Nothing But Words

Flying from Philly to Rhode Island for Christmas

Flying from Philly to Rhode Island for Christmas22-Dec-2006 13:58Canon Canon PowerShot S230, 2.8, 5.40625mm, 0.01666666 sec,

Greetings from Newport, RI. We are having a wonderful but exhausting time running the loving gauntlet of my myriad relatives. You name it, I’ve got it – siblings, parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, step-siblings, half-siblings (who are not related to each other…), even ex-steps. What it all boils down to is this: lots of love and presents for Kai and Eidan. We’ve been here for 5 days so far, and we’ll spend the day tomorrow in Boston with even more relatives. Then we’re off to San Francisco, where we have a packed 48-hour schedule before we fly to Tokyo.

The two weeks leading up to our departure from Philly was a marathon. It turns out that preparing to leave the country for six months isn’t all that different from plain old moving, with the added complications of having to pack very judiciously, and dealing with bureaucratic overhead (for visas, international drivers’ licenses, etc). Maria and I kept a running to-do list, but every time we went to check something off, we ended up thinking of new things to add, so the list never seemed to get any shorter. To make the final week even more lively, we decided to sell our car. We were planning to get a new one when we returned from Japan, and we finally realized it made more sense to sell it before leaving than to let it sit and depreciate for six months in the driveway. We did the title transfer last Thursday night and left town on Friday.

I’ve set up a Skype account with a local Philly number (calling that number is a domestic US call, but I’ll receive it on my computer in Tokyo). Send me an email if you’d like the number or my Skype username (which you can use to call me from your own Skype account – no phone necessary!).

There really are no words to describe this video, so I’ll just say: watch and enjoy (it’s kind of long, so depending on the speed of your connection, it may take a minute or so to start up).

There’s a saying that the oldest child is the father’s child, and the next child is the mother’s. That’s definitely true with our boys. When Kai was an infant and a toddler, Maria often felt a bit left out, as Kai always glommed on to me. Now, with Eidan, the shoe is on the other foot. And it’s even more pronounced with him, because he’s more openly affectionate than Kai was. Maria is regularly peppered with hugs and kisses throughout the day. And me? I get nuthin. Well, once a week or so I’ll get a hug, but that’s about it.

An interesting aspect of this is that Eidan is very friendly with men. He’ll happily run up to men who are strangers, and he’ll gladly let any man pick him up. But, other than Mommy, he doesn’t like women to get close to him. This was frustrating for my sisters and my mother when we went to visit this summer. Eidan warmed up to them eventually, but he was instantly friendly with my father and brother. Maria is the only woman for him. I’m sure that’ll change by the time he’s a teenager

The last time I wrote about Eidan I reported that he said his first word – “no.” He stopped saying “no” after just a few days, and hasn’t said it since. But he’s added “hi” and “bye” to his vocabulary, along with vigorous waving. What’s freaky about this is that he says “hi” and “bye” in a low, raspy voice. It’s not at all what you’d expect from a baby – hearing these words come out amidst his usual stream of babble is a bit startling – it’s like suddenly hearing your dog start talking.

Yesterday he said “shoes” and pointed out the window. He knows “shoes” means its time to go outside, and there’s nothing he loves more than being outside.

I can’t emphasize enough what a terror Eidan has become. I have now come to fully understand and appreciate the sportscaster phrase “you can’t stop him, you can only hope to contain him.” He literally runs around the house with the sole goal of creating as much chaos as possible: laundry flies out of the bathroom and down the stairs, books fly off shelves, toys and food are thrown everywhere. And for him, it is all sheer joy. The weather turning colder is going to be a big problem for us. The back yard is the best place for his exuberance. There may not be much left of our house if he has to stay in it for days on end, when it becomes too cold to play outside.

We have cracked the code. Eidan is now back to just two wake ups per night (midnight and 5am). After a month of sleep deprivation, this feels like the best thing ever. The main part of the solution is to not go to him every time he wakes up and cries, which became easier to do once Maria’s mother was no longer visiting. But another big part of it was turning his room into a fully optimized sleep chamber. He’s got a space heater to keep his room warm (since he always throws off his blankets), white noise to help him fall asleep and stay asleep (he has a clock that makes the sounds of ocean waves and seagulls – he’s a very light sleeper, so this makes a big difference), and a night light that slowly pulsates (I have to admit even I found it oddly soothing). Next he’ll get a humidifier, since the heater makes the air dry.

My deepest thanks to the inventors, manufacturers, and distributors of all these devices.

My life outside of work and parenting has ground to a halt over the past month. We thought we had put Eidan’s sleeping problems behind us, but now he’s gone back to getting up 6 or 7 times every night. I haven’t had more than a few hours of sleep per night for weeks now. Jen has moved in already (she’ll be renting our house while we’re away in Japan) and Maria’s mother is visiting, so all our beds are full and there’s currently nowhere in the house to escape for a quiet place to sleep (although I’ve become desperate enough to seriously start considering the basement…). In order to get through the day – especially the days when I have Japanese class after work – I’ve been doing something I’ve never done before: using stimulants. I’ve limited myself to the most popular, legal option however: caffeine. I hate coffee, and I hate Coke, so Dr. Pepper is my new drink of choice. I’m using it only in moderation though. Unlike the many people who can’t even start the day without coffee, I haven’t developed any tolerance for caffeine, and it sends me for one hell of a loop if I have too much.

My situation made me think of the old “I’m a Pepper” and “Coffee Achiever” ads of my youth. As yet more proof that you can find absolutely anything on the web, here’s the Dr. Pepper ad and here’s the Coffee Achiever ad. I had forgotten about how star-studded the coffee ad was. I also came across this interesting tidbit about the guy on the Taster’s Choice jars – apparently Nestle used his image without permission and never told him his picture was on label (once he found out he won a $15.6 million lawsuit against them). At this point I should point out that when I’m sleep deprived and on caffeine, I really tend to ramble….

Eidan was due for shots, so Maria took him to the pediatrician a couple days ago. She asked about his frequent wake-ups, and the doc said we simply have a hyper-alert, very active little boy, and that the 14-16 month old period is a time of major brain development (walking, acquiring language, etc), which often results in sleep disruption.

Eidan really has become incredibly active over the past month. He wants to be outside all the time. When I take him downstairs at 7am, he goes right for the door, yelping at me and trying to pry it open with his little fingers. He’s particularly fascinated with kicking and throwing balls. He kicks and runs with the ball really well – like a little soccer player. He fell down a lot teaching himself how to do it, but he was determined. Actually, the ball is big enough compared to him that he often would end up rolling himself right over the top of it – it was quite something to see .

He also said his first word a few days ago: “no.” He probably hears it more than anything else, so he definitely knows what it means. He was pulling CDs out of my CD drawer and dropping them on the floor, and Maria told him “no.” He then grabbed another CD, held it up, said “no” with a little smile on his face, and dropped it on the floor. And he did that a few more times until Maria got over to him to stop him.

He’s damn lucky he’s so cute.

Update: We’ve made some progress with Eidan’s sleep situation over the past couple of nights – we’ve got him down to 3 wake-ups now. Hopefully it’s a sign of things to come!

Last week Maria wired the deposit money for our apartment in Minato City (which is not actually its own city – it’s the central district of Tokyo where the apartment is). And yesterday she called Minato’s school department to find out about registering Kai for the public school kindergarten in Konan, which is the name of our ward in Minato. She wrapped up the whole thing in one call – Kai is now registered for 1st grade, which in Japan starts in April. He’ll also get a spot for kindergarten in January, but he may end up in a neighboring ward, since we’ll be arriving in the middle of the school year and the Konan school might be full.

Check out this web page for the Minato City schools. The first thing to notice is that it’s written in excellent English. The second thing to notice is that it has very clear instructions for foreign residents to register their kids for school. As an American used to generally lousy public services, this just amazes me. Can you imagine a US public school being this accommodating to foreign residents, and having a web site just for foreigners that’s this good? Minato has a high percentage of foreign residents, which is undoubtedly the motivation behind the web site, but again, as an American, I’m amazed to see a city district do something so eminently sensible, and do it well.

We’ve also made our travel plans for getting to Japan. First we’ll first ship all the stuff for our 6 month stay to a friend’s place in San Francisco. Then we’ll go to Newport for Christmas. It’s a Christmas we don’t want to miss – my 14 year old nephew, who lives in Australia with his father, will be in Newport for the first time since he was 6 years old. Then on Dec. 28th we’ll fly from Boston to San Francisco, and spend a day and a half there (since we’re travelling with the boys, we decided it would be wise to break up such a long journey). We wanted to arrive in California sooner, so we could we more time there, but we couldn’t get the flights to work out. But we’re looking forward to seeing our friends in the Bay Area again! Since it’s such a short visit, we’ll probably have a party one night and invite everybody. Then we’ll load up all our stuff and fly from San Francisco to Tokyo. The Japanese have great delivery services (takkyubin), so we’ll use one of those to pick up all our stuff at the airport and take it to the apartment. We’ll arrive at our little apartment just in time to celebrate New Year’s Eve in Tokyo. We’ll still be on US time, so we’ll be up!

Events of the past few weeks have left me too short on time and worn out for much blogging. The biggest challenge has been Eidan’s sleeping. We had actually just succeeded in getting him into a nice routine a few weeks ago, when he started getting an allergic reaction to something. His primary symptom is post nasal drip, which makes him cough when he’s lying down, and he would usually end up having a coughing fit and vomiting. The advice we got from his pediatrician was to tilt his mattress and get a cold air humidifier blowing in his face (he’s too young for cough medicine). It took a while for him to adjust to the humidifier, but now he’s finally sleeping fairly well again. Soon after we moved here three years ago, Kai developed a similar problem, although it wasn’t as severe (of course, he was also older). Kai’s problem went away about a year ago. It’s probably some kind of household mold, but I’m hoping that in Eidan’s case it’s seasonal and will go away soon. We’ll see…

Aside from that Eidan is doing great. He’s walking like a pro now. Well, actually, he’s walking like a drunk, but every day he gets better at it. And he turned one a few weeks ago! It’s hard to believe. He still has more energy than Maria and I combined, but he’s become easier to manage recently, as he’s developed the ability to stay focused on a task for more than a few seconds. For example, going out to eat previously had been a tag-team effort between Maria and I, with one of us keeping Eidan reigned in so the other could eat a few bites. Reigning him in usually meant letting him climb all over me like some kind of little feral animal while he giggled constantly, and making sure he didn’t fall as he’d go up my chest, around my head, down my side, and so on. But the other night we went out and he sat calmly in his high chair for a full 20 minutes and ate his food. When I say “ate”, I mean he smeared his food all around the table and himself, with maybe a third of it finding it’s way into his mouth (and yes, we always leave an extra nice tip when we take him out with us). Hey, it’s progress – it was a mind-bogglingly pleasant experience to sit, eat at the same time, and actually be able to exchange a few words. Of course, Kai is always there to redirect the conversation to the topics of Superman, Batman, legos, etc., as he’s not about to sit through a mind-numbingly dull “adult” conversation.

Last weekend we began the process of moving Kai out of his room. He’ll share Eidan’s room until we leave for Japan (and they’ll share a room in Japan too). Maria’s friend Jen, who will be staying in our house while we’re in Japan, is moving in early and taking over Kai’s room in a couple of weeks. I never quite finished the renovations in Eidan’s room (he lacked a ceiling light and the closet wasn’t finished), so I’ve been doing some work in there.

Maria’s been busy preparing for the Shibusawa conference, which she and Jen are co-hosting at Villanova and Penn in a couple of weeks (Jen teaches political science at Penn). This is the conference we attended in Japan two years ago. It’s in a different part of the world each time, and hosting it rotates through some of the regular participants, so this year it’s Maria and Jen.

So this weekend is the eye of the storm, in that our schedules are not overloaded, for just a little while. Maria will attend some panels at the APSA conference tomorrow (Marc Lynch shared some humorous thoughts on the conference – humorous if your a poli-sci geek, anyway) , and on Sunday we’ll finish Kai’s move into Eidan’s room. Then next week our schedules will become totally crazy again, as I’ll start a Japanese class, and Maria will be making final preparations for the conference.

I’ve added a link to the “friends” section of my blogroll – Maria’s page at Villanova! Many of you have asked about Maria’s work. Her Villanova page is not complete yet (I’ll see if I can help her spruce it up), but it should give you an idea of her interests. Also, now that Maria is a CFR fellow, they’ve posted a nice, concise bio for her on their site.

Here are the pictures from Maria’s 3 week stay in Newport with Kai and Eidan. I was there first with the boys for one week (that’s the previous batch of pictures), then Maria and I switched places. I came to visit them on the weekends, thanks to Southwest airlines cheap fares from Philly to Providence.

As I mentioned before, I worked on remodeling the bathroom while they were away. The pictures will be coming…Maria had the digital camera, so I had to use our old film camera, and I still need to finish the roll.

The farm pictures are from the farm where my brother John works. The Taiko drummers were part of Newport’s annual Black Ships Festival. They were playing at none other than Toppa Field (named after my relative and local legend, football coach John Toppa). It’s a shame the photo of Maria, Eidan, and my sister Rebecca has so much glare in it – otherwise it would be a great picture.

Please don’t use the navigation arrows when you pull up the pictures, otherwise you will miss many of them. A project I’m hoping to get to during our stay in Japan next year is the photo management software I’ve been wanting to write – I want to do things like pick my own order for displaying photos, even if I’ve picked photos from different albums.

Sorry for the long silence. Maria and the boys are still in Newport, visiting my family. Kai is having a fantastic time playing with his cousins, and Eidan has taken his first steps! But I wasn’t there to see it . Apparently he’s done it twice now – just a few steps each time. But he only does it when he’s angry, kind of like the Hulk (he did it once when my sister took something away from him, and once when he was fighting over a toy with my Dad’s dog). They’re coming home tomorrow.

I’ve been here in Philly, and all my time outside of work has been consumed by my work on the new bathroom floor. It’s a big job, but it’s coming out nicely. I’ll post pictures of the work, and more pictures from Newport, soon.

Also, I’ve made a few changes to the blog. The biggest change is that I’ve removed all of the political posts (but I may go back through them and re-publish some of the best ones – I haven’t decided yet). I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I’m ceasing my political commentary for a number of reasons, which I’ll try to explain in a future post. I’ll probably still occasioanlly point you to something good that I’ve read, but that’s all. As far as I know, my readership is very small, and consists of friends and family, whose main reason for coming here is not to hear my views on politics anyway.

Last Friday night we kept the boys up late so we could all go see Bugs Bunny on Broadway – the Philadelphia Orchestra performed live, accompanying Bugs Bunny cartoons projected on a big screen. Before it was dark enough to show the cartoons, the orchestra did a short performance, which – as you might expect – Kai found boring. So we lied on the lawn and looked for shapes in the clouds. This isn’t something I’ve taken the time to do with him before, and I can’t tell you how great it was. I continue to be astounded at how curious he is – after talking about the clouds for a few minutes, he asked about how the dinosaurs died, and then he wanted to know how the solar system was formed, and then he wanted to know where the first person came from. He understood my explanations for the first two, but he had a hard time wrapping his mind around evolution (sorry folks, I didn’t go with the biblical explanation). But he didn’t give up – he kept asking me about it in different ways until he felt he had a handle on at least some of it. I’m now a true believer in lying on your back and staring at the sky – it’s probably the best way to have a conversation without distraction. Given that we live in the Age of Distraction, this is no small feat.

Kai wasn’t familiar with the old Bugs Bunny cartoons, as they’re not on TV much anymore. He loved them. Of course, he was probably influenced by the huge crowd around him laughing, and the fact that he was up way past his bedtime. If you’ve ever been around kids who are up too late, their behavior is indistinguishable from that of a drunk, except that they’re more frenzied. The same goes for Eidan – with everyone around him laughing, he had a big grin on his face most of the time. Fortunately, he fell asleep before having a meltdown (which is the big risk of keeping kids up too late).

Given the live orchestra, two “musts” for the show were The Rabbit of Seville and What’s Opera, Doc?. I laughed pretty hard at the “Rabbit of Seville” – I had almost completely forgotten this one, so the gags seemed new to me. But of course I hadn’t forgotten “What’s Opera, Doc?” from my childhood – as with many of my generation (and probably the generation before) it was my first exposure to opera. I will never be able to appreciate “Ride of the Valkyries” as it was intended. To me it will always be the “kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit!” song (and I’m sure I’m not the only one). I just learned from the Wikipedia page I linked to that many consider it the greatest animation short of all time. Seeing it for the first time as an adult, I can understand why – the scoring (dozens of hours of Wagner condensed into 6 minutes), the animation, the voice work, and the many satirical jabs are all brilliant.