2 Months

Look who is 2 Months Old already!!

A funny thing about QP is that he loves having his hair washed and brushed. He gets very calm. His hair is long enough to get tangled in back! The big smiles have just started, and we are loving every one of them!

Boys' Day Out

   A few weeks ago, Fox took Cash for individual time. Cash had been asking to go hiking, so they made the hourlong hike uphill on local Mt. Yashima, which we first visited four years ago.

Cash on the trail.  This boy loves being outside!

At the top near the shrine

There is an aquarium on top, and the boys got there just in time to see the dolphin show!

Cash got to feed the sea otters, which are Mommy's absolute favorite!

Can you tell which otter is the friendly one?

After the aquarium, the boys went to the onsen (you know, the popular public naked bath house), which they love to do. The girls in this family stayed home fully clothed and painted our nails :) Yay for individual time!

1 Month

Quincy is 1 Month Old! (plus 10 days, because I forgot to blog this).


Here's a little glimpse of our little almost 6-week old:

Remove the clothes and voila! His first smile, captured excitedly, hence the blurriness!:

   We sure love this little baby and can't wait to get to know him as he gets bigger. So far, he is pretty mellow and just loves to be cuddled. Fox and I have been able to spend a lot of time cuddling this boy, since Cash and Cosette play together and are more independent.  It sure is nice to have only one baby in diapers this time around!

5 Years Old!

   Cash is 5 Years Old! He let us know yesterday at 4 a.m., and 6 a.m., and just about every hour since! He had a very relaxed birthday as he has plans with friends this weekend and got to do things he usually doesn't get to do, like watch an entire movie in one sitting in the middle of the day (Kung Fu Panda 2, thanks Grandpa Rick!).


His good buddy Tamara-sensei gave him an Optimus Prime!

He wanted to make his cake and decorate himself, as big boys do:

Blowing out the candles!  Not sure what's going on with his floppy hair :)

Here are some other things 5 year olds do, according to Cash:
--protect their sisters on the playground ("Get back here, I'm a 5 year old!")
-- eat red peppers (only 6 year olds are big enough to eat tomatoes)
--flip their own pancakes
--stand on stools to reach tall things
--no longer pick their noses
--use a lighter (sorry, bud, not this year!)

Cash is so fun, and we are so excited that he is 5 years old now!  He loves to color, read out loud, play outside, and snuggle his brother.  He loves the show Wild Kratts and really likes when I show him old shows that I used to watch, like Rescue Rangers and Inspector Gadget.
  Cash still eats a banana every morning, just as he has since he was 1.  He loves fish, meat, and curry rice.  This boy will not eat string cheese, flavored yogurt, or pizza!
   It is really fun to have Cash around.  He is a great helper and is eager to please.  He loves to count the members of our little family and proudly announce, "The boys are winning!"
  Cash is a great big brother and almost never hits back when he is being bullied (sadly) by Coco.  We have to tell him to stick up for himself with her!
   He has just started asking a TON of questions--"Why does soap make use clean?" "Who is Heavenly Father's Father?" "How does your body make milk?"  Keeps us on our toes!
  I remember very clearly what my little brother David was like growing up, and Cash reminds me a lot of him.  Very sensitive, active, and curious.

We really love our Cashy boy and look forward to what this next year brings for him!

In an alley in Osaka...

    Yesterday, we made the trip to the U.S. Consulate in Osaka to put in applications for Quincy's birth certificate and social security number.  I'm a bit let down with the U.S. Consulate--I thought we would be greeted with a welcome basket of Grape Nuts and US Weekly--hey, I can hope :).  They did have a T.V. playing a Bulls vs. Celtics basketball game, though, so I guess that was something!
 
Anyways, afterwards we took an alley to get back to the station.  Alleys here are actually little outdoor malls (some shadier than others) behind bigger buildings, and it's our experience that going down these alleys yields really awesome surprises.  We were not disappointed!

 First, we found  a really cool shrine nestled between two skyscrapers.  I really loved this wishing wall:

  Then, we found a little hole-in-the-wall Okonomiyaki restaurant.  I forgot to mention this earlier but the ferry we took to Osaka left at 1 a.m.  We realized this at 11 pm when I re-read the kanji on the ferry website.  So, we were running on literally zero sleep, and the kids got maybe about 4 hours.

  There are 2 styles of Okonomiyaki in Japan: Hiroshima and Osaka.  I love Hiroshima-style, but Osaka-style is good, too.

This is a shrimp okonomiyaki--they place a large shrimp on top for looks--you don't actually eat it whole.

And finally, we found the most awesome pet shop!  It had monkeys, a meerkat, and a crazy groundhog for sale!

This meerkat can be yours for a mere 600,000 yen--that's about $7500!

   After exploring a while, we were literally so dead on our feet, which is sad because Osaka has really cool shopping areas. We explored as much as we could! The kids were thrilled, because they got to ride a ferry, bus, and train in one day!  Our return ferry home got us back at 1:30 a.m., so it was a quick and exhausting trip--but the paperwork is in and Quincy's passport is on its way!

Hospital Food in Japan--a glimpse

    I am obsessed with food, as are most of the people in my immediate family. Take that food obsession and add in a pregnancy and a year in a foreign country and you get an even more food-obsessed person. A person who was not able to indulge in ANY of her cravings while pregnant--cranberry juice, Cafe Rio, salmon burgers with sweet potatoes, chocolate soymilk, etc. etc. Whaaa... So, I held no high hopes for hospital food here, especially after my previous hospital experiences.

    After laboring all night with Cash, I was presented with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on white bread. Wow. With Cosette, we requested a vegetarian menu, so lunch was an entire plate of only: french fries. Just french fries. "Where is the protein? She is bleeding!!" Fox demanded of the head dietician. "Sorry about that, she'll have protein for dinner," he said. Dinner was a green salad with a side of protein: a small cup of slivered almonds.

        After that, I swore I would have all my babies at home just so that I could have hot lentil soup afterwards. You can imagine my suprise when every single one of my hospital meals here in Japan was not only beautiful but super yummy and nutritious (except of course for white bread and rice)! A nurse came in and told me, "You are nursing and recovering, so everything we are giving you has iron and calcium in it." Yes, thank you, finally!! Granted, I still couldn't recognize all of it, but I ate 90% of it, which was awesome.  Here's a glimpse:

Breakfast: salad with grapefruit and boiled eggs, fish with tomatoes, vegetable soup

Lunch: Salad, rolls, tomato soup, honeydew, apricot mousse, fish w/ zucchini stir-fry.  Zucchini and honeydew are very rare here!

Okay, this one I didn't eat much of, but it was presented in a beautiful layered bento. Orange, clear soup, sashimi, shrimp with okra and kabocha, tempura, and a veggie broth of some sort.

Another breakfast: salad, omelette, clam chowder, and mango pudding. The drink on the top is a traditional Chinese herbal medicine that I had with every meal to contract my uterus.  It tasted like echinacea.

   Also, every day at 3 p.m. was tea--the first day, they brought in a dish of vanilla ice cream with fresh peaches. The next day was another apricot mousse. So yummy! With dinner, they also provided a carton of juice and a pastry for a later snack.  It was so fun to actually look forward to my hospital meals and see how beautifully they were presented. I don't think I've ever eaten as many vegetables in such a short period of time.

  The hospital also provided a free facial on one of the days. A nurse watched the baby, while I went down to the "esthe" room for 30 minutes of hot steam and a face massage. Also, each day the hospital would bring a new-mother present: a new nursing pillow, large towels, a bound baby book. It was awesome. Good job, Inoshita Hospital! You are tops in my book :)

Quincy's Birth Story

      Ever since I found out I was pregnant, I told Fox and pretty much everyone that this baby would be born on January 21, 2012 and that my labor would be 3 hours. My last labor was 21 hours, so I spent time visualizing a much shorter birth and a cool birthdate (1-21-12 sounded good to me!). I use hypnosis for all of my births (and teach it, too, through Hypnobabies), and it has always been really effective for me. So, when my doctor told me on January 20th that I had not dilated at all, baby was still high and that it would be a while yet, I was a little surprised! He told me to get some walking in, so that afternoon, I walked around the mall for about an hour. I also finished crocheting a baby blanket and cleaned out the car, which were the two things I told myself had to be done before baby came.

    That night, I started having really high pressure waves (what we call contractions in Hypnobabies) but nothing painful, so I didn't worry much about it. When they started getting longer and closer together, I knew they were the real thing but was unsure of whether or not to go to the hospital yet, since Cosette's birth took so long even after regular pressure waves. After saying a prayer, we knew right away it was time to head to the hospital. Fox drove to pick up our friend Tamara, who would watch the kids, and we headed out to the hospital (a 45 minute drive) at 12:45 a.m. The drive was good--I stayed in hypnosis the whole time.

Quincy at 1 day old. He has a hematoma from being born so quickly, so no cute beanies for a while!

     As soon as we got to the hospital, we got down to business! My pressure waves were coming every 3 minutes. I got into the hospital bed and noticed that there was a big screen with the words "Birth System 2000" or something on it. The screen had relaxing music playing, with images of bottle-nosed dolphins gliding through waves. It was so relaxing that I really didn't need to use hypnosis to stay relaxed. Also, there were about 2 nurses and 2 midwives in the room, instead of my regular doctor. They directed all their questions to Fox, so no one bothered me, which was awesome. We were very blessed in that we didn't have much communication barrier at all, even though we were quite unsure of medical terms in Japanese. They were also very cooperative when we asked to not be hooked up to the IV. I really loved being surrounded by these women who, whenever I would have a pressure wave, would just quietly soothe, "Hai hai hai hai hai" (which basically means "yes yes yes" but here meant "yes, we know what you are going through!")

 

5 days old

    After about an hour, I told Fox to take me to the bathroom, since having a full bladder can slow down labor. He took me, but as soon as I sat on the toilet, I realized that I was going through transition and the pressure waves were coming right on top of each other. After a bit, I stood up and had Fox do the belly lift on me with my next pressure wave. As soon as he did that, my water broke with a huge pop; I felt baby come down, and I was ready to push! This is why Hypnobabies teaches to not do the belly lift unless you are in place to give birth! I made it to the bed, told them we needed to push, and pushed Quincy out in 3 pushes! The Birth System 2000 was hooked up to my contraction monitor and started playing some breathing noises. I also put on my "Pushing Baby Out" CD but pushed Quincy out before it had been playing for 5 minutes. As soon as he was out, the big screen immediately had a big "Congratulations" come across the screen. I got a kick out of that!

  The only snag we came across was when the on-call doctor came in to see if I needed repairs and started tugging on the cord to get my placenta out. He got a bit upset when Fox told him to stop tugging and asked him to wait to cut the cord, which they do immediately here but which we know is not good! The doctor was so mad that he left the room! The midwife came and caught the placenta and then cut the cord. They gave me a piece of it in a wooden box, which is a Japanese custom. I bled a bit, so they gave me an IV, which I have never had before and can honestly say was the most uncomfortable part of the whole birth experience! I think it was a good thing, though, since this is the first birth after which I haven't fainted! They also do not bathe the baby for the first 24 hours, since they don't want to lower baby's body temperature, which I thought was cool.

1 week old!

So--just as I had visualized--Quincy was born on 1-21-12 at 3:20 am, after only 3 hours of labor. Fox has requested that I visualize any future babies to be born during working hours, so he gets out of work :) I had an amazing and really positive birth experience in Japan, thanks to a great doctor and awesome nurses. It is truly a blessing that things worked out so wonderfully!