Raising a Strong-willed Child

Not sure how many of us are blessed with strong-willed children but I am ;)  Thankfully, in this digital age, we have been blessed with countless resources to help us on our journey of parenting. This morning I stumbled across this great excerpt from Dr. James Dobson. 

 http://www.drjamesdobson.org/blogs/dr-dobson-blog/dr-dobson-blog/2017/03/01/don-t-break-your-child-s-spirit?sc=FEM&mc=FEM0317VF2&utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_campaign=20170310%20Voices%20(FEM0317VF2)%20(5)&spMailingID=16751671&spUserID=MzI0Nzc1NzEyMjM3S0&spJobID=980801697&spReportId=OTgwODAxNjk3S0

It served as a great reminder of this simple parenting principle and truth, as far as I believe:  to pair love and consistent discipline! And it is a prescription for use in your own home too. I pray that our generation will give it a go and we will raise up God-fearing, healthy servant leaders.  

Have a blessed day! 

God's Perfect Design

Started reading 'The Christ-Centered Marriage', by Neil Anderson, which has been a blessing so far.

He defines a Christian marriage as a "spiritual union with God that is intended to be a visible expression of the relationship that God has with the Church, which is the Bride of Christ."

There was a good reminder in the first pages about how a family that prays together stays together.  One of my life's main assignments is to break the cycle of divorce in my family ancestors.  Jesus hates divorce because of the negative impacts it has on the spouses themselves, any children, parents, and even extended family and friends.  Of course He is gracious and merciful and can use anything that enemy intended for evil for good (Genesis 50:20).

In Ephesians 5:25-27, we are provided with instructions and a picture of what a Biblical marriage was intended to look like: "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the Word (the Bible), and to present her to Himself as a radiant Church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies."

May our generation keep Christ's sacred union between a husband and a wife without stain and wrinkle, expressing how grateful we are for His perfect sinless life, and sacrificial death on the Cross for us sinners.  Amen.

Another Birthday to Celebrate in May!

On May 14, 2013, at 2:59, we witnessed the miraculous birth of our 3rd child and son, Keo Nozomu Luedecke-Kobiki. At 3680 g (8.1 lbs) he was nearly the same weight as Joa, his older brother, when he was born. Keo was around 51 cm in length +/- a few cm since nurses normally don’t measure the precise length. Anyhow, Shinobu did an excellent job during labor. Since Nina was born in roughly an hour after we arrived at the clinic, we wanted to make sure that this time we would leave a bit more cushion before the actual birth. As soon as Shinobu sensed that contractions were around 10 minutes apart, we made our way to the hospital, arriving around 3 AM in the morning. We left in the wee hours of night for all 3 kids so this was nothing new. We both expected to see our son before sunrise, but this was not to be the case. In the end, Shinobu used an inducer and we elected to use an epidural for the first time, since her previous two births were both completely natural. The actual due date wasn’t for another 5 days and once the doctor mentioned the possibility that today might not be the birth date, and that we may be able to return home, we both opted to do everything possible to have our son born this same day. There was also concern that the longer we waited, the larger the baby would be, and the more difficult the delivery.

After pushing for hours, at last we were able to meet our little guy, who popped his head out right before 3PM that afternoon, 12 hours since the time we checked in-- not what we anticipated.

Most importantly though, Keo was healthy, and Shinobu looked great even though she had just gone through the toughest delivery out of our 3 children. The rattling first cries out of Keo’s mouth were strangely enough a welcomed sound to our ears and symbolic of the genesis of a new member to our household.

Keo’s Name:
Since about the 2nd trimester of Shinobu’s pregnancy, we had been tossing around several names for our third. However, it wasn’t until a week later, that we settled on Keo, which depending on which source you use, is a form of Joseph(Joe) in Hawaiian, and means ‘God will increase/add to’ in Hebrew from the book of Genesis in the Bible. Joseph, who had the ability to interpret dreams, was also a man of character and faith, who rose to become the king of Egypt. In Khmer, his name means ‘superior, extraordinary, precious, exquisite, delicate, special, and uncommon. Quite the meaning. It is very close to Keon, which means ‘God is gracious’, just like our other 2 children, which we thought fit well. We also wanted to keep his name short as possible, given the length of our last name. As much as possible, we also wanted to select a name easily pronounced in both English and Japanese.

His middle name is from the same verse that the rest of our kids get their middle names from, Isaiah 40:31: but those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.

His Kanji character is the word for ‘hope’ and is a single character just like all of our Japanese names are.

Thank you all for all your prayers and support and as you would say in Japanese, Yoroshiku onegaishimasu! Now we humbly ask and pray for wisdom from Above to somehow raise these 3 little ones of ours! Lord help us!

Joa and Nina in Feburary

Joa often likes to hug and hold Nina, as he is doing here in this photo that we shot a couple weeks ago.  Joa has his Tigger pajamas on while Nina has her little light pink outfit along with her favorite pink pacifier.

November photos

Here are a couple recent pictures of our 2 beautiful kids! Nina is still about the same size as the stuffed animal next to her who we call Katie while Joa is over 90 cm tall and growing! 

Compared to the first few weeks as a big brother, Joa has been a lot better, as I am sure Nina would attest to, if she could.  Right now he is in the phase of wanting to do everything by himself - whether it is putting on his shoes, taking the cap off of a drink bottle, or carrying the groceries from the store.  In that regard, he has become quite helpful...at times, while other times it would be much faster if he would let us help him.  All in all, we are enjoying the development of his personality and character. 

      We often hear from our friends who have older kids that these early years are precious and once they are older, you miss the toddler days.  Nina has been great.  She is also growing very fast.  We notice her ability to recognize her surroundings increasing and her facial features are also becoming more defined.  She is looking a lot more like Joa did when he was her age.  They definitely are siblings!  One thing we pray about daily is for her body clock to become 'normal' ASAP, as she is rather nocturnal in the time being.
    As mentioned early though, we are constantly counting our blessings and truly thankful, and reminded to always be grateful during this thanksgiving season.                                                                                    

Sept 27, 2011 3:18 AM

 David and Co. has now increased from 3 to 4 members!  The original due date was the 25th and 2 days late sounds like nothing but it seemed like we were waiting forever for our second child to be born.  Early in August Shinobu was told that the baby had dropped too far and another 4 mm and she would need to be hospitalized.  Once we safely into September, we quickly switched gears and Shinobu was doing squats, exercising and doing all that she could to speed up the birth.  Yet as we learned, it was in God's perfect timing that our daughter Nina seemed to be born.
      Monday evening after putting Joa to bed, I also fell asleep quite early.  I was awoken just before midnight and somewhat facetiously asked Shinobu if she was having any contractions since there had been no signs for 2 weeks even though we were told that it could happen "any day now..."  But sure enough, Shinobu smiled and said that she thinks she is starting to feel some contractions.  It had been over 3 years now since the last time so she wasn't quite sure.  So we waited and monitored her situation and sure enough, at 130 or she became confident that these were in fact contractions and that tonight would be the night.  We started to get excited, packed up our things and made one last check, and then headed out the door at 2 am.  The clinic, which was different from the one Joa was born in, was about 15 minutes away but we ended up getting there at 2:20 because on the way there Shinobu said she was hungry so we stopped off at Family Mart and Shinobu had 2 onigiri before we reached the hospital.  Sure glad we didn't wait any longer because little did we suspect, but 1 hour later, at 3:18 AM, Nina was born!  She weighed in at 3.2 kg (7 lbs) and 48 cm (just under 19 inches).  We were told beforehand that labor is shorter for the second one but didn't think it would be THIS much shorter!  Wow!  But we sure are thankful to the Lord that we made it to the hospital in time.  The midwife was great and we couldn't have asked for a smoother experience (well, at least that is what I thought...maybe not Shinobu ;))

How we got her name:

 

 Following our experience with Joa, we thought that this time, we would come up with a name for our daughter before she was born.  In Joa's case, we thought we would have several candidates ready and once we saw him, would be inspired by a name based on his appearance.  Some of you may be able to relate, but as far as our experience went, none of the names we had prepared for him immediately hit us once we saw him.  So this time we thought we would simply select a name beforehand.  It seemed like everyday we were talking about possible names but until the day she was born, none really resonated with us.  Then at 3:30 am or so, we looked at each other and said that it really is time for us to decide a name for her.  Then out of nowhere, Nina popped into my little brain and I spoke it out and Shinobu seemed to like it, even though it was not one of the names we had talked about beforehand.  I told Shinobu I would go home and check what the meaning was before we finalize her name.
        After checking online using various websites, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Nina in Hebrew, had a similar meaning to Joa- 'God was gracious and God has shown favor. ' In Native American her name means 'mighty' and in Spanish, 'little girl'.   Other meanings included 'flowery, blossom, and friendly.' http://www.babynamespedia.com/meaning/Nina

 Understanding the meaning of her name quickly sold us on naming her Nina.  So we next shared the good news with our moms and relatives.  By the way, like Joa, we wanted a short name that would be easy to pronounce in both Japanese and English, especially since our last names are so long.  Anyways, what made her name seem even more perfect to us was when Shinobu's mom assumed that we had chosen Nina because she was born on the 27th, which in Japanese is 'ni' which means 2, and 'na', which is 7.  We honestly hadn't thought of this but did think it very appropriate and a blessing that she was in fact born on the exact day that her name indicates in Japanese.  We have yet to choose a middle name but have one in mind and it will likely be one kanji character like the rest of us have. 

March 11th, 2011 in Retrospect

Exactly 3 months have passed since the catastrophic triple whammy hit the Tohoku region of Japan, 373 km (231 miles) NE of TOKYO, Japan.  Fortunately for us, that day our family was all together.  There were a number of blessings in disguise, you could argue, that happened to us that day.  It was a Friday here in Tokyo, and a workday for the general populace.  My wife and son were both not feeling so hot so I accompanied them to the doctors' that morning.  Originally, I had planned on having lunch alone in Meguro, where one of our clients has a restaurant.  Since my family also needed to eat, I asked if they wanted to come along and they agreed, which was another blessing.  Instead of taking the trains, which is typical in Tokyo, we decided to drive our wheels instead, which later turned out to be a tremendous blessing because little did we know that in a few hours, NE Japan would be rocked by a 9.1 quake, followed by a tsunami that would alter the landscape of the area, and destruction to the Fukushima nuclear power plants that, even to this day, continue to leak radiation into the surrounding area. 

God of this City....Tohoku Quake 3.11.11

This clip above was one that I viewed numerous times in the days and weeks to follow yet watched almost anew just now for the first time since then.  At the time, we had become numbed by all of the news, images, interviews, and seemingly endless stories of devastation, emptiness, and lost hope.

Nearly 24,000 people were killed or are still unaccounted for, 90,000 are in shelters, and the ever-increasing costs of the quake and its aftermath could in the end be anywhere from 5-10% of GDP.  This compares to the Kobe quake back in 1995, which cost 2% of GDP. 


http://www.japanquakemap.com/ tracked all of the quakes on and around that date, including the foreshocks and hundreds of aftershocks that have since followed and continue to occur, yet hardly make the news anymore.

One of the positives, if I may dare say, to come out of these events, has been our reassessment of nuclear energy and its role now and going forward.  Germany was the 1st country that made the bold move to ban nuclear energy from its country by 2022.  We, the general populace, are definitely more educated now more than ever on nuclear, its benefits, risks, and disadvantages. 

Personally, with regards to this topic, a greater concern for me is what our neighbors in China have going on, and what India, for example is planning for the future.  Mainland China has 14 nuclear power reactors in operation, more than 25 under construction, and more about to start construction soon.  The Japanese government, who have been criticized for being slow in their recovery efforts, planning, and execution, and TEPCO, which has a history of not being forthcoming with complete disclosure and is once again being accused of not being transparent; will most likely, and sadly, pale in comparison to how China may and will respond in the future, if and when a similar natural disaster or incident occurs at one of more of its nuclear reactors. 

When I think of my son and upcoming second little one, and their future world they will be a part of, I can't help but scratch my head and simply hope and pray that our geopolitical and socioeconomic leaders will make wise decisions, not only thinking ahead for the sake of our grandchildren, but hopefully our grandchildren's grandchildren, and beyond.  I heard recently that the Native American government make decisions based on how they will affect the next 7 generations!  For some decisions, I think this is an excellent idea, and nuclear energy, is most definitely one of them.  

Time flies...

Recently been showing Joa this youtube video which goes through mandarin pinyin in 6 minutes.
Joa now talks quite a bit, understands even more, and continues to bring us laughter and new challenges each new day!  You could say that we are all growing together...

 We also hit Izu in September and the weather was perfect!  There was white sand beach just like back home and the water was warm.  We were at a beach called Tadadohama, which is right next to Shirahama Beach. 

Shirahama, where we took the picture below, resembled Waimea Bay, with the exception that there are not the same gigantic waves like Hawaii during the winter time when the waves are up. 

We let Joa freely play in the sand as you can see, which he took full advantage of, getting it into his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth of course.  

We took him on the surfboard as well but will save him the embarrassment...maybe later??? 

Sendai in September...

We were in Sendai, in Miyagi prefecture this past September.  Sendai is about 300 km, or close to 200 miles away from Tokyo.  The water was very warm and the place where we were at was right next to Shichigahama, which is the sister city to Plymouth, where the Puritans fled to from England back in 1620. Both locations are resort towns, with similar geography and size.