"There is a distance between us."

Watashitachi no aida ni ha kyori ga arimasu.



Were you shocked? I sure was. Most of the fuss about him in the past decade or so was unfortunately not about his music, but you have to admit, sexual tastes aside, his music and dancing were pretty amazing.

So this conversation went on in the workplace today.

O: I still can't believe he's dead.

Me: Me neither. I remember when there was always someone in the hall trying to moonwalk.

S: Me too. I had a Thriller folder.

O: I had Thriller stuff, too. I loved that song, and the video. Even if he was kind of messed up these past few years.

S: Do you mean about the monkey he had?

O: Actually, I meant the whole pedeophilia mess, but yes, he had a monkey. What was his name?

Me: Bubbles the chimpanzee.

S: Yes, Bubbles. I remember when he came to the zoo in Pumpkin Prefecture with Bubbles, and one of my friends cut class to get a glimpse of him.

M: (youngest person in the room, at age 26 or so) You know, It's been all over the news since early morning, and I don't really understand what the fuss is about.

(O, S and Pumpkin Mommy suddenly feel very very old)

It's cold!

Tsumetai ne!

(this is for cold water, cold temps would be "samui ne!")

I mentioned my cousin passed away a while ago (around when I just started to fit into my pre-pregnancy jeans). In Japan, after cremation, you keep the ashes in the family home for a while before sealing them in the family grave. Last weekend, my cousin's ashes were sealed.

The cemetery was a 2 1/2 hour drive away, which isn't in itself that big a deal, except the sky saw fit to pour buckets that morning. My mom had bought the Pumpkin Princess and her cousin new plastic raincoats and rain boots "just in case."

I should probably mention again how much the Pumpkin Granny rocks.



The Pumpkin Princess stood for a half hour in the pouring rain while the Buddhist priest chanted and my cousin's ashes were sealed. We were all impressed at how well behaved she and her cousin were (for a three-year-old girl and a four-year-old boy, anyway), and I let her know this.

"It was fun! We were drinking water."

Huh?

"There was water on our raincoats, and we licked it. It was cold and it tasted good!"

Apparently, while the priest was going on about how life sucks and we need to accept life sucks (basic Buddhist doctrine), the Pumpkin Princess and her cousin had been licking each others' plastic hoods.

At least they hadn't been tasting puddles, which was what their second cousin appeared to be doing.

May I do the puzzle?

Pazuru shite mo ii?

This is the Pumpkin Princess's favorite pastime of the moment. It's a 65 piece jigsaw puzzle. I'm impressed that she's learned to put this together by herself. The picture of her favorite anime of the moment is good motivation. She's developing her hand-eye coordination and concentration.

I just wish she wouldn't start taking it apart at 8:15 on a weekday morning.

The Return of the Pumpkin Mommy

Kaette kita kabocha kaasan

So it's been two weeks of wearing makeup and stockings every weekday. Work has gone all right, and there were even some dull stretches. I'm at the point in my career where my work mostly involves checking if other people have done their work properly, so when there's nothing to check, I can lock myself in a spare room to make the Pumpkin Prince's lunch.

The typical day consists of my leaving in the morning with the Pumpkin Princess and dropping her off at day care, leaving the Pumpkin Prince at home with his daddy. At around three in the afternoon, the Pumpkin Daddy drops the Pumpkin Prince off at the Pumpkin Granny's, and goes to pick up the Pumpkin Princess. He brings her home, keeps her entertained, and gives her her bath. Then they walk to the Pumpkin Granny's. I meet them there when I finish work, and we all have dinner there. Then we come home, I put the Pumpkin Princess to bed (usually falling asleep in the process), I take a bath, and we go to bed. The Pumpkin Prince still wakes up a couple times a night. The Pumpkin Daddy has many fine qualities which I admire, but the ability to get up at appropriate times is not one of them, plus, I'm trying to breast feed as much as possible anyway. This means I'm constantly sleep deprived, but that's just the way it is.

In between, the Pumpkin Day Care went to a dude ranch. This being a weekend, it involved my having to fix a box lunch (bento).




Thank goodness for the frozen food section...

The Pumpkin Princess got her first pony ride. She was pleased she got to ride "the Philipe colored horse" (Belle's father's horse in Disney's Beauty and the Beast).



The mask on the ranch staff is an anti-swine flu measure. At least, it's supposed to be an anti-swine flu measure. It was a gauze mask, and I'm not sure how effective those are for flu prevention.

The Pumpkin Prince is growing and growing. I'm trying to remember if the Pumpkin Princess grew this fast, and I don't really think so.



That's it for now. Time for bed, until the Pumpkin Prince wakes up, anyway.

"Why do I have to be the one to do this?"

Nande watashi ga yaranakya ikenai no?

We're trying to teach the Pumpkin Princess to pick up after herself. Today, I told her she couldn't blow soap bubbles in the bathroom until she put her Legos away. She did, but not without saying the above.

Thank you to the mommies that wrote comments about their bottles and laundry. I think there is surely a special place in Heaven for mommies who sterilize 14 bottles a day for several months. I'm not sure how much danger a breast fed baby drinking things out of a bottle washed in soap and hot tap water would be in. My (semi-) educated guess would be some where between miniscule to nonexistent when said taps are located in the United States. I can understand the need for special baby detergent, but yes, it's funny that a special baby detergent, supposedly devoid of unnecessary substances, would be scented.

One more week, and I'm back to part time motherhood. I hesitate to write "working full time" just yet, because I got a call yesterday telling me that they were expecting me back but not exactly counting on me 100%. That is, I'll be on a kind of probation type situation for a week. This suits me just fine because the last time I was away from work for 14 weeks, my brain stopped processing the information placed in front of my eyes the way it used to before the break. It took at least a couple weeks to get back into the swing of things.

On the agenda for next week: making sure I have enough decent looking shirts and pants that fit (I think right now the ones that look all right don't fit, and the ones that fit look quite worn), and getting my hair colored and cut.

How do you do it in your household?

Otaku de ha dou shite imasu?

During Golden Week, my brother's family of four visited my parents at their house and stayed pretty much the entire duration of the holiday. They have a 4 year-old boy and an 8 month-old boy, the most beautiful, robust, happy baby boy you've ever seen (second only to the Pumpkin Prince, of course :P).

While they were there, they did laundry a few times. My brother and his wife wanted to use baby detergent. I don't know if they have this in the Americas and in Europe. It's a special detergent just for babies, made from milder ingredients and devoid of bleaches and brighteners. Parenting magazines in Japan tell you to use this exclusively for babies, at least until they are a few months old. They also tell you to do the baby's laundry as a different load from the rest of the family. I did this for the Pumpkin Princess until she was about six months old. For the Pumpkin Prince, I toss everything except the poopy stuff in the laundry with everything else. Have any of my fellow mommies heard of "separate laundry and separate detergent" for babies?

Another thing the Japanese parenting magazines (and health care providers) tell you to do is to sterilize the baby bottles and nipples by steaming them or boiling them in hot water. Again, I did this for the Pumpkin Princess's bottles and breast pump parts until she was six months old (and continued with the breast pump parts for the duration of their use). For the Pumpkin Prince, they just get tossed in the top rack of the dishwasher with the rice bowls and coffee cups. How many of my fellow mommies sterilized the baby bottles and nipples? How did (do) you do things in your household?

"You're right!"

Sono toori!

During the drive home from day care, the Pumpkin Princess said, "Kenny says that boys are strong and girls are weak, but that's not true, is it? Both boys and girls are strong!"

I've taught her well, haven't I?

(Name changed to protect the ignorant innocent)