Thursday 28 April 2011

Easter

I know, Easter was ages ago now, but I don't seem to have that much free time lately for some reason...

Easter isn't celebrated in Japan, even in the purely commercial way that Christmas and Hallowe'en are. I'm sure it won't be long until someone realises that it's a great opportunity to sell chocolate and then it'll become a big event, but for now it usually passes me by unless I happen to look at a calendar from overseas. This year I also had my parents and K's international pre-school to help me remember.

I hadn't planned on any Easter celebrations, but then thought it would be nice to do something. So on Saturday we boiled some eggs, got out the wax crayons and stickers...


... mixed up some food-colouring-and-vinegar dyes...


...and made a few Easter eggs. There were spots and stripes, random scribbles, the Easter bunny and Humpty Dumpty (that's his arm you can see there on the red egg at the bottom. Obviously.).


Sunday was pretty cold and windy but we headed outside for a little egg hunt anyway. Luckily I had some plastic eggs that K got at his pre-school's graduation party. Yes, mean Mum that I am, I kept them back, unopened, at the time; he did get lots of other snacks and little toys that day, so he wasn't completely deprived...



Anyway, K had a little note from the Easter Bunny instructing him to head out to the garden and look for 5 eggs and 5 little presents, one for each of us (Easter chocolates provided by Mum).


He really enjoyed it, and only needed a little bit of directing towards some of the treasures...



Then it was back inside to get down to the serious business of unwrapping his chocolate bunny and biting off its head. No time to waste on things like the taking off of coats!




Later in the afternoon there was time for one more little activity. A friend of Mum's had given her a decorate-your-own chocolate for K, and he had great fun squeezing out the yellow and green icing.


Most of the green icing ended up in one big heap, which he termed 'a mountain'...


To be honest I can't really say that I'm passing on my cultural heritage or important family traditions to K, as we didn't do egg hunts or egg decorating as kids, nor are we church-goers (did have the chocolate though!). But on the other hand, why not? We did some fun things together, indoors and out, that we wouldn't normally do. And there was chocolate involved - win-win, I say.

Friday 15 April 2011

2 little monkeys

Little boy, big bed...

...and vice versa.


2 weeks have passed since little T and I came home from hospital. Where has all the time gone? T has already changed so much, and seems to no longer be the sleepy newborn he was a week ago. Last week we went back for a check-up and he was given the thumbs-up for both weight-gain and jaundice.



In general, Mum and Dad have been looking after K while I take care of T, and between us we deal with meals and laundry. Actually I think they have the harder job; T sleeps well and feeds well and doesn't cry much, while K is, well, a 3 year old...


We haven't really done anything much lately, which is what you'd expect I suppose :-) When Mum and Dad have been looking after K, I have had a couple of little outings with T, to English School, the play centre and a few shops. It's been fun to show him off to people; the first comment from those who know us is usually along the lines of 'He looks just like K!'.



The other common reaction is surprise that T is less than 3 weeks old and that we are out and about, as traditionally Japanese women stay at home until their baby is a month old. A lot of women go back and stay at their parents' house from late in their pregnancy until the the baby is a month old, even leaving their husbands behind if it's far away. Nowadays I suppose less people do that, but people are still surprised to see me being *so* active - wait until they hear I was driving a 2 ton truck loaded with wood back from the home centre yesterday...


Sunday 10 April 2011

A Family Day Out

Mum and Dad have been here for 2 weeks now but they have barely left the house, except to visit me in hospital last week or go to the supermarket. A trip to the home centre has probably been the biggest outing so far, so we thought we'd better make the effort to do something yesterday.

After lunch in town we drove out to Saihaku, about 30 minutes from home. The cherry blossoms along the river there were in full bloom, and the weather was better than it looks in some of these photos...




To coincide with the cherry blossoms, the town holds a small festival where townspeople display sculptures or models they have made using things from their house such as lacquer ware or ceramics. People make the displays in their homes and then open up the big windows onto the street so that everyone can see them. Here we have K studying a figure made of lacquer lunchboxes and bowls...


...and here are a couple of pandas made from baskets:


As this is the year of the rabbit, there were several rabbit-themed displays. This one shows rabbits pounding rice to make mochi. Whereas in the West we say there is a face visible in the full moon, in Japan the patterns on the moon are said to show rabbits making mochi. These rabbits here were made from traditional Japanese footwear: wooden geta sandals can be seen in the centre, the rabbits clothes are made from the colourful thongs of zori sandals and the white parts are tabi, the divided cotton socks worn with sandals.


In this prefecture there is a well-known folktale about a white rabbit, so he popped up a lot in the festival. This one is made from small bowls and dishes, wired together.


K enjoyed looking at all the displays, and running around looking for the red lanterns and numbers which marked the participating houses. T, meanwhile, spent the entire afternoon sleeping in his pushchair...


Finally we made it back to the primary school, where we had parked the car, and there was just time for a quick go on the swings before we headed home again...


Thursday 7 April 2011

Hospital life

T was born in the early hours of Monday morning last week, and we stayed in the hospital until Friday. A stay of 4 or 5 days is the norm here, and people are usually quite shocked to hear how quickly you go home again in the UK. In fact, a lot of older people here still think a week is the usual length of time to stay in hospital, and consider 4 days to be rather short...

The new expanded Monkey family, 12 hours in

I had T (and K) at a small ob/gyn, not a general hospital. I had a private room (with washbasin, fridge, TV and DVD player) where I laboured before going to the delivery room. After T was born I rested in the delivery room for an hour or so before walking back to my room, where I spent most of the next few days.

Big brother cuddles

For the first day and night T stayed in the nursery and was brought to me when he wanted to feed. From the second day he was in my room with me, but the nurses and midwives often reminded me that I could leave him with them anytime if I needed a rest, or if I wanted to take a shower. Each morning the cleaning lady came in and cleaned the room, and brought me fresh pyjamas.


H, K and my parents came in to visit every afternoon, and several friends dropped by too. There weren't that many women in the hospital at the time I was there, so the staff always had time for a chat too if I had any concerns.


T was rather jaundiced and it was recommended that he have some UV light treatment. Usually that requires going back to the nursery and lying under a special lamp with a mask on to protect the eyes, but they just happened to have a new piece of equipment there on demonstration loan. This provided light from below and a naked T was fitted into the special cover-cum-pyjamas with just his head sticking out. This meant that he could stay in the room with me and didn't have to wear an eye mask.


His levels had improved by Friday and were even better again on Saturday when we went back to have them checked again. Tomorrow we'll be going back for a check-up again.

Now a big issue at hospitals is always the food, right? Before I went into hospital with K, I had heard that this clinic put a lot of emphasis on traditional, Japanese food. Now most of what I cook and eat at home is typical Japanese home cooking, but even so I was a bit worried that there was going to be a lot of oily fish, natto (fermented soybeans) and the like...

In fact, the food was fantastic, and so it was again this time! Here's what I had for dinner on the first night, along with a little 'congratulations' flower arrangement...


...and here's a typical lunch:


There was natto for breakfast one day, but H was there then, so he ate it :-)

Lots of people, Japanese and not, have asked me if I wouldn't have preferred to have given birth back in the UK. It's true that it would have been nice to at least have had the option of some pain-relief, and alternatives to the feet-in-the-stirrups delivery table, but overall I really liked the whole hospital experience here. Nice environment, lovely staff, delicious food... it was like a little holiday, with no cooking or housework to do. Oh, and did I mention the complementary aromatherapy foot massage?

Saturday 2 April 2011

Introducing...


... Taisei Noah Aoto, born at 4.14am on Monday 28th March, weighing 3830g.

He waited just long enough for his grandparents to get here first (mid-Sunday afternoon) and then was born on their wedding anniversary.

We had a false alarm on the Saturday night; contractions were coming every ten minutes but, after getting H's dad to look after K and then heading to the hospital, they stopped. They monitored me for a couple of hours, with just the occasional labour pain, served me breakfast and then sent me home again.

I had random contractions throughout Sunday and then, at bedtime, they started coming every 5 minutes. I didn't want to be sent home again so I waited around a bit more until I was absolutely sure, then woke H, arrived at the hospital at 1am and gave birth 3 hours later. Phew.



Taisei (pronounced Tie-say, from now on known as 'T') looks so much like K did as a newborn. I think I'll struggle to tell the difference in baby photos in the future. He's an enthusiastic feeder and I'm really pleased that I'm able to breastfeed him without bottle supplements, which we had to do with K. T is a bit jaundiced but after 24 hours on the light box his levels are much better now. We came home from the hospital yesterday, and all is well.