elijah’s first word was ‘manma’, which is the japanese baby word for ‘food’. i since learned that some english-speaking babies say ‘num-num’ meaning the same thing. he uses ‘manma’ for any kind of food but especially snack foods that come in boxes or little bags, like crackers. this started after we drove home from ontario and he had all kinds of dry snack food to eat in the car seat.

the next thing elijah started to say was ‘mama’ and ‘papa’ randomly to both of us. one morning, he woke up at 5am and started chanting ‘mama! papa!’ over and over in a loud voice, banging on the bed frame. he was so proud of himself! at 13 months old, he had ‘papa/mama’ confusion. he could say ‘papa’ very clearly, but not ‘mama’. i was so jealous! he called me ‘papa’ for awhile. it melted my heart anyway.

nowadays he can clearly say ‘papa’ to paul and ‘mama’ to me. when he wakes up in the middle of night (still…) and shouts ‘mama~ mama~! oppa~i (breasts)!’ i feel like i can do anything for him.

i’ve been saying ‘daisuki (i love you very much)’ to him for a long time. around 14 months, he started to imitate me hugging him. we’d say ‘daisuki’ and he’d open his arms wide and give us a hug. he’s recently started trying to say ‘daisuki’, but he can’t say the entire word. so he says ‘dai~, dai~’ and open his arms and for a hug. he does it to my friends and their babies as well. it’s pretty adorable.

‘dai’ in ‘daisuki’ means ‘big’. ‘dai’ plus ’suki (like)’ becomes ‘i love you very much’. but in english, ‘dai’ sounds like ‘die’, so it sounds like he’s chanting ‘die! die! die!’ and wanting a hug. it probably sounds horrible to some people, but to me it’s the sweetest thing.

elijah’s vocabulary is increasing every day. i keep track of the words he learns in my ‘elijah word diary’ (it’s just a small agenda book). he picks up new sounds very quickly and seems to be able to associate the sound with its object. he learns so quickly that i can’t keep up with what he knows. most of the words he says are not really words, just the first syllable or sound from a longer word — but we can understand him, it’s our secret code. we are ‘oya-baka‘, so we’re convinced these are all certainly words.

here’s my elijah dictionary at 15 months:

A:

• ai~ (from ‘ari’, meaning ‘ant’ in japanese) — he uses it for ants on the ground or flies buzzing around the window
• appu~l (apple) — he says this clearly enough for most people to understand. he can recognize a real apple and a drawing of an apple. at the supermarket he chants ‘apple!’ and points firmly at the apples. if you show him an orange he’ll also say ‘apple’
• awaa~ (’flower’) — he says this pointing at a real flower or a picture of a flower or a field full of flowers. one of his favorite things is dandelions — he brings them to us to blow the seeds
• ashi (meaning ‘leg’ in japanese) — he says ‘ashi’ if we point at his leg or one of ours, and if we say ‘ashi’ he points at his leg

B:

• beee (’B') — he has some magnetic alphabet letters. he calls them all ‘B’, except sometimes he says ‘aysh’ (’H') at random
• bana~ (’banana’) — i think he just like to say this word. he doesn’t eat much banana. he’s more of a melon guy.
• be~bi! (’baby’) — he says ‘baby’ for babies in real life and in photos and also uses the word for kids much older. i’m not sure if he knows that he’s also a baby.
• bai-bai (’bye bye’) — he waves goodbye to papa leaving for work, sometimes too soon when paul is still putting his pants on. he also waves bye bye when we put him in the car seat and close the door, even though we’re getting in the front seat right away.
• ba~cku~l (’buckle’) — he loves to spend time playing with the buckles on his high chair, trying to open and close them
• baffi~ (’buffy’, the name of our neighbour’s dog) — even though we’ve lived here for more than a year, buffy is always surprised to see us and barks at us when we’re out in our back yard. so i taught elijah to say ‘hello buffy’ every time we go out in the yard. she still barks at us.
• a!ba!ba!ba! (’bus’) — buses are very exciting.
• bu~bu~! (the japanese baby word for ‘car’) — he likes watching the cars drive by from our window. he also uses this word for his toy car.
• bey~ah (’bear’) — he has three polar bear cuddly toys. he’ll hold them tight and lay down on the carpet.
• bah~~ (’ball’) — he likes to run around after the soft soccer ball inside and his green plastic ball outside
• buk! (’book’) — he is always asking us to read books to him. we go through his entire book collection almost everyday. his favorite book is dr suess’ “hop on pop”. he asks for it by name: ‘op op’
• burrrrr~ (’bird’)– this was one of the first words that he learned. he notices birds all the time, even when they’re far away in the sky

C:

• chapu-chap (sound effect for water splashing in japanese) — i taught him that ‘chapu-chap’ means bath. he loves the bath and he’ll point at the bathroom door and chant ‘chapu-chap!’
• chea~ (’chair’) — he learned this word from a picture book. he was so happy to learn this word that he walked around to touch all the chairs that day.

D:

• dami~! (’dame’, meaning “don’t do that” in japanese) — he likes things that are ‘dame!’
• dau~ (’down’) — he says this when he’s climbing down from something, or going down the stairs (backwards, on his stomach). he doesn’t use it when he’s being held and wants to be put down, he says ‘up’ instead.
• dahhh (’dog’) — i guess i was supposed to teach him to say ‘puppy’. he likes dogs.
• do~h (’door’) — we never taught him this word, but he was listening every time we yell at each other;”is the door shut?”
• do~jyo (’dozo’, meaning ‘here you go’ in japanese, when offering something to someone) — he mostly says this to mean ‘gimme’. you’ve got it backwards, elijah!

E:

• eapu~ (’airplane’) — he looks up to the sky every time he hears an airplane overhead. he does a gesture we taught him with his hand “flying” around like an airplane
• e~lijah!  – he says his name very loudly and repeatedly.  he looks happy when he says this.

G:

• gya~f! (’giraffe’) — we have some giraffe stickers on the wall of his bedroom.

H:

• hama~ (’hammer’) — he likes to hammer things, especially when he gets to use a real hammer. we just bought him a toy hammer that makes funny sounds. so far he’d rather use his other toys (like his wooden cars) or some other things from the house (like papa’s shaving cream) to hammer on the floor very very loud.

M:

• mama (’mama’, me) — when he hugs me as he whispers this word he melts my heart.
• manma (the japanese baby word for ‘food’) — when he gets really hungry he screams ‘MANMA~!!!’ again and again. not very subtle, elijah.
• meyo~ (’melon’) — he loves eating melon and asks for it all the time — either cantaloupe or watermelon. sometimes he stuffs his mouth so full that he chokes and vomits everything back up
• mimi (japanese for ‘ear’) — another body part.  he’ll point at his ear when he hears music.
• myu~ (’music’) — he can turn on the big stereo and start pushing buttons. sometimes he inserts a CD or MD (mini-disc) by himself. he likes to turn on a CD/MD player, insert a CD or MD and hit play. he loves dancing to music.
• me (not [mi], but [me], ‘eye’ in japanese) — occasionally he pokes my eye with his precious tiny finger saying ‘me’!

N:

• nyo~z (’nose’) — another body part he likes to name. he really likes grabbing papa’s big nose.
• no, no, no, no, no~! – he waves his hands around and tells me that’s a no no! he started saying it to himself when he knows he’s not supposed to do something.

O:

• ahf (’off’) — he always wants to flip the light switch by himself. our house becomes a disco.
• oh,oh! — he’s supposed to say this when he drops something accidentally. but he says this BEFORE dropping things — meaning he’s dropping them on purpose. the worst part is when he’s sitting in his high chair with his plate of food and he says ‘oh-oh!’ — BIG MESS.
• auchi~ (’ouch!’) — he gets so much attention when he bumps his head that he’s started bumping it (very gently) on purpose, or even pretending he bumped it (we can see he didn’t). he holds his head with his hands and comes running to me saying ‘auchi! so i kiss him and look sad. he doesn’t do it to paul, because papa just laughs when he sees the obvious fake injury.
• opa~i (’oppai’, meaning “breast” in japanese) — at night sometimes he screams and screams and screams and then suddenly says ‘oppai?’ in a quiet polite voice.

P:

• papa — papa is elijah’s favorite. anytime he hears a noise from around the entrance, he points and asks “papa?”
• pada~ (’panda’) — his playmate is ‘panda-san’, a stuffed animal panda from IKEA. i put a diaper, baby clothing and a bib on panda-san so he can be elijah’s role model. elijah feeds him food and holds on to him in the crib as he falls asleep.
• pee pee! (’penis’) — he grabs his pee-pee with no mercy. i didn’t realize that thing could stretch so far.

T:

• tachi! , do tachi! (’don’t touch!’) — many things are ‘don’t touch’ in the house… sorry, elijah. he says ‘tachi’ or ‘do tachi’ when he’s near them, but then he touches them anyway and looks very happy.
• te (japanese for ‘hand’) –another body part. he’s learning how to do “high-five”.

U:

• up! – he can say ‘up’ very clearly now, whenever he wants to get picked up but also he wants to get put down. so he says ‘up’ even when he’s already up! how high do you wanna go, elijah? he’s a climber. he climbed all the way up a ladder to the roof of the garage one time. where is your fear, my friend?

june 8th, 2008.  a minute after he was born…

1 month

2 months

3 months

4 months

5 months

6 months

7 months

8 months

9 months

10 months

11 months

12 months

i’ve been having an awesome time playing with elijah.  we play all day from dawn til nightfall.  he’s running around all the time.  and he’s started saying a few words that i can understand.

elijah loves spending time outside.  he’s always running up to the screen door and trying to push it open.  i have to keep it locked so he doesn’t get out on his own.   if i ask him ‘out?’, he bangs on the door and say ‘ahhtoh~, ahhtoh~’.  if i say ’shoes’ he goes to the entranceway and grabs his sandals, even if i don’t gesture or point.  once we get ready to go, he is so proud to step out of the doorway on his own.

we go to a park a few blocks up the street from our house almost every day.  he runs around on the grass pulling out the dandelions, saying, ‘ahwuh~, ahwuh~’ (’flower’).  he likes to break open the seeds of the dandelions after they go white.  he points at dogs we meet, saying ‘dahh~, dahh~!!’ very loudly.  he’s always noticing birds flying in the sky or sitting on the grass in the park.  whenever he spots a bird, he points at it and says, ‘burrrrr! burrrr!’ and looks to make sure i notice it too.

at home,  he tries to dig around in everything possible.  he takes a bunch of stuff out of a dresser drawer, then puts it back in, he repeats the process many times, non-stop.  he goes into the food pantry and brings me a box of something (usually the box of brita water filters).  he climbs up on the low buffet table and presses all the buttons on the phone and answering machine.  he’s always erasing all the messages and recording his own chatty voice as the answering machine message.   he always wants to play with the non-baby items in the house: the phone (he likes the real phone more than his toy phone), the computer, the stereo, any remote control.  a couple of times he’s been playing with the stereo buttons when there’s music playing and suddenly turned the volume knob all the way to maximum. that made him cry with surprise.

he wants to feed himself all the time.  he pushes away the spoon if anyone tries to give him a bite.  he’s not that interested in most finger foods like cheerios anymore.  he wants to eat with a fork or spoon, even though he makes a big mess.  his favorite food right now is apple pieces.  he knows the word ‘apple’ and can say it clearly when he sees a photo of an apple, or a drawing of an apple, or a pile of apples in the grocery store.  after the meal he brushes his teeth.  of course, he wants to do it himself.

he is climbing up and down from things.  he knows the word ‘up’ and asks us to pick him up or take him somewhere.   he’ll ask other people to pick him up sometimes, like the cashier at the grocery store.  when he says ‘up’ he holds his arms straight up towards us and twists his hands back and forth as fast as he can.  now that he can get up on so many things (the low coffee table, the small armchair, the bench near the window, not to mention the stairs), we’ve been teaching him how to get down safely.  he knows to turn on his stomach and gradually go backwards so his feet touch the floor first.  he does this getting down from our bed (it’s a tall bed), even though he has to fall a bit before his feet hit the floor.  he says ‘dahh’ (’down’) when he’s doing this technique.

when he wants to hear a story, he takes all his books out of the cupboard and brings them to me one by one.  when i tap on my thigh, he crawls onto my lap and i read him stories. his favorite books right now are: ‘don’t let the pigeon drive the bus!‘, ‘don’t let the pigeon stay up late‘, ‘DOG‘, ‘bossy bear‘, ‘tamahiyo doubutsu‘, ‘tamahiyo misete‘, ‘dr. seuss’s abc‘ and mama’s japanese novels.  he likes it when we say lines from his favorite books at other times during the day, like when i’ll do the pigeon’s voice saying “first of all, i’m not even tired… in fact, i’m in the mood for a hot dog party!!”

i read ‘dr. seuss’s abc’ to him before he goes to bed.  his favorite character is ‘itchy itchy ichabod’.  sometimes i can only manage to read till the letter B before he starts saying  ‘oppa~, oppa~’ (’oppai’, the japanese word for breast/breast milk)’ and putting his arm inside my shirt to grab onto my oppai.  he does that in public sometimes, so i have to be careful i’m not on parade.

after breastfeeding, it’s time for bed.  he starts sleeping in his crib every night now.  he usually wakes up a couple of times before coming to bed with us early in the morning.   he likes to start the day early, like at 6:30 or even 5:15, so i have to get some sleep to get ready for the next big day.

13 months

we visited beacon hill park.

it’s time to check out wheels with a stick.

whoa~!  super exciting!

and he never forgets to be adorable.

finally we’re back in saskatoon.  it’s good to be home.  i like it here.

mr. elijah, 363 day-old baby, has finally slept through the night. i put him to bed at 6:30 pm and he woke up at 4:54 am! during the night he was awake for awhile and talking to himself, but he went back to sleep. our boy learned to go back to sleep on his own.

only 3 times in his entire life has he slept more than two or three hours in a row. one day in august when he was two and a half months old, he slept for seven hours straight. we kept him up most of the night before, because we had to pack for a trip and catch an early morning flight. then there were two days in march when he was nine and a half months old when he slept five hours and four hours in a row. otherwise, he was up every two or three hours every single night.

last night, i was really tired so i went to bed early at 10 pm. i woke myself up in a panic at 2:44 am. i couldn’t believe the time i thought i must have slept through elijah crying. i went to the living room, where paul was awake working on a project. he told me that elijah was still sleeping quietly, more than 8 hours since he went to bed. we decided to go check on elijah just to make sure he was still alive.

he was sound asleep. it looked like he had rolled over to change his sleeping position, but he kept sleeping. we snuck out of the room happily. my right breast was swollen like the planet earth from not feeding for this long. it started to shoot milk a little; i think it was crying milky tears.

i felt so much better sleeping five hours straight for the first time in a long time and was so excited that he’s sleeping that i couldn’t go back to sleep for awhile. can anyone rock me to sleep?

i heard him talking (not crying) at 4:54 am. he was looking for my breasts so i nursed him. i put him down even though he was awake. i left the room, but i didn’t hear a thing after that.

he woke up at 6:30 am for his breakfast. he was chanting ‘manma! manma! (food)”. he looked very happy that i was happy.

paul, elijah and i have been living temporarily in london, ontario since the beginning of may. it’s been so much fun living here.

if i have to choose three things that i need to live in a city, they would be…

1. a small river
2. parks
3. a farmer’s market

this city has it all.

elijah and i hit a park or two everyday. there is no shortage of parks here — parks everywhere! the thames river runs through the city and there are parks all along the riverside.  the city of london is nicknamed ‘the forest city’. mature trees covers the entire city. leaves rustle, birds sing, and the sun dapples gently on your face. elijah is examining a hole in the ground with a dandelion. i feel completely refreshed!

five minutes’ walk from our apartment takes us to victoria park. elijah and i go there in the morning to check out squirrels, birds, and interesting branches and weeds.  he’s started to say a few words. he points at a bird and says ‘burr~, burr~’. i think he’s trying to say ‘bird’.

we met a cute baby girl at the park. she was 16 months old. elijah is into older women (not much choice yet). he was acting shy at first, but then he decided to make a move.

he gave her a blade of grass and a dandelion with the seeds pulled off.  but when she was tried to grab his pine cone, he started to run away.

‘mine!’

mr. elijah decided recently that he’s no longer a baby. he declared that he’s an independent adult. he doesn’t like me to feed him anymore, he wants to feed himself. he said to me, ‘mama, please don’t try to feed me, or i’ll feed you!’. he picks up his food and feeds me and paul, then himself.

i’ve been giving him diced cooked vegetables like carrots, sweet potato, and acorn squash as well as some cut fruits and cheerios. i’ve been wanting to add some protein. i mixed some vegetable and meat in rice and try to feed him that, but he didn’t eat much.

one of my mama-tomo (mama-friend) and i were talking about baby food (our babies are nearly the same age) and she suggested that i should mix meat into some mashed potato and fry up a pancake. good idea! that evening, i cooked up some potato pancake with lots of veggies and meat in a non-stick pan. wow! he ate everything and wanted more.

since then, i’ve made different pancakes with sweet potato and pumpkin. they worked well too. but now he’s off to use a spoon on his own. i never be able to keep up with elijah’s growth. that makes me happy.

he’s a very hungry boy now because he’s walking! it was amazing to see the process of how he learned to walk. he took his first step when he turned 10 months. it looked like an accident. he stood up and took three quick steps toward the dishwasher. since then, he took a few steps at a time and would fall. he spends standing up for longer and longer each day. one day, when paul said to him, “oide” (”come here”). he was standing by the fridge. then he walked toward paul! eeeeeeeeeeee!

we kept telling him to “oide” with arms wide open. he would walk toward us, further and further each time. everyday, he was able to walk more. one week later, he can control speed, change direction and walk from room to room. he doesn’t crawl much any more.

i can’t help but feel emotional.

i’m inspired by the ugly patterns on the textiles for baby clothes at the fabric store. happy clowns and baseball patterns and weird pastel-coloured bears with eyes too close together.  they are so ugly i’m having nightmares.

paul and i found this shirt at nishimatsu-ya, a baby clothes shop in japan. my mom and my sister-in-law, mayumi-chan, kept telling us to go check out this shop — lots of cute baby clothes, with reasonable prices.

so one day we dropped in to do some shopping. we were happy to find that most of the clothes they carry have awesome engrish on them. we had such a great time we ended up going back there again and again.

elijah seems a little skeptical, but that’s his usual face so we don’t worry about it.

rainbow world very wonderful
nice the sky happily
we are all well so special
smile big sky

on the back of the shirt, it says ‘highest’.

(photos:: seven month old elijah)

you probably know this, but babies cry. they don’t just cry. they cry like the universe is ending and our life is actually a total farce. elijah barely cried at all during the first couple of days, while we were still in hospital. paul and i were saying to each other, ‘hey, our baby doesn’t cry!’. needless to say, we were fooling ourselves. he started crying hard in our car driving home from the hospital. his face was so red that i thought he was feeling pain or something. it was probably him feeling something different in the air that would tell him he was no longer in the womb. it must have been pretty shocking — i thought he’d blow out the windows. i’m pretty sure his crying voice reached the top of mount everest.

when he was hungry, he wouldn’t cry too hard and his crying would cease when i fed him. but as the night fell and he got tired, he would cry harder and harder. building from loud crying up to ‘i can’t believe anyone is capable of crying this hard’ crying. paul used to say it was like a gear shift; 1st gear: mild conversational crying, up to 5th gear: unbelievable death-metal crying. i was thinking it was more like 28th gear. i used to visualize being blown away by the sound of his screaming and floating in the soundless universe.

he would start crying around 8pm. he was very punctual - true yamato spirit. paul and i used to joke around by counting down to 8pm and bang! he would start crying. it wasn’t that precise but close enough. we looked for an on/off switch or a volume dial in his body, but we couldn’t find anything like that. i guess babies in canada don’t come with such features. so we did our best to calm him down and make him comfortable by rocking and walking and cuddling etc. some people said he was colicky, but i think he was just sensitive and punctual. after pondering why he was crying that hard, paul and i came to think that he needed to get his extra energy out to help himself fall asleep.

it must have been hard for him to get used to a different situation - from the womb to the outside world. as an experiment, i sank my body in a warm bath and got out from it and saw how it would feel. it felt very cold and alone since there was nothing wrapping me anymore. maybe that’s how he felt too.

once he fell asleep, he usually didn’t cry hard in the middle of night, only when he wanted to be fed (every 2 to 3 hours). but suddenly, when he was four months old, he started crying all day and all night. his first tooth was coming in. no wonder he was putting his fingers or whole fist in his tiny mouth a lot. it must have been very painful and uncomfortable. after a few days, he settled down back to his usual pattern.

the magical day came at the beginning of the fifth month, in november. he just stopped crying that — cold turkey. he was like a different person. he still cries when he can’t get what he wants, but now he doesn’t just cry and cry for no reason. nowadays, when he cries, he sounds angry, not helpless.

to be honest, it has been pretty hard to get used his crying voice and to have to deal with all of the things he wants every single day. i didn’t want to get too stressed out because i didn’t want elijah to get a negative feeling. so i’ve had to find a way to go through this period somewhat positively.

mentality-wise:

• i used to ask elijah to cry even harder. since it’s an endurance game in a way, if i tried to stop him from crying, it would just accelerate my stress level because sometimes he just didn’t stop crying. so i said to him, ‘go ahead and cry. i know it’s a tough life. it’s okay to cry’. he would go ahead to cry even harder, but wish granted, i didn’t feel as bad as before.
• paul would pretend to cry even harder than elijah could. elijah realized he was not the only one who was crying - no prince treatment. he seemed shocked by it - rival!
• i would use his crying time for my exercise hour. since i had to rock and walk him for awhile, i might as well use the time for my own sake. i would work on my legs by doing squats. the longer he cried, the better. i got some exercise done - hurrah!
• teamwork. when i thought i couldn’t handle it, i gave elijah to paul and got the hell out of the room and be alone. paul was working long hours so this chance didn’t come very often, but even a few minutes of alone time refreshed me a lot and felt energized to go back to take care of him.

equipment and technique:

• hot sling. i used this a lot when elijah was very tiny. it wrapped him as if he was in the womb. he looked comfortable and right down to sleep. he outgrown this very quickly. i probably used it for a few months only.
• baby bjorn. this was useful since paul was able to put it on too. very comfortable. shoulder supports let us carry him without much pain. i used it to go for a walk everyday. he would stop crying once he was outside — once again, uchi-soto yamato spirit! and also we used it whenever we took him with us to buy groceries.
• bouncing ball. i have a big white exercise ball that i bought for decorative purposes. turns out this was very useful to rock elijah as i was able to rest my arms on my lap.
• swing. we should have bought one earlier — we got it just a month before he learned to sit up and pull himself out of it. elijah seemed to like being rocked to sleep — he had a few afternoon naps with this.
• making white noise by saying gentle and rhythmic ’shhhhh’ sound in his ear. this was maybe the best trick. it always helped him calm down. but now that he’s older, if i try this he just cries harder.

if you are new parents and going through this tough period, hang in there. it’s tough, but this period won’t last forever. soon, you’ll be seeing happy baby smiles all around. ganbatte kudasai!