Sakura Ruth

Our local baby clinic

2008-04-05T07:12:01Z

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!

Muppet Alphabet

2008-04-02T08:52:43Z

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:

Spring baby

2008-03-31T15:31:42Z

Spring baby
Originally uploaded by Durf

She's almost 13 months old, and quite large for her size. Walking steadily and preparing to run. As the weather gets warmer she's enjoying plenty of outside time.

Aunt Jes has been in Tokyo for a visit but will go home tomorrow. Thanks for playing games and listening to the little song books over and over and over and over and over with Sakura!

Video explosion

2008-01-22T06:03:54Z

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.

Walking, almost . . .

2008-01-21T10:10:32Z

Walking (1)
Originally uploaded by Durf

She's getting there. She can hang onto this toy of hers and stumble around the living room, stand on her own for about a half-minute at a time, shout and screech, empty the drawers in the kitchen. Lots of development! Check out the Flickr site for loads and loads of photos uploaded over the last few days, despite the fact that they date back to October.

Pondering the tatami

2007-10-04T17:00:26Z

Pondering tatami
Originally uploaded by Durf

Here Sakura thinks about tatami, Japanese architecture in general, and the reasons our apartment is no good at keeping her cool during the Tokyo summer.

New videos uploaded

2007-10-03T09:16:36Z

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

Sakura's cousins

2007-08-21T06:46:23Z

download8_8_07 224
Originally uploaded by adurfee

Ewww, a Stanford shirt! One of these days Sakura will have to put on her Cal gear and fight back, photographically. It will be the Big Baby Game.

A loaf of bread . . .

2007-08-17T06:58:43Z

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!

Dual citizenship for the baby

2007-08-02T10:39:03Z

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.

Okuizome

2007-07-17T15:11:18Z

お食い初め (1)
Originally uploaded by Durf

The okuizome (お食い初め) ceremony is traditionally carried out on the hundredth day of the baby's life. When we got photos taken at the shrine where we took her studio shots (and, for that matter, where we got married) we got this lacquered dish set to use in this ceremony. We also snagged a rock from the gravel in the shrine yard.

The meal the baby pretends to eat at this point includes sekihan, or rice boiled with red beans; some soup; a bream, a fish often eaten on days of good fortune; and that rock. Sakura actually eats none of this. I carry it to her mouth and this represents our wishes that she will never go hungry. When we did this she was more interested in the chopsticks than anything else on the table.

Roller Baby

2007-07-17T03:21:51Z

She's good at this rolling around game. (Well, I'm defining "good" as "can go to her right, back to tummy, but can't go left or get back onto her own back." Seems good to me, though.) Here she has an adventure with the blanket that her grabby little hand decided would come along for the ride: There are a bunch more videos linked in the list to the right. Click and enjoy.

Ready for summer

2007-06-24T12:14:34Z

Learning from Dad's example
Originally uploaded by Durf

In her pink dress and holding a bottle of the summer's hottest drink flavor, Sakura is ready to go!

(I'm not dumb enough to let her drink any of this Ice Cucumber stuff. I'm dumb enough to drink it myself, but there are limits even to my boneheadedness.)

Walk in the park

2007-06-04T09:53:59Z

One of several new videos uploaded over the past few days. (The links are all at right on the main page of this blog.) We took a walk down the hill to Musashino Park to take a look at the tree leaves blowing in the wind. This is one of Sakura's favorite things to do.

The bouncer

2007-05-28T15:51:05Z

Well, I tried rotating this video by 90 degrees, and it worked, but in the uploading process it went back to its sideways original. So get yourself a kink in your neck as you view Sakura enjoying her Baby Bjorn bouncy chair: