Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 0 No. 13

2004-02-03 23:14 (Kristen) I love to watch Jamie play with his fingers. He will bring his hands together, and delicately move them about against each other in a manner sometimes reminiscent of Montgomery Burns. "Excellent."

We picked up Jamie's first passport today, and I couldn't help exclaiming how cute he was (even though I'd already seen the pictures) in his new official document. The woman at the desk was very nice about it. We spent a great deal of today running about, which was complicated by Jamie's demand to be fed every two hours, almost on the dot. He also spent some lovely quality time with Tom and Michelle, and also with Tami Sagara, chatting away between feedings. Lots to do, and not enough time to do it, but Jamie seems sanguine, at least.

2004-02-03 25:00 (John) I'm guessing he's doing some more growing. Eat, poo, chatter alertly for a little while, then fall asleep. Repeat.

2004-02-04 25:00 (John) Jamie's been doing more of the frequent feeding, along with a lot of gnawing on anything we put in his mouth, though he favours thumb knuckles. I think we've got everything we think we need packed in a way that we may be able to handle. There's still several hours' worth of work that needs doing though, so I'm not sure I get to sleep before our 7 A.M. cab ride to the airport. We'll be updating our private copy of this log, and taking plenty of pictures every day, and transfering them to the copy that you're seeing whenever we have a moment, likely every few days. Thank you for following along.

2004-02-05 21:00 We're safely here in Puerto Morelos. I got an hour's sleep last night, and Kristen got a couple more. I don't really remember much about late last night.

We counted fourteen items of baggage as we left the house. Each of us had a suitcase, a posl-bag (or in Jamie's case, a diaper bag, which is a little large but still functionally equivalent), a knapsack (or in Jamie's case, a stroller, which is equivalent in the sense that it straps onto his shoulders), a personal item (me: camera, Kristen: snack/overflow book bag, Jamie: car seat) and a bottle of water (except for Jamie, who has Kristen).

At the airport, we put the car seat in an Air Canada-provided plastic bag (like a bike bag, but smaller, and free), checked the suitcases in, went through security (next time, don't dress Jamie in his denim overalls with the metal buttons) and took the shuttle bus through the tunnel under the runways and out to the wilds of darkest Mississauga to gate 527. There were several other families travelling to Cancun aboard a spiffy new Airbus 321, but Jamie was the youngest. He woke up on the plane, and went through a fairly steady nurse-poo# cycle, but was otherwise well behaved.

The in-flight movie was "Master and Commander", which I've now seen two very bad edits of. The first was the "diaper edit", when Kristen and I went to see it in a real theatre. This second was the airline edit, which cut out all the gore, and for all I know a plane crash scene.

Laureano, Beatriz and my dad picked us up in two cars, with Kristen riding in air-conditioned comfort with Jamie while undergoing a twenty-minute surprise quiz of her Spanish conversation skills. We unpacked quickly, took Jamie for his Caribbean baptism. He was startled by the cold water and cried, as expected. I passed him back to Kristen on dry land, then swam a few metres underwater to clean off from the trip (and from Jamie, who had soiled his spiffy new swimsuit on the way to the beach) and took Jamie back to the house to dry off and warm up. By the time Kristen got back, he was sound asleep.

My mom made dinner for our outgoing landlords Nancy and Herman Wenker and for us, and Kristen, Jamie and I turned in early, as we were exhausted. Nancy and Herman stayed up late, because they had to leave at 4 A.M. anyway to catch their flight home.

2004-02-06 23:00 We may have overpacked by approximately one suitcase. Jamie is willing to wear a diaper, but doesn't see the point to wearing anymore, and we're inclined to agree. He spent the entire day dressed in a diaper, except for a few hours in the cool early hours of the evening, where Kristen tried to dress him in his khaki shorts and blue Hawaiian shirt, but he was having none of it.

He was having none of a lot today, but it's sure a lot easier to deal with when there's nothing else on schedule. In between his two to two and a half hour feeding schedule, we each got to go for a good snorkel, eat well, and nap. I think I may have set a personal record for number of naps with six, but I lost accurate count at four.

He's definitely still teething, and on top of that, we're still trying to figure out how best to help him deal with the heat. We've figured out "no clothes" and "stay in the shade", but he'd be happier if there was something more we could do, I'm sure. No heat rash yet though, and he's still on the whole an angel. Thanks, Tom, for teaching us your standard position for soothing otherwise inconsolable babies: held in both arms facing away from your chest, so that they get the comfort of being held but not the hassle of having to make eye contact.

Another useful trick, thanks to the members of the Toronto Scrabble Club, is that if your infant wants to be mobile but doesn't want to be held, you can drive him around indoors in his stroller. That's how we got through dinner. Whee!

When it finally cooled down in the evening, Kristen took Jamie out for a walk on the beach while I went to visit Dr. Joe the chiropractor (above Mama's Bakery) for my annual checkup. When I was done, and walking a lot straighter, all three of us walked into the zocalo* (town square), stopping along the way to chat with all the baby junkies and parents along the way.

(Kristen) The moon was full and low on the horizon when we reached the beach, and the colours were breathtaking. The sky was a deep indigo around the moon as it cast a sparkling road of light on the dark sea. The white sand reflected the moonlight as well, and the stars were sharp and bright. The waves on the shore were small with snowy crests, and I think that Jamie was calmed by the hissing sound as they hit the shore. The gentle breeze off the water cooled him down, and he stayed calm and alert in my arms as he watched the scenery, comfortable for the first time all day. I pointed out the lights of Cozumel to him, barely visible in the distance, and explained how a certain Mayan goddess was responsible for him being here. It was a lovely mother and son time.

Kristen noticed that Jamie has learned how to sidle his way across the bed while on his back. She put him down a little distance away, and when he was hungry, he started inching over by alternately lifting his bum and shoulders! (Kristen) What he is actually doing is rotating himself 90 degrees to the position he is initially in and then getting stuck. If the crib was just a little bigger, I know that he'd be doing happy 360s all day.

Jamie definitely thinks that flannel makes the best teething aid. We've tried him on refrigerated water-filled plastic toys, and on his trusty fish, but he pushes them away in favour of a corner of a flannel receiving blanket every time. (Kristen) The trusty fish has a cloth tail, which will do in a pinch when a shirt or blanket are unavailable, or for a bit of variety.

2004-02-07 09:45 I was woken up at five in the morning by a change in the wind. The prevailing onshore easterlies reversed, as they do once every few weeks, and clammy air started wafting in from the west windows. Jamie and Kristen were sound asleep, so I puttered with the camera, learning better how to work with it in low-light situations until sunrise.

I walked down to the beach to find my mom doing her morning exercises in front of a lagoon that had turned as flat as a pool of oil. I watched the laziest pelican in town float with the current for half an hour, waiting for a fish to come within its reach. We hurried back and got changed for snorkelling. Kristen and Jamie were up, and took advantage of the overcast skies to come see us off as we went for a long swim. Highlights: spadefish (formerly rare in these parts), three spotted eagle rays that welcomed my mom like an old friend, and a very hungry 1.5 metre barracuda floating very high in the water.

(Kristen) Inspired by our lovely walk along the moonlit beach last night, I took Jamie out this morning for a walk. We saw John and Tai Tai head out into the water, and then walked around the area looking at birds. Highlights: a very low-sitting Yucatecan owl, some yellow flycatchers, a mockingbird that sat in a fence only a few feet from us, and the sound of a woodpecker that wouldn't show its face. The owl was a real surprise to see so low to the ground: its tail was ticking and tocking back and forth so regularly that it could have been one of those tacky little owl clocks that were so popular in the 70s, and it had a face that looked perpetually ticked off with the world. We then walked back to the beach to watch John and Sai snorkel from a distance, talked with Martin (the handyman for the Ojo de Agua), watched the sanderlings and sandpipers run across the sand, and then headed back in with John and Sai. Rather, I saw these things: Jamie was asleep when we set out, and didn't wake up until we were back at home.

2004-02-07 12:05 (John) Breakfast at Mama's Bakery was on Hisae. Our yoga friend Joyce turns out to be a closet baby junkie, and neglected the store (covering for Diane who was off sick) to spend time with Jamie. Kristen dressed Jamie up in his blue Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts, so John had to dress similarly and show off for photos with his boy.

2004-02-07 22:00 (John) Kristen went for a walk down past the zocalo* to the handicraft palapas* and learned the Mayan word (poch*) for "what a cute baby!". Dinner was a big batch of chicken curry that Hisae made, after dinner entertainment was the beginning of this year's jigsaw puzzle: a 750-piece panaromic view from atop Mount Everest.

2004-02-08 19:00 (John) Another cold day, enough so that we had to find something reasonably warm to dress Jamie in for sleeping. No complaints though, it's a lot easier to deal with than heat. My mom and I were the only ones swimming in the lagoon today, as it was raining intermittently and there was a really strong onshore wind. Happy windsurfers# and kite-surfers though. (Craig: what are the SOWPODS anagrams of onshore? One refers to a certain kind of tomb, the other to the practice of Irish landlords mooching off their tenants).

Kristen and Jamie came down to the beach to keep us company as we went whizzing past the coral on the current. (Best fish today: a huge white stingray, at least 1.5 m wingspan and a 2-3 m tail). Then they went out for a walk to see if they could get a quiche at Mama's Bakery (too late) and down to the zocalo* to go window shopping. When they came home, we went over to Casa Verde so that my parents' tenant Beatriz could look after Jamie while we napped in her hammock. After our siestas, we walked into town, met a woman with twin two-month olds, took turns looking after Jamie and browsing in the bookstore (okay, I'm still waiting for my turn to browse) and brought home takeout Chinese for dinner.

I'm going to post this tonight, and check to see if Kristen's sister Jennifer has sent us any urgent e-mail concerning her arrival (which we are all eagerly anticipating) tomorrow. Next update will likely be Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon.

(Kristen, as dictated to John while she holds Jamie) When Jamie and I went to the zocalo*, we met a couple and their daughter from Edmonton who also had a Zooper Buddy (stroller). We had a good time discussing how it deals with snow and I continue to marvel at Jamie's ability to break the ice with strangers.

2004-02-08 21:00 Jeez. This town changes way to quickly. My parents' tenants now have a DSL connection and a WiFi network. I have been spending my afternoons in a hammock well within their wireless coverage area, without realizing it. I'll try to check my e-mail whenever I hit the hammock from now on, which ought to be almost as often as back home. :)

I also discovered that I clobbered Jamie's photo index, but retrieved it from Google's cache. Phew.

2004-02-09 12:00 (John) Jamie's in a good mood again this morning. It's warmer today, but not hot, so he's dressed in shorts but no shirt. I went for a quick swim to cool off before heading into town to get Jennifer (saw a school of 30 pompanos), then came back and checked her arrival time. Delayed by two hours, I'm guessing due to something I vaguely remember is called snow. So now Kristen has gone off for a swim, as it'll be a little late to go swimming after Jennifer's plane arrives, and Jamie and I are hanging out. His teeth are bugging him, but he has a fish and he knows how to use it, so we're fine.

2004-02-09 19:00 (John) Took Jamie into the water for the third time this afternoon, after picking up his Aunt Jennifer at the airport. I almost thought we weren't going to make it in time, as her flight was delayed for two hours, including time for everyone to get off a plane with a dead battery (couldn't find long enough jumper cables, I guess) and onto a new one. This time, I held him for a seven-count, or as Jamie counts it, AAH AAAAH AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH AAAAAH AAAAH. Then I took him out of the admittedly cool water (must have been no warmer than 25 C, it's hellish down here), wrapped him up in a dry towel and he calmed right down. He really loves spending time on the beach with the sea breeze in his face. I do too. Everytime I come here, I think that evolving into land animals was a huge mistake. Well, except for sharks and barracudas.

I went back in with Jennifer and my mom, after passing Jamie (by now sound asleep and tucked up in my arms) to Kristen on the beach. We swam from about 17:15 to 17:45, which in the tropics is quite dark, but the water was clear enough that we could still see the fish. Jamie's cousin Becky would probably like to know that her mom got to see barracuda (six one-metre juveniles) on her very first outing.

* For the benefit of Scrabble players, words that are not in the Scrabble dictionary are marked with an asterisk.

Back to Vol. 0 No. 12, or up to Jamie Chew's Web Log Archive. or forward to Vol. 0 No. 14.