Happy Fathers' Day

Junji's first ever Fathers' Day card, personally doodled by daddy's little girl. Happy Fathers' Day!

Timing is everything

So we just returned from a very long trip, after the ceremony to remember uncle Shunya's death a year ago. His ashes were buried in the family grave this morning in Sendai. Before that, there was a little ceremony thing at the shrine.

Imagine this... everyone dressed in serious black, sitting in order of birth and relationship to the deceased, all silent, looking all solemn in the immaculate, speckless temple hall. The Shinto priest starts chanting while tapping his drum and bell.

And what happens? Our dear Minori starts dancing!!!

She insisted on standing just in front of me and she pumped her knees up and down to the beat of the drum and her arms started doing the hula-hula!

Yuri, my SIL, sitting on my left, and my cousin-in-law who had a very well-behaved two-year-old boy sitting on her lap on my right, burst out into chuckles. Minori's dad sitting a few seats away saw it and had to close his eyes to stop himself from laughing.

Sorry, no photo of this one.

The durian test

Minori's dad grins widely as he comes back into the car after grocery shopping, "do you smell something?"

Thai durians are in season right now in Japan. They are pricey and aren't as good as those that we are used to in Malaysia but it's good enough for Minori's dad, who missed having durians on his last trip back to KL.

Minori's first durian experience... and not liking it very much... yet.

Thank you Aunty Tina

Minori examines the tag on her belated birthday present from Aunty Tina and Shinki. "Ok it's the right size."

Getting it right

I'm now onto this book. It's amazing how working mothers, of all cultures, halfway across the globe, have the same set of challenges dealing with career and family, face the same kind of guilt and have the same thoughts as to whether their children will end up being some psycho because their mom is not a stay-at-home mom.

Unlike some of the other stuff I've seen, this one is well-written, and fairly credible (the writer is a clinical psychiatric and behavioral science professor who researched Stanford business school grads that spanned across decades). Can't say anything more since I haven't yet completed the book. I'm now at the chapter about guilt!

Hope to glean something from it.

Pearly white

A week after her first birthday, a tooth finally decides to show up in M's lower gum. Just one, not two, tooth. We still can't get a good photo of a smile that shows that tooth so no photo with this blog... sorry!

Loving her music

M is really, like REALLY, starting to dance now. She dances to anything that has rhythm, even to the reading of nursery rhymes!

On the music front, she has shaken her booty to bohemian tunes on the radio, music by Santana on daddy's iTunes playlist and even classical music, especially Tschaikovsky (sp??).