Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 0 No. 33

2004-06-22 23:00 Jamie's still wobbly on his feet, but has a lot more confidence, and is beginning to take his mind off the details of walking to more carefully and systematically explore his environment. Everywhere he takes us in the house there are horrible child safety hazards. Aargh!

2004-06-23 25:00 (John) Why is it that the busier the day is, the less time and energy there is to describe it? I took Jamie to Loblaws to go shopping for breakfast essentials in the morning, and thence to Tai-Tai's for breakfast. He eschewed the chopped-up soba* that was first offered in favour of Tai-Tai's own breakfast (soy milk, sobako*, oatmeal and umeboshi*). Kristen then took Jamie out used book shopping with the visiting Adam Logan, joining back up with me when I took Daniel, Ross and Michelle out to the Coffee Mill to celebrate their respective graduations from Grade 5, Senior Kindergarten and another year of schoolchild motherhood. Jamie liked walking around the edge of the fountain, and the fountain itself, along with the suggestive display of pots and pans on the wall. And he liked the credit card stickers on the cash register, though he couldn't quite see how they were supposed to go in his mouth. And he loved Yorkville Park, especially Ross' "train tracks". Don't know what he did in the evening, other than help Kristen find my camera where I'd left it at Michelle's. I was off wrapping up the Scrabble club season.

2004-06-24 23:44 (Kristen) Jamie is getting more and more clever, and every day seems full of firsts. He was deliberately stacking and unstacking stars on a post (once, no repeat, but still), and walking throughout the house with a determined stride worthy of the best generals. He didn't sleep much again during the day, deciding that he wasn't going to sleep for Ken, but fell asleep on John's shoulders during his evening walk tonight. He's busy busy busy, and keeping up with him is getting to be a real challenge. Part of me is looking forward to when he walks around on his own, and part of me shudders as I envision a small boy running off without me at every turn.

He was wearing his whale outfit, which was a gift that arrived a day or two ago from Sherrie Saint John and Gregg Foster, and which looks very cute on him. He played with two children visiting Ayami, Ryu-kun, and Miu-chan, and Jamie was very entertained by Ryu running as fast as he could up and down the driveway to impress Jamie. Jamie is so cute, sometimes, I can hardly stand it. He laughs when I kiss him under the chin, and he is such a loving, sweet boy. I look at him sometimes, and hope beyond hope that we can give him what he needs to stay that way.

2004-06-25 23:40 (John) Jamie and Kristen were walking on the Danforth in the heart of Greektown when Greece beat France in the Euro 2004 quarter-finals. I could hear the cheering at home, followed a few minutes later by crazed Greeks driving down even our street, honking their horns and shouting "Ellas! Ellas!". On the whole, I think Jamie was happy to see the increased vehicular traffic, as he's still quite fond of motor vehicles.

Then we took the bus and streetcar down to Nami to help my visiting brother Ted celebrate his birthday. Jamie catnapped on the streetcar so that he could be on his best behaviour at the restaurant, then guzzled a bowl of miso (he loves the little tiny tofu cubes) and a bottle of apple juice, and then Kristen and I took turns taking him out for walks.

2004-06-26 24:10 (Kristen) Jamie has figured out how to stick his tongue out and pull it back in on purpose. He has a very tiny tongue, and sometimes he sticks it out far, and sometimes just a little beyond his closed lips. It's been very funny to watch him stick his tongue out on his own, or in response to other people sticking theirs out first.

We went to the St. Lawrence Market this morning and met with Leslie Ambedian and Peter Kotanen, two friends of ours who just resturned from a three-week trip to London (sigh...) They brought Jamie a Plague Rat hand puppet from the Globe Theatre, which John and I loved on sight for its evil beauty. They laughed, and said that they knew that we'd appreciate it. At one point, I had the puppet in the baby carrier while John carried Jamie, and he declared it very "Get Fuzzy" (a comic strip featuring a cat often carried in a baby carrier like ours).

Jamie also spent time playing with a panda bear rug/puppet that Gary and Ayami found at a garage sale this morning. Gary was animating the puppet, and Jamie thought that it was just hilarious.

2004-06-27 23:45 (Kristen) John wasn't feeling very well today, so Jamie and I took off for a long afternoon walk together. It was Pride Day today, and so I decided to take Jamie to see what Pride Day was all about. We walked over the viaduct towards Church and Bloor, and Jamie was alright about it: he spent some time in my arms and some time in the stroller. When we made it to Church St., we sat at a very picked over Second Cup and watched some of the happy and colourful crowd. Jamie was tired and somewhat bothered by the loud music being played by some of the floats, and so we headed down Church away from the parade. He fell asleep finally after I put him into the octopus (the blue baby carrier), and he got lots of "aws" as I pushed the stroller through the crowd with a sleeping Jamie strapped to me.

Jamie seemed to enjoy the parade, but found it a little overwhelming, particularly when it got noisy. We ducked out to a little park for a nurse, a change into cooler clothes, and a time out to talk with another nursing mom and her daughter. In the end, we decided that we'd seen as much as we could with the large crowds, and we headed back home on the subway.

We've been having some trouble lately getting Jamie to fall asleep anywhere but in bed while nursing. This includes, miseries of miseries, not falling asleep in the stroller. He is less and less copacetic about being in the stroller for long periods of time at all, and has refused to sleep in his stroller for a few days now. I'm somewhat disturbed by this, and have decided that I will only nurse him to sleep at night, and hope that he'll start sleeping in the stroller again during the day. I've also tried introducing a soother in the hope that he'll suck on it for comfort rather than on me. He took to it yesterday, chewing and sucking on it in an interested fashion, but has no interest in it as a comfort tool. We'll continue to experiment: it's better than his reaction of three months ago, which was to gently push it out of his mouth with his tongue. On the other hand, he has taken to falling asleep on his father's shoulder on their evening walks, but this is only a partial success in that we have real difficulty translating him from his father's shoulder to the bed without waking him.

2004-06-28 17:30 (John) Jamie went back to Dr. Kennedy's today for his belated six-month immunization shots. He now weighs 18 lbs. 9 oz. (almost 8.5 kg) and is about 28" (71 cm) long. She gave him a clean bill of health, and told us we can expect some eyeteeth in the next few days.

2004-06-28 12:33 (Kristen) It was a hard day for our boy, as the shots and the teeth combined caused him a great deal of difficulty. He slept for a little over an hour early in the afternoon, and fell asleep on his papa's shoulders later tonight. I went to play Trivia, and so John was in charge of the progeny this evening. Michelle took him to see the streetcars for a bit, but Jamie started to get affronted that the streetcars kept leaving without him, and so she brought him back home.

He ate a tremendous amount today, and I worry that we've been starving him. He inhaled a bowl of cereal and a good amount of tofu and zucchini at his Tai Tai's around 5:30, and then ate another full meal at Tom and Michelle's. He is still working hard to become the official Death of Asparagus, and also ate a piece of watermelon to his father's disgust (Jamie has not inherited his father's hatred of the melon/gourd family). He is now sleeping peacefully beside me, and I hope that when he wakes, he will have a new eyetooth. It'll be strange for him to have an eyetooth but no front uppers: I'm looking forward to calling him "Fang."

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

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