Sunabe Sunset and First Time Spaghetti

Tom started work Monday and Brendan and I are doing our own thing. We've been playing, napping, eating, and running errands. His hellion streak has ended (hopefully for good) and now that we are getting into a routine, and a schedule, he is back to his sweet self. Yesterday we ran errands until he was ready for a nap. I intended to drive straight home and put him to bed. And then I spotted Gracieux, with an Open sign in the window. Gracieux is a French bakery I spotted while on our way to the American Village. I had to stop. I wanted one of everything in there. I settled for a baguette and a pain au chocolat. I should have taken a picture but I was too excited to eat it. Poor Brendan went down for a nap, and I sat down with a treat. I'll share the next one. I told Tom I'm going back every day. He thinks I was kidding.

That was all beside the point. After our second round of errands Brendan went down for another nap, against his will. Tom got home and wanted to see the sunset. Unfortunately, I had just started dinner and the baby was in bed so he went by himself. I consoled myself with the thought that I have four years to see this.

And this.

And this.

But these moments are the ones I need to soak in.

After all, you only get spaghetti for the first time once in your life.

He thoroughly enjoyed it.

He went straight from high chair to bathtub.

As we are quickly approaching Brendan's first birthday, I have become very nostalgic. I can't believe this baby of ours is so quickly turning into a little boy. He no longer does the "soldier crawl" (which I thought was extremely appropriate for a military kid). He is now a pro at this crawling stuff. He has been pulling himself up from his knees, but he couldn't quite figure out how to get his feet turned the right way so that he could stand. That is, he couldn't figure it out until this morning. He just had to want it bad enough. And I guess he wanted the laptop bad enough to figure it out.

Tonight we're going out to dinner so that Brendan and I can see the sunset, too. I am going to pick the restaurant this time since Tom's most recent choice was a big flop.

A Better Than We Expected Christmas

Christmas Eve dawned a little cold and dreary. We had to go to the BX to get each other a Christmas gift. It was a madhouse and I was glad to get out of there. We were torn over where to go for dinner that night. We thought about the curry buffet, but opted to head to the American Village instead. Christmas is different here. Back home after about 6:00 on Christmas Eve, everywhere you look is a ghost town. Not here. Despite the cold and rain, lots of people were out, and lots of places were open. We chose a Thai restaurant.

Big mistake.

 Here's what Brendan thought of it.

We should have stuck with the curry buffet. We went for the full experience and ordered one of their "set" dinners that included about five courses. Let me put it this way:  The best thing I had was the water. On the bright side, Brendan was very well behaved the entire time.

After dinner we walked around the mall and spotted the Doctor Fish booth. These fish love to eat dead skin so you can pay 500 yen to stick your feet in for ten minutes.

It really tickles.

This right here was the highlight of my night.

His feet are so ticklish he could only stand it if he planted them on the bottom.

It was a great Christmas Eve. And my very first Christmas gift was a full night of sleep, because Brendan slept all night long.

It took a lot of work, but we did get a tree up.

Impressed?

Yeah, right. Here's our tree.

In the days leading up to Christmas I was sad and disappointed about how I knew it would turn out. I couldn't find a Christmas outfit for Brendan. I didn't even have a stocking for him. But then I decided that I would rather it be like this now, when he is unaware, than when he's eight and really understands what is going on. And then we woke up on Christmas morning and he was more interested in the trash than he was in his presents. Nevertheless, he got plenty of them.

Those toys in the background are toys he already had.

This was the longest Christmas morning ever since Brendan was absolutely not interested in opening anything. Tom finally opened the last few himself. I went upstairs to shower so we could go to the USO and call home. When I got downstairs these two were ready for a Christmas nap.

Oh, and I sure can't leave out the Christmas kitty.

He loves to get the kitties. I'm working on teaching him to "be easy" because he loves to grab and them and pull their tails.

We were invited to Christmas dinner with several families. We had already met two of them. One of them has a baby about 3 weeks younger than Brendan. When we got there he had two more presents waiting for him.

He was actually more interested in the dog toys.

He played hard all day, and into the night. There was no shortage of kids or toys.

Or dogs. I wanted to take this one home with me.

He really liked Kaelyn's dinosaur.

So all in all, we had a pretty good day. I think we both expected it to be kind of sad and depressing but it wasn't. With Brendan around, sad and depressing really isn't possible.

Merry Christmas!

Naha

Yesteray (Sunday) we opted to hop in the car and head towards Naha. We didn't really have a particular destination in mind. We figured we could stop if we saw something interesting. We saw signs for Shurijo Castle Park and decided to stop. Well, we ended up trying to go in the back way and there were way too many stairs to climb, while lugging a big stroller. We did find the main entrance and decided that it was too big of a place to try to see in just a couple of hours. Plus, it didn't look stroller friendly no matter how you got in so we decided to come back after we get a backpack to carry Brendan in. 

We got back in the car and kept going. This time we found the main shopping district in Naha. We found a parking lot but we had no idea how much we would end up spending since there were no signs in English. We took our ticket and hoped for the best. It ended up only costing 400 yen, which was less than $5. Not too bad.

Brendan had a MIUCH better day yesterday than he did the two days before. I previously posted about those rough days. In case you missed it, click here.

I wish I had a nickel for everyone who stopped to talk to and play with him. Men, women, young, old...he certainly attracted some attention. And half of them didn't give Tom or me the time of day.

After walking around a bit we needed a snack. And guess what we just happened to find.

They do things a little differently at McDonald's here. For starters, the uniforms look sharp. And they value your time, not only at McDonald's, but everywhere here. They are in a hurry to help you because they know your time is important.

In case you're wondering, 200 yen equals about $2.43, depending on the current exhange rate. Currently, 82 yen equal one dollar but it's constantly changing.

These are Shisa dogs. You can read about them here. You see them outside of a lot of buildings here. They have all different kinds - big ones, small ones, mean ones, funny ones. I plan on getting us a pair at some point.

Tomorrow's moving day! Wish us luck!