Go Koji Go (Get It? Five in Japanese is "GO"...)

Our son is five years old. I find it unbelievable that it's already been five years since Easter 2003, when we first met Koji. Here's how he looked:



And here's who he's become:



That's right, we used his fifth birthday as an excuse to buy a trampoline. I think we pretty much got our investment back right at his party; the kids had that much fun jumping, and praise God, we avoided major injuries!

We had other birthday party trappings, of course. Our pinata was kind of a bust, and I mean that literally. The kids barely tapped on it and candy started gushing out. I guess that could have been a good thing, from their perspective, but I wanted them to work a little harder!

Here's this year's cake. The whole party was meant to have an open hand=five kind of a theme to it, but this hand came out looking more gorilla than human. Oh well.



Happy Birthday, Koji Lucas. We love you!



If you have a lot of free time and would like to see every last party picture, then be my guest!

He Thinks I Can, He Thinks I Can

To family and friends and even strangers who may happen to stumble upon this lowly site:

Please note the generosity, kindness and faith my husband Aogu has shown by allowing me to fork over an excessive, exorbitant, just plain expensive amount of cash so that I can have my booty whipped into shape by a couple of trainers at LifeTime Fitness. That's right, I am now a bona fide member of TEAM Fitness, which means that I'll be spending an hour of every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning for the next 12 weeks lifting weights and doing cardio. Not just any weights and cardio though; these weights and cardio will keep me carefully in Zones 2 and 3, just under my anaerobic threshold (AT) so that I burn fat (BURN, FAT, BURN) and not carbohydrates, or, more horrifically, muscle. Got that?

I don't know if I've got it, but I do know that I've got 15 extra pounds riding on me that haven't budged in the 11 weeks since I abruptly went from being pregnant to not. And furthermore, that 15 was on top of the 10 that I never got around to losing before I got pregnant with Ai in the first place. Many of you, most notably including Aogu, are kind and accepting and tell me earnestly that I don't look so fat, or it wouldn't be bad for me to get pregnant again without losing it. But I just can't feel that way. Neither can I seem to get ahold of this thing on my own.

So it's with trepidation and a tiny bit of hope that I join TEAM Fitness and say to you and to Aogu, I promise to do my best!

Thank you, kind husband.

Soul Searching

Play that involves nothing more than a box or a paper towel roll or a piece or two of cellophane tape or a cast off piece of junk mail is so common around here as to be daily. When this reality is presented to me photographically, as above, I have to search the depths of my soul for some satisfaction to that unanswerable question, "why do I ever buy them toys?!".

A related example: the most amusing game of this morning for Koji and Izumi consisted of removing all the cushions from both sofas and using them, along with all cast-off jackets/coats in the vicinity and a duvet from their bedroom to make a gigantic makeshift bed in the middle of the living room floor. They were saved from my wrath (because I still need an attitude shift: I struggle to look at that kind of scene and think, "creative, wonderful children!". Rather, I am usually flooded with trepidation, knowing that I'm the one who'll have to clean up...) when Koji announced the following, "Mama, we're making a hotel!".

Oh.

P.S. So sorry, but once again, I have to recommend that you exercise those mouse-moving muscles and scroll down. In my unflagging desire to put things up chronologically (which is bizarre, I don't consider myself perfectionistic about much else?!), I've once again inserted a couple of new posts under that thumb-sucking one you've been staring at for so long. Apologies for that too. Good grief, if I don't stop now, I'm going to be sorry that I'm sorry!