Our New Baby Boy!

After what was starting to feel like a very long wait, we finally welcomed A. and D.'s little sibling this week! God blessed us with a very healthy baby boy, who will share Daddy's name. His birthday means we get to celebrate his, Daddy's and D's in the span of a week, and hopefully he'll never have to go to school on his birthday, either. :)

The short version of the birth story - I had taken the girls swimming in the afternoon, and Daddy actually made it home early to start dinner. We walked in from swimming at 5:10 p.m. and were eating by about 5:30. I'd felt a couple contractions in that time, and by the time we were ready to leave the table at about 6:30 I knew it was for real as they were about 7 minutes apart. While Daddy bathed the girls, I hopped in the shower and within the next hour, they were down to about 3 minutes apart and pretty strong. So I told him to start hurrying up with the bedtime routine so we could leave for the hospital. Got our kid-watcher here at 8:15, left at 8:20. Pulled into the hospital parking lot at 8:45. Made it up the elevator by 8:50. Water broke before going into the triage room. Went from the triage room into a L&D room on a quiet night, and little J. made his appearance at 9:13 p.m. I know lots of women have labors that are shorter than 4 hours, but I don't know how it could have gone much faster than that. I'm glad it was at night so we didn't have to fight traffic, or else we really might not have made it! It was awesome to go through the whole thing with a husband, and we were blessed with a couple great nurses and a nice doctor who were really accommodating to our wishes for the few minutes they had with us. Our first (maybe last) Japan baby! We couldn't have asked for a more wonderful way for him to come. 

The girls are absolutely in love with him. They both came into the hospital room with their arms up, D. saying, "Baby! Baby! I hold baby!", then fighting over who got to hold him first. They've been kissing and touching him every chance they get. I can't wait to see them with him over the coming years. They really are going to be great big sisters. 

D. went for the baby hat right away. 

I think he has A's newborn face here. 

His eyes are kind of grayish right now. 

He hasn't held his own newborn in 4 1/2 years. It'll be so nice to get to do these first few months together again. 

All ready to head home and start life together. 

Typhoon Guchol

Well, it's 7:40 p.m. here on Monday, June 18th. It's already started raining pretty heavily, but the winds haven't picked up enough yet to get us to the hospital. If you're past 37 weeks here, they "highly encourage" you to come and stay at the hospital while a typhoon passes so they don't have to be sending out a lot of 7 tons to bring in women who are in labor. It's a big storm, but it looks like the closest it will get to the island is about 75 miles away, so we won't get all the high Cat. 3 winds. We should be getting 60 mph winds pretty soon, though. 2 of my siblings are supposed to be flying out tomorrow, so this is my last night to let them see a new niece or nephew. Not giving up hope yet! All the doctors say these storms send lots of women into labor. Either way, today is my due date, so we can tell the baby there was a typhoon on the day they were due to arrive. OK, off to finish packing my bag! Hubby and I are going to have a nice date night at the hospital. Next time I end up blogging, I'm sure there will be a new baby in the family. :) 

Sibling Trip!

Auntie M. has been here since right before Memorial Day. Too bad for her, I've made her wait to do things until our other 2 siblings got here. So the first two weeks we did a lot of nothing. I've loved having her - we decided she should give up on her life path and just come and be our nanny. She's a great cleaner/dish washer/baby-sitter, and has made my life so enjoyable and stress-free these last few weeks of pregnancy. I'm so thankful she was here! We did try out the Okinawa Zoo which we will not be taking anyone else to. Not too impressive. The impressive part if the children's museum that's attached to it, which I have to take them back to since I got a pass. :) My favorite part is the huge pin art part. A. was actually really good at pressing her body into it. These things just make me laugh. D. actually mimicked her okay in this picture. It's so sensitive you could even see her belly button and the shape of her braids. I purposefully didn't include the pic of my large belly sticking into the pins, but it was pretty funny. 

Since all 3 of my siblings are here now, we started going places. They have these ginormous swings at this orchid place called "Bios on the Hill." The whole place is kind of a random walk through nature, with kids' pioneer day activities tossed in. I think it's fun. 

D. actually did okay at walking on the little stilts. 

The one and only pic you'll get of me at 39 weeks. I know I'm huge. That's why I try not to look at pictures of myself. I get a lot of people doing double takes of me when we're out now, with shocked expressions on their face. I feel like a celebrity of sorts. I finally learned how to say how many weeks I have left in Japanese, because I kept confusing people with my gesturing trying to say I had 3 weeks left. They thought I was pregnant with triplets. 

We had been to the Butterfly Garden back in February, but this time I guess the girls were at more of a scared age. The moment we step into the greenhouse with all the butterflies, D. starts freaking out. She sees one fly past her, and she screams at the top of her lungs. We all couldn't help but laugh. She had no idea that this one had landed on the back of her shirt, or she would've had tears in her eyes. She really did not enjoy the experience at all at the tender age of 23 months. Wow, almost a two year old! A. didn't like it any better. Last time she had warmed up and let lots land on her. I think she was just tired from the day this time. We sisters had fun doing some nature photography, though. 

Easter and our dear Cousin

Just a few pics of A. growing up - 4 1/2 years old already! She was doing some dance poses for me. Cousin C. noticed how expressive she is when she walks around, which I guess I'd only noticed subconsciously. She really will walk everywhere moving her arms and dancing to her own tune in her head. It's super cute. 

This was at the Japanese tea ceremony I took Cousin C. to when she was here. They even let those of us who wanted to try to make the tea at the end, and I didn't want to pass that up. When I was whisking (I guess that's what I was doing) the tea, the lady laughed because apparently I was doing it too gently. She said she could tell I had a gentle personality with how I was doing it. :) Tea ceremonies used to be only for men, but now women have almost completely taken over the tradition. Women train for years to learn how to properly conduct a tea ceremony. The ceremony is pretty short and involves admiring the flower and calligraphy in the room, drinking the tea and eating a small dessert. It was an interesting ritual to be a part of. 

We had a great Easter celebration at church this year, almost 60 people in attendance, which was huge. The weather was really nice, too. We ate a potluck at church before heading to a party for my English class kids. 

I guess most of these are younger siblings. The boy 2nd to the left is one of the students who comes every Saturday to the English class I co-teach. 

D. was pretty excited about finding eggs. 

We took a ferry when Cousin C. was here to Ie Island, just a half hour away. Every year they have a Lily Festival, growing over a million lilies on their little island. Most of them were white, but they had all the other different colors too. J. thinks they just dyed them, but I think they're natural. Some people were taking more pics of A. walking through the lilies than they were of the lilies themselves. They think American kids are cute and we think the Japanese kids are cute. The other day when we were at a castle, it had just started raining, and a young guy stops us and asks us to take a picture. I know he just wants pictures of the girls, but he asks for the whole family. So after a few of all of us, we step aside and let him and his "crew" of five or 6 gal friends, all with nice, huge cameras, start clicking away at the girls for probably a good five minutes. I'm sure they got more pictures of the girls than they did of the castle. I think A. feels like a mini-celebrity here with so many people always wanting to take her picture. 

We went on a nice walking tour in the "Valley of Gangala". There were lots of caverns that  used to be underground that are now outside, and this awesome tree with vines that had grown down and become its own roots in the ground. There was also come giant bamboo that the guide said had grown 50 feet in 6 months. It was pretty incredible.  

Right at the beginning of May is Golden Week in Japan, a week where they celebrate 3 holidays. It's like a Spring Break for the kids and lots of people take off of work for the week. There were also some big dragon boat races that we got to go and watch in the harbor. American teams even compete against Japanese teams, some friendly competition. There are races all over the island, which are held in hopes of a successful fishing season. 

January, February, March and April

Woo hoo! A blog update, just to check it off my "to do before baby list". :-) Since January we've had 2 cousins come to visit, and really enjoyed showing them both around the island. We got to do some new things with them too, so that was great. Here's Cousin R. on the roller slide. The 2 weeks she was here in January turned out to be the coldest of the season (see the short-sleeved shirts?. . . no, it really was around 45 on some of the other days). 

We went to the Butterfly Gardens with Cousin R. and walked around for half an hour trying to get them to land on us before they finally did. A. freaked out a little, but eventually she had about 5 on her hand all at one time, with a big group of tourists standing around her taking her picture because they weren't landing on any of them. We had fun. I think we'd do that again, for the cheap price! Did you know that every butterfly likes a different kind of flower? A. and I learned that in our "learning time". That's probably why there was only one kind of butterfly there at the garden, and why we don't see too many different ones in our field out back. 

 This pic is D. in mid-May. Isn't she beautiful? She's talking tons now, probably as much or more than A. did at this age. A. really loves her and is a great big sister, always looking out for her. They play well together too, which is something I hope will stick around for as long as possible. 

A. started ballet/tap class at Kadena, a 30 minute drive from our place. She goes once a week and has been absolutely loving it. We're STILL waiting on her ballet shoes from Target, though . . grrr, it's been almost 3 months! She loves her teacher, who just looks like a perfect ballerina and is really kind and gentle with them. I'm having fun watching her through the windows in her first organized activity. She has more rhythm than I do, at least! 

When Cousin C. was here in April, we took a 30 minute ferry ride out to Ie Island, where they hold a Lily festival every year. They say there are a million lilies on the island, which I guess if you count each individual blossom, could be true. There were tons of white lilies, but they also had grown lots of different colored ones. We girls all loved the colored ones, but Daddy wasn't too impressed. He said they just dye them, but the actual petals looked different on some of the colors, so I'm not convinced. 

Another park we played at with Cousin C. I can't believe what a big kid D. is becoming. She's going to seem extra big when we have a newborn in the house again in a few weeks. 

Bugs. . and a new kind of hanbaga

Have I mentioned that we live in the land of bugs now? I know it's probably just like every other place, but after living in an arid desert region for the last 2 years where the biggest thing we dealt with were pincher bugs, I now feel like we have surround sound jungle outside. Someone spread the rumor that these are just the once every 7 year cicadas, but I won't believe that until next year. Man, they're huge! And they're so loud in the morning when you walk out to the car that you actually can't hear what the other person is saying when you're walking. And then something disturbs them in their tree and they come flying out as a big mass, trying to invade your space. They're so big they just bounce off of cars and keep on going. Same with their friends, the Japanese beetle. A beetle flew into the car one day and landed right above A's car seat, and (I'll tell the story differently to save my honor) the minute she saw it she starting screaming and crying as I tried to undo her car seat so it wouldn't land on her. OK, so I'm not raising Bindi Irwin. I'm okay with that. Now she's extra good at hopping in and getting all buckled before another bug attacks us. :) The good news is that we haven't found any bugs that have survived the 4 story climb to our apartment yet, and I'm hoping we won't. . .ever, because out in town it's a different story. . . 
So we made our first stop at a fast food place called MOS Burger, and we quickly scanned the drive through menu for the best looking burgers. Mine was pretty decent - some kind of roast beef with melty cheese on it. J's looked like this: 

It didn't taste too bad, kind of bland. The only rice patty burger on the menu with some beef mixed with cooked spinach or something. He always orders the funny stuff, like the time he took me to a really nice hamburger place to eat good meat and he orders the "Mushroom Burger" and out comes his "burger" with just one really big mushroom on it. I still laugh about that. 

After eating burgers we went to see some castle ruins, and caught some cool nature in action while we were there. 

As we were walking toward our car, we look 3 feet from us to the left and we see one of the biggest spiders I'd ever seen. Then we shift our eyes, and there's another one! And then another, and another! We stayed away and watched them work for awhile. This one was repairing its' web. Pretty cool to see. I might have nightmares picturing this guy getting into my bed, though.