Just wanted to say those 3 special words to all of my grandparents! 

Hello, and a Happy Spring to you!  The cherry blossoms have bloomed beautifully and attracted many picnic goers and drinkers to sit under their canopy of pink.  But now in the first week of April, the petals have just about fallen and the green buds have started to push their way out to form the lush green leaves.
At 2 years and 3 months, Shosei is an active and gentle boy.  He still loves to take naps.  He likes to play on the slides in the park.  He loves Yakitori chicken, just as much as his Mommy.  His favorite foods are mushrooms and fish and natto and rice and noodles.  Recently, he discovered fine taste in fish roe such as Ikura and Sujiko.  He often says, 'Sujiko, please' at the dinner table.  He still loves strawberries and other fruits.  He likes to eat Grandpa's dried pears.  It's so chewy and sweet, he practically drools.
Mommy started toilet training in the late winter.  Her daily routine is to get Shosei to sit down at the toilet at least once a day.  It used to be trying to get Shosei to go to the bathroom, but nowadays, he says 'pee pee, please' and then I help him sit on the toilet.  But I realized he doesn't understand any of this toilet concept yet.  I figured out that he pees in his diaper first and then he asks to go to the bathroom.  I have yet to get him to pee in that toilet BEFORE he pees into those handy diapers of his.
Thankfully, Shosei doesn't have any of those screaming moments anymore.  He must have left it on the plane when he had the last screaming fit that lasted 4 hours on the plane ride back to Tokyo. 
But, he is definitely picking up on vocabulary that he hears from his parents, other adults, the TV, and from words that he hears when we read books together.  He still likes to read books and he can now sit down and read books by himself.  It is quite an amazing thing.

Happy New Year 2013, as told by Shosei!

Hello, and Happy New Year, belatedly!  It is actually much closer to the Chinese New Year!  My new years festivities started out in Taiwan this year.  I kicked off the Eve of New Years Eve with a very high fever that led to a visit to the ER at a local hospital near my grandparents' home.  Before that emergency, a week before, I had already visited the ER at a different hospital to treat my huge welt on my forehead after I fell off my stroller.  To top it all off, I screamed at the top of my lungs for the whole 4 hour trip back to Japan on the airplane.  I screamed and hollered and kicked at the seat in front of me, and angrily dropped crackers onto the man's shoulder sitting beside my mom.  The man disgustedly and quietly picked the crackers and handed them back over to my mom's embrassed and cringing self.  My mom was pretty much left at doing all possible ways to calm me down SOMEHOW, but, the blow my dad threw into the back of my head with the airplane blanket just made things worse in me.  It made me sooooo angry!!  My mom was pretty sure she had a two year old in her hands after that episode!  Welcome to the terrible two's, Dad!

With that episode aside, my mother was not surprised to see an extra 1 or 2 kilos gained from the trip to Taiwan.  It was all that delicious food she ate while visiting Nai nai and Yie Yie.  Steamed dumplings filled with crab bits and crab miso, tasty pork thigh, delicious shrimp, scalding hot dumplings filled with hot broth and meat, eaten with ginger slices and soy sauce....I can go forever!  It was so good!  My mom drank a lot of the pearl milk tea, too.  And lots of tea, in general.  Nai nai bought a lot of jasmine tea bags for my mom and she drinks it just about everyday now.  It is really good, especially with a spoonful of sugar or honey.  Daddy is snacking a lot on snacks he bought in the grocery stores.  He and mommy enjoyed a bit of foot massage time before we went back home to Tokyo.  It is much more cheaper there than to do it in Japan.
Thank you, Nai Nai and Yie Yie for having us stay at your place and taking care of me when I got a high fever.  I will forever be Mr. Bean and Tato, to you! 

Here are some photos from our trip:

Sucking on a large pork bone.

My Taiwanese breakfast outside-sweetened soy milk, egg pancakes, soy milk soup with deep fried bread sticks and salty vegetables, sticky rice ball filled with dried beef bits, deep fried bread sticks, and other goodies. 

Daddy really liked this meal.  

12.12.12

December....Stellan Shosei will be turning 2 years old in 8 days! 

He is chatting a lot and remembering and learning more and more.  Besides giving you a cute smile after he achieves something, like peeling the skin off of an orange all by himself, he can also be QUITE a screamer and simply be a NO-MAN.  He says NO to all the things you might suggest him to do when he is bored, angry, or just plain frusturated!  He is not a YES-MAN at all.  He is very cautious, and likes to clean the floor and wipe the tables.  He doesn't like his fingernails or toenails for that matter, to be chipped or broken.  He wants them trimmed neatly at all times.  Nowadays, if he wants his nails trimmed, he will say, 'cut, cut'.  When he wants tea, he will say 'tea'.  When he pooped, he will let you know by the obvious stench and 'poo poo'.

He still has an appetite and eats a lot.  He loves juice.  He won't drink milk.  And still doesn't eat much green vegetables.....I cannot get him to clean up his plate full of veggies. 

Somtimes, he is quite a handful when I take him grocery shopping.  He is always touching and pulling things off the shelves and putting the items into the shopping basket.  He doesn't like sitting in the shopping cart anymore and only wants his way to push the shopping basket, which would only mean a crash disaster.  One thing I dislike doing is shopping with him.  I really want to go shopping by myself!!! 

The terrible two's, here we come!!!  The terrible, terrific two's!!! 

Hello, Shosei speaking. May I take a message?

Good bye, September. Hello, cool October

September whizzed by quick for Mommy and Shosei.  We enjoyed a leisurely summer vacation in Seattle at Shosei's grandparents' house.  Most of the days we spent there were sunny and warm.  Shosei loved playing in the garden and picking fresh tomatoes, green beans, strawberries, and ground cherries.  He enjoyed going on long walks with Grandpa and singing with Obachan who played on the ukulele.  Mommy was able to 'get away' from Shosei for a while because his grandparents were always there to pick him up and give him lots of attention. 

While in the U.S., Shosei met and played with his 2 cousins, and loved riding the tricycles.  After returning to Japan, Mommy is definitely going to get a tricycle for him. 

Shosei ate lots of new things, too, that he wouldn't normally eat in Japan.  He had hamburgers, Mexican tortillas/tacos, baked potatoes, bread with butter, turkey, ham, roast lamb, and lots of avocado!  Boy, does he love avocados!!! And he loved eating freshly picked plums from the yard.  His face lit up every time he saw the plums sitting on the kitchen counter.

Another experience Shosei had was running and walking through a huge grass field in his bare feet!!  That is definitely something you cannot get to 'feel' when you live in such an urban city like Tokyo.  At first, he was just rooted to the spot and couldn't quite decipher what that cool feeling he had in the soles of his feet, but after a little encouragement from Grandpa and Mommy, he was able to take a few steps on the grassy field with a knowing smile.

Garden buffet

Soft shell tacos!

Tricycle time!

Looking down from the top floor of his Grandparents' house in Canada.  Wow, cars look so small!

Mommy is hopeful that Shosei has grown more social.  He talks a lot more and can say 'dakko' which is 'pick me up' in Japanese.  He can say no, ok, no(nose), maa(mouth).  He understands more than he speaks.  Only a couple of months until he turns two years old.  2012 is going by so fast.   

August sun brings sunflowers and sweat

Is it August already?  Shosei will be 20 months old in a couple of weeks.  Family members are starting to question whether he can talk or not, but Shosei is no where close to that.  I repeat names of things, such as the fruit he eats, but of course, he is content now on just filling his mouth with the sweet juicy snack.  On one particular day though, our ears were playing tricks on us, and my husband thought Shosei said, 'cherry' after I said it to him. 

It must be true what people say:  You try so hard the first 3 years to get your child to speak, and then the next 10 years to get your child to shut up.  But obviously, this is a selfish parent's wishes, and is not allowing their child to grow at all. Being a parent, let alone, being human is quite the challenge in our own lives.   

Anyways, these days, Shosei still enjoys flipping through books, and sitting on one's lap and being read a book.  He talks in different syllables more often now instead of a boring 'dah, dah, dah'.
He can get extremely crabby and emotional when things don't go his way.  That, I must say, is so similar to how his mom can be.  Obviously, mom still needs to grow up in her own way.

Shosei likes music and shifts his weight from side to side and dances to the music in his own cute way.  Lately, he enjoys the reaction he gets out of his Daddy when Daddy says goodbye to go to work.  Daddy leaves the house, grinning ear to ear, with a wet, sloppy kiss mark on his cheek.

And of course, Shosei can't get enough of touching and playing with things that Mom doesn't want him to get into.  But trying on the bath tub shoes and saying, 'cheese!' was worth a shot on the camera for Mommy. 

More hot days to follow...and a haiku

Splash, splash goes the boy
giggles, shouts, squeals and silence
wet, chubby fingers