Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 0 No. 47

2004-09-28 22:45 (John) Picked up Daniel after school, and as soon as we turned the corner into the schoolyard, Jamie started going "Da! Da!" Then when I started chanting "Daniel" antiphonically, he extended it to "Da[partial glottal stop]l! Da'l!", which is only the second two-syllable word he's uttered, after "Uh-oh!" (I've dropped something). Daniel was quite pleased.

Today's worry. His left cheek seems puffed up, and we can't think of why. He probably is working on a tooth there, but that doesn't seem a good enough reason. No fever, not hot to the touch, no apparent discomfort, no food chipmunked in the cheek (which is what it looked like at first). Postscript: I've just gone back over the last few months of photos (I knew we were taking them for a reason), and it turns out that his left cheek has been chubbier than his right cheek for a long time, so we're going to stop worrying.

The light obsession is continuing. At the park, he was more interested in pointing out all the lights than eating or playing, and it was hard work persuading him that I couldn't turn the park lights on and off.

2004-09-29 22:45 (John) Things may get a little terse the next few days, as the annual Toronto Scrabble Players Tournament takes place this weekend.

Jamie's been enjoying sitting lately. Last night, he grabbed a book and plonked himself down in my lap for the first time ever. Tonight at the club, he happily sat on the floor and examined all of our baggage. I think it's because he's so confident in his mobility now that he no longer feels trapped when sitting.

He's been in a generally good but really fragile mood today. Kristen thinks it's because he's cutting another (lower left) tooth, which will make #7. I have no alternate theory to propose, and he certainly has been chewing on things even more than usual. He's also taken to carrying his clip-on pacifier in one hand, and his favorite blanket (the one with the ladybugs) in the other, doing a pretty good Linus imitation.

(Kristen) Signs of teething: copious amounts of drool, at least one bite (no blood) while nursing per tooth (two nips this time), and the new twist, biting my clothes. He chews on his chewy man, his pacifier, and other more usual items, but now he wants to bite my jeans and my shirts. Sometimes he gets a little bit of me too, and a lecture about biting which he ignores in his wide-eyed, innocent fashion. (darn, babies are good at that) I thought that he was going to tear a hole in my sweater tonight, as he tore at it with all the gusto of a wolf on a caribou.

I'm enjoying the new lap-sitting Jamie. He sits on my lap while we listen to music, read books, and play games. Tonight, he sat beside me, with a few trips around the couch, for almost 40 minutes. We talked about life in general, had some milk and juice, and laughed a lot. He's getting to be really good company.

2004-09-30 24:09 (Kristen) Jamie gets bolder in his solo flights. Today, we walked over to Tom and Michelle's together, and it was a remarkably quick trip for little legs. He stopped to touch his favourite poles and rattle a little cast-iron fence, but he just had to touch them rather than visit. Once initial contact was made, he was content to roam on. By the time we got to our destination, he climbed up the stairs to the house by holding onto the railing with one hand and my hand with the other. He would kneel on the upper step, climb to his feet, and tackle the next one. I was impressed. He is much more confidentr about walking across a room to get to me than he was even yesterday.

(John) Kristen had to help out at Bakka today, and I had to get ready for the tournament tomorrow. Thank you, Daniel, Tami, Ken and Tom for spending so much time looking after Jamie for us today.

2004-10-01 22:30 (John) I have had very little sleep, and don't imagine I will for a few days, but the high point of my day was when Jamie and Kristen came to visit me at the first day of the Toronto Scrabble Tournament. Lots of new players from out of town to marvel at how cute and clever and agile he is.

2004-10-02 23:05 (Kristen) Jamie's walking continues to improve. He is remarkably cautious, however, about how far he walks without a person or object to hang on to. A number of people have said to me "So-and-so walked 2 steps one day, 10 the next, and then they were off running." Jamie can walk across a room, and will sometimes, but prefers distances of five or so steps. He will somtimes resort to his funny little crawl if he isn't sure of the distance. Within his five-step limit, however, he is very secure and will move quite quickly and confidently.

We took the subway up to the Scrabble tournament again today, and managed to get a seat at the front of the train. However, he needed a diaper change somewhere around Eglinton, and we can now the subway as yet another place that Jamie has been changed. He likes riding the bus from Sheppard to Bathurst, and was very well behaved at the tournament. John took him and spent some time with him doing something (?) while I talked with friends. Then we took the bus back down Bathurst, which got some pointing and "oohs" out of him, and bought two warm little shirts for winter at a quality used clothing store for kids. We had lunch (and coffee for me) at a lovely cafe called The Urban Annex, and met Christine Miller there. We walked Christine home, saw Andy Beaton, and then headed back out.

Jamie had been sleeping when we left the tournament, but the wind outside the community centre was strong and woke him up after he had only been asleep for 20 minutes. He finally dropped off again around 5:30, which let me do some book shopping at The Beguiling, a great book and comic book store. Then we did some groceries, headed home, and had dinner with Lisa Kessler, Lisa Deift, and a visiting, Scrabbling Kate Doe. Jamie was pretty exhausted, and it was no trouble at all getting him to sleep.

(John) At Silk Road, Jamie executed the difficult Double Nose Grab on Lisa Deift and myself.

2004-10-03 23:30 (John) The funniest part of my dad at the tournament was when Jamie started swaying his head from side to side and singing along with the inkjet printer, confirming the intrinsic musicality of the device as was observed a few years ago by a New York Scrabble player who mistook its sound for that of an invisible trombone. Jamie still sometimes does the pigeon bob, but mainly to make the stroller go faster. The head swaying he does whenever he likes the music he's listening to, whether that's playing on a CD or on his private soundtrack.

2004-10-04 23:18 (Kristen) Today was "Be Thankful for Friends and Family Day." Jamie woke up last night for the second night in a row, crying and wide awake. This necessitated my getting up, turning on the light, finding the children's Tylenol that I had cleverly left beside the bed, applying dosage, and then rocking and walking my poor little son back to sleep. He is still biting me (mostly in a playful way, which I'm not encouraging), and drooling. I have a small theory that it may be gas, but it shouldn't have this middle-of-the-night crying effect on him. Teeth are the number one suspect.

This means, however, that even after he settles back down, I don't sleep very well. Jamie was up around 8:00 this morning, and I was the Zombie Mother. We went out on a play date with Oscar Orchard and his mother Claire around 10:30, and Jamie happily played at the park and ate sand. He was furtive about it...he seemed to know that I wouldn't like it...but the messy, tell-tale signs of wet sand on his hands gave him away. That and the sand moustache. He fell asleep on the way to Browning for lunch, which had me holding my head in my hands, as I saw my own nap time sleeping away.

This is where I am thankful for friends and family. I fell asleep after lunch on Tom and Michelle's couch, and woke up almost two hours later to find Tami playing with Jamie. He had been fed, changed, and played with after he had woken up while I was asleep. Gary and Ayami had stayed to play with him before going to do their errands for the day. Later, John took Jamie to see his mom while I got some much-needed alone time, and Gary and Ayami again took Jamie while I had a tension headache in the evening and played with him in the basement. I am a little less tired, a little more human, and so glad for the support network that we have around us.

(John) Jamie was a little tired today, too. He fell asleep listening to Japanese lullabies on CD at my mom's, in the middle of his late-afternoon snack. When his head flopped back and hit the chair, it startled him awake, so I rushed him into his stroller and he was asleep again by the end of the block. When I got home, I attached the boot to the stroller so that Jamie could sleep cozily in the windy 8°C coolth, with Kristen grumbling all the way about a lack of respect for Icelandic blood.

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

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