We've moved!

We've started a new blog to accommodate the newest addition to our family.

To those updating bookmarks and links, the new address is: http://4inthefamily.blogspot.com

Please continue to keep in touch with us there!

Who's who

The left is Marissa, the right is Minori.


Can you guess who's who here?


We'll be posting the answer in a couple of days!

She ain't heavy...

The sisters watching TV together on a rainy autumn's day.

Big sister

M has become big sister to Marissa, born on 7 Oct 2007. She can't seem to wait for Marissa to grow up so that they can play together.

The nun

M doing an impersonation of the nuns in the Sound of Music, her latest favorite DVD.

R&R

Last weekend's trip to Katsuura, our third in a month, deserves a blog entry of its own. It's the first time M was very happy hanging out for hours at a time with people other than family without me being around. She was particularly drawn to daddy's female students who relentlessly played doh with her at the student chalet or carried her around.

Which gave me a rare couple of hours of R&R a day, for two days, to lie on the couch to read over some snacks and good coffee (disclaimer: this is only my, what, 3rd or 4th intake of caffeine throughout the pregnancy!).

Evenings were spent at the conference lounge. Well... I'm not sure about the conference bit, but there were state-of-the-art karaoke systems and free flow of beer from the tap (disclaimer: didn't touch this). You would have no idea this place belongs to a university! No one else except us and daddy's seminar students booked the cottage that weekend so we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves. Which was a good thing because M was so overwhelmed by her first experience with the karaoke, she must have sung the chorus of "Tomorrow" (from the musical Annie) a hundred times both evenings combined!

If any of daddy's students who were there is reading this, I want to say:
THANK YOU for putting up with the singing! You are all wonderful, WONDERFUL people!

So happening

I haven't blogged in ages... it does seem like pregnancy has gotten the best of me and life is rather dull at the moment, doesn't it? On the contrary, we've had so much going on in the last few weeks it's almost impossible to blog it all down. Here are the highlights:

Katsuura
Since that first trip to the university beach resort over a month ago, we've been back there for two more weekends!


Sea World
On one of those trips, we stopped by at Sea World in Kamogawa on our way back home. The killer whales (shatchi in Japanese) were her favorite.


Baby Yuno
The Kageyama family gets another girl, YES! M absolutely adores her baby cousin!


M messes with grandma baaba's compact powder in the cafe at the maternity clinic.


Getting fat with other Malaysian mothers
A few foreign mothers, mostly Malaysian and one Chinese, and children, got together at the Hilton near Disneyland for a very nice high-tea buffet (good news for pregnant me, both food-wise and location-wise!) and chit-chat. M had fun... she absolutely loved meeting and playing with the babies like Erina, Yuta and Yuan Yuan and was so looking forward to seeing Aimee in person! Aimee is a month younger than M. Before this get-together, she has only met Aimee once as an infant (she barely remembers I'm sure) and mostly seen her photos on her blog.

Many thanks, kids, for sacrificing your afternoon nap so that we mommies can have a couple of hours of chit-chat and laughter!

(Out of respect for the privacy of all these mothers and their children who may not want their picture on a public domain, no photo of this event on the blog, sorry!)


SUMO!
When you attend a sumo match here in Tokyo, you get to fill out lucky draw slips equivalent to the number of tickets you buy. Drawn slips win a pair of tickets for the next match held in town. We filled out the slips at the last match, and what do you know, daddy and mommy didn't get drawn but Minori did!

M seemed to have enjoyed these round of bouts a lot more than the last time! It was as though she knew she had won the tickets.