White onesie…. approx. $2.99

Blue plastic eco bag…. 157 yen

Yellow felt…. 105 yen

Black yarn… 400 yen

White shiny cloth… 105 yen

White Old Navy socks… approx. $1.35

An awesome Chun Li costume for Ellie’s 1st Halloween…. Priceless

(and yes, I hand stitched everything together.)

Over the past week and a little bit, my sister and her husband and 4 month old son came to visit us here in Tokyo.

They left Tokyo to go back home today.

I love my sister.  She is the best (and only) sister I have.  I also love my nephew, Zachary, who is the cutest little boy I know.  My brother-in-law, Will, is pretty cool too and is a perfect match for my sister (they’re both really quirky).

Their visit was a pretty good one despite the fact that the 6 of us shared a 60 sq meter apartment together during half of their stay.  The other half was spent in 2 separate hotel rooms in the southern part of Japan.

We had a lot of fun together.  We always do because we all click together so well.

Sure, the babies cried and fussed together quite frequently but they were also happy at the same time (most of the time).  It might have been a conspiracy because I swear there were times when I just know that E and Z were talking to each other in baby talk.

I’m going to miss them.  No, I should say that me, E and Jason will miss their presence in our tiny apartment.  Of course, their departure also meant that peace will come back to both of our families since babies won’t be crying and waking each other up in the middle of the night….and Z can go back home to his own room, own bed and own toys.

Well, time to go back to our own lives and continue doing what we normally do, whatever that is…

Can’t wait to see you guys again in February!

Well, not really.

So last Thursday was my birthday.  I turned 29.

29.  That’s 1 year away from 30.

Man, time really seems to slip by quickly doesn’t it?

I didn’t really do much for my birthday.  In fact, a majority of it was spent at home lounging around with Ellie.  It was just another day to her.  There was a pretty big typhoon that hit Tokyo that morning but by the time we woke up it had passed us by and it was nothing but sunny skies and lots of wind.

On the other hand, E partied like there was no tomorrow….She passed out quickly from all the birthday celebration.

As with pretty much every birthday, I’ve always thought about how much my life has changed and where I am today compared to where I had imagined I would be 5 years ago.

Honestly, these days I feel quite lost.  I’m not anything specific.  I am an IT geek, a gamer, an artist, a photographer, a friend, a wife, a mom, a sister, daughter and a granddaughter.  I feel like I am always trying to reinvent and redefine myself, always trying to find what my passion in life is but always getting distracted by something new that comes along.  I feel like I spent a large percentage of my time trying to do so many things that it feels really weird to not be doing much these days.

Well, these days, all my time is spent being mom and wife.  I’m not complaining much about it since it is quite a challenging to juggle both roles without isolating E or Jason.  In fact, I find that I enjoy it from time to time, especially when I wake up to see E’s big smile looking at me as she claws at my face while Jason is sound asleep next to her.  The only problem is that I spend so much time trying to get those two to work out that I somehow lost myself.  This then leads me to feeling sad and depressed that I am no longer able to live the life that I had prior to E’s birth.  But then again, I don’t really have time to feel sad and depressed, so a lot of these thoughts and feelings get bottled up and hidden somewhere in the back of my head.

hmm, I guess I didn’t exactly have the happiest birthday celebration huh?

Well on the bright side of things, I accomplished at least another thing that was on my childhood list of “Things I’d like to do before I turned 30″, which is to have a child.

Things will get better once E is a bit older.  Maybe next year, when I turn 30, it will be less depressing for me.

Maybe.

Before we had E, Jason and I would always make an effort to go to any hamster events that were being held in or near Tokyo.  These events are essentially Kiddyland events that are held to sell hamster goods as well as some event specific goods that cannot be found elsewhere.

Since having E, we have been cutting back on hamster time, which is sad since we do love our hamsters.

It just so happen that there was a week long hamster event held at Tokyo station in mid-August.  Since E is older now, we decided to take her on her first hamster event trip.

Since the day we went was also the first day of the event, we figured that we would get there early and leave after a quick visit.  When we got to the event location, there was already a fairly long line waiting for the store to open.  I guess we forgot just how popular the hamsters were.

The line went in quite quickly and after we grabbed a few items, we waited in line to get to the cash register to pay.  That was where the madness was.

The line was really, really, really long.

We got lucky and was at the beginning of the line before it formed so we were out of there after waiting a good 30 minutes in line.

The line starts at the cash register.  You can’t see it because of all the people in the photo but it’s on the far right side of this photo.

The line wraps around the corner on the left side of the photo above and goes all the way back to the stairs on the left side of the photo below.

The line then goes up the stairs and all the way to where the photo below is taken.  In fact, it got longer when we walked by it later on.

Madness, I say!

Seriously, though, it would have been such an easy day to steal from that place.  There might have been someone who did it but I believe that everyone stayed in line to get the free hamster eco-bag that came with a purchase of 2000 yen or more.

Anyway, it would have been wrong to go to E’s first hamster event and not have her take a picture with a hamster.

A few weeks back, while shopping at the mall with E, we encounted these 2 bears at some store with lots of cute things for sale.  I asked E if she wanted one and she reached out for one when I held him up to her.  I bought the bigger one and then a few weeks later, we returned to the mall with Jason and bought the smaller one.

So here they are….the 3 stooges…

The big bear is named “Kuma-san” and the little one is “Mike-san” (pronounced mee-kay) and E is in between the two.

This is the pecking order between the 3 of them:

E smacks mike-san around because he is smaller than her.

Kuma-san smacks E around because his size intimidates her.  (though she finds it amusing when he swings his arms at her…which she also reaches out and sticks in her mouth)

Poor mike-san doesn’t have anyone to smack around but he likes to headbutt E to make her laugh.

There you have it.  E and her two buddies.

They are the 3 stooges.

It’s been 2 weeks since my last post!  Really?!  Wow, time is flying by too fast….what am I spending all this time doing?

Ah, yes, watching Ellie.

Things have been rather difficult with E lately.  She doesn’t want to go to bed like she use to anymore.  It’s always a battle of wills between her and us.  She’s also much grumpier lately.  Maybe it’s the weather or maybe she’s teething….  Though I feel like she’s been teething since she was 4 months old.

I’ve also been having quite a bit of back pain.  Not quite sure what triggered the pain but it’s there and it is annoying as well as painful….especially when I have to move.  It also makes picking E up much harder.

So here we are….  so much I could post up but the back pain and the sheer exhaustion from dealing with E this past 2 weeks…I don’t really feel like thinking too much right now.

So here’s a picture of E.  What do you think she is trying to do?

I’ll tell you what she’s trying to do.

She saw me taking a picture of her and wants the camera.  So she can put it in her mouth.  Kinda like how she puts ethernet cables, remote controls, toys, laptops, etc into her mouth.

Yes, she is lunging at me in this picture, with her mouth wide open, ready to eat my camera.

Yes, my child is strange.  And she gets stranger every day.