Great things in small packages!

First of all congratulations to my brother Rob and his wife Ann on the birth of their 2nd son, Ethan Henwood. I have become an uncle yet again, and getting prouder each time.





Big brother John is doing great too.

Jotaro got his first 2 teeth (bottom two) and is enjoying sinking them into whatever he can.

He really likes playing with his keyboard.

Jo, Yuki and Miku play:

Here's a short, cute video of Yuka eating a cookie and chatting:

Finally, here's a snappy new jacket I bought to keep out the winter chills.

A Model Boy

I'm not sure if I've already written it here before (a bad memory and infrequent posting will do that) but Jotaro was selected to be a baby model for the Japanese chain store called Akachanhanpo. It's a smaller version of Babies R Us that has stores all across Japan. They had posters in their stores asking for customers to submit photos of their babies. Well, we sent in Jo's pictures and they really liked him. So we took him to a photo studio in Osaka on the weekend for his modelling debut. It went really well and everyone at the studio loved him. They gave us a 3000 yen gift certificate for Akachanhonbo too. I was hoping we'd get a big paycheck and I could consider retiring from work but it looks like that won't be happening for awhile. Anyways, without further adieu, here are the backstage photos from the big photo shoot.

This is the only outfit Jo modelled. It's some kind of formal dress for babies.

Eventually Jo started to get a little fed up with all the pictures and posing and began to cry a little. Tough little guy though.

A well deserved nap after his first day of work. お疲れ様でした！

Afterwards we rendevouzed with Hiroko and Miku-chan in Umeda. We were doing a little Halloween shopping to get ready for our big Halloween bash at the end of the month.

Here's Miku trying out her witch's hat.

Here's a preview of Jo in his devil horns.

Yuka sings along to the theme song from the animated movie 'Tonari no Totoro'.

Jo practices standing up by himself... with a little help from his dad.

Perhaps Jo is trying to tell us that he's getting too big for his bed?

At our local Akanchanhonpo store Jo poses with Japan's arguably most loved cartoon character, Anpanman.

Then it was off to 'Amazing World', a great kids' play center where we got some great pics of Jo in their photo studio.

Jo takes a 'Rodi' for a ride.

Meanwhile, Yuka is relaxing on the cat bus from 'Tonari no Totoro'.