Another John John Installation

One of my favorite things is walking into a room and discovering the remains of some exploration and play that John John has left. This one was intricate. Notice the placement of the camels under the plastic lid as a detail.  #lovemylittleinstallationartistimage

Celestial Awakening

We packed the car after John John went to sleep.  The thinking was that we’d wake him up and load him in the car and he would sleep on the two hour drive.  Of course he stayed up the entire drive.  But he was quiet the entire time and when we arrived I took him out of his car seat. The moon was three-quarters and bright up in Santa Rosa at 11pm. I pointed to the moon and asked John John what it was.  He knows the moon: he says the word when you point to a picture, whether in full or crescent or with a funny face.  But being a child that goes to bed when the sun is still out, those depictions are the only moons he knows. So I pointed and asked him, “John John, do you know what that is?”

“Egg!” he said.

“No, it’s the moon!” I said, “The real moon!”

He looked intently.  “Moo(n),” he said.

“And those little white dots,” I said, pointing to the stars littering the night sky. “Those are real stars!”

“Stah,” he repeated.

We looked at the moon and stars for a few more moments, naming them .  In the morning it was the first thing he did to point to the window in the direction we’d seen the moon, and sleepily said, “moonh.”   Love this little guy.

At the Hakone Open Air Museum

imageOn day two or three of our Japan sojourn, we went to the Hakone Open Air Museum and had a little tail end bit of Hanami.  Even a bit of the kind where the petals fall off in the breeze, like gentle snow cascading through the air.

They had a great area with something like a knitted jungle gym.
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The child had a great time, even though he was maybe too small to fully experience the wonders of this net/web.image image image

They also have a totally ’80s Picasso permanent exhibition.  So ’80s.  So Japanese.

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They also had some classic Japanese bronze sculptures from the ’60s.
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With classically Japanese translations of title.
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All in all, it was a good day, and that meant lights out for everyone on the car ride home.image