Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 0 No. 32

2004-06-15 24:50 (John) I slept in very late this afternoon, so I'll pick up the story where I came in. Ken brought Jamie back from his post-prandial walk an hour into a nap, and I managed to keep him asleep long enough for Kristen to take him back out. They ended up at my parents' for his usual late-afternoon meal, and then we packed up to go to our midwife clinic's picnic.

Except that we'd managed to confuse our midwife clinic's picnic, about which we'd had a phone call, and which is on Thursday, with the East York/Don Mills clinic, which had their picnic tonight, and who sent us a lovely flyer about it, completely neglecting to mention the name of the clinic concerned.

With an unexpected evening free, we went to Mocha Mocha for the first time in months. Jamie had a ball. First of all, it was a beautiful warm summer evening, so we sat out on the sidewalk. Jamie could look in and see the ceiling fan spinning (ooh, ceiling fan), or look out and watch the people, pets and traffic go by (aah, pets and trucks). Despite the distractions, he managed to nibble string beans, cucumbers and avocado off our plates,

We then walked through Withrow Park, where Jamie enjoyed riding on the bouncy motorcycle, going down a slide, standing on a ladder, and riding a swing, all with varying degrees of assistance.

At home and in the bath, Jamie decided that What Baths Are Really All About is leaning on the edge of the bath reading bath books. That's all he wanted to do, except bend over and pick up his book when it fell from his grip. Soon, I will teach him that WBARAA is lying back comfortably with a good book, and avoiding dropping it in the water too often.

2004-06-16 24:45 (John) Jamie followed a fairly typical weekday schedule today, thanks to the unexpected appearance of Ken, who usually takes Wednesdays off, but was able to take Jamie out for a walk and a nap in the afternoon. I think there was more than the usual amount of to-ing and fro-ing though, as Jamie has finally clued into the idea that adults are steerable.

He leans out of one person's arms into another's, then uses his body language to sometimes gently (sometimes not) tell them which way he wants them to go. Kristen is eager to teach him sign language so that he can tell us when his diaper needs changing or he's hungry. I'm not convinced that we don't just need to learn the signs he's already using.

In the bath tonight, it finally dawned on me that when he's pounding his hand like a demagogue, he may be trying to tell us "get me that thing that's out of my reach". This requires more study tomorrow.

2004-06-17 10:30 Kristen was playing "one foot... two feet!" with Jamie, so I dropped by to offer linguistic balance: "anyo... anyo!" Heh.

2004-06-17 23:30 Jamie was leaning naked on the outside of the tub tonight when I saw him contort his face, and I thought, "It looks like he's having a poo." He was, and it's a good thing his poo is more solid now. [Kristen: it gives us a little more time to react to situations.] I describe it as having the general appearance of a dark red miso, while Kristen prefers not to think of it thus because it puts her off her miso.

Jamie's been very vocal the last few days. It could be because he's teething (Kristen thinks his upper teeth are coming in), or just because he has a lot on his mind. Mostly, it's "blah blah blah bap bap bap", and some bilabial fricatives.[Kristen: think, nothing. He's been chewing, shall we say, *vigorously* on just about everything.]

He fell asleep sitting on my shoulders this afternoon. K and I were rather surprised, and only just managed to transfer him back to the stroller. He much prefers the shoulders though, a better perch from which to observe traffic and wildlife, and declaim his thoughts thereon.

In the tub, Jamie deliberately went around tentatively reaching for things to see if they were allowed (bath toys) or disallowed (pretty much anything not). I was quite impressed at his reaction to the latter, which was just to move on to the next item. It speaks highly of either his equanimity or the number of bath toys.

(Kristen) Jamie is getting better and better at standing, and can now pull himself up into a standing position without too much effort. He cruises along the edges of things, loves to stand on the back of a chair and hold onto the back, and will make big monster baby steps if you allow him to cling to your hands with his feet on the ground. Any attempts to crawl are half-hearted at best, although rolling can sometimes get him where he wants to go. He had fun playing in his playpen with the bells and rattles donated by Auntie Jennifer. He is still enraptured by animals, and I'm sorry that we weren't able to go to Riverdale Farm as planned. Instead, I took him to a local pet grooming store, where he terrorized a small pug into thinking that he might try to pet it.

2004-06-18 23:56 (Kristen) Jamie has been waking up early in the morning (around 6:00 AM) and sleeping very lightly after that with almost constant (so it seems) nursing. This morning around 8:00, after being kicked and pulled at for around two hours by a semi-conscious boy, I decided in my sleep-deprived haze, that I'd had enough: he could be asleep or awake, but not both. I got up with him and changed him, but he was still not fully awake, and it took a great deal of effort to wake him. Once he was awake, however, we had some cereal and crawled back to bed together 45 minutes later for a two and a half hour nap. Thank goodness...I was very worried that I was going to be Psychotic Mom All Day from lack of sleep.

Another good reason to be glad that we went back to bed was that Jamie was very physically active today. After he woke up from his afternoon nap, he didn't want to be anywhere for very long. If he was in my arms, he was leaning far out of them to do something or go somewhere as he chattered away. He wanted to be on the ground as much as possible, moving himself from place to place and imperiously expecting help when he deigned to need it. This meant, for me, holding out my hands so that he could pull himself into a standing position, and picking him up whenever he fell over and was on his stomach. There was also a lot of "don't put that in your mouth, let's move that over here."

The culmination of this was when he found Tom tonight. When Tom came into the room while we were over at Browning for dinner, Jamie leaned out and demanded to be picked up by Tom. Then, he demanded that Tom put him on the floor, and support him under his armpits while he walked remarkably quickly down the short hall to the basement stairs before turning to go into the basement. This was Jamie's way of telling Tom that his purpose in life is to take him to the basement where all of Daniel and Ross's toys are so that Jamie can play with them. Our son is proving to be a master of non-verbal communication, and is reveling in the knowledge that he can direct adults to do what he wants. All hail King James I: it's his world and we just live in it.

(John) Jamie really was gleeful all day long at his new-found ability to get adults to move him from point A to point B. He spent a couple of hours on my shoulders learning the fine art of dressage. (Pull long hair gently for a slow turn, grab short hair and yank for an abrupt turn, etc.)

2004-06-19 23:47 (Kristen) Today was John's speed Scrabble tournament, which he held in honour of his 40th birthday. So, for most of the day Jamie and I watched and kibbitzed as John and seven other Scrabblers played a 40-round tournament in the dining room. We were very happy to see Adam Logan, who won the prize for longest distance travelled to tournament (and the tournament itself!), and introduce him to Jamie. Each pronounced the other satisfactory.

Jamie was up around 9:00, but had been kicking and squirming again around 6:00 AM. He did nap for an hour around 10:30, and mirabile dictu slept for almost three hours this afternoon up in his room. He has not done this in months, and I was getting twitchy by the end, expecting him to wake up any minute for over an hour. He napped again for half an hour this evening, and was in bed by 11:00. We'll see what time he rouses himself tomorrow.

His "walking" improves apace, and he is getting more strident in his insistance that he walk to where he wants to go. He walked to the basement door so that he could go downstairs and see his favourite rug in Gary and Ayami's kitchen. We went for a short walk this afternoon, but part of it involved walking to the Chester Hill St. lookout and watching the cars on the DVP. I also let him stand up and look out, which he loves. This is something that John started doing with him, and the thrill for him is still strong. He is becoming more and more active, and while I watch this development with great trepidation, I see the pure joy that he takes in his own self-determination and think that this joy will make it worth any trouble on my part.

(John) On one of my walks with Jamie today, we visited Michelle. After his initial delight at seeing her, he insisted on being put down on the kitchen floor so that he could walk to the easel and play with the letters. Soon, he'll start learning his two-letter words!

2004-06-20 25:15 Jamie celebrated Father's Day by spending a lot of time with his dad, and being extra charming. We went for a walk around the block in the morning, popped in on Ross and Daniel: Ross was scandalized ("He's naked!") that all Jamie was wearing on this fine summer day was a diaper. We sat in the shade in the backyard weeding the lawn together. I'm pretty sure none of the bits of grass actually made their way all the way into Jamie's mouth.

Then James Cherry called and we ended up going on a long walk with James, Melissa and Sam, first to brunch and then to Riverdale Farm to see horses, a donkey, cows, pigs, sheep, turkey, chickens, ducks, and rabbits. Jamie's favorite part was when a rooster woke up from a nap and crowed for five or ten minutes in perfect antiphony with Jamie's delighted kak-kakking.

In the evening, my parents and aunts took us out to dinner at the Silk Road, and my aunts were stunned at how well and determinedly Jamie is walking now. He still needs two adult hands for balance, but where two days ago he was taking only tentative steps, he can now briskly stride across a room. He also impressed my aunts with his table manners. After I got a jar of baby food into him to take the edge off his hunger, I put everything I thought he could safely eat onto his plate, and we watched as he carefully picked things up and mashed them into his face: snow peas, rice, baby corn and sliced carrots.

He was in a fine mood in the bathtub, not complaining at all about having his hair rinsed (which had lately become a bit of a battle). What a lovely way to end a great first Father's Day!

2004-06-21 23:45 We went to the midwives' clinic reunion picnic at Riverdale Park this evening. It rained a bit, but no one seemed to mind. Jamie munched on asparagus and celery, while I bemoaned the fact that I didn't get to eat any of my own chicken curry, as it disappeared in the time it took to finish unloading the car. (I should have known it was a good batch when a stray dog showed up at our door begging for some.) Jamie would have loved to kick the ball around with some of the slightly older kids, but he'll have to wait for next year's picnic.

We went for a walk in the rain while Kristen was taking a shower. Jamie loves the way the wet roads amplify the traffic sounds.

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

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