Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 0 No. 14

2004-02-10 19:00 (John) I got up this morning to watch the sun rise, then did 90 minutes of yoga at my Aunt Jean's 7:00 A.M. (formerly 7:30 A.M.) drop-in class at Villas Shanti and went to Mama's Bakery for breakfast. Around ten, it was heavily overcast, so I bundled Jamie up and took him down to the beach for his daily dip. He's getting better about it. He whimpered a little as the big, scary, cold ocean approached his little toes, but then when he was fully immersed, he just let out mild complaints of the "Do we really have to do this, Dad?" level rather than the earlier "Someone call Children's Aid, heeeeelp!". I kept him in for a good thirty seconds or so, then passed him back to Kristen and went for a snorkel to wash off after yoga. Saw the usual barracuda, including one antisocial one that never wants to float with the rest of his school (one has to wonder what kind of personality disorders a barracuda can have), twenty pompanos and eighteen foot-long needlefish by the palapa pier.

Went to see Mauro Jaramillo for an hour's deep massage, then staggered home for a siesta until it was Kristen and Jennifer's turn to go out snorkelling. I looked after Jamie, who napped for the first 45 minutes (good boy!). He woke up mildly fussy, as he often does because I think whichever side he's lying on overheats, but calmed down quickly as I took him for a tour of the ceiling fans downstairs. I then put him in his playpen and after he had played with Sue's chain of fish (currently his favorite toy), I read him a book that I'd bought him at CostCo yesterday: Baby Einstein's "Guardería de Idiomas", the Spanish-language edition of "Language Nursery".

Boy, is he our son. He dropped the fish in an instant, and stopped blinking as his eyes darted back and forth between me and the book. As the story progressed, his fingers worked further and further into his mouth and he looked as though he could barely handle the suspense. What would happen next? Where did the train go? Etc.

He looked a little overstimulated at the end (eyes bugging out), so I put the book down beside him in the crib and left him alone for a few minutes. He started whimpering though, and when I looked, I saw that he was trying to roll over so that he could see the book better. I read it to him a second time, with the same reaction, and put it down where he could reach it.

When I looked at it next, he had figured out how to open the pages (it's a board book), and was flipping through looking at the pictures. I think I'd still be reading it to him if Kristen hadn't come home and reminded him he was hungry. It was a tough choice for him though, I read it to him a fourth time while Kristen was getting changed, and he alternately whimpered "I'm hungry" and gurgled "turn the page".

Dinner tonight is boquinete* (hogfish), caught this afternoon, that I bought at the fish market on the zocalo*, panfried whole.

2004-02-11 15:00 I'm doing more "Dad" things here than I was in Toronto. I think it's because Jamie's reached an age where he needs more than a steady supply of breast milk and diapers. In addition to the aforementioned reading of board books, I've gotten into the habit of taking Jamie out for a walk on the beach in the evening after dinner, so that he can see the moon (full a few days ago) and feel the cool, salty breeze, both of which he likes.

This afternoon, he was insistent that he was hungry only 90 minutes after his last feed, and after trying everything else, I asked Kristen if we had any bottles handy for me to try giving him some water. Kristen had tried a few days ago without success, but after some initial negotiation, he was happy to take it from me, as long as I carried him in front of me, facing forward. Definitely not if I pretended to be Kristen in any way.

Took him for a three-minute swim in the morning. He's starting to associate going to the beach during the day with this mild unpleasantness, and started whimpering "do we have to?" before we were even in sight of the beach. I said "Yes, and it's warmer than what I had to put up with in Narragansett Bay, so stop complaining." In the water, he continued his mild protests, which were overruled by the crowd of adults who gathered around to watch.

Saw a school of six squid swimming eerily, the only way they know how, and a dozen hefty barracuda, some about my length. I was a bit nervous, but they decided they weren't quite hungry enough.

2004-02-12 15:00 Slept for nine hours last night, but we all slept in and barely made it to yoga class this morning. Kristen took the class, and I took Jamie, who slept at first, then entertained himself with his water bottle. As I write this, he's sleeping peacefully across Kristen's knees, as they both enjoy some quiet time in Laureano's swing chair at Casa Verde.

If anyone's looking for news of Alison Motluk and her potluck group, I did bump into Alison, Kurt, Genya and Toni, together with Teresa on the beach this morning. I think they arrived yesterday, and there's another group on its way in on Sunday. Tomorrow's update may be a little late, as we're planning on going to Chankana'ab Park at Cozumel for the day, to thank Mayan fertility goddess Ixchel (and the syncretic underwater statue of the Virgin) for answering our prayers last year.

2004-02-12 21:30 Jamie's swim this afternoon was noisy but I'm sure it built a little more character. I tried holding him tight to my chest this time, which only gave him more to grab onto and squeeze, but didn't seem to calm him down. He was an angel at dinnertime though. Hisae was tired, so Kristen and I made dinner (sopa de lima, guacamole, chicken tikka masala) and Jamie spent the entire time amusing himself in his playpen.

2004-02-13 22:00 Jamie's first (or arguably second) visit to Cozumel was quiet and uneventful, which is parental for "ideal". He slept, fed and was wide-eyed alert in rotation all day long. He could tell that he was seeing things he'd never seen before, and maybe wide-eyed doesn't do justice to his expression. Agog, maybe.

It rained on and off all day, which meant that we were all (except Jamie) fairly damp by the end of things, but it was warm, so we didn't care. We thought it might reduce the crowds at Chankana'ab Park, which it did only somewhat, as avid snorkellers and divers know that rainy weather is excellent diving weather. I have never seen so many fish in one place before. I could not get into the lagoon without bumping into fish, nor could I freely swim without jostling them. At one point, swimming in a school of a few hundred sergeant-majors, one of them took a nip out of my elbow, and I have two tiny bleeding tooth marks to prove it.

Since Jamie was being so good, and since it was raining so hard, we didn't take him swimming. It would have been difficult to get him down the slippery coral steps safely, and next to impossible to get him thoroughly dry again. So instead, we offered a couple of coins to the underwater statue of the Virgin (who is responsible for the safety of the island, and anyone who comes to swim at the lagoon), and anointed Jamie with some water from the lagoon.

2004-02-14 16:00 I forgot to mention yesterday that we tried putting Jamie face down on our bed while packing for Cozumel, and he flipped right over onto his back. Did it repeatedly, and with ease. Still doing it today. So he can now no longer safely be left on the bed, as if he gets it into his head to roll off his back (still a lot harder for him), he could roll all the way off.

Jennifer noticed two days ago that he understands the word "kiss", and Kristen points out that he will lift his head so you can kiss his cheek when he hears the word. I noticed later the same day that if you bend over him and say "Up, up, up!" and don't pick him up, he is not happy.

For a Valentine's Day present, Jennifer offered to look after Jamie for an hour or two to give Kristen and me some private time together. Sensitive readers may want to skip the graphic details in the rest of this paragraph. I gave K a 110-point handicap in game 22 of our current series of 100 SOWPODS Scrabble games, and lost 447-493 despite bingo-ing four times with BRANTLED*, NEURONAL, CAPOTES and SIENITE. Well done, Kristen! As for the phony BRANTLED, I got fixated on whether or not BRANTLE# was a noun or a verb, and completely ignored the playable BARTEND+E and BARTEND+U (the alphabetically first anagram).

Alison and her family dropped by in the morning, Kristen and Jennifer too Jamie out for a couple of walks, Jamie went for a brief and noisy swim, and we're going out to the restaurant John Gray's Kitchen tonight with my aunt and uncle Jean and Jack Loew. Otherwise not much to report: another lovely day in paradise.

2004-02-15 20:30 The winds shifted again this morning, calming the lagoon and giving ideal conditions to go snorkelling on the reef. (When an onshore wind stirs up the seas, you can only go where the reef is more deeply submerged.) My parents, Jennifer and I hired a boat to spend the morning on the reef, and saw a turtle, a spotted eagle ray, a lobster, an eel, along with vast quanitites of coral and other reef creatures that you don't see closer to shore. Jamie spent the morning sleeping with Kristen.

We went to Alison's condo at the Casa del Mar (just north of UNAM) for lunch. Jamie was at his usual wide-eyed best trying to take in his new surroundings, and especially enjoyed observing her kids Genya and Toni at play.

On our way home, we stopped in at my aunt Jean's to play some Boggle, and again Jamie paid rapt attention. He actually let us play several rounds, while he sat in his car seat, happily chewing on the shoulder strap. He's no longer afraid of the sound of the dice being shaken, and thinks the dice box is some sort of adult rattle.

2004-02-16 22:00 It was a busy day for Jamie. We spent the morning getting his aunt Jennifer ready to fly home to Canada, then drove her to Cancun airport in my dad's car. He was in wide-eyed must-absorb-everything mode for the day, especially at the airport. I don't know whether it was the alienness of the surroundings, or if he could tell that something was up from how people were acting around him. He certainly calmed down when Jennifer went through security, and was much less interested in the shopping we went to do at Plaza America afterward.

We're keeping track of all the unusual places Jamie has been changed. Today we added to the list: in the back seat of an old VW beetle at the Pemex station just north of the airport.

When he got home, he was in a feisty, neural pathway making mood, and the three of us had a good laugh for the first time. How? It started with Jamie saying "Ha!". So I said "Ha!" back at him, and Kristen chimed in. He seemed to find that amusing, so I stage-laughed "Ha, ha, ha!" and I was dumbfounded when he giggled "hahaha" back at me - I'd never seen or heard him do this. We spent a good ten minutes all of us going back and forth with genuine and staged laughter, and I don't recall when I last had so much fun.

After that, he decided he was tired of lying on his back, so with a little bit of help, he flipped himself on his stomach, and started trying to explore the bed. I helped him lift his tummy up to reduce friction, and he managed something slightly more directed than Brownian motion. He was exhausted at the end of it, but quite pleased with himself. He drank himself to sleep, and as I write this has been asleep for 3.5 hours. We'll be making physical exercise a regular part of his evenings, I think.

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

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