Eyeroll, please!

One day Maggie and Arthur are going to roll their eyes at us.  Nonstop.  As parents, Matt and I have lots of glaring eye-rollable qualities.  Consider first of all how I spend much of my day: in the kitchen.  What could I possibly doing in the kitchen all day?  Oh making things like vegan yogurt and cream cheese to replace non-vegan things in recipes that aren't vegan to start with.  Are we vegan? Not anymore.  Morning sickness and another incident put an end to that.  We are still quasi-vegan, I suppose.  I made vegan cream cheese the other day to pair with home-cured salmon.  Yes, vegan cream cheese with ACTUAL salmon...  Eyeroll, please.  It was quite the process, having to hang for 24 hours in a cheese cloth suspended over our sink.  Is there milk in our fridge?  Yes, right next to the two kinds of soymilk and sometimes almond milk. Milk is the only thing we can regularly get around here that's not highly processed and doesn't curdle in hot coffee.  Still, I insisted on making vegan cream cheese rather than buying the easily available dairy variety.

I burn things all the time in my kitchen.  Walnuts.  Caraway seeds.  Toast.  We had a toaster but it started working less and less because of electrical differences between here (Japan) and America where the toaster was originally purchased and used.  I could use a timer, but I don't have a dedicated one.  I have Siri set a timer for me quite a lot.  Siri is often in the next room, though, or my hands are so full of food prep that I can't bring myself to hold down the Siri-call button on my $500-iPhone.  Also, she can only do one timer at a time.  We've looked for timers on many occasions.  There are lots of them, but they are all made in China and we have agreed not to buy things made in China that we are not planning to walk on or if it's not an absolute crisis, because they don't last, you might read in the paper one day that it is toxic, and labor practices in China are questionable at best.  Do we own things made in China?  Yes.  Have I visited China and plan to visit there again, like maybe this summer?  Yes.  Isn't it frustrating to always be burning things?  Yes... Eyeroll, please.

I am American, born and raised.  So is Matt.  I speak to my kids in French, and Matt speaks to them in Spanish.  We live in Japan.  Did either of us grow up speaking these languages with anyone?  No... Eyeroll, please.

One day when we are done having babies and moving around with the Navy, we are going to get rid of a lot of our furniture and put the rest in storage and take the fam on a long trip... to Disney? Nope.  Europe?  Nope.  China?  African Safari?  Cruise?  Nope.  We are going to hike part of the Appalachian trail.  With backpacks.  And kids.  They'll appreciate the experience one day... Eyeroll, please.

I could go on, but this blog is about Maggie and Arthur and their childhood, not about what crazy parents they have.  But that's part of it, too, I suppose.  Here are some pictures:

Arthur, at 4:45AM.  But he didn't want to sleep anymore.  So he chatted with Mom over coffee.

It sure is bright out at 5AM here in Japan, thanks to no daylight savings.

Maggie singing along with Caleb and Sophia on the computer, sporting pigtails (just like Sophia) and new hair clips from the 100yen store.

Aren't these hairclips great?

Daddy's getting ready to jog Maggie to nursery school and go for a run!

Arthur and Daddy, just before Daddy goes off to fly his helicopter.

Oh, no.  Must be time for Mommy.