Sleep In, To. Def...

Today was yet another example of why I pay professionals to look after my children six days a week. Some people have mummy flair - I'm more of a mummy in the making. Not going to be bloody good at it until my kids have grandkids and then I will know EVERYTHING.

Last night wasn't quite as bad as the night before - Marina and Shou slept through but Ryu was being a fussy tart. I remember an add from when I was little that said 'never shake your baby'. I probably used to think how odd it was that people would even think about it - and now. Now I get so close sometimes I have to shake myself to sort my shite out.

Hub did the breakfast thing and I got to sleep in.

Sleep In, To. Def - to enjoy thy bed and peaceful slumber for longer period of time than usual in the morning.

Sleep In, To. Def - (mother of toddlers and babies) ... the word you searched for could not be found.

My sleep in this morning was...
5am - Shou gets up and hub takes him downstairs. I didn't even realise.
5:30am - Ryu wakes up and hub brings him into the lounge too. I didn't even realise.
5:45am - Shou decides to wake Marina up and comes upstairs. Marina is not a good morning person and I hear everything but try to pretend I am still 'sleeping in' by hiding self under layers of duvets.
6am - Marina and Shou are in Ryu's cot AGAIN and hub gets them out. Loud voices, a few 'bakatares' (from Shou), a few 'bakares' (from Marina who can't quite get her mouth round the whole bakatare (which means dickhead)) and I get up through lack of any other choice really.

Awesome. My having to come downstairs four times last night for Ryu meant Hub got up with the kids first thing and I got to 'sleep in' for an extra thrity minutes. Fuuuuuuuuuuuck, I'm lucky.

This morning I had to finish the nengajo for his office - all new people and addresses from this year. He gets all shitty and I pack a sad that I am there doing the nengajyo for his office and could he at least entertain a child or two and pawn the rest off to Granny K. Half an hour later and we are ready to get out the door - via the post office - to the hospital so that hub, Granny K and I can get out 'parents of children under one year old' swine flu jab.

Takes way longer than I anticipated and had to use my whole days bestest mummy skills to keep them in semi order in the full waiting room. Which is why the rest of the day was spent telling them off - mainly for climbing into Ryu's cot.

After lunch Marina, Shou and daddy have a nap. Ryu went down as soon as we got back from the hospital and was therefore just waking up when the others went down. Sigh. How nice it would be to have a KY (kuuki yomeru - hmmmmm, English??) baby for once who sleeps when everyone else does. I decided to plonk him in front of DVD for forty minutes while I napped on the couch.

The afternoon was chaos, followed by dinner which was remarkably OK and the bath thing which was good, minus a few fights over Marina's teapot. Hub went off to wannabe fireman training thing where they stand outside in straight lines puffing their chest out. Following that they get in the noddy firetrucks and cruise round - they have just gone past us with a million bells a ringing, a thousand lights a flashing, aaaaaaaa lot of noise. la da di da and a partridge in a pear tree.

Ryu woke up. Dummy got stuffed back in. Ryu went back to sleep.

Only fifteen nengajyo to go - better get to it.

SDGH&QL

Festive Season Blogging

This must be the holiday season blog thing - slow down on the blogging or forgo it all together for festive season festivities and following day slogginess. God knows what will happen over the next six days when Gaijinwife kindy opens up 24/7. I will probably either have to throw the computer out the window or not be able to find it under the pile of cars, tea sets and nenga bloody (fucker, bollocks, shit, crap, all other obscenities) jyo.

I realised what may have been wrong with the printer - a choccy paper appeared from inside the cogs and was nice pretty one with santa and christmas trees on it. Took it out and all of a sudden things started printing straight. Great. Might finally have all the bloody things finished by tomorrow.

Anyhoo, yesterday we ventured over to Jo's for a post christmas get together and lunch with her crew and Rachel and her girls. Shou attacked the toy cupboard withing ten seconds of walking in the front door and proceeded to spend the best part of two hours playing with a Thomas the tank engine railroad set. He got a bit stroppy with Erica (Rachel's two year old), who told him to 'christmas tree' in a very angry voice - obviously Erica-go (language) for fuck off you twat.

I ate far too much and somehow managed to come away with left over Christmas turkey and gingerbread men - which didn't make it through the night I might add.

Last night was pretty horrific between Marina and Ryu - bastardy buggers. Was not asleep for more than forty minutes I don't think. Marina was having full conversations with her glow-worm at 2am - glow-worm that I had turned sound off on but which still glowed - smugly no doubt. Marina would push it to glow and then ask it if it was OK before telling it she needed to go to sleep. Replay times a fricken hundred.

I was so not in a happy peace with the world place this morning - I nearly cancelled my meeting with the man from the English school who keeps ringing me and whose calls I keep ignoring. But, my curiosity won over and I took Ryu and we went to meet him for coffee.

He's a bit full of himself - a lot of name dropping, his academic greatness rah rah. For someone who is so wonderful he sure doesn't google very well. Despite all this I have almost agreed to teach from Jan until the end of March, when we will discuss things from April. It is only two hours on a Friday with the addition of Wednesday mornings from April.

I'm not entirely convinced I'm doing the right thing as a very good source/s says he is crap to work for. I figure it's only about ten weeks though and then can bail if want to. Will be nice little bit of pocket money (not as much as really wanted and probably actually very shite considering high possibility class schedule will be changed) .

So after our meeting I came home and did some cleaning before the rath of six days of being able to do nothing, and then headed off to friend's sons's birthday in next town over - where I ate chips and salsa non-stop for two hours. Excellent. I am so starting the water and air diet tomorrow.

Best get off to bed for another fun-filled night of babies and toddlers who think 2am is perfect time to bond with glow-worm.

Oh, and a pic from Jo's yesterday - Ryu in between the two puppets that Rachel's girls got from Santa.

SDGH&QL

Season's Greetings.

Merry Christmas, seasons greetings, joyous festivities, pished chrissy bubble snogs and herald all the angels harking.

I find the day after Christmas is always a bit of a downer. The lead up is so huge that impossible to keep the chrissy bubble bubbling over to boxing day.

The kids were spoilt rotten. They opened stockings yesterday morning before kindy. Shou's number one stocking filler turned out to be a long arm digger. Quite obviously more exciting than the wind up grass hoper that had too many festive beverages and lost it's wind. Marina's butterfly was on fire though and that took pride of place for thirty seconds before she unwrapped the angel wings - that she then wore to kindy.

They went off to kindy and I came home to tidy and sort things out - put prezzies under the tree, get the christmas dishes out. Went to find a wee something for friend at the local pottery shop. I have a lot of stuff from here and now it turns out, I have a lot more!

These are made by the owner's autistic son. He spends hours upon hours making figurines. Up until now I have really just seen a lot of monkies and monsters so was stoked to find some cute Christmas ones. The reindeer was thrown in for good measure at the end. I am wondering if could show boy pictures of three wise men, Mary, Joseph and baby jesus in a manger and get him started on a few thousand of them for next year!!

Went to pick friend up at lunch time and came home via the supermarket, ending up with bags of goodies for dinner so I wouldn't have to do anything except arrange it nicely on plates and tell everyone it was mine!

Hub was home at half five which was good cause Shou was just about to tear some wrapping paper - after first lining all the prezzies up in order of ones he wanted judged on size, paper and weight!! Prezzies were opened while we ate and Shou took an immediate shine to Marina's tea set - she took a shine to it too but really didn't stand a chance. Shou set about making 'yakiniku', 'udon' and 'coffee'.... yum!!?

No kids got bathed and were all in bed at a good time - enough for friend and I to open bubbles and gass until nearly 2am. Crazy. I should have been feeling a lot worse than I was this morning!

Had to take friend home after dropping Shou off at kindy - alone. Marina had her second normal flu jab this morning and the kindy didn't want her back for the day. Something about running round at kindy all day after her jab might lead to a temperature. She got free reign of her tea set and even Shou's fire rescue super tomycar truck exploding out wing thingy. While she was doing that I put away all the chrissy decs and hub went to give the ancestors a good scrub at the grave.

This christmas was probably the best one in Japan so far, no doubt thanks to having kids at an age that can enjoy the whole prezzie and Santa thing. Can't wait till they are all at that age. Also looking forward to a time when hub gets with the christmas program and buys me something I'm not expecting! Even Granny K got me something - 3,000 yen worth of vouchers for a local department store. She had written my name on the outside of the envelope and then crossed out 'sama 様' and written 'へ' instead! Oh well, I doubt I would ever address anything to her with 'okaasama'

We are out for the morning tomorrow and then there is Monday at kindy followed by six whole days of holidays. My god. I'm actually going to have to look after my kids for six whole days. What to do, what to do??

The house got trashed yesterday and I fear that after six days of the same we will be wading in knee high tomycars, tea sets, nappies and rolled up bits of newspaper, which for those of you without a three year old boy, is for 'rocks and dirt' for construction vehicle 'genba' (site).

Best hit the hay. Knackered. May Ryu sleep like a champion again - I got seven hours out of him the night before Christmas! Must have been dreaming of sugar plum fairies.

SDGH&QL

Really Twas the Night Before Christmas...

Have just spent an hour doing damn nengajo. Would you believe the printer packed a complete spaz and for some strange reason I have had to print out addresses and hand write the post code. Have done the out of town ones and tomorrow will get about the local ones done - well, by Monday anyway!

I also spent an hour wraping and sorting out stockings for Shou and Marina. Some small prezzies, a couple of choccies etc. It will get left on their bed tonight.

It is hard sorting things out when they are at kindy everyday - I don't wont to let them unwrap loads of prezzies tomorrow morning right before kindy - or in the evening only a couple of hours before bed. Hub reckons we give them a prezzie each in the mornings until Sunday and then give them the rest! They have lots and have been spoiled rotten.

My afternoon English class was cancelled due to the oink flu, which I might add has reached our pre-school - which is joined to the kindy. Arrrgghhh. When I went to pick the kids up today the teacher asked me if I was going to keep them home tomorrow. The kindy and pre-school had a big eat together and play together thing a few days ago so if it's going round it's going round. That said, the kids that have it aren't the ones that Shou and Marina seem to 'hang out' with. If you can hang when you are three.

Time will tell I guess!

If they are both fine still on Sunday morning I still intend on coming over to yours Jo?? If you or Rachel are iffy about this then let me know and we'll stay home. Totally understand.

My evening English class came though and we had a Christmas thing - where we made paper foldy things and iced cookies. Despite being teenagers they actually enjoy this kind of stuff.

I have been thrashing Chrissy songs for the past couple of days and am even getting used to the shite renditions on my latest album. In a couple of years I think I will be able to talk to Marina and Shou about the reason behind Christmas. In the meantime I think I'll spend a couple of years looking for the perfect Bethlehem set - three wise men, Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus. Perhaps a few farm animals.

Growing up we had to make the nativity set every year - in a shoe box and using what we could muster up for the wise fellas and the regals. If I remember correctly we had the three wise men, Luke Skywalker and Princess Laya were Mary and Joseph, and baby Jesus was a lego construction worker minus his helmet. Awesome. We are so not going to heaven.

Nearly forgot - today went to Hub's work to pick up Ryu's passport. He had to appear in person to get it!! I dressed him up - kind of. He had on a red jumper and Christmas booties with Jeans. Hub took one look at him and asked why I had put him in Red - cause he looked like a girl. I said people the world over don't go round accusing Santa of being gay just cause he wears a red suit.

The rest of his office thought Ryu was cuteness of all Christmas santa cuteness. And he was. And I have the bestest photo of him with his new Christmas talking teddy but for the life of me have no idea where have put camera cord. And am in no state to look now so will have to wait till tomorrow or the next day!

Oh, made left over roast lamb curry tonight.

What NOT to make for dinner.

Hub ate it but the smell put me off. I LOVE Roast lamb but any other way and I'm a bit iffy. I made it for dinner but had to get creative with some cheese, bread, sausages and eggs for the kids.

Ohhh, is officially 12 o'clock

Merry Christmas!

SDGH&QL

Twas the night after Christmas...

Well not quite but celebrating Christmas on the Emperors birthday and things start to get confusing. The Gods must have been smiling, or perhaps the Emperor, because today could have followed one of a million patterns that was worse than what it was but it didn't.

The BEST part of the day was the 37 seconds at 6am this morning when Shou realised Santa had left a box beside his bed. He had come into our room (Shou, not Santa) at five and was in sleepy haze enough to be coaxed back to sleep for an hour. Afterwhich I asked if he had seen anything in his room. He went and turned on the light and what do you know. He doesn't notice that three types of paper have been used to wrap it - or that the same paper was used later to wrap the prezzies for our friends that came over. His face was priceless. The complete and utter joy of knowing nothing but that you have been given the exact toy you have been asking for for months. It was magical.

Marina wasn't quite as good with the reaction thing but Shou kind of got her into it all which was good. Shou was almost as equally pleased for Ryu when mummy said she found a prezzie in by his cot.

They only got one prezzie each today - the big one. The public holiday for the Emperor's 76th birthday meant they had a whole day to play with it.

Hub got home at 2am last night. Wasn't impressed. He missed out on Shou's best ever Christmas expression which was his loss. He asked if he could stay in bed for another three hours - yeah right. For self-inflicted hangover? Sent Shou up after two hours to jump on him. The kids had been fed and clothed and needed entertaining while I sorted the house out and started to get ready for our afternoon guests.

All good though, got everything sorted. Lamb, spuds and pumpkin roasted, meringues creamed and fuited and eclairs iced and creamed.

Guests arrived at four with a bucket of KFC - as you do. I knew they were bringing it though as Chiemi had said her hub had ordered it a couple of weeks a go.

Great Christmas party followed and I would like to write more about it but there is a pile of dishes in the sink that need attending to. There is also a cold beer which I will be having by self as all other persons are sound asleep. Yay Marina - she went down straight away last night, nap today and this evening. Long may it last.

SDGH&QL

Catch up.

Waiting for hub to get home - his third late night in a row. Sunday and Monday were work - and tonight is too I guess but since six it has been 'work with alcoholic benefits'.

We had some words about this last night. I said I wanted to go for a girls night in Fukuoka in February (with Ryu of course. God forbid the man and his mother have to look after three children for 24 hours, despite Ryu taking bottle) and this led to him saying that my going out for a night was completely different to him.

His is all work. He doesn't want to be actually eating fine foods and drinking fine beverages with his collegues. He would much rather be at home with three small children and a fat gaijin wife in a hissy fit. Alright then.

My debate line was that his job was taxes and it was OK to go out with tax men/wannabe firemen/workers union lads rah rah. My job was house and kids and therefore it should be OK for me to go out with mummy friends - god, the only thing we talk about is kids and useless husbands anyway. It is me getting out of these four walls to a different location.

We have agreed to disagree on this because unless he does what I do for a set period of time he will never 'get it'. I understand his argument - I've had the full time job in Japan and been expected to attend these functions. He hasn't had a piece of the house wife thing. Well, he gets a piece of me every so often but that wasn't really what I meant :p

We nearly had an argument over nengajo (news years cards) but he bit his tongue. Just as fuckin well or I would have bitten the bastard right off for him. My post codes aren't perfectly centered in the postcard set-squares on some of them. He said that and I just about ninja starred the 120 nengajo in his face. Not impressed. I suggested that perhaps I just leave all the post codes off and he can go and handwrite them all? Perfectly in the centre.

Anyway, what else.

We are on to day four of Marina in her new bed. Not the best time to start with day two, three and four being me on my own getting them all to bed. Day two was Sunday and she was asleep after twenty minutes of me telling her to stop grizzling and lie down or the hall light would go off/door would get shut. She hadn't had an afternoon nap which was our saving grace from an hour of back and forth.

Last night was a bit heinous. Fast forward an hour. I was going to wait to put Shou to bed until she had gone to sleep but she was pissing round so much that I took Shou up to bed at 8pm and had to say a few 'just go to sleep' Marina through the wall. She did. Cue snoring.

However, middle of the night and she wakes up complaining of poo. I am down stairs feeding Ryu so hub goes in and what do you know there are NO nappies in the house - only Ryu's ones. This is 100% my fault. I suggest there might be some in the emergency nappy ziploc bag in the car. But no, just small nappies and tampons.

Slam car door, times four.

Hub asks what he should do and I suggest using the swimming nappies we have in the top drawer. They are big size pull ups and we had about four packets of two in each so she just would have gone off to kindy in a swimming nappy in the middle of winter. Nevermind. Hub chose to ignore what I said and put her in one of Ryu's - which actually go up to 14kg anyway but which are tape ones not pullups. He doesn't have 'can change nappy in semi-darkness' skills like I do so had to put her room light on - bright damn fucker that it is. After changing her he left me to try and get her back to sleep.

No darling, we aren't reading the hungry catepillar at two o'clock in the morning.

No darling, Shou doesn't want your teddybear...

No darling...

Hub was not a happy chappy and so I slept in with Shou cause much warmer and lots more cuddles!

I have just finished making eclairs and microwave meringues for tomorrow. I was going to cut and par-boil (?) the roast veges too but can't be flagged. Coffee Chiemi and her boys aren't arriving till about three and hub knows he is on kiddy patrol tomorrow while I sort out the house, the roast lamb, the prezzies, the deserts, the drinks - shit, and the baby and self. Thank god I'm a multitasking female. I might even be able to do half of this with a glass of bubbles in hand.

Highly possible me thinks.

Tomorrow is our 'Christmas' and Shou and Marina will get there big prezzie in the morning so that it occupies them for the rest of oh, at least half an hour. I might have to elaborate on the night before Christmas story and say that due to time differences and jet lag New Zealand Santa arrived at our house two days before his kindy friends. They will get a stocking and some other things on Christmas day evening - not before kindy as that would be recipe for disaster.

Christmas was going to be a very low key affair - as in actual Christmas day - but arrangements today mean a friend will be joining us which is nice. The more the merrier and I know what Christmas not at 'home' is like. I have warned her that it will be Japanese chicken and sponge cake, plus some MOET, god forbid I went too Japanese and tried to fob sake or plum wine off as a Christmas beverage of choice.

My English class Christmas party for Thursday afternoon has been cancelled - or rather I cancelled it. One of the girls has been oinked, another's little brother has been and the others are all at a School where 5 out of the 30 students are away with it. Have told them we will just have a belated Christmas party in January. I think my evening class will go ahead though as they are all Junior High kids and I think they are OK.

I think that's about it. There were things over the last couple of days that I thought about posting but for the life of me I can't remember.

Better wash the dishes and wait for the 'very quiet' hub to return.

Bang, crash, pissed mutterings, bang, crash, snore, snore.

SDGH&QL

A big girls bed at last.

The house is quiet - bar Bruce Springstein and John Foghurty (so not spelt like that. Looks far too much like yoghurt) belting out Pretty Woman on BS. The rest of the house is...

and...
and not...
but this was taken an hour before Ryu went to bed.

So, today was the day we took down Marina's cot and put her in a big girl's bed. Yes, well. Only took an hour and a half to get her to sleep!! We have put a gate over her door so she can't get out and try and get down the stairs in the middle of the night. She didn't climb out as much as I thought - just kept crying. I don't wont to get her into the habbit of going to sleep with one of us in her room - like Shou. So, I kept tucking her in, saying good night and closing the door. For the first hour anyway. Then we did controlled crying and she cried for ten minutes then five then three and then two and then zzzzzzzz.

Shou wasn't too impressed that he lost the roof off his bed (was bunks) but he went to sleep with daddy fine. I hope tonight was the worst of it cause up until now Marina has been my dream sleeper. If I was home alone putting all three of them to sleep on my own I could always count on Marina to have her bottle and got to sleep on her own. I have faith she'll pull through and get with the 'what mummy wants' program though.

Hub and I were going to be getting a load of firewood off Jo this morning but because of the snow yesterday and fact that firewood is still in trunk form on side of hill we decided too dangerous to go.

Was a lovely day today.

Could have gone afterall but might try and do it next Saturday.

Instead we went shopping and to sushi. I dropped hub off at silver ball heaven (lucky man) while I went and shopped for a matress and duvet etc for Marina's bed and for a Christmas prezzie for Granny K. She had pointed out a revolving (spinning? round and round? lazy suzy?) low chair that she wanted for her low table. It was only 6000 yen. I saw a much nicer one with a lot less bulk for three times that amount. I was very tempted but stopped myself as it wasn't the one she had cut out and therefore probably would have been flawed in some way.

Ryu and I did all the shopping - him with his monster hat on and getting lots of attention and me being well in the mood for it. Hub had a two hour time limit - unless he was raking it in and could win enough silver balls to buy me something sparkly for chrissy. He wasn't though so we picked him up and headed to sushi - which he paid for seeing as he did come out slightly better off.

On the way home he mentioned that he had a wannabe firebrigade start of new year overnight drinking thing and a one night two day work thing in January - the work thing of course including a dinner and on the lash thing that night. I didn't put up a fight, I just said that in return I would like a night away in Fukuoka (Illahee, Kuri??). With Ryu of course.

He got all narky and 'fine, stay for three nights I don't care' (Illahee, Kuri??) If I work on him I might get a week!

We then had to have a chat on responsibilities. He sometimes gets so dilluded that he actually thinks working overtime at a computer is harder than dealing with three small children on your own. He makes me feel like I should be fuckin grateful for having a night away from it all - when if it's him it's all for work or 'tsuki-fukin-ai' The argument ended when I told him to shut it cause he was the one that just spent two hours of pure him time while I went shopping for bloody christmas shit for HIS mother and our daughter and all the time holding, pushing or feeding Ryu.

In his heart of hearts he knows that the house and kiddy stuff is hard/monotonous/painful/stressful, but then he spends too much time with other Japanese men whose wifeys seem to do everything and still have time to stay skinny and vaccum the house in a full face of makeup. Not that hub expects this of course but still, some of his mates do jack bloody shit when it comes to child raising.

That was a bit of a ranty tangent sorry. Day was actually fine. Lunch at sushi was good and we went home via Tokiwa to send his two brothers, his uncle and a prominant figure of the Kunimi community who lives down the road 'end of year gifts' - namely, box of ham X 2, box of beer and some fish or other for his manic healthy policeman brother.

Also got started on the new years postcards (nengajo) today - got our address on all of them. Still haven't really even sorted the photo and I wonder how close this year's ones will bring us to divorce. Always arguments!!

Anyhoo, off to watch the rest of CSI Mongolia or whichever one it is.

SDGH&QL