Summer in LA

It's been a long time since the entire Cannon family gathered together in one spot. We're up to 20 (21 if you include my Grandmother, and 22 if you also include the baby that's due in November).

Vacation for the Tokyo Cannons was all about being with family. Shelley spent a month with her folks and then we both met up in LA and spent a month with my family. For me, being in LA was a stark reminder of the things that we lack in Tokyo: family, space, grass, a dog and good Mexican food - all hallmarks of our stay in LA.

Every night after dinner we would spent time outside in the backyard with my parents' poodle puppy Jack. We'd chase the dog, Anthon and Ella would hug and kiss the dog and then get promptly knocked down by the exuberant puppy. Anthon liked to spin aimlessly around the yard until he fell down. Ella discovered the moon and would lie on the grass for good chunks of time just staring at the sky. It was a really wonderful time.

Coming back to Tokyo we were greeted by the heat and humidity. Shelley and I have been reluctantly assimilating back into our lives. This is new for me since we both love it here - love our friends, love our community, love the culture. I think it's more about how great it was to see family and friends again more than anything else.

Naturally, we took a number of pictures. Click on the thumb below to see pictures from Shelley's time in West Virginia and Indiana, and our time in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles, 2009

Indiana, 2009

The next Michael Phelps?

A year ago, Anthon was afraid of setting foot in a pool, even with his life jacket on. Fast forward one year and Anthon is jumping into the pool from the diving board and swimming on his own (without a life jacket) across the length of the pool. At this rate of progress, he'll be breaking world records in a few years.

I give all the credit to Shelley and her Mom. I've learned that Anthon responds very strongly to rewards. Each day if he did a variety of swimming exercises in the pool he would get a toy (from the 99 cent store). If he swam the width of the pool 10 times he got a trip to Chuck-E-Cheese. Swimming the length of the pool got him an ice cream cake.

We've also found that peer pressure has been a great motivator. We're happy that this works now. We may regret it when he gets to be a teenager, so hopefully we can also instill in him a sense of right and wrong beforehand! Seeing his older cousins swimming and diving has fueled Anthon to learn to swim on his own - I'm sure out of pride. Praise works well, too. He'll do anything for praise.

Anyway, here's a video of Anthon swimming the length of the pool.

7th Inning Stretch

We went to the Dodgers game the other night and brought the kids. Shelley and I are big fans of taking our kids to sporting events. We brought Anthon to a USC / Nebraska football game when he was 10 months old and while he freaked out at the enormity of the crowd, he got used to it.

The game becomes that much more fun for me because we're sitting there as a family eating our hot dogs, nachos and cotton candy while we're talking about the game, the players and what is going on. All they see is the game. They hit, they run, we cheer. They don't see the money or the steroids or anything that detracts. And it's cute when he internalizes that into his own play at home. When we're home playing in the back yard Anthon will want to be his favorite Dodger - Hiroki Kuroda - the lone Dodger from Japan. So cute. We also get really awkward questions, like "Why aren't there any women on the Dodgers?" The answer I came up with on the spot was, 'Well, most women prefer to play softball." and left it at that. I was tempted to be a bit more sarcastic with my response, but I was afraid Anthon would repeat it.

But for all of the reasons to take your kids to a game, this has to be THE main reason - to see them singing "take me out to the ball game."