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Totally Fine

The Sendai baseball team, the celebrated Rakuten Eagles, apparently give out free Eagles baseball caps to all the new first graders in the city each springtime. Not a bad marketing plan.

Kenzo brought his cap home today and the moment he wasn’t looking Osamu claimed it as his own.


I'm kinda jealous. It's not some cheapo cap. It's the real deal, complete with a cool Yamaya logo on the side.

The boys have been to a bunch of Vegalta soccer matches and a Sendai 89ers basketball game, but this year it looks like we’re gonna finally head to a ball game. They're gonna be more excited about riding the subway downtown than the actual game, but that's fine. I'm more excited about hot dogs and beer than the actual game, so we're kinda of the same mind.

Eri and I are in deep discussions about setting rules and expectations for Kenzo‘s after school activities; specifically, his neighborhood wanderings with his friends to look for lizards and bugs and mischief.

The other day Eri was talking with one of the moms down the street and she was hearing all kinds of stories about some of the other elementary school kids who have apparently gotten into some not-so-good mischief. It freaked her out a little and she’s kind of panicked and stressed about letting Kenzo go out with his friends after school. 

Today Hidekazu came over as scheduled after he dropped off his backpack at home, and Eri accompanied the boys to another friend's house to check out his lizards.

I don't know this other friend yet, but from what I know so far I'm not a fan. He's got a kira-kira name, a flamboyant hairdo, and an unpleasant older brother. I told Eri this is why I prefer Kenzo's friends come over to our house rather than him going to theirs or them wandering the neighborhood. I want to know his friends. His friends are going to shape his existence more than mama and papa going forward.

Eri and I are both pretty astonished about the gap between our way of thinking and other parents' thinking when it comes to first-graders' after-school activities. It seems that Hidekazu's mom is totally fine with him just taking off and wandering around after school. I have no problem with that except that Eri does not want to make our house the go to place for all the feral little boys in the neighborhood. And I'm with her. There has to be some balance.

Kenzo was prepping his small, portable bug box so he could take one of his lizards to Friends Club and show it off. Eri said she’s pretty sure that’s not allowed, but Kenzo claimed that it’s totally fine. So he took it and we crossed our fingers.

Turns out it’s totally fine. 

He took his lizard and apparently it escaped at some point, but he caught it again and his teacher Mr. Nathan praised him in front of the entire class for the valiant rescue. Kenzo told me in the car on the way home from the bus stop, "Mr. Nathan said he was proud of me."

Something about the way he said that. 

The boys say a lot of things, sometimes copying what they heard in a TV show or from their friends or from mama and papa. More and more of course they form their own thoughts and vocalize them, like the other day when Osamu announced, "My bottom is squishy and sometimes smelly."

I can feel when they're just trying out words and phrases and when they're expressing ideas based on language they've actually acquired. The concept of being proud or of having someone be proud of you is pretty specific, contextually. Clearly, Kenzo knew what he was talking about when he made his utterance.

Made his utterance. Haha. I'm obviously taking this all too seriously and should probably relax a bit more.

"I'm proud of you, too, Kenzo!"

In the rearview mirror I could see him beaming.

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