The Long Awaited Pictures of Our House Part 1

Everyone I know has been wanting to see pictures of our new house, so here they are. We moved into it in the middle of May and we have been doing a lot of painting, unpacking and all sorts of stuff to make it ours. We still have a ton more to do, but we are getting there and it is starting to feel like home.

First I will start with the before pictures. This is how the house looked when we moved in.

This house came with a lovely backyard of dead grass.

Which we have managed to get green; we know they are weeds, but they are green.


Living Room

Kitchen - no appliances.

With brand new appliances

and a new sink

Master Bedroom - yes, it is purple (definitely on our list to be changed).

Master Bathroom - the shower was unfinished..

... but with a good contractor, it looks like this

I love the garden tub!

and the 2 sinks.


The front room/playroom

Coming soon: pictures of the newly painted rooms.

A Meter Tall

Last Saturday I was finally able to put Donovan's growth charts back up. after careful measurement, Donovan is now officially 100 centimeters tall or 39.37" (3' 3.37"). Donovan was quite excited about his new growth, especially when I explained to him that he was now 1 meter tall. Ever since, he was been going around telling everyone, "I'm a meter tall. I'm a tall boy." I think he has finally realized he is on the tall side of kids, but more than that, he is just so proud of his growing up. It really is quite amazing to see how such small milestones can make such a big impact in a child's life.

Donovan is showing off his "huge muscles" and pretending to be a sumo wrestler.

Caught in the kitchen.

This picture is courtesy of my brother who sent us a big box of packing peanuts. I guess, the bigger the boy gets, the bigger the messes he can make.

I Like the Movie, Movie

Donovan's new favorite movie is Madagascar (1 & 2). In the past few weeks we have watched both movies at least a dozen times. Since the lion in the movie loves to dance and so does Donovan, it is a perfect fit. Donovan now is a lion. He loves to jump on the bed and roar as loud as he can. His dances look quite similar to the ones in the movies.

He pretends that the lion, zebra, giraffe, and hippo are on his toy planes when he flies them around. I asked him the other day if the penguins were flying, and of course, they were. Today Donovan told me "I am Marty". I asked him how he was like Marty and he said he had stripes and was a zebra (he was wearing a gray and white striped shirt, I guess that was good enough for him).

He also loves to sing the songs from the movie. He just 'doesn't quite get the words right, but I like his versions better. The main song from the movie is, "I Like to Move it". (If you seen the movie, you know the song I am talking about.) Donovan sings the song like this, "I like the movie, movie. I like the movie, movie. Move it!" If you try to correct him, he says, "No, it's movie, movie, not move it, move it."

I always say a change is nice, so no more Cars or Wall-E for the time being; we just get to enjoy Madagascar and all the comical animals in it.

This is my Dan

Back when Donovan was first speaking little bits of words, he would call me "Mom-Mom" and Dan he would call "Da", which seemed perfectly normal, but after a little while, it seemed like he was actually saying "Dan" and not Dad. This seemed resonable, since I call my husband by his name, Dan and it really does sound so close. We thought it was cute, but made a point of telling Donovan he should call him Dad. For the last year, he has referred to him as Dad most of the time.

Lately, Donovan has begun to refer to his father as Dan again. Now that he talks quite well, there is no denying what he is saying. If you ask Donovan who Dan is, he says, "That's Dan." If you ask him who is dad is, he will say, "Dan," or "Dan is my dad." The more we correct him, the more he tries to use Dan instead of Dad. I asked him the other day why he calls him Dan and not Dad and Donovan's response was, "Because it's his name." How can you argue with that? So for now, we are Mom and Dan.

More Shinkansen - Bullet Trains

After seeing the picture of the Hikari train on my post yesterday, Donvan has been requesting to see pictures of the other Shinkansen trains. Since I went through the effort of finding these pictures, I figred I would share them.

Here is the Nozomi N700 - the fastest train we rode on.

Then there is the Nozomi 500 Series, which also runs the Hikari line sometimes.

And finally the Kodama 300 Series

Here is also some video we took of just how fast these trains go through the station - this is the Hikari Railstar passing through Iwakuni.

I never thought I would know so much about trains...

Donovan loves trains.

That would be the understatement of the year. I realized his passion for trains on Christmas day a year ago (2007). Donovan received a few Thomas trains in his stocking. Now they say that toddlers have a very short attenton span, but Donovan played with these trains for about 8 hours straight. It was difficult to convince him to eat, and don't even think about sleep. He just drove those trains around and around.

So I began to feed his passion for trains. First it was the little die-cast Thomas trains, which he has about 20 of, then his gramdma and grandpa got him a small battery operated Thomas and track to go with it. My goodness, he thought that was the best thing in the world. He just sat in the middle of the track pushing it around and around. More trains and more track came. This past Christmas, Dan picked out a bridge/waterfall set to go with the trains. By this time, Donovan had about half a dozen trains for this set, both Thomas and Japanese Shinkansen trains, as they both fit the same track. Donovan really loves the Japanese Shinkansens more than the Thomas trains. (He can name them all, but his favorite is the Hikari Rail Star.)

So Donovan and his trains are inseparable, but moving day arrived. There was not enough room for the trains and track in the luggage. We did bring a few minuture versions of some Japanese trains, but none of the bigger ones could come with us. Amazingly, Donovan was okay with this. We have been living out of 5 suitcases for the past 2 months and he has been exceptionally good only having a small selection of toys. Although, the past few trips to Target has revealed a longing for more trains. Everytime we pass the train ailse, Donovan says, "I will get my trains back when we move into our new house." Then he proceeds to say, "Let's go to our new house." (Unfortunate for him, he doesn't understand that buying a new home can take a bit of time. But the whole house hunting story will be an entirely different blog.)

The nice thing about the small trains we brought with us is that they can go just about anywhere we go inside my purse. They are great at keeping him entertained. So, the this past weekend, while we were at a restaurant waiting for our food to come, we got out a train. Donovan also had the kid menu and crayons in fromt of him. Dan thought it would be a good idea to draw some trains tracks on the menu with the crayons. It worked. Donovan was overjoyed to finally have tracks for his trains. He didn't even want to eat food, just play with his train.

Since then, Donovan has been asking for me to draw tracks on all of his coloring pads. This has now extended to drawing railroad and stop signs for the cars before they go over the tracks. Everyday, he asks me to draw more track and more signs for all his differnt trains. So far, we have created quite the track with paper and markers, which makes me wonder why we ever invested in any other track.

Welcome to My World

For the past year, I have been keeping track of the silly, crazy, and endearing things Donovan does and have now decided to share them with my family and friends. Hopefully he will thank me and not hate me when he is older for sharing these stories.

For a little introduction ... Donovan is 3 (or as he would say "free") years old. We spent the majority of his life in living in Japan, therefore, Donovan believes he is Japanese. It is quite cute when this pale, blond, little boy says he is from Japan and speaks Nihongo (Japanese).

He is beginning to explore the imaginative side of play. Lately he is "The Caterpillar". Whatever he does, he will say things like, "The Caterpillar needs to brush his teeth" or "the Caterpillar needs to get dressed." He also crawls everywhere, just like a caterpillar. The other day, he was a robot and went around pushing his "buttons" on his chest and trying to move like a robot.

There is so much more about my boy, who I (just like any good mother) thinks is the cutest on earth, and I hope to share more soon.