Familiar Story, Surprise Ending

Yesterday was a super busy, but I confess not atypical day. This is what I did:

Dropped Koji off at school
Stopped back at home to pick up forgotten items
Swung by mailbox, inserted letter
Returned item at Target, bought replacement items and then some
Delivered dinner to friend who recently had a baby (Welcome to the world, Lily Kathryn!)
Went to church for pre-schoolers playtime, chatted with friends
Picked Koji up from school
Visited another friend at home, had lunch, caught up, only had to break up two? fights between Koji and Ben
Hauled us over to a western suburb for a birthday party at Jack A. Claes Pavilion, which has a great carousel and indoor play area (Koji rode the carousel by himself for the first time!)
Made a final stop at Mitsuwa, where we met up with Aogu for some ramen (now that Aogu is working in Schaumburg, he'll never eat American food again!)
Rushed home to get kids in bed

The point of this list is to show you that I'm certifiably insane...I mean, to lay the background for the little incident that follows:
I hustled Koji in bed, and when I shut his light off, he wanted to read a book. I said that we weren't going to do that because it was too late, but because he seemed ready to throw a huge fit, I compromised and said I would just tell a story. So he named several friends and himself as characters that should appear in the story. But I wanted it to be a Bible story, so in Veggie Tales fashion, I thought it might be OK to change things up just a tad. So I started in on the story of the feeding of the 5,000, thinking it would be perfect to put Koji in as the boy who shares his lunch.

Bad idea. By the time I wrapped up the story (and I'm sure reading a book or even two would have been faster!), though I tried to reassure him of Jesus' good intentions, Koji was left sobbing, "Jesus took my lunch! Jesus took my lunch!".

Please pray for the spiritual formation of my son.

3/4-Year-Olds Can...

That's right, Izumi is eight months old today. Unbelievable. Sappy mom thing to say, but it's simply true: the second baby grows up WAY too fast. I know, it's not like she's going off to get her driver's license tomorrow. Nevertheless, I truly feel that the first eight months of her life have gone by much more quickly than the first eight months of Koji's life did. Maybe it's just that I'm not so freaked out by everything that happens. Not that I'm an expert on taking care of a baby now, because I'm not, for sure (and that's why she still wakes up two or three times per night!). I just feel more able to enjoy watching her grow, and since I'm enjoying it so much, I wish the whole process would slow down a bit!

Exhibit A~as if she somehow knew that today was a life marker kind of opportunity, here she is pulling to stand for the first time:


Here's a back view, which allows for admiring not only her standing prowess but also the fun and attractive bald spot she keeps up by rubbing her head vigorously on whatever surface is available when she's sleepy.


Last but not least, here she is enjoying her accomplishment:

Make Your Summer Plans Now

Though 25 degree weather is not ideal for rock climbing (I say, as if I know much of anything about rock climbing, though I have tried it before) it wasn't bad for taking in the view at Smith Rock today. My sister and family vowed to return during the summer. I'd like to take the same vow, but there are SO many things I want to do, I better sort them out before I started making promises. Guess there are still a few 25 degree days with which I can plan for warmer weather.

Picture taken with Aogu's new Katana (you're right! you can't take a picture with a sword, but I didn't name Sanyo's newest phone)

Resolute On Resolutions, Sort Of

So I had this crazy idea that I would resolve to post to my blog every day in 2007. Funny how it's the 8th and this is my first post...yeah. Well, I have a pretty legit reason for my lack of posting (which only covers this year; I really can't explain that December 7--27 silence).

For one thing, we went on a road trip. We left Skokie on Dec. 27th, destination Charlottesville, Virginia. You may wonder why we would choose somewhere so seemingly random. Well, along with Rich and Jenny, we had initially planned to visit Brad & Kath, and it was very sad when we had to admit that trying to drive to ANYWHERE --even if it's a place of great friends and warm beaches -- 30ish? hours away from home with four children ages three and under was clinically unstable. So, though we had to give up the beaches and time with B & K, which would have been great (I'm so sorry we didn't make it!!) we didn't want to give up visiting friends. Which is why we settled on Cville, the new home of Jim & Meg who have founded the Charlottesville Vineyard there just this year.

Gotta speed up here. OK, so we did that and it was fun and I'll put some pictures up maybe sometime.

After that we were home for one day, and then on the 4th we flew out to Oregon for our annual pilgrimage to visit my parents and sister's family. We were with them and my longtime (nearly half my life now!) friend from Biola, Rachel & family, for three days at my parents' house.

Next (are you following this?!) we came out on a family vacation to Eagle Crest. Wow. It is spectacular out here in Central Oregon, from the condo we're staying in to the views and even the marvelous weather. Today we were out for a walk and Koji got so overheated that he had to strip down to his undershirt (his jeans etc. were still on, not to worry)!

However, internet access is NOT a feature of our condo. That's probably good for us, but it's preventing me from carrying out my so-called resolution for 2007. We'll see how I do from Jan. 17th on...

Happy New Year, friends!

Twilight Zone

Here I am, logged in to "Blogger Beta" and ready to get to work breaking my recent silence. I'd love to update you on Izumi turning six months old, our recent trip to Tokyo, etc. BUT Blogger refuses to upload my photos. GRRR!

What a waste! I have all this "free" time courtesy of that guy who followed us back from Tokyo, Jet Lag. He really should be some kind of action figure, because his action has us thoroughly messed up. A typical day's schedule for the last several has us sleeping from 5 p.m. to 11 or midnight, getting up for several hours of fun and feasting (the other night I made some massaman curry and we enjoyed it for "dinner" at 1 a.m.) and then back to bed for varying degrees of success at a second round of sleep.

Aogu's in his first few days of "vacation," though, so I think we're actually enjoying our time in the twilight zone. There's no pressure to conform to any schedule, just sleeping and waking up when we feel like it. Well, let me amend that: there is some pressure for Aogu to get his next job. When you think of us, please pray and/or connect us to opportunities you may know about!

Make Use of That Passport

Now that Izumi is six months old and it's been a year since we were last in Tokyo, the time seemed right for a trip to introduce her to the family there and make use of her (American) passport. So here we are on our usual flight, AA153.

What you see here is the way both of the kids looked for the most of the flight, as in, NOT ASLEEP. I didn't expect much different since our flight left at 11 a.m. but I was naive enough to think that Izumi would sleep for longer than two hours total (out of 13). Silly me!

Good thing Aogu got in this practice holding Koji up. Koji did actually go to sleep...once we landed at Narita. I'm serious! The wheels touched the ground and at the same moment, he nodded off. Speaking of wheels, if only we could have attached some to his shoes, we would have been in a good place!

Exciting start to our trip. If you need advice on how to travel with kids, I don't know that I actually have any. I'd probably only leave you with practical gems like, "it's OK to allow your three-year-old to watch The Ant Bully three times in a row; you're just doing what you have to in order to maintain peace."

Six Months Old!

Can you believe it's already been six months since Izumi was born? I don't want to sound like some granny when talking about my own child, but the speed of life since she was born has accelerated! She's accelerated as well. Take a look at what she can do:

Uncontested Title

Don't even try to challenge Izumi for the title of "Strongest Forehead". She will whup you every time.

Photo taken at today Kohl Children's Museum with Mariella on a much-praised quilt (when I say "much-praised," I mean that everyone who saw it had complimentary words!) made by my talented sister Laurie.

364 More Days of 50s and I Don't Mean the Weather

A Very Happy Birthday to Dad (right) and Gary (left)!!






Sending prayers for a special year and all our love,
Jamie, Aogu, Koji and Izumi (also known as JAKI)

Not So Special

Just the other day I was thinking that I must be the only person in the world with my name. But I guess I was wrong....looks like I'm one of two?

HowManyOfMe.com

There is: 1 person with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

This is courtesy of Emily.

My Revvin' Is Chicago's Revenue

Some time ago, I read somewhere (how's that for vague) that the City of Chicago was putting up a large number of traffic cameras. Seems that was controversial for invasion of privacy or the amount of tax dollars the project consumed or both?

At any rate, though I still don't remember it clearly, according to an astonishly clear photo/ticket we received today, I ran a red light on October 3rd at 6:15 p.m. Yikes! And there aren't any warnings. The Camera has no mercy; it's just, we caught you red-handed (red-lighted?) and now you owe us NINETY BUCKS.

They've probably already paid the cameras off by now.

Consanant Confusion

Koji's English has improved rapidly in the last few months, so much so that I can hardly believe he's the same little guy we brought back from Tokyo a year ago. That small one (he's still small though he looks huge to us compared to Izumi) now daily comes out with full sentences like, "We can play this game now, OK Mama?," which are perfect English with the exception of the placement of "can" and "we".

However, he still can't always hear or reproduce the difference between certain English vowels. That's how it is that when Izumi spits up some part of her last meal, he reports,

"Mama! Izumi spilled!"

Halloween Report

I still don't know what to think about Halloween because I'm not a fan of the evil, scary side of it. However, ever since I realized it's pretty much the only day that a person can ring neighbors' doorbells (and then be rewarded for doing so with candy)...and not to mention that I think costumes are really fun... I can't just dismiss/ban it altogether. So here's how things came out for us. These photos are from my cell phone. I took scads more at Koji's school but we all know by now how it goes when I'm faced with transferring photos from the camera to this blog. Yeah. I don't want to be responsible for your death, so please don't hold your breath!
She HAD to be a pumpkin, it's a good look for her, I think. The fact that I picked this costume up for a dollar at a garage sale had nothing to do with my choice...
This photo doesn't quite do justice to the staggering amount of candy we collected today! We might be staggering if we eat any significant portion of it any time soon. Koji probably won't be since I hid it from him. I might be in trouble though.
Are they both going after the "severed ear" chocolate, which was by far the most interesting/disgusting item we collected while trick or treating?

Long Distance Dedication

Maybe it's an embarrassing reference to my age, or maybe it's just the reason I'm so darn good at "The 80s Game" (the one where Rich puts on 80s songs while we're playing Settlers and we try to name that singer) but I used to like the American Top 40. Particularly the part where Casey Kasem read some cheesy letter explaining why one someone, typically pining for another someone, wanted them to hear such and such song with love, which was also know as a Long Distance Dedication. However, I didn't like it when the dedicatees were pets.

The point is, I'd like to send a Long Distance Dedication to my mom on the occasion of her @#$% th birthday. Happy Birthday, Mom! Here's the cake we made for you. It's a plum-raspberry upside down cake (without the raspberries this time) from a recipe I found in the September 2001 issue of Martha Stewart Living. I've made this cake several times, but I know for sure this one would have been more delicious if we could have actually given it to you.

May this coming year be as sweet and delicious as this cake, Mom!

Her children arise and call her blessed...Proverbs 31:28

Didn't Mean to be Trendy

In case I was having any qualms about my daughter's name--which I wasn't--along comes this article to reassure me.

As you know well by now, her name is Izumi (ee-zoo-mee). Let's all say it together!

See Ya, Mitsuwa

Most everyone in the "Chicagoland area" (who makes these names up? when I lived in Southern California I thought that calling the Riverside-San Bernardino area "the Inland Empire" was bizarre...) who likes Japanese food and has ever needed ingredients to make it has heard of Mitsuwa. It's great, if you live in Arlington Heights and don't mind paying twice as much as your items would cost you in Tokyo. I exaggerate slightly.
Anyway, I may never go to Mitsuwa again now that Super H Mart has opened in Niles. Sure, it's technically a Korean store, but some significant number of their products are Japanese. Plus, they have a great produce section and a food court, which serves a delicious (spicy!!) tofu soup from the "KOREAN" section. Bring your own beverage though; they only have canned drinks for sale and they're not cheap.

Annyonghi gaseyo, Mitsuwa.

P.S. Scroll down for more new posts...keep scrolling...exercise that finger!

Party for Aogu

Who knows why we haven't been taking many photos lately? In any case, it's a shame we don't have photographic evidence of the sushi/curry/salad/sake dinner we enjoyed for Aogu's party. Just believe me when I say that it was a success! It must have been; I can hardly think of another time we've made a big pot of curry and cleaned the pot out the same day!
Kristen thoughtfully provided this birthday cheesecake bar. Cheesecake is Aogu's favorite, but it was so good that I liked it too, especially the raspberry sauce!

Here's proof that Aogu actually likes Settlers, which is a board game, people!

Big Girl Now

Everything's approximate around here these days. As much as I like to be exact, particularly when it comes to marking occasions, these past few weeks my new goal has become survival. There are many worthy activities going on around here, but they're all happening at once. Maybe someday you'll hear about them, but for now I'll just announce that Izumi is four months old!

As of her check-up today, she weighs 14 pounds 12 ounces (6.69 kilos) which puts her in the 75th percentile for weight and means she's doubled her birth weight and then some. She's 25.5 inches long (saying a baby is tall sounds weird when they can't stand up, right?) which is 64.8 centimeters and the 90th percentile. Huh? Another reason not to use the word "tall," because that description certainly doesn't apply to anyone else in this family!

Her very latest accomplishment is rolling from her back to her front. She then gets stuck; that is, she forgets that she knows how to roll the other way too. So then she cries and is miserable. Of course I have mercy on her and roll her onto her back, where she promptly rolls onto her front again. Funny girl!

Every Sunday Afternoon Should Be Like This

Sam and Erika came over for a Sunday afternoon game of Settlers, which set the stage for a Sunday evening game of Settlers, which we never would have had the energy for without a spontaneous mac-cheese-hot dogs-peas dinner. Note Izumi "sitting" on the couch...
I shouldn't say this, in case Aogu ever goes to a Settlers tournament, but he likes to buy development cards. Lots of them.

In the Kitchen & Visit to Naperville

Izumi can't crawl yet but that doesn't stop her from escaping the confines of her (Kate's--thanks Josh & Jen!) baby gym. That's where she started out, honest.
Don't you want to have dinner with your children at Noodles & Co. now? I should be paid for this advertisement.
We already know that Noah is a good big brother but here we see evidence that he's ready for a little sister. I'm not saying this to pressure anyone; I'm just reiterating sentiments that Noah himself has expressed lately.