Baby Ryosei update

Ryosei is a happy baby. He smiles and talks a lot. Arielle bothers him a lot; whenever Arielle gets a little closer to him I can see his nervous face expression. At first Ryosei wasn't eating very well and threw-up occasionaly. Now, he's doing better. He almost sleeps through the night. He only sleeps in his car seat. Arielle is learning so much Japanese now. She's starting to communicate with everyone in Japanese. Our family really enjoys life in Japan but occasionally we do miss our crazy and hectic lives in Korea.

Finally, I can sit down and write an update on our family. As you all probably heard I already gave birth to our second baby named Ryosei Isaiah Coleman. He was born in Toyama, Japan on January 20 at 4:45 am. Ryosei was an 8lbs baby but he was kind enough not to make mommy work too hard for his birth. I did and do not speak Japanese at all. Clark was very kind to translate things for me, but even then I still didn’t quite know what was going on. During the delivery, the only word I knew in Japanese was “itai” which means “it hurts”. They told me to push when I felt a pain in my stomach. At the time, I thought “oh man, I really wish they would give me an epidural” but I only had to push for 30 minutes and he came out crying like the sound of a cat but a little stronger. After birth, I had to stay at the hospital for seven days. I enjoyed the rest a lot. I couldn’t communicate with the nurses, but I managed to get by. I’ve been living overseas so long that body language has become a crucial part of my daily interaction with others.

Any day now

Vyda's at the point now where the baby should come any day. He's already 3.9 kg. now (courtesy of an ultrasound the other day) so we're both hoping he exits before he beefs up any more.

Arielle is really enjoying her pre-school. She's started going all day now (8:30-2:30). That was a milestone of sorts. I can't believe she's old enough (4 in May) to be going to pre-school all day. Our time raising her is 20% over. If the next 20% goes as fast, before we know it, our time raising here will be almost half gone, which is a very sobering thought.

Arielle has a great imagination and is really good at "improvisational playing." Apparently, she's also been kissing some of her male classmates and gets frustrated when they resist her! She told us the reason she hit one of the boys was because, "he wouldn't let me kiss him."

We'll post photos once the baby comes out. They don't do epidurals at the hospital Vyda goes to so Vyda's going to have an "old school" birth experience, which is why we hope he doesn't get any bigger than he already is.

We're planning on naming the baby Ryosei Isaiah. "Ryo" is the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese character that means "good," and "sei" is the Japanese pronunciation of the character that means sincere. Isaiah apparently means, "The Lord is salvation" in Hebrew. In Japan and Korea Isaiah is pronounced "Ee-sa-yaw" so he can choose later which pronunciation he prefers.

At the risk of rambling, I think I'll conclude here.

Arielle's first day at the Pre-school

Finally, Arielle's dream came true--she started her first day at kindergarten. I mean she's been asking us to put her in a school for so long. This morning about 7:45 am I woke her up. She was still quite tired but I told her "Arielle, you need to get ready for your school". She automatically got up and smiled excitedly. Arielle loves associating with other children. Arielle didn't cry when I dropped her off at the school. She even told me repeatedly "mommy, you can go home and rest; don't stay at (Arielle is still confused about using preposition--poor little child!)) me at school". Arielle is better than me. When I was younger and living in Cambodia my first day at Kindergarten was terrible. I snuck out of the classroom and walked all the way home. I was only 4 years old and I remembered how to get home by myself.
Anyways, she came home today and told me her friend said to her "abunai" (means dangerous). I asked her what it means and she told me it means "yes". Everything means "Yes" to Arielle in a foreign language. Arielle finally grasped the concept that Japanese and Korean are different languages. At first, she would just speak Korean to Japanese kids, but now she just does signs and body language to Japanese. Arielle and I really need to improve our language skills. We've been her almost two months but our lanugage skills are still very stagnant. We've got to do something about it!

I'm not sure what's wrong with Clark and the camera. I always have a hard time making him take a picture with me.

Arielle is playing with a Japanese traditional instrument that is famous in Toyama Prefecture. We also got to make one.

We're making traditional Japanese paper