Sunday Night

Well, nothing too dramatic happened this weekend. We are having fantastic fall weather. There is a fresh nip to the air, and the maples are gearing up for their autumnal display of brilliant reds and golds. We went to an antiques market at a shrine in Harajuku today and picked up some Christmas gifts. Some day soon we will head back to Harajuku to get Robert's picture taken with some of the Harajuku Girls. I think they will want to pose with him.

Last weekend we had another tropical storm blow through packing 50+ mph winds. I knew it was raining, but it rains a lot here and I had not heard there was going to be a storm -- this should not surprise those of you who know me well. We needed some supplies, so I decided to brave the rain and stroll Robert and myself up to the grocery to resupply. Robert came through nice and dry, we have a clear plastic rain fly for the stroller, but I blew out another umbrella as soon as I left the grocery store and got soaked to the bone on the way home. I need a rain jacket. Have any of you seen mine? It has been MIA since our arrival.

Robbie is really at a fun stage right now. He likes to mimic whatever we are doing. A case in point, today at dinner I accidentally tried to breathe a bit of water and thumped my chest a couple of times as I coughed. Later, while I was bathing him, Robert got some water down in his lungs and he thumped his own chest while coughing it out. Too cute.

His mobility is increasing as well. Over the last couple of weeks he has become quite proficient at climbing up the ladder on the slide at the park near our house. He still wants to hold your hand while he slides down though -- it is quite a long slide, and very slippery. Here is a video we shot this afternoon, so I guess you can see for yourself:



There is not a whole lot else to report other than we found a really good baby sitter. Her name is Katie. She went to a small liberal arts school in Vermont where she double majored in Environmental Studies and Geology. But jobs as a geologist are hard to come by when you don't want to work for a company that is engaged in "resource extraction", so she and her boyfriend moved to Tokyo and took jobs teaching English. And babysitting. We have her coming over every other Saturday evening so that Sarah and I can go out and explore a bit of Tokyo nightlife. For our inaugural adults-only evening in Tokyo, we went out to dinner, then to a Keller Williams concert with my friend Andrew from work. Andrew is leaving Tokyo on Friday to head back to Sydney to be with his wife. She is due to be giving birth to their second son in early December.

Speaking of work, the project I came here for had its first release on Friday. Everything seemed to go all right, but we don't process our first trades until tomorrow morning. Wish us luck!

I finally had a chance to update flickr this evening too, so check it out if you need an additional Robert fix:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kirkbrides/