To say that this weekend was a bit lazy would be an understatement. In fact, to say that this weekend was a lot lazy would still be an understatement.
Saturday we woke up around 1… in the afternoon. Layla was up until 11 the previous night, but she’d never slept in this late. I would have gladly slept in another hour if I wasn’t worried the poor kid was dead, or worse. Luckily she was still sawing logs, sweating up a storm in the process. I think she might have had a bit of a fever early in the morning and had sweat it out by mid afternoon. It’s why we kept her up late the previous night — score one for forward thinking parenting!
Our plan for the day was to go out and get some shoes. Big plans, to be sure, but we were already behind schedule. After getting cleaned up and having breakfast we were off to Machida for some shopping fun. If there’s one thing I love, it’s shoe shopping. Especially with my two favourite girls…
Surprisingly, we found Tamie’s shoes at the first place we hit. It was amazing, like nothing I’d ever seen before. She didn’t even need to try on more than three pairs of shoes before deciding. Twas’ a sign of things to come, or so I’d hoped, as we headed off to find my shoes…
The last pair of shoes I got here, they didn’t have my size so I had to get it delivered through the mail. I had tried some on for size, and they fit pretty well, so thought the ones coming in the mail would be as comfortable. After a couple days of wearing them, trying to break them in properly, I found they still were a bit small. To this day, they are still one of the most uncomfortable pair of shoes I’ve ever bought. With that in mind, I was determined to find a pair of shoes, in stock, that we could try on and buy… no matter how long it took.
I found a pair that seemed decent, and we asked the salesguy for a size 27, the sizes here being the size of your foot in cm… I’m still not exactly sure what the size 10 I wore in Canada actually represented, as my foot is neither 10 centimeters or 10 inches. He brought them and they were a bit snug, to say the least. We tried a 27.5 and again they were a bit small. Finally the guy looked at my current shoes, which were supposedly size 10 and said that should be a 28… I tried on a 28… and voila – a much better fit. Especially compared to the torturous shoes I’d been wearing. We walked out of that, the first store we hit for my shoes, successful in our search for shoes. Two for two!
To celebrate, we headed off for some ice cream. Layla told me she didn’t want a big ice cream, but she wanted me to have a big ice cream. How could I say no to that? She ended up taking all the parts of my parfait that she wanted, leaving me with her leftovers. Regardless, it was a decent snack and turned out to be most of our dinner. It turned out to be later than we thought and we were a bit stuffed, even after looking around for a while after the ice cream. We ended up at the outback for some steak salad… and some ice cream (for the kid) for dessert.
Today, we headed off for another trip to the park. Layla seems to love it there, and we love to take her. It’s the only grass field for miles, so it’s kind of a special place here… making it kind of a busy place too. One interesting thing about the grass park is the hill, where kids use cardboard as toboggans and slide down it. It sure looks ghetto, but I guess when there’s no snow you have to make do with what you got. One lady even tricked out her cardboard by putting plastic handles on it. Very impressive, indeed.
At the park, we kicked a ball around before heading off to the playground for some slide fun, only to close out with a terrifying steam spray. The same steam spray Layla used to love to run through as a young(er) kid, she’s now deathly afraid of. I ended up carrying her through it, which is more than she let me do last time, so progress is being made, albeit slowly. Maybe someday she’ll be as brave as she was when she was a year old. Maybe.
As we were leaving the park, the chipper youngster chirped up with her suggestion of what to do next. “Starbucks!” The call for the green tea frappuccino was message enough that we go there far too often. Regardless, we went. Some parents mark lines on a wall to watch how their kids grow up — we take pictures at Starbucks. I figure in five years, I’ll send the pictures in to the marketing department and see if I can’t make a few bucks on all the money we spent there. It’s really more of an investment, in that respect.
While we were sucking back our drinks, Layla pointed out that we dress her like a bum. The knee of her pants, already sewn up once, had another hole from her skinning her knee one of any number of times. She was adamant that we buy her new pants, and we were more than happy to oblige. We went to the Gap where a nice saleslady got to practice her English with us. She showed us a great deal on a new line of pants — buy 2 pairs and get 20% off the purchase. Sounded good. The only problem — there’s no way I am going to shell out 9200 yen (100 bucks!) on pants for my kid that she’s either going to outgrow or rip in two months. Even with a 20% discount.
I checked a few other places while Layla played, but I couldn’t find anything decent for a decent price. Tamie took a look and found a couple options (I’ll admit, she’s a much better shopper than I am). Layla picked a pair, tried them on, and was so happy with them that she ended up wearing them moments after we bought them.
Not having spent enough money yet, we headed off to buy a new vacuum cleaner. It wasn’t exactly a spur of the moment thing, as every time I vacuumed Tamie would complain about the quality of my work, and I would complain about the quality of the tools I was equipped with. The fact that she complained about the tool whenever she vacuumed too was a clear indicator it was less the blame of the operator as it was the fault of the machine. One new vacuum cleaner later, and I have a happy wife and a cleaner apartment. How’s that for win-win?
The last thing we wanted to buy, a Google phone for Tamie, had to be put on hold because by the time we actually got around to it, the store had closed. It wasn’t a total loss, though, as it will give us something to do next week, if we don’t find something else to do first.
Pictures from the weekend are here:
Saturday
Sunday
)