Superstylin'

It's been a busy and fun month as we enjoyed the summer heat - except when the heat was too unbearable to enjoy! It's actually been a pretty mild summer compared with the last few years that I've been here.

Joshua now has his first teeth! They started showing about a week ago and now he has two sharp little chompers at the bottom. We're still waiting to see him crawl, but for now he seems content to get around using his rolling and sliding technique. His most recent check-up at the doctor saw him weighing in at 7.77kg and 70.3 cm long.....almost 5kg and over 20 cm bigger than his birth!

A little blurry, but can just see teeth - hard to take new teeth pics!; Josh likes mummys new hair; playing with Shinosuke-kun; jamming on the G-tar; health check

We started the month with a BBQ for all my workmates. It was nice to get everyone together outside of work and enjoy a feed and drinks.

We then went to stay a night in Hakone with Aki's mum. The first day we went to the Hakone Open-Air Museum - a big park like place with lot's of intersting sculptures, including a building dedicated to Picasso. It was actually more enjoyable than I thought, with many interesting and crazy pieces to see. We enjoyed a nice meal and hot bath at the ryokan and planned to play golf the next day. Unfortunately, a typhoon decided to interrupt those plans so we just headed home instead.

Aki and Joshua went away the following week to stay in Yamanashi with her family. They had a lot of fun as they could enjoy the cooler temperatures outside.

We got the pool out again, and this time Joshua enjoyed it a lot more. He was happy to splash around and be dragged through the water.



As part of our training days at work, we went to our company president's beach house near Zushi. After about an hour of talking business we were free.to enjoy the rest of the day, which meant BBQ, swimming, lot's of alcohol and a jacuzzi. Aki and Joshua also joined us in the afternoon. It was an awesome day, with one of the highlights being in the jacuzzi, with a glass of champagne, watching the sun set over Mt. Fuji. Truely Beautiful! I also saw some stingray while swimming and got my first real tan of the summer.....just hope it wasn't too much coz I hate to peel! Hopefully Shachou will tell us where he leaves the keys, so we can go back some time soon.

The Politically Incorrect Blog

Actually, there's nothing very "un-PC" here, but I just watched the first episode of TVNZ's "Politically Incorrect Parenting Show" and got a good laugh out of it - especially as I'm dealing with parents everday and I can definitely see the twisted extremes that some parents go to. Having said that, I hope I can stay nice and relaxed with Joshua!

I didn't realise a whole month had gone by without updating here. We haven't been too busy, but I guess I like to spend my free time playing with Joshua more and more as he keeps growing. It's so fun to watch him slowly develop, but also realise how much he's changed in his first seven months! He is now eating two meals a day, and has a wide range of foods in his diet. Fruits are easily his favourite, but he has no problems eating vegetables, bread, fish and rice as well. Joshua is now sitting a little better by himself. His personal best is about 20 seconds before toppling over! He's still not crawling, but he can move around quite a bit by sliding on his belly - a bit like a seal. Now we have to keep a closer eye on him - as evidenced by his recent discovery of an airplane ticket that he found, ripped and chewed on! His coordination is also getting much better as he plays with toys and throws them around.

It's hard to remember everything we've done in the last month without checking our photo's.... We spent one afternoon at the beach. Tokyo area beaches are not exactly beautiful, but it wasn't too bad. Joshua wasn't too sure about the water, especially when the sand buried his feet in the shallow surf. It'll be a lot more fun next year when he can run and play in the water by himself.

Brad and Colleen stopped over for a couple of days on their way to Thailand. It was much too short a time but we still managed to gorge ourselves on sushi, play XBOX360, have a BBQ and drink a lot of booze.