Wow, so I was just reminiscing about the past, reading the 1st blog I had created for Kai and saw this post about his possible Zodiac signs.  This was written before he was born and I was trying to determine what kind of personality he would have.

The description I wrote about scorpios is almost uncanny:

The eighth sign of the Zodiac and associated with intensity and power. Individuals born under this sign are thought to have a complex, emotional, analytical, focused, determined, hypnotic, and self-contained character.

Many people at this school have said to me, “I don’t think I have ever seen Kai walk before.”  Well I guess the writing was on the wall.

Kai's Favorite

Here are the pictures that I promised, a little before schedule even. There are a lot of pics in here, taken from Nov. 18th till recently. Yes that date does sound familiar: It was Kai’s birthday.

Besides the B-day photos, there are pictures from Thanksgiving Vacation back in the Hamptons and also a trip we recently took to Boston.

Enjoy the show!

Wow, I don’t even remember the last time I posted (wait there it is right below there).  At any rate it has been a long time since there has been an update, so allow me to indulge for a little.

We have moved to NH, where I am teaching at a boarding school named Tilton School (in case you have been living under a rock) and I am loving it out here.  It is a lot of work, but life is good and I am plenty busy with the students, the family and work.  Kai is starting to speak a lot more now, and also at the same time becoming more shy to strangers.  Before he would run right up to anyone and say “HIII!” but now he is more into the shy not interested game.  I am not sure if this is because he is meeting so many new people, teachers and students, or if he is just mentally developing that idea of being shy towards new people in general.

Kai has also started his potty training.  This is a big step and he is making some great progress.  For now  it is only #1s, and that is great; #2s are a whole other ballgame.  Aya has set him up with his favorite buddies in the bathroom: A curious George doll and a Cookie Monster doll.  It has worked wonders, and just watching George sit on the little seat convinced Kai that it was the new hwat-ish.

Aya is enjoying it here as well, and making some new friends.  She is with the Kai-man all day, but it is nice because I can always meet her for lunch and even pop in and out of the house between classes: my house is 20ft from where I work.  I have just finished my JV-B Soccer season, and we ended with a nice 4-6-2 record. We easily could of had a .500 record but a couple of bounces just didn’t go our way.  At any rate it is considerably better than last year’s record: 0-13.

Last, and definitely not least of all, Kai has a big birthday coming up.  On November 18th it will be Kai-man’s 2nd B-day, so make sure to post a comment or send some love up to NH.  I am going to try and get some photos back up and going, maybe even a video, but to be honest I don’t have my nice Apple iMac any more and working with any Windows OS is just to much of a headache.  Hopefully Santa will buy me one for Christmas.

Kai surely likes to express himself, and I finally got a good video of him doing it. Here you can see how he is starting to talk (English or Japanese?), and make more gestures that he has learned. It looks like he is giving his birthday speech about what he liked and what he thought could be improved. Kai’s comments were duly noted.

As you can see he is testing out his new birthday present: The Snoopy Sports Stadium. We had to withhold the plastic bat and golf club from the set, due to fears of smashing windows, but maybe next year he can swing them around when he understands a little better. In the background you can see the beautiful hand-stitched, happy birthday banner that Aya made for Kai. Then Kai climbs a little to high and the video is cut short…oops.

The next day I made a cardboard platform for the rest of the play center because it seemed a little dangerous incomplete without it.

Don’t be afraid to takes these videos Fullscreen; they actually come out good. Just hit “Menu” [bottom right] and then “Full Screen” [top right].

Well, I’ve finally found a couple of hours to sit down and explain to you all how the Birthday went. Kai had a wonderful time, and I’m pretty sure everyone else enjoyed themselves as well.

We had the party at a local restaurant called “Sato,” (ever been there) and when we first arrived we meet another little boy who was celebrating his first Birthday. Oddly enough, Kai and this baby shared the same birthday, November 18th.

Aya’s family and friends came to the party, along with some of my friends and some other mothers Aya has met at meetings along the way. One mother brought this fun-ball house, which we saw at Baby’s-R-Us the day before. Kai absolutely loved this thing; he was very into throwing the balls, and laughing about how silly it all was. We were thinking of maybe buying it for a Christmas present because it was that much fun.

During the party we preformed a very old Japanese Tradition that Aya had read about, where the child (who is celebrating his first birthday) walks across the room with mochi tided to his back. This stuff wasn’t exactly light and probably came weighing in at 10~15lbs. Kai could hold his own, but seemed to have trouble walking with it on his back.

Next we went into the meal, which included sukidashi (I think mountain potatoes?), tempura, samshimi (raw fish) and kurogoma tofu. Aya made a wonderful, baby-friendly cake, fresh with homemade pancakes, ($10!!) strawberries, and whipped yogurt for icing. It was moto bene! After that, Aya wanted to see what Kai had in mind for career decisions so we laid out some symbolic objects for Kai to choose from. There was a plane for a pilot, a pen for a poet, a spatula for a chef, a thermometer for a doctor, a microphone for a musician and a train for a train conductor (cause why not). Of course he chose the mic because he is a rockstar!

That was the birthday in a nutshell, but don’t worry if you feel liked you missed out on the fun, we will be celebrating many coming birthdays in the US of A. Thank you for the kind birthday wishes and the presents!

Kai-chan, omedeto! (congrats!)

Birthday Show (17 pics)

Miscellaneous Show (12 pics)

Just wanted to let you all know, today is Kai’s first birthday! We had a nice party with the friends and family, and Kai accumulated a big stack of presents. I can’t write to much now; we have been busy making sure Kai enjoyed his special day, but I will give you all a full report when I have some time soon.

Well its been a fast couple of months and I am sorry I haven’t hollered sooner, but things have been a little hectic around the house lately. Allow me to explain why.

First and FOREMOST Kai is now a full-on walking (trouble making) baby. He started to take little wobbly steps about 2 weeks ago, and then last week he became more confident moving around like a biped. Now there is no stopping him; he can walk from one side of the apartment to the other, and is getting faster everyday. All this at only a little under 10 months! Insane I know. I have a bunch of video of him learning to walk, so you all will be able to see how fast he progressed to basically a leisurely jog across the room. I now need to edit the video and put some music to it, because this is, without a doubt, the biggest milestone we have seen yet (now…if I could only get Kai to stop running around so I can make this movie).

There are some pictures we have taken along the way as well. Nothing to crazy, just a lot of messes being made while eating really. I also went on a rafting trip a couple of weeks ago, but due to the water throwing us out of the rafts, I decided not to take many pictures of the occasion.

We had a little EEEEEE-coli scare last week, too. Kai seemed to be dropping a lot of lose buckets (if you know what I mean), so we took him to the SENSEI and asked her if everything was cool. She ran some tests and found out he had some sort of infection and need to be sure it wasn’t e-coli 0157 (err’ something) and that didn’t sound good at all. We got nervous that something dangerous could be affecting him, but it turned out that it was just some harmless infection. Long story short, he took his meds, and seems to be doing just fine now.

Finally I would like to say, “Domo Arigato Mr. Robotoe!” to everyone who sent me the kind birthday wishes. It was wonderful to hear from you all, and Aya, Kai, and I are truly lucky to have such wonderful family and friends. We took it easy for the birthday, and had a small get together on Saturday night, hitting up our favorite local restaurant. Then on Monday, Aya made me a wonderful dinner and bought me a nice chocolate cake. I am still accepting birthday gifts so don’t be shy if you want to send us a few Benji’s. I will be sure to place them towards Kai’s future schooling and most certainly not an iPhone.

The Dude Abides.