Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 2 No. 73

2009-01-27 21:37 (Kristen) Well, it's not freezing and raining really, but it was cooler and more rainy here today. We woke up at 7:20 or so, and Jamie was very disappointed in me for not going to yoga this morning (he really wanted to go with me) because we slept in. I fell asleep with Liam again last night, and we both managed about 10 hours of sleep, which is two hours less than the night before. We had a quiet morning eating breakfast and getting the water back, before John and his mom left for Cancun for a day of shopping. As we were all pretty tired, Jamie, Liam, Sherrie and I hung out until around 11:00, when Jamie was showing signs of Too Much DS. I shoved the kids out the door to have some beach time because the sky was looking ominous, but the heavens opened up on us as we ran over to the Ojo de Agua hotel. We took refuge on their porch, but realized that the rain was going to keep up for a little while longer, so why don't we run into the restaurant for lunch and watch the rain over the ocean? We did this, and the kids happily ingested much food.

Afterwards, we did go out onto the beach for a couple of hours spent building sandcastles, burying children in sand, observing bird prints and birds, and enjoying the beautiful, if overcast, weather. The wind was strong, but the sand was wet and so didn't blow all over into our faces. We finally came back in around 1:30 or so, and spend more quiet time at home playing with toys, drawing and colouring, and reading together. Jamie got a half hour of DS time in the afternoon, and was willing to give it up when asked. Liam played in the yard, and was watched very closely as we found out to our horror this morning that he knows how to open the back gate by himself. He scared the life out of everyone by walking out, not listening to the panicked cries of "Stop!" from his parents, and almost wandering into the road outside. As I said, watched very closely from now on. John came home from Cancun with toys (a Megablox robot-style toy for Jamie and a basket with plastic food, including a plastic yoghurt container, for Liam), which the boys loved. We had a light dinner, and an early evening. Jamie and Liam were both blitheringly tired by 7:30--Liam even more so because he didn't nap--and it took an hour and a walk in the stroller before Liam finally stopped fighting and fell asleep. That molar is finally poking its way through, and it's sure taking its sweet damn time.

2009-01-28 21:08 (Kristen) The boys, starting with Liam, woke me up at 6:10 or so. Glarrgh*. I wasn't all that ready to get up, so we had a very quiet morning until I was feeling a little more normal. It wasn't a good day for me, as I somehow managed to almost give myself some sort of heat stroke but just managed to avoid it. It did mean that I slept a lot today, which isn't all that bad. We went out onto the beach in the morning and played with sand, and John got a reluctant Jamie out into the ocean for a little. We are reminded that every year, Jamie is afraid of the ocean at the start of the trip but is ecstatic about it by the time we leave. Liam is just dubious. Yesterday, Liam was the most copacetic person in the world, except for at bedtime, but today he was less so. Jamie has been pretty tired too, and so we've been butting heads a little more than usual. We had a lovely lunch at the Ojo, where Jamie and Liam ate John's lunch for him, aswell as their own, and Liam slept for about an hour and a half this afternoon. John took the boys to the hotel pool for a swim, and I heard Liam's screams of indignation over here; enough that I stuck my head outside onto the porch, wondering if that was him and if I was going to be summoned for some horrible accident. But no, and they had a great time once Liam was submerged. Dinner was late but well worth the wait, as John made achiote chicken, cooked in local banana leaves cut down only an hour or two before. John made achiote tofu in banana leaves for Sherrie, and Jamie made sure that he had some too. It's quiet now, and soon we'll put the boys to bed.

2009-01-29 22:15 (John) The highlight of the day was Kristen finally coaxing the boys into the ocean, when for the last few days they had insisted on swimming only in the hotel pool. I'm not sure what I was doing wrong: no matter how many times I threw them in and patiently explained how much warmer it was than when I learned to swim in Narragansett Bay, the boys kept freaking out. And electric rays are much easier to avoid than barnacles too, I think.

The day started off quietly with everyone getting up at 6:30 to see Kristen off to Yoga class. I fed the boys breakfast, then let them do whatever they liked, which at that hour saw them looking for favourite videos on the various media players. Liam now knows how to find his Anpanman videos on my iPod Touch.

Today was Bath Day: we boiled water and shampooed the boys' hair in a tub in the yard, making a futile attempt to remove sand. As in past years, we'll be sweeping sand out of our bathtub for days after we get home.

For dinner, Kristen and I cooked some chayote, reheated leftovers, and my mom brought over some fried rice with plantains. After dinner, we walked to the zocalo for the first time in a few days, to get some ice cream. Jamie fell asleep not quite as quickly as last night (when he was snoring before the lights went out), but quickly enough; Liam was still fighting it the last I checked.

On the downside, Kristen got a little too much sun, as did each of the boys, due to not reapplying sunscreen after swimming. Jamie is up to three mosquito bites, one of which has one of his legs swollen up to a not quite alarming degree (yet). After the big swim, Sherrie buried Kristen, Liam and Jamie in the sand (at their request), and Liam fell asleep. I stayed with him until he woke up, but didn't realize that his PFD was going to give him such a bad case of pins and needles that he lost the use of one whole arm for a very noisy and scary fifteen minutes. Oh, and Jose the property manager still hasn't managed to get our water pump working properly; in the middle of dinner, a downpour from the roof signalled that the float in the tank was broken, and with the kind assistance of our neighbour Eric, I've manually switched off the pump for now.

2009-01-30 24:00 (John) Liam's imagination now runs to making up short stories, such as one about a baby owl who is tickled by a ghost (Liam plays both parts and is particularly keen on portraying the tickling). He's able to communicate with us quite well; I can understand about 90% of what he says on the first try, and almost all the rest of it in three tries with context. It helps to know a few Liamisms, such as "me" for "Jamie", "hop" for "help", "da" for "yes" and "wee" for "sleep"; the rest of his pronunciation is however quite clear for his age, and easily comprehensible to anyone who speaks English and Japanese and knows all of Liam's interests.

Kristen and Liam went out to see the sun rise over the Caribbean this morning, and talked about all things marine. Liam kept turning the conversation to fish, and how much he was looking forward to eating more for lunch. As it turned out though, Jamie noticed that the menu listed hotdogs and fries, and when he ordered them, Liam had to follow suit. Liam ate 2/3 of his hotdog before eating half of my fish; Jamie managed all of his hotdog and about a third of my fish. I'm not sure how I'm managing to maintain my weight.

This was after a hearty breakfast and morning snack, and before afternoon snacks, dinner (Jamie asked Tai-Tai for curry rice; I made triggerfish tikinchik; Sherrie made refried beans) and ice cream. Liam insisted on having his scoop of vanilla in a cone, just like Dad's rum-raisin. The tropical heat and his slow progress of course meant that more ice cream ended up on hands, arms, elbows and clothing (his, mine, Kristen's, Sherrie's) than in his stomach, but he was very satisfied.

On the way home, we took a walk out to the end of the fishing pier to see the stars. Jamie was at first terrified of the darkness and the ocean but, typically, by the end of the pier was refusing to go back to shore, wanting a turn at squid fishing after Sherrie.

We kept Jamie in for most of the day, partly because his shoulders are somewhat sunburnt, partly because it rained twice. He did some sketching, and his Japanese homework, and spent the rest of the time playing on his DS game, to his delight. I was surprised when he fell right asleep as soon as the lights went out.

2009-01-31 23:58 (Kristen) Yesterday's rainstorm has turned into today's norte*, a cooler day with strong winds from the north. The beach was actually cold, so we kept the boys in and entertained ourselves much as we did yesterday. We ate at the hotel restaurant, and Jamie was deeply put out that he didn't have his *own* plate of fish, instead of having to share with us and Liam. We'll try to do better by the boy on Tuesday. Both boys are crazy about the fish here, and given how fresh it is, it's easy to see why. Liam didn't sleep this afternoon, despite my best long walk, so we got to see some of the town at least. John took the boys to the beach for about 45 minutes at 3:45, and I met them on their way back up. John made panuchos for dinner, and we took the boys to the zocalo* for ice cream. Liam was hysterical when it was time to go home, but managed to fight falling asleep until a block away from home. Jamie was very interested in the soccer games in the area (live, in the zocalo*, where a team kicked a ball into a souvenier shop and lost the ball, and on televisions around town), but was also in a very tired, "Let's do everything that will get me killed if my parents weren't so patient and restrained" (this is for you when you're older, Jamie) kind of way. He fell asleep instantly, which was kind of nice.

2009-02-01 23:25 (Kristen) It was an early morning for Liam, and so it was an early morning for me. John and Jamie stayed in bed until close to 8 (or was it later?), and came down for breakfast, hungry. It was cold and windy still on the beach, so we spent the morning inside. I managed to get the boys away from their electronic devices long enough for a music lesson: "What sounds can you make using your body?" It stayed remarkably clean, considering. We had fun dancing and Jamie and I sang "Never Going To GIve You Up," because we could. Then it was back to the devices.

The big fun today came when we went out for a trip to a restaurant called Chocolate City in Cancun with neighbours and friends of John's parents. Emilio and Neiri brought their son, daughter-in-law, and twin granddaughters, who are a little older than Liam and two years younger than Jamie. We drove to the restaurant in a van that impressed Jamie because it had a DVD player and automatic doors that closed at the touch of a button. We watched a Mexican animated movie about the Day of the Dead and a rotten older brother that is constantly scaring his younger brother, and there was something about Nahuatls, but we didn't get much more than that. Jamie was, of course, full of questions. Once at the restaurant, the girls and the boys repaired up the stairs to the playroom, which had a large inflatable room in it, along with other things to do. The boys played flat out for an hour, I think, and it was just too much for Liam in the end, as it was close to three when lunch arried (he'd eaten earlier, but still). The combination of rich food and energetic play was too much, and he fell asleep at the table, almost as he sat, but I managed to catch him. He slept until 5, which worried me a good deal about wht time he was going to go to bed tonight. Jamie, on the other hand, played flat out again in the playroom, and Liam joined him when he woke up. There was a woman named Sylvia who chatted with me for a bit, as she'd taken quite a shine to Liam. Then it was home, and a brief encounted with a ball of fluff and lint that was the three-month-old puppy of the twins. Liam in particular was delighted with the dog, and ran around with her in excitement and chattered on about her after we left our hosts. Jamie and John went to bed almost right away, and were both out like lights by 7:30 or 8. Liam, on the other hand, was clearly not sleepy, so we went downstairs for some Anpanman (for Liam) and work (for me). Liam had some cereal, and fell asleep at 10:15 or so, in my lap, sweetly and quietly. That wretched molar finally broke through the skin today, and the other half should be through soon (I hope). Then we'll have that party I always talk about.

2009-02-02 23:00 (John) Kristen's gone to bed without blogging tonight, which is unfortunate as I spent the day running errands in Cancun (tracking down the secret new location of the DHL office (SE corner of Uxmal and Tulum), grocery shopping at Chedraui, lunch at Los Almendros), then visiting Mauro Jaramillo for a massage treatment, all without the familiy. Jamie and I did do homework together in the morning, and he put in the final piece of the 1000-piece jigsaw we've been working on on our trip. Dinner tonight was takeout from Los Almendros (arroz con pollo, and pavo en escabeche de Valladolid), along with my mom's fried rice, Sherrie's cole slaw and edamame. Both boys, as usual, hoovered heroic quantities of food, but I was horrified to hear were just as happy to eat hotdogs at the Ojo de Agua as they were to eat real food, like enchiladas or filete de pescado al ajillo. The boys are continuing to play a lot more with each other than they were in Toronto, and are learning to negotiate with each other. Some of it is forced upon them by resource scarcity, such as having only one iPod between the two of them (technically mine) on which to watch videos, but a lot of the time they are just having fun chasing each other and hiding from Mom and Dad.

(Kristen) The boys were fine while John and Sherrie were away. They played together, ate hot dogs (sigh) at the Ojo, and played in the sand. At one point, a band of showers moved through, and I got to show Jamie how weather works by pointing out the band of grey on the ocean, and telling him that it was a band of rain. He was moderately interested: it's hard to tell, sometimes. I tried to read more of "Charlotte's Web" to him, but he was very resistant. I finally got him to tell me that he wants stories with more pictures: likely one picture to each layout of text. So, as much as he says he likes the story, I will put it down until I can find an edition with that ratio, or until he is a little bit older. Liam didn't sleep, and was wildly tired by the time he was in bed. Liam is chattering away, and it's lovely to see how he loves his brother, and shareds with him too. Jamie is good, and comes to me if he has a problem with Liam, rather than beating on his brother, in the way that many kids might.

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

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