Born to be loved

Back in July my two sons and I went to Japan .  That trip was anticipated since long time ago, but my wife m couldn't make it as she couldn't get time off of her work so she stayed, and kept 1-yr old daughter LM with her so that she wouldn't be alone. Now, m finally gets 2 weeks off. She was way passed the point of patience to visit Japan, and my side of parents who don't travel overseas have never met LM. So we decided to go again with such a short gap, this time with the entire family of 5. Yes it's not usual year at all. Blame pandemic. Courtesy of some photos to aunt Y, uncle T & D. Briefing the trip in FAQ-style. Q. How was the experience for prepping and entering Japan? A. Japanese government significantly relaxed the policy a month before our trip, most effectively resuming visa waiver program for the US citizen. Combined with their online, pre-registration system ("Fast Track") that takes great amount of effort while in the US, immigration proc

Powerful tool as a secondary language education - Anime Kids (or any humans maybe) learn to communicate because of an immediate need, I think. And such an immediate need is always English as long as English is the most used communication. There's absolutely no need for Japanese in the world our kids live in, so as parents we're trying to create such a need for our children. Long story short, among many other things, we do not mind showing anime/アニメ to them with time limit. We recently started showing Dragon Ball (wikipedia.org) , which is one of the most successful manga/anime in the world and happens to be originated in Japanese. My wife found an online streaming service that all the episodes from the very beginning. The original cartoon started being published when I was 9, many many kids around me got into it, but I somehow didn't. So I thought maybe it's finally the time to catch up with. Hiccup in old, international content We immediately noticed, unfortunately, th

School bus -- Something I've never experienced as growing up in another country where I went to the elementary school on foot, went to junior high school by bicycle, then went to high school by a train (that passes in the middle of the school yard of the very school in the city of Utsunomiya). My story aside, boys are now going to the same school as a 2nd grader and a pre-K. In the beginning when the emotionally developing 4-yr boy started, there was some dramas, but 1 month passed he seems to thrive. It leaves our neighbor hood punctually at 6:52am every weekday. While being freed from 2 of 3 kids that early everyday is a huge help despite early morning hassles of making lunchboxes, the most helpful aspect of it is its reliability. As NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) puts (nhtsa.gov) , "school bus is the safest vehicle on the road". While I've always assume so without really trying to understand what makes that propaganda true, a tragedy occurre

 For almost 5 weeks 2 boys and I were in Japan while my wife m and 1-yr old LM stayed in Georgia. Taking the advantage of this opportunity, both boys temporarily went to local elementary school or kindergarten, both of which I went to in my childhood. 6-yr old HG thrived from get-go likely thanks to our devotion to Japanese language education as a 2nd language. 3-yr old AK initially seemed to have understandably struggled to adjust to the different environment in multiple ways but he eventually coped with it. They made friends, experienced nature there. Families from both sides helped a lot, and boys re-established bonds with both great/grandparents. It was indeed exhausting for me, and for grandparents, but that's what kids take to extend their world. It was worth it. I strongly hope that we can make this Summer trip and local school visit as our tradition.

I made a big career move back in 2017/07 when I lived in Sacramento, CA to switch from a non-profit company I co-funded in Tokyo to a for-profit, new-born startup in Texas.  This startup company has been successful and just turned their 5-year mark. As the OG /  (non-management) employee no.1, I'm grateful all these experience I've had with them. With the some recent life challenges though, I had to make a tough decision. From a leader role to the bottom Company celebrates 5-yr BD (facebook.com) featuring me and 2 other earliest employees. As the one of only a few senior level engineers in the beginning, I've taken leading role for the 1st few years of this company. In 2018 we had the 2nd son born, but I somehow managed to work long hours, along with my wife's even longer hours (or I may have not as successful as I think from now? I'm seeing posts like this where family got sick, I got exhausted and almost inmobilized ). Then a business boost began probably at

Almost 11 months ago I wrote our decision to send our then 5-yr old to a Saturday school for additional Japanese education, in addition to the weekday local elementary school. Driver back then was pandemic, which prevented us from going to Japan over the Summer where we are hoping the children to get stimulated and motivated to learn Japanese and its culture. What happened afterwards? Let us review briefly. Overall, we are very happy for the decision we made, and we decided to continue sending our soon-to-be 7-yr old to the Saturday school in addition to weekday local school. There was number of challenges, but HG has been showing interest in learning secondary language and the culture, and demonstrating growth. Also, the level of fluency for Japanese language we as parents hope our kids to acquire has changed, maybe we are now hoping higher. Kinder class at Georgia Japanese Language School We joined the class in August. For the entire school year, which is from April thru March same

We've been inhabited by sickness for over more than a month. Mostly kids are the ones that are affected for their school and activities but sometimes we the parents have gotten sick as well. It's just a chain of sickness after sickness. It started off from 3 years old getting something likely hand-foot-mouth. Then both parents having severe sore throat and fever, days of migraine. Kids' lingering coughs, sometimes resulted in vomit. and comes a week of hiatus, then a baby getting flu A, and now the entire family is getting a stomach bug that 3-yr started off. Kids going to school is always the most suspected source. But with 3rd baby's first birthday approaching, I noticed there's a pattern about our health problem: It's always Spring where the entire family suffer from terrible, lasting for weeks, and sometimes series of multiple different, sickness. For the previous 2 times we were in Sacramento, CA, then now in the state of Georgia where pollen and allergy se

 6-yr old seems like an age filled with hopes! Our son HG's future job has been migrating between all kinds of professions he knows. Usually there's been a direct link to what he's into at the moment, e.g. when he was into automobiles he wanted to become a driver etc. Only exception is his recent determination for becoming a scientist, which I don't find a link to his current fascination - Going to an elementary school and also going to multiple after school activities, he's been too busy to be attached to single domain of interest but rather being distributed - to name a few, Pokemon and craftwork. Above all, he retains general (strong) fascination for the nature. And he seems to have started developing admiration for those people who discover new things about the universe, and he also looks like he has realized his maternal grandparents are the those people (Here I noticed the influence from the family or anyone close definitely matters). One of his previous fads,

Activity-full 6-yr son  Our 6-yr old HG has been trying out various sports by now. Just for the past 1 year he tried paid lessons for golf, martial arts (Taekwondo), soccer, swimming. He also enjoys rock climbing with his one of the best friends . That variety was largely realized thanks to my wife m challenging him explore new activities during her maternity leave. Once that ended we obviously had to pick only some of them to continue although he seemed to have enjoyed all of those. Also swimming was seasonal at least we thought at the place (later we found the aquatic center offered indoor lesson though). After all, we narrowed down to Taekwondo and soccer. Then this year around, we noticed we forgot signing up for the soccer for the Spring and the class is already full (there's a well-managed private club in the city that owns multiple full soccer courts, where his age of class is well over a few dozens of kids. Yet the class is still full). So we decided to try joining a baseba

 3rd child LL is around 8-month corner. She sits by herself, almost crawls, grabs REALLY well with a good pinch (ouch for long hair). We've been careful not to leave any small items accessible for her, which is hard especially with 2 lil boys. For the past few weeks, maybe around the time we've traveled to California , she's been getting to fuss a lot, day and night. During daytime she cannot be left by herself for more than, say, 10 minutes as she starts crying, often hysterically. At night, worse. She wakes up MANY times, no matter whether she just starts the night time sleep, or past midnight sleep. Sometimes she falls back to asleep easily, sometimes just by herself, but almost every night there's one episode where she gets wide awake, stays up for an hour or even longer in the worst cases. We suspect she's in separation anxiety period ( Ref. babycenter.com ), but also wonder if the environmental change over the inter-state trip and multi-family get-together may

 Entire family got infected for the 1st time...We stayed home the entire MLK longer weekend at home. Very fortunately none of us so far has suffered severe symptom. While boys are totally asymptomatic, adults are experiencing mild cold-like symptom (both are getting in stomach, which is unusual for cold or flu for us). Infant has been feverish, but even before the infection she had already been fussier than before, so hopefully she's just ok. Some neighbors offered meal so generously. We're once again reminded of the great community we moved in. 3 little kids staying home all day is of course a challenge. Although boys, 6-yr and 3-yr old, play together a lot, they bother adults A LOT. An infant is perpetually needy. All happen while adults are sick. We accepted this as a necessary time-off from the work and the mental drive for being productive (particularly my wife), trying to do things together with kids. Age dynamics with 6, 3, 0 is challenging as the gap between 6-yr and 3-

Happy 2022! Hope this year will be much brighter than ever or at least than the past 2 years.  This was the first winter break for our oldest HG at a public school, meaning it's our second time of the experience in dealing with child-stay-home-for-2-weeks while we have work (first time was when pandemic started ). Luckily, our winter break was well-planned, family get together with sister's husband's family in California, so we had a great family support.  HG (6-yr) and AK (3-yr) both did socialize, play, bother, really well I think with our mother's side of family as well as the spousal family. They hadn't seen grand mother and father for 2 years, but on the 1st day of grandma's arrival they already snuggled into her bed and read books together. Grandpa taught a number of things incl. Shogi (Japanese chess) spent a few hours each day. Also saw sisters, in-law brother who they've seen more recently. Huge addition this time was meeting in-law's brother&#