Mason Shoma

Recently every day is a bit of a battle. I survived the terrible twos but the tormenting threes are hitting me hard. I get very upset about the smallest things nowadays. If I’m in a bad mood I am disagreeable with everything. I say no to everything. And everything upsets me. I end up being bossy and mean. Ordering Mommy and Daddy to do things. When they try to do what I say I get more upset. Don’t sit here. Go over there. Don’t go.

I don’t know what the cause is but it is not a good feeling. Sometimes we can wait it out. Sometimes have to let the tantrum consume me and all of us before I calm down. When I’m back to myself I apologize and am my usual happy self. But it is very trying.

After another morning tantrum I calmed down and quickly transitioned to normal conversations. “Yesterday Kana-chan watching like this (two index fingers on head to make horns) people.” I was referring to her Oni no denwa which is on her mother’s phone. When Kana-chan is misbehaving the oni or demon calls and warns her to be good. I thought it was a bit scary though I didn’t show it. But if I’m still thinking about it today maybe it scared me more than I thought. Apparently the oni is supposed to help Kana-chan behave, but it doesn’t really work and she finds it interesting instead. I’m glad that I don’t have an oni disciplining me. Maybe I should try to behave better or I might not have a choice in that matter. Let’s try to keep the tantrums to a minimum.

Best part of having pizza for dinner is the inevitable leftover pizza another day. Yum! I had a great pizza dinner and even had some of Mommy’s Mother’s Day gift for dessert. Yum yum!

We had another great English lesson! I know it is not really a lesson for me, but I love the games we play and I do learn a lot of new words that I hadn’t picked up at home. Also, my classmates like learning from me so I enjoy helping out the class! Although I did get a little too excited and had a false start during another classmates turn. I sat back down and waited for my turn.

I’ve really been into my remote control cars lately. Daddy and I have been playing with them a lot. The funny thing is that Papa gave me these cars over a year ago when they visited for my second birthday. It was the right gift, but just a bit early. I’m making up for lost time now. Boy these things are fun! And to think I’ve been moving my other cars by hand all this time.

My good friend came over to play today and we exchanged birthday gifts, since our birthdays are only a few days apart. We liked our gifts and thanked each other, and then we went straight to playing together. We get along so well. We also are having so much fun that we all forget to take pictures. We are just living in the moment. I can’t wait to see her again!

Playing in the laundry hamper. Why? Because it is a lot of fun of course. Have you tried it? You should.

Speaking of laundry. I also got into some of Daddy’s laundry and I guess it doesn’t quite fit me yet.

Daddy and I always have a lot of fun playing together. We often come up with goofy fun things to do. Today we did stuffed animal belly sumo. Awesome!

Mommy met up with some college friends today at the train station, so Daddy and I headed off to catch a train: a train ride on the roof of the station.

It was pretty cool. As usual, I don’t really show my emotion, but I really enjoyed the train ride and talked about it a lot later on. Much more than I talked about the school field trip to the zoo, which was supposed to be a much bigger event.

After our train ride I had a snack on the roof of Hakata station. We had a nice chat and enjoyed the beautiful weather as we watched the train ride continue to go around and around.

Another cool thing was that on our ride home we saw a Dr. Heli (medical helicopter) flying overhead. It was right above us. That was pretty cool!

Today my nursery school has a field trip to the zoo! It is a bit of a ways to get there but I woke up without trouble and off we went.

Last year we took the subway, but since I have grown fond of riding buses, we took buses to get there and found that it was a little bit easier than the subway and taxi option.

At the zoo we met up with my teachers and friends and after taking some group photos and doing some warmups, we headed off to see the zoo.

To be honest, I was only somewhat entertained. I have been to a railway park dedicated to trains and animals just don’t cut it for me. Don’t get me wrong, I still had a good time. But it was a bit of a quick walkthrough instead of an in depth education on animals.

The penguins were quite entertaining. They were so good at swimming that it looked like they were flying.

The one animal that was on my must see list was the giraffe and we made sure to stop by and even sit down and have a snack near its habitat.

We had a good time at the zoo, but we all know that animals do not necessarily hold my interest. Let’s put it this way. When we visited the gift shop I found a safari jeep and a bus-shaped tin of cookies and those were the only two things in the entire shop of animals that interested me. Maybe someday I’ll be able to visit a vehicle zoo.

Mommy had to work late today so Daddy picked me up from school. We had a nice walk and nice talk. I am very curious and stopped to look at so many things and asked about so many things. We had a great (albeit random) talk on our walk home.

Mommy usually picks me up from school and since this was a special pickup day Mommy told me that Daddy would get me a drink from the vending machine. I have been eyeing this sweet potato milk drink for quite some time and Daddy got it for me. (It was not as tasty as I thought it would be.)

When asked about dinner, first I said that I wanted pizza. Daddy wanted to go pick it up, but I wanted him to order delivery so that we could have time to play while waiting for it. It was a win-win situation.

Not only was dinner delicious, but it was a lot of fun too!

Luckily, Mommy wasn’t too late and was able to join us for dinner.

We visited the prefectural office today, and after visiting the observation floor we checked out the food display in front of the cafe. It looked so delicious. There were so many things we wanted to eat there. We also checked out the exhibits. I didn’t really understand what they were but they were very pretty.

Across from the prefectural office in the park there were some beautiful flowers so we decided to take a nice group photo of our class. (I was the only one not smiling.)

At the park today we ran around a bit, but I spent most of my time at the “construction site”. My excavator and front loaders were busy moving dirt around and building things. It was a very active construction site.

My new shoes arrived today. I can still wear my current shoes, but they are getting tight and quite worn out. It has only been a few months and I’m already growing out of and wearing out my shoes. At this pace my shoes budget is going to be huge.

I was very excited about the arrival of my new shoes. I chose Hayabusa Shinkansen shoes this time. Pretty nice!

We got to the park today and found that it was nearly empty so that meant that we had almost the whole space to ourselves. We took advantage of that and ran all over the place.

We had gymnastics class again today and I opted to observed again today. But I made some progress. When I was invited to participate I ran over and touched the mat and vault, showing my interest in gymnastics. One day I’ll join in.

I decided to crawl to botcha today. And on the way there I recalled that we saw a cat on the way home. But since a can’t pronounce my “k” sound it was hard for Daddy to understand. I clarified with a follow up, “meow-meow”. That made it easier.

Walking home from school we noticed a strange bearded man following us. On closer inspection we noticed that it was Daddy. He got off work on time and caught up with us. I ran to him and leapt into his arms. Then we walked the last block home together. Not without checking in on a local stray cat that I often see on our way home.

On our walk we saw a police car on patrol and waved to it, cheering it on and thanking it for serving and protecting.

At the park we saw a lot of ducks in the ponds and a lot of baby ducks in the pond. We tried to count how many but there were so many and they kept moving around that we couldn’t get an accurate final count.