Birthday Boy!

Happy Birthday to my little Beaver today!

We celebrated tonight with a chocolate chip cookie cake, since Beaver wanted candles to blow out, but he is not actually very fond of cake.

Candles lit for the birthday song.

Blow them out!

Present time!

Beaver requested that I take pictures of him in various poses with his presents.

Bear joined in the fun.

T-shirt from G&G

Beaver spent the day trying to grasp the concept of turning four years old.  As we walked back from the bus stop this morning, he asked me, "Am I four?"  "Yes!  It's your birthday and now you are four years old!" I told him.  "No, I am still three, because I don't have any balloons yet." he declared.  As the day went on, he kept asking, "Is my birthday starting yet?"  Mike came home early to have dinner with us and to be there for Beaver's birthday celebration.  Now that he has blown out his candles and opened his presents, I think that he feels he really is four years old at last!

A few things about my boy in honor of his birthday:

Beaver really likes watching TV.  His favorite movie is How to Train Your Dragon (hence, the t-shirt). He often quotes lines from that movie, and others, and cracks up just thinking about them (I'm okay!  Less okay...).  I can't say that I am thrilled about this passion of his, but there it is.  I just try to temper it as well as I can.  He also likes sports, yogurt, motorcycles, snuggling with his "bah" while sucking his thumb, play fighting, wrestling, racing, hide-and-seek, animals, Diego, Backyardigans, and reading stories.  He has a goofy sense of humor and raucous laugh that we love.

Two funny things he said today: 

I was visiting a friend and Beaver kept interrupting us.  I told him repeatedly that he was interrupting.  Finally he said, in exasperation, "Mommy!  I am not interrupting because I am not a volcano!"

Mike was speaking Japanese throughout our dinner.  He said to Beaver, "Tabemasho!" (let's eat!).  Beaver responded, "Tabemasho, ne!"  This cracked us up, but it is only funny if you understand a bit of Japanese, so William (and maybe Samantha, too), if you read this you can laugh.

Beaver's birthdays are always bittersweet to me.  I just hate seeing my baby grow up.  And so, for remembrance sake, here is Beaver through the years:

Oh, little boy, how we love you!

Beaver Quote

As he ran from me and hid behind the couch:

"I am so fast that I can run from creditors!"

He meant predators, but I guess I can see that one might want to run from creditors as well.

I have done a foolish thing...

I started reading a book.  I didn't really mean to.  I've had this book downloaded on the ipad for a few months.  I read the first few pages awhile ago and didn't get into it.  Two days ago - in spite of the fact that I have lessons to prepare, piano to practice, children to feed and care for, a house to clean, and a level A Japanese test to study for - I picked it up again.  But this time I read a little farther and did get into it.  Now I keep reading instead of preparing, practicing, nurturing, cleaning, and studying.  I looked up some classic symptoms of addiction:

• Difficulty cutting down or controlling the addictive behavior.
• Social, occupational, or recreational activities becoming focused around the addiction, and important social and occupational roles being jeopardized.
• Becoming preoccupied with the addiction, spending a lot of time on planning, engaging in, and recovering from the addiction.

I find that I am displaying most of these symptoms.

I am very nervous about my Japanese test.  My sensei keeps telling me not to be nervous, but she also told me that if I do well, she will feel "so happy" (as she clasped her hands to her heart for emphasis).

I fear that I am going to shame my teacher.

Nevertheless, last night I quickly did my homework in about 10 minutes, and then read my book for an hour. 

We did some fun things over our holiday break.  Our iphones take terrible pictures, though, and our camera is broken, so I'm not getting good pictures of anything we are doing.

This is the Kawasaki Good Times Museum.

These are from a fun children's museum in Osaka.

This was so cute.  There was a little town set up with a post office, medical clinic, hair salon, grocery store, and a few other shops.  All the shops had mailboxes, and the kids could dress up like mailmen and deliver letters that were actually addressed to the different shops.  

With the holiday over now, Bear is settled back in school, and Beaver back in preschool.  Bear has started reading the Harry Potter books.  He has read the first one twice, and is halfway through the second one now.  Guess who, besides me, is a bit of a book addict?

Funny things Beaver has said lately:

"Daddy, you are a bad guy because your eyeballs are down."

Upon being told it had not been raining enough to make puddles to jump in:
"I know, how about we turn the rain on very much, and then when we go to the bus stop to pick up Bear, there will be puddles to jump in!"
Me: "How do we turn the rain on?"
"We jump up into a cloud, and turn the rain on."
"Can you jump up into a cloud?"
"If I in a helicopter I can jump up into a cloud."
"When you get in the cloud, how do you turn the rain on?"
"You see a rain thing, and turn it on!" (showing hand motions like he is turning on a faucet.)