U.S. visit

Lucinda, Arno and I are back in the United States on vacation, visiting my parents in Denver. Blaine will arrive next weekend. The trip over with the children wasn't easy: 2 hr bus trip to Narita, 2 hours waiting at Narita, 9 hours to San Francisco, luggage customs and a quick wait in SF, and then 2 hours to Denver. A very long day that repeated itself.

I hoped that the kids might sleep on the long plane ride; it is, after all, a night flight. But Arno fell asleep literally as the plane was making its final approach to S.F. and I had to carry him off like a sack of apples. Fortunately, they both slept on the way to Denver because I have no idea how I would have entertained them. (I don't sleep much on planes in any case.)

Lucinda handed the jet lag like a champ: the first night in Denver, she slept for 15 hours! The same night, Arno slept for 4 hours, woke up at 1:30 a.m. and refused to rest until he passed out at noon. Finally, on day 3, he fell asleep at 5 p.m. and slept till 7 a.m. - and then we were back in business.

We're in Denver for 3 weeks, probably the most time I've spent here in nearly 20 years. We're doing lots of swimming, some shopping, lots of playing in grandparents' backyards, and I've signed the children up for various summer camps. I'm also actively trying to relax rules that I'd set up in Tokyo to make life there easier; here, Arno can wear his Superman pajamas to his summer camp if he wants to (I'd banned them from preschool because he wanted to wear them every day).

Lucinda and Arno are quite happy about life at the moment and curiously seem more mature and independent than they did even a few weeks ago in Tokyo. I'm not sure if it's because they're just older or because they've learned to handle themselves in new situations as we've lived in Japan. In either case, it's a very welcome development.