Sakura Ruth

A very quick post to link to the website of Hamada Nursing Baby (浜田ナーシングベビー). This Koganei clinic is run by an 80-year-old woman with strong massaging hands and plenty of advice for new mothers wondering what to do with their infants. Megumi has been going there for some months, and has made a number of friends in the neighborhood with babies about the same age as Sakura. If you're in the area and have a tiny baby we highly recommend Hamada-san!

I've been trying to get Sakura as hooked on the Muppets' Alphabet Album as my siblings and I used to be. There's a great page on it at the Muppet Wiki: The Muppet Alphabet Album. (Of course there's a Muppet Wiki. Don't be silly.) After listening to the CD version that Grandma and Grandpa found for us, I was tickled to have my memory prodded with this trivia about the original vinyl pressing:

On non-record editions of this album, the following section of dialogue has been cut from the end of side 2, after Big Bird says, "What's the alphabet?" and everybody groans:

Bert: Well, don't just sit there. Turn the record over and let's start again.

Big Bird: Hey, if they turn the record over, won't we all fall off?

Then the closing music plays, on all versions.

It's good to see that many of these songs are available in video form on YouTube, too:

Videos! Many have been uploaded; many have been linked. Go see them in the list on the right side of this page. A sample for you:

She's much quicker now than this seven-week-old video shows her to be. Quick and dangerous! My MacBook refused to accept CDs or DVDs for a while because she had pounced on it and bent the frame. I managed to straighten it back out, but yowza.

Just added a bunch to the menu on the right. Here she launches her musical career:

After a disastrous attempt at upgrading the software on this server, I'm back to a backed-up version of everything. It's missing some recent posts, though; I think this video may have been in one of them. Sakura really wants some of that bread!

Joe Jones at the Japan Law Blog wrote about dual citizenship a while back, specifically what a Japanese citizen with additional citizenship needs to do at age 22. Sakura is Japanese now but will become an American as well; the process involves a trip to the embassy with baby and (ideally) both parents present, though, so we'll wait until she's a bit more travel- and bureaucracy-ready. Akasaka is a long way from Koganei when you're dealing with a hungry, wriggling person.