing next to her, is also having a blast. 

 Yosei pulling a weird face cuz I couldn't get him to sit still :P

 Photo with HK,  green screen because I'm too cheap/poor to buy the ￥1000 ($10) fancy one with a digital background

 Yosei and Haruki in the Kitty Mobile

And of course the Jewel Pets who came out to warmup the crowd in preparation for the big Hello Kitty Christmas Parade. This was the only (and last) show we acually hung out for before heading home.  Keia fell asleep and Yosei was so not into sitting and watching singing and dancing for 30 min ;)

Laundry

I've never liked doing laundry, even before I moved to Japan I hated it.  However, living the last 6 years in Japan has given me a new dislike for laundry, it's really one of the few things I think we do better in the US. 
There are a couple reasons for this:

1. Cold Water >< -  No hot or even lukewarm water washes here, its ice cold.  So of course no matter how awesome your detergent is if you've got something that's absolutely filthy your best bet is to fill your bathroom sink with hot water and wash it by hand. 
2. No Dryers - Yes it seems completely bizarre in a place thatseems to be so technologically advanced but unless you head to a laundromat you probably won't find a dryer (and even those, I've been told, don't work very well).  Some of the new fancy washing machines have built in dryers but most people don't use them.  Why?  To save electricty of course.  We have one of those washers with a dry function, but I have never used it so I don't know if it works or not :P   This means that we hang our laundry out to dry (underpants and all).  This then brings out all the disadvantages of hanging laundry out to dry : Rainy day?  Either don't do laundry or find a place inside to hang it all up.  It probably won't dry until you're able to hang it outside, but at least hanging it will keep it from molding.  Cold and or damp day?  Yeah.... forget about wearing any of those clothes for the next 2 or 3 days.
3. Mold - Being from Colorado where the air is dry this was something entirely new to me and I unfortunately learned the hard way, on a few occasions,  that everything here gets moldy unless you're incredibly careful.  I ruined Yosei's sunhat after a trip to the beach because I put it in a plastic bag when it as wet and forgot about it over night.  I had no idea it would happen so fast.

The first few year I lived here,before I got married  I was able to get away with a once a week (sometimes every two weeks) laundry day.  After getting married it became twice a week. Even after Yosei was born twice a week was ok (his clothes were little)  After Keia was born it became 3-4 times a week, depending on how messy the kids got.  But now with Yosei in yochien I'm washing every single day.  If it's not an entire load then I know for sure I'll be washing peices of his uniform by hand.  Usually is the short pants and button up shirt, I'm usually able to get away with just wiping down his jacket with a damp cloth (but some days not :P)  And I have to say I dread seeing his play smock every single morning when I drop him off at yochien because I can see the cleaning job gradually building up waiting for me to finally clean it at the end of the week .

Preparation for Yochien pt 2

The Uniform
As I mentioned in my last post, uniforms vary greatly depending on the yochien you use.  The one we ended up choosing has a very  elaborate uniform with both summer and winter uniforms as well as a P.E. uniform with both hot and cold weather versions.

 All the pieces of the uniform

 P.E. wear

 Winter Uniform - With jacket, button up shirt, neck ribbon, sweater (optional depending on the weather), pink play smock (customized with iron on patches), short pants, hat, indoor shoes, yellow bag (for carrying bento, letter case, and attendance book)

Summer Uniform- short sleeve button up shirt, neck ribbon, sleeveless play smock, short pants, straw hat, indoor shoes, and yellow bag.

 Ready for the first day of school

Modeling the summer uniform

Like I said pretty elaborate uniform for a preschooler, but you can see why it cost around ￥40,000 :P   Anyway its got me doing laundry a lot more often (its amazing how dirty his shirt gets even though he's got a play smock on over it all day long).  The smock, as well as hand towel, indoor shoes, and PE wear gets sent home on Friday (or in the case of a day off or Saturday preschool, the last day of the week) for washing.

Lunch Time

This is another area in which all yochien differ.  Ours has a school lunch on Mondays, I have to make a bento on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday; and on Wednesday schools gets out at 11:30 so we have lunch at home.  Nearly every Yochien gives the kids milk with their lunch (unless  your kid is allergic of course).  Most yochien ask a flat monthly fee for the milk.  Ours however has us purchase milk tickets that we have to send with the kids to school.  The reasoning behind this is that it's more cost effective for the parents. Less school days in a month, miss a few days cuz you're sick? Well don't worry about losing out one the money you payed for milk  because the tickets have no expiration date,  you just buy more when you use them up.  I actually really like this system.  

Now on to the bento aspect.  Most of the moms I talk to really hate having to make bento and they would rather the school switch to all school lunches.  They must think I'm out of my mind because I actually really enjoy trying to create cute lunches (I'm beginning to think this was actually my calling in life, making art with food rather than with animation or manga like I had wanted to for so long :B)

Starting in December they're going to be putting the kids' bentos into warmers so I had to purchase an aluminum bento box this past week.  It's a Cars bento box, Yosei got to pick it out all by himself.

 First day of school - Shinkansen bento. He didn't eat the lettuce or the broccoli (but made sure to eat the cheese stars and mayo off of it :P) 

Events

There are a ton of events throughout the year and moms are put on committees to help with the preparation of events.  I've been put on the 'Owakare Kare Party' committe (English translation : The Goodbye Curry Party)  It's to say bye to the kids that are 'graduating' and moving on up to elementary school.

The week before Yosei started the kids went sweet potato digging and we got to tag along,  lots of fun digging in the dirt with your bare hands ;)  Two weeks ago the kids got to eat all those potatoes they dug up at their sweet potato party.

Coming in December we'll be doing 'Mochi Tsuki' - smashing sticky rice into sticky chewy rice  cakes with a giant mortar and pestle,  and at the end of the month the kids will have a performance day in which each class will put on a play.  I hear  there will be some work involved for me there too in the form of sewing decorations (ribbons and such) to Yosei's costume.

Twice a year they do a parent child field trip; the last one this year is taking place this Wednesday and we're going to (drumroll please)..... Sanrio Puro Land, the Hello Kitty theme park and possibly cutest place on earth.  I'll make sure to do a write up on that trip.