Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 0 No. 86

2005-06-28 23:50 (John) K will fill in the details, but here are the photos I took of Daniel's Grade 6 graduation. When I first started taking Daniel to school eight years ago, for Junior Kindergarten, he seemed as small as Jamie does (and was definitely not as enthusiastic about the idea of school), while the Grade 6 students seemed adult by comparison. When Daniel's brother Ross has his Grade 6 graduation, Jamie should be as old as Ross is now. And so it goes.

Yesterday, Jamie helped plant peas in the garden. He was quite enthusiastic about it, and as a result we may have more peas than we need. Put the pea on the ground, push it in with your finger. "Zzzt!" Repeat. When he finished all the peas, Kristen let him plant nasturtiums, which kept him busy while we transplanted and weeded.

This morning, I was knocking mortar off a brick preparing it for use as a stepping stone in my vegetable garden, when I whacked my middle finger between two bricks instead. I'm glad Jamie wasn't around for that, and am redoubling my efforts to use up my collection of reclaimed bricks to prevent him from repeating my error.

At my mom's suggestion, I've added frozen blueberries to the breakfast raisin bran that I share with Jamie. He was, needless to say, delighted with them, and his hands and face ended up quite purple.

Kristen had a business meeting in the afternoon, so Tami played trains with Jamie for two hours after his nap. Not surprisingly, he didn't once ask where Mom was, even when I told him she was at the front door. He did ask for me once, but that was just to fix a locomotive that had gotten tangled on a thread.

(Kristen) When we went to Daniel's graduation ceremony, which was held outside at Jackman School, Jamie was initially interested. Then, when he saw Gary, he made Gary take him over to his favourite playground nearby, and that was that. He did consent to come back for cake and juice, however, and liked the icing the most. Both John and I disliked icing when we were kids, so we find this odd. In deference to the hot day, Jamie was running around in shorts with no shirt on. Mrs. Cheng, Daniel's teacher, greeted Jamie by name, and talked with me briefly. At one point, she laughed and commented on all the well-dressed kids being in wonderful counterpoint to a half-naked baby. Jamie dragged us over to the new slides after cake,where we played with Michelle and Ross until it was time to come home and go to bed.

2005-06-29 22:18 (Kristen) A large developmental editing project has descended upon me, and I'm glad for the four millionth time that Mio is helping us so well with Jamie. However, I am questioning the wisdom of working in the living room, since his chortling and chatting about densha, and the sound of the tv as he watches Treehouse are more than a little distracting. We will rethink this.

Jamie slept in until 9:15, when John and I gently woke hiim up to join Mio and start his day. They played together until lunchtime, when Jamie had a small lunch after a late breakfast. It was hot enough that I think he just wasn't very hungry today, which was fine. He seems to know his body well enough still that I trust him. He is equally happy eating protein, vegetables, tofu, or fruit, and will have a sweet followed by a veggie without blinking. He isn't discriminating, in the best of ways. We saw Daniel and Ross into school on the last school day of the year, and then I walked with John to the Second Cup. Jamie flirted with a little girl, and said "bye bye baby" to her when we left. I took him on the nature trail down to the library (at the bottom rather than the top of Riverdale Park), and he finally fell asleep as we were going back up onto Broadview from the bottom of the park. I took him into the very lovely air-conditioned library for about half an hour, when he started to stir. I rushed him outside, and I think that he would have stayed asleep if the streetcar hadn't gone by exactly when it did. He consented, despite some protest, to stay in his stroller until we got home, when he had some litchee (which he can say quite well) and grapes as a snack.

John went to pick up Ross and Daniel for their traditional end-of-school meal at the Coffee Mill in Yorkville. Jamie and I went too, and Jamie enjoyed eating bits of everyone else's meal and insisting on eating the whipped cream off of Daniel's drink. He spent most of his time running around the area outside the Coffee Mill, and going up and down the stairs and elevator. He was pretty wired, but enjoyed himself. He also liked moving his head to Alice Cooper, as we introduced Daniel and Ross to the song "School's Out" in the car. We spent the bulk of the evening playing with Ross in the basement of Browning, as Jamie went up and down his slide repeatedly. He'll go down by himself (with me spotting), and uses his feet to slow himself down if he thinks he's going too fast. Then we went home, he played with Gary and Ayami while I got the bath ready, and then invaded Kayoko's room for a minute to play with her keys. Finally, he was in bed, and despite protestations of non-sleepiness, fell asleep very quickly before 10:00.

I've been trying to teach Jamie the sign for "Thank you," with some success. I was watching him do it today, and was thinking that he's doing very well in keeping it distinct from the action of blowing a kiss, which is a very similar action. The main difference between the gestures is that he makes a smacking sound with his lips when he blows a kiss, and doesn't when he's saying thank you. I have had to ask him to make the 'thank you' gesture, trying to teach hiim the sorts of situation where he should use it. Tonight, when he was nursing, he stopped for a moment, smiled at me, and made the "thank you" sign.

Words fail me at describing what a great kid I have.

2005-06-30 22:09 (Kristen) John told me today that Jamie thanked him for changing his diaper this morning. Yay! It was otherwise a pretty normal day, full of normal things. Jamie and Mio played in the morning, and we went to Browning for lunch. Ken took Jamie for a walk, and he slept until a little before 3:00. John had some errands to run, so Jamie and I went with him. Jamie was a little crusty by this point of the day, however, and was having difficulty with anything that deviated from his plan. Carrot cake seemed to help a bit, as did some of my iced chai latte, but it felt like more of a struggle than usual to get from A to B.

I left John and Jamie with John's mom while I ran an errand, and met them at home. [John: Jamie enjoyed munching on fuki and dried apples, often in bizarre combination] Jamie and I walked Hisae to the corner in his wagon, and then we came back home in time to go to Browning for dinner, it being Thursday. Jamie played with Ross and Gary, and we came back home where Gary played a little more with Jamie while I started organizing myself for this weekend. John will be in Albany NY for a Scrabble tournament this weekend, while Jamie and I stay home and hold the fort. We won't see John until Monday night, so it's a mummy/Jamie weekend. Lots of thrills and adventures to come, and (I hope) at least one trip to the wading pool.

(John) Much of Jamie's irritation was likely from the large number of large mosquito bites running along his right arm from elbow to shoulder. We have no idea where he got bitten - maybe there was a mosquito in the house last night (unlikely), or in the alley where he was playing with Mio in the morning (also unlikely)?

2005-07-01 22:18 (Kristen) John left early today for Albany, and I was very grateful to Mio for agreeing to stay the whole day while I worked on my big project. She left around the same time as Gary was taking Ayami to work, and so Jamie grabbed Gary and made him take him to the park. No flies on my son, no sir.

I made homemade macaroni and cheese for dinner, but it wasn't as good as my mom's: Mom, send me your recipe! It's all nice and creamy, and Jamie likes cheese! Jamie was very kind, however, and ate a good amount of it, and some vegetables. We played with trains, watched a little television after dinner, and played with John's mom, who brought Jamie some plantain and guavas. Jamie only slept for an hour on his walk with Mio (and spent an hour playing in the park afterwards), so he was very hyper, but really rather tired. He had his bath with me, and then he fell asleep pretty quickly after we discussed his pink hippo and his lion for a few minutes. He is wondering where John is, but I've told him that papa is on a plane, and will be back in a few days. He seems to understand.

So, it was a pretty calm Canada Day. I hope that Jamie and I can have more fun together tomorrow.

2005-07-02 22:58 (Kristen) Jamie and I woke up together around 9:00, and spent most of the day in synch. We had breakfast, watched some of the Live 8 concert together, had lunch, and went out for a short walk. We walked Gary and Ayami to the subway, and Jamie fell asleep soon after. I went back home to meet John's parents, who did groceries for us, and Jamie woke up when they arried. I managed to get him to go back to sleep, and he ended up napping for about an hour and a half.

I have to say that watching the Live 8 concert made me want to hug my son more. The video that they have made, with an actor or musician snapping their fingers very three seconds to represent a child dying of poverty-related causes, was very powerful. I am reminded constantly of how lucky I feel to live in this century, and I now have to refine that feeling of extreme fortune to mean living in this country, with my son and family.

When Jamie woke up, we headed out to the park for some much-needed exercise and running around. Jamie enjoyed going down slides and running on play structures, but was quite nervous about other children going up behind us. He was unusually nervous today, and he never likes sounds that he can't see the course of anyway. However, it didn't stop him from having a good time. After a while, I asked him if we could go, and he decided that we could walk over to Daniel's. We had chicken katsu, and Jamie went to town on the cucumbers, lettuce, and broccoli. My son eats broccoli, and asks for more. I'm a happy mom. We went home, had a bath, and went to sleep by 10:00 or so.

Two things: first, he slept almost through the night last night, and didn't wake up after I put him to sleep until somewhere around 4:00 AM. Second, I caught him in the living room, sitting on the couch, taking paperbacks off the bookshelf and leafing through them quietly and with great concentration. I remember when I was 3, picking books off my parents' shelves, and trying to figure out what they said. I wonder if he's thinking the same sort of thoughts, and is going to be inspired in the same was as I was.

2005-07-03 22:42 (Kristen) We woke up again around 9:10, and crawled out of bed like the slugs that we are. We'll have to get up early tomorrow morning to get back into the swing of our weekday routine, where I should have Jamie fed and dressed by the time Mio arrives. We don't achieve that very often, but it's a goal.

For breakfast, Jamie had a bowl of frozen wild blueberries and a good portion of my ochazuke*, which is a Japanese rice dish with salmon, umeboshi* (Japanese pickled plum), nori* (seaweed), soy sauce, over which you pour hot green tea. Not surprisingly, he likes it a lot and will have me pick out bits of salmon and feed them to him, along with rice and the pickeld plum. Oh, and the seaweed too. But I was happy that I fed him the blueberries while he was only wearing a diaper, because he was covered from head to toe in blueberry smears. I still haven't gotten all the purple off his hands. He was a complete Blueberry Boy. We didn't rush breakfast, because we didn't have anywhere to go, and it was a fun meal.

I decided to take him to Withrow Park to check out the wading pool. The weather was fabulous, the water ice cold, and Jamie unsure if he liked the wading pool much. I had had a hunch that he wouldn't like the pool much if he wasn't wearing shoes, and sure enough, he was a little more interested in the pool if he wore his teeva*-style sandals. He didn't go any further than ankle deep, but it's a start. We spent the rest of our time playing on the big play structure, and going up stairs and down slides. As a treat, I took him to see Ayami at Mariko, the restaurant that she works at on the Danforth. Jamie and I shared lunch, and so he ate teriyaki salmon, rice, some California roll, tofu and miso shiru*, salad, and even shared some of his green tea ice cream with me. Stuffed to the gills, it still took him most of our walk to the library to fall asleep.

I'd been hoping to spend time at the library with him when he woke up, but the library was closed (splutter, invective, grrr). I was walking home with a sleeping Jamie when I ran into my aunt on Broadview, and spent a pleasant hour with her at my cousin Scott's new apartment. Then we went home, and Jamie woke up soon after we got there, having slept almost two hours. Soon after, John's parents showed up and we headed out to Bluffer's Park for a picnic dinner. This is a park on Lake Ontario in Scarborough, and Jamie loved chasing the seagulls, jumping from rock to rock on the shore (but not on the shore itself, because sand/rocks would get into his sandals), and watching the geese. He also loved walking on the grass without his shoes on, a rare transgression on his part as he usually is the Shoe Fascist in our house and won't go outside without his shoes on (or let anyone else). He enjoyed being carried in the backpack, and can say "backpack" quite clearly, and ran hither and yon with a little too much abandon when not in the backpack.

We got home around 9:00, and for the third night in a row, he's in bed and asleep by 10:00. I must be exhausting him, because he's sleeping 11 hours a night lately. Lots of food, lots of exercise, and he'll be fit as a fiddle for when John gets back tomorrow.

2005-07-04 34:24 (Kristen) John came home today, and Jamie was so very pleased to see him. John had managed to get a standby flight so he was able to come home early, before Jamie's bedtime. When I saw John coming up the front steps, I picked up Jamie and said in an excited voice, "Guess who's home! Guess who's home!" When John came in the door, Jamie's whole face lit up, and he blew John a kiss right away. Then he reached out for John, wrapped hs little arms around his neck, and gave him another kiss. Then he asked to go outside so that they could see John's airplane, since I'd been telling him that Papa was on a plane for a few days now. He wasn't too disappointed, however, since he and John immediately went in search of densha.

John brought Jamie some new bath toys--three fish of gradated size, that suck up water and squirt it out through their mouths. Jamie wasn't interested in using them as weapons to move the rubber ducks around, but just liked the bubbles that they make when they suck up water. He's a gentle boy that way, naturally adverse to violence. And, he likes bubbles. He went to sleep well, but had a bit of a restless night. We'll see what the new day has in store.

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

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