The BEST Beach

Chris and I are always on the hunt in Okinawa for the best beach.  Now, I think this might be a personal opinion depending on what features you enjoy of a beach.  Chris and I look for the following attributes:

1. Few to no other beach goers
2. Good swimming
3. Good snorkeling
4. Good sand
5. Secluded
6. Shade? Easy to get there?

I'm even going to venture to say that those are in order from most important to least important (especially since we have an umbrella and as long as its an hour or less, we don't mind driving to meet our other requirements).

Today we hit the jackpot.  We found a beach (hamahiga) that met a LOT of our requirements.  It was gorgeous.  We did have to pay for parking, some American's showed up when we were leaving (boo), and the snorkeling wasn't great.  But it was really gorgeous.  You're probably thinking, "Geez, that's three strikes," but a good beach is hard to find, and I assure you, this was a good one!  You can judge for yourselves, via the pictures.  Reina LOVED it, as it was a good swimming and good sand beach - perfect (except for Reina - as she HATES the sand) for little ones.  

Tomorrow will be a day full of errands, cleaning, and packing in preparation for our trip on Thursday.  Chris and I had quite a lengthy discussion on what Reina will where on the plane.  I think a settlement was reached....but its always interesting finding out what Chris really thinks of Reina's clothes, as he usually doesn't tell me.  

I fear that after the trip, Chris will be on a quest to find a TV so that he can watch the last few games of the World Cup. He is already wearing his Japan jersey for tonights 11 o'clock game.  Boy, I am looking forward to the time difference once we hit stateside, as I think Chris and I have decided that Japan is the WORST difference between here and S. Africa.  

"Say Cheese"

Reina has learned how to "smile" on cue.  Unfortunately she thinks this means squint and bar her teeth (see picture).  Sometimes I get her to laugh and snap a good pic, and I get her to laugh because I"m cracking up at her ridiculous smile.  Reina is also starting to drop some of her signs in place of words.  She won't sign more or water, as she says those two words all the time, and she also usually says down too. Mind you they aren't complete words yet, but she's getting there.  She is still learning new signs, and Chris and I agree that our new favorites are "cold," "go," and our old favorite "baby."

Swim lessons have been going pretty good. We finished one week and it was kind of an up and down with Reina.  Some days she would tell me "all done" over and over because she wanted to get out, other days she loved it.  We sing lots of songs when swimming at lessons, and her absolute favorite is "baby shark, doo, doo." We do these cute hand gestures that Reina tries to mimic. Its really cute.

Reina also has started to "play" pretend.  Mr. Cow (a present from Grandma since Reina was born in the year of the cow) is her baby.  She likes to put Mr. Cow in her stroller and car seat and then tuck him in with her blanket and say "shh." Then she'll walk around with him in the stroller and likes to let me hug and give Mr. Cow kisses.

As you can see from the pictures, Reina has become quite the little climber - into and on top of things. The picture in the basket was about 2 seconds before the whole thing tipped to the front and she got a nasty bruise on her chin. I fear that there will be many more tumbles in our future.

18 Month Stats

Reina will be 1.5 years old on July 4th. Since we're flying out on the first, we went for her 18month well-baby visit today. She had a terrible time. I have never seen her so unhappy. As soon as I even thought about putting her on the scale for her initial vitals she started to cry. After the torture of having her weight, height, blood pressure and temperature taken we went to wait in a room for the doctor. Our "old" doctor recently moved, so we had to see a new pediatrician (she was great). Reina was pretty good until the doctor had to start touching her...looking in her ears, eyes, checking her legs, etc. Mind you this is all before the really bad part - when some poor guy has to come in and give her a shot. And yes, this was the first visit when she only got one. So, Reina pretty much cried from about 1 - 1:30.

Then we went up to radiology b/c the doc wanted to check out Reina's tummy (she has some bathroom problems, I'll leave it at that). This was another form of torture...so again, I literally had to have her pried off of me and then hold her down for the x-ray. The tech said my hand was in the picture, but I think both of us knew trying again was pointless. After all of this we went home and Reina was quite ready for a nap. We were surprised to find her happy in her crib after her nap, reading a book to herself. Hopefully she is at peace with the world.

Oh. And her stats. She is in the 20th percentile for weight and height (22.5lbs and 30.5 inches). She is in the 40th percentile for head circumference. Aside from the cruel and unusual punishment, Reina got a clean bill of health. Glad we don't have to go back there for another 6 months!

First Days of Summer

Summer vacation is here. We are relaxing around Oki for about a week and a half before we fly to Portland on the 1st. Although the forecast calls for thunderstorms every day, we managed to go to the beach yesterday and start swim lessons today. Reina loves the water. We also filled up a bucked on our balconi so that she could play in the water. Wish we could take that on the plane - that is at least an hours worth of entertainment.

We go for what I think may be our last meeting about our house before we leave today. Kuniko is up from Naha to watch Reina, as her attention span is too short for our meetings now! Reina has also started going to just one nap. Its good and bad, since now she goes down for longer - closer to 2.5hours, but its bad since she goes down at lunch time, so we're stuck at home for the middle part of the day. Oh well, we need to eat our food anyhow!

Feeding Frenzy

I wish this title was describing Reina's appetite. Unfortunately we still haven't figured out what she'll eat no matter what (except maybe rice), so she always seems to want to eat, but doesn't want to eat very much of what we offer. I guess to be fair, she goes in spurts with eating. Maybe its her teeth?

I digress...Obaa-chan Kuniko took Reina to the park last week for one of our house meetings. She got eaten alive by mosquitos. Reina seems to be sensitive to the bites; between the park and our visit to the beach yesterday she is covered in huge red welts. She scratched one so much she started to bleed, and today she seemed quite annoyed by them. I'm not sure what to do aside from not go outside, which seems kind of sad.

Reina LOVES to play in water. We have a spicket on our balconi that she recently discovered, and the last two mornings she has come in soaking after playing in it. And of course at the beach she loves to sit and splash in the water and figure out buoyancy. I plan on signing up for swim lessons again the week before we leave and am excited to see her in the pool.

We finally got by the house today. All of the load-bearing walls are in place. We even walked through. I have a whole album dedicated to the house if you find your way to picasa via the slideshow on the blog. There I uploaded a bunch of new pictures with captions. We have made most of the final decisions. I'm most excited about the tile. We found some really cool tile for the outside. After walking through the house everything seems pretty good. I'm a bit worried about the bedrooms being a bit small and the whole house being dark....but its going to be ours and it will be awesome!

We are on our last week of school. Then Chris will be boxing up his school stuff and moving to Kubasaki. We are really excited to be at the same school. And I know Chris will enjoy the older crowd (the students, not the teachers!). We have also been casually researching different preschools for Reina. We may change, but if we don't find the perfect fit, we'll be happy with the place she goes now. 3 weeks until WA!

Newest Accomplishments

Again, I have little to report. I feel like I say that a lot, but still post on here I guess out of habit. Reina has been learning some new tricks that Chris and I really appreciate. She signs "thank you" pretty often now and she can shake her head "yes" when you ask her a question. She's been shaking "no" for some time now, so the yes is a welcome change. And its really cute, because she still has to deliberately shake her head "yes" in such a manner that its really a whole body yes. Pictures are just ones I took around the house of Reina being Reina. She is still waking up once at night, but if she does, that usually means she'll sleep in (today she made it till 8), so I don't mind.

We are making lots of decisions about the house and I am finally starting to realize that its going to be done in no time. We leave for the states in about 4 weeks and when we return in August, it will practically be finished. 2 more weeks of school, and I swear we're all practically counting the seconds at this point!

Interior Design

Final decisions have been made (well I think!). We decided on some tile that I feel really good about. After that I feel like I won't really know how I feel until I see it done. We meet again today at the kitchen showroom to make final decisions about the kitchen and the front door. I have to praise Reina for being such a trooper. We lug her to these long, boring meetings and she really had done well.

Not much else new. Reina has been talking a lot more. She is working on thank you, which is my personal favorite, since it gives her such good manners and it sounds funny when she says it, since it sounds nothing like what it should be. I have to make her 18 month appointment for June. I can't believe she's 1.5! I have uploaded random pictures of her reading, helping with the laundry (she copies EVERYTHING we do), and holding a lot of things (something else I think she gets from us).

Oh, we also made plans to go to Greece this summer. We had planned on going to London to see Liz graduate and had added on some extra time figuring we'd do some travel in europe. After much deliberation, we finally decided we really wanted to do Greece. It really is the perfect location for Chris and I, since I love the beach and he loves history. We will do Athens for a few days and then head to one of the Greek islands (right now its looking like Tinos or Naxos with a visit to Delos).