Babel Weekly – 49

Your 49th week was spent entirely in our new Derby home. It was Papa’s long Easter break and he spent most of that playing with you and taking care of you, while I unpacked our boxes and got our new house organized.

The new house is nice and spacious, yet it turns out we have less space here than we had in Buxton, so I’ve had to pick and choose which of our belongings got a spot in the new house and which got stored in our garage. It’s good practice for when we move back to Japan, where all living spaces are much smaller and we’ll need to make do with even less stuff.

I read on several baby sites that moving house can be quite traumatic for babies, but you’re doing totally fine. You did get a lot of practice making yourself comfortable in new environments last month in Japan, where for three weeks we spent nights at several different houses, hotels and ryokans.

I’m not all that comfortable here yet. It feels similar to a culture shock, like I experience every time we move to a new country. There are lots of new things to get used to and old things to be missed. It takes me a while to find a new routine and comfort zone in a new environment. Yet, I’m sure that soon taking care of you and myself in the new house will be just as normal as it was in Buxton.

The fact that you are doing so well and are so happy in the new house helps me adjust quicker and easier. Next week, IKEA will deliver curtains and a few more necessary items for daily life and then the house will finally be completely in order. Except for that boiler that’s still not working, so we haven’t had working heaters since we moved in.

We do have hot water because there is a water tank heated by an electric immersion heater. We do have to space out our showers and baths to make sure we can all have warm water when we wash ourselves. You and daddy have been taking baths together and you love it.

We have started practicing brushing your teeth this week. This is becoming very necessary because we’ve just discovered three more teeth coming through: the two front teeth and your left upper vampire teeth. So soon you’ll be showing off six teeth! Yes, you’re still breastfeeding, and yes, those upper teeth scare the heck out of me.

You are standing by yourself more and more often and we’ve even seen you dancing while holding on to nothing. You love your songs, and when the music starts your little body starts moving and your arms start waving and you’re dancing and hopping and you also like to sing along. It’s immensly entertaining. Your current favorite song is probably “Oni No Pantsu”, you love to see it on the large TV but you also love it when we sing it to you. Singing that song has helped us many times when we wanted to distract you whilst you were fighting to climb away during a diaper change.

Yesterday, you were playing by yourself in the corner and suddenly I heard fluting sounds. Apparently, you have figured out how to make sound come out of your wooden recorder, and also saliva on the other end of the instrument. You have been practicing quite a bit over the last two days and you’re getting better at it already. Are you musical? You always want to pick at Papa’s guitar as well, so who knows?