Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 0 No. 46

2004-09-21 23:49 (Kristen) Jamie's sleeping habits continue to change, and I think that he is starting to work his way down to one nap a day. He woke up around 8:30, napped for close to two hours at noon, and then did not sleep again until he went to bed at 10:00. I didn't nap at all after 18 months, and my mother is laughing in Ottawa as she contemplates revenge in all its sweetness. Thanks, Mom.

We visited Bakka, and Jamie had fun running all over the store. He wanted to look at the books; ok, he wanted to pull them off the shelves and onto the floor; but we distracted him with a cookie and juice. Jamie enjoys riding the subway and buses, and John was worried that he wanted to ride the buses again earlier this evening. However, he proved distractable.

This is not always a given: he is getting more and more pig-headed about what he wants to do, and what he doesn't want to do. If I don't pick up on what he wants to do, or I say "let's do something else," he gets downright annoyed with me. He also needs more exercise than he is getting, and I think that I'll let him walk/run up and down the street a few times a day to work some of those ya-yas off. Or not...

I bought him some clothes yesterday, and they were for an 18-month old: roll up the cuffs, and he's fine. My little boy is getting big.

2004-09-22 24:00 (Kristen) Jamie is working hard on walking and eating like the rest of us. John told me that he was trying to show Jamie a safer way of going down stairs, since he currently holds onto a convenient adult hand and steps blithely into space. He was on his hands and knees, going down the stairs, and trying to get Jamie to do the same. Jamie was, reportedly, livid, and made John go up to the landing and go down the right way with him, like a grown-up. He is also learning to use a spoon on his own. He holds the spoon, I take his hand and use it to spoon something sticky (this does not work with non-sticky items, like blueberries) on the spoon, and he then puts it into his mouth unassisted. He thinks that this is an excellent state of affairs.

He also wants to be able to push the stroller, rather than ride in it. This lead to tears today, as we were in the Jackman School schoolyard and he fell. At first heartbeat, I thought that he was crying because he was indignant until I picked him up and saw the blood in his mouth. There was quite a bit of it, and he was obviously in pain. I cleaned up the worst of it, rushed him into the school office for some ice, and examined his mouth again. Sure enough, his sharp little bottom teeth had cut through the little piece of skin that keeps your upper lip tied to your gums. With visions of stitches and oral surgery, I called John, who told me to see Dr. Kennedy rather than the children's emergency walk-in clinic on the Danforth, and that he'd meet me there. I called the doctor's office, and said that I'd be there in five minutes. The doctor was about to leave, but stayed there for us. She said that he was fine, that the mouth would heal very quickly, and that his teeth were also fine. Jamie, by this time, was all smiles and happiness. His mom took a little time to let the adrenaline ease off. We're so glad that we live so close to our family doctor, and that she's so kind as to see us on such incredibly short notice.

(John) I weighed Jamie while we were at the doctor's office. He enjoyed the process thoroughly, as he's been very much into things like armchairs, ever since he sat in his rocking chair the other day. So he sat up on the scale, grabbed the sides and rocked forward and back as fast as he could. I think he weighs 21 lbs. 2 oz.

2004-09-23 22:59 (Kristen) We slept in today, but Jamie still ended up having two good naps today. Why? Because we ran his little legs off. I took him for a walk to the corner and back first thing this morning, and then we let him walk from the schoolyard down Chester Avenue until he got tired. This hasn't happened before, so we must be doing something right.

All that walking today must have really taken, because he was cruising by running his hand along furniture and walls in the evening, not hand over hand the way he has done in the past. Then, he started walking between me and John, and took five steps at one point unassisted. He runs, rather than walks, so he's playing against time with gravity, but he is surprisingly solid. He was so incredibly proud of himself, and was laughing and laughing away with utter glee. His mom and dad were pretty thrilled too.

He believes, firmly, that shelves should be empty and that boxes should be too. He is very studious as he pulls all the DVDs and CDs off their shelves, and I'm glad that the books are tightly packed onto their shelves, or they'd be all over the floor as well. He enjoys being sung to, and songs with hand gestures are even better than songs without hand gestures. His mouth is healing, although he still can't comfortably bite things into small pieces. Another few days, I hope, and he'll be chewing on cookies with abandon once more.

(John) Over the past week, it's become clearer and clearer that whenever we talk about Daniel, Jamie says "Da!". I think he says it with a flatter 'a' (like in 'fat', not like in 'father') than when he says "Dadadada" upon seeing me, but it's hard to say because (sigh) he hasn't been saying "Dadadada" for a few days. On the other hand, he's been greeting me with his multipurpose "Ooh!" (general meaning: "I have seen something that I like"), which I choose to interpret in this case as the equivalent of the manly Japanese greeting "Ossu!".

2004-09-24 15:00 (John) I keep forgetting to mention this, but for the past week or so, Jamie has been imitating the exhaust fan in our bathroom in a curious way. We turn it on to expel humidity when he's bathing, and this makes him a voiced pharyngeal fricative (a favourite of his) but nasalized (with air coming out of both his mouth and his nose).

Something else he's working on is the Edo-era nursery game "kaiguri kaiguri totto no me" (easier to Google in hiragana), which I imagine has been played on my mom's side of the family for quite a few generations. He's at the stage where he finds it hilariously funny (which it is, especially when four adults at the dinner table do it in synchrony), is starting to try the hand motions himself, and likes it when people help him with it (which is unusual, because he's on the whole pretty disdainful about help).

Today, his growing obsession with lights (and pretty much anything else that's on the ceiling) continued and made us do the Tour of the Ground Floor Light Switches. Given that electricity was added to this house after it was built, we have quite the motley collection of switches, which should keep him amused for some time.

At my parents' house, Jamie listened to k.d.lang's latest album, and agreed with my mom that her cover of Jane Siberry's The Valley is brilliant.

I noticed while taking today's pictures that Jamie is definitely on the small side to be walking so confidently. He's crouching down in the photos, but just before I took them, he was walking tall under the tables, and every other toddler I've ever seen at the restaurant was big enough to bang his head on the edge.

2004-09-25 24:16 (Kristen) We all went to the St. Lawrence Market today for the first time in months. This was after a happy chance encounter with Auntie Millie and Jeff outside John's parents' place. Jamie fell asleep at the market, and so I walked him over to the nearby Loblaws where he woke up in the toiletries aisle. It was the only nap that he had today: I finally took him out for a walk after 8:20, and he fell asleep in the carriage as we walked through the cool, quiet night together.

He walked ten steps on his own twice tonight at Tom and Michelle's. John watched him walk over to the toy box from a nearby chair, stopping in the middle of his trek to think about what he was doing and to focus his energy. He also forgot himself and dashed over to me from the other side of the room, falling about three-quarters of the way when he tripped on a toy. If the toy hadn't been there, I think that he would have made it. Wow.

(John) At Loblaws, Jamie suddenly noticed for the first time the pacifier clipped onto his diaper bag. We hadn't offered it to him in ages, but boy was he ready for it today. He instantly grasped its superior design, allowing to walk and chew on a nipple at the same time. It made for a much quieter afternoon running errands than I had dreamed.

2004-09-26 22:37 (Kristen) After falling asleep so early last night, I wasn't surprised when he woke up, happy and chatty, around 8:30 A.M. We had breakfast, and second breakfast, together as John was sleeping in after having a rare night out last night. We decided to go to Word on the Street, a big open-air book fair on Queen's Park, around 11:30. Next time, I will bring the backpack and not the stroller, because I was utterly unable to get through the crush around the different tables. Still, we listened to one of the Bare Naked Ladies sing "Brian Wilson" and then a black choir sing African songs while we sat and ate snacks on the lawn of Queen's Park Circle, and that was nice.

We went home, I got a coffee and Jamie walked and talked to dogs. We went to Jackman School, where he filled the cuffs of his pants with dirt and mulch, met with John, and went to his parents' house. Jamie napped between 5:30 and 6:30, and still went to sleep at his usual time: I guess that we ran his legs off again. It's a good system, and I hope that it keeps working!

2004-09-27 22:15 (John) Ken and Tami are back from their car trip to Victoria, so we had lunch at Michelle's house today. Then I took Jamie to the university, and he obligingly fell asleep on the way to the subway and didn't wake up until I was ready to come back home again. He's pretty familiar with the route now, but continued his obsession with overhead lights, possibly heading into what my parents called my "den!" phase, when I could not pass a light without pointing it out in Japanese.

Jamie appears to be working on a new lower tooth. I'm not sure which one it is, but Kristen and Michelle apparently do. His left cheek is a bit swollen too, and I'm hoping its related, as I can't think of any other good reason for it to look that way.

We had tea and greengages with Alison at Timothy's, then spent forty minutes waiting for Daniel in the schoolyard. Jamie's confidence in walking is growing by metaphorical leaps and bounds and actual increasingly long free walks followed by lunges into our arms. It's hard to believe, but last week he was still clinging to the furniture for dear life, and this week he's happily (if very deliberately and with intense concentration) walking a dozen steps to cross a room.

The deliberation is something we're getting used to now too. He will form a Plan, and woe betide anyone who gets in the way of its Implementation.

Oh, my dad has a listen to Jamie's fan impressions, and as far as he can tell, it's dorsovelar, not pharyngeal.

(Kristen) Every morning after breakfast, I take Jamie for a walk to Broadview. Sometimes we go all the way over to Browning, and sometimes we just watch the buses. Today, he had to stop and investigate every pole that he came across: telephone poles, lighting poles, and street sign poles. He gets very very annoyed with me if I try to distract him from the poles, and he doesn't like it when I pull him out of people's gardens either.

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

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