We’re on a island…

We’re in Hawaii, on the “Garden Island”, Kauai. This is the first real vacation since we had kids so it feels special.

You could say, the last vacation me and my husband went on, indirectly led us to the one we are on now. You see, we went on a second honeymoon to Mexico in 2007 and we had just found out I was 6 weeks pregnant with our first baby, needless to say I’m one of the few that have experienced spring break in Cancun completely sober.

Our plan was to see as much as possible of the historic places so we wanted to rent a car. And at the front desk of our hotel we got informed that we could get a car, free of charge for a week, all we had to do was go to a different hotel and have breakfast and attend this “information” meeting. We knew the deal, they wanted to sell us something, but what the heck, we’ll go, listen, eat and get the car..not get suckered in to anything.

2 hours and 3 breakfast burritos later we walk out of a restaurant with a bottle of champagne and a 40 year deal on vacation rentals. Suckeeers!! I hate sales people!

What sounded like a “grrrreat” deal then, have kind of felt like “damit, we have to figure out where to go so we can use those points we’re paying for every month..”(and which fee they also keep raising every year)

So finally last year we started planning for Hawaii, together with my mother in law and her husband, that have their own sucker vacation pack for life. And now we’re here, on this beautiful island together, I can’t complain. The Bali Hai Villas where were staying are great, fresh and kid friendly. And Kauai is so lush and green…

We also realized that this is the island where parts of Jurassic park was filmed..

No sight of and dinosaurs yet, just a shit load of wild chickens. And I’ve learned that I actually really enjoy waking up to the roosters “cock-a-doodles” at sunrise…

A Swedish saying, roughly translated..“nothing bad that doesn’t bring something good”..

Home sweet dusty home

Our life in the week that has passed..

In two days we packed 17 moving boxes and bags, filled with clothes, toys and every nick back we might want or need during our summer at home. 17 is insane! and record for us, I don’t know how it ended up being so much…but oh well.

I cleaned and mopped the apartment, put all spices in the refrigerator, cleaned all the bed sheets and put them and all duvets and pillows in sealed bags. When we get back to Tokyo in August it’s gonna be crazy hot and humid and I have learned through the years that you really don’t want to leave anything out for that long.

It’s nice, the flight from Japan to LAX is a straight shot, no layovers with long waiting and the fact that I really don’t like flying, the less take offs and landings, the better. With lives on two continents and my family in Sweden, we do quite a lot of traveling so our daughter is a pro, no craziness or meltdowns. Our son on the other hand….it THAT child. He threw fits and wanted to go to the bathroom every five minutes throughout the flight, he’s the type that would be better off sedated while flying. Either that or sedate the rest of the passengers, for their own comfort..

Coming home on the other hand is great as always, the house was insanely dusty but I was so happy to be home again after 9 months!  I plowed through it the same day we got back, with mop in hand, and now it’s back to its normal state of everyday mess. And the joy of sleeping in my own bed! Now I just wish that my kids could get over this jet lag…it’s 2.20am and I’ve been up with the kids for an hour already..

….I’m….so…tired!

 

Park Zoo’s and a dangerous mama.

Spring is really here! Today was so nice and warm and the petals are falling off the cherry trees, creating the illusion of snow in the air and on the ground. It’s amazing!

Todays adventure was going to Inokashira Park Zoo. I take the kids to Inokashira park every now and then but I’ve never been to the Zoo. Hanna went with school a few weeks ago and she loved it so I figured it would be a nice outing.

It was really cute, not very many big animals though, a big old tired elephant but then mostly smaller birds and rodents. The guinea pig petting area was the only thing my kids really cared about and the corner with some left over carnival looking rides. It’s free entrance to  the Zoo for kids up to 12 and 400 Yen for adults, it’s a hit! Perfect to just walk around and enjoy the beautiful surroundings.

 

So we’re merrily strolling around in the sunshine, and as I pass this mother and her toddler, the mother says (in Japanese of course) “Kowai mama!” basically meaning “scary, creepy” while glancing at me. I don’t think she thought I’d understand what she said, because she said it loud enough for me to hear. Only it took me a bout 10 seconds to process in my head that she had called me “scary looking”…! For whyyy?! Because I’m 5’9 and my head is partially shaved? What rock are you living under?

Isn’t it always like that, it’s when the moment has passed that you come up with all these things to say back. I couldn’t even get a “boo!” out in time!

I was looking at her, a few feet away and you could tell she was one of those dry people who huffs and puffs up on anything that is not “traditional”. The type that lies on her back like a dead flounder when having sex. And she was wearing a little sun hat with a white rubber band under her chin, that’s pretty scary to me, so I was kind of satisfied with that. I saw her looking over our way and all I could think was…yeah you would think I was scary wouldn’t you…

 

 

 

 

Time to stop slacking and start stacking..

I’m looking at these pictures of my youngest sister.Only 15 years old but already starting to make a name for herself on the Swedish fashion scene.

She did ACNE’s spring collection, and it popped up on my Facebook page, since I’ve liked their page…oh…is that..? That’s my sister!

I’m so happy for her that she’s doing well and she’s got amazing years ahead of her.

But this also makes me feel incredibly old. I remember when I first started modeling, it was before “Hotmail” existed..

Just then I realized, time is going by….I’m aging…

I had to throw a pitty party for a minute, then threw myself on my husband who was on the sofa, for a sympathy hug, then rolled off on to the floor for a 15 minute intense panic session of various ab-workouts and push ups.

My husband looking at me, throwing gasoline on the fire with the comment “Baby, you’ll never be 15 again”…

Well I know that! If anything, this makes me pumped and motivated…

I’ve decided that this summer I’m going to get as fit as I’ve ever been. Thanks to the BTD, I’ve gotten a great head start because those last most difficult pregnancy kg that I thought I’d be stuck with for ever, melted away in a couple of weeks after getting on it. So I’m gonna work on building muscle.

I’m gonna build so much muscle that you’re gonna wonder if I’m really a man in a two piece, I wanna look like a piece of oiled up beef jerky.

No, I’m just kidding…not my cup of tea.

See you on the fit side!

Diapers, talk and molars

I might have had a shitty week but my son has had an amazing one, I’d say. Well, apart from getting two molars, (not so pleasant I can imagine) he stopped using diapers! He’ll be two in June so this is early for us. Our daughter fought the potty for months, and I mean fought, she was terrified of it, and was finally diaper free around 2,5.

And little man here, he just loved ditching the diaper as soon as he realized he could. It’s been over a week now and he’s doing great! Even wakes me up at night to tell me he needs to go. It’s one of those milestones that make you realize how much they’ve grown. When you first have kids I don’t think you can imagine how fast that first year will go by, but it’s like an illusion. They sit, then crawl, then walk and after that it’s over, that’s the last time you get to sit down and have a cup of hot coffee in peace…

Potty and molars isn’t all though. His vocabulary has taken off as well. It’s pretty incredible, he seems to get everything we tell him and we get him, it’s so awesome!

Much of this is thanks to him having his sister to look up to, he want’s to do everything she does and she’s so cute with him. I just love this stage.

 

This is my daughter in the mornings

She has the worst morning mood. She comes in early in the mornings and wakes me up by hitting my pillow next to my face. Then points impatiently towards the living room and if I’m not standing up within 2 seconds she starts making this whiny voice and stomps with her foot.

I can’t stand this behavior and all it does is, catapults me in to a horrible morning mood of my own.

I’ve tried to talk to her but it’s just not going throughout to her. Same thing every morning and….I don’t know what to do…

 

Last home game!

This weekend my husband’s team played their last home game for the season. Now all they have to do is meet Aisin “Sea whores” (ok, so their real name is Sea horses but I can’t stand them…) next weekend in Toyota city.

Anyways, great games this weekend and the kids got to walk out with their papa during the opening ceremony. Last time our daughter went, she ended up hanging tightly around her papa’s neck because of the teams mascot, the Alvark, whom she is terrified of. And so is our son, so this time we didn’t know if both of them would come screaming off the court.

It was a little shaky at first but once holding on to their hero it was all good!

 

A year has passed

Four days ago it was the year anniversary of the 9.0 earthquake and devastating tsunami that hit Japan.

And every day for the past year I have thought about earthquakes, my children’s safety, about where to run, where to take cover, I’ve made it a habit to look up above me when walking anywhere. I always keep my eyes open for open “safe” spaces where ever I am. I rush my errands in department stores when I’ve got the kids with me, especially our local PARCO. Because I was a block away from it when the earthquake hit and I saw how it was swaying back and forth over the street below. I will never forget that. All the people who lost their lives and the ones that lost their homes in the tsunami. It’s hard to grasp.

This past year have been so mentally stressful and the first months back in Japan I was suffering from severe anxiety, and I’ve come to learn that anxiety can be mentally paralyzing. And it’s exhausting. Although I still think about all this, at least the anxiety is under control.

Another thing, here we get “early earthquake alerts” via the cell phones as well. It gives you about a 1 sec heads up before a bigger quake is hitting. Phone blinking and this extremely stressful warning alarm sounds out. That to me just makes the whole situation worse. Cuz now you have the alarm and the shaking at once. I mean what can you do in 1 second? …The whole night after the earthquake my phone was going of with quake alerts. I was on my toes, alone with the kids, because my husband was stuck in Nagoya till the next morning..STRESS-FULL!

Last night we had a 6.1 and “brreep! brreep! brreep!”, both mine and my hubbys phones goes off at the same time, a second later the whole building is rocking back and forth. Kids sleeping, we’re just pausing, looking at each other, looking at the light swaying above the table. I don’t think you can ever get used to it, but at the same time you are…it’s weird. Scary and it is what it is. The earth is alive.

My thoughts are with the people still struggling with the aftermath of this tragedy.

 

Stunning!

I know I know, I’m bios, she’s my baby sister. But remember this face because I have a feeling we’ll see a lot of her in the future.

Waiting to inhale..

We discovered we have a leak of some sort in our daughters room. The wall is wet, water coming from the ceiling or…who knows. And it’s all ending up in the corner by the floor, in a blossoming mold growth. I’m terrified of mold and while we’re waiting for someone to come have a look at the problem and fix it, remove it, I don’t want the kids to be in the room. I think if we inhale it, it will start growing in the lungs and spread to the brain and then we’ll die. Not good.

My husband thinks I’m blowing it out of proportions and don’t think it’s that big of a deal.. Hello, it’s mold…my arms are literally falling off as I type this…

Our daughter is camping on a futon in our bedroom till this problem is solved.