10 November 2010

Our anniversary coincided with a lunch date with Nick, which we were able to take outside as it was very warm in the sun.

We carried on afterwards to visit Lottie. Rudy had just taken his first steps; he is not even 11 months yet! We left him sleeping, with Brigida babysitting, and took the girls off to the local park, which was a pleasant spot and had a decent playground. They ended up collecting leaves, of course. A four year old girl wanted to play with them and they managed a few rounds of hide-and-seek, though she could not understand why they did not stay hidden for long, and she got frustrated a bit when she tried to get them playing tag and they didn't get it.

Emily counted out 10 objects twice today and also seems to have mastered most lower case letters now.

8 November 2010

When Emily woke the first thing she said was 'what are we doing today?'. I explained that we were going to Mia's and she said she didn't want to go. We went anyway, and in the end she seemed to have a nice time. They played with Playdough and made dinosaurs and snakes.


It was a beautiful day and very warm, maybe as much as 20C. It's hard to know what clothes to wear and take with you as it is quite cool in the shade but T-shirt weather in full sun.


After a hasty lunch I whisked Emily off to Akachan Honpo, where we bought a new Thomas water bottle, a Thomas umbrella and two pairs of footwear, plus a few little bits and pieces. Byebye Y10,000 ( GBP 75 or more these days). I hope her feet don't grow until the end of winter now!

Before going home we stopped at the playground in Azabu Juban for a play with Charlize. They were happy enough collecting leaves, though a bigger boy scared Charlize, prompting a very rare wee accident.



At home Emily accurately counted out 9 mikan (satsuma) from the fruit bowl.

7 November 2010

Emily and I stayed at home in the morning while Nick went out to study for a couple of hours. We made animal-shaped biscuits together.

After lunch Emily and I went to Charlize's birthday party, which was held at KSpace again. Emily was very withdrawn for a good hour and only really loosened up when they were allowed to go down into the soft-play gym for half an hour. The kids went mental and it was all a bit crazy. I am amazed none of them got hurt as there were limbs flailing everywhere and big pile-ups at the bottom of the small slope.

The party had a dance theme and Charlize's ballet teacher was there to get the kids dancing, though Emily baulked at doing much of that. The whole party had a soundtrack of classical music, which made a refreshing change to the usual music on offer at kids parties, though it was a too loud for sound-sensitive me. When the Ariel character cake came out, Charlize was upset as her friend blew out the candles before she could get to them, but at least none of them spat on the cake as one little guest did last time!

Over tea I go very stressed out with Emily - I overreacted to several fairly minor transgressions that could be attributed to her extreme fatigue -maybe I was a bit hormonal. Although I did not feel like running at all I went and did my longest route, which I completed in only 47 minutes (usually nearer to 50) and I felt so much better afterwards, of course.

6 November 2010

Nick was studying in the afternoon and it was another glorious day, so I took Emily to Onarimon on the bus again. Cliff brought Charlize over later too; as she hadn't been to the playground there before she was excited to try everything and was ordering Emily to join her on each thing, but Emily had already tried it all out and was happy collecting leaves. There was no sign of the stinky gingko nuts that were scattered everywhere earlier in the week, so I think they must have all been collected. They are a delicacy here, particularly served at the bottom of a savoury egg custard called chawan mushi.

3 November 2010

Today was one of two national holidays this month, this one being Culture Day, so Nick had the day off. He still needed to study though, so I took Emily to Onarimon playground on the bus, which leaves from the end of our road and conveniently stops right opposite the park entrance. It was very sunny and we were soon stripping off layers down to T-shirts. Emily quickly exhausted all the play equipment and was then content to collect leaves ad nauseum. A man had been collecting gin-nan (ginkgo nuts) and after washing off the smelly outer flesh had hundreds of the nuts laid out to dry in the sun.

Back at home, Emily took herself off to the loo on her own several times: another little step towards independence.

After a Japanese lunch of kitsune udon (an unintentional nod towards the special day), we went to Kyu Shiba Rikyu, getting Emily to walk all the way to Tamachi station. The park was really busy but the crowds gradually thinned as the sun worked down the sky. Emily had great fun collecting even more leaves and pretending a small pine tree was her house.

We had Japanese dinner as well: tasty and fairly cheap yellowtail tuna and daikon (giant white radish) cooked in the holy trinity of sake, mirin and soy sauce, plus ginger. Actually it was rather good so I should make it more often. Heavy saucepan usage though - the washing up took an age.

Given the opportunity of Nick being home in the evening for once, I forced myself out for an additional run after Emily had gone to bed, though I kept it to 35 minutes and skipped the second long hill past the Kuwait embassy.

2 November 2010

No sooner is Halloween behind us than I noticed that Starbucks had begun pumping out Christmas muzak! Spare me.

31 October 2010

With Nick studying yet again I had arranged to meet Cliff and Charlize for a trip to Minato Mirai. The journey takes about an hour so I was glad that Emily had Charlize there to help it pass more quickly. It was a pleasant day and the two of them were happy to hang around outside Tully's while us adults had our caffeine fix. Then we slowly made our way into Landmark Tower for an early lunch at Sizzler all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant. Neither child ate very well (apart from bread rolls and dessert) and were rather distracted by the Halloween decorations.

We called it quits and went straight to Kid-O-Kid where they ran riot for an hour and a half. Most popular were the bouncy castle and the tumblers.

Charlize went into meltdown when we tried to prise them away; Emily was hardly happy about leaving but thankfully I avoided any tantrums. Charlize dropped off soon after we began the return journey so we jumped onto a quicker train while they headed back in a more leisurely fashion.

My evening run was OK, if not great. It was a trifle too warm for my liking.