Tozai Todd

Friends in Japan sent us this for Lio a few weeks ago. I’ve seen something similar in Babies R Us, but in the interest of cultural exchange, I thought I’d share. It’s a stuffed animal that plays a calming, sleep-inducing swoosh-swoosh sound similar to what babies hear in the womb (and 4 other lullabies when you push its tummy). And it absolutely works. Or, at least it does now. For a little while, Lio didn’t respond to it much, but now it’s our newest trick to get him to sleep.

I’m getting called out for not putting enough photos of Lio, so here’s hoping this makes some amends. More can always been found at my little corner office at Flickr.

This is one of my favorites:

There was a doctor in the OR who not only was kind enough to offer to take pics for me, but also knew her way around a digital camera and was shooting the scene as if she was covering Wimbledon for Sports Illustrated:

The footprints for the baby book:

His eyes were closed, so I understand if he didn’t fully appreciate my comic genius at this moment:

The hospital we had Lio at thankfully offers free wifi in the rooms, so at some point I went home and brought back our iMac (17” G5, if you’re interested). The result was this beautiful moment above where Yuko was able to show her mom in Tokyo her new grandson (via Skype, again, if you’re interested). It was a truly 21st-century moment, and we all had a good cry thanks to technology that simply wasn’t around or as easily accessible 10 or even 5 years ago.

Born two weeks early and his parents couldn’t be any more thrilled by that.