The last week our little boy has been having a fever. The nights have been restless, filled with coughing that had him wake up all the time, almost as soon as he got back to sleep. It is of course a bit worrisome and painful to see our little boy in such discomfort, so the …
A year ago I had never heard of Thomas the tank engine, as far as I remember. Now I am familiar with not only Thomas but many of his friends thanks to my son. He tells me about James and Percy and Hiro and Rebecka, and his Thomas puzzle we bought last week has already …
I never thought that having a little toddler at home would be to have a teacher giving me lessons in metaphysics, or a zen monk introducing a koan to me. That is one of the things I appreciate most about being a father, the constant need to challenge habits and old patterns of thought which …
Sometimes I wonder if there is a kind ghost living in our house or if our baby has some kind of special powers. A little red wooden toy car had been missing for weeks. I had been searching for it everyone including the bathroom and I was convinced that it must have somehow ended up …
Having had a few tough weeks with our son graduating from one cold to the next, there has been a lot of unusual lifestyle patterns forming at home. Our son waking up coughing in the middle of the night has been a frequent occurrence; when the coughing has stopped he does not want to go …
Our little family tries to surf in the rough sea of languages every day, the waves sometimes so violent that I fall of the surfing board and wash up on the shore all bruised. Especially so after a morning with my son at the playground. My wife and I speak Japanese and English, I speak …
The slight shift in in temperature, required to make the air coming in from the sea feel soft instead of chilly, has come. The sun is warming the playgrounds from early morning, and suddenly we start to meet friends that we have not seen since autumn. It is like the children and their parents (for …