Seasons_Greetings-1998

This year was another one that we enjoyed here in Japan, doing our best to benefit from what is here and not to long too much for what we don't have. We've tried to stay in touch with family and friends elsewhere (though I imagine they're thinking we could have tried a little harder). We did manage to get to America last summer, visiting for a much-too-brief time on the West Coast and in Hawaii.

As the Japanese economy teeters on the brink, Gary's company is doing its best to stay afloat. We've had to tighten our belts, cut costs and so on, but we should weather the storm okay. Seems like the way business is done here will be going through some radical changes.

As a family, it was a year of growth for us. It's a cliche, of course, to say the kids are getting bigger. We always knew that they would, but it's still rather startling to find Rennie coming up to our shoulders. Drew's not so far along; he's still just a little guy. At the same time we love to see the new things he can do, we also want to indulge in his littleness. We appreciate that kids are only small once and, while we encourage our kids to grow and change, we also try to enjoy them fully for who they are now (I'm writing this paragraph at work, where it's easy to wax philosophic on the subject. It's a little harder to do this on the front lines).

A few highlights--

Lauren's now in the third grade at Yagihara Shogakko (elementary school). This kid is truly bilingual. With English-speaking family and friends "back home," and in our home, for the most part, she speaks English. But at school and in the neighborhood, she speaks Japanese like the native she is. We've always read to her and she's picked up our love of reading sufficiently to enable her to read at her grade level in English. But she's also kept pace at school. In fact (okay, time for paternal boasting), she won an award for writing (in Japanese, of course) an essay in a competition of all schools in Chiba Prefecture (equivalent to a state).

As for Andrew, well, with the experience of Lauren as an infant behind us we thought we were prepared for having another kid. Little did we know. In this country they just say, "Of course. He's a boy." Not exactly politically correct. Maybe it's just personality differences. In any case, whew. This guy's a handful, not in a mean-spirited way or an intentionally destructive way, just in . . . an active two-year-old way. We are constantly amazed at the things that he remembers (the latest song is "America the Beautiful"), and if his energy can be channeled (or — let's be positive thinkers — when it's channeled), I "pity the poor fools" who get in this guy's way.

Shortly after his second birthday, Drew was diagnosed with epilepsy. He experiences simple-partial and complex-partial seizures. Since then we have been trying different medications (and combinations of medications) to see what will best control his condition. Prospects are good that he will be able to function normally (i.e., go to school with no special problems), and he may well outgrow the condition entirely. Be assured that other than when he is actually hit by a seizure, in other words about 99.7% of the time, he is his usual rascally rogent self. The seizures themselves, by the way, are not the stereotypical intense total-body several-minute experiences one might imagine. They are considerably milder than that and, thanks to the medication, they are continuing to get less frequent and less severe.

It's been an eventful year for us, and a mostly positive one. We hope that it's been a good year for you as well. Happy Holidays!


More pictures:

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