The Power of Food

Last week Jamesie Cat spent a day with me. We started out learning the letters of his name.

Do you know what happens when you offer a prize if he gets it correct?

The student tries very hard!

Watch Video:
Learning how to spell J-A-M-E-S, one letter at a time.

For recess we went to the pool.

Do you know what happens when you play with him non-stop for over an hour?

The kid acquires an insatiable appetite!

You got more sandwiches? Please...

You got more milk? Please...

And when you run out of turkey and ham sandwiches, after you'd already given the kid your own, and he's even drank your milk, you find him something to do to get his mind off of eating until you get home. 

So we went to work with Uncle 5-Star.

I'll work for Skittles if you want to hire me.

The power of food.

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Ready, Set, Hike!

Several months ago I asked a a niece of mine to take me on a summit hike in the Philippines. "Yes," she replied. She added, it's not cake walk, so you better start training by running for two hours everyday!

Jimminy Chirstmas!

Two hours?!

Running?!

Everyday?!

Is she serious?!

Well, regrettably, this niece no longer lives in the Philippines. However, I have started to get serious about getting back into physical shape, and have logged two long hikes to my training log. The first hike was Mount Si, about an hour and a half out of the city.

It was a round trip of eight miles, and we did it in about four hours. It normally takes a little over two hours to complete this hike. It took us twice as long for these reasons:

1. I had already run 5 miles that morning.
2. Alfonsina was carrying a fifty pound pack
    (conditioning for a sixty-plus mile trek
    through the Sierra Nevada range.
3. Colleen had a torn muscle in her rib cage.
4. It was a scorching hot day, with not a
    wisp of a breeze in the air.



My  next hike was an "accident". We had planned on Bandera Mountain, but the access road was closed due to logging. So we picked the next trailhead off the Interstate... Mailbox Peak, so aptly named with the mail box perched at its summit.

This hike is a round trip of six miles, but it took us over four hours to do it because:

1. A sheer (no pun intended) gain in elevation,
    with a total elevation of 4,100 feet. Imagine
    climbing about 1,000 feet per mile.
2. Alfonsina carried a thirty-pound pack (still
    in training).

And in addition to these hikes, I was running four miles a day, three days a week for the last two weeks. I'm now up to six miles a day, three days a week.

So, if and when my niece returns to the Philippines, I'll be ready for sure!

.

Jaida's Visit

This photo, taken almost three weeks ago, could mean only one thing: Jaida Bug was in town!

It had been a little over a month since Jaida Bug and her family moved to California. It was very hard for me when they left. I thought it would be another year before I saw Jaida Bug again, and that she might not even recognize me the next time we met. (I am already sure Sheazie Bear wouldn't forget me.) So I braced myself for the jab in the heart when I met Jaida Bug on this brief visit Mayet made with the kids.


She recognized me all right, but she was being so shy and coy with me! After spending a whole hour with her and Mayet at lunch, she warmed up to me.

Do one-year olds have a conscience of showing off? Because I swear that's what Jaida Bug was doing. She practically ran from one structure to the next in the playground, looking at me like "Look Auntie Netty, see what I can do!"

She wanted to get on the springy horse, and refused to let me hold her, the whole time giving me that look of seeking approval.

The next day we went jogging for old times' sake.  And in true Jaida fashion, she put up her feet in absolute comfort as she took in the sights and sounds of people and their pets along the way.

Then we went shopping. She loves riding in the shopping cart!

And when she saw that we were on the job, she squealed with glee.

... and waded through the knee-high grass with wonderful curiosity.

While she played shy and coy with me when we met, she was the exact opposite with Uncle 5-Star. As soon as she saw him, she ran to him with open arms calling "Ay-eeh! Ay-eeh!" (Scotty). [Which left me rather jealous...]

Then we met an old friend and his boy Lucas. Lucas is barely ten months old. Jaida is over a year old now. They eyed each other with curiosity, but didn't move to play with each other. Had we stuck around longer, I'm sure the dynamics would have changed.

But alas, their interactions remained "curious", even as we were saying good-bye to our old friend.

[See Jaida eye-balling Lucas in the car?]

That night, Jaida slept like a rock! There was no waking her, not even the dogs' barking.

At home, it was as if Jaida had never left. Sonya immediately took on the guardian role, and wouldn't leave Jaida's side.

Then we went to the pool. Jaida was so impatient to get in the water.

Then she knocked out for her afternoon nap.

The following week Sheazie Bear and Mayet came over. What is it with kids and shopping carts?

Jaida follows her kuya everywhere!

Then we stopped by the kids' old stomping grounds.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm so excited to see Jaida upright and running and jumping, but sometimes, just sometimes, when we really need her to stay put, like when we're packing up the car in a shopping mall parking lot, I miss when she couldn't crawl yet.

[Jaida was complaining about being strapped down.]

On the day that they were going back to California, we went to the beach and ate Spuds fish n' chips, for old times' sake again.

This time it wasn't so hard for me to say good-bye to Mayet and the kids. There's something less dramatic about seeing someone leave with a suitcase, so temporary, as opposed to leaving in a moving van with home in tow.

I tell you what though, this departure was harder on Uncle 5-Star. He left first, perhaps to avoid seeing his Jaida Bug be the one to leave.

The Right People

"... sometimes the most ordinary things can be made extraordinary, simply by doing them with the right people."

- Nicholar  Nicholas Sparks, The Lucky One