Important Dates

Well, we've finally got the details worked out for our move to the States (well, most of them anyway).

On April 3, we're leaving Tokyo to go to Izumo. We'll spend about 2 and a half weeks in Izumo. Tak is arranging for internet service for while we're there. Yay! Otherwise, it's really hard to get any work done.

On April 22, we have a really long day! We catch a plane from Izumo to Tokyo (Haneda Airport) at about 7:30 in the morning, arriving in Tokyo at 9. Then we have to take a limousine bus (a little over an hour) from Haneda Airport to Narita Airport. Then at about 3:00 in the afternoon our plane leaves for Detroit. We'll have a few extra hours at Narita, but that's far better than being rushed all day. Hopefully, the weather will be nice and we can let the kids go run around outside at the plane viewing area. Once we clear security and customs, there is also a kids' playroom which we've never checked out before. I think we'll be checking it out this time!

We arrive in Detroit on April 23 at a little before 2 in the afternoon. It'll be crazier than usual this time. We have to do something in order to apply for Tak's green card. I've checked with people and heard that it doesn't take very long at all. Yay! Then we'll have tons of luggage with us. We usually only have 2-3 suitcases. This time we'll have 7 (the max that we are allowed for free)! We're not planning to ship anything, so those 7 suitcases are it. (All the rest of our stuff will stay in Izumo.)

Most of the stuff for moving is already organized for easy packing, and some stuff is already packed to send back to Izumo. We cleared out a lot of stuff and organized it when we moved to the apartment next door in December. That move was actually a really big help! It would have been really tough to go from the apartment we were in straight to the States.

Craziness

The last couple of months have been pretty busy. Just in a nutshell:

• At the beginning of January, Hana got sick and had a high fever. With the fever, she had a febrile seizure. When it happened, Tak had her on his back in a carrier and felt something was wrong. I looked at her and her face was funny; all I could think about was the hard cracker I had given her about 10 minutes before. We thought she was choking. Tak was pretty panicked. I was doing what I remembered from first aid/CPR. Tak called an ambulance. Before they arrived, she started crying weakly. She hadn't coughed anything up so we figured she had swallowed it. So, we went to the hospital by ambulance. When we got there, the doctor asked if she had been coughing afterwards. We said no. If she had been choking, she would have coughed even after her airway cleared. So he figured it was a seizure. They gave her a suppository to prevent her having another one. She was fine, but it was scary.


• Hana does another scary thing. Sometimes, usually at night when she's a bit tired, when she gets really upset, she will do the air-sucking cry thing. She will stop breathing for something like 30 seconds until she passes out. She's been doing this at least once or twice a week now. None this week yet. I finally stopped by and asked the doctor about it. He said it's nothing to worry about and that she'll probably outgrow it within a year.


• Gaku is FINALLY completely potty trained! Finally. Up until about 2 weeks ago, he was mostly potty trained, except he absolutely refused to poop on the toilet. He would hold it for days. We were setting a timer and having him sit on the toilet for 5 minutes, during which time he didn't go. But as soon as he was off the toilet with a diaper on he would poop. After the first time, he finally realized that he COULD poop on the toilet. No problems since. We gave away his remaining 10+ diapers to his daycare.


• We finally got Tak's visa!! Yay! So now we're planning our move to the States for April. We're planning to leave Japan on April 22 and arrive in Michigan on April 23. I'm just trying to finalize everything with a travel agent. We'll probably head back to Izumo for 2 weeks before that.

Today I printed up some photos and dropped them in envelopes for great-grandparents who don't have computer access. I'm really bad about doing this type of thing, but it didn't take me that long. I realize I need to do it more often. Just like I need to keep up with my blog better... If I don't have time to write, I suppose just throwing a picture out there for family is better than nothing...