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.