It's Mama

Right on time for Sendai, the first snow to stick came last night. The streets were fine, but when we opened the curtains this morning all the houses and gardens and cars were topped with a nice white blanket.

The boys' kindergarten is located about 8 kilometers from our house, closer to the mountains, so the snow piles up more there. When they came home they told me about playing in the snow with their friends and teachers. 

We have this chest of drawers in the tatami room where all the boys' clothes are kept. Eri put labels on the drawers to help them (and all of us) with being able to retrieve and put away their own clothes each day in the proper place. Tonight I praised Kenzo for how well he's been folding and putting away his kindergarten uniform. Up to recently he was just stuffing it all into a random drawer or leaving his shorts and sweater on the floor. In the morning when I open the bottom drawer now, where the boys' bags and other necessary daily items are kept, I love seeing Kenzo's neatly folded (for a six-year-old) uniform shorts and sweater. He showed me this evening how he folds his shorts and he was beaming with pride.

Eri does not have a natural talent for reading stories to kids, but she's getting better at it. Actually I wish she would do it more, both for practice and especially because the boys love it. They tolerate papa's nightly story reading, but with mama it's a bit more special. It's mama.

Eri read to them because there was some post-bath-time drama and I was upstairs. When I came down to the living room and enjoyed the ending of Eri's rendition of Momotaro Osamu immediately turned to me and asked if I would also read a story, to which I could not refuse.

Kenzo and Osamu were both so tired. They hardly napped today and they played like crazy all afternoon. They were yawning as I read a super short story called "After You" about a toy bear who asks if you want to do things like go on a slide and then follows up with "After you!"