Drop Slide Park

This month has been super rainy, so when the sun finally peeked through the clouds on Tuesday, we took advantage and made our way over to a park. I'd read on Okinawahai about this park with a super long roller slide, and my neighbor Louise told me about the drop slide too. I was itchin' to check it out, so we got directions and got in the car.

The ginormous roller slide.

Weee!

The roller slides are a little rough on your bum, so we brought some cardboard and plastic things to sit on for the ride down. The plastic seat things really made me go fast! So fast that I had a hard time stopping at the bottom and made a pretty classy dismount right on my bum... just as a random couple walked by on the path.

Go, Spencer, go!

Sydney had no interest in doing the roller slide, so we each just went down once then walked to a little playground area. She ran around with Spencer while I rocked Shawn to sleep.

She was in heaven.

My little 80's rocker, climbing through a rope tunnel. I can't wait for those bangs to grow out again!

After his nap, Shawn hung out in the stroller.

Showing off his new teeth.

We went down this slide about a billion times. It was just the right speed for Sydney- slow enough to go down all by herself, but fast enough to still be fun!

Wohoo!

We saved the drop slide for last. I wish we would have taken a picture of it from the side and from the top, because these just don't do it justice. It's essentially a super tall and wide slide with a 90 degree drop, then another less intimidating hump.

Spencer actually went first, and from the ground I was giving him a hard time about taking so long to do it. Then I got to the top and looked over the edge... and totally ate my words! It looked pretty intimidating from above.

After about 5 minutes of periodically looking over the edge and saying, "I don't think I want to do this," he talked me into just sitting down at the top. Then the next step was to lower myself down.

Ahhh! No turning back now.

It was really fun, but anticlimactic that you don't get enough momentum to make it over the second hump. I had to scoot to it on my bum. I actually had to go down it twice since I let go of the bar before Spencer took a picture, so the photo above is a reenactment. It was definitely easier to do it the second time around!

Ringing in the New Year

I'm a bit late posting this, but shortly after the new year we went to the Futenma Shrine. It's a Japanese tradition to visit a shrine at the beginning of each new year, and there was certainly a crowd to prove it!

The Torii gate at the main entrance of the Futenma Shrine.

I'd been wanting to check it out since we drive past it every Sunday on our way to/from church, so the extra celebration seemed like a fun time to go. We went on a sunny afternoon... and almost bailed when we were looking for parking and saw how long the line was on the side walk down the 81 (yes Nonnie, the 81).

But as luck would have it, we found a decent place to park and figured it would be something fun to check off our list of things to do. I think we had to wait about a half hour, but it went by quickly since we had fun checking out the stuff that was being sold by street vendors.

That being said, we aren't the best planners. I'd talked to my neighbors a bit about the shrine, but I didn't take any time to do any research about customs and appropriate things to do once you enter.

For example, once we walked up the front steps there was a hand washing station where people were grabbing ladles to wash their hands. Since we hadn't read up about it, we were afraid to do it because we thought it might be offensive for non-followers of Shinto to participate. After reading about the shrine online, I think it would have been more appropriate for us to wash. Instead, we just joined a group of people and walked up the main steps to the shrine.

Inside, Okinawans tossed coins into wooden boxes, clapped twice, then bowed their heads in prayer. There was something going on with a priest behind a sheer curtain, but I didn't really stick around long enough to get a good look.

To the left of the building there were racks of wooden plaques called ema, which you could buy and write a prayer or wish on it, then hang it up in hopes that it comes true.

Then to the right of the building we went and bought our fortunes for 100 yen. Thank goodness they had some in English!

Sydney choosing her fortune.

Mine was excellent, and Spencer's and Sydney's were both very good. If the one pictured above is Spencer's, good thing he wasn't proposing this year :) If you're fortune's not so great, you can fold it and tie it to the ropes by the shrine walls to keep the bad things from happening.

Spencer tying his fortune...

and his face after he accidentally ripped his paper. Awesome.

On our walk back to the car, we passed a vendor selling mochi balls. They had a variety of them in pastel colors, and we bought a few because they looked like a dessert. Turns out they had a super weird texture and were filled with bean paste. Needless to say, we didn't finish any of them.

My Kiddos

I feel like Sydney has just gotten so big since we moved to Japan, ... I think it's partly because she's always telling me why she's a such big girl (e.g. "Mom, I washed my hands all by myself because I'm such a big girl!") and partly because now we have a smaller kid to compare her to. It's kind of crazy to think that she slept in a Pack 'n Play when we first got to Okinawa.

At her 3 year old check-up, she weighed 31 lbs. (51st percentile) and was 39 inches tall. Here are some big girl things she started doing in the past 6 months:

• sleeping in a twin bed
• washing her own hands (even turning the water on/off herself)
• wiping her own bum, for the most part (hallelujah!)
• pumping herself on the swing- taught by our 5 year old neighbor Emmy (another hallelujah!)
• dressing herself (sometimes still needs help with this)
• climbing in/out of the van
• cutting with scissors (although she's been on a break from them since she cut her own hair)
• going to Primary (she even willingly said the closing prayer today and did great!)
• holding her brother all by herself on the couch (this stemmed from seeing picture of her friend Macie holding her new baby brother all by herself)
• taking the playground by storm! She's still timid with some things, but now she'll walk on the shaky bridge, climb up the ropes, and go down the big slide all by herself.

Some funny things that she's been doing lately include:

• asking me every single morning what time we're going to eat lunch and dinner that day. And if you ever ask her what time it is, she'll usually say "60:30," or in Sydney talk, "Sixty-firty."
• bargaining (e.g. "Mom, can I have a mint?" "Sure Syd, you can have one mint." "Well, maybe can I have two mints?")
• waking up Spencer in the middle of the night if she needs something (e.g. more water, music, to be wrapped up). Ha ha, just glad she goes to him instead of me! She has certainly become more of a daddy's girl in the past few months, and now cries for him whenever she goes to time out. I knew it was only a matter of time before she realized he's more fun than me.

My sweet little Shawn has reached quite a few milestones lately as well. He has been reaching for and grabbing onto toys, which immediately go right to his mouth. He pulls Sydney's hair about a billion time a day when she's giving him smooches. He is constantly chomping on his hands, making them and his shirt wet with drool. He is bright-eyed and gives big smiles all the time, but really makes us work for a laugh. He doesn't really care for his car seat and started lifting his head up when he's strapped in it. He can roll from his back to his side, and when he's on his tummy he can hold up his head really well, sometimes supporting himself with his arms. Occasionally he'll lay his face on the ground and go on his knees to lift his bum up in the air. He's heavy, but doesn't look fat because he's so long. That being said, he's kind of a tank compared to what Sydney was at his age, so his nicknames have transformed from things like Chunky Monkey or Chunk to my favorite, Squish.

At his recent 4 month check-up (a bit late since he'll be 5 months old this week), he weighed 15.14 lbs. (57th percentile), was 27 in. long (94th percentile!), and had a head circumference of 43 cm (60th percentile). In the few days that followed, I gave him Tylenol to stave of any fevers or pain he might have from his immunizations. Then on Friday he started being a bit more grouchy than usual. I gave him more Tylenol before putting him to bed on Friday (the 6th) suspecting that he might be cutting some teeth, and sure enough when I checked Saturday morning, his bottom right incisor had cut through. I can see the left one coming in too, and it looks to me like the top two incisors won't be far behind.

Cape Zanpa

After talking to several neighbors about the lighthouse at Cape Zanpa, we decided to venture north to check it out. We left later than I intended, so the lighthouse was already closed when we got there. Regardless, we still got to enjoy some spectacular views.

On our way to the lighthouse, we passed a giant shisa, a random pen of goats and rabbits, and this cool statue.

Spencer & Sydney

Sydney is so into being a big girl. Those igneous rocks were uneven and scraggly, and she was making me so nervous trying to walk around on them by herself. Every time she does stuff like that (or heck, even when she's running fast on a paved sidewalk), I still have flashes of her falling and bashing her face like she did right before we moved out here. Thankfully Spencer was there to offer a steadying hand.

Those dark clouds held out for quite a while, but it started to rain about 30 seconds after we got back to the main pathway. There was so much more to explore, we will definitely have to go back soon.

Peace Prayer Park & Itoman Lights

The day after Christmas we wanted to head down south to see the display of Christmas lights at Itoman. Since that obviously didn't start until it was dark outside, we decided to make a day of it and also go to Peace Prayer Park, which was just down the road.

The memorial grounds were beautiful, right on the coast. They refer to the WWII Battle of Okinawa as the "Typhoon of Steel," where upwards of 200,000 people were killed.

These memorials had names of both the Japanese and Americans who died in the battle.

Of course, we had to look for family names.

Syd was a good sport. I think her favorite part was wearing her kitty cat hat.

Sydney was cracking me up when we were taking this picture. With each one we took she scooted a little closer and then started putting her arm around me... so sweet.

Me & my kids.

There was a pretty spectacular view of the suicide cliffs, where many Okinawan civilians committed suicide at the urging of Japanese troops.

We followed a walkway up a hill, and it was lined with memorials. Of course everything was written in Japanese, so we have no idea who they were for.

We got to enjoy another breathtaking sunset. Camera (or, probably more likely, our photography skills) didn't do it justice.

When it starting getting dark, we headed over to the light display. If was an interesting experience, in a funny way. The lights were pretty incredible, but somehow it just wasn't very Christmasy to look at them with ABBA's "Money, Money, Money" playing in the background. Or maybe it was the slightly generic show of girls in Arabic costumes belly dancing.

Notice the Japanese fashion behind me- black tights with shorts and heels is all the rage here. It was totally cold outside, but there were tons of girls wearing them.

Sydney was mesmerized by a guy juggling fiery batons- again, not very Christmasy, but entertaining nonetheless. Shawn got grumpy pretty quickly, so we didn't last very long. We had a great day exploring more of this beautiful island.