Skip to main content

As Clean and Wonderful As Anybody Could Ask For

The boys are so good at not smiling for the camera.


Sometimes, though, they rise to the occasion. 


Today is Children's Day, so we did a celebratory lunch and some pictures with our front entrance traditional decorations and even a little old school garb.



It was finally warm enough that I joined the boys in wearing shorts for the first time this year. We spent the morning cleaning the inside of the car, after which they scuffed it up again pretending to be mama and papa driving. Osamu has a pretty good mama face here.



Osamu had so much fun yesterday playing with water guns at the park that he tried to recreate the experience today at our local park. He did okay. He just got himself all wet. 


Papa caught five flies for Kenzo's frog to eat. Two escaped in the transfer process and it's unclear if the other three made it to the frog's stomach. I am keeping my fingers tightly crossed that he lives to see another day. Kenzo is great at catching bugs but needs to work on his caring-for-bugs skills.

I’ve been getting into the head of Kenzo's frog. Currently his name is Irotsuki-kun. The reason for the name, according to Kenzo, is because he is so colorful. 

I keep thinking the frog is listening to us talking. Or at least he is listening to Kenzo and Osamu talk. They love holding him and saying things like, "We should put more water in his terrarium" or, "Maybe he’ll eat some ladybugs," and the frog must be thinking "no way" to all of that. 

"I just want to go home to my park," is what he's thinking.

I can see it in his eyes that the moment he has a chance he’s going to jump away and be free. 

And then there’s the part where Kenzo shows off Irotsuki-kun to other people, like all the neighborhood adults who walk by. 

One of our neighbors, a nice old lady, was saying, "You should let him go! He’s covered in germs so you should wash your hands."

The frog must be thinking, "Wait a second. I’m kind of offended by that. Maybe I’ll stay and prove you all wrong. I am as clean and wonderful a pet as anybody could ask for."

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Mr. Blue Sky

Man, I conked out so hard on the living room floor tonight. Right after bath time, before story time. I barely remember. Completely exhausted. Big adventure day. Another in a long series I hope the boys will remember when they’re older... our first IMAX movie, a downtown city outing, and some life lessons in the game center. We left the house at 9:15 a.m. and didn’t get back until nearly 6 p.m., totally spent but full of pizza and memories. The Wild Robot in IMAX was totally stunning. The scale, the colors, the sound. We could feel every gust of wind and rustle of leaves. I made sure we had prime seats, row G, right in the center. Two big buckets of popcorn too, which, according to Kenzo and Osamu, I  absolutely should not  be sharing. “You should get your own!” they kept saying. I think a little bit of popcorn thievery is well within my rights as the papa. After the movie, we headed through the cold and wind across to the game center on the other side of Sendai Station. Being...

Not About Baseball

I stayed up past my bedtime again last night. I almost made it. I watched a couple of episodes of Ted Lasso and came to a good stopping point where I was satisfied with myself for enjoying some quiet TV time with my favorite show and even though it was after midnight, I was confident I could still get a pretty good night's sleep.  But no. For some reason I decided it would be a good idea to just lay on the living room carpet and put on a movie. I saw the first seven or eight minutes of Goodfellas and then I woke up when the end credits were rolling with Sid Vicious' is cover of My Way . I brush my teeth and I can see the light of day already shining in through the bathroom window. "It’s almost the longest day of the year," I told myself, to at least rationalize why I'm brushing my teeth and crawling into bed at this hour. I was trying to minimize the mental anguish I regularly put on myself for not just going to bed like I should. I told Eri that I was thinking a...

Sendai vs. Tokushima

Osamu said he had to go pee, and I make it a habit to believe him most of the time. Another habit I have is taking him to go pee, much of the time.  When we came out of the restroom I decided it was time for a beer, so with Osamu holding my hand we waltzed over to the food concession and I was checking out the selection, and the prices. Seven hundred yen for a draft beer. I had a feeling. It was only 500 for a whiskey cocktail (whiskey with water on the rocks) but I wasn't about to be that much of a derelict this early with my four-year-old son in tow. The tickets were free, the seats aren't bad, might as well spend seven bucks on a beer. The problem was that the dude next to us with his little boy about the same age as Mumu-chan loudly and with braggadocio you don't often see in these parts ordered a Blue Hawaii snow cone for his kid. I heard this and panicked. Last weekend at Michinoku Park I got a Blue Hawaii snow cone for Osamu and he loved it.  I looked down at my l...