Happy Valentine's Day

Pothead
Originally uploaded by kuckibaboo.

This morning Sean suggested we celebrate Valentine’s Day by at least thinking about sex. Hmm, not sure I have time for that! Oh blissful parenting!

I love you honey. Thanks for wearing so many hats lately and most of all for keeping me together and being by my side. The hazelnut latte and sleep in this morning were divine. You are the best husband in the whole wide world!

9 months

Cereal box destruction in his wake!
Originally uploaded by kuckibaboo.

You are 9 months old today sweet boy and you are having a great time living life! You are very curious and social and you love getting out and experiencing new places. You are generally very well behaved when we go out to restaurants or visiting and we’ve recently discovered that you are a very good traveler. You love cats and dogs and always reach out for them if they come within reach. You’re at the stage now where “activity” toys are the “it” thing for you and some of you old favorite rattles and small toys are sadly waiting for your sticky little hands to find them again at the bottom of your toy bin. You love books of all kinds and you happily turn the pages in the right direction as we read to you. You are now up to 3 solid food meals a day and eating is a really big deal for you. You have mastered the sippy cup and are the proud owner of a Nalgene Toddler bottle. You make all sorts of noise when you eat mostly ummmmm, ummmm and you are very impatient for the first few minutes and just can’t get it in fast enough. Your favorite foods so far are persimmon, Fuji apples, barley cereal, cheese, any kind of yoghurt, watermelon, blueberries, Shreddies, pears, peas, sweet potatoes, rice crackers and avocado. The other day you ate an entire Fuji apple, ¼ banana and 10 teaspoons of barley cereal for breakfast! You like chicken and turkey but not beef. You finally like eating with your hands but are still not too good at it and there constantly all manner of cereal O’s, squares and bits of cheese in your high chair. All the temper tantrums or “fits” you’ve thrown have been over food. You go to bed between 7 and 8 pm and sleep until 4 or 5 am. You wake up long enough for boobies and a bum change and then you sleep again until 7 or 8 am. We think you’re going thru a growth spurt as you motor through your breakfast and are back to sleep by 10 or 11 for a couple of hours. The last couple of days you’ve woken up for a snack and playtime and then start with the yawning again. You also could need a second nap because you’re a full on crawling baby now. You started seriously logging miles the day we got home from being in Ottawa for Oma’s funeral. Of course you weren’t crawling before we left so the apartment was not in any way baby proofed. So your very travel weary and emotionally bankrupt parents scooted after you as you discovered everything that you shouldn’t. It was a stressful afternoon and we were very pleased when the time change finally caught up with you and knocked you out for a few hours. Ever so thankfully your whinging seems to be decreasing with your increase in mobility. Your grampa said it best when he said “he’s been staring at all this stuff around him for months and now he has the means to get to it”. Baby you can have almost anything you want as long as you don’t whinge! You like to play in your crib by yourself when you wake up and can to so for up to 45 minutes. This playtime consists mostly of you kissing yourself in your baby mirror and babbling to the bears your gramma and Oma gave you. Once out of bed you like to snuggle with us for a while which is ohh so delicious! You don’t mind having your finger and toenails trimmed but it’s bloody hell trying to swab your sticky out little waxy ears. Your blue eyes are definitely here to stay and you’re sporting 8 bright white teeth now, four up and four down. I’m still breastfeeding you about 4 times a day and you’re starting to learn that biting me brings a swift end to that peaceful activity. You still despise having shirts or any type of clothing pulled on over your head and it sounds like we’re torturing you when we’re just trying to get you into your friggin’ snowsuit! What’s with that? You have learned to stand up if we hold your hands and we know that walking is just around the corner. Oh joy. It’s been a while since we’ve had time to weigh or measure you but I’d guess you’re about 19 pounds now. Babbling is your choice form of communication and you do bust out the odd mmmummmm mummm mum and dada daaaa. We’re pretty sure you’re not talking about us though. You used to clap your hands when you were happy but you haven’t done it since we’ve been back. The day your Oma passed away you looked at me from across the living room and waved bye-bye. It broke my heart and I secretly hoped you were sending Oma off in your own little baby way. Every day you bring us greater joy with your quick smile and sweetness. You’re such a smart little guy and we are having the time of our lives watching you discover and explore the world around you. We love you baby our soon to be toddler!

This post was started on Monday, January 21/2006

I’ve been away from this blog for a long while. We went to Tokyo for two days and then on to Canada for a month to be with our families over the holidays. I had intended to post while we were away but it seems time and good Internet connections got away from us on a daily basis.

We’ve been back in Obihiro now for a week. As a matter of fact we got home at nearly exactly this time last week. I’ve been up since 2:45 am, I fed Keenan and he’s now snuggled up with his daddy in our bed. I couldn’t get back to sleep so I’m once again turning to the blog for some wordage therapy.

It’s been a crazy weekend and I’m finding it hard to start so I’m just going to pick a point in time and let things flow as I’ve been told.

Sometime on Friday afternoon my mom had a stroke. She was on her way to the mailroom when she started to feel it. She made her way back home and soon after she was on her way to the hospital in an ambulance. She was conscious for a while and my sister Jose was very fortunate to be able to spend some time with her while she was still able to speak as by the time my brother arrived she was only able to communicate by squeezing her hand. We would soon learn that the stroke she had was a “catastrophic event”. She had developed a pool of blood above her brain stem that was about the size of a fist and because of its location, inoperable. We were also told that her chances of recovery were extremely slim and if she did recover she would be blind and severely mentally and physically challenged. It was decided we would wait 24 hours to see if there was any change. There never was and as a matter of fact the bleeding was getting worse. So slowly the doctors and nurses eased off the life support and our dear mom came took her last breath around 12:30 am on Sunday.

Everything happened so fast but it seems like an eternity since we got the first call from my nephew on Saturday morning (our time). I’m finding it very difficult to keep the timeline together with the 14-hour time difference. We were home just a week ago and now where getting on a plane tomorrow to return. I only know its Monday at 5:50 am because that’s what it says on the computer. I still have to put our clothes in suitcases that I hadn’t even put away in closets yet. I can’t believe we were waving good-bye to my mom from the car on the way to the Ottawa airport and a week later she woke up to her last sunny day.

She called last week. I can’t remember if it was Wednesday or Thursday but we had a great chat. If only I knew it was going to be the last I would have stayed on the phone forever. She could hear Keenan babbling away in the background and I could hear her smiling through her voice. We talked about our trip back to Japan and plans for moving back to Canada this summer. She was so excited that we were coming back and that she was going to get to spend a lot of time with Keenan, her little sweetheart. I was going through Keenan’s summer clothes after that conversation and I imagined Keenan wearing his little t-shirt and shorts and running through my mom’s front door yelling “Oma!” at the top of his lungs with a big smile on his face. It’s something that hasn’t even happened yet but my heart is breaking over the fact that it never will.

I feel truly blessed that we got to spend a month in Canada. Mom and Keenan feel in love with each other the second they met. I’ve never seen Keenan better behaved than with his Oma. She was the first to admit he could do no wrong in her eyes and to back that up it would appear her hearing aid couldn’t detect crying or whinging. My mom died believing Keenan cried only once in the whole month we were home! It was really wonderful to see the two of them interact together. I will absolutely never forget waking up the morning after we arrived. Sean and I were sleeping on the pull out couch in the living room and I opened my eyes to Keenan sitting in the middle of the dining room table with the place mats all over the place and mom looking on with utter adoration! Keenan’s crib was in her bedroom and as it turns out she woke up to find Keenan bright eyed, bushy tailed and quietly playing by his self. My mom had a bad back and not a lot of strength but somehow she managed to bend down, pick up Keenan and get him into the dining room. This would be her favorite place to play with Keenan for the rest of the month as she could keep him at eye level, let him play and have her arms around him all at the same time. Everything about Keenan brought light to my mom’s eyes. Seeing him open his mouth wide like a little bird whenever he ate, watching him kick in the bathtub, sleep in the stroller and of course smile at his Oma. In the last couple of days Keenan figured out how to clap and he would clap, laugh and smile whenever he was happy. This thrilled my mom to no end as she had been singing a Dutch song about clapping your hands to him since we arrived. She herself said that she couldn't have wished for a better Christmas.

The last 8 years have been especially hard on my mom. Uncle Ber, her beloved brother died and 6 weeks later my dad died. Then a couple of years ago Taunte Riet died, as did her best friend Blanche. All this time she’s been asking us and God himself “Why do I have to be the last one?”

I continue from here on Saturday, February 10, 2007…

I just read the first section of this post for the first time since I wrote it. I likely stopped where I did as we had a visitor or had to finish making our travel arrangements or the phone was ringing yet one more time. Everything about those first hours and days after Sean delivered the news to me that my mom had died is a blur and I don’t remember too much of it. We’re back home in Obihiro now and life is just steaming along and dragging me and my heavy heart along with it. It’s going to be a challenge for me to slow things down and feel. But I must. Writing here has been my outlet and seems to work for me. Something about this act of publicly writing for me and others to read is very cathartic. It’s not easy but forces me to be honest with myself; it keeps my mind clear and lightens my heart. Please feel free to egg me on. Here I go...

Tooth # 5, food glorious food and the early stages of crawling

Our child seems to be going for some sort of record-breaking performance in the tooth department! Today I spotted tooth # 5! Nope, not “a tooth about to erupt” but a tooth that has already broken through his gums and has already been put to good use on a wide array of teething devices. Surprisingly, this tooth was preceded only by a rare midnight feeding last night and of course copious amounts of drool.

We’ve got Keenan up to 2 solid food meals a day and he’s really enjoying it. I mentioned a while back that I wasn’t sure if his early teeth would indicate an early need for solids. Well I’m pretty sure the two go together in this case. Especially since he’s barely cutting back on his breast-feeding need/interest. We’ve been taking the recommended route of introducing solids one at a time and 4 to 7 days apart to ensure there’s no allergic reaction and so far so good. I’m making all of Keenan’s baby food and freezing it in small batches with great success. So far Keenan loves his veggies more than fruits and his grains include rice, quinoa and oats. He eats quinoa or oats or a mixture of the two which I grind into flour and then cook to make a gruel (yes Tom, the boy loves his gruel as much as you do!) for a mid morning meal. I mix that with one or two fruits such as banana, apple or persimmon. He eats about a half a cup of that followed by a two boobies and then he literally passes out for a few hours. Then in the evening he has rice with one or two veggies like yaki imo (roasted sweet potato), kabocha (Japanese pumpkin) or avocado (I know it’s really a fruit but he doesn’t like it with breakfast!). In between he snacks on rice crackers, which are a blast because they stick to his face and hands when he drools on them! And yesterday I bought spinach and kabocha bite sized biscuits, which he really loves, and are getting him to understand what chewing is all about. Once he hits the 7-month mark we’ll work on expanding his horizons in the food department. We’re holding back on the juice or water except for a very rare treat and even then we dilute the juice with 50% water. The problem is he likes the taste way too much so he’s not happy to only have a wee bit and when we give him more he pukes it up. Here’s something interesting though…if he has a bit of juice with water and then I breast feed him he still pukes but he only pukes up the water and juice not the breast milk. Freaky.

As if getting new teeth and having a good appetite isn’t good enough Mr. Progress is getting better at “pre-crawling” every day. He’s on his hands and knees for longer periods of time now and he really gets into bouncing in that position. When he really gets into it he laughs like crazy and then falls on his face and then laughs some more. So the very near future holds the task of keeping things up high, doing away with cables and a visit to the baby store for all the safety stuff to keep his curious little hands out of cupboards, drawers, heaters and plugs. Oh joy!

Close encounters of the illegal alien baby kind

This is a “venting” post. The grammar will suck and the tenses might be senseless but I will feel much better by the time you read it.

The last 2 days have been stressful in ways I couldn’t even dream up in my worst nightmares. It started on Sunday evening when I was filling out the forms for travel insurance for Keenan and myself. Sean is covered thru his employer for our trip to Canada in a few weeks but Keenan and I are not. No big problem as it’s fairly easy and inexpensive to get travel insurance here. The one thing that worried me was the extensive list of exceptions on the application so I saved the filling out of these forms for a quiet evening so I could sit down and read the “fine print”. There are many interesting things you come across when reading print translated from Japanese into English. Most are absolutely abhorrent errors in grammar that are so ridiculous I often feel like someone must be videotaping my reaction in secret because no well meaning person would actually write…”insured members will be except from coverage due to any unforeseen calamity”. One sentence in the fine print that went something like “we will not be responsible for arranging travel visa’s for you or your children” fuelled a nasty feeling I’ve had about Keenan’s residency status since he was born.

Let’s go back more than half a year to the point in time when I was still pregnant and getting together the mountain of paperwork we had to fill out for Keenan once he was born. We got his Canadian passport and citizenship applications. Got all the details together for applying for his Japanese Alien registration card. Checked out the procedures for registering his birth at City Hall and Sean’s office was going to take care of signing him up for health insurance. We consulted the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo, the Canadian consular designate in Sapporo, Sean’s office and the City Hall here in Obihiro and all said that was all we needed to do. Shortly after Keenan was born we filled everything out and all seemed hunky dory.

Now we’re back to Monday, the day before yesterday and after reading the “fine print” I asked Sean to confirm with his office whether Keenan needed a visa or not. I was going to call Immigration in Sapporo and triple check with them. Calling the Sapporo Immigration office can be a seriously frustrating exercise as they are supposed to have someone that speaks English on staff but I think their name might be Suzuki Snufalupogus. In other words that person is rumored to exist but nobody who speaks English has ever actually spoken to them. It’s really unsettling speaking to someone with broken English about immigration issues since we live either a 5 or 3 hour drive from the nearest immigration office. You could get all the way out there and realize that you don’t have all the forms or ID you need because the person you were dealing with on the phone gave you the wrong info or didn’t know how to say it in English. So on Monday morning after Keenan went down for a nap I called Sapporo Immigration and prepared my self for a hen pecking conversation of broken English and my even more broken Japanese. To my complete and utter surprise I got Snufalupogus on the phone. Next and in no uncertain terms he informed me that Keenan needed a visa and should have had one 30 days after he was born and now he is an illegal alien and we have broken Japanese immigration laws and by the way, why did you do this? OH MY GOD. I can’t tell you how those words sharpened my defenses to a razor’s edge. Shit! What’s going to happen next? Will we be deported? Will they call the police? Wait. Did I give this guy my name? Say where we lived? I did say Sean was on the JET program and we know the only other JET couple that had a baby on Hokkaido in the last year and they’ve already returned home. It wouldn’t be too hard to find us. Now into problem solving mode…“I’m so sorry we made such a big mistake, can you please help me fix it?” So it turns out we would need to get to the Immigration office sooner rather than later with our passports and alien registration cards (which all 3 of us have), Keenan’s shyusshyoo shomei sho (a copy of Keenan’s birth certificate which is a whole other nightmare I’ll save for another post), Sean’s zaishoku shomei sho (proof of his employment), my Mother’s book and a letter explaining why we didn’t get Keenan a visa within 30 days of his birth. I was told he couldn’t guarantee the situation would be resolved in one visit and that Keenan’s visa application would need to be reviewed by some big wig on up high because we would be applying under “special circumstances”. Good Mxxxxxxxxxing grief. At least two full day trips to Sapporo and there’s already snow in the mountains and it would be 10 to 12 hours of driving a day depending on Keenan’s mood and actually he would be totally and understandably a nightmare if we strapped him into his car seat for that long. “Ok, thank you very much for your help. We’ll see you soon. Bye-bye”. To the sounds of Keenan cooing himself awake I collected my thoughts and devised my plan. Call Sean and compare notes, email Eiko and ask if she can call Sapporo and confirm everything I’ve just been told and check if we can do this in Kushiro (only 3 hours away) then get all the paperwork together. (Typed by Sean while I got up to eat my breakfast…FART FART FARTY FART!! ...Isn’t he so lovely?!) By the end of day Eiko had called Sapporo and confirmed all the stuff we needed and found out that we could get this done in Kushiro. Sean’s classes on Tuesday ended at 11:45 am and Eiko offered to come with us so we decided we’d head to Kushiro in the afternoon.

On Tuesday I got up early, had a shower, drove Sean to work, did the banking downtown, bought Keenan a new Shinada because I couldn’t resist it and I needed a bit of retail therapy and then we headed to City Hall to get a copy of Keenan’s birth certificate. I was a little fed up with the whole “lack of any clear system” to get our child properly registered in this country so I took an “I don’t speak or understand any Japanese” position. I don’t really speak or understand much anyways but I was feeling extra stubborn and wanted these folks to work for their supper as they were part of the reason we were scrambling to get this stuff done. Did I mention I felt like I was getting my period for the first time in 13 months?! So I finally got 2 copies of Keenan’s birth certificate (1 for immigration and 1 just in case we need it when we’re traveling-I had to lie to get the friggin’ second copy), drove home to Eiko waiting, packed up our stuff, picked up Sean and then the 4 of us were off to Kushiro. Five minutes into the drive Keenan starts screaming because we’ve had such a whirlwind morning I hadn’t had a chance to feed him for a few hours. So 10 minutes later we pull into the Dai Ichi in Satsunai. I nurse Keenan in the parking lot while Sean and Eiko get some bento, beverages and eats for the drive. Twenty-five minutes later were on the road again. We arrive at the Kushiro Immigration office around 3 pm and Eiko explains our story to the lone Immigration Officer. He knew our details before we walked in the door as the Sapporo office called him the day before. So it turns out this fellow is the #1 boss and the other lowly guys were away taking care of some other sort of immigration business. He was a really lovely man with kind eyes, a grey beard and a “I have 6 grandkids and I’m 5 years away from retiring” kind of way. I finished filling out the paperwork by 3:15 and our applications were faxed to some unknown locale for approval by some other high up folks (remember we made ourselves a “special circumstances” case by not getting Keenan’s visa within 30 days). Within minutes we’re told Keenan has been granted a visa and that it’s over in the time it takes to read this sentence.

And now? Now I really can’t wait to get our 3 butts on that plane to Canada.

If you are having a child in Japan here’s some important immigration tips…

-Deal directly with the immigration office for your region to make sure you have all the applications you need before your child is born
-If you have a bad feeling about something follow your intuition and if you get the run-a-round here call or email the passport/citizenship department in your home country
-Be aware that the deadlines to apply for a gaijin card, passport, citizenship and visa make absolutely no sense (e.g.: the visa application must be made within 30 days of birth but you can’t apply for a visa without a passport and it took us 60 days to get Keenan’s Canadian passport)
-Every child born in Japan to non-Japanese parents needs a visa and a re-entry permit if you plan on leaving and returning to Japan
-Always read the fine print

First ocean visit 2m tsunami warning tooth #3 tooth #4 5cm of snow 6 gazillion tons of concrete 8.1 quake a Whooper Swan wedgie & a call from the BBC

The above are the highlights of our life from the last 3 days. I like singing it to the 12 days of Christmas tune.

It started on Tuesday. I was breastfeeding Keenan and well, he bit me. He’s bitten me before but he’s only had teeth on the bottom so it felt totally different. Teeth on the bottom AND top work together to produce a whole new type of sensation! So, I stuck my finger in his mouth and lo and behold his top right, front tooth had pushed through his gums overnight. That explains the excessive drool and disruption in his rock solid sleep patterns.

Then yesterday I drove Sean to his high school in Taiki. It’s about an hour drive away and he only had one class so I figured I’d take Keenan down to the river to see the spawning salmon and then we’d pick up Sean and take Keenan for his first visit to the ocean. Keenan whinged or screamed for the whole time we were at the river. When I held him he wanted to be in his stroller, when he was in his stroller he wanted to be held. So I gave up and I took him back to the car to nurse him. Then we picked up Sean and some lunch and headed out to the ocean. Hokkaido has some of the most rugged yet breathtakingly beautiful coastline I’ve ever seen. The area we went to had steep, high cliffs that ran out to a short beach. A serious effort has been made to restore the ocean side forest that once existed along this stretch but when you look down the cliff face your view is obscured by what seem to be giant sized concrete jacks stacked in triangular columns, which run parallel to the cliff as far as the eye can see. Two rows of them ensure the huge waves break far enough away from the cliff to minimize erosion. First of all it’s an awful eyesore and secondly nobody lives out there. I can’t imagine that the ocean is eating away at the island at such an alarming rate that they must invest millions and millions of yen to pepper the entire coast. So Keenan’s first look at the ocean was not so pretty and actually he wasn’t really awake for much of it seeing how he was nursing or napping the whole time. While I was nursing him and Sean was out taking photos I was sitting there with my eyes closed while I listened to the waves crash into the beach. I could swear that somewhere off in the distance I could hear Canada geese (the sound of Canada geese carrying on as they fly in formation is on my top 10 things I miss about Canada). I just assumed I was getting pretrip nostalgia for all things “home” and then I opened my eyes and saw a very distinct “V” flying towards me. What the frick? As they got closer I realized they were Whooper Swans. Whooper Swans have marked the end of fall and the beginning of winter each year we’ve been here. Seeing those beautiful creatures fly up the coast and over me filled me with sadness about our stay here coming to a close. Shortly after that Sean reappeared and we headed for home. I spent the evening tidying up the apartment and surfing the net. The phone rang around 9 and it was Pat. Very odd for us to get a call from Canada in the evening so I knew something was up. It turns out there had just been an 8.1 earthquake just off the Kuril islands north east of us and there apparently was a 2 meter tsunami warning issued. Hmm, very interest. This was all over CNN, CBC and CTV back home but not much about it had hit the airwaves here. Maybe that’s why the beaches are stacked with miles of concrete! I sent out the standard “we’re ok” email I send out to family and friends after every earthquake that makes it to international news and called my mom. We checked to make sure none of our friends were living along the NE coast and then we checked the BBC an hour or two later to see if anything came of the tsunami. There was this thing at the bottom of the update that said something like…Do you live on Hokkaido? Did you feel the quake? We didn’t feel a thing but we live on Hokkaido so I figured I met half the criteria to warrant my comments! So, I filled out the online form and in about 2 minutes I received a reply back asking me if it was ok if the BBC called me to talk about our “experience”. How novel! Sure I’ll answer your questions! We live in the middle of the island, 5 hours away from the affected coast and are in no danger what so ever but I’d love to chat with someone from the BBC! Sure enough the nice lady called, we chatted and that was about it. Then we watched the Soprano’s, ate some Doritos’s and went to bed.

Then this morning we wake up to our first snow to fall on the city this winter. Remember what I said about the swans? I’m pretty sure they brought the winter with them from Siberia. Keeping with the white theme this morning also saw the arrival of tooth #4. This time it was the left one on the top and in front. We’re well on our way to having a little beaver baby! How Canadian and just in time for Christmas!

Dear ( Iamjustcheckingtoseeifurereadingthis...),

We can celebrate good times a lot sooner than you think my friend as we're COMING HOME FOR CHRISTMAS! That's right! We land in Ottawa on Dec 14 and we leave on Jan 13. We'll be in the Soo for a good chunk of time in the middle but we definately intend on making at least a day trip to Montreal.

By the way, not only do I read your blog on a regular basis but I also know how to spell (Iamjustcheckingtoseeifurreadingthis)!

Love you and we'll be seeing the 3 of you soon!

PS-Put that paddle in the water a few times for me before the lakes freeze up. Can't wait to learn the ropes of family kayaking with you guys.

Just when I thought I might go crazy

Keenan has been a bit of a workout lately. He makes this incredibly aggravating noise (honestly, I now love the sound of nails on a chalkboard) in his throat which we have come to call whinging (pronounced win-ging). It kind of sounds like ehhhhh, ehhhhh, ehhhhhhhh and if he goes long enough it ends up as a waaaaahhhhhhhh eh eh WAAAAAAAHHHHHH. He does it between the times when he’s being engaged. Many times daily I run through the list of “Are all his crucial needs being met?” which 9 times out of 10 they are (hey, I’m not perfect you know!). In the end he just wants to be entertained a la “I don’t want to play with my toys but I want you to play with them right in front of my face while I watch”. Don’t get me wrong we’re not the type to leave our kid unattended with the Playstation and a myriad of other toys and expect him to get the job done himself. I just would like to be able to go for a pee or brush my teeth to the sound of a cooing baby not a whinging one. So we’re walking down the path of this phase pulling out all the old tricks and always inventing new ones along the way to keep our little guy amused. And I guess it’s that concept of this being a phase that he’ll grow out of that keeps us sane. Just today I heard him wake up from his morning nap and I peeked in on him to see what he was up to. He was keeping himself perfectly content by sucking on his toes and waving his hands in front of his face and did so for about 15 minutes.

So now he’s down for the ultra rare afternoon nap and this is my time. During the morning nap I fly thru the house like a banshee trying to check off as many things as I can on my self imposed, huge, long list of domestic responsibilities. But when he goes down for an afternoon nap I do a little happy dance, make some tea and gear gown. This is when I get to surf the net, blog, tweeze my eyebrows, frown in the mirror over my grey hairs and possibly string a couple of beads together. Today I came across an article and video on the internet that made all my fussing over Keenan’s whinging seem…well like I was whinging.

Please check out this link for the story of Dick and Rick Hoyt. It will inspire you to see the tough times with your children through new eyes. At least it did for me.

Boo!

Originally uploaded by kuckibaboo.

We had a great time with Keenan on his first Halloween. We had a party on Friday night at Katie's and then we went to huge celebration at the Tokachi International Relations Centre. Keenan was a little overwhelmed with all the costumes and general scariness at first. He was even a little freaked out about my mask for a while too. But hey, what's Halloween without a little fright! We entered Keenan in the costume contest and he was the youngest contestant by far! He won two prizes...the most unique costume and either the cutest or most realistic costume. He got a couple of bags of candy which he is of course too young for but he really enjoyed the crinkly packages! I have been teaching a couple of classes lately and I've been able to take Keenan with me so he got to wear his costume yet again today. The kids really got a kick out of his cuteness!

Well there's no trick or treating here so we'll spend tomorrow evening at home and probably crack open one of the newly received Bounty bars from my sister! I hope you all have a spooky good time and eat some of those mini chocolate bars for us!

Mommy and Daddy time

Last week Wednesday Sean and I went out on our first date ALONE since Keenan was born. Alixe and Eiko offered to take care of Keenan as a team (each was there in support of the other!). Keenan sees Eiko about once a week and they are totally in love with each other. He sees Alixe less but is very comfortable with her and always flirts with her! So we knew he’d be ok to be alone with them if he woke up. So we followed the plan to have Keenan in bed before we left. He was out like a light and so far he’s never woken up before midnight when we put him down at around 7 pm so the ladies were pretty confident they were able to handle their charge. So after many “ok, here’s what to do in case of’s” and double checking cell phone numbers we left Keenan in the very capable hands of our babysitting team and made our way out the door at 7:45. It felt really strange for the two of us to get into the car and drive away without him. By the time we were 3 minutes from home I was having butterflies and starting to feel a bit anxious. All the while Sean was reassuring me that Keenan was ok and when I asked him if it felt weird for him to be away from Keenan he did in fact admit that it did. A few minutes later we pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant. As I got out of the car I looked into the car seat in the back and it was empty. Weird. The restaurant we went to is called Nagoyaka-tei and it’s a great kaiten zushi place here in Obihiro. We went to the new one on Odori but there was a 20-30 minute wait. Too long and still in baby mode we drove 10 minutes across town to the other location which is a 15 minute walk from our apartment and waited for 10 minutes to be seated! Oh well! We had a great dinner and just chatted and enjoyed watching the sushi glide by. We went for dessert at Baskin and Robbins and did some people watching at the Ichi maru grocery store. Something we both love but don’t have time to do with a squirming 5 ½ month old. Up until this point we had been away from home for 2 hours and that was about all either of us could take. We walked in the door to find Alixe and Eiko watching Murder She Wrote on Alixe’s computer and Keenan fast asleep. He didn’t make a peep the whole time we were gone and Alixe was just getting up to call us and tell us to take our time. I’m not sure what we would have done with that extra time but we felt great for time we did have to ourselves. I think next time we’ll strive for 3 hours!

A million thank you’s to Alixe and Eiko for taking care of Keenan for us!

5 months…and a week

Keenan & Shinada
Originally uploaded by kuckibaboo.

Dear Keenan,

Happy 5 months birthday my sweet boy! You are growing so big so fast it’s almost hard to believe that you were born only 5 months ago! Your dad and I measured you on Sunday and you were 65 cm long. You’ve grown 4 cm in length in 3 weeks! It seems that every week there’s another sleeper or onsie going in the recycle shop bag because you manage to squeeze your shoulders out of the neck! You still have just two teeth. The first one appeared on September 1st and the second one came in on September 10th. So far no others have broken thru but you’re drooling so much that we’re pretty sure one of your upper front ones will be making an appearance any day now. I don’t weigh you too often but you are about 6.5 kilos (about 14 lbs). Your eyes are still blue though they are a little darker blue than when you were born. Your infant hair is nearly all gone and most of the new hair that is coming in is blond. In the last couple of months we’ve noticed that you are developing two dimples in your chin. One is the same as your dad and gramma Pat’s and is right in the middle of your chin. The other one is a bit of a rogue and can only be spotted on the left side of your chin just under your lip when you’ve got a huge grin on. Your ears have kind of gotten to be well…a little bit “sticky outy” and I find them to be insanely adorable! Your body, arms and legs are so long it makes you look like you are a lot older than you actually are. I was sitting next to a woman with another baby yesterday and we had the typical mommy chat. How old? How much does he weigh? Well, it turns out her kid was 9 months old and you were longer than him!

You’re really getting into food. You’ve been watching us intently every time we put some in our mouths for about 2 months now. We let you have your first taste of banana on September 16th and you really liked it. Since then we’ve let you try apple juice with water, sweet potatoes, carrots, pear, apple-pear and mango. You loved everything except the pear. We haven’t really started you on solids yet but we figure since you like trying new things there’s no harm in letting you try a new taste every now and then. You’re all set to go with dishes (Buzz Lightyear and Woody patterns no less!), sippy cups, spoons and bibs. I’ve got some baby food making supplies and I’ll likely make most if not all of the baby food you consume. It’s pretty easy to make and this country has about a million gadgets to get the job done!

You still really love getting out and meeting and being with new people. You are starting to develop a bit of a shy side to you but that’s pretty natural for a wee guy your age. You love being taken out to see the sights and really enjoy being in stores or out walking with us. Yesterday I took you into Nitori to shop for a steamer and you had to touch everything I did. So I carried you and let you reach out and pick up the odd thing. You were a real hit with all the other shoppers, which is always the case when we’re out.

On a good day you have two naps. The first one for about 45 minutes at around 10 am and the other usually in the early afternoon for a couple of hours. If you get all cranky and don’t want to nap I load you into the stroller and we go for a walk. You are not such a fun guy to be around when you don’t have a nap. You are a pretty demanding hands on kid to begin with but if you miss your nap you are a total wingey grump! Needless to say your dad and I have become quite good at what normal/childless people would call idiot behavior! Grinning, jumping up and down, singing in bizarre voices, making faces, knee slapping, clapping all in the name of bringing a smile to your face. When I’m really desperate to bring you out of a funk I break out a set of spoons and play them while I sing to you and make goofy faces all at the same time. The sound of the spoons seems to mesmerize you and you kick your feet and smile like crazy. Nice to know we’re going nuts simultaneously! I know I’m going to jinx myself the second I type this, probably have already for thinking it anyways…there are two times of the day where your schedule is pretty concrete well, for now anyways. You go to bed at 7pm otherwise all hell breaks loose. The 60 minutes between 6 and 7 are usually pretty hairy but if we try to keep you up past 7 it gets ugly (unless of course we’re away from home and then for some reason you’re an angel!). Then you wake up between 3 and 4 to be fed. I put you back in your crib and you sleep until 6 or 7 am and then we bring you to bed and you sleep for an hour or two. You’ve been like this for a while and we count ourselves lucky for your sleep patterns!

You love other children, especially babies. You reach out for them and smile and coo and exude more angelic qualities than I can list. The ladies are still your favorite. You never miss a chance to flash your two pearly whites at the pretty girls no matter their age!

Crawling is in your near future. You can hold your chest off the ground by pushing yourself up on your arms and you can stick your bum in the air by being up on your knees with your face mashed in the floor but you can’t do both at the same time. Once that level of physical dexterity and strength is achieved our lives will change drastically! Right now you inch worm your way around. Never very far all at once but far enough that we have to keep an eye on you when you’re left on an open surface.

You still have one hang-up in the getting dressed/nudity department. You HATE having sleeves pulled over your arms. This is particularly frustrating given the colder weather we’ve been hit with. Layering is going to be a nightmare with you!

Your hands and arms finally are co-operating with your brain! You are constantly reaching out for things that come within or just outside of your grasp. We have to keep an eye on you when you’re in the stroller in the grocery store as you’ll pull things off the shelf if we get you too close. You are most adept at pulling your father’s goatee. You can get all 5 fingers of one hand completely tangled up in it in less than 2 seconds. Then you pull as hard as you can! It’s gotten to the point where your dad has said he’s keeping the goat until Halloween for his pirate costume and then it’s gonna get a serious trimming. Who knows we might even see that handsome dimple again!

Your favorite toys are your rattle with a bunch of different rings on it and your red Shinada creature. If either one gets lost we’re screwed. I’ve considered buying back ups to both but that seems a little extreme don’t you think? You still like your rocking chair and play mat but you get tired with both pretty quickly. Methinks a high chair will be coming into our lives soon. You like having your toys in front of you on some sort of surface where you can move them around, bang them into submission and then discard them onto the floor. Our computer mouse has met with this fate on occasion. Might be best to have a back up of one of those too!

Well, it’s taken me a little over a week to write this! You keep your mommy busy these days but I wouldn’t have it any other way! I’m looking forward to what the next two months hold for you…solid foods, possibly crawling, more Keenan speak and perhaps even sleeping right through the night!

For Keenan: Your first car!

Keenan's first car
Originally uploaded by kuckibaboo.

Written on September 11, 2006...

You were such a good boy on the drive home from Sapporo yesterday! You were a little wingey to start but it was nothing my singing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star for 30 minutes couldn’t take care of! You slept all the way to Hidaka (about 2 hours) where we got out for a pee break for me, a diaper change for you, a bit of walking around and the purchase of a very hard to find Domo charm (for me of course!). Then we continued on until the rest stop with the gigantic papermache-like bear. We had lunch there. I had a cheese sando, ume juice and a Yubari melon softo and you had two boobies. It was here that I bought you your first car. It’s hand carved from wood and I have visions of you scuffing up the hardwood and wearing out the knees of your pants as you push it along the floor in your little hand in a few months! You're a pretty lucky little boy. I didn’t get my first Japanese made car until I was 34!

Just what the Doctor (Sean) ordered!

Man do I feel great! I just got back from a terrific 3-day retreat to Sapporo. I was starting to go a little kooky with cabin fever and teething crankiness. I so badly needed to get out of our apartment, Obihiro and my role as the chief sounding board for Keenan’s teething complaints. I started to crumble on the eve of the eve of Sean’s departure for a 5-day/5-night conference in Sapporo. I just couldn’t bear the thought of being super parent for nearly a week without some sort of break beforehand. Plus I’m starting to get all gooey about this being our last year here and I might not ever get to see fall in Sapporo ever again blah, blah, blah! So Sean suggested we pack up the family and spend the weekend before the conference together in the big city. Financially we couldn’t really afford it but emotionally I was already careening towards bankruptcy so technically one cancels out the other. I’m pleased to report the trip was well worth the money!

The drive there was a little much for Keenan and perhaps for Sean as well. For the last 20 minutes or so before we got to the hotel Keenan was just full on wailing in the back seat. I usually come undone when he does that but I knew stopping wouldn’t help any so I just drove on. I thought Sean was going to climb out of his skin. I found myself promising Sean that we would never ever drive to Sapporo again but would opt for the train instead. As soon as I pulled into the hotels single parking spot (things would have gotten desperate if it wasn’t empty) Sean popped out of the car and got Keenan out of his seat. The two of them stood in the shade of the hotel entrance and consoled each other. It was a beautiful thing to watch. After that everything was peachy. We unloaded the car, checked in and went for dinner at Taj Mahal. We ran into the only other JET family in Hokkaido. What are the chances that all 6 of us would end up in Sapporo, on the same weekend and in the same restaurant at the same time? Nutty. It was really great to spend time with another family. After stuffing ourselves with waaaay too much Indian food we headed off to drool at the Patagonia store and then to Robinson’s to buy breakfast for the next day. Keenan conked out early and for probably the fifth time since we’ve been together Sean fell asleep before me. I had a great time with full control of the TV remote until I came across the soft porn channel featuring a young Japanese woman dressed up as Sailor Moon having sex with a teddy bear that was outfitted with a dildo. Is that supposed to be sexy? Too gross for me so I spent a good 20 minutes tweezing my overgrown eyebrows. They were definitely not sexy!

On Sunday I started my day with my first onsen since giving birth and it was fan-freakin-tastic. The best part was I had the whole bath to myself and that meant I could indulge in onsen swimming, which probably isn’t a good idea, but I love it regardless! There’s only one thing better than swimming naked in the ocean and that’s swimming naked in a steaming hot onsen! Fully scrubbed and steamed we continued on our regular Sapporo routine to routine regular ness. Which means Sapporo is the only city in Hokkaido where we can spend a day doing all the things we love to do in any city in Canada. We went for coffee and then we went to the bookstore, which has an entire section dedicated to English magazines. This section always looks like it’s fallen victim to some sort of localized magazine tornado. Being the only decent English mag section in the 5th biggest city in Japan it gets a lot of love and since the mags are so pricey they get a good once over by many folks and are left behind. It’s such a novelty reading magazines here I find I pick up many titles I wouldn’t even glance at back home. In an effort to maximize my titles per minute I don’t really take care to put them back where I picked them up from. It’s apparent I’m not the only one guilty of such a sin hence the tornado affect. I also looked at lots of books for Keenan and fell in love with the “My very first (insert-numbers, colors, shapes and words-here)” by Eric Carle http://www.eric-carle.com/. I’m gonna have to check out Amazon.jp for the complete set as the format and illustrations are simple yet wonderful. It’s hard to leave a bookstore with just a list of books you want to buy and with no books in hand but it’s just too expensive to ship books back home so they’ll have to wait. I’ll get a few for Keenan and that’s about it. Next on our check list…Yodobashi Camera to check out the Nikon D80. The ultimate “we’ll never need another camera” camera. It is a beautiful instrument. The D70s is already pushing my price limit though so Sean’s gonna have to work on me a bit more! We did get a really nice family photo taken of us by the gal promoting Canon cameras! She was demonstrating the speed at which you can take a photo and print it off so we got a free 8 x 10 of the 3 of us! Our usual route brought us to the Patagonia outlet next. Sean has become fast friends with one of the sales staff who is a member of the Surf Rider’s Foundation and they’re always so pleased to see each other. It was a little too hot in there for me and Keenan was getting hungry so I had to do a quick once over of the place which made me kind of sad. Sean did find me a great Watergirl shirt, which he bought me as an early birthday present. Happy Birthday to me! After that we beat a path to the train station which is a mega, multi floor mall you could spend a week in and never see every store. It makes the West Ed mall look like a corner store. The main target here was Akachan Honpo, which is a whole floor, devoted to kids stuff. They have a great comfort station and I fed Keenan there and we picked up the next size in cloth diapers as well. As I was feeding Keenan I noticed that his second tooth has broken through! This one was way easier than the last one! We had lunch and then headed to Jupiter foreign foods where we bought exotic things we can’t buy in Obihiro like green Greek olives, oats and mushroom ravioli! I popped went to the Gap and picked up a pair of swim trunks for Keenan for 3 bucks and then we wearily made our way back to the hotel in the rain. We treated ourselves to Robinson’s sando’s for dinner and a Java Chip frappacino. Then back to the hotel again for my second onsen of the day and some much deserved sleep.

After Sean left at 7:30 am for his first day at the conference I got all of our stuff packed while Keenan had a nap and then we headed to Starbuck’s. I had a mocha and a scone and Keenan flashed his big blue eyes and flirted with a very cute little girl in a Burberry dress. Being a year older she was 3 times his age and the high-end dress and $500 Aprica stroller meant serious trouble in the future so he had to leave her broken hearted! Besides she was from Honshu and we had to return to wee Obihiro! Speaking of which I packed up the car and Keenan and I hit the road rejuvenated and ready to face the rest of the week together.

First tooth!!!!!!!

Well, we now have our explanation for why Keenan has been sounding and acting like he was just stabbed by the witch king on Weathertop!!!! He’s cut his first tooth at 16 weeks + a day! That’s about 2 months ahead of schedule. I spotted the tooth this afternoon when Keenan and I were settling into a feeding session. He opened his mouth wide and I noticed the jagged little white protuberance in his lower gums near the front and just off center. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I poked my finger around in his mouth, which didn’t please him much since he already had his eyes on the boob. I have to admit that sharp little tooth didn’t make me feel too happy about sticking my boob in there! It’s pretty tiny though (the tooth, my boobs are huge) and I didn’t end up feeling it after all.

Sean and I have recently had the solid foods discussion (as in when we are going to start Keenan on them). The mid wives here have told us that we could start him on juice at 2 months, soups at 3 and solids at 4 months. That might explain why Japanese babies are so round. The hospital has been really good with our views on when to introduce solids. We have decided on letting Keenan take the lead but we both agree that we’d like me to breast feed Keenan exclusively until 6 months. Everything we’ve read clearly identifies that babies don’t have the digestive system for solids until around then and they usually don’t cut their first tooth until that time anyways. I’m not sure if that theory works the other way around but like I said we’re going to let Keenan lead us in the right direction. If he seems like he’s not being kept satisfied with the breast milk then we’ll start the solids earlier.

So this first tooth explains a few other things too. As of this week bibs have become a permanent addition to Keenan’s daytime attire. He drools a nearly obscene amount of oob and it gets everywhere. He likes to chew on the bibs too so they serve as a convenient, tethered down teething device. Everything he can get into his mouth he sucks on. My shoulder, Sean’s fingers, all his toys, the shoulder straps on his car seat. Two days ago I found him on his side in his crib sucking his own forearm. I can’t wait to tell his first girl friend that he gave himself his first hicky! He’s been chewing on his tongue and rolling it around his gums non-stop the last two days. And he’s been breast-feeding like crazy. Probably because it feels good on his tender gums. It’s been impossible to get him to nap for more than 5 minutes for the last 7 to 10 days. He gets himself so worn out that he goes to sleep by 6:30 pm, gets up for a 2 am feed and diaper change then sleeps until 5 or 6, and then I bring him into our bed and he gets fed again and sleeps until 7 or 8 am. I’m pretty sure that even the weather has changed for the better because of this tooth!!

Keenan was carrying on this evening with the “eeehhhh, eeeehhhh, eeeehhhh”, “eeeeeeeeeyaaaaeeeehhh” business so we dug out the Anbesol I asked Pat to bring for us (thank you, thank you, thank you!!!) and put a wee bit on his gums around his new tooth. Poor guy, the first thing he gets to taste other than breast milk is yucky Anbesol. He pulled a very unhappy face but then the pain went away and he started in with the yawning. He was so tired that he didn’t even finish one boob and he was conked out. He was totally limp and sound asleep by 6:10 and I don’t suspect we’ll hear from him again before midnight. Poor boy, vaccines last week and his first tooth this week. Maybe I’ll make him some breast milk popsicles to make him feel better!

3 month check up

I got a very tired Keenan to bed early tonight and Sean is making me dinner so I have a bit of computer time this evening. Yippee!

I took Keenan in for his 3-month check up last Wednesday. The hospital was a mad house. It was so crazy busy that I had to use their tertiary parking lot down the street. We get in, I sign in and by the look on the nurses faces I can tell that I’ve already managed to do something wrong. So it comes down to…“What are you doing here?” … That’s busy nurse speak for “What’s the purpose of your visit today?” I point out that my mother/baby book states that I’m supposed to bring Keenan in for a check up between 3 to 4 months after he’s born. I figured 15 weeks was pretty much half way. Apparently I was supposed to make an appointment. Of course no body told me that last time and it says so nowhere in my book. I’ll just chalk that one up as “one of those things I should have been born knowing”. Needless to say everyone was once again extremely accommodating and they managed to fit us in.

Keenan has been doing this “wingey, I’m not gonna sleep thing” for almost 2 weeks and I was really worried he was gonna have a melt down in the waiting area. Didn’t happen. He was very curious about the other babies and really appeared to be enjoying himself looking around and taking in the sights. Within about 5 minutes the mid wives upstairs had been notified that we were on the premises and they started to file down to see us. It was great to see Sato-san again and she clearly enjoyed bouncing a much bigger Keenan on her lap. The first segment of the visit always consists of checking and logging Keenan’s stats. He was so amazing during this process. He actually smiled and looked about happy as a clam. I was so pleased!

His progress since birth is as follows…
Weight gain (since post birth weight loss)…1870 grams (4.12 lbs)
Head circumference growth…5.2 cm
Chest circumference growth…6.2 cm
Growth in length (funny how we don’t say length growth!) … 10.6 cm

Keenan’s current stats are…
Weight: 5800 grams (12.78 lbs)
Head: 40.5 cm
Chest: 41 cm
Length: 62 cm

Then I discussed vaccines with the nurses and asked that he get vaccinated in the backside instead of the triceps. A 9-point vaccine is used in Japan to ensure maximum exposure and it leaves a nasty scar about an inch square. They didn’t think it would be a problem but I needed to ask the pediatrician. We drew up a vaccine/booster schedule for the next year and I put in a request for a Hep B vaccine. Hep B is not part of the bundle of routine vaccines here but it is in Canada. It costs 6400 yen a shot and there are 3 shots in total. We are planning a trip to Thailand this Christmas so I want to make sure Keenan has that one before we return home. He will get the polio, DPT and Hep B at the hospital and we have to go to the Health Centre to get the BCG.

Next we were sent back out to the waiting area to wait to see the pediatrician. This is where you get to listen to all the other kids screaming while their vaccines are being administered, it’s bloody hell and I wasn’t looking forward to Keenan’s turn. Keenan fell asleep while we were waiting. Great, not only was he is line to get a needle in his ass, he was going to wake up to getting a needle in his ass. What an evil mom! The pediatrician completely checked Keenan over and was please with increase in length but said Keenan was still “smallish” read “not fat enough”! Arghhhhhh! By North American standards he’s doing just fine and I don’t think he needs to be a porker to be healthy. Now for the vaccines. It was pretty heartbreaking to watch Keenan naked and squirming around on the examining bench as he was getting a shot in the muscle above each bum cheek. He stopped crying as soon as he was dressed and in my arms and everything was a-ok again.

All in all I was pleased with how everything went and I’m happy with Keenan’s progress. It was great to see the mid wives again and Keenan did me proud by being such a tough and brave little guy. Hopefully I can be just as brave during the administering of the rest of his vaccines.

Maintenance up

Keenan is currently going thru a very high maintenance, wingey, I need 24 hrs of mommy and her boobies stage. So I’ve been away from the ‘ol blog fer a while. I’m currently typing with 1 hand as he is sleeping in my other arm. Thank goodness for intuitive word processing.

Apologies to Gina, I got your msg and will reply when I’ve gained control of my other hand! I hope all is going well in these first few weeks. Keep up the ganbatte spirit.

Gotta run, the babe awakes.

A year ago today…

After lots of trying and a little praying...
Originally uploaded by kuckibaboo.

...driving in the pouring rain on a road thru the Hidaka mountains I felt the first sensations of a life starting to grow inside of me. I knew the test would be positive. My outlook on life would never be the same. There were those few hours before I told Sean what I was feeling and it was such a bizarre point in time, the beginning of the end of just the two of us. As soon as I told Sean we would be on the other side. The side of not just hoping but being. I was calmly excited and I enjoyed those hours of being the only one to know. I felt like I was being afforded a unique time for reflection and I developed a deep sense of appreciation for the road that had brought us to that exact point in time. School, work, travel, love, death, all that couple stuff (the good, the bad, the ugly and the great!), great friends, awesome family, personal growth and now we were be given the one thing that nobody else could give us but ourselves (and possibly divine intervention?!) the beginnings of a family. How truly miraculous indeed!

Fast forward a year and here we are with Keenan and we’re already talking about when we’re going to have the next baby. I’m pleased to be one step ahead of the folks back home on that question for once! The best part for me is that the second one was always a big “if”. I wasn’t really sure I could handle being a mom and now I realize it might possibly be the best job on earth.

Written on August 15

13 Weeks/3 Months

Keenan Mosaic
Originally uploaded by locket479.

Dearest Keenan,

Happy 3 months birthday! The last 3 months have gone by so quickly. All of a sudden you’ve become curious, engaging, talkative and mobile in your own rolling little ways! We love to sit and listen to you babble on in Keenan speak. You are so emphatic that at times your words come out in high pitched yips or bubbling raspberries. And when you are serious your brow furrows exactly the same way as your daddy’s. You fall asleep in our arms so easily and you definitely would rather snuggle with us than be put down. I love that feeling of having your warm little body cradled in my arms. I could stare into your face for hours while I hold you. You like to sleep stretched out and on your side but you would rather sleep on your tummy if only your mommy and daddy would let you. We’re in the process of moving you into your crib for most of the night and it’s a hard thing for me to do but it’s just too hot and cramped to have us in the same bed all night. Plus you have a habit of thrashing about from 4 until 7 and you kick off your covers and MINE! Last week you started hanging onto my clothes when carried and you now keep your head held high when we’re walking about. For some reason this past week you cry when we put you in your car seat but you’re still happy to fall asleep or watch the landscape blur by as we’re moving. You are 100% breast fed which is a battle we both won with tears. It was really hard in the first month. You preferred sleeping to eating and when you did eat you didn’t suck hard enough which caused my milk supply to decrease. I’m sorry if you felt hungry at times but it was that hunger that spurned you on to learn how to suck properly which brought my milk supply back up. I celebrate every one of your quabbles and creases as a victory of motherhood.

You have an adorable little round tummy but really narrow hips so it’s been hard to get the next size of diapers to stay on. The only problem is you were still wearing infant diapers but not having infant sized poops! Well congrats, you wore your last infant diaper last week and have no problem filling the next size up now! Your eyes are still blue though somewhat darker and leaning more towards grey now. You have an ever-growing amount of chins and quabbles and yesterday daddy noticed for the first time that you have dimples on your elbows! Your hair is still the loveliest strawberry blond and it looks like your new hair is coming in the same color or a little blonder. At this point you haven’t lost too much of it, only on the sides and you don’t have that bald patch at the back of your head either. What you do have on the back of your head is the exact same birthday as your daddy. You have strong hands with long fingers and adorable feet that are big like daddy’s but with my toes! By the grace of God you managed to end up with my long torso and your daddy’s long legs (daddy long legs ha-ha!) instead of the other way around (short legs, short body). At this point you look pretty much like your daddy, which I’m ok with ‘cause you know, you are a boy! I do see myself in you in a lot of ways. You have my nose, mouth, chin and exact replica’s of my big toes!

In an effort to keep you cool this week I was wiping you down with a wet face cloth and you grabbed it and put it in your mouth. Now you’re starting to put other things in your mouth like our fingers and your rattles. Soon everything you encounter will be similarly tasted. It is truly fascinating to watch you explore your world. From the people you meet to the most ordinary everyday objects, everything is regarded with the same wonderment. I can only imagine the kinds of things you’re going to get into over the next 3 months!

Happy 3 months on the outside wee boy! I am so looking forward to watching you grow and learn.

All my love,

Mommy oxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

***Thanks to Sara who made the Keenan mosaic of photo’s from the last 3 months. We love you Auntie Sara!!!***

Baby book ends, daddy’s home and my first 7 hours of blissful sleep in 3 months!!!!

As you can see Keenan loves his new baby book ends!
Originally uploaded by kuckibaboo.

Well yesterday was another scorcher of a day but nothing could spoil my mood since Sean was due home in the afternoon. I fulfilled my mission of locating baby book-ends yesterday. They work ok so far but are a little far apart so I need to make a slight modification to them. Naturally Keenan hates them as you can see in the photo to the right! It does appear that he only hates them when he’s awake so that’s not too big of problem. I also found bumper pads for the crib but I’m gonna hold off on those until I can shop around a bit this weekend.

We picked up Sean from the train station at 4:30. It was sooooo good to see him! We celebrated his return home with dinner at Saboten with Bret and Sara. I’m very excited today as my omiyage is coming via takubin. That means it was too big or too fragile for Sean to bring it home on the plane! Ohhhh, I wonder what it could be!!!!!

We got home at 9 pm and I fed Keenan and put him in his crib at around 9:30 (sandwiched nicely between his new book ends of course!). He has been sleeping with us all night up until now but the bookends and the heat make for too close quarters for our sweaty little family so I figure now is a good time to get him used to sleeping on his own. I assumed I’d be up to feed him in a few hours but he didn’t wake me up until 4:50 am! And he wasn’t even terribly upset! He was just lay there making his morning grunting sounds and I suspect he was probably trying to turn over. I was so shocked to feel so rested and wake up to it being really bright out. You know when you sleep for a long time and you wake up and feel like you’ve become part of the mattress? That’s how I felt. I could barely move and man did it ever feel good! I fed and changed Keenan and got horrifically peed on. He peed from his changing table into the living room without getting anything on his bedroom floor. I didn’t notice his skillful urination until I came back from washing my hands and stepped in it. Lovely feeling at 5:30 in the morning! I brought Keenan into bed with us and we slept for another couple of hours. We woke up to Keenan speak and more attempts at rolling over. Sean hadn’t seen any rolling yet so we let Keenan do his thing. He surprised me in two ways. First, he somehow gained Herculean strength over night and can fully lift his huge head off the bed for fairly long periods of time. Secondly, he can now roll from back to front and then front to back! I can’t believe how talented and strong our little guy is! We’re so lucky to have such an awesome baby! Somebody’s gotta have the best baby in world and I’m pretty sure it’s us!

…Keenan won’t stop rollin’

Written on August 8, 2006
Finally got internet back. Yippee! Now I know that it’s been 32 to 35 C with up to 75% humidity for the last 4 days. It almost looks like it might rain tonight. Hopefully it’s one of those huge atmosphere clearing thunderstorms that leaves sparkling, dry weather in it’s wake.

Keenan has been a friggin’ workout today! He just won’t ease up on his desire to roll onto his stomach. He’s lightning fast at it now and today he was holding his head up off the mattress and looking around like a little turtle. He can now move from one end of the crib to the other by kind of pulling himself along with his arms while he’s up on his knees. Sort of a half crawl. He still finds it emensely frustrating and I have to roll him onto his back after about a minute of looking around. The book end style rolled up blankets aren’t working anymore. That lasted about 72 hours. So last night I started using pillows. By this afternoon he had foiled that anti baby rolling technique as well. He either just pushes or kicks the pillow out of his way. He didn’t sleep more than 20 minutes at a time today because he kept waking up to roll over. It’s bitchin’ hot again today so he gets all sweaty and sticky and really tired. But he won’t sleep. It does make him really hungry though so it’s been a day of 20 minute naps, rolling and breastfeeding. So this afternoon I got to thinking about those waterproof Pelican brand briefcases and camera cases. They’ve got these pre cut die cut foam inserts and you can remove any number of the pre cut dies to fit your camera or breakables. I was thinking I’d like to get one of those foam inserts for Keenan’s crib! I could just remove a Keenan shaped pattern of dies and just slide him in there when he needs to go to sleep. Presto! No more rolling over! And it makes so much sense ‘cause as he grows I can just remove more little bits of foam! Ya, so the heat is indeed getting to me. What I wouldn’t do for a diaper friendly outdoor pool! But seriously, I need to do something about the rolling over. So I bounced Keenan on my lap and did a search on the net for some real anti rolling devices. I found a few online and I’ll check around town tomorrow. If I can’t find what I’m looking for I’ll just order online. I also need to get bumper pads for the crib since he gets his little arms and legs all caught up as he’s trying to roll over. No doubt he’s gonna bonk his nogin’ sometime soon.

The good news is Sean is home tomorrow night. Yippee! We’ve both missed him very much although since Keenan can’t argue with me I can safely say that I miss Sean more!

Rollin’, rollin’ rollin’…

Written on August 7, 2006
If you had told me yesterday that it was going to be even hotter today I would have packed up overnight and moved to the North Pole. Now it’s too hot to move so I may as well stay around and tough it out. It didn't really cool down that much last night so by 10 this morning it was just as hot as it was yesterday at 2 pm. It’s another bra and undie day for me and Keenan’s decked out in just a diaper.

I forgot to mention it in my last post but yesterday Keenan mastered the art of rolling over flat onto his stomach. Yup, he figured out how to get his arm from underneath him. Today he can pull up his knees and get his butt straight up in the air. That’s right. Them’s there are the first signs of crawling! It’s all still a huge struggle for him and he grunts, farts, cries out and gets boogers and drool all over his sheets in the process. His neck is not quite strong enough for him to keep his head off the mattress so he gets terribly frustrated once he gets himself rolled over. He doesn’t even enjoy being rolled over once he gets there! It’s just such an instinctual step in the process of learning to walk. I wonder what’s going thru his mind as he’s struggling with his little nose smunched into the bed…”what the hell am I doing this for?”, ”boobies are way better than this”, “what are my legs doing, why is my bum in the air?”. The worst part of it for me is that I’m worried to death he’s gonna choke or suffocate so I have to put these baby bookends (rolled up blankets) on either side of him while he’s on his back or side to keep him from rolling onto his stomach unsupervised. He gets truly pissed at me for doing this so I indulge him in his rolling instincts every couple of hours usually when I’m having a meal or snack. It’s a weird thing sitting in the rocking chair watching our 3 month old struggle onto his front while I’m having sushi bento or my morning coffee. All in the name of progress I guess!

Hotter than Satan’s arse

Keenan beatin' the heat
Originally uploaded by kuckibaboo.

Written on August 6, 2006
It’s 11:15 pm on Sunday and it’s just finally cooled off enough that I can open the windows of our apartment. It’s been so friggin’ hot these last few days. It’s the kind of heat and humidity that would keep a person from taking up permanent residence here. According to the locals this weather is highly irregular. This is my third summer of highly irregular hot, humid Hokkaido weather. I’d say that’s consistent enough to qualify as “regular”. Sean is currently in Tokyo for a 5 day JET conference. So Keenan and I are making our first attempt at surviving without daddy. We’re doing really well so far even though we miss Sean very much. I can’t imagine how hot he must be in Tokyo. Yesterday it was supposed to be 33C (that doesn’t include the Humidex). I hope he hasn’t melted into a puddle of goo! Our apartment is pretty tolerable for most of the day but I can’t do anything strenuous like fold laundry, without breaking into a sweat. So around 2 when I’m pretty tired of moving around at a snails pace in order to keep cool, Keenan and I head out to heavily air conditioned retail environs. Today’s exploits took us to Posful which is a somewhat hip department store downtown. We actually went there twice. We had to abort our first attempt because in the 10 minutes it took us to drive there in an air conditioned car I had sweat so much that it looked like I had been sitting in a puddle. How lovely. So we made our way back home so I could change. We got in the door and I put Keenan in his crib while I got into some cooler bottoms. Keenan reacts to heat by sleeping thru it so by the time I got changed he was quite happily snoring away. So I striped down to my bra and undies and read some magazines until he woke up. It was actually quite tolerable and probably the closest I’ll ever come to wearing a bikini in my adult life! So Keenan had himself a nice 2 hour nap, another feed and then we made our second attempt. My pants selection seemed much better this time and we made it into Posful without an ass sweat incident. It was so gloriously cool in there and they were having a sale! What luck! We did lots of poking around and I picked up some 50% off summer clothes for Keenan for next year. I also got him a ring rattle with lots of colors and textures for those exploring little hands of his. I bought lots of no cooking required foods in the grocery department and we headed home to a still very hot apartment. Hopefully tomorrow will be a little cooler.

Tanabata Matsuri

Tanabata Matsuri (Star Festival) in Obihiro
Originally uploaded by kuckibaboo.

Written on August 5, 2006
Yesterday Keenan and I went to the Tanabata Matsuri (Star Festival) in downtown Obihiro with Bret, Sara and Daryl. This festival is geared towards kids and features all sorts of huge piñata type decorations that hang down from the rafters of the koji (covered walkway). They shut down the traffic in the koji and the street is filled with kids of all ages decked out in yukata (traditional Japanese hot weather clothes) running thru the streamers trailing down from the decorations. There is no shortage of festival food, games and trinkets to spend your hard earned yen on. It was too hot to be out for more than a few hours so we didn’t get to any of the celebrations and merry making at the Buddhist temples which had me a bit sad but we were happy to get back home and have a cool bath. Keenan did get to wear his yukata that Pat bought him and he was stopping lots of gramma’s I’ll tell ya!

Gas and Keenan’s 2nd iTunes play list!

Our little guy sure does get some pretty nasty gas attacks. He’s been getting them since he was about 5 weeks old. The first time he had a big one he woke us up with peels of screaming at around 3 in the morning and after an hour of trying massage, bouncing, rubbing, walking around the apartment and a bit of crying myself I figured out the magic formula. I sit with him sideways on my lap, I hold him tight and close into my body with one hand and with the other I pat him 4 times on the side between his ribs and hipbone and then I bounce my leg up and down 3 times all the while talking to him in a calm voice. Repeat, repeat, repeat and change sides when necessary. The end result is a sleeping baby (knock on particle board). This may sound incredible but after two months of this I’ve run out of things to say for the “talking in a calm voice” part of the exercise. So I’ve put together an iTunes play list called “Sing Keenan to sleep”. It’s about 4.5 hours of songs I know almost all the words to so I press play, sit myself down in front of the computer with the wee guy getting bounced and patted on my lap and sing along. So far Keenan’s favorites to fall asleep to are by Jack White, Gordon Lightfoot, Billy Bragg, Joe Strummer, Bob Dylan, David Francey, Green Day, Joni Mitchell, Matthew Good, Johnny Cash, Pearl Jam and the Housemartins. I think it’s speaks volumes of the quality of your music if it has the ability to soothe a baby of it’s gas pains and carry it into a sound sleep. Especially when it’s being sung by a somewhat sleep deprived mom with a not so great singing voice!

12 Weeks

Trying out the wrist rattles...
Originally uploaded by kuckibaboo.

Well it’s been a frustrating week of no Internet and sticky, hot and humid weather but none of that has stopped Keenan from learning new things and continuing on his path of near unbearable cuteness! Tuesday was a pretty exciting day as he mastered the art of thumb sucking and he went to his first movie in a big theatre! He has finally convinced his arm, hand and thumb that working together would bring a great deal of soothing during times of stress and boredom. As a result he’s constantly covered in drool but he keeps himself amused so it’s worth the oob. We ventured out to see Pirates of the Caribbean II and Keenan once again did us proud by barely uttering a peep during the flick. He made a few “talking in his sleep” noises but other than that he slept thru the whole thing.

As far as the movie goes…I thought the fortuneteller was sexy beyond belief, the effects were cool especially those used to create Davey Jones and his crew but I thought the first flick was better.

Back to the boy…he is really enjoying having a bit of “alone” time. He’s nowhere near as needy as he was in the first two months. He likes to sit in his rocker and stare at his hands and kick his legs. He also really enjoys carrying on in “Keenan-speak”. When you talk to him he talks back in his own language and always with a big smile. A typical conversation goes something like this…

“Hi there sweet boy. You’re lookin’ very genki this morning!

“Ackle beep fssst nngaa ghee!”

“How about we change that stinky bum of yours?”

“Haaahap nnboo!”

As you can see we’re communicating wonderfully! If only we could get him to understand that being on his stomach is not such a good thing. On Thursday he finally got himself nearly flat on his stomach. The only thing that is keeping him from being completely turned over is that he hasn’t figured out how to get his arm out from under him. I imagine that will be just a few more days though. Keenan is starting to show an interest in toys. He likes looking at and grabbing for his wrist rattles. He hasn’t quite figured out that the noise they’re making is a direct result of his movements but you can really see the wonderment in his eyes over the whole situation. The best development this week has been in the smiling department. He smiles whenever either one of us looks into his face. He smiles at Sean when he gets home from work and the most precious smile is when he wakes up and gives us a big gummy grin. We’re so lucky to have such a happy little guy.