Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 0 No. 20

2004-03-23 24:30 (John) Kristen's actual birthday. Thank you for all your calls. Ken (Daniel's grandfather) took Jamie for a walk on the Danforth so that Kristen and I could go out for lunch at the Silk Road Cafe. Ken with a small child is a familiar sight on the Danforth, and I don't think he minded if people thought he had another grandson. After all, everyone thinks Daniel's my son.

I picked up carrot cake and pastries at Dufflet's for a smaller celebration tonight. The carrot cake was an updated, organic version of the one we ordered for our wedding cake. Then I played with Jamie in the car for half an hour while Kristen wandered freely through Nicholas Hoare (Books).

Jamie's still got a bump on his leg from the shot yesterday, but it doesn't seem to have slowed him down any. His people skills and coordination are improving daily. He's getting better at grabbing small objects within range and shoving them into his mouth, and he seems to be recognizing another word each day. Still big into cars and trucks.

2004-03-24 24:30 (John) Kristen's sick in bed with a cold today. Jamie's sneezing, and early in the morning it was green mucus, but he seems in fine spirits. Ayami and Gary have been a big help in looking after both of them.

I think Jamie just laid down another big chunk of myelin today. While he's been able to grab things and put them in his mouth for some time now, his movements had been jerky: he'd swat and flail until he hit something, then reflexively close his hand around it when he brought it to his face it ended up in his mouth. Sometimes it did.

Tonight in the bath for the first time, I saw him slowly move his hand to Mr. Windup Fish, pat it on the back to confirm contact, then gently guide Mr. WF to his mouth. I was really impressed: his movements suddenly seem so much more grown up.

Astute viewers may note a milestone today: today's POTD is the 1000th image shot with our new camera since we bought it exactly seven weeks ago.

2004-03-25 24:45 (John) Kristen's feeling a little bit better, thanks to a good deal of sleep and more childcare help from Ayami, Tami, Ken, Tom and Michelle. Jamie's fine, modulo a few more sneezes than usual. I'm a little wiped out. Jamie spent much of the day practising his New Sound. I've got a little video clip of it that I'll post when I have time, but the best description we could come up with for it is a "marine mammal" squeal. He seems to use it when he's happy or angry, or just plain expressive, and it's certainly a big improvement on being yelled at. I thought at first it was some sort of weird ontogeny-recapitulates-phylogeny thing, but of course not: marine mammals are our cousins, not ancestors. I guess he's managed to get some fine control over his larynx, and is getting a justifiably big kick out of it. I can hardly wait to see what tomorrow brings.

2004-03-26 24:45 (John) Jamie was in such a good mood today. He giggled and laughed at everything, and why not? It reached 18C (64F) today, and all the bulbs in the garden stretched up visibly.

We walked to Mocha Mocha for dinner among its usual mix of families with small children and nice young couples gay and straight. Jamie gurgled peacefully in my arms until we were within sight of the noisy, smelly traffic on the Danforth, and tap-danced and squealed delighted the rest of the way. On the way home in the stroller, he tried to sit up to get a better view of the traffic until we turned off the Danforth, whereupon he promptly fell sound asleep.

2004-03-27 24:30 (John) We're delighted to welcome a new tenant to our household, Rika Shiraishi. Rika moved in this morning while I was at the St. Lawrence Market, and accompanied Jamie and Kristen on their afternoon walk. In the evening, we went to Jeff Kesner's 40th birthday party, where one of the poslpeople described Jamie as the belle (I would say beau) of the ball, with a dance card that was full as soon as he arrived.

One of Jamie's more frequent dance partners, Daniel's dad Tom, is nursing a broken thumbnail, the result of Jamie's vigorous but as yet unsuccessful attempts to chew his way to his first tooth, through hard rubber toys, water-filled soothers, and the occasional helpful adult's thumb. Ouch!

Jamie's been wired all day, napped very briefly and doesn't yet want to go to bed. I think a lot of the world is starting to come together for him in his brain, he just doesn't want to miss anything, and I can't say that I blame him.

2004-03-28 24:45 (John) We celebrated Greek Independence Day as quietly as we could today. You can't live within four blocks of the Danforth and not celebrate it at all, but what with our not being in any way Greek, we restricted our festivities to taking Jamie for a walk along the Danforth to see the parade preparations, and then playing a game of Scrabble at the Second Cup while Jamie took his afternoon nap. Jamie would have stayed awake if the parade had involved more heavy vehicles.

Jamie's voice was heard over the phone today by my parents, who are coming home from Mexico next weekend, and by our friend Agnes, who is expecting her second child today. I held the phone up so that Jamie could hear my mom's voice, and his eyes went wide as he tried to figure out how we'd squeezed her into the handset. Then he tried to use the phone as a teething toy.

2004-03-29 21:45 Jamie made his first successful and semi-deliberate key presses, which I have cut and paste: 000. Perhaps he means that he wants to join the British Secret Service. I think it more likely that he is expressing Peano's first axiom.

Other less important milestones today: he laughed his way through a slide-show of digital images of his younger selves, made himself laugh hysterically by making faces in the mirror, and turned midway during a reading of Language Nursery to realize that it wasn't the book that was reading itself aloud in my voice, but my regular voice coming out of my mouth that was somehow synchronized to the turning of the pages.

Today's Jamie itinerary: to Debbie Ohi's birthday party and then to the math department.

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

Back to Vol. 0 No. 19, or up to Jamie Chew's Web Log Archive. or forward to Vol. 0 No. 21.