daylight savings

Does anyone else besides me wish that we had Daylight Savings in Japan? It's only April and I'm already tired of it being light so early in the morning. Natsuki has been waking up between 5:30 and 6:00 am for the last few days, as opposed to her usual 8 am, and it's really having a toll on me. When I hear her crying and I look at the clock I can hardly believe the time.

After a few mornings of this, I put a blanket up over her window last night and this morning she slept in until 7:50. I don't know why it took me so long to remember this trick. I did the same thing with Sakura two summers ago and it worked great. Hopefully this will help Natsuki sleep until a normal time and let me get the couple more hours of sleep that I desperately need.

Emi is doing great in school. After the crying episode on Wednesday morning, I wasn't really sure what to expect from her, but there haven't been anymore problems. I really believe she cried because that was her last chance to try a little emotional blackmail on me!! She started having homework from yesterday and she was pretty excited about that. It was only one page of some hiragana writing but as soon as she came home, she whipped it out and completed the whole thing. I've heard that there is a big jump in the amount of homework from 1st grade to 2nd grade so my goal this year will be to create a healthy attitude towards homework that will hopefully carry her through the next few years.

I mentioned it before but each day the kids need to take different stuff to school so I've been checking each night and making sure all the right things are in Emi's bag and then go over it with her in the morning. It's all written in hiragana so I can read it and I felt like it was going really well, but yesterday when Emi came home, she told me that she couldn't participate in an activity in the gym because she didn't have her gym shoes. What!? I looked at the schedule again and it does not say gym shoes anywhere. I'm going to have to ask one of the other moms about this. Sigh... I thought it was going so well...

As far as I can tell, Misaki is enjoying preschool (she's in her kindergarten year). These first two weeks are only half days so once they get there, they do a couple things and then come right back home again. When I ask Misaki what she did each day, all I get is "I don't know" or "Nothing". This might be true, but I'm not really sure. On Friday, they have an open house type of thing so I'll go and meet her teacher and hopefully find out more about what she's doing each day.

Actually, I have to go to Emi's school on Friday, too, so that's going to be a busy day. Chikara's been taking a lot of days off lately and he doesn't think it's a good idea to take anymore so I'll be taking Sakura & Natsuki to the elementary school in the morning for an hour or so and then taking all the kids to the preschool in the afternoon. Needless to say, Wednesday and Thursday are going to be spent doing nothing so I can save all my energy for Friday. I'm pretty sure this is another reason why the birthrate is going down in Japan. It's really hard to attend everything that you're supposed to if you have more than two kids. I'm a little jealous of my neighbors who have their two kids in elementary school this year. Of course, they're not doing anything brilliant with their free time. Mostly they do laundry and cleaning. Once my kids are all in school, I am so going to be going out and/or getting together with friends as much as I can.

Sakura has been having an awesome time while her sisters are gone in the morning. Having some time to herself has brought back my happy little Sakura and this has made life a little bit easier too. On Sunday, when we went to church, my friend noticed the change in her instantly. Also, having time to herself on the weekdays helped her be able to handle Saturday, when everyone is home, a bit better. She doesn't do much during the mornings but she can do whatever she wants which is the key for her. I've got her home for at least two more years so it's good that she enjoys being here!

Next week Emi & Misaki have full school days. What will I do with all that time? The following week we are going to Tokyo to visit our friends for Golden Week so I have much to look forward to in the next couple of weeks.