Father's day...a bit early

It is the expat tradition in Tokyo for many wives and children to flee Tokyo soon after school gets out for the summer. What remains is a lonely fraternity of bachelors who loosely assemble during the week to keep from missing their families too much. I've joined that fraternity for the first time as Shelley and the kids flew home to LA, and then to Evansville last week. I am nearing the end of week 1 (5 weeks total) of being "home alone."

Consequently, we celebrated Father's Day a week and a day early. Anthon has been preparing to celebrate Father's Day for weeks, and has been really excited about it. One time, upon overhearing Shelley and I talk about one of my gifts that I stumbled across (a case of Dad's root beer) Anthon thought it was important that he gets himself out of bed, walk into the kitchen, climb up on my lap and say that he had something very important to tell me. He proceeded to whisper in my ear what my present was - a laminated necktie he made in school with his picture on it. Anthon really has owned this year's Father's Day - overruling Shelley on the style of umbrella they were giving me and insisting that he hide the gift himself. His reasoning is that it's Father's Day and I'm HIS father...not Shelley's. You can't help but be flattered.

And to top it all off, I got two songs sung to me...the best presents of all.

The photo shoot

We have a neighbor, I guess an ex-neighbor as of today, who might as well be a professional photographer. Basically he's my idol. He agreed to take a few shots of Ella and Anthon - this in the middle of all their packing up and moving, mind you. Impeccable timing, once again, by the Cannons!

Anyway, Ella fared pretty well, readily flashing her cute smile. The flash took its toll on her eyes, however. She kept rubbing and covering her eyes, even folding herself in half to get away from the flashing light.

The photos I'm posting here are just the raw, scaled down photo without any cropping or photoshopping. There are some real possibilities here that show Ella's little personality. Look at the gallery and let us know if there's one that you particularly like. While the photo shoot focused on Ella, Anthon wanted in on the action. You can see his enthusiastic, boyish personality in almost every shot.

If anyone is interested in the photographer, Ryan Young, or his work, please visit his website Ryfoto.com. They'll be relocating to the Arizona area in case you want to hire him to do some work for you or your family.

Ella is starting to walk

Right before the family left for the U.S., Ella began to take some steps on her own. So while we'll be away from each for the next month, I'm full anticipating seeing Ella make the transition to walking full time.

Up until the day they left, she never would walked for me. Whenever we tried to get her to walk, she would end up walking on her knees with her arms outstretched and grunting - looking a lot like baby Frankenstein.

But here she is walking around and enjoying the laving praise we pour on her.

It's going to be a boy

We went to the doctor last week and found out that we're having a boy. You obviously can't tell from this shot, but rest assured, we are. Anthon, of course, is excited. He told us, "I've always wanted a boy!" Ella doesn't know what's coming.

So this confirms what Shelley has thought all along - that there is something about being pregnant with a boy that really makes her quite happy. Unfortunately, her pregnancy with Ella was the exact opposite. Anyone else have a similar experience?

Our girl sleeps in the closet

These are the instructions Shelley left for the babysitter last night. Brush teeth, say prayers...and don't forget to put Ella in the closet! There's part of me that feels guilty about putting our daughter to sleep in the closet. I mean, what loving parent puts their children in the closet for 10-12 hours at a time? Ella isn't the deepest sleeper and the slightest noise seems to wake her. To exacerbate matters, we don't have blinds in Ella's room and with Tokyo getting light at 4:00 AM, we've had a spat of days where Ella is up at 5:00 or 5:30 AM. Not good. So we've resorted to putting her in the closet. It's at least a walk-in, and we have a crib there for her. But we do feel bad, because we are putting her in a closet. In the movies, only unloved kids with mean parents put their kids in closets. I mean, is she going to develop some complex that will take years of therapy to unwind because her heartless parents put her in a closet at night, turned out the lights and closed the door? We're willing to risk it to give us a few extra minutes of sleep. Well, there goes parents-of-the-year honors for 2009. Better luck next year I guess.

Terra Cotta Warriors

The other highlight to our trip throughout China was our stop in Xian to see the Terra Cotta Warriors. To get there, we took a 12 hour over-night train from Beijing. This is a pretty good option, especially with a family. There are some downsides, however.

1. Non smoking cars aren't truly nonsmoking as people can smoke at the end of the train cars and that seems to circulate quite nicely back into the other cars via the air conditioning system.

2. You're easy pickings by fellow train passengers who want to interact with you and your kids. This time I was the target. Some random lady who saw me on the platform buying drinks and snacks tracked me down and found my room and, uninvited, sat down to tell me all about why she was going to Xian. She probably would have stayed there forever had we not told her to leave our cabin...in a more nice way than I'm putting it.

The Terra Cotta Warriors were stunning. They were first discovered by a local farmer who was drilling for water and came across shards of terra cotta. That turned into the massive dig that we have today. If this had been the United States, then the guy who found this would undoubtedly be a very rich man...kind of like finding oil underneath your house. But in this case, the man who found this has a new job, that of sitting in a visitor center outside of the entrance, shaking hands with people and signing autographs for tourists who buy coffee table books. Look, is it a step up from farming? In my book, yes. But come on...this guy got shafted in grand scheme of things.

I don't know if it's comforting or not to know that wasteful government spending isn't a modern invention. A few hundred years BC, Emperor Qin, who's buried here, recreated an underground palace complete with an army to help him fight in the afterlife. So much planning went into this, that it was started over 30 years before the future Emperor died...even before he was made Emperor.

The whole compound is fascinating. It's one of these places where you can stand in one place and stare it would still be as stimulating after 30 minutes as it was when you first saw it. It's just hard to fathom how much time, money, people and effort that went into making these statues. The attention to detail and the sheer number of soldiers is incredible. Most have been broken apart underground and it must be so tedious to put them back together - like a giant 3D puzzle.

This place is still very much a slow work in progress. There are three pits, two still darkened significantly, denoting ongoing archeological digs.

As always, click on the pictures to take you to a small gallery of shots from the day. The youtube video below offers a brief look at the statues and the pits.