Rewind: Christmas Eve

Before we took off on Christmas we got to have a wonderful Christmas Eve on Okinawa. What's so wonderful about this place is you are in the same boat for being so far away from family so you come together for family traditions with each other. Oki family is a term everyone uses here because it's true. I'm so so so grateful for the friends we have made here. There are many more that are not in these photos. 

We all met at Mickelle's house and gathered around the cozy fire. 

 We had a wonderful dinner of different soups and breads that we all made. We then had a mini concert displaying our talents. Turns out this is a tradition for Anna and Mickelle's family too, so that was fun!

Stella did a little dance to Jingle Bell Rock

 Victor played the clarinet, and not pictured was me playing the violin which Winston the bulldog mostly barked through--I guess the violin is scary!

 Duke and Mickelle both played the piano and Austin and Sherry sang such a beautiful duet of O Holy Night (while Austin held my sleeping baby ha).

 ^^the one pic where everyone looks good is when J doesn't. taking one for the team!^^

 ^^cute Lucy resting her head on J's shoulder!^^

 ^^all the babies, one a little bigger than the rest. Connor, J, Lucy, and Ian.

^^wonderful women^^

We ended the night reading Luke 2 and then doing a little gift exchange. It was such a nice evening. Love these special Christmas Eve traditions. Hope you all had a great holiday as well!

Christmas Day in Taipei

Oh hey! Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!

We've been out traveling since Christmas and we are soo glad to be back in Japan. We had a great time, but clean, quiet, orderly, polite, etc. is a welcoming thing coming back to Japan.

We left early Christmas morning and headed to our first stop on our trip: Taipei, Taiwan, where we had a layover until the next day. I didn't know what to expect for Taiwan. I was expecting China, and it was, but not really. We were very pleasantly surprised. Taiwan is open and welcome for tourism. They are happy to have tourists and you can tell they have done a lot to make it tourist friendly. Not to mention, people speak great English: not always the case in mainland China. We are realizing now that a return trip is necessary. Here's hoping we can sometime.

It was a bit rainy the whole day, but not cold thankfully. We headed to the center of the city to see the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial and walked around the gardens and saw the changing of the guards. Learned a bit about Chiang Kai-Shek too, since before we really had no idea who he was haha.

 ^^their concert hall. how cool would it be to perform in there??^^

 ^^Chiang Kai-Shek everything^^

We also headed to Taipei 101, a huuuuge building, the fourth tallest in the world. Wow! ;) Because of the weather we didn't see much from the top. 

  But on the ground floor was the famous dumpling restaurant Din Tai Fung, and we had an absolutely delicious Christmas feast devouring tons of dim sum.

 ^^every dumpling has to be perfect or it gets thrown out^^

Fascinated by the dumpling making.

And we may have come back here on our second layover at the end of our trip. Victor just had to have the dumplings!

Hopefully we can come back to Taiwan and experience more of the country. We had a nice Christmas day together. This is the first time since being together that it's just been our little family on Christmas. So far our only Christmas tradition that's been consistent as a married couple is traveling for Christmas. And we love it!

Sacred Weekends.

Victor has been at work A LOT the last few weeks. Working on Saturdays, leaving hours before J is awake and coming home after he has been put to sleep. We have missed him. I find myself now becoming incredibly protective of our weekend time since it's our best time we get to spend as a family.

This weekend sure was a great one. Didn't do anything special. Had brunch with good friends, did silly errands like the hundred yen and grocery store, went to church, watched movies. But it was wonderful, because all of it was done together.

I'm grateful for this time in our lives where we can have these slow happy weekends.

Entertaining with the Hundred Yen Store

A few months ago, I hosted a baby shower for my friend Mickelle and her sweet baby girl. Since I moved to Japan and began to experience the joys of the hundred yen Stores (dollar stores) it really makes me want entertain. So for this baby shower, I went to the hundred yen stores first for decor and glassware before I went anywhere else. It was so much fun. 

The main decor were these paper lanterns above the food table. It was what you saw first when you walked in. 

Glass pitchers and cute jars for drinks:

Jars for the flowers, ribbon, and spice jars to go with the theme of the shower. The chalkboards aren't from the hundred yen stores, but the chalk was. I had bouquets of fresh orchids everywhere from the farmers market that only cost like $15. 

 Candy jars and bags for the favors:

 It was such a fun afternoon celebrating Mickelle. I started planning this right after J was born, and the key to being able to pull it off was planning early doing little bits at a time. I did the decorating days before so it wouldn't all come down to the last minute trying to do it with a newborn.

 Such a fun day! And now Mickelle's baby is almost two months old. And look how little J was! (He's on the far left being held by one of my friends). Crazy. Can't wait to do some more entertaining!!

Our Baby Free Hour

 On our last day in Bali, we decided to hire a babysitter through our resort, because unlike everything else at the resort, it was cheap! Less than five dollars an hour. But the thing is, a four month old baby really wasn't cramping our style on the trip. All the things we wanted to do the baby could join in usually. The only thing I wanted to do that was baby free was spa treatments, but Victor didn't care so he would just watch him while I got several treatments throughout the week. And we aren't really partiers, so we didn't really feel the need for "a night on the town."

So we hired the babysitter for a grand total of an hour and did something I had never done before: jet skiing! I let Victor do all the driving, because to be honest, water scares me a little. I LOVE driving an ATV all day and a jet ski is kind of the same thing but on the water, right? Kind of, but not really. Maybe next time. It was still super fun though. It reminded me of the old joke "They say money can't buy happiness, but it can buy a jet ski. And have you ever seen someone not be happy on a jet ski?" I say the same thing about riding an ATV through the mountains.

Then we hung around in the pool and took extremely cheesy pictures with our go pro. Kissing underwater is not easy, nor is it that pleasant.

And then our hour was up and we were excited to go have the baby join us again in our lounging in a cabana, eating tropical fruits and relaxing afternoon. It's amazing to me how quickly we adjust into being a "family unit." Like how now I'm really not so interested in "only me and Victor" pictures. If J is there, I want him in the picture, because he is part of our family now, and it seems silly to leave him out of the picture if we can help it. And we really really like him, and want him to be a part of our family activities. Maybe I'll think differently when he's a crazy three year old, but right now, he's pretty chill and so much fun to have around.

But it was a fun baby-free hour with my main man. I love him so much. And I love traveling with him!

Four Months of this Sweet Goodness

Baby J, you are too sweet.

I love this kid.
I could spout off little facts and statistics about what he's up to development wise, but honestly I never read people's posts like that, sorry.

So I'll just say that this baby is such a joy. And it's so amazing seeing him learn. He changes practically every day. And dare I say that his latin roots are coming through more and more considering his nice little tan he has from no sun exposure??

We are so thankful for this happy, squishy, healthy, perfect baby.

I'm not a hippie mom, I'm a lazy mom who wants to sleep.

When I look through my pictures on my phone, I have an awful lot of adorable sleeping pictures of my baby. And an awful lot of those are of the baby sleeping in the bed. If it looks like he sleeps in my bed a lot, it's because he does. I guess you can call me a co-sleeper.

Before having a baby, when I heard the term "co-sleep" and "the family bed," I immediately thought that sounded like hippie parenting. And since sometimes I'm not even a fan of having to share a bed with my husband (I want my space!), I said I would not participate in this co-sleeping business.

I posted the link to this post I wrote on facebook. And I got some great feedback that has stuck with me and was a turning point in the way I view my baby sleeping. One of my friend's said, "I'm probably going to regret it later at some point, but I've just been letting my little one co-sleep so that I can get more sleep." And I admitted to her that I'm guilty of that too, as if I should be ashamed that I went back on my word to never co-sleep. But then my other friend said something about co-sleeping that still makes my hormonal self tear up:

"I have never regretted it! All 4 slept with us. And now, as the oldest prepares to leave for college, I would give anything to have those days back"

Since then, I have let go of the guilt I feel when we let the baby come sleep in the bed at 1am. I would feel guilty because the last thing we wanted to do was rock him to sleep for who knows how long, when I could just bring him in the bed and he would almost immediately fall back asleep, just from holding his hand (love that sweet little boy!). And since I let it go, I no longer dread the night time, wondering what the crap shoot would deal me as far as a night's rest went, because sometimes he sleeps great, and sometimes he doesn't, and not knowing would cause me mild anxiety. Sounds silly, but I'm a girl who loves sleep.

The baby starts every night in his crib. Sometimes he stays there and sometimes he doesn't. And right now, it's working for us. It doesn't bother Victor, because he's naturally a big sweet ball of mush who says "I like having my family all in the same room with me," although maybe he's changing his mind now that the baby likes to sleep right up against him while he is already on the edge of the bed ha ha.

And while we are on the subject, I have realized that some of my biggest reasons of why I love breastfeeding so much are because they work great with my lazy parenting techniques. I don't have to do any prep, any cleaning and can do it anytime or anywhere. I also lost the majority of my baby weight just from breastfeeding---no exercise required! Yesterday after baby woke up at 6am ugh, we took the nicest nap together after I fed him in bed while lying on my side. It sounds so hippie, but when you think about it it's because I'm lazy and didn't want to get up and wanted to get more sleep.

Hippie parenting/lazy parenting. Whatever you want to call it, I'm getting sleep and sure am enjoying the extra baby snuggles. Win win.