It's been nice to be home this week. Our plants survived our absence, thanks to my friend Kelly who lives down the hall. Somehow we got a weed in our snapdragon pot while we were away. Rafe watched me pull it out, then promptly pulled out all the tomato seedlings when I wasn't looking and threw them off the balcony . . .
He'd rather eat yogurt than tomatoes anyway. Some mornings when Rafe wakes up with the sun and I feel like I may die if I have to get out of bed, Vivien is very helpful and she'll get them breakfast. We are usually out of yogurt at this house, because if I'm not present, ALL the yogurt in the fridge will be eaten in one sitting. I bought a yogurt maker this week. I think we'll use it often.
The weekend after we got home was the Corpsman Ball. It's like a birthday party for the job "hospital corpsman." It is formal occasion, so I wore my fancy dress . . .
. . . and took my fancy man in his dress whites. It was his first time wearing the choker jacket, and we discovered as he was setting out all his hardware that we had never gotten the loops that hold the shoulder boards on. I improvised some loops with a needle and thread, feeling very resourceful, but we will need to get the actual loops put on before he wears it again, because the boards kept sliding through their thread holders and sticking off his shoulders a few cm, like decorative wings. It was my job to slide them up whenever I noticed them going wayward. Our upstairs neighbors that are in our ward and expecting their first baby watched our kids so we could go. It is always entertaining to go watch people who have been drinking have a dance party! I also really like the birthday cakes the club on base makes . . . "so moist."
The kids are very happy to be back at school. They are so cute in their matchy summer uniforms. When they get off the bus at the end of the day and run to give me a hug with their bright, smiley faces I just want to squeeze them forever.
We had to go searching for new shoes this week, because it is very important at youchien for the kids to put their shoes on by themselves. The only shoes Rafe can put on without pleading "Help me!" are his rain boots and he's starting to get chaffing on his calves from the tops of them rubbing against his skin. I went to the Japanese shoe store without the kids to scope out what was available and found these shoes that are perfect for him--they keep their shape, the tongue folds up easily all the way to the toe, and they're velcro. Unfortunately they only had them in a size 14cm, and I sat there looking at that size 14 thinking it was at least 2 inches too big for Rafe's feet. So I put them back on the shelf and came back later that afternoon WITH the children and was mildly horrified when his feet actually fit perfectly in the enormous shoes. When did my baby get so big??
With the kids at school all day again, I am continuing to develop my homemaking skills (slightly more motivating way to say "doing chores"), and slowly working on going through all the piles of things that just need to be done "at some point," because I'm 32 weeks pregnant now and am running out of time before those "at some points" become few and far between. I fear I may have spent all my nesting energy traveling the world, because I feel like I only get one productive day for every day I spend in a haze of fatigue. I take a nap on those days, and feel grateful that my kids are in school and I have an awesome husband who does all the providing so I don't have to worry about it. Happy Father's Day, Drew! Your 3rd child is very grateful that you are taking good care of her mom. Sometimes I can sneak a day in to indulge in creative exercises, to keep my brain alive. One of my friends had a birthday this week, and she is working really hard to lose baby weight so I didn't want to derail her by taking her a batch of cookies or something sinful, so I made her an edible arrangement! She laughed, but she told me liked it.
When the kids are home, we are currently working the most on learning to ask politely for things we want that other people have, or politely ask someone to do something for us. They are hard skills! Rafe's still a little skeptical that they're worth having, but I think his future family will thank us for our effort.
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