Happy Halloween 2010!

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The next American Idol?

Adam decided to charm me at dinner with his amazing raspberry rendition of "Every Morning" (heard in the background). Oh, he's going to be such a charmer. I love his smile.

Ha,ha. Had to include a picture of his new talent. Instead of picking up his sippy cup, he decided he would just scrunch over and drink. Laziness or ingenuity?

Typhoon Chaba

What we do to entertain ourselves during a typhoon...

We go for walks in the house. (He has really taken off the past 2 days. He used to only do 4-5 steps at a time. Yes, Mary's wearing her Christmas pj's already :))

We watch the wind, the rain and Daddy pull down the swing that we forgot to secure.

We carve our Jack O Lanterns

Waaa-ah-ah-ah (evil laugh) Death by spoon.

We enjoy fresh, roasted pumpkin seeds. (Apparently, it's a dangerous activity)

We admire our handiwork. Our first Jack O Lanterns as a family.
And we end the day with some wild, crazy hair vaguely reminiscent of The Flock of Seagulls.

That is what we do during a typhoon. What do you do?

The third prize!

Yea! Our reward calender is really starting to work (knock on wood). If you remember, the first prize was a huge Thomas the Tank Engine balloon. The second prize was a Gordon train (I didn't blog that one). Well, today, she earned her 3rd set of 7 smiley face stickers for doing such a great job sleeping at night and going to the bathroom all by herself. I took her to the toy store on base to pick a new train if she wanted. She said she wanted to leave her options open and see if something "called out to her". Ha,ha,ha!!!! She found a train she wanted and carried it around while we went through each aisle. A Toy Story memory game tempted her for a split second, but she didn't waiver. However, she stopped short when she saw the shopping cart. She easily gave up the train for the cart without hesitation. I wanted to keep her prize at $10 or less. The cart was exactly $10 and it was the last one on the shelf. I guess it was meant to be. Congratulations Sweetheart.

She's taking Big Baby to the store.

The fly on the wall

Ever wonder what it would be like to be a fly on the wall (or in our case a gecko)? This is what you would have overheard in our house this week.

• Ewww. Mom, he's touching his boy parts again!
• Me: Mary, what time did you get up? Mary: At fifth forty
• No! Don't touch the stereo. No! don't eat paper. Cat vomit is not food. Ewww, your vomit is not food. Come on, try the peaches, you eat rocks and they're waaaay better than rocks.
• I like your panties, Mom. They're bbbiiiigggggg!
• N- Me: What's this letter? Mary: N! For Nancy! Me: And? Mary: Nose! Me: And? Mary: Eyes! Me: Um, no. Oh! N for No!
• After waking up from nap or sleeping all night, Mary announces that "I'm froggy."
• When I was little born, I had boy parts, but then they fell off and now I have girl parts.
• Me: Mary, guess what? Mary: You love me? Me: I love you. Mary: I love you too.

scrub a dub

If I could choose 1 word to describe the Japanese, I'd have to say...clean. The streets are clean, the stores are clean, the bathrooms are clean, even the people are neat and tidy, except for the wild and crazy outfit choices. It's common practice to remove your shoes before entering a house, certain restaurants, temples, etc. so as not to "pollute" clean interiors with outside dirt. There are even rules about pre-washing before entering an Onsen (communal bath). Heck, there are even bidets on some public toilets; However, I'm too scared to try them for fear of possible splash back contamination from a previous participant. Where is all this going? Washcloths...or lack there of. What do these clean people use to wash with? You would think we would have learned after our last trip to a Japanese hotel and instead of washcloths they had strange "magic eraser" type body sponges. In case you were wondering, they didn't erase all the unsightly marks like the real ones. So in Kyoto, we were once again washcloth-less...even magic eraser-less. They provided us with hand towels and full size towels. I quickly found washing the kids with the hand towels to be a bit cumbersome, awkward and down right strange. So the goal for day 2 of vacation was to hunt for washcloths. Luckily, they're everywhere. Unluckily, they're more expensive than one would think (@$21 for 4), but they sure make great souvenirs...and are super light to bring back in the suitcase! Of course, we stumbled upon the 100yen store after we bought these. Oh well.


I will admit, the Hello Kitty in the Kimono is pretty cool. Mary's is on the left and mine is one the right. Didn't get a shot of the boys'.

Putthoff Pumpkin Painting

This is the first year Mary has had a pumpkin (of course, we had to get Adam one too). I still have horrific memories of my brother, Carl, slicing open his hand as he was trying to carve the jack-o-lantern and having to be rushed to the emergency room for stitches. I just want to paint faces on them. Doug thinks we have to cut them (I want to roast the seeds, right?). So temporary truce, we paint now and next week we cut. This ends up working in our favor, double entertainment for Mary. She had a great time using the "grown-up" paint and adding lots of colors. I'll admit, I had fun painting a face that ended up looking a lot like Adam (big ears and buck teeth).

Showing off the "two handed paint brush method".

Ta-da! Masterpieces!

Even though the locals don't really celebrate Halloween, they sell a lot of Halloweenish stuff to appeal to the Americans. Anything to make money, right? We thought it was funny to find a Japanese jack-o-lantern

Kyoto

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For those of you without facebook accounts, I've posted the picture collage here. We had a great time in Kyoto. I was really nervous about all of us in 1 hotel room. Adam's used to us putting him down in the crib and walking away and he puts himself to sleep. Not so easy when he has a sister and his parents to look at. We learned quickly, that Mary and I had to escape to bath time and let Doug put Adam down. We also quickly realized the Japanese version of the crib was too small for Adam. The bars only came to his waist and he would have fallen out the moment we turned our back. Luckily, we got a triple bed room and one was pushed right up against the wall, so that became ours (mine and his). Naps were impossible but it made bedtime easier. Of course, us turning out the lights, laying in bed with the kids and "pretending" to be asleep to help them fall asleep caused us all to drift off at 8pm the first night. Here are a few things I learned on our trip: When your 3 yr old removes a toothpick from the toothpick holder (at the restaurant), uses it to stir her tea, then puts it back in the holder...it's gone forever. To the person who finds the wet toothpick, all I can say is "I'm sorry." A playground is a playground. Doesn't matter if it has the best equipment or just plain grass. All is good when you can run and play. Shrine dirt tastes like regular dirt. playground dirt tastes like regular dirt. Adam will put anything and everything in his mouth. We have some wonderful travelling kids, but we're skipping the ice festival in February. We're exhausted.

10/10/10

10/10/10, a date not to forget in the Putthoff household.

10 months 4 days old.

The Reward Chart

The Problem: For over a year, our nights have consisted of us waking Mary and taking her to the bathroom before we go to bed or letting her wake up on her own and cry until one of us (usually me) gets up to take her. Once in a blue moon, she will surprise us and hold it all night, but that's rare. We decided it's time for her to start doing it on her own.

The Goal: Go to the bathroom by herself at night without crying.

The Method: A reward chart. For every night that she's successful, she gets 1 smiley face sticker. An unsuccessful night gets an X. 7 Stickers earns a reward.

The Reward: For months, all Mary can talk about is Thomas the Tank Engine. She's obsessed. So the idea that a train would be incentive was a no brainer. "Do you want the kind that cousin Gus has that you push around or do you want the kind like Jusco where you push a button and it automatically goes?" JUSCO!!! Of course. I guess that's good, since we looked at the exchange and even though they have a rather large Thomas section, they are lacking the most important one...THOMAS. Doesn't surprise me. We started looking at the Japanese stores and finally hit the mother load at Toys R Us. Trains out the wazoo. There are push ones, wood ones, metal ones and the all important, battery operated ones. Of course, they are 2,299 yen. Yikes, but worth it if this is successful.

The Process: We've had to adjust the rules a bit. We originally started by saying she had to get 7 smiley face stickers in a row and if she had a bad night, then she had to start all over again. Harsh. Too tough for a 3 yr old. Then the nightmares started and uncontrollable screaming and crying at night that woke Adam, woke us and caused us to have a brief moment of bad parenting and take away stickers as punishment. I regret it, Doug regrets it, Mary doesn't remember. We've moved on and hopefully learned our lesson. (I'll post about the nightmares some other time). So we changed the rule to just 7 stickers, no matter how long it took.

The Prize: Today, Mary met her goal! We loaded up the car and headed to Toys R Us. She couldn't stop talking about her train and how next she's going to work to earn tracks. (Shhh, we bought her a train table for Christmas and it's stashed in the closet). We get to the Thomas display and all of a sudden she sees a Thomas balloon. A HUGE Thomas balloon. She, who loves balloons, decides that's what she wants as her prize. Really? Really. 2,299 yen vs 899 yen. SOLD! I'll admit, I tried to talk her out of it. I didn't want to have to deal with "buyer's remorse" when we got home. No worries, she's so stinkin happy. Thrilled. That balloon went everywhere with her today, even around the block for our evening stroll. Because we're still in the early stage of self night pottying, we decided to continue the reward chart with the same goal and the same rules for another prize. Guess what she wants for her next prize? Another balloon! Ah kids, gotta love 'em!

It really is big!

She's already in love. Gotta give it a hug.Yep, kissing the tires or whatever they're called.The hard work pays off! The reward chart. YEA!!!!

8 months

I like to think I'm an optimist. I always look on the bright side of life. Positive people beget positive experiences, right? I will say, I have loved everywhere we have lived and we've moved a lot. Granted, we've had the occasional gripe and groan (we're not all flowers and happy faces)about 1 year orders to the continental U.S. between our 3 island tours, but each place has had it's own charm. Sicily had the joy and excitement of newlyweds exploring Europe and the wonder of new foods and cultures. New Jersey had the beauty and peacefulness of farms, rolling hills and the best fresh fruits and vegetables (oh how we miss Delicious Orchards). It also had the thrill of a short train ride to New York City for a weekend getaway and a Broadway show. Hawaii was, *sigh*, Hawaii. Kansas was great because we were an hour drive from Doug's family, our beautiful daughter was born and I finally got my dream trip to Branson (ha,ha,ha- no, seriously). We were spoiled with that year seeing family whenever we wanted and were a bit sad to be moving so far away. But hey, life's an adventure, right? So now we're in Japan. The newness has worn off and the end of the tour is in sight...and the pessimism is creeping in. 8 months to go. 8 months to hang on. It's frustrating being so isolated, from family, from friends, from...things. It seems that there's no easy way to get anything. I go to the commissary for 3 items and they don't have a single one. The big Tylenol recall was last May and yet, the exchange and the commissary still have empty shelves with no replacement infant generic acetaminophen or ibuprofen. I ordered medication on-line for Adam and even though it shipped over a month ago, it's not here. Don't even get me started on our Christmas package from my parents last year. Why do they offer dance classes for our kids and not sell any of the apparel required and then say your kid can't dance if they don't have the proper attire? Thank goodness that shipment arrived in a week, but boy was I stressed. It's the little things that drive me crazy. Why is it that I can't find a single pair of 12 month boy pajamas? Sigh. Sure, I can say I love the food here, but because we're a 1 income family, we don't eat out much. Because we have a toddler and an infant, we are limited in what we can do and see. I love all the friends we have made here. I love how our family has grown from 3 to 4. I love the day to day enjoyment of watching and teaching our children. But most of all, I think I am looking forward to loving the day we move back to the States. 8 months left...and counting.

Wow! Can't believe it's been over a week since I've last posted. Not too much going on here. Doug's finally getting better, though now he (and we) are plagued with a loud, annoying (sorry, honey), dry cough. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, praying to God and wishing with all my heart that he gets completely better and the rest of us don't get sick because next Wednesday, we're off to Kyoto. I'm half dreading it and half super excited. The dread is all 4 of us in 1 hotel room. Not sure how that's going to work, since Adam is used to us closing his door to his room and letting him fall asleep on his own. He doesn't have his goofy sister to look at (or mom and dad in the room). Hmmm. Will let you know how that goes. We'll just be taking a quick 4 day, 3 night trip. To tide you over, I've compiled some pictures to share of this past week.


We've been working on " finger foods".

We've gotten ourselves stuck ala "Austin Powers" style, but it's all good. Yeah, Baby!

We drooled. Oh wait! We always do that.

We played at the playground and the weather was beautiful.

Adam tasted everything while we were there. I kept telling him there wasn't anything edible, but he didn't listen.

(there were sticks)

(and leaves) (and the tiny pine cones that are the perfect size to hoard in those chubby cheeks). And we got a couple really good shots.

That's what we've been doing.