Sumahi the Germ Spreader

Ever since Sumahi started Day Care, she started catching different illnesses one after the other. First, it was a stomach flu which turns into pneumonia, then she catches an eye infection which had yet to completely heal, now she is having a cold with an extremely runny nose and a low-grade fever that had come and go for the last two days. The result is a skinny nene that no longer has her previous glory: the thunder thighs, the chubby arms with folds of fats, and the pinchable cheeks that weight a ton. All of those.. gone... Daddy commented that she no longer looks like a chubby eggplant, but a lollipop. I argued that she is not skinny like a lollipop... maybe just a microphone.

As I agonize over the lost of her chubbiness, Sumahi is quick to pass her germs around. First, she gave everyone a stomach flu, that includes, me, my father, and Janell (a friend and the niece for my landlord who is currently staying at our house with her two kids until the end of February ). Then she gave the Janell's daughter the pneumonia. Now she got me, my mother and my father the cold.

Sumahi is as cute as she is deadly.

Sumahi and the Pikachus

Here is a video with two of my favorite things.



I've decided, that as a loving and caring father, Sumahi will love Pikachu as much as I do. I've started this process, by making sure her life so far is full of Pokemon. I know that there is a chance that she will hate me for this, but I'm hoping that Pikachus will be so natural to her after a while, that having them around will be as normal as breathing or drinking water.

Betsu

For those of you who don't know it, I am sort of a poet on Guam. I've had the privilege of reading several times at the Sinangan-Ta events over the past few years. Sadly, I never win the prize at the end of the contest because my poems are always too long.

Here is one of my biggest crowd pleasers, "I am Chamorro," which isn't too long at around two pages long.

Some of my poems sprawl out of control and end up at four or five pages, such as this one, gi entre i mas ya-hu na betsu-hu, "Time Machine Native."

Over the past few years though I've begun writing shorter and shorter poems, mainly in Chamorro, about less explicitly political things such as guinaya yan triniste. You can find most of these on my blog. One of the few "political" Chamorro poems I've written though is titled "kinattayi yu' ni' sindalun Chamorro giya Irak," or "I was written a letter by a Chamorro in Iraq."

Anyways, how does all this relate to Sumahi? Taimanu chumetton este na sinangan-hu yan i hagga-hu?

Well, Jessica took Sumahi to attend the most recent Sinangan-Ta in December of last year, and I think that the love of poetry reading might be in her blood. Check out these pictures.

Sumahi's Nine Months Birthday

Today is Sumahi's Nine Months Birthday, it had pretty much became a habit that we celebrate her birthday monthly. But nine months is particularly special, it means that she had survived 3 quarters of her first year of life with me!

Since it is her special 9 months birthday, I called Daddy yesterday to discuss how we should celebrate this special day. I wanted to read to her one of the Dr. Seuss books that I had brought for her for Christmas, titled "Happy Birthday to You", then open her toys that are for nine months old, so she could play with them. I also wanted to bring her some place, Daddy suggested the beach, and also that I should give her a new food for her to try.

So I picked up Sumahi from the day care after work, and headed to Matapang Beach with Grandma Winnie tagging along. We brought two sets of swimsuits for Sumahi, the red bikini which is only for picture taking, and the other one is for when she gets into the water. I put Sumahi near the shoreline for her to stand and pose for the photo shoot... unfortunately, Sumahi hated it. So we decided to slow things down and have her crawl on the sand instead. She hated that too... and started crying and crawling to me. We realized that it wasn't really the water that she hates, she hates the sand. So we picked her up, walked into the water, and repeat the process of dipping her into the water and then lift her up high in the air. She gradually warmed up and started paddling in the water (her paddling didn't get her anywhere, of course.) We didn't stay at the beach for too long (we only stayed for approx. 30 min.) for we didn't want her to catch a cold.

After a warm bath and eating regular baby food, we fed her a strawberry. Yes, that was the choice I made, Daddy suggested something healthy, so I picked Korean strawberry, sweet and packed with Vitamin C. Well, from her expression, she didn't seems to like it, but she keeps eating it anyway. By the time she was done with the strawberry, she was too exhausted for the other plans that I had install for her, so we let her go to bed instead.

I think those should go on the Sport Illustrated Swimsuit Edition.

Sumahi's First Christmas

It was Sumahi's First Christmas, in the beginning, I had a lot of ideas and plans to make her First Christmas special. But since Daddy's stay was short, and with him working on the documentary and getting sick twice, we weren't able to go to the beach as a family, we didn't take any Christmasy photos as a family other than the one you see above which was taken at the Day Care as part of their program (oh, yes, nene is in day care now, I'll talk more about it in another entry.), and nene didn't have a tree (coconut, as her daddy insisted) for Christmas. We also didn't do anything that were pretty traditional for Christmas on Guam, such as going to the Skinner Plaza, and nene kissed no Baby Jesus. While we did bring Sumahi to see the mini train in Hilton, it wasn't as great as I had expected, for unlike the previous years, the train has so many advertisements on it, nene wasn't amused for we couldn't get close to the train as I thought we would be able to, and Daddy was pretty much lying dead on the couch waiting to get home for he was sick.

Although we didn't do a lot of the things that I wish we could have done, we did many other exciting things, like making the Sumahi Video Christmas Card, Sumahi being filmed in the documentary. Sumahi also received a lot of gifts, especially from Daddy and from her grandmothers. She did get to spent Christmas with her family, and most importantly, with her daddy, which was all that matter.

Sumahi's New Moves

On Sumahi's nina's birthday, we all went to our all time favorite restaurant for dinner. Through out Dinner, Sumahi was dancing to the beat, and everytime we tried to capture her on video, she would stop. But you could catch a glimpse of it in this video.

Ti Guailayi I Palabras