Our flight back to Tokyo felt like a lifetime. It was only 11 1/2 hours but it really felt like it was never going to end.

E was all over the place. She wanted to touch everything, see everything, wave at everyone and see what all our neighbors were up to. She wanted to sing her little songs and babble baby talk. She wanted to squeal at things and stand up and walk around. She was tired but because of the time change and all the excitement around her, she wouldn’t for the life of us sleep…and she would get cranky and whiny because of it.

The only time we got a real break from having to entertain her and keep her from disturbing the peace was during the 2 hours of sleep she got at the beginning of our flight. It was still uncomfortable and cramped in our seats but the 2 hours of quiet time we got made it bearable.

Ah, quiet time….

Only time we get quiet time these days is when this child is asleep.

For more images of “Quiet”, check out this weeks You Capture challenge over at I Should Be Folding Laundry.

At first, it felt a little long since I was feeling a bit lonely and homesick without Jason by my side. It was the first time we were separated for so long since we got engaged. Once E and I began to settle in with the change in environment, things got better. Time went by even faster once Jason joined us in LA.

Before you knew it, our 3 week trip had come and gone and we were packing to head back to Tokyo.

As with every trip back home to visit family, I feel a bit sad that we are once again heading back to Tokyo especially since we’ve gotten a hang of things here.

I actually enjoyed being home and watching E interact with her new surroundings and with family. I know that she will miss all the space for her to run around in and she will most likely miss all the family that she has grown familiar with.

We have to go back to Tokyo, though. Our lives are there and we need to go back to it. I’ve played with the idea of moving back to the US but with the way things are in the economy, it’s not an option we can take right now.

For now, the only thing we can do is continue keeping in touch with friends and family and coming home to visit often…

Our once quiet and simple world was turned upsidedown with the arrival of a 6 lb 1oz bundle of madness.

It’s hard to believe how a year has gone by so quickly, especially when it felt so slow in the beginning. Both Jason and I had a rough start getting use to our new little addition but over time, things got easier and we grew to love her more and more each day.

This has been quite a year for all of us and it was quite an experience raising E and watching her grow from an immobile newborn to an active toddler. She learned a lot of new skills this past year and Jason and I learned a lot about being parents as well as being a family.

If you had asked me a year ago what I felt about having another baby and about my thoughts on how things will be a year later, I would have told you that I’m done with having kids. I would probably be very sleep deprived and depressed and so I would have told you that I wasn’t sure things will ever get better. Now, I can honestly say that I am ready to do it all again and I look forward to the many more years of teaching E about life because it gets better and better each day.

We love you very much, dear E!

Happy 1st birthday, babe!

Jason’s a roast beef man. He likes his sesame bun and the fact that there are no cheese sauce or Arby’s sauce added to his sandwich. He does not add ANY sauce to his sandwich…NONE!  How that man can choke down such a dry sandwich is beyond me.  (maybe that’s where E gets her madness from…)

I, on the other hand, love the chedder sauce that comes with beef ‘n cheddars. It’s much tastier with all the extra sauce and cheese oozing from the sandwich. I don’t like the original roast beef sandwich because it’s so dry and hard to choke down without the sauce already in it.

Anyway, we pretty much always banter back and forth about which one is better and this time, we have a third person to help us choose a side…E.

Since she began solids, we’ve been feeding her all sorts of stuff within bounds of reasons. So it’s quite normal that we’re feeding her bits of Arby’s.

Jason gave her bits of roast beef and bun from his sandwich and I gave her some of my beef ‘n chedder. Then to settle our debate, we both put pieces of our sandwich in front of E and whichever sandwhich she chose was the “better” one.

I was pretty confident I would win since she likes cheese and because she pretty much always chooses me.

I was wrong.

My child looked like she was going to come towards me but at the last minute she changed her mind and went towards the roast beef.

Talk about betrayal!

I still think that she chose Jason because he had his sandwich closer to her face than me.

I demand a retest!

Last year, most of the stuff we had in our large suitcase was the clothes we got for E. This year, it’s mostly food and snack stuff for her.

While we were busy opening up boxes and dumping her fruit pouches into the suitcase, E notices the packages of baby wipes in the suitcase. She loves opening them up and taking each wipe out one by one so she made her way to the wipes. Since the wipes were INSIDE the suitcase, there was only one thing for E to do….climb into the suitcase.

So while we were busy trying to pack her stuff away, she managed to climb, without any assistance, into the suitcase, make a little area for herself, sit down and proceeded with trying to open up the packages of wipes.

This child…..she is really something.