10 months

For Eiko...cute pose!
Originally uploaded by kuckibaboo.

Well littlest, here we are at 10 months. On your 10-month birthday you woke up in a Japanese style hotel room at the Fukuhara hotel in Shikaribetsuko. All 3 of us were sleeping on the floor on futons and it's the first time in a while we’ve had a peaceful night together in the same bed. The 3 of us slept in the same bed for the first 3 months after we brought you home from the hospital. It was really convenient and cozy and we could listen to your milky breath and quietly inspect your sweet newness as you slept. You were so small and immobile. 10 months later I lay on the futon next to you barely able to sleep for an hour at a time. I’m not sure why I couldn’t sleep but I really loved laying there looking at you in the soft light coming in thru the rice paper shoji screens. On the other side of the window the snow was falling and the room was filled with that peaceful stillness that accompanies earthbound flakes. In that stillness I could hear your breathing and see your lips going thru the sucking motions even though I was a couple of feet away from you. After so many months of having so little sleep I now had the energy again to lay there awake and just watch and listen to you. It was the best night I’ve had in a long time.

It’s so hard to believe we started this journey only 10 months ago, it feels like you’ve always been here. And I’m so overjoyed that you are. You sleep thru the night now, can play on your own and can scoot around so fast on your little hands and knees that you can almost beat your running parents to any corner of the apartment. You stood up unassisted in your crib for the first time last Sunday (March 1st) so we are literally on the verge of having a tottering baby in our midst. Your sleeping pattern has become quite regular; you go to bed between 7 and 8 pm and wake up at 5:30 am. You play by yourself until 6 and then I get out of bed and our day starts. You’re usually fall down tired right after breakfast so you go down for a nap by 10 and are conked out for 2 to 4 hours. You really should nap again in the afternoon but you resist with all your might. If the weather cooperates we head out for a walk after lunch and you succumb to sleep for about an hour.

Some new teeth are trying to make their way onto the scene and it looks like your next one will be an eyetooth on the top right. You had your last DPT vaccine this month and you just need to get your Hep B booster and a polio shot in May. You are such a little tough guy when you get a needle. You only cry for a couple of seconds right after the needle goes in and then you’re all smiles again. Thank you for taking it so easy on your mother! We also had Maruyama sensei (your pediatrician) have a look at the umbilical hernia (aka Keenan’s spigot) you developed when we were back in Canada over Christmas. He said it was a pretty common thing and will likely heal itself before your first birthday. If it doesn’t then it may need to be surgically repaired. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. When we were at the hospital we visited with Eriko Sato-san the midwife who delivered you. She was so pleased to see how big you’ve grown and she was very impressed by your Shreddie eating dexterity. She is a very busy lady but she took a few minutes out of her day to hold you and crawl around on the floor with you. We promised to stop by for another visit before we leave for Canada. We took you to Ito Yokado shopping center last weekend, they have a great baby station with every manner of baby measuring devices and a nursing room. We weighed you and you are now up to 8.5 kg (almost 19 lbs) and are 70 cm long. Your dad is so anxious for you to hit the 9 kg mark so we can turn your car seat around. Your seat is rear facing right now and he totally hates not being able to see and communicate with you!

There are many things that you do on a daily basis to make us laugh. Most notable is your pillow diving, growling, open mouthed “kissing”, rolling nude on our blanket and fits of excitement. We have a couple of big Japanese style floor pillows on the living room floor and you love to dive face down into them with your mouth open. This is usually accompanied by your signature growling which is then followed by lots of giggling. We’re not sure about this open mouthed kissing business as it sometimes leads to biting but either way you target one of us at a time and then dive into us with your mouth open. You often get tired around the time I'm in the kitchen making dinner so you sit at my feet and dive at my slippers. When you’re the opposite of tired you have a tendency to have these short fits of excitement. You usually do it when you grab hold of something that has been eluding you like a rolling ball. Once you get the item in your hand you pull into your face and well, you get really excited about it! I’ll have to get it on video cause words just don’t do it justice. We purchased a blanket that we thought would be great for you to play on in the living room. Turns out it’s also very cozy on our bed and it’s never made it to the living room. This blanket is really, really soft and fluffy and you love snuggling up with your dad in it every morning. Last week we stripped you down to your nudity and let you loose on the blanket. Total hilarity! You crawled and rolled around in the softness just squealing with delight! It’s almost become a nightly ritual!

There are of course a few things you do that make us crazy. You are obsessed with our living room heater. I can’t count how many times a day I say “KEENAN! DON’T TOUCH!” How can a country, which is home to Asimo, the Prius and the Wii, still not have central heating?! God, I can’t wait until it’s warm enough to put the heaters away. Then of course you still hate having your snowsuit or any shirt or sweater put on you. Recently you’ve starting screaming when we change your diaper. We’re to the point where we’re looking in to going diaper free in an effort to get you out of the friggin’ things as soon as possible. You still whinge a bit but mostly only when you eat and if you’re really cranky. Regardless how much you whinge or how load you scream when you’re getting put into your snowsuit (which is for your own good I might add!) it just takes one little smile or a flash of those bright blue eyes to bring you back up to maximum sweetness again!