I never cease to be amazed by the contrast in technological advances and lack there of in this country. We had to pay to have a separate gas hot water heater installed in our kitchen as only dish soap gelling, frigid water comes forth from the taps. On the other hand there is an entire division at the Japan Meteorological Agency that tracks the “sakura front” (桜前線, sakurazensen) as it makes its way north to the very tip of this cherry blossom crazed country! They even publish and regularly update a webpage that plots the progress of the advancing pinky goodness!
I must admit we’ve really come to look forward to the arrival of the cherry blossoms. They are the true sign that spring is here to stay. We’ve even planned 2 days and nights of our spring road trip to coincide with the blooming of 1600 sakura trees in Goryoukaku Park in Hakodate. We’ve never been there before and we’re really looking forward to exploring this beautiful city as the warm spring breeze swirls the delicate petal around us. We plan to partake in some “flower viewing” (花見, hanami) which is taken very seriously amongst avid cherry blossom fans. Apart from going for a nice steamy onsen, hanami is one of the most relaxing activities I’ve encountered in this country. You pack yourself a picnic or pick up your favorite bento, some beverages, a blanket and of course the one accessory that shows you really know what your doing…a blue tarp! Then you head out to your favorite cluster of flowering trees, set up underneath them, sit back, enjoy the flowers, the food and the company of other hanami enthusiasts. It’s really amazing to see all the stuff folks will tote along to their chosen site. You’ll see carts that are loaded up with BBQ’s, tripods, spotting scopes, folding chairs, obscene amounts of skewered meats for the grill, blankets, liters of bottle tea, mochi, video cameras, kids toys you name it. If it will prolong the hanami experience it goes along!
This time of year will always be very special to me. When I went in to labor for Keenan almost a year ago the blossoms had yet to open in Obihiro. Keenan was born at 12:14 in the afternoon on a Thursday and that Saturday I noticed the first blossoms opening from a window in the hospital down the hall from our room. There is also a sakura tree just outside the window of the maternity floor lounge and it burst into bloom that same day. On Sunday (my first Mother’s Day as a mother) I awoke to the unforgettably striking sight of snow falling on the blossoms. It was truly breathtaking. The whole 7 days we were in the hospital trees all along the building were in various stages of bloom. It felt wonderful to me as we had planned to name our baby Hanako(“hana” means flowers and “ko” means child) if she was a girl. Instead we had a beautiful baby boy in the middle of a city in full bloom. Looking at the blossoms thru the hospital windows was one of the first things Keenan and I did together apart from the routine hospital stuff and I will always hold that memory close to my heart.
Eiko, if I have made any kanji mistakes please let me know! Yoroshiku!
Originally, this blog was created to chronicle the experience of starting our family in Japan. Now in Canada & expecting our second child...the journey & the adventure continues...
Monday, April 09, 2007
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Monkey express
Now that Keenan is fully mobile in the crawling department he's decided he'd like to be able to take things along on his exploits. The problem with crawling is that it employs both of his hands. So last week he started to put things in his mouth to get them from point A to point B. The results as you can see are often quite hilarious!
Monday, April 02, 2007
I survived last week…
…but the day after the previous post was even worse. Keenan developed a bit of a runny nose, cried nearly all day and wouldn’t sleep. Sean came home that night and brought along Eiko, Bret and Sara. Keenan and I both had such a shitty day and company was just the thing we needed to get us out of our funk. Dinner, cake and a bit of fun made us both feel better but the next morning it was clear that Keenan had come down with something. There was nothing we could do to make our wee boy happy or ease his discomfort and yet he didn’t seem sick enough to take him to the doctor. So we decided we’d tough it out and if he wasn’t better by the end of the day we’d take him to the hospital. Then we had an “a ha” moment. We discovered that he would sleep if he lay against our chest when we were reclined at about a 45-degree angle. And he would sleep that way for hours. Clearly he was tired and needed the rest so we traded Keenan back and forth and let him sleep on us. He would scream if we tried to put him down. I was starting to wonder if perhaps he inherited my tendency for head colds accompanied by painful sinus congestion. Until very recently I never used to get chest colds if I got sick at all. I was always the stuffed up nose kid that emanated Vicks Vaporub. I’m sure that, my chocolate sandwiches and tendency to kick my teachers added greatly to my popularity! Maybe our little guy was really stuffed up and every time we tried to lay him down he got stuffier? I filled the essential oil burner with a good dose of camphor, mint, rosemary and eucalyptus and put it next to the tub, ran a bath, closed the door and let it get all steamy in there. Then I gave him a long hot bath, breastfed him and he fell asleep in his crib for about 90 minutes. A pretty short nap by Keenan standards and even shorter for a sick boy but he was way more genki when he woke up. By Saturday afternoon he was pretty much back to himself again. Phew!!!!! We’re so lucky he’s made it this far and that’s the most sick he’s ever been. Knock on wood, fingers crossed.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
One of THOSE days
*CAUTION: Profanity used at will in this post and I can’t be bothered to spell/grammar check either.
Oh God, this day is a doozy. I’m saying “is” because it’s only 3:49 pm and there’s still plenty of time for it to get worse.
Today started off as most do. Up at 5:45 am to the sounds of Keenan burbling away in his crib. The only difference here is that I took the wood frames out from under my side of the futon yesterday and as a result I had the most amazing frickin’ sleep since Keenan was born. So I had some cobwebs in the brain and was a little slow to get to the boy so he got a bit whingey. No biggie, nothing I haven’t dealt with before. Breastfed Keenan, changed his bum, got him dressed for the day and turned him loose on his toys in the living room. Got coffee going and breakfast on the go. Then, hmmmm wonder if Sean needs a shower today? Better check. Opened door to bedroom, let Keenan loose on his dad. “Do you need to shower today Sean?” I shower every second day on opposing days to Keenan’s bath day. Don’t know why, it just worked out that way. Sean showers whenever but if we have to shower on the same morning then we need to step things up a notch, well no actually then he needs to get his ass out of bed earlier so we can both shower before he leaves for work. Sean gets out of bed, has a shower, I’m in the kitchen continuing to get breakfast ready while Keenan is biting me, pulling on my pants, pulling things off shelves, holding the fridge door closed when I need it open and then holding it open when I need it closed. You know, typical baby getting into everything kind of scenario. So I’m trying to juggle all this stuff and Sean walks by and says “ok, what’s the funniest line from last night?” I have no idea Sean. I don’t store that kind of info well anymore. What was the funniest line from the Soprano’s (or was it CSI)? That’s when the badness started. “You need to try to remember that kind of stuff or you’re just perpetuating the problem”. Right, I’m gonna have a shower. Which I did. I get out to a very quiet apartment. Sean fed Keenan who fell asleep in his high chair before finishing his breakfast and is now fast asleep in his crib 20 minutes before we have to leave to take Sean to work. Sean and I talk about the spat and how I spend the better part of my day trying to remember things I’ve forgotten and how that comment made me feel. Part of the problem is that Sean had an office party last night and I had Keenan by myself all day. It’s totally fine if he’s in a genki mood but if he’s not which was the case it turns into an exhausting endeavor. So, I was feeling like yesterday was just bleeding into today with any break and it was making me a little crazy. Anyways, we patch things up and then wake up the boy and get Sean out the door.
Keenan whinges all the way to Sean’s office and all the way home. It’s a good kind of whinge though. His I’m gonna fall asleep if I even just see a picture of a boobie kind of whinge. We get upstairs, Keenan gets two boobs and is not venturing off to lala land during the feeding. Shit. No prob, I’ll just set him down in the crib on his side and see if he’ll go off to sleep. Five minutes of crying later I go in and bring him out to play for a little while. “A little while” turns into a few hours but then I finally get him off to sleep at around noon. 20 minutes later someone’s pulling on doorknob and ringing the doorbell. Back home this would freak the shit out of me but it’s commomplace here for the delivery guy or gas guy to open the door if it’s unlocked and call your name into your apartment. I wasn’t too impressed the first time it happened, stopped keeping my purse in the hallway and never walk around in my underpants and bra in the daytime unless it’s 32 degrees Celcius or higher. And now I always keep the door locked too. Then Keenan starts to cry. Oh boy. If it’s that guy trying to sell me first aid kits again I’m gonna give reason to use one. Wasn’t him. It was Sean. “I didn’t have any lunch money so I rode home”. Great ok, well you just woke up Keenan after I tried all morning to get him down for his morning nap. He apologizes, makes lunch, hangs out with us for a few minutes and then has to get going again. I’m in the middle of eating my lunch, Sean walks out the door and Keenan starts crying. He’s been doing that lately when we leave a room and he can’t see us. So, I pick him up and take him into the hallway for a bye-bye hug, kiss and a bit of waving. That seems to do the job now he wants my lunch. He eats a bit of it and I get up to make him some too. More crying. I pick him up and take him in the kitchen with me. Lunch is pretty easy to make with one hand. Take rice from rice cooker and put in bowl. Open package of sesame seeds a pour some on rice. Set package down but somehow manage to drop it and when trying to prevent package from falling on the floor I dump the contents all over the kitchen floor. Likely millions of seeds are all over the floor, my socks and in the pockets of my hoodie. This was definitely an “aw few fuck sakes” moment. Fuckity fuck, ok Keenan you need to play in your crib for a few minutes while I get this cleaned up. “Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa” Geez you’d think you were getting a diaper change or something.
I’m tracking seeds everywhere but manage to get them swept up. Finish making Keenan’s lunch. Feed him and try to get him to bed. He’s dead tired. I try another 5 minutes of crying in the crib. Nope. I bring him out to play. He pulls the tea pot off a shelf he couldn’t reach yesterday, gets into the garbage, pulls on the heater cord, nearly pulls a kitchen chair over onto himself, falls on his face while crawling because he’s so tired, smacks his nose, more crying, reaches for a plant he’s not yet been interested in, only wants to play with the computer mouse, no luck there baby, more crying, pulls on heater cord a million more times. In the middle of all this I did actually have to change his diaper and he screamed so loud I thought my eardrums would pop.
When Keenan gets tired but won’t sleep he looses all interest in his toys. It’s like he forgets how to play with them and just goes trawling for trouble. Then he gets wound up and needs to be brought back down to earth. So I brought him over to his toy area, put everything in the toy bin and then took one thing out at a time and we played with each thing until it was boring. Plus we ate stray sesame seeds off the floor! Yummy! After an hour of plain ole quiet fun the boy starting yawning every now and then. So of to his room we went and he finally went down for his morning nap at 3:30 pm. If I could I’d give myself a raise. Maybe I’ll shave my legs twice this week.
Shit, it’s 4:46 and he’s crying. Here we go again.
Oh God, this day is a doozy. I’m saying “is” because it’s only 3:49 pm and there’s still plenty of time for it to get worse.
Today started off as most do. Up at 5:45 am to the sounds of Keenan burbling away in his crib. The only difference here is that I took the wood frames out from under my side of the futon yesterday and as a result I had the most amazing frickin’ sleep since Keenan was born. So I had some cobwebs in the brain and was a little slow to get to the boy so he got a bit whingey. No biggie, nothing I haven’t dealt with before. Breastfed Keenan, changed his bum, got him dressed for the day and turned him loose on his toys in the living room. Got coffee going and breakfast on the go. Then, hmmmm wonder if Sean needs a shower today? Better check. Opened door to bedroom, let Keenan loose on his dad. “Do you need to shower today Sean?” I shower every second day on opposing days to Keenan’s bath day. Don’t know why, it just worked out that way. Sean showers whenever but if we have to shower on the same morning then we need to step things up a notch, well no actually then he needs to get his ass out of bed earlier so we can both shower before he leaves for work. Sean gets out of bed, has a shower, I’m in the kitchen continuing to get breakfast ready while Keenan is biting me, pulling on my pants, pulling things off shelves, holding the fridge door closed when I need it open and then holding it open when I need it closed. You know, typical baby getting into everything kind of scenario. So I’m trying to juggle all this stuff and Sean walks by and says “ok, what’s the funniest line from last night?” I have no idea Sean. I don’t store that kind of info well anymore. What was the funniest line from the Soprano’s (or was it CSI)? That’s when the badness started. “You need to try to remember that kind of stuff or you’re just perpetuating the problem”. Right, I’m gonna have a shower. Which I did. I get out to a very quiet apartment. Sean fed Keenan who fell asleep in his high chair before finishing his breakfast and is now fast asleep in his crib 20 minutes before we have to leave to take Sean to work. Sean and I talk about the spat and how I spend the better part of my day trying to remember things I’ve forgotten and how that comment made me feel. Part of the problem is that Sean had an office party last night and I had Keenan by myself all day. It’s totally fine if he’s in a genki mood but if he’s not which was the case it turns into an exhausting endeavor. So, I was feeling like yesterday was just bleeding into today with any break and it was making me a little crazy. Anyways, we patch things up and then wake up the boy and get Sean out the door.
Keenan whinges all the way to Sean’s office and all the way home. It’s a good kind of whinge though. His I’m gonna fall asleep if I even just see a picture of a boobie kind of whinge. We get upstairs, Keenan gets two boobs and is not venturing off to lala land during the feeding. Shit. No prob, I’ll just set him down in the crib on his side and see if he’ll go off to sleep. Five minutes of crying later I go in and bring him out to play for a little while. “A little while” turns into a few hours but then I finally get him off to sleep at around noon. 20 minutes later someone’s pulling on doorknob and ringing the doorbell. Back home this would freak the shit out of me but it’s commomplace here for the delivery guy or gas guy to open the door if it’s unlocked and call your name into your apartment. I wasn’t too impressed the first time it happened, stopped keeping my purse in the hallway and never walk around in my underpants and bra in the daytime unless it’s 32 degrees Celcius or higher. And now I always keep the door locked too. Then Keenan starts to cry. Oh boy. If it’s that guy trying to sell me first aid kits again I’m gonna give reason to use one. Wasn’t him. It was Sean. “I didn’t have any lunch money so I rode home”. Great ok, well you just woke up Keenan after I tried all morning to get him down for his morning nap. He apologizes, makes lunch, hangs out with us for a few minutes and then has to get going again. I’m in the middle of eating my lunch, Sean walks out the door and Keenan starts crying. He’s been doing that lately when we leave a room and he can’t see us. So, I pick him up and take him into the hallway for a bye-bye hug, kiss and a bit of waving. That seems to do the job now he wants my lunch. He eats a bit of it and I get up to make him some too. More crying. I pick him up and take him in the kitchen with me. Lunch is pretty easy to make with one hand. Take rice from rice cooker and put in bowl. Open package of sesame seeds a pour some on rice. Set package down but somehow manage to drop it and when trying to prevent package from falling on the floor I dump the contents all over the kitchen floor. Likely millions of seeds are all over the floor, my socks and in the pockets of my hoodie. This was definitely an “aw few fuck sakes” moment. Fuckity fuck, ok Keenan you need to play in your crib for a few minutes while I get this cleaned up. “Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa” Geez you’d think you were getting a diaper change or something.
I’m tracking seeds everywhere but manage to get them swept up. Finish making Keenan’s lunch. Feed him and try to get him to bed. He’s dead tired. I try another 5 minutes of crying in the crib. Nope. I bring him out to play. He pulls the tea pot off a shelf he couldn’t reach yesterday, gets into the garbage, pulls on the heater cord, nearly pulls a kitchen chair over onto himself, falls on his face while crawling because he’s so tired, smacks his nose, more crying, reaches for a plant he’s not yet been interested in, only wants to play with the computer mouse, no luck there baby, more crying, pulls on heater cord a million more times. In the middle of all this I did actually have to change his diaper and he screamed so loud I thought my eardrums would pop.
When Keenan gets tired but won’t sleep he looses all interest in his toys. It’s like he forgets how to play with them and just goes trawling for trouble. Then he gets wound up and needs to be brought back down to earth. So I brought him over to his toy area, put everything in the toy bin and then took one thing out at a time and we played with each thing until it was boring. Plus we ate stray sesame seeds off the floor! Yummy! After an hour of plain ole quiet fun the boy starting yawning every now and then. So of to his room we went and he finally went down for his morning nap at 3:30 pm. If I could I’d give myself a raise. Maybe I’ll shave my legs twice this week.
Shit, it’s 4:46 and he’s crying. Here we go again.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
First haircut looms in near future
We woke up to Keenan's first dreadlock the other day. He still has quite a few newborn hairs that just won't fall out and they are really long and tend to get all fuzzy and form this halo around his head. Now they're getting really brittle and dry and they get tangled up while he sleeps. So it looks like we'll need to give the babe a hair cut soon. It's kind of sad cause his long wispy bits are terribly cute. But it won't be so cute when he gets his sticky fingers caught in the knots and accidentally pulls out his hair!
I'm not really looking forward to the haircutting event. It's gonna be quite a task to get him to sit still. There will be tears and they'll likely be from all three of us. I think the fastest and safest way to do it will be to use the clippers. That'll give us a better chance of a somewhat uniform cut as well. We'll be sure to take lots of before, during and after photo's and we'll keep the clippings as well. Wish us luck!
I'm not really looking forward to the haircutting event. It's gonna be quite a task to get him to sit still. There will be tears and they'll likely be from all three of us. I think the fastest and safest way to do it will be to use the clippers. That'll give us a better chance of a somewhat uniform cut as well. We'll be sure to take lots of before, during and after photo's and we'll keep the clippings as well. Wish us luck!
Already starting to miss them
There are many, many things that we are going to miss about leaving this country and Obihiro, the lovely little city we've called home for the past two and half years. Of all the things we'll miss, the great friends we've made will be on the top of the list. Some have already returned home, Alixe leaves this weekend and this summer a good load of us gaijin will shed many tears in airports and train stations and then go our seperate ways.
Waving good-bye to Bret and Sara will be truly heartbreaking. They are both the most unlikely & likely folks to be married and we love them so much for that and in fact for all the things they do and say. Everything's an adventure when we hang out with you two and we're really gonna miss the dinners, headturning escapades, cultural blunders and bizarre yet refreshing use of the Japanese language!
I snagged this photo from Sara's Flickr page. Bret's not too fond of sweets but Sara really wanted him to have a special treat so she made him this ridiculously brilliant birthday cake. In an effort to keep it a surprise she assembled the burgers and fries into the form of a 2 layer cake in her car, in the parking lot of their apartment building, in the dark! God, I wish I could have been there to see her order 22 cheeseburgers and 1 order of small fries at the local MacDonald's! I can't even imagine what that would smell like in the car! Then to sit there in the dark and put it all together as other folks from the building walked by. Just a glimpse into a typical day in the lives of Bret & Sara! Keep on keepin' on just as you are. You rock!
Waving good-bye to Bret and Sara will be truly heartbreaking. They are both the most unlikely & likely folks to be married and we love them so much for that and in fact for all the things they do and say. Everything's an adventure when we hang out with you two and we're really gonna miss the dinners, headturning escapades, cultural blunders and bizarre yet refreshing use of the Japanese language!
I snagged this photo from Sara's Flickr page. Bret's not too fond of sweets but Sara really wanted him to have a special treat so she made him this ridiculously brilliant birthday cake. In an effort to keep it a surprise she assembled the burgers and fries into the form of a 2 layer cake in her car, in the parking lot of their apartment building, in the dark! God, I wish I could have been there to see her order 22 cheeseburgers and 1 order of small fries at the local MacDonald's! I can't even imagine what that would smell like in the car! Then to sit there in the dark and put it all together as other folks from the building walked by. Just a glimpse into a typical day in the lives of Bret & Sara! Keep on keepin' on just as you are. You rock!
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Pooh story #2 ~ The 'ole “grab & rub”
These days the only time you seem to be happy about getting your diaper changed is when you’re yanking on your penis or testicles. Yup, you’ve discovered your private parts my boy! And you’ll introduce them to anyone or anything you can get your hands on like your rattles, poor innocent & sweet Shinada or any clean clothes that are within arms reach. A typical diaper change sounds something like this…
“Woo hoo! That baby is stinky”
“Ok, I’ll change ‘im”
Baby gets set down in changing area
“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa”
Pants off
“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa”
Diaper undone
“Waaaaaaaaaaaa wuh wuh wuh waaaa a a a aaaaa”
“Oh crap, it’s a big, messy one!”
“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa”
“Keenan!”
“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa”
“Wait! No, not Shinada, we just washed him yesterday.”
“Heeeeeeeee he hum heeeeeeeeeeee hehh aahhhhhhh!”
“Oh geez, oh shit, honey? I need reinforcement! This is a 4 hand diaper!"
“Burble beeeeee beeeeeep beeeee buvvvvvvvvv!”
Oh and you like to get up mid diaper change too. So, we’re faced with crap on our hands, crap on your hands (which leads to crap everywhere) and then you decide “I’m done with this laying on my back business, let’s get mobile!” Necessity has forced us to become as quick and agile as calf ropers when it comes to changing your bottom. Please God let this be one of those stages you tire of quickly!
“Woo hoo! That baby is stinky”
“Ok, I’ll change ‘im”
Baby gets set down in changing area
“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa”
Pants off
“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa”
Diaper undone
“Waaaaaaaaaaaa wuh wuh wuh waaaa a a a aaaaa”
“Oh crap, it’s a big, messy one!”
“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa”
“Keenan!”
“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa”
“Wait! No, not Shinada, we just washed him yesterday.”
“Heeeeeeeee he hum heeeeeeeeeeee hehh aahhhhhhh!”
“Oh geez, oh shit, honey? I need reinforcement! This is a 4 hand diaper!"
“Burble beeeeee beeeeeep beeeee buvvvvvvvvv!”
Oh and you like to get up mid diaper change too. So, we’re faced with crap on our hands, crap on your hands (which leads to crap everywhere) and then you decide “I’m done with this laying on my back business, let’s get mobile!” Necessity has forced us to become as quick and agile as calf ropers when it comes to changing your bottom. Please God let this be one of those stages you tire of quickly!
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
10 months
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!
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!
Monday, March 05, 2007
Love that you wear
We had one day of visitation at the funeral home before the funeral. We had decided we wanted to fill the room with photos of mom’s life, flowers and things she had made. Tyler made an amazing photomontage of mom’s life on his computer that would play constantly on the large screen TV. Jose found Tyler and Nick’s baby blankets that mom made and a few weeks before she had given me a whole bag of baby things that mom had knit for her boys. Mom was very pleased that these things were being passed on to us and that Keenan would get to wear them as well. We were sure she’d be pleased to be surrounded by these things at her final send off.
The first morning we were in Ottawa when we went home for Christmas mom gave Keenan his first sweater that she had made especially for him. It’s kind of a light sky blue with blue buttons. I mentioned in a previous post that we woke up to mom playing with Keenan on the dining room table. Shortly after we got out of bed mom told me to go into her room and get the gift box off the shelf in her bookcase. In the box was the sweater, 2 pairs of her famous baby booties whose pattern has been in our family for a few generations at least, a couple of toques and a pair of mittens she bought. While Keenan sat square in the middle of the table we dressed him in his new sweater. It looked great and was just big enough that he would have room to grow and would be able to wear it until the chill left Hokkaido’s spring air. Mom was so pleased with herself and beamed with pride.
I had asked mom to make Keenan this sweater sometime late in the summer of last year. All I requested was that it be blue and a cardigan style as Keenan hates having things pulled over his big square head! Mom picked the color and pattern and started it when it became cool enough to sit with knitting in her lap. I knew from the start that asking mom to do this was a big deal. She hadn’t done much knitting or crocheting in recent years as her patience, eyesight and fingers were all conspiring against her. But like any best mom in the world she would do just about anything her kids, grandkids or great grandkids asked. She called me shortly before we were to leave to tell me the sweater was done. She had also started on a matching pair of pants but she was going to save them until we were there so she could measure his long legs and make sure she made the pants big enough to last as long as the sweater.
The pants are what I found the morning we were collecting things for the visitation. We stopped by mom’s to pick up a few things I had in storage in mom’s basement and some photo’s as well. It was the first time I had been in my mom’s place since she had died. It was so shocking to think that just a week and a half earlier we had woken up in this very house and hastily got ready for our early morning flight back to Japan. I can still see Mom holding and playing with Keenan as we got ready and she was very much alive. This time around we were once again short on time and basically just stormed the place and tried to get in and out as quickly as possible. I picked up moms knitting bag on the way out thinking there would be some things in there we could put up at the funeral home. Keenan’s half finished little blue pants were in there. Everything slowed down at that point. Seeing those pants on the knitting needles hit me with such a sense of finality. I hadn’t been to the funeral home yet, we had sped thru mom’s place and I barely had time to look at anything and I was still in a state of disbelief that mom was gone. Such a small thing made me still and delivered me tears. I thought about my mom and how she was so particular about making sure everything was taken care of or completed. She rarely started anything she knew she couldn’t finish. The pants were just another indicator of how suddenly she had left us.
We took the knitting bag with us to funeral home and set up her handiwork on a chair. She would have been proud to see those things there. Lots of people commented on how lovely they were and I think we all felt a sense of pride for our mother’s work.
It’s safe to say that my mom has knit almost all her life. She could remember knitting or crocheting as far back as her memory could take her. She learned to knit in grade school, before World War II. Like most girls of that time she attended a Catholic school that was run by nuns. At the beginning of grade one they were given a “dolly” as mom would call it, two knitting needles and a crochet hook. The nuns showed the girls how to knit and then they would all sit for a couple of hours each day and knit all the while chanting the directions in Dutch. I know for a fact that my mom remembered that chant up until at least the week before she died as she recited it for me. I’m sorry I didn’t write it down. By the time the girls finished grade 2 they could fully dress their dolly with either knitted or crocheted clothes. Take your pick. Hats, dresses, sweaters, pants, socks, underwear, booties, mittens, blankets, you name it. This has amazed me to no end for years. What an unbelievable skill to have from such a young age. Seems to be a hell of a lot more useful than cutting & pasting. Though considering the time my mother went to school, this would have simply been practical. “Once you know how to dress a dolly you can dress a baby,” she would tell me. Mom didn’t knit too much during her “teenage” years mostly because there was a war going on but also because she loved to sew. Not only could she knit or crochet any garment known to humankind she could also sew them. She made many of our clothes when we were kids. She made skirts for me out of my sister’s jeans way before it was “hip” to do so. Jose and I were talking about mom’s sewing skills when I was back home for the funeral and she revealed to me that she can remember when she got her first pair of store bought jeans, I believe they were bright yellow. Not many 46-year-old women can lay claim to that memory! Once babies came back in to mom’s life so did knitting and crocheting. She made things for her babies in the 50’s and 60’s, Charlie’s boys in the 70’s, Jose’s boys in the 80’s, Keenan in 2006 and any other babies that came along in between that needed something special. Her knitted baby booties are legendary and Keenan has grown out of his first pair already. Thankfully he has two more pairs to grow into. They match his blue sweater and the unfinished pants too.
I personally never really considered myself the knitting type. But for some reason I bought a book about knitting at Chapters when we were home for Christmas. It is filled with all sorts of “modern” patterns as my mom pointed out, but most importantly it has easy instructions for getting started. My mom would try to teach me how to knit when I was a kid and I would always have to get her to cast on or start the first few rows for me as I could never pick it up from her showing me. I'm sure at that point she probably felt cutting and pasting was a huge waste of her daughters time too! I’m a read and learn kind of person (some would label me a “manual reader” and you know who you are!) and this book had awesome casting on instructions and it was cheap so I bought it. I brought the book to mom’s place to show her and I proclaimed with a big grin on my face that I wanted her to show me how to knit. I was really excited and her excitement level was well, waaaaay below mine. She gave me that cool “Why would you buy a book to teach you how to knit and then ask me to show you?” She glanced through the book and basically told to me “just keep trying, you’ll figure it out, you’ll see”. This wasn’t exactly turning into the warm fuzzy mother/daughter event I had hoped it would. Did I keep the receipt? Frig. Then mom looks at me and says “I’ll make sure Jose knows that you’re supposed to get all my knitting needles and crochet hooks, don’t worry you can do it, just keep trying”. Well shit. Now I’m committed. Committed, pleased and deep inside girlishly excited.
Little did I know that within a month my mom would pass away, we would return to Canada for her funeral and then back in Japan again I’d be opening that book in the wee hours of the morning while sitting up with a 9 month old both of us trying to recover from jet lag. Those first few nights home in Obihiro were pretty confusing for Keenan. He’d get up at 2 am and think it was time to play. So I’d get up, bring some toys to him in his crib and I’d sit in the rocking chair watching him play and babble himself to sleepiness. At one point I figured “I may as well get that knitting book out and see if I can’t figure out how to get started”. Sometime between the Canada trips I had bought a ball of light blue baby wool and a pair of size 8 bamboo knitting needles so I had all I needed. That’s how it started for me. Sitting up between 2 and 5 am watching over my babbling babe trying to turn a ball of yarn and a slipknot into something called the “first row” with two bamboo sticks. I may be a manual reader but I couldn’t make the aforementioned ingredients look anything like what was being shown in the pictures. “What the hell is wrong with me?”, I thought. My own mother was knitting a full set of clothing for her dolly by the time she was 7 and here I am a grown woman with my own child and I still can’t loop a friggin piece of yarn around a stick! Good grief! So I have to admit that I looked at the LAST picture in the instructions, what I was supposed to end up with, put the book away and struck out on my own. After many failed attempts and downright shitty looking loopy tension issues I, Nancy, 36 years old, mother of 1 figured out how to cast on! Then I knit the first row and the second one and it looked just like my knitting when I was a kid but it was beautiful to me. I have both my mom and believe or not my dad to thank for this. My dad could figure out how to make anything from looking at the finished product and my mom…well it may be premature to say but I think she may have passed on some of her knitting DNA to me.
So there I sat knitting away, stopping every now and then to pull the lot out and start again. After getting over the initial rush and amusement of having figured the whole thing out I realized that I was actually enjoying myself. I could knit and think at the same time! How novel! It was a wonderful combination of being productive, relaxing, creative and escapist all rolled into the same ball of yarn. I started to think of what I was going to make given my limited talents. Naturally I envisioned cozy, chunky sweaters and toasty full sized blankets. But, I figured a scarf for Keenan would be best (even though he has no neck and I wasn’t sure I could finish it before the birds began sitting on their nests). Then I started thinking about my mom. All the years she sat amongst us quietly watching us and knitting away much like I was doing with Keenan and I was struck by a something I’ve never felt before. The feeling that I am making something long lasting for someone I love. It’s different than cooking. Not only was I going to make a scarf to keep Keenan warm but, it would be a physical and permanent manifestation of my love for him. I thought of how my mom looked so happy when the sweater she made fit so well and looked so good on him. And I remembered back over the years all the jeans, mittens, blankets, hats, sweaters, booties, skirts and even wedding dresses she created. She did it because she loved what she was doing and she loved us. I am so lucky to have all those great baby things that mom made for Jose’s boys. Even though mom only knit a few things for Keenan she indirectly made him all those other things as well. Her love will to continue warm whoever gets to wear her creations.
Now what of the half finished blue pants my mom started? I guess in hindsight I’m sad that I left them behind in Canada. At that point the last thing I could think about was having enough time, energy, emotional fortitude and brain cells to take on the task of completing them. Now I’m pretty sure I could do it but it’s too late. If there’s enough wool left for me to make them to fit him next year then I might consider pulling them out and making them bigger for next fall. If not, maybe I’ll pull them out and knit them into something else. Or maybe I’ll just leave them as they are, on the needles, forever a work in progress so I can pick them up once in a while and imagine my mom sitting there in her chair with a smile on her face peacefully knitting her love into warmth for us stitch by stitch.
The first morning we were in Ottawa when we went home for Christmas mom gave Keenan his first sweater that she had made especially for him. It’s kind of a light sky blue with blue buttons. I mentioned in a previous post that we woke up to mom playing with Keenan on the dining room table. Shortly after we got out of bed mom told me to go into her room and get the gift box off the shelf in her bookcase. In the box was the sweater, 2 pairs of her famous baby booties whose pattern has been in our family for a few generations at least, a couple of toques and a pair of mittens she bought. While Keenan sat square in the middle of the table we dressed him in his new sweater. It looked great and was just big enough that he would have room to grow and would be able to wear it until the chill left Hokkaido’s spring air. Mom was so pleased with herself and beamed with pride.
I had asked mom to make Keenan this sweater sometime late in the summer of last year. All I requested was that it be blue and a cardigan style as Keenan hates having things pulled over his big square head! Mom picked the color and pattern and started it when it became cool enough to sit with knitting in her lap. I knew from the start that asking mom to do this was a big deal. She hadn’t done much knitting or crocheting in recent years as her patience, eyesight and fingers were all conspiring against her. But like any best mom in the world she would do just about anything her kids, grandkids or great grandkids asked. She called me shortly before we were to leave to tell me the sweater was done. She had also started on a matching pair of pants but she was going to save them until we were there so she could measure his long legs and make sure she made the pants big enough to last as long as the sweater.
The pants are what I found the morning we were collecting things for the visitation. We stopped by mom’s to pick up a few things I had in storage in mom’s basement and some photo’s as well. It was the first time I had been in my mom’s place since she had died. It was so shocking to think that just a week and a half earlier we had woken up in this very house and hastily got ready for our early morning flight back to Japan. I can still see Mom holding and playing with Keenan as we got ready and she was very much alive. This time around we were once again short on time and basically just stormed the place and tried to get in and out as quickly as possible. I picked up moms knitting bag on the way out thinking there would be some things in there we could put up at the funeral home. Keenan’s half finished little blue pants were in there. Everything slowed down at that point. Seeing those pants on the knitting needles hit me with such a sense of finality. I hadn’t been to the funeral home yet, we had sped thru mom’s place and I barely had time to look at anything and I was still in a state of disbelief that mom was gone. Such a small thing made me still and delivered me tears. I thought about my mom and how she was so particular about making sure everything was taken care of or completed. She rarely started anything she knew she couldn’t finish. The pants were just another indicator of how suddenly she had left us.
We took the knitting bag with us to funeral home and set up her handiwork on a chair. She would have been proud to see those things there. Lots of people commented on how lovely they were and I think we all felt a sense of pride for our mother’s work.
It’s safe to say that my mom has knit almost all her life. She could remember knitting or crocheting as far back as her memory could take her. She learned to knit in grade school, before World War II. Like most girls of that time she attended a Catholic school that was run by nuns. At the beginning of grade one they were given a “dolly” as mom would call it, two knitting needles and a crochet hook. The nuns showed the girls how to knit and then they would all sit for a couple of hours each day and knit all the while chanting the directions in Dutch. I know for a fact that my mom remembered that chant up until at least the week before she died as she recited it for me. I’m sorry I didn’t write it down. By the time the girls finished grade 2 they could fully dress their dolly with either knitted or crocheted clothes. Take your pick. Hats, dresses, sweaters, pants, socks, underwear, booties, mittens, blankets, you name it. This has amazed me to no end for years. What an unbelievable skill to have from such a young age. Seems to be a hell of a lot more useful than cutting & pasting. Though considering the time my mother went to school, this would have simply been practical. “Once you know how to dress a dolly you can dress a baby,” she would tell me. Mom didn’t knit too much during her “teenage” years mostly because there was a war going on but also because she loved to sew. Not only could she knit or crochet any garment known to humankind she could also sew them. She made many of our clothes when we were kids. She made skirts for me out of my sister’s jeans way before it was “hip” to do so. Jose and I were talking about mom’s sewing skills when I was back home for the funeral and she revealed to me that she can remember when she got her first pair of store bought jeans, I believe they were bright yellow. Not many 46-year-old women can lay claim to that memory! Once babies came back in to mom’s life so did knitting and crocheting. She made things for her babies in the 50’s and 60’s, Charlie’s boys in the 70’s, Jose’s boys in the 80’s, Keenan in 2006 and any other babies that came along in between that needed something special. Her knitted baby booties are legendary and Keenan has grown out of his first pair already. Thankfully he has two more pairs to grow into. They match his blue sweater and the unfinished pants too.
I personally never really considered myself the knitting type. But for some reason I bought a book about knitting at Chapters when we were home for Christmas. It is filled with all sorts of “modern” patterns as my mom pointed out, but most importantly it has easy instructions for getting started. My mom would try to teach me how to knit when I was a kid and I would always have to get her to cast on or start the first few rows for me as I could never pick it up from her showing me. I'm sure at that point she probably felt cutting and pasting was a huge waste of her daughters time too! I’m a read and learn kind of person (some would label me a “manual reader” and you know who you are!) and this book had awesome casting on instructions and it was cheap so I bought it. I brought the book to mom’s place to show her and I proclaimed with a big grin on my face that I wanted her to show me how to knit. I was really excited and her excitement level was well, waaaaay below mine. She gave me that cool “Why would you buy a book to teach you how to knit and then ask me to show you?” She glanced through the book and basically told to me “just keep trying, you’ll figure it out, you’ll see”. This wasn’t exactly turning into the warm fuzzy mother/daughter event I had hoped it would. Did I keep the receipt? Frig. Then mom looks at me and says “I’ll make sure Jose knows that you’re supposed to get all my knitting needles and crochet hooks, don’t worry you can do it, just keep trying”. Well shit. Now I’m committed. Committed, pleased and deep inside girlishly excited.
Little did I know that within a month my mom would pass away, we would return to Canada for her funeral and then back in Japan again I’d be opening that book in the wee hours of the morning while sitting up with a 9 month old both of us trying to recover from jet lag. Those first few nights home in Obihiro were pretty confusing for Keenan. He’d get up at 2 am and think it was time to play. So I’d get up, bring some toys to him in his crib and I’d sit in the rocking chair watching him play and babble himself to sleepiness. At one point I figured “I may as well get that knitting book out and see if I can’t figure out how to get started”. Sometime between the Canada trips I had bought a ball of light blue baby wool and a pair of size 8 bamboo knitting needles so I had all I needed. That’s how it started for me. Sitting up between 2 and 5 am watching over my babbling babe trying to turn a ball of yarn and a slipknot into something called the “first row” with two bamboo sticks. I may be a manual reader but I couldn’t make the aforementioned ingredients look anything like what was being shown in the pictures. “What the hell is wrong with me?”, I thought. My own mother was knitting a full set of clothing for her dolly by the time she was 7 and here I am a grown woman with my own child and I still can’t loop a friggin piece of yarn around a stick! Good grief! So I have to admit that I looked at the LAST picture in the instructions, what I was supposed to end up with, put the book away and struck out on my own. After many failed attempts and downright shitty looking loopy tension issues I, Nancy, 36 years old, mother of 1 figured out how to cast on! Then I knit the first row and the second one and it looked just like my knitting when I was a kid but it was beautiful to me. I have both my mom and believe or not my dad to thank for this. My dad could figure out how to make anything from looking at the finished product and my mom…well it may be premature to say but I think she may have passed on some of her knitting DNA to me.
So there I sat knitting away, stopping every now and then to pull the lot out and start again. After getting over the initial rush and amusement of having figured the whole thing out I realized that I was actually enjoying myself. I could knit and think at the same time! How novel! It was a wonderful combination of being productive, relaxing, creative and escapist all rolled into the same ball of yarn. I started to think of what I was going to make given my limited talents. Naturally I envisioned cozy, chunky sweaters and toasty full sized blankets. But, I figured a scarf for Keenan would be best (even though he has no neck and I wasn’t sure I could finish it before the birds began sitting on their nests). Then I started thinking about my mom. All the years she sat amongst us quietly watching us and knitting away much like I was doing with Keenan and I was struck by a something I’ve never felt before. The feeling that I am making something long lasting for someone I love. It’s different than cooking. Not only was I going to make a scarf to keep Keenan warm but, it would be a physical and permanent manifestation of my love for him. I thought of how my mom looked so happy when the sweater she made fit so well and looked so good on him. And I remembered back over the years all the jeans, mittens, blankets, hats, sweaters, booties, skirts and even wedding dresses she created. She did it because she loved what she was doing and she loved us. I am so lucky to have all those great baby things that mom made for Jose’s boys. Even though mom only knit a few things for Keenan she indirectly made him all those other things as well. Her love will to continue warm whoever gets to wear her creations.
Now what of the half finished blue pants my mom started? I guess in hindsight I’m sad that I left them behind in Canada. At that point the last thing I could think about was having enough time, energy, emotional fortitude and brain cells to take on the task of completing them. Now I’m pretty sure I could do it but it’s too late. If there’s enough wool left for me to make them to fit him next year then I might consider pulling them out and making them bigger for next fall. If not, maybe I’ll pull them out and knit them into something else. Or maybe I’ll just leave them as they are, on the needles, forever a work in progress so I can pick them up once in a while and imagine my mom sitting there in her chair with a smile on her face peacefully knitting her love into warmth for us stitch by stitch.
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Hey, I remember you!
Keenan’s been sleeping through the night, which means I’VE BEEN SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT! It’s happened more than 3 nights in a row so this officially counts as a “trend” and not a fluke. Oh, yippy skippy! I forgot how good it feels to go to bed at 10 pm and not get up until 5:45 am. I’m finally starting to feel like I’m coming out of the fog and as an added bonus I’m even starting to remember things. Is that good or bad? Sometimes ignorance is bliss. Well actually my red glasses have been missing for over 24 hours now. They’re somewhere here in this apartment. I’m sure they’ll turn up sooner or later. So yeah maybe a little more memory would be good ne? For now I’m pleased as punch to be getting a full compliment of zzzz’s.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Happy Valentine's Day
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!
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!
Saturday, February 10, 2007
9 months
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!
Friday, February 09, 2007
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...
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...
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
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!
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
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
Thursday, November 16, 2006
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!
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!
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
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.
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.
Monday, October 30, 2006
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.
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!
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!
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!
Sunday, October 29, 2006
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!
A million thank you’s to Alixe and Eiko for taking care of Keenan for us!
Thursday, October 19, 2006
5 months…and a week
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!
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!
Monday, September 25, 2006
For Keenan: Your first car!
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!
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!
Monday, September 11, 2006
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.
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.
Friday, September 01, 2006
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!
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.
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.
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