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a fine visit

Tokyo, 2010.01.02

We're back in Tokyo, but The Boy had a great visit with his cousins.It was one of those visits where the two smallest boys—aged 2 1/2 and almost two—were pretty much inseparable. They spent all their time playing, squabbling, running around and terrorizing the adults at meal times. And they influenced each other.Thanks to the gimme-gimme nature of The Boy's playing style (he's a daycare child), Ta-kun wound up toughening up a bit over the course of the week. At first he kept running to his mum whenever The Boy stole his toys, but slowly he began to steal right back. And both of them seemed to benefit greatly in vocabulary and speaking confidence: Ta-kun has been a bit slow to speak (he's not a daycare child) but by the end of our week he seemed to be making more clear sounds. And The Boy is now able to string together words in primitive noun-verb sentences. He sounds like me when I speak Japanese!This was the first trip in which he didn't need to breast feed to take off and land successfully. A fine milestone.