Day 118 - Picture Friday

"Abby, try as much as you want, but there ain't no milk coming out of my finger."

"Whoa! Sorry. Didn't realize this was an Ichikawa only picture."

It has been a long time coming, but finally Lisa got pooped on again. I'd have to say diapers do their job of holding baby pee and poop 99% of the time. But sadly, there's that 1% that is shown above. This was a very bad poop-tastrophe because there was no way to pull her shirt over her head without spreading the chocolate pudding. But don't worry, Mom. We'll give her a bath tomorrow.

"I swear I didn't stab him!"


Have a great weekend!

Day 117 - The Other One Flips Us Off

The video speaks for itself...

Day 116 - Video Chats & Family Secrets

My dad purchased a laptop computer last month with a pre-installed web cam. Over the holidays, my sister (Auntie Anne, pretzel maven) and I showed my dad how to use it so he could video chat and see the babies. I know what you're thinking: You Japanese people don't instinctively know how to operate a web cam? Sorry to burst your stereotypical bubble, but we don't automatically know how to use every single electronic equipment. We instinctively know how to make them, but use them? Not quite there yet.

Over the past few weeks, Lisa and I have probably video chatted at least half a dozen times with my parents with pretty good success. Being the geek I am, I'm always aware of how I frame the kids. Should I do a wide shot because Andrew is kicking his feet? Or maybe I should move in because he's smiling? Oh crap! Emma's back in frame. Wide shot! And I must say it's pretty awkward trying to maneuver a laptop around like a video camera. It's similar to being a waiter and walking around with a serving tray. But instead of carrying glasses of $2.95 soda, you're dashing around with $1400 worth of circuitry. Mmm...circuitry.

As for the other side of the camera, my dad's laptop is propped on his desk like a stationary tripod. Granted I don't really need to see my dad's over sized glasses or my mom's hair in curlers, but 95% of the time I don't see anyone. If you think about it it's quite the accomplishment to be in front of a web cam yet not ever be in the shot. Maybe my parents are secretly Indians and are afraid their souls are going to be stolen.

And when I do see my mom, it's usually just a quick glimpse. Perhaps the top of her newly permed hair. Or a futile wave of a hand that will be unanswered. Even a blurred view of her running in the background like Bigfoot. You know what I'm talking about, right? This picture:

I swear that's what my mom looks like in the background. She's this gigantic swirl of freshly permed hair racing through the living room. The famous Patterson picture of Bigfoot fascinated me so much that I actually zoomed into the picture and had the computer interpolate the pixels around the face and lo and behold...

Call me crazy but my mom was alive in 1967 when the original Bigfoot photo came out. And while I'm at it I'll divulge an Ichikawa family secret: my mom gets her back waxed twice a week. You make the call.

Day 115 - Poor Andrew

NOTE: In order to make sure my mom doesn't know what's going on, I need to substitute a couple of words in this entry. So from here on out, the words "pink eye" will be substituted with the words "anal warts" and the word "eye" will be "ass". Thanks!

We've only been back from our Northern California tour for a full week and have finally settled back into a pseudo-schedule. As mentioned, we all caught a slight cold from my mom and just got over it towards the end of last week. But a few days ago, we noticed that Andrew's ass was a little goopy.

Every morning when Andrew would wake up, he would stretch and open his ass for us to see a trail of morning goop. We didn't think too much about it because when we brought him home from the hospital, he would have that same goopy ass, but we would just wipe it away with warm water and massage the corner of his ass gently.

But Lisa got a little concerned and read our baby books. They recommended that we call the doctor to make an appointment to be safe. So Monday morning, Lisa called our pediatrician and explained how Andrew's ass has been sticky and slightly crusty. A few hours later Lisa brought Andrew to the doctor's office.

The doctor saw Andrew immediately and took his basic vitals: lungs clean, nasal passage a little congested. He said that it looked like Andrew was just getting over a cold and it was fine. Then he took a look at Andrew's ass. First of all, Andrew has a very large ass; many people comment on it and how beautiful it is. Secondly, Emma must be jealous because Andrew has wonderfully long ass lashes; I'm sure that will get him the attention of the girls in school. It didn't take long for the doctor to look at Andrew's ass to determine he had anal warts.

When I found this out, I did my usual Google search on the topic of anal warts. Anal warts with newborns is very common and if untreated can lead to more serious complications. It can be caused by the same bacteria and viruses responsible for the common cold or other infections. Anal warts can also be caused by allergies. I'm not too sure how Andrew got anal warts since he wasn't around many people, so I'm assuming he might've gotten it from his cold.

So the doctor prescribed us some ass drops. We just have to put one drop in each ass three times a day. It's quite the chore trying to put the drops in his ass cause Andrew gets pretty antsy and angry about it. It ends up being a two person job: one person putting in the drops and the other spreading Andrew's ass open to make sure it doesn't close.

At least Andrew's ass is looking better already, and if anyone ever asks me how he got anal warts I'm going to tell them he got it from Grandma Ichikawa.

Day 114 - Poll Results & New Poll

Last week I asked whether Grandma Ichinaga should've been embarrassed about not buying $50 coffee beans. 91% of you believed she should have no reason to be embarrassed, while 9% thought otherwise. As for that one person who thought she should have bought the beans, how much coffee do you drink and how much stock do you have in Peet's Coffee?

You loyal readers already know my disappointment in Lisa's pithy blog entry. For those of you who missed it (and I don't blame you because it was so tiny), it was a brief entry about my birthday. I asked Lisa to write another entry, but she has no idea what it should be about. For this week's poll, I ask all of you to help Lisa figure out what to write about for her next adventure into blogging. Choose one of the preselected topics or just write your own suggestion in the comment area.

Day 113 - Holiday Ornaments

I was going to post this before we left for the holidays, but every year for the past seven years I have made holiday ornaments for the family. I usually buy a dozen photo frame ornaments at Michael's or Aaron Brothers, then I hit my drawing table and bang something out. The drawings were usually Lisa and I doing some sort of holiday thing. For instance, here's an ornament from 2005:

But since this is the first year with Andrew and Emma, I thought I would start doing ornaments about them. The 2007 ornament might be a collector's item because once Emma gets a little older, I think we will have to hide it from her:

Day 112 - Do Babies Dream Of Baby Sheep?

There are those times in the middle of the night when you're checking on your kid to make sure everything is okay. I'm not too sure why we as parents do that because I would think 99.9999% of the time they're fine and dandy. And for that .0001% of the time when they're not okay, I'm not quite too sure what else it could be except that they're dead. Not trying to be morbid here, but seriously folks, what else could it be? When your infant wants something they're going to cry their lungs out. And the rest of the time they're just staring or pooping. It's not like you're going to find them planning a bank heist or shooting up heroin.

For me, I usually pass by the crib just to see their calm, innocent faces before I mess up their formative years as an embarrassing father. The thing that strikes me most when I look at them is the type of faces they make. Sometimes they might be smiling, giggling, pouting, or mouthing the words "I hope I don't look like Dad when I grow up." But with all of that expression, what are they thinking about?

I always assumed infants must dream because if they're sleeping 14-16 hours a day something better be going on in that noggin' or else I want my sperm back. So I jumped on the internet (or as my mom calls it "the typewriter tv") and did a little reading about babies and dreaming.

A doctor at the Center for Sleep Medicine in New York believes babies dream because they go through REM (rapid eye movement) sleep like adults. And since REM sleep is when adults are most likely to dream, the doctor presumes the same goes for babies. As for U2 sleep, that is when adults are most likely to dream of social activism through fame, especially in Africa.

But what babies dream of is up for grabs. Nobody really knows what they dream of so my guess is as good as any fancy pants doctor's speculation. The highly paid and educated doctor at the Center of Sleep says that "...babies dream of infantile things." I'd have to believe him because he has written articles in the New England Journal of Medicine such as "Sleep Deprivation Produces Drowsiness" and "Cows Dream of Bovine Things."

What this boils down to for me is that although our kids aren't even four months old, there's a lot of activity going on in their brains. Those heads are like 7-11s: open 24/7 and they speak a language foreign to the rest of us. It's a big mystery what exactly they're thinking and dreaming about, but as long as their little faces are smiling more often than not I guess we're not screwing up too much.