Back to Vol. 0 No. 11, or up to Jamie Chew's Web Log Archive. or forward to Vol. 0 No. 13.

[a bar of photos of Jamie's face]

Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 0 No. 12

2004-01-27 10:45 In response to a query from Laraine: Jamie's section of this web site averages 600-700 hits per day, for a total so far of a little over 50,000 so far and about 80% of the traffic on our home server.

2004-01-27 14:21 (Kristen) Jamie is sleeping right now, and I'm listening to the third CD of Japanese children's songs that his aunts sent to him from Japan. I still intend to translate a number of his favourites so that I know what is going on in the song. Jamie is getting so big...he's a solid little baby now, over 12 lbs, and his current growth spurt is showing results. It has been pronounced over the last few days, and I can see how much bigger he is now than he was then.

His personality is developing too. He is more impatient with Mummy when she doesn't pick up on what he wants, and has a lovely temper (lovely, as in a well-developed example of its kind). He is better at expressing what he wants, and is very clear about it. Still, he is patient, and gentle, and still a very reasonable, happy little boy.

2004-01-27 25:00 (John) Kristen spent a lot more time with Jamie than I did, which isn't all that uncommon. Usually I'm in the house, but today I was out shovelling a little more than a metre of snow. It was only 40 cm or so of accumulation, but the wind (accompanied by thunder snow, ooh, aah) blew it around enough that each snowflake needed to be moved back at least three times. I told Jamie that in ten years I'll retire from snow duties and pass the snow shovel to him. He didn't seem impressed. He does "not impressed" remarkably well.

He was also bored today, as Kristen noticed, but we were prepared. He watched his first baby educational video today (Baby Galileo), and was thoroughly entranced.

2004-01-28 23:31 (Kristen) Jamie woke up today in the sunniest of moods, and his mood has lasted throughout the day. We even managed a few tearless diaper changes, with smiles instead. He is still trying to shove anything in hand into his mouth, and has moved on to manipulating his fish rattle more effectively into his maw. He laughed, slept, wriggled, sang, and has been even chattier than usual. It's days like this that make you happy to be a mom, and more than make up for the bad ones.

We went to the Scrabble club tonight. Jamie was wearing his yellow duck outfit with the matching hat that Lynda Wise gave to us at the Scrabble shower Fern Lindzon hosted before Jamie was born. He has almost grown out of it, and I spent a good deal of this afternoon going through clothes. There are newborn outfits that he is too big to wear (sniff), and I'm starting to eye the 3-6 month outfits and even the 6-9 month outfits for him to start wearing soon. Sigh. I have finished packing for him for both our Kingston and our Mexico trips...I have such a sense of accomplishment!

Jamie has also been spending a good deal of time with Gary and Ayami. Ayami watched Jamie this afternoon while I packed, and even got him to fall asleep for her! Gary spent time with him tonight, making his usual faces, and even carried him around for a short time while I grabbed a quick bite to eat (nursing makes me ravenous). It's been lovely having both of them here, and involved in his life. Add to that that one of the players at the club told me tonight how much they enjoyed having Jamie come to the club every week, and we're feeling pretty lucky in the people that Jamie is going to get to know.

2004-01-29 26:00 (John) Jamie had a very fussy day for the first time in a week or so. I think he's teething, and I think the Sher-E-Punjab puts broccoli in their palak paneer (and not just in their saag, as their menu suggests), and I think Kristen eating broccoli gives Jamie bad gas. If you type "Sher-E-Punjab butter chicken menu please" into Google, the #1 hit is a photo of Jamie.

This posting is a little later than I thought it would be, because our trusty Nikon CoolPix 950 has bit the dust, after only two years and just over 5,000 photos. I'm a little distressed by this, especially as it adds another thousand dollars onto this season's unexpected bills (the dental implant and the new furnace). Michelle helpfully points out that she celebrated her children's births with a flooded basement that had to be repaired through what had been the floor of her front porch, and by having to replace her washer/dryer. More genuinely helpfully, she's loaned me her Canon PowerShot S30 to keep the web site going while I start pulling my hair out.

2004-01-30 10:30 We're getting ready to leave for Kingston for the weekend for the annual Toronto-Montreal Scrabble tournament. It's also something of a dry run for travelling with Jamie: a three-hour drive instead of a three-hour plane flight. I haven't made any special arrangements for Internet access while in Kingston, so there's a reasonable chance that the next time we'll update this log will be Sunday evening when we return. That is, we'll keep a local copy updated daily, but we may not be able to update the publicly posted version that you're reading every day, which is also the tentative plan for Mexico.

2004-01-30 24:30 (John) Following a long detour via Nikon's office in Mississauga (very friendly, helpful service tech said he would have a repair estimate for us on Monday, and said he could offer enough trade-in value on the 950 to buy a 5400 for the very good price of $678) and rush hour traffic, we arrived in Kingston eight hours later at around 23:00. Jamie was fine for the first four hours, while we were in or around Toronto, but got understandably a little stir crazy for the last four hours, which we had to drive at the speed limit because of snow and stopping at each service centre because of Jamie.

No Internet service at the Howard Johnson. Some rooms have data phone jacks, not ours, not that we still have a dial-up ISP (so 1990s). We'll save our updates for Sunday night, I think.

2004-01-30 25:30 Kristen says that Jamie just rolled over onto his side for the first time, but she's not sure how because she wasn't watching! He was beside her on the bed, so I'm guessing he grabbed a towel to pull on, but I'll have to watch him more carefully!

2004-01-31 23:15 (John) Ooh, war-chalking from the tournament room works! Kristen and Jamie are playing a fun game against Craig Rowland now, and I'm in a corner of the room gleefully tapping typing away. I had breakfast with Jamie in the hotel restaurant, then saw him only intermittently through the day, as Kristen and Jamie went out with Ted, Alice, Ian and Amy for the afternoon. I'm told Jamie was well-behaved and charming. During dinner (takeout from Curry Original), he sat quietly in his stroller and gave me the Look of Death whenever he noticed that I was eating. I'll go see if I can upload one of the photos Alice took now.

2004-02-01 21:51 (Kristen) Another late night last night: when John asked me what time it was this morning, my response was "You take his length, and divide by a bowl of curry." I said this a few times, when John asked me the question again. I believe that the "his" in question was Jamie.

Jamie and I had a lovely breakfast with Ian, Amy, Alice and Ted. Then we went book shopping at a local bookstore (Wayfarer Books), before meeting my highschool friends Michael and Alison next door at The Sleepless Goat on Princess Street. Jamie had the three-hour nap that I was hoping he'd take in the car between 10:30 and 1:30, but it gave me time to have a nice talk with Michael and Alison. We were on the road by 4:00, with Jamie asleep in the back, but made the mistake of stopping for food at a McDonalds. Mom shut the car door too hard, and Papa had to first comfort a crying baby and then change a crying baby in the front seat of the car. Jamie looked comfortable (for a minute before the next poo) sitting on John's lap in front of the steering wheel. It seemed as though he'd be happy driving back to Toronto on Papa's lap that way.

We stopped in Cobourg to visit Heather, David, and Rissa, and to have a nurse and another few changes, before arriving home around 9:00 PM. It was an easier trip than the one there, and Jamie slept from Cobourg to home. He is lying on the bed, having just had One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish read out loud to him. He liked it very much, and is now telling John all about it.

2004-02-01 24:30 (John) Jamie's almost got the idea about imitating speech. We spent fifteen minutes this evening going aah and ooh in antiphony, with Jamie getting so excited by the end of it that his eyes started bugging out. He had a run of ten or so correctly repeated aahs and oohs before getting distracted and going back to random gurgling.

Jamie also made a first step toward bathing on his own today. He pooed# in the tub, and I had to explain to him that this was not what the phrase "going to the bathroom" means, and that the whole notion of having a toilet and a bathtub in the same room is a Western barbarism in the name of plumbing convenience. No serious damage done, though. The towel that I keep him wrapped in while I bathe him caught all the output, and Kristen put him in a new, clean towel and back in the tub in less than a minute.

2004-02-02 10:55 (John) Kristen saw Jamie roll over onto his stomach for the first time ten minutes ago. She says he just gave a big kick and flipped right over!

Nikon called and said my CoolPix 950 is a write-off, but they'll have a 5400 ready for me at Wednesday on lunch. Now I just have to figure out how to explain this to Jamie, who really is quite fond of the 950. I asked, but they said that they couldn't give me the dead 950 for legal reasons. Sigh.

2004-02-02 18:17 (Kristen) Chihoko, one of our former tenants, is over visiting Jamie while I run around packing, and even grab a nap. She has been an enormous help. I always forget how much time it takes to pack for Mexico, even when you have done it so many times before. And packing for Jamie makes it even more challenging.

I found a poem in the December 1, 2003 issue of The New Yorker (page 69) that really made me think of Jamie, and of John as well. It goes as follows:

Baby Baby

Choices have been made that I had nothing to do with--
mistakes have been made,
and, worse than that,
Death has been served tea and fresh figs.
I was not present in that room,
at the table polished with citron oil.
I did not take part in the extended discussion
whereby the decision was refined.
So don't point a finger at me someday.
I was here by the crib, looking at you
chewing your toes,
blowing raspberries,
blowing little thought balloons
with your labials, fricatives, glottal stops, and retroflexes,
your mint-condition neurons firing.
(The language can't be understood,
but the purpose is plain.)
I was here advising you that even though
all the women want to stroke you
and all the men want to be your pal
you should probably start developing 
your own resources.
Popularity like that never lasts.
I was saying how difficult it is to be
courteous, loyal, thrifty,
brave, cheerful, obedient, and wise
separately, let alone all at once.
I was pointing you far into the future, to the day
you go down to the river
and wade out knee deep in the sacred element
and turn and see on the riverbank
seven luminous beings lined up and looking at you.
To which of them will you put your question 
when you wade back? The Christians say
the story of the universe is the story of a boy and his dad.
They are absolutely right.
I can see that now, waiting here
for the smiles I'd kill for, 
watching you as you sleep curling your fist,
which in a time I can barely recollect
did not, or maybe did, exist.
--Vijay Seshadri

* For the benefit of Scrabble players, words that are not in the Scrabble dictionary are marked with an asterisk.

Back to Vol. 0 No. 11, or up to Jamie Chew's Web Log Archive. or forward to Vol. 0 No. 13.