08.25.08
Summer?
Long long time, no post. It’s nearing the end of August here in Nikko, Japan, and this year it hasn’t seemed like there was much of a summer. It was pretty darn humid on some nights, but there has been nary any sunshine for the last 10-12 weeks. During that time period I can recall no day on which Mother Nature graced us with a full day of unadulterated sunshine (it might have started off sunny but clouds always eventually intervened). The last two weeks have been super cloudy and fairly rainy, but it hasn’t been hot. The net effect is warm dampness, which isn’t as bad as heat and humidity but isn’t as good as cold dampness, in which case the dampness can be mitigated by a heater, which lets you dry things up and warm things up at the same time. It’s not hot now, but using a heater would just make it feel muggy inside.
Life in general has been good to/for us. Of course, as usual I remain perplexed by and aggrieved at the mystery that is life. Why are we here and why do we have to die, and so on and so forth.
There has been so much to write on the kid front. The kids are really wild these days, being quite mischievous at home. There has been a lot of fighting during the last two months (though not much of it the last few days). It is not uncommon for the kids to hit and bite each other. Funny things happen. A few weeks ago, Mickey bit Milo and once Mickey was chided/scolded, I picked up Milo to soothe and comfort him. Then Mickey, presumably wanting to get his own share of the attention, then bit himself on the arm. Yes, three-year-olds with self-inflicted bite wounds.
I spend a lot of time at home shirtless. That’s the only way to do it when it’s this hot. Often, I’m eating breakfast or vacuuming, and the kids (especially Milo), will run up from behind and slap me on the back. “Slap!” for lack of a better onomatopoeia. Just as I’m turning round to deal with that slapper, another slapper comes from the side and gets me again. It’s like tag-team wrestling, two boys against Daddy. Yesterday, I was in bed, still sleeping around 8 a.m. and Milo and Mickey kept slapping me on the head. It hurt! Milo had gotten up at six a.m. with multiple demands, e.g. help me go poo / rub cream on my skin / fix me a drink, and he had gone to bed at midnight the night before. I tell you, I can think of few jobs that are as hard as parenting.
All human beings have the need for an other or a victim to denigrate, and I don’t think kids are any exception. Milo, and Mickey too, but somewhat less so, love to say “Obaka! Oni! Pen-pen!” (Dummy! Devil! I’m hitting you!). Oftentimes the target of their insults is a book or a toy that has ostensibly wronged them in some way. Mickey loves to say, “Daddy dummy!” in an effort to get my goat, but name-calling by my own kids doesn’t bother me. Milo, however, gets a really angry look on his face when Mickey calls him stupid. And Milo got angry at me last night and called me “Obaka” after I had taken his toy away.
They twins’re in a continual body-exploration phase as they get a big kick out of fooling around with their bodies. Both of them like to pull off their pants and run around the bedroom on the futons, crying, “Pee-pee! Pee-pee!” in a mock gesture of spraying urine on the bedding. Also, they like to stick their fingers up their butts and then smell their digits, giddily pronouncing, “Anus smelly!” or something like that.
Mickey (more so than Milo) and Milo are able now to recognize their own printed names (in English of course). There are many stages to reading and one of the first ones is simply word recognition. Maybe you haven’t thought much about it before, but words we know well are instantly recognizable but words we have never read before can make us stumble. I find the same thing with reading Japanese hiragana. Even though I’m easily able to pronounce new words, it takes a much longer time to read them because I haven’t seen/visualized them before (even though I know them very well orally).
The kids’ Japanese is much better than their English, but I’m OK with that. I don’t speak Japanese to them, and I don’t let them speak Japanese to me. I think that is key. When we move back to Canada they will be quite a bit behind in English but they will have a strong foundation. They are not very good with articles (a, an, the) or prepositions (to, from, for) and they often omit these words, but they have a good grasp of word order (“eat food” but not “food eat”) and their listening skills are really good. They’re able to listen for gist and don’t sweat it if they don’t get all the little words, unlike many of my students, who often seem to be unable to listen for gist (maybe they are trying too hard to understand every single word). The kids know how to answer a “Why” question (they say “Because…” in chorus) and “Where” and “What” questions, but “How” questions will take a little longer.
I have a day off from work today (Monday). No classes until 6 p.m. on Tuesday. That’s real nice. The kids are at daycare and I’m cleaning up the place a bit. The wife is cleaning up her mom’s place (her job right now) and she’ll come over and we’ll eat lunch. Getting hungry. Well, it’s another cloudy day here. Hope to write more soon. The major stock market indices are down quite a bit and I think it’s a good time to buy stocks. Wish I had more cash. But anyway, this recession is good news for people seeking to acquire cheap positions in large-cap companies, like General Electric and Pfizer. Gotta make money for our future. Signing off…
