Poor Ella. Because she is the middle child, we barely notice her developmental milestones. For example, because we play "hide and go seek" a lot, Ella has memorized how to count from 1 to 10. And I think she has known how to do it for a while now, but we're just sort of realizing that she can do it. Nevertheless, it is really cute as this girl is exploding in terms of the volume of words she can speak. And might I add she is exploding in terms of the actual decibel volume of her voice, too. Man can she scream.
Here's a brief video of Ella showing off her counting skills. She just woke up, so her hair is everywhere.
This post is just to highlight a quick video I took of Ella and Anthon doing somersaults. More fun on our flooring. Not as much fun as "kicking the kids" but fun nevertheless.
As I was taking the video, however, I was struck by how blue Ella's eyes are...and how nice and green Anthon's eyes are. Maybe it was the sun.
Ever feel like punting your kids across the room? I happened upon a game with my kids as one of them was lying on the floor crying. Don't ask me how I thought of it, but I flung her across the floor with my foot and she stopped crying and started to laugh and wanted me to continue to fling her around the floor. That lasted about 15 minutes.
Now both my kids love to be "kicked" across the floor. Oddly enough, I feel much more relaxed and composed.
I took Anthon and Ella to the park for a few hours on Saturday and they promptly began to bombard me with leaves. Anthon led and Ella followed. Fall is such a wonderful time of year.
It would have been perfect had Shelley and Quinn joined us. Shelley was fighting with the roll dough she had made, but had turned into "the blob" in our refrigerator. The yeast was acting so powerfully, that it had expanded far beyond the mixing bowl it was placed in. It had spilled out and had enveloped the salsa, the container of leftover peas and was moving towards the condiments. It had to be stopped.
The day before Quinn was born, Shelley, the kids, Shelley's parents and I spent the day in and around Shinjuku - going to parks, lunch and what not. We took the train. On the train, Anthon decided he would have a little vocabulary lesson with Ella. This is the result. Hang in there till the end:
While I'm not the biggest fan of Anthon using some terms so liberally...I do have to laugh that Ella seems to know the difference in placement between the bum bum and the penis.
More importantly, I love the kindness that he's showing to his sister. I'm glad that I caught this on tape, so it can remind me that my kids do love each other...even when it doesn't seem like it at times!
Ella is growing up and becoming quite the talker. Shelley and I have always talked about how great Anthon's was verbally growing up, but Ella is starting to really ramp up her words and sounds. We took a video when Anthon was 18 months old and quizzed him on certain words. Now that Ella is days away from being 18 months, Shelley took a quick video of Ella talking and making noises.
On a personal note, it's been within the last month, month and a half that I've been able to develop this nice father-daughter relationship with Ella. She is quite a charming little girl and I am smitten. She wants me to sing songs to her at night and will try to sing along with her favorite ones. When she wants to give you a kiss she'll place her hands on my cheeks and guide my face to hers so she can kiss me. She loves giving tight squeezes around my neck and will grunt like she's squeezing so hard. She loves reading books. At night when I come home I can hear her yelling "dada, dada, dada" as her little feet are running towards the door. She can't quite beat Anthon to the door. He's pretty swift. But Ella isn't far behind. She's so polite. She says thank you for everything. She'll fold her arms and listen patiently through the prayer, even long ones and give out a very enthusiastic "AMEN!" at the end.
We're amazed at what new things she is saying, learning and doing from one day to the next.
Our last stop on our trip to Kyushu were the cities of Kurume and Fukuoka. I lived in Kurume for 7 months as a missionary. As a tourist destination it's not much. But this place houses a lot of great personal memories for me. One of the great memories was teaching a person who worked at the first Subway sandwich shop in Kyushu. And we as missionaries, longing for a decent sandwich, would frequent this place. The other main reason to frequent this place was a guy, nicknamed Gonchan, who was interested in the missionaries and then eventually joined the LDS church. Gonchan was our age and had boundless energy. He would call us when his boss wasn't there to tell us to come down and he would make us sandwiches. He even made me a Subway nametag and got a uniform to fit me and I was able to be "sandwich artist" during our lunchbreak.
The only other things that make Kurume somewhat famous are 1)a gaudy and 200ft tall statue of Kannon the Goddess of Mercy; and 2)the Ishibashi family. You may not know the name Ishibashi, but you've probably heard of Bridgestone Tire, the largest maker of tires in the world. They are from Kurume and started the company there. As a side note, the daughter of the founder married a future prime minister of Japan. And one of their sons is the current prime minister of Japan.
Our time in Kurume was spent with Gonchan and seeing other friends that I knew in the area. It was great to catch up. For those of you Fukuoka missionaries, I have to tell you that we dined at the best tonkatsu place on Earth, Hamakatsu. For those of you who don't know what tonkatsu is - it's a flattened, breaded and deep fried piece of pork (usually pork, but also chicken). It's served with a cabbage salad, miso soup and rice. You dip the katsu in an Asian style barbecue sauce and it's wonderful. As missionaries we used to lust after this restaurant. We would always get the chicken katsu and we would go to town on the all you could eat cabbage salad and rice. It was a decent sized chain 15 years ago, but nowadays it's absolutely everywhere. We had to stop in to eat there once. It's so good. Anthon loved it so much he downed a whole thing of tonkatsu, then threw it up in bed with me later that night. In what was undoubtedly major inspiration, I woke up, sat up and moved out of the way literally a split second before Anthon spewed half-digested tonkatsu everywhere. I escaped the sickness. Yes!
After our one day in Kurume, we spent a half day in Fukuoka, killing time before flying home to Tokyo. Fukuoka is the 8th largest city in Japan and doesn't really hold any real special feeling for me, except for the LDS temple that was built on the site of our old mission home. A friend of mine from the mission, Greg Peterson, and I were able to fly back in 2000 for the dedication of the Temple. It was surreal to think that the old home that we would visit on the large plot of land was now a temple. From my LDS perspective, what a blessing that is for the members of the LDS church in Kyushu.
Our final stop in Fukuoka was Ohori Park - a large park created on the old castle grounds. We devoured McDonalds hamburgers and fries and let the kids run. I think our vacation went a few hours too long because in what should have been a fun ride on the paddle boats turn into a nightmare of crying by the children. My attempts to get us back to the dock to stop the madness were futiles as we were paddling against the wind and it made our trip back not only slow but very physically taxing on my legs! If you like hearing kids scream and cry, then please feel free to watch the short clip Shelley took below.
As always click on any of the pictures to be taken to a gallery of the few shots we took in Kurume and Fukuoka.
It's been hot and humid here in Tokyo the last week. It's definitely ice cream weather. But you have to eat it quickly, or else it will melt all over you. The great thing about being a kid is that you don't care that your ice cream cone gets all over you. And really, I think the greater the mess, the higher the level of enjoyment for the child. Watching Ella eat this ice cream cone makes me think she really, really enjoyed it.
Sometimes you look at what your kids do and think that they were born with that disposition. Ella is showing an affinity for all things girly. She likes to preen in the mirror when you tell her she's pretty. She loves her toenails painted and she now has a fascination with Shelley's high heels. Ella will go straight for the closet and put one or more on and clog around the apartment. I'm sure it creates quite the distraction for our neighbors downstairs, but it is pure entertainment watching her act all grown up with her feet that fill barely a quarter of Shelley's high heel shoes.
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.
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."
The Wedding I spent my last weekend without family in Kobe and Kyoto for the wedding of the daughter of the family I lived with as a home-stay student 16 years ago. This was my first trip to Japan. Who knew then it would turn out like this? Anyway, I turned the wedding into a long weekend in some of my favorite areas of Japan.
The wedding was a traditional Shinto wedding, a first for me. There is a part in the wedding where the bride and groom will drink what looked like ritual water poured by the priestesses. Then each member of the wedding party, as a symbol of I guess unity, partakes of the ritual beverage. Now, if you know me, you know that I don't drink alcohol. Let me tell you, that was NOT water I drank. Can I just marvel at how such a small thimble full of sake can generate so much heat in the mouth and throat? Wow.
Geisha / Maiko Oddly enough I had many opportunities to interact with geisha and maiko (who are apprentice geisha). The father of the bride is a patron of a geisha house and has access, which is extremely uncommon. So throughout the weekend we had geisha and maiko attend and perform at the wedding, dinner the next night and at an after-party at a local cabaret. Not to mention I did my fair share of stalking them with my camera on the streets in the districts of town where one can find the geisha houses. I wasn't the only one. There were a lot of tourists, like me, and other fan-boys whose main hobby it is to hang out in these districts to take these girls' picture. Seeing that was almost equally as interesting as the girls themselves.
Here is my take on the whole geisha thing. It's incredibly interesting. These are young teenage girls who choose to move away from home to learn a very traditional way of life. Their access to friends and family is limited. They learn traditional forms of dance, music and singing. They learn a high form of etiquette. To me, I find these girls beautiful in the way I find a statue beautiful. Everything about their appearance is a work of art. It takes them about an hour to get dressed, 30 minutes just to put on the facial make up and their hair takes so long that they only have it done once or twice a week. The clothes they wear costs thousands of dollars. Even their mannerisms and attitude are trained to be mature, docile and agreeable. It's not necessarily who these girls are, it's who they're being made up to be. And they're being made into a work of art. It's a really interesting world. A funny example of this training came at a dinner the night after the wedding. I was sitting next to one maiko at dinner, translating for the group, and she would not eat any of the food until she was invited to do so. I didn't know this and she just sat there until the father of the bride told me to let her eat.
So it was one of those really cool and rare experiences to get so much time interacting with these girls. This isn't a normal thing, even for Japanese...many of whom have never seen one in person let alone talked to one.
Akashi Kaikyo Bridge Ask my wife, and she'll tell you that I'm a sucker for heights and panoramic views. So, I decided that I would take a tour of the world's largest and tallest suspension bridge. It may not sound interesting, but the climax of the tour was an elevator ride up to the top of the main gate, 300m above the 4km long bridge. You emerge from the elevator and you're outside with nothing but a chest high wall keeping you safe. You have unobstructed views of the world around and below. For my metrically challenged friends of the U.S. (I used to be one of them!), 300 meters is about To give you perspective on the height of 300 meters, for my metrically challenged friends that's just under 1000 feet, or about 90 - 100 story building.
Kyoto Other highlights of the weekend included the trip to my favorite shrine in all of Japan, Fushimi Inari Shrine. This is a mountain shrine that has many kilometers of steep pathways up and down the mountains that are enclosed by giant red torii gates packed in one after the other. These are gates that are purchased by companies and donated to the shrine as an offering for prosperity for that particular company. There our thousands of these gates of all sizes lined up one after the other.
Bamboo forests, river cruises, zen rock gardens. It was a very traditional Japanese tourist weekend and I loved it. I was only sad that I couldn't have shared it with the family.
So, definitely check out the pictures by clicking on any of the photos in this post. I took hundreds of pictures, but I picked the best ones and put them into one gallery. There are some really cool shots of the maiko as well as some panoramic shots from on top of the bridge. Definitely check out the video below.
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.
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 hard to know where to start in describing our experience with the Great Wall. One can get caught up in the data points - like the fact that it stretches the same distance as a flight spanning the Pacific Ocean from Los Angeles to Tokyo (5,500 miles). It took centuries, plus the lives of millions of laborers, to build this wall. At its height, more than 1 million soldiers were used to guard the Wall. The construction is even more impressive when you realize that the wall basically lines the contours of these rugged mountains, no matter how steep. And at times there was some very steep hiking.
We started out our hike among a throng of other hikers, which at times can be really frustrating. But luckily the more you hike, the more solitude you find, which I think is the best way to experience the Great Wall. It's worth it to see the empty walkways and cool, dark guard towers in relative peace and quiet. Off the beaten path, you can see the wall in its original, unrestored state, being overrun by nature. Trees, shrubs and plants have busted through the Wall, leaving behind only small hiking paths in its slowly crumbling state. It was nature taking over one of man's most amazing creations - which makes for an interesting parable when you stop and think about it.
The biggest worry was the kids...specifically Anthon. He can be very sensitive about walking too much. But we found out on this trip that so long as you tell him stories, he'll do anything. He'll go anywhere...and there will be no complaining. He walked 70% of the way there and back...that's a lot of up and down for a 3 year old. A total champ. Poor Shelley, though, had to tell the same three or four stories probably 20 times each. Ella had it easy. She was in the backpack and took a number of naps along the way. Our guide, Flame, carried her a good chunk of the way. I had it relatively easy too. I was charged with taking pictures and video. I took over 400 pictures over the course of the day. Don't worry, if you click on these pictures it will take you to a gallery of shots from that day that have been winnowed down to something below 40 shots.
As always, I took some video and have it uploaded to Youtube below.
One thing we know about Anthon is that he has a really, really good memory. Almost too good. After reading him a story a few times he can pretty much recite the whole story for memory. If you purposefully mess up on a word, 7 times out of 10 he'll be able to correct you.
So harnessing that, Shelley has been helping Anthon memorize scripture verses. And Anthon has really taken to it. Here's the first one he memorized, Doctrine & Covenants 109:8. He has these cute little hand motions too that go along with it to help him remember.
We may try to do a series of these memorized scriptures. As many of you know, I teach seminary (early morning, daily Bible study for LDS high school kids). Our course for the year just ended...but it looks like I'll be teaching it again in the Fall. Every year there is a set of scriptures that the students are asked to memorize. Maybe if we can get Anthon to memorize the set of 25 scriptures this year, that will motivate the kids to memorize theirs. Nothing like a little competition from a 3 year old.
If you spend any time in Beijing and read about its history, one thing becomes abundantly clear - the imperial family didn't spend much time out and about with the common folk. I'm sure that's the case with most royal families. But there are large tracks of land that was dedicated solely for the use of the emperor and empress, the summer palace being one of them. To further my point, a lot of the landscaping done around the palace, from its large lake to its Venice-like canals, were made as replications of existing famous Chinese sites. My point? I don't know how much the royal family, or their handlers, got around much. One has to chuckle knowing that after the original palace grounds were ransacked, the money to rebuild the grounds was taken from the money that would have gone into building a navy.
There are three things that make this a must see in Beijing. First is that this is every bit as much as gathering spot for locals as it is a tourist spot for foreigners and tourist groups. Locals can buy a month or year long pass to enter at the price it costs for us to get in for a day. You'll see these people in large groups Chinese line dancing. We're talking a hundred people all lined up dancing away. Others are doing group jump rope, kicking Chinese hacky sacks, which looks like a cross between a western hacky sack with a badminton shuttle cock, or by doing some rhythmic exercises with a ball and paddle.
The second interesting thing about The Summer Palace is seeing how this place was ransacked in the early part of the 20th century. Western powers trying to quelch a nationalistic uprising ransacked much of the palace, even destroying walls adorned with Buddhist statues. You could see heads of these statues lopped off. The higher you got, however, the more the heads were spared. I guess even marauders have certain height limitations.
Finally, I think the best part about being at The Summer Palace was renting a boat and floating around the lake seeing the entirety of the estate. During this time of year the many willow trees were drooping down into the water and their cottony blossoms were wafting in the air creating a really dreamlike state of serenity. It was really quite a nice feeling as we were floating calmly along the canals and lakes of The Summer Palace.
We spent our first full day here and it was a wonderful introduction to the city. Click on the pictures to see more from the gallery. The video captures nicely, I think, the three great things about this place: the people, the lake and the Buddhist statues. At the end you can see a pretty funny video of people gathering around like paparazzi taking pictures of Ella and how Anthon responds to being grabbed.
I've not actually seen this in person - I had to steal this video off of Shelley's camera - but evidently Ella really loves the washing machine. When it's on and she's awake, she loves to stand up and look inside at the clothes, water and bubbles sloshing around.
Shelley has brought many things into our marriage, and I think one of the funniest things is the traditional Easter bunny cake that she makes. It's a carrot cake with a cream cheese frosting and coconut shavings that shaped into a bunny. Chocolate chips for the eyes and a red gummy bear for the nose. She also dyes coconut shavings green to make the grass and to top it all off, even lays out raisins to represent the bunny poop.
Anthon helped Shelley make the traditional Easter bunny cake and evidently developed a close bond with the bunny because when it came time to eat the cake, Anthon got very protective of his friend. He wouldn't even eat the Peeps, no doubt part of the bunny-cake's entourage. Being the loving,sensitive and caring parents that we are, we broke out into Elmer Fudd's "Kill the Wabbit," which only got Anthon more riled up...of course we thought it was funny.
This was a nice Easter. Anthon has caught the vision of the Easter egg hunt and cleaned house. Ella, sensing the presence of food and candy seemed to have a knack for crawling after the occasional forgotten egg. Though I think she was more interested in eating the plastic egg than she was with finding the goodies inside. Click on any of the pictures to see a small gallery of Easter-season shots.
Anthon likes to climb up on the counter in the kitchen to help Shelley with the cooking. He's quite a good mixer. He uses one of our kitchen table chairs to climb up. Ella, who freely crawls around and pulls herself up on things, especially the kitchen chairs, realized one day when Anthon was on the counter, that the chair is light enough to push it around while standing, yet strong enough to support her.
She can't quite steer the chair, so she'll walk until she runs it into something. Then she does these little leg squats to complete the work out. She is quite pleased with herself, as you can see in the video below.
I haven't posted anything new on the family for a while. I captured this little video of Ella showing off the other morning during breakfast.
Ella is 11 months old now and becoming this total character. she seems less and less like our tiny baby and more and more like our little girl. She can clap her hands to "Patty Cakes" and will 'throw it in the oven' by raising her arms up high. She's waving hello and goodbye. She's really good at feeding herself with her hands and is showing interest in using spoons and forks. She loves food and can't get enough. If she's sitting on your lap and you're eating food, she will reach for the arm holding the utensil, grab the arm with both hands, pull it towards her and forcefully guide the utensil with the food into her mouth. She's very determined. Ella is pulling herself up on almost anything and enjoys standing. She's crawling everywhere and just has a lot of confidence in herself.
While visiting the historical mountain village of Nikko, we got up close and personal with wild monkeys that were hanging out by the lake. There were three of them, two parents and a baby, and they were getting harassed by onlookers who were jokingly trying to pick fights with the monkeys. Naturally, when the monkeys tried to fight back, the onlookers ran away like sissies.
I was of course filming some of this, hoping to catch something funny - like some dude getting pelted by monkey feces. After a few minutes, Anthon and I retreated back to where the rest of our family was, and we took out some bread and sembei (rice crackers) to eat. One monkey, about 40 yards away, charged towards us, resulting in our quick retreat. He ate our bread and then made a deliberate march towards Anthon, who was holding a sembei. Shelley screamed for Anthon to get rid of the sembei, so being the closest to him, I grabbed it out of Anthon's hands and threw it at the monkey who happily backed off to eat the loot. Anthon wasn't too happy - his sembei was stolen by the monkey. Later, Anthon offered tough words about the next time he came across the monkey - he was going to "kill him by slicing him with his sword"...my little samurai.
Here's a quick little video of the monkeys and the aftermath of their taking Anthon's sembei.
It's interesting to note that the two people that the monkeys proactively stalked and went after were little kids. They vigorously defended themselves (and their young) when adults came too closely, but they made two unprovoked advances on children their own size. I guess the primates take to heart the belief that you should only "pick on someone your own size."
Shelley and I recently attended the year's first Grand Sumo Tournament here in Tokyo. I'm sure you caught highlights on SportsCenter, right? On the surface, sumo wrestling looks like a bunch of fat Asian guys in ornate g-strings pushing and slapping each other inside a ring. But it's so much more than that.
Sumo wrestling has deep roots in the Shinto religion, and started literally as a symbolic wrestling match against the kami, or local God of the shrine. Today, every aspect of the sport is embedded in the Shinto religion from the construction of a shinto temple roof over the ring, to the coordinated rituals that are done before and after matches. One interesting one is done by the Grand Champion(s) (called the yokozuna) who enters the ring, and purifies it by driving away evil spirits by doing the big leg stomp. Certainly a site to behold...on a number of levels that I don't think I need to go into.
Sumo wrestling is going through an interesting time. Because while it is quintessentially Japanese, it is being more and more dominated by foreign wrestlers from Polynesia, Mongolia and Eastern Europe. Four of the last six grand champions were foreign born and the many of the top wrestlers are foreigners. How do officials of this very traditional Japanese sport deal with it? They place limitations on the number of foreigners that can participate, of course. But that's beside the point.
The point is, seeing it live is awesome. I'd seen it on TV a number of times, but you don't get a feel for how strong these guys are, and how much real technique there is. While the guiding principles of the sport underscore a need for little emotion, seeing it live you pick up on intense competition and bitter rivalries that percolate underneath the surface. Plus, as one of my friends put it, it's a great opportunity to remind your wife that she should be glad us husbands don't look like that.
We enjoyed ourselves so much so that we're hoping to head back in May when the tournament comes back to Tokyo. Anyone care to join us?
Click on the pictures above to see a small gallery of photos taken from our nose bleed seats. There is also the video below that we shot of a few rituals and matches. Be careful, they contain images of large, scantily clad Asian, Polynesian and Eastern European men pushing each other around. Best not seen within 30 minutes of eating.
Ella has this little motion when she gets excited where she waves her arms in a circular motion. Shelley and I can't decide whether we should be putting her into swimming classes to be do the butterfly stroke? Or perhaps put her in a row boat to have her do crew? Thoughts?
As you can see, she takes quite the face plant towards the end of the video, but seemingly cheers up when she starts waving her arms again.
Ella has started to say "mama." Shelley is rejoicing. I kid you not, this girl is exploding in confidence and curiosity. She's everywhere, into everything, saying new sounds and for good measure finds being awake so much more fun than falling asleep. We're not as big a fan of the latter development.
I don't feel it's too late to make a quick holiday recap since at the Cannon household Anthon won't let us take down the stockings and Christmas tree. Luckily it's fake.
Christmas - great day, but did I really have to take a vacation day to celebrate Christmas? Yes. Doesn't quite seem fair until you remember that in Japan you basically get the entire week off the following week. More to the point, growing up Christian in the U.S. you really don't know what life is like as a religious minority - but while we're in Japan we're definitely the minority here. It was weird to see life carry on as usual on Christmas day when things basically shut down for the day in the U.S.
We were asked all the time if we were heading home for Christmas and while we would have liked to spend time with family, Shelley and I were excited to forge some of our traditions for our family. So what traditions did we create for ourselves? Well, food wise we ordered hamburgers via delivery...and that night we made shabu shabu at home for dinner. While it might seem more like what Ralphie's family would have done after the neighborhood dogs ate their dinner, but we're open minded people and the food was really good. Christmas was one of those all time great days where from top to bottom it was filled with happiness. Oh and yes, Santa (by way of the local FedEx) delivered our new plasma TV.
New Year's - Most of our activities can best be read on Shelley's blog. I don't have too much to add other than to say how gross my feet must be to have been the main attraction for the Turkish Dr. Fish. They literally attacked me and wouldn't leave my feet alone. I made sure to add that onto my list of things to accomplish this year.
Finally, it was a rarity to see Mt. Fuji with such clarity up so close. For someone who is a sucker for vistas and expansive views, it was really, really cool. If it hadn't been so cold I think I could have stayed up there all day. Anyway, read Shelley's blog and you can get all the low down on the day - here is a short video from Fuji and then the next day at Meiji Shrine. Also, click on any picture to go to the gallery of shots over the holidays.
So now that Ella can crawl she suddenly is terrorizing everything in her sights. Shelley wrote on her blog that Anthon had to trap Ella under her toy basket, like a bear, because she was going after the toys he was playing with (no need to mention that it was her toys in her room).
She was supposed to be napping, but I caught Ella crawling up to the side of her crib and going after the animals in her mobile. She successfully, though quite accidentally, stopped the music and therefore the rotation of the mobile itself, which allowed her to prey on the innocent, multicolored elephant.
After a few weeks of looking like she wants to crawl, Ella has finally put it all together and is crawling. Shelley and I readily admit that our apartment is not ready for Ella to start crawling. I can't tell you how many times she has instinctively gone for the very things we're trying to keep her from - wall sockets, television cords, etc. Ella crawled over to Anthon's shelves and pulled down his camera...the old heavy one that missed her noggin by inches. Good times ahead.
I know the quality of these videos may not be better than what I've posted in the past. Youtube does allow you to watch uploaded videos in "higher quality." If you're interested in seeing that, click on this link to take you there.
Shelley took this video of Ella copying my movements. I would put my hand up and she would put her hand up. I would put my hand down and she would put her hand down. She was so tired, but thought that this little developmental milestone was so funny.
She's been shaking her a lot, as if to say no. She teases her Dad at the 45 second mark by shaking her head "no" when asked if she could indulge me by saying "Dada!" She's a tease!
I know the quality of these videos may not be better than what I've posted in the past. Youtube does allow you to watch uploaded videos in "higher quality." If you're interested in seeing that, click on this link to take you there.
Anthon has been in school for a few months and to top off his very first semester at school, they had a brief Christmas concert. It was very cute. The kids had practiced "Jingle Bells" and "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" for the better part of a month.
I'm toying with the idea of hosting these videos on Youtube. Let me know what you think.
Ella is growing up and becoming quite the talker. Shelley and I have always talked about how great Anthon's was verbally growing up, but Ella is starting to really ramp up her words and sounds. We took a video 
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.
While visiting the historical mountain village of Nikko, we got up close and personal with wild monkeys that were hanging out by the lake. There were three of them, two parents and a baby, and they were getting harassed by onlookers who were jokingly trying to pick fights with the monkeys. Naturally, when the monkeys tried to fight back, the onlookers ran away like sissies.
