Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 0 No. 75

2005-04-12 23:34 (Kristen) Jamie woke up and played with Mio all morning, with only one visit to me while I finished off a project. He usually comes and nurses with me at least once, but not today. I was surprised and pleased. We're getting him to drink from a cup, rather than from me, when he's thirsty, and it may be working. [John: he's been working intensively the last few days on drinking/eating while walking around, which I think is his way of saving time.]

It was a pretty normal day for the most part: lunch at Browning, a walk with Ken, and then a walk to the Second Cup to see John [John: I biked there to get my blood flowing, then used their free wireless access to work online], charm the patrons, and have a bite of key lime tart. I took Jamie home and played with him for about an hour until John came home, and then he took Jamie outside to do garden chores. Jamie is at an age when we can do some chores outside with him and he'll be happy doing his own thing while we do. The outdoors have been a godsend: the lovely weather has meant that Jamie can get his daily dose of exercise in a way that makes him happy and requires not much energy on our parts, and we get some gardening done. The garden did not look this good this time last year.

In fact, his coordination has improved considerably since he started going outside for a few hours a day. He is much steadier, and more confident in his ability to move around and manipulate things (usually long objects, like rakes, shovels, and swiffers). John says that he and Jamie spent a good deal of time in the alley with a rake, while Jamie vocalized strenuously about the right and wrong ways to hold a rake, and while moving rocks with it was all right, what were those leaves doing on his rake? He is getting similar definite ideas about how things have to be with swiffers and brooms. John says that he doesn't know where he gets that from (hahahahaha says the wife).

They also spent time in the garden, discussing what is edible and what is not. The negi (green onions) that are sprouting all over the place are "ummamma," while daffodils (to which Jamie pointed hopefully) are "bleah." He and John enjoyed eating some fresh spring negi from the garden, and sitting in the sun on the back porch.

Mio and her boyfriend Taka came to dinner tonight, and Jamie was very pleased to see her. We all had a good time, came home a little late, and Jamie was in bed a little later than usual. He's stirring now, and I have to go. [John: no you don't, I sang him back to sleep with the Mockingbird Song.]

2005-04-13 23:46 (Kristen) We were up by 8:30 this morning, but could have easily slept longer. Jamie wasn't all that interested in breakfast when Mio arrived, but she managed to get him to eventually eat most of it. They played for most of the morning, watching The Cat Returns (a Studio Ghibli movie), watching the construction vehicles across the street, and playing outside. He really likes the Fisher-Price trike that my mother got him for Christams, Mio says.

It being Wednesday, Mio took Jamie out for an hour for his walk, while I whipped over to the library. He didn't fall asleep until close to 2:00, and slept until 4:30. That gave me a quiet afternoon. He woke up in time to go to John's parents' place for dinner before we headed off to the club.

He enjoyed the mapo* tofu, but loved the edamame. Those are soybeans in the pod, steamed, and often salted. John's dad kept Jamie endlessly amused by popping the edamame out of their skins. Jamie thought this was hilarious, and was willing to eat as many edamame as were given to him. That's a good deal of soy beans. He read his book in the car on the way to the club, chattering away about diggers (I presume: it wasn't that clear) and other important matters as he read. John ran his legs off while I played a game of Scrabble, and then I did more or less the same as John did while John took care of club matters. He fell asleep in the car on the way home, and John put him to bed this time. John is trying to get Jamie to fall asleep using stimuli other than nursing. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

2005-04-14 23:10 (Kristen) Jamie was woken up this morning, for the second morning in a row, by a truck backing up outside the house at the construction site across the street. The sound of a truck going "beeeep....beeep...beeeep" as it backs us is irresistable somehow, like the sound of a can opener for a cat. Ken said that the same sound woke Jamie up this afternoon on his walk.

Jamie spent the morning watching trucks and playing outside, while I ran downtown for an errand or two. John took over and brought Jamie to Browning, where I met them for lunch. Jamie slept for an hour and a half, and was cheery when he came in from his walk. I took him upstairs, and John (while giving him a hug) said "My son smells of the sun." He ran around the house for a while, had a snack, and headed out again to Withrow Park with John for an hour. John said that Jamie had fun with a yellow bucket that he found, and treated it in the same way he does the little stacking cups that he has in the bath. He fills the cup up, and dumps it down his front. John did, for the record, an excellent job in getting the sand off his son before he came home.

It was Thursday, and dinner at Browning. Jamie had fun playing with Daniel and Ross, and spent time on the computer with me and with Tom. I found a Teletubby site at www.pbskids.org (or is it .com?), which he found fascinating. It made a good break from Elmo. He was tired when we came home, and ready for the bathtime ritual.

(John) One of Jamie's more charming habits is that when he is tired, he will look around for something soft, spread it out very delicately, and then rest his head on it. He did this in the tub tonight with a washcloth on the edge of the tub, once he grew tired of drinking bathwater.

2005-04-15 23:26 (Kristen) We've been trying to get Jamie to sleep on his own a little more assiduously, and it has its pluses and minuses. (We have him set up on a mattress beside our bed).I've noticed that Jamie will sleep for an average of two hours on his own before he starts looking around for me in his sleep. This is regardless of whether or not I'm actually there: he needs to be beside me, sharing my warmth. I can't just put my hand on his back or hold his hand. He isn't awake when he does this, but becomes hysterical in a fugue state that can only be assuaged by nursing. John is starting to take over soothing duty by singing to him when he wakes up first at night, which is usually when we are still awake. He can usually get Jamie back to sleep, although I am still called upon occasionally. Jamie expects, even when he is asleep, that he can nurse for comfort and is upset if he is denied it in any way. If John soothes him, then it's just Dad, and he doesn't nurse with Dad so there is no thwarted expectation. We'll see how this goes. He only nursed twice today, which is an unusually scant amount, even though I think his teeth are bothering him.

He had a usual Jamie day: play with Mio in the morning, walk with Ken after a large lunch at Browning, and then play with Mom for a couple of hours before playing with Dad for an hour or two before dinner. John took him to the kindergarten playground at Jackman School, where Jamie had a good time exploring the parameters of what sand is and is not expected to do. Sand in Toronto, for example, is not like Puerto Morelos sand: sand in Puerto Morelos tastes good. Sand in Toronto tastes 'bleah.' Sand should be brushed off the wooden beams surrounding the sand box. Sand should be poured over oneself repeatedly. John was saying that Jamie has definite ideas of how things should be done, and doesn't have much of a sense of humour about variations from his "plan." For example, John was given a stern talking-to after he went down the slide on Jamie's right, instead of on his left. When John pretended to go down on the wrong side, Jamie didn't yell at him, but displayed a remarkable lack of humour. I laughed and laughed when I heard this, since Jamie may have inherited this from another person in our small, three-person family who isn't me.

We went out for dinner at Le Commensal, a vegetarian restaurant in Toronto, with a group of Scrabblers with whom we play occasionally on Friday nights. Jamie brightened up when we went inside, as it is a large buffet, and he knew what it was for. He enjoyed the food, but needed to run around a good deal after the meal, despite the temptations of a small backhoe and some books (including the new book that I bought him today on Things That Go.) He was generally manic all night, which was a sign that he was pretty tired. We went to Geoff's after dinner with a group of people to play Scrabble, and Jamie enjoyed chasing the cat and playing with Geoff's pinball machine. He fell asleep in the car on the way home, as we thought that he might, and has only stirred once. John performed his Dad Magic, and he still sleeps like the sweet baby he is.

2005-04-16 20:30 (John) Kristen got up early with Jamie and let me sleep in until it was time to go the St. Lawrence Market. We picked up Tai-Tai and dropped Kristen off at the library to do some work, then went to do our shopping. Jamie worked his way through the food my mom had packed, a chicken samosa, and a large number of other snacks, ran wild through the south building, and finally fell asleep on the ride to Loblaws. With my mom there, I was able to whiz through the supermarket in record time, and Jamie stayed asleep for almost two hours.

He woke up because he was hot and overdressed for the warmest day so far (18° C), nursed, and then went out to play for a little bit. He visited with Alexandria, played with her collection of bouncy balls and her slide, and supervised my propagation of black raspberry canes. He looked at that point like he could use a rest, so Kristen packed him into the stroller and Jamie and I set out for a walk.

We made it as far as Jackman school when Jamie had had enough of resting, and I watched for an hour as Jamie ran the gamut of things that could safely be done with playground wood mulch. I was somewhat relieved when Tai-Tai called to invite us over for a late-afternoon snack of salmon steak, soba and fried vegetables. We met up again with Mom at Daniel's house, where we're waiting now for dinner to begin.

2005-04-16 22:00 (John) While waiting our turn in the bath (Kristen will be washing Jamie's hair tonight, as it has a lot of wood mulch in it), Jamie pointed at the letter M on the keyboard and said "mmm", the letter D and pointed at me (Dad), the letter A and said "A". He's quite clever.

2005-04-17 22:00 (John) Jamie spent the morning at home eating and playing, with a brief excursion to Pearls with Kristen to go fetch some fresh oregano I needed for making more huachinango tikinchik. (Yay, I can now just Google for those words to find my recipe.)

Early in the afternoon, we drove to Home Depot to pick up a few supplies, and since Jamie fell asleep on the way there, Kristen stayed in the car while I shopped. I was gone for less than half an hour, the outdoor temperature was less than 20°C, and half the car windows were open, but Jamie was flushed and overheated when I returned. Despite our best efforts to cool him down, he woke up as we arrived at Andy and Christine's for an afternoon of Boggle and Illuminati New World Order (with Jill and Jen, and Alicia's parents Anneli and Tim).

As a result, he was tired for the rest of the day, and a bit of a handful. Fortunately, the moon is visible during the day right now, and Andy and Christine have a big Totoro poster in their hallway, so there were plenty of distractions.

We had dinner at Pearls, where I cooked the fish, my mom cooked everything else, and Jamie ate well, except for a brief interlude when he insisted that we all sing the Gira-Gira song, which was fine except when we stopped after the fourth repetition, and then Jamie needed to be taken for a little walk around the block to calm down.

Despite his fatigue, Jamie continues to be working very hard on his language skills, practicing the names of everything that he can come anywhere close to. "Ghee" for "key", "moo" for "moon", "birr" for "bird", "ba" for "ball", "bo" for "boat", etc. He's settled into his own made-up "nani" as a demonstrative imperative pronoun ("Do what I want you to do with that thing that I'm pointing at"), and correctly uses "glee" for "please": "Ma glee? Gleee? Gleeeeee? Gleeeeeeeee?" for "Food please? Pleease? Pleeeeease? Pleeeeeeease?".

2005-04-18 23:00 (John) Jamie is a remarkable mixture of stubborn and reasonable. I don't believe there's a minute of his day where he doesn't know what he wants to be doing, and what he wants to do next. If he knows the word for what he wants to do, he'll use it; if not, he's quite handy with the aforementioned demonstrative imperatives. Most of the time, I go along with him (it's easier that way), but sometimes I have to explain to him why my plan might be more suitable, and he (most of the time) will listen to reason.

In the morning, he wanted to drag me off cat-hunting in neighbours' backyards, but I persuaded him that watering our own backyard would be more fun (the hose is still a novelty). When we needed to stop doing that and go to Daniel's for lunch, he clearly expressed a preference for continuing to water, but was willing to go along with everyone for food.

Late in the afternoon, he wanted quite strongly to play at the daycare across from the Second Cup, where a large number of kids were thoroughly enjoying the play structures. But when I said "Let's take the stroller to the park instead" he swivelled on his heels and dragged me back to the stroller, imperiously pointing the way to Withrow Park. I was surprised, as I didn't know that (a) he knew the word "park", and (b) he had a clear idea how to get to Withrow Park, which is a crooked ten blocks away from our house.

As the day wore on and he got more tired, his wants got weirder and somewhat more intense, but he remained in enough control that we were able to persuade him gently with nary a meltdown. But if it had been up to him, we would still have been sitting on the deck nibbling on green onions from the garden while admiring the moon.

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

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