Current State of the Family

As you can see, we are the Smith family. And I can rhyme.

Let's see if I can find a good (and recent) picture. Stand by...

Oh, why did it put the picture at the top? It was supposed to go here. Oh well. And just ignore the hairy arm that is in the background. It couldn't be mine, since I'm not a hairy guy, so it might be Taeko's. Or maybe an alien's.

Taeko has been working very hard preparing a lesson to present at the Institute class for the Japanese ward here. She has been working pretty much every night on this lesson for a couple of weeks now, so I think it will be pretty good.

Interestingly she's told me before that she prefers teaching church classes in English, which I assume is because almost all of her life in the Church has been spent in the United States. Of course, we've been attending the Japanese branch/ward now for something like 5 years, so maybe that's changed since she told me that.

Colin is doing well. He goes to preschool twice a week for two hours, and loves to show me all of the things he makes in class. He has been learning to draw shapes and letters, and he does well at it; and his teacher reported to Taeko that Colin is a very careful colorer, and puts forth the most effort in his class at coloring within the lines. I don't know how the quality of his pictures compares to his classmates', but it sure is fun for me to see the kind of details that he adds to his pictures. (For the most part, if I can make anything out in his picture it is a picture of a face. Actually, yesterday he drew the sun, complete with sun rays coming out all over the body. And according to Colin, if you break off one of the rays then it will grow back slowly, just like a starfish's arm. But still, it had a face. Kind of.)

Colin's teacher is a nice lady, and he likes her well. He's actually known her somewhat for a few years. She is the aunt of a kid in our ward who is Colin's age, so he had met his teacher at his friend's house. Then she got a job at one of the Gold's Gym babysitting services where Taeko would take Colin while she went to work out, and so his teacher knew him by name already by then. And now, of course, she's his preschool teacher. Maybe she's stalking him. He is cute.

Colin and I went on a bike ride this morning. He has a lot of fun riding bikes. He likes to show me how he can ride fast, and how he can stand up on the pedals, and I like to show him how he can ride farther to the right side of the road and not stop to rest in the middle of an intersection.

We rode over to a nearby elementary school and played on their equipment. They had a couple of poles with cross members set up, which I figured to be small soccer (futbol) goals without nets, which I used to show Colin what a cool guy I was back in elementary school when I could do tricks on them. Or at least flip around them once or something. When I hung Colin on the cross bar, having his feet dangling maybe two feet off the ground, he got scared, and didn't want to fall. So I picked him up myself and dropped him from about the same height. (For some reason he wasn't so scared of that.) After that we spent the next ten minutes running between the two goals, hanging and dropping from them. We saw some ice on the leaves and grass in the shade this morning. I've been trying to teach Colin about dew and cold temperatures. I don't know how much he gets, but it's kind of fun to think of ways to explain stuff.

Tonight we saw Jupiter and Venus again after Church. (I had to check the internet to make sure I was telling Colin the truth about the bright spots' identities.) On the way home Colin said, "Look daddy, Venus and Jupiter are moving." I asked where he thought they were going, but he didn't answer. I briefly thought about telling him they are moving very fast, just a long way away, but thought the idea of some planets going on a trip while we were driving home was probably more fun.

Riona has 4 teeth. She's had 4 teeth now for a while. She got them all at pretty much the same time, and has had silence in her mouth since then. But that doesn't stop her from eating Cheerios and whatever things mom has cooked for her. Broccoli, sweet potato, spinach and amarynth are the most common foods Riona eats that don't come from bottles, but so far she hasn't seemed to express anything other than just plain old hunger toward any particular food. Well, I guess she's made some interesting faces at times, but that never seemed to slow her down from eating anything.

Riona is crawling around now, and she seems to get around faster every day. Now that it is colder we haven't been getting so many pill bugs entering our house (must have been coming in through some narrow gap in the sliding door), and this has paid off in Riona getting less of the buggers into her mouth. My dad likes to tell us that his sister used to eat pill bugs, but so far I think Riona just likes to lick the germs off them and then let us dig the remains out of her mouth.

Riona has also decided in the past two or three days that she isn't going to take a morning nap any more. She goes willingly to her crib and doesn't cry, but an hour later she'll be sitting up just talking to herself. That makes Sundays tough, as her afternoon nap time is right through Sunday School and Priesthood/Relief Society meetings, and so Sundays are napless for our two kids. But she held up well.

I am now the Elders Quorum 2nd Sunday teacher. I was released from being the Sunday School teacher this week. I think, anyway -- I was asked to substitute for Sunday School in two weeks.

TTFN