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Today was E’s last day at her daycare. She officially begins preschool next Monday. It was really sad watching her say goodbye to her friends and teachers at her daycare especially since she really loves being there everyday. Her teachers even began to cry when they were talking about how much they’ve enjoyed watching E grow up this year and how they wish her happiness at her new school. Both A-chan’s dad (A-chan is E’s best friend) and I began to tear up over the whole exchange too. This was bound to happen one day since many of the kids are getting older and willRead More →

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One of the benefits of sending E to a Japanese daycare is that I get to learn new words with her. One of the words you’ll hear frequently around E these days is なかよしさん (nakayoshi-san) which means “good friend”. E really loves using that word to refer to Bear or to Jason and me which totally melts our hearts 🙂 One of the things that E enjoys doing to reinforce this idea of a close relationship is having us do the same things at the same time. If Jason is playing video games, she would bring out her iPad and have me sit down withRead More →

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It’s been a while since I’ve shared a video so here’s one for your enjoyment 🙂 This was taken today when we were on the monorail heading towards Haneda airport. We’re not flying anywhere. We just go to the airport to eat and to watch airplanes take off. Some explanations: – In the beginning of the video, you see E grabbing something from my lap and patting it onto Jason’s lap. It’s something strange that she does whenever Jason pretends to “chop” me or pretends to rip chunks of my muscle to “eat”. She would yell at him to stop and then goes to “replace”Read More →

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Today, E’s daycare held their annual Family Fun Day event. Last year, they held it at a park. This year, they decided to hold it in an auditorium of an elementary school, which was a good idea since it has been raining all day today. They had a bunch of activities planned, altering them a bit to fit the needs of the kids in each age range. For some reason, E was placed in the group with the other 1-year-olds even though she was 2. We would have asked them if we could move to the correct group but it wouldn’t have mattered because ERead More →

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Yesterday’s outing with E really was a treasure trove of wonderful moments. I was going through some of the photos I took yesterday when I saw this photo and remembered the story behind it. This was taken in the walkway area that lead to the subway station. Rather than leaving the walls blank and boring, the people at Tokyo Dome City painted these murals that made it look like it went somewhere. It was a nice touch to an area that people used to go from one place to another. When E saw this one particular mural, she stopped in front of it with aRead More →

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Today, Jason had to go into work for a few hours so I decided to take E out to Tokyo Dome City. The place was packed unlike the weekday when I went. The area I wanted to take E to was too crowded so we went to the amusement park in the same complex instead. After going on two kiddie rides together, I bought some kuma castella, these bite-sized sponge cake in the shape of a bear, from a little snack stall. Then E and I sat down on a nearby bench to eat them. When there were only two left in the bag, sheRead More →

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Just when I thought that there was nothing else E can do to surprise me anymore, she goes and proves me wrong. Tonight was one of those times. I was in the kitchen preparing dinner when E and Jason came home. E wanted to see what I was making so she joined me in the kitchen for a bit. Then she saw this and wanted it It’s a package with bunch of smaller furikake packets. Furikake is a type of dry Japanese condiment that we usually add to rice to give it a little flavor. I figure there was no harm letting her play withRead More →

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Do you notice anything odd about this picture? No? How about this one? Still don’t see what’s happening? It’s okay because I didn’t notice anything at that moment either. But you’ll soon notice that a certain someone’s finger is slowly sneaking towards a bag of gummi bears sitting on her daddy’s desk. Yes, she’s quite sneaky about it too 🙂 I thought it was a little weird that E climbed up Jason’s chair as soon as he left the room and kept turning to check if he was coming back in. I got a little suspicious when she became really quiet and so I lookedRead More →