Catch-up

If anyone has hung in long enough to still be around for it, here it is! Finally I am making an attempt to catch up. Don't stop here - check back on posts for the last few weeks, as I will be retrospectively catching up bit by bit.

Okay, catch-up:

KANJI is finally, after many a long year, almost regularly coming home at 5pm. Wow, what a different life. Ironically I am seeing less of him, as he seems to be catching up on five years of lost sleep by going to bed at 8pm every night! Every day he buys fish off the guy who comes around on his scooter selling fish, and he comes home and we cook together. We are starting to get into a kind of routine, although things have been messed up lately by his coming home early, which tends to make the kids go crazy, and the new bunk beds. I have two evening lessons a week, so, so far it looks like I will be doing baths after dinner while he lingers over dinner, then I go up to read a book (We are reading Anne of Green Gables at the moment) and then leave them to it. So I end up with less reading time, because I had got into the nice habit of having an uninterrupted half hour or so reading by book-light while the kids settled. Now Kanji has a pile of books upstairs by the bed... The kids bounce in and out of their bunks, which is nice, because I miss them. Sometimes I put them back in the bunks, sometimes I don't. I am pretty sure that once they are happy in their bunks and have no interest in snuggling up with Mummy and Daddy, I will be very nostalgic for the good old wall-to-wall family bed days!

ME - Around nine regular lessons a week - I could do more, but right now I am concentrating on getting the house organized. I have had a headache for two months. First I thought it was a cold, then 'natsu-bake' or summer-exhaustion, which you don't get in NZ cos it never gets hot enough! Then a brain tumour, of course, but now I am convinced they are tension headaches, and what I need is a new pillow, a massage, a computer chair, less time on the sofa, more exercise (ironically I stopped swimming because of the headaches) and a better posture. We'll see how this works out this week. I have back pain too, so I might go to the osteopath or try acupuncture, anything ahead of going to the hospital and paying buckets of cash for loads of tests!

AMY - All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth! Yep, they are both gone, plus one on the bottom. She seems to have no problem eating though! She just had her school sports day, which is a BIG DEAL here in Japan, held on a Sunday, with everyone brining a picnic, school grounds crowded, everyone jostling for the best video-camera position. Check out pics on Oct 15. She is still swiming, and loves it. Wants to learn piano, but we need to buy one first. We will get an electric one, not an organ, but a new 'piano touch' keyboard. Still loves to draw - her pictures are so good now that sometimes people assume I drew them.

LENA is practicing for her ballet concert. She is excited about it, but doesn't seem to make the connection between practice and the concert. For some reason she is in only one dance, but that means I save $100. Kindy is going okay - she is getting a little tired of it, I think. It's not the most fun kindy in the world - they do concentrate on academics a bit much, but they feel they have to to produce the results the parents expect for the money they are paying. She can hang in until April I am sure.

What are they doing now? They dressed themselves exactly the same this morning, right down to shoes, which Amy especially washed so they would be the same. Now they are playing volcano - using the skipping rope Amy got as a present from her kindergarten for the school sports day. They tie the toys to it, then run up and down the stairs with one holding each end, 'saving' them from the volcano. I am still in my pyjamas, as I vowed to do this before anything else! I will get dressed now, have a cuppa and continue to sort my magazines. 10am we will go to the nearby festival, and come back around 11:30 for a lunch of minestrone soup with crusty bread and cheddar cheese. Then I have to go to work, and Amy will go back to the festival with Aunty Mie to join her art class and draw pictures of the festival. I finish at 6pm, and I am hoping the kids beg to stay at Baachans, so I can go to the onsen and get a massage!