pinku

Nine-dawg!

Dearest Jake,

You are now nine months old. It took nine calendar months to cook you...well actually you were a little well done since you were eight days late and now we've spent nine wonderful calendar months with you 'on the outside'.

This photo is funny for me to look at because when I was actually pregnant (even at nearly 40 weeks) I didn't feel THAT big. I mean I knew I was big...but now I look at the photos and think 'holy moly....I was as big as a house!!'

Pretty much right when you turned eight months old, all of a sudden you started clapping. Now if someone had told me that watching a baby clap is one of the cutest things in the world NINE months ago I wouldn't have believed them.

We had a surprise visitor this month and you finally met the first member of your American family, Uncle Cary. He and I secretly arranged his visit from California to surprise daddy, and I'm so glad that I managed to keep a secret for that long (like six weeks or something). The first time your Uncle Cary visited Japan he was suffering from Bangkok belly so he didn't have a lot of fun but I'm happy to report that we made up for it during this trip. I was worried how you would go on our five or six hour trip (which involved two long distance trains including the shinkansen and a bus) to the world heritage listed town of Shirakawago....but I needn't have worried - you did great. I did realize though that travelling by train is much better for us than the bus because we could get up and walk around when you got fussy.

Here is a pic of you two together. Sweet.

Some of your favourite things to do every day include pulling up and banging on our old cd/tape boom box, pulling all of the tissues out of the tissue box and then proceeding to pull apart each tissue, pulling all of your dirty clothes out of the laundry basket, pulling all of the books off the bookshelf and pulling all of your toys off the shelf where they are kept. I suspect there is a common thread here. Destruction....whoops I mean discovery.

Other things you love are stopping to look and smile at every single dog and cat we pass....we love that you love animals. Seriously they bring you a lot of joy.

You also love the big kids and by that I mean two year olds and above. You follow them around and try to pull up on them and they just stand or sit very still and don't know quite how to react to your keen interest in them. It's really fun to watch. You also love pushing your own stroller (you've been doing this since you were a young un like seven months old as shown in the photo below) and acting like a big boy in general.

And you are very responsibly holding onto the handles in the train!!

You may remember that last month I mentioned we spotted your very first tooth and we take another look in your mouth this month and there are now a total of SIX - four on top and two on bottom. Lately you've been really living up to your nickname of SLOBBERdan Milosevic - it has been pouring out of you, so I suspect there are even more on the way soon. It's been messing with your sleep a little and some nights are worse than others but I think you are doing a great job. You seem to be shifting from three naps a day to two but since your naps are really only 30 minutes to an hour long, we've needed to put you to bed a little earlier to compensate. Sometimes you are sad, but the cries often quickly turn to smiles.

At the Keio Department Store Beer Garden in Shinjuku

It's summertime here in Japan and it is really hot. I don't think the temp has dropped below 30 for weeks. We plan to avoid the heat by visiting the pool a lot for your swim lessons and we'll also be visiting the little kiddie pool at the zoo. There are a lot of fun summer festivals that we hope to take you to, but your recent bedtime of 6pm kinda gets in the way of early evening plans but that's ok. A happy Jakey is what we all want.

Your father and I are both DOG TIRED - you are so active and alert that it is hard keeping up with you. Sometimes we look at those people with more...um sedate babies and feel a little jealous, but to be honest dear boy we wouldn't want you to be any different at all. Every single day after you've gone to bed, your father and I feel pretty knackered, but we absolutely always talk about how awesome you are, about your wonderful energy and spirit and about how we can't believe how much love we love our little boy.

Shoogie and Lorettie

If you've visited pinku before then you would know we have two guinea pigs - Sugar and Loretta.

Before Jake was born they were showered with affection, but now they certainly don't get as much direct love as before. We feel bad. Our apartment 'Before Jake' was also fine size-wise, but now with two adults, one crawling baby (who likes to pull up on their cage) and two guinea pigs, it's starting to feel small. Therefore we've come to a decision to find them a new home and I feel sad. We will also be leaving Japan this year and we won't be able to take them with us so we would like to find them a good home before it all becomes too crazy with the moving etc.

That's all for now. I'll be back with Jake's 9-month update soon. I'd like to keep them up because he is growing so quickly. It'll all be a blur before long and I LOVE looking back on my posts and remembering all of his little milestones. I'm also trying to organize an online mother's group (in the form of a forum board) - mainly because I have so many cool internet mama friends and I want to ask them so many questions all the time... so I thought a forum would be fun. When I say trying to organize...that means I'm thinking about it...actually a very basic board has been set up but I haven't posted anything. Maybe I'll get around to it in the summer when it is quieter at work and I actually have time to do something other than work....at work. Ha!