Home Alone
I find myself at home, all alone this (long) weekend, frantically cleaning the place up for Miyu and Jay's arrival in a few weeks. It's actually got to be a bit of a pig-sty, truth be told, and now there seems to be so much more free space. Although that's all very positive, man, there's been a couple of mishaps. The biggest is that my external HD, which holds all of my photos and movies, seems to have stopped working! And the frustrating thing is that due to it's sleek design (a Lacie 250 GB FA Porsche design), there's no way to open it and have a peek inside - no openings on it, just a couple of vents. If anybody knows what to do, please drop me a mail! At the moment it makes a screechy whirring noise, then dies down and a tiny light flashes green/orange. Yikes.
I've been reading some books regarding a baby's intelligence, and helping him develop it. Some of it may be quite common sense, like did you know a baby goes through four stages of walking? 1st, free movement of arms and legs in a prone position, 2nd crawling, 3rd creeping (meaning on his hands and knees) and then lastly walking on two feet. It's very important that the baby goes through each of these stages as they're like building blocks for not only his motor-sensory development, but also setting off all sorts of neural pathways that will stand him in good stead for the future. And the earlier baby is given the opportunity to be on his tummy to try crawling the better. Imagine if you were kept on your back all the time, and that you couldn't turn over by yourself? Very frustrating, no? So anyway, I explained this to a sceptical Miyu, and put Jay onto his tummy last week. Well, he was off! He began kicking and pulling and was soon a good 6 inches from his starting position! Then he fell asleep, completely knackered! Miyu's a bit worried that he might not be able to breathe in that position, but as long as you keep an eye on him, he should be fine. "Back to sleep, front to play."
Jay's also smiling a lot more now. Not just in his sleep (which might only be due to gas), but when he sees Miyu. It's awfully cute.
I caught up with one of my Aussie friends a couple of weeks ago. I hadn't seen Pierre for 5 years. We had both attended the SCI Kosugi Farm summer camp when I first came to Japan, where we spent 2 weeks in the mountains of Yamanashi, refurbishing a building for drop out High School kids. Pierre, like me, was one of the older people attending the camp, so compared to the uni. kids that made up the majority of attendees, we both fell into mentor like roles. He was a triathlete, and I'll always remember the first day of the camp, waking early to go explore the area and watching Pierre come jogging down a mountain track, having just ran 5 km! This was something like 6am, and we had a full day of labour intensive work ahead of us. Anyway, we quickly became friends, and we, with Anto, another of the "elders", formed one of the groups who climbed Mt. Fuji. Well, we actually ran up Mt. Fuji, as a challenge, and because we were all quite fit. Big mistake for me, as although it was fine going up, coming down was like walking on shattered glass!
So, I met up with Pierre a couple of weeks ago, and together with Aroop and his girlfriend (sorry, name escapes me!), we went to a huge Brazillian festival in Yoyogi park. Some cool impromptu performances of high energy drumming in the crowds were the highlights for me. I was amazed by the amount of meat sizzling away on these HUGE bar-b-qs! God knows how many cows were slaughtered for it but it must have been in the triple digits, I kid you not. Pierre is an engineer by trade, and he was over in Japan for about 6 weeks working on setting up and maintaining wind turbines all around Japan. His work takes him all around the world, which seems very adventurous, were it not for the fact that his girlfriend is more or less having to live alone, as Pierre is always going off on another assignment! He's still doing the tiathlons, good on him, so is as skinny as a rake and little of his appearance has changed.
I'll leave you with a video of Jay - enjoy!
I've been reading some books regarding a baby's intelligence, and helping him develop it. Some of it may be quite common sense, like did you know a baby goes through four stages of walking? 1st, free movement of arms and legs in a prone position, 2nd crawling, 3rd creeping (meaning on his hands and knees) and then lastly walking on two feet. It's very important that the baby goes through each of these stages as they're like building blocks for not only his motor-sensory development, but also setting off all sorts of neural pathways that will stand him in good stead for the future. And the earlier baby is given the opportunity to be on his tummy to try crawling the better. Imagine if you were kept on your back all the time, and that you couldn't turn over by yourself? Very frustrating, no? So anyway, I explained this to a sceptical Miyu, and put Jay onto his tummy last week. Well, he was off! He began kicking and pulling and was soon a good 6 inches from his starting position! Then he fell asleep, completely knackered! Miyu's a bit worried that he might not be able to breathe in that position, but as long as you keep an eye on him, he should be fine. "Back to sleep, front to play."
Jay's also smiling a lot more now. Not just in his sleep (which might only be due to gas), but when he sees Miyu. It's awfully cute.
I caught up with one of my Aussie friends a couple of weeks ago. I hadn't seen Pierre for 5 years. We had both attended the SCI Kosugi Farm summer camp when I first came to Japan, where we spent 2 weeks in the mountains of Yamanashi, refurbishing a building for drop out High School kids. Pierre, like me, was one of the older people attending the camp, so compared to the uni. kids that made up the majority of attendees, we both fell into mentor like roles. He was a triathlete, and I'll always remember the first day of the camp, waking early to go explore the area and watching Pierre come jogging down a mountain track, having just ran 5 km! This was something like 6am, and we had a full day of labour intensive work ahead of us. Anyway, we quickly became friends, and we, with Anto, another of the "elders", formed one of the groups who climbed Mt. Fuji. Well, we actually ran up Mt. Fuji, as a challenge, and because we were all quite fit. Big mistake for me, as although it was fine going up, coming down was like walking on shattered glass!
So, I met up with Pierre a couple of weeks ago, and together with Aroop and his girlfriend (sorry, name escapes me!), we went to a huge Brazillian festival in Yoyogi park. Some cool impromptu performances of high energy drumming in the crowds were the highlights for me. I was amazed by the amount of meat sizzling away on these HUGE bar-b-qs! God knows how many cows were slaughtered for it but it must have been in the triple digits, I kid you not. Pierre is an engineer by trade, and he was over in Japan for about 6 weeks working on setting up and maintaining wind turbines all around Japan. His work takes him all around the world, which seems very adventurous, were it not for the fact that his girlfriend is more or less having to live alone, as Pierre is always going off on another assignment! He's still doing the tiathlons, good on him, so is as skinny as a rake and little of his appearance has changed.
I'll leave you with a video of Jay - enjoy!
posted by TOK at 2:04 pm
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