the fifth of may is a japanese holiday called ‘kodomo no hi‘ (children’s day). the holiday used to be called ‘boy’s day’, but the government decided to rename it children’s day to celebrate the happiness of all children. we still celebrate boys on this day since there is a girl’s day on the third of march.

for boy’s day, we raise a carp flag (koi nobori) and display dolls in samurai armor. one of the dolls represent ‘kintaro‘. kintaro was raised in the mountains by his mother. kintaro rides a bear instead of a horse. the animals of the forest became his friends due to his gentle nature. eventually kintaro joins up with a Samurai clan and helps to defeat a gang of demons. kintaro is a symbol of a healthy and strong boy.

i don’t have carp flags or the dolls yet, so i made an origami kabuto and jinbei kimono for elijah. i happened to have a kintaro bib. i tried to put a paper origami kabuto on his head, but he ate it. here he is on his rocking moose.

i hope he had fun on his first boy’s day. or maybe he’s sick of being a model…

elijah’s separation anxiety began when he was eight months old. in japanese, we call this period ‘ato-oi’, which literally means ‘after-follow’. he began to follow me around wherever i would go. even when i was in his sight and someone else was holding him, he immediately would start crying and reach out to me. it is/was really, really touching and awfully adorable.

i try to stay close to him so he won’t feel insecure. he wants to be picked up and held all the time, so i do that. when i need to go to the next room, i let him know that i’m going. i try not to disappear without saying anything. he always stops what he’s doing and crawls after me. for some reason, if i get down on the floor and crawl out of the room, he doesn’t react anxiously. maybe he thinks i’m off to catch some salmon. it’s all part of the bear game, my friend.

recently, he started to follow after paul, too. he chased after paul when he entered the bathroom. so i thought it might be a time to teach him that papa and mama are around even when you can’t see them.

it’s kind of embarrassing to tell you this, but i’ve been leaving the bathroom door open when i take a shower in the morning. i put elijah in the playpen and move it down the hall in front of the bathroom so that he can see me. as soon as i would get in the shower, he would start crying, and he’d keep crying his head off the whole time. from time to time, i would stick my head (covered in shampoo) outside the shower curtain and say “daijyo-bu! mama kokoni iruyo!” (it’s okay, mama’s here!). he would cry even harder. :D after a couple of try, i stopped hearing his crying. he started to play with toys.

this is one of the drawings for ‘100 stories’ at hosfelt gallery in NYC.

100 stories

photographs by crystal liu
& drawings by crystal liu, ruth marten, rachell sumpter, yuka yamaguchi

11 april - 31 may 2008

hosfelt gallery
531 w 36th street,
new york

(20 wks ultrasound)
he used to look like this inside me floating around for nine months.

(june 8th, 2008)
this is how he looked when he came out of me. this is literally two minutes after his birth.

and now another nine months later, this is how he looks. it’s hard to believe that he used to be one little cell. he turns out to be a very happy boy who smiles a lot, laughs a lot, cries hard and plays hard.

he’s been…

crawling,

cruising, standing and walking with support,

opening drawers and grabbing mama’s bra, and running around, baby-talking, pointing at things,

feeding himself solid food,

chewing on the cord…

of papa’s headphones,

…and making a mess wherever he goes.

i have been talking to him ever since he was born explaining what i was doing and asking him what he would want to do. when he was very little, i used to get so excited to hear random sounds he made. even when he just made an ‘ah~’ sound, it made me jump. it sounded like he was responding to me.

he started to vocalize more when he was three months old. there was one point where he kept saying, ”blah blah blah” all the time. nowadays, he has started to babble more and more, trying to imitate what i say. when i sing to him and make silly gestures with my arms, he tries to imitate what i sing and do. when paul and i talk in front of him, he waves his arms up and down and say ‘uh~ gguah~ bha~’ etc. i think he wants to join the conversation.

he has started saying ‘da~da’ and ‘mama’ a lot. paul and i have been telling him who is ‘papa’ and ‘mama’. today he kept saying ‘mamma, pappa’ continuously. i almost cried.

i know babies cry when they are hungry. elijah was like that too. nowadays, he’s more direct. he grabs my face and pulls it toward him, opens his mouth and bites down on my lips, then starts sucking them…hard. he’s also saying ‘mamma, mamma’. ‘mamma’ is a japanese baby word for ‘food’. it’s no coincidence that ‘mama’ (mother) and ‘mamma’ (food) sound similar.

elijah has been a very smiley boy, but nowadays his smiles are more deliberate and when he smiles looking into your eyes, he’ll melt your heart. he used to crack up whenever i made some exaggerated gasping sound. nowadays, he laughs so hard at so many things. paul is so good at making him laugh. he’s such a good papa.

paul and i have been crawling with elijah. elijah likes to play a crawling game with us. he starts crawling then stops and looks back to see if any of us are following him. if we starts to chase him he’d laugh and crawl away really fast, or stop and crawl back toward us.

elijah and i play a bear game. we pretend that we are bears. we crawl around the house, exploring, then i stop and pretend i’m sleeping. he’d comes over to me and climbs up on me and starts slapping my body. i “wake up” and we start crawling around again.

the first nine months with elijah were full of happiness, tears, laughter and lots of “holy mackerel!” moments. as a person who had never taken care of any living creatures (no pets, no plants even), taking care of a baby is like becoming a self-taught artist - i have no idea what to do. i had no clue what-so-ever about babies. paul and i did all our best to figure out as things came up. and elijah have taught us what to do.

there were times when it was very hard. but it was worth it, because i can see this smiley face every single day.

never

forget

your helmet.

watercolors and pen on paper

what do i do with this??