Okaasan, okaasan, wherefore art thou?

At about the same time we returned to our house in Seattle, I noticed Peanut referring to me as (and occasionally addressing me as) "Okaasan." I find this interesting because I've never referred to myself as anything other than "Mama" and most of Gboy's relatives in Japan did the same. Gboy was probably the only person that she heard refer to me as Okaasan and that was maybe 50% of the time, the other 50% of the time he uses Mama when talking about me. And yet here we are with Peanut using Okaasan quite often when talking about me to Gboy or when she's by herself in her crib for example.

What I find most conflicting about this is that it was hard enough for me to adjust to being "Mama" in the first place. The whole idea of being someone's mother, especially since we had to wait for a while to have her in our lives making it almost unreal when she finally was, seemed foreign to me. Add to that the idea that I think of "Okaasan" as Gboy's mother since that's what the whole family calls her, and we have a strange mix. I don't think of myself as Okaasan at all. Peanut may as well be calling me Fred. I tried to explain this to my husband and he was really surprised to hear this. I reminded him that while the name "Okaasan" means something quite familiar and perhaps comfortable to him (having grown up with it all his life) it's unfamiliar to me. Furthermore, there's something frustrating about having someone else (or some other culture) dictate the terms of part of my relationship with my daughter which is sort of how this whole thing feels.

I'm able to see that there's something sweet about the fact that she's attached to me such that she'll call me both Mama and Okaasan to see which will get her the results she wants - i.e. me. I'm also able to see that this is just one of many of the interesting situations we're bound to run into in a bilingual/bicultural family. And for that I'm grateful; I'm grateful that Peanut has been exposed to both languages so much that she has a broad vocabulary of both English and Japanese already.

Coming out of the fog....

I'll be back with a more thoughtful post in the next few days. For now, I'm wondering, should I tell you about:

• The fat lip Peanut got when she was running around the airport in Itami and fell down
• Our fleeting but lovely meeting with Kim and her daughter in the Narita airport (Why oh why did we have to have such a short layover this time around when we usually get stuck there for 8 hours!)
• "New in Town" - the movie I watched on the plane and loved if for no reason other than that it was in English and joked about cold winters and lots of snow - struck me as incredibly funny
• Salami, lamb, feta cheese and the lovely foods I've been rediscovering here in the U.S.
• Connecting with old friends in Seattle
  
• Missing new Osaka friends
• Visits to half a dozen parks to see which might be Peanut's favorites
• Recovering from jet lag in what feels like record time
• Having to clean the house much more than I anticipated (wishful thinking had me convinced our bachelor friend would have hired a housekeeper before he left)
• Talking to my family on the telephone and reveling in our proximity
• Today's visit to the zoo - who knew goats would inspire my daughter to cry when separated from them?
  
• How much I hate packing and unpacking and moving in general (okay we didn't exactly move but it sort of feels like it)
• American television - I don't even care what I watch - I'm loving it!!
• My library is amazing and I have about 25 books checked out that I'm trying to read as fast as I can - just finished this escapist bit
• My cake baking project for the summer - I've got The Cake Bible and plan to use it!
  
• Amazing blue skies and perfect temperatures with no humidity

The view and weather two days after our return.

Muffins are a wonderful thing

That's right. Honest to goodness blueberry muffins were awaiting me in our friend's car when he came to pick us up at the airport at 11am on Monday morning. I was stunned by the generosity that he and his wife showed us. Not only did he pick us up at the airport (with all of our international baggage in tow) but he brought us muffins and juice (kindly provided by his wife) and when we got back to our house we found that they'd even stocked our fridge with a few basics. We were blown away by how much these little things all added up to make our re-entry that much smoother.

Our return flight was amazing. Peanut did great. Lots of sleeping. Very little complaining or crying (maybe the last 15 minutes of our domestic flight). It was pretty heavenly actually.

We've been buried under stacks of mail, layers of dust (our friend/renter wasn't as thorough about cleaning as one might hope) and bags still to be unpacked for a couple of days now. But we seem to be winning the war on dust bunnies and junk mail and I hope to be back to posting soon.

For now let me say, cupcakes have been eaten, late night junk tv has been watched (what else to do during jet lag?) and my own bed has been slept in. Life is good!

Pack up your hot dogs

The post is from a song off one of my daughter's CDs. The song is about packing up your hot dogs in a backpack and going for a hike. I find the idea of packing hot dogs to be pretty funny. Maybe it's just late and I'm tired, or maybe it's completely nonsensical after all. Anyway, a few last things to go in the bags and hopefully we'll be done. We leave tomorrow but with the long flight(s) etc. and time difference, (technically we leave on Monday afternoon but we get home on Monday morning!) I have no idea when I'll be posting again.

So until then - catch you on the flip side!

What's in a name? Father? Mother?

We're getting ready to leave in a couple of days and I'm up to my eyeballs in o-miyage (souvenirs).

But I wrote this the other day and didn't get a chance to post it so please read and discuss while I'm away from my computer indefinitely. Did anyone see this article about fatherhood? My husband is currently a stay-at-home dad (or “work at home dad) whichever term you prefer or perhaps depending on the day. Some days he’s actively working on starting his own business, other days, he really just concentrates at parenting responsibilities. Either way, since we’ve been in Japan, he’s done a lot more childcare than ever before and far more than many dads.

I recognize that financial limitations make it more practical in many instances for the guy to work and earn an income, esp. in cultures where women still don’t make as much as men even for the same work (are there cultures where that isn’t the case?!). Anyway, the problem as I see it, is that even if a family is lucky enough to have a situation where the father can occasionally be an involved parent on a weekday, the expectation is that he won’t be around and mom will. This would certainly explain all the "mommy and me" classes and so few "kid and parent" experiences.

There’s a nice little daycare/preschool here in Japan that we might ultimately send Peanut to, but the mothers are expected to pitch in once a month or thereabouts. I’m all about helping out and being a homeroom parent – but I’d like the same opportunity and expectation for fathers. We were informed by my sister-in-law that this would likely make the other mothers very uncomfortable so despite the fact that my Japanese isn’t all that great, I’d be the designated hitter in this situation. Huh. Wouldn’t it be just as nice for my daughter to have her father helping out in her school? And I recognize that while there may be far more stay at home mothers in Japan than there are in the U.S. this isn’t an unheard of situation in the U.S. either. Sad but true.

Frankly, I love that my husband wants to be so involved and it frees up some of my time to do other things. Like go back to work part-time as I’ve mentioned before. It’s an arrangement that in some ways may be unique to us. But I’m sure there are families out there with two dads, or single dads, or divorced dads – families for which the mom can’t be the designated hitter all the time. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate "girls' night out" and some "no men allowed" experiences every now and then. But honestly, the more open-ended arrangement for more parent + child experiences sounds kind of nice if you ask me.

The countdown begins...

One more week until we're back in the U.S.A. As in, 7 days from now we'll be boarding a plane at this very minute. Wow. I've learned a lot while living here. I had hoped that I'd get a better feel for the culture and my husband's history and upbringing here. I had hoped that I'd be able to better understand why he couldn't just say to his family, "My family and my life is in the U.S. now and I'm not coming back to live in Japan," (especially since that was really our original plan - barring any serious illness of his parents of course in which case we'd help out and stay for a while). Having lived here now for 8 1/2 months, I think I can safely say that I have in fact gained those perspectives. I'm not saying that makes all of life easier, but I think I have a better sense of the issues and factors that my husband has tried in the past to describe to me - to no avail.

I'm not sure that Japan and I will ever be best friends. But I do feel that I have a new appreciation for life and the culture here. I've enjoyed getting to know my husband's family better. I've met some wonderful people here through AFWJ and my Japanese class. As my Japanese language skills have improved, I've even found it easier to communicate with people in the village here and that in turn has helped me to feel more at home. And I'm *really* sad that my daughter will have to say good-bye to her grandparents and all of her extended family here. It makes me get all teary-eyed just thinking about it. Gboy's family is, by and large, an amazingly wonderful group of sweet, sweet people and I will miss them. I know for sure that Peanut will miss them. My whole extended family had moved away from my hometown by the time I was about 8 years old. No grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins - it was just my parents, my sister, and me. Whenever I got the chance to visit our extended family I was thrilled. I grew up watching "Eight is Enough" and "The Brady Bunch" and I knew that some chaos was inevitable in a family that big, but darn it! They looked like they were having an awful lot of fun too and now that I've witnessed Peanut with her cousins and family, I know they don't always agree, but they DO have a lot of fun. I hate to take that away from her even for a little while.

Our plan right now is to return to Japan in time to celebrate the 2010 New Year; this helps make the parting more bearable. And of course, there's the promise of real pizza, Vietnamese food, Mexican food, Ethiopian food, beans and grains of wide varieties, and baked goods made with butter, salt and vanilla (all ingredients that seem to be lacking in many baked goods here) and of course - coffee. I can't forget to mention the amazing Seattle weather coupled with lots of great parks within walking distance. And while Peanut may not have time with her Japanese family while we're back in the U.S., we've already got plans to ensure that she gets to spend lots of time with her American family and they're so excited to see her! These are all strong incentives for making the return home!

Love and marriage and a baby

There are days when parenting is hard. There are days when working on a relationship and marriage can be hard. Mix the two together and occasionally it's a recipe for disaster. I love my husband and cannot begin to express how grateful I am for his commitment to be a truly active and involved father for our daughter. For instance, he loves to cook for her. If it were up to me, the poor child would probably exist on crackers and fruit (I am not the most inspired cook). But from the moment we introduced Peanut to solid foods, Gboy wanted to be in charge of her eating. Since she was exclusively breastfed until 6 months of age and refused the bottle after just a few weeks of trying it out, he never really got a chance to feed her until she was 6 months old. From that point on he's been making her a steady (and healthy!) diet of homemade soup, skillet dishes, gourmet hamburgers and the like. This is just one example of his amazing parenting skills.

And yet....as is often the case with two unique individuals, we have different priorities, interests and strengths as parents. As a result, we have been known to disagree and argue about how to parent. Today was a perfect example. On our short ride to town, Peanut started to fall asleep. Gboy began his usual routine of entertaining her in an effort to try to keep her awake. Since switching to one nap per day (usually going down at about 12:30) Gboy has been paranoid about letting Peanut fall asleep in the car for a catnap in the morning. Once upon a time, namely during the transition from 1 to 2 naps, if she fell asleep in the morning for say 20-30 minutes in the car, she would often struggle to nap later in the day. This was difficult for us since she wasn't napping much at all on a good day at that time. I'm not sure I think that a 15 minute car nap this morning would have prevented her from napping later in the day, but he was adamant that she be kept awake. I argued that perhaps we should let her sleep (she'd been awake since 4:45 this morning!) and just see what happened. More disagreement and discussion ensued.

What frustrated me most about the whole thing is that I'm not even sure what upset me or bothered me most. Was it that I felt he was criticizing my admittedly lame attempts to help keep her awake while he tried to drive? Was it that I felt my strategy was better? Was it that this is one battle I'm just not interested in fighting? Was it that the act of keeping her awake *every* time we get in the car (since it seems this happens all the time) is just so monotonous to me that it's become one of those parenting jobs which is inevitable and monotonous and I'm feeling selfish because I don't like that there are things about parenting which aren't all fun and games?

I just don't know. All I know for sure is that this was a juggling act that involved two people I love and it's a challenge to make all the players happy all of the time.