Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 0 No. 88

2005-07-12 23:00 (John) Jamie's skin infection is definitely on the mend. The affected area is still discoloured, but the redness and swelling are almost gone. Thank goodness for modern medicine.

It was another scorcher today, but we're coping. Ken took Jamie out for a brief walk, and brought him home soon after he fell asleep. I sat out with him in the driveway between the houses where it was remarkably comfortable, and Jamie slept for close to three hours.

Dinner was soba* at Pearls. Jamie ate and behaved well.

Jamie got his first Jeopardy answer today. The category was "Terrible Twos" and the clue was something like "The first two-letter word most children learn to use." He chorused "Nooo!" with Kristen, but forgot to phrase it in the form of a question. We'll work on that.

He wouldn't go to sleep tonight until I lay down on the bed too. He's been very bossy, and seems to get more that way when he gets tired. It's nice to know that when I can't be around, Jamie will make sure that everything stays in order in the house.

(Kristen) Jamie slept in this morning, possibly because he was up late last night. He ate an enormous breakfast (one whole mango and some tamago* no gohan*). We tried a little potty practice too, and he ate his breakfast while on the potty. He succeeded in peeing into it a little, but jumped up when he did, startled by the sound of peeing into the plastic pail. So, it was a partial success on a strictly material level, but a huge success psychologically. We praised him to the skies, both then and later in the day, and he seemed shyly pleased with the whole thing by the end. We'll try again tomorrow.

2005-07-13 22:36 (Kristen) Jamie has a purple plastic wading pool that we got for him, and he's been somewhat leery of it. He likes to stand beside it and splash a little by dropping rocks into the water, and other things, but by and large hasn't been convinced that it would be a good idea.

Today it was hot enough that the water we put in the pool this morning was bath temperature by the afternoon. He went for a walk with John for his afternoon nap, but didn't sleep at all. They were both pretty hot when they came back, and so John added some water to the pool and they both got in. Jamie wore his flip flops at first, since he has a thing about not wearing shoes when outside (he scolded Tai Tai for walking on the sidewalk without shoes tonight), but John convinced him to take them off after showing him that he wasn't wearing shoes in the pool. We also took Jamie's diaper off, and let him cool off all over. John had brought Jamie's bath toys out earlier in the day and Jamie continued to have fun playing with them. Now I think, after a day or two more of this, that I might take him to the wading pool at Withrow Park again, armed with a ball or two, and see if he likes the pool more while wearing flipflops.

I hope that he remembers, later in life, how much he loved looking at the moon as a baby. Tonight, when I needed to get him away from Ross's trains, I told Jamie that we could go outside and look at the moon. He dropped the train, and put his shoes on. He ran down the street with John, laughing and pointing upwards at the beautiful, almost half moon in the clear night sky.

I should add that Jamie did finally fall asleep around 5:20, and woke up near 7:30 PM. We had dinner at John's parents, visited Browning, and came home. He finally fell asleep somewhere around 11:15...I will have a hard time getting him up tomorrow, I think.

2005-07-14 22:36 (John) Jamie has been working on his words, new today are "Ross", "off", and a few others. He continues to rule the household with a firm hand, ensuring that we buckle our sandals tightly, hand each other towels in the bathroom, eat properly and clean up afterward. He likes Teletubbies, Rubbadubbers and Lilo and Stitch, alternating every 30-60 minutes. He is trying to draw letters, but has had limited success so far making Is and Us. With some assistance from me, he rode Daniel's Razor scooter around his basement.

Today started off as hot as ever, and Jamie spent much of the morning naked in his wading pool eating freshly picked raspberries. After his afternoon walk, the weather started to cool (only by comparison) as we had our first rain in weeks. The temperature dropped down below 25°C in the late afternoon, so Jamie wore more than his usual diaper on the way to dinner at Browning.

(Kristen) Jamie hasn't worn much more than just a diaper in close to a week. It's a practical thing: he's hot, and he gets heat rash easily. The reactions we've been getting to a toddler in a diaper have been pretty funny. Everyone thinks that a naked baby is just lovely, and cute. And yes, he is.

2005-07-15 22:24 (Kristen) Jamie is a highly focused individual, who dislikes it when things do not go according to his plan. I have taken to narrating the day more explicitly and what I am going to do next so that he isn't surprised when we don't do what it was that he wants to do right away, or at all. This sometimes works, and sometimes doesn't. He protests bitterly when we have a morning diaper change instead of going straight downstairs, for example, despite my telling him what is going to happen next. We are attempting to diffuse this a bit by giving him two choices that involve the activity needed anyway so that he'll have a sense of control. The funny part was that we were discussing how Jamie's need to have things just so can easily shade into being a control freak, and John and I shot looks at each other in exactly the same way at exactly the same time. Apparently neither John nor I are control freaks, but may be perceived that way by another, and Jamie didn't get it from US, oh no...

On the other hand, John was having a slightly rough day, and Jamie picked up on it in the bath tonight. He stood behind his dad, and scrubbed his back, making John feel much better, and pouring warm water on his dad's back. He also spent part of dinner spooning rice and salmon out of the bowl and onto our plates, during which we managed to feed him. He needs to feel useful and to have something to do, and we're trying to think of ways to make this happen more often in his life.

I've been trying to get Jamie interested in music, and he is definitely interested. He likes my guitar, because he can interact with it. He strums while I form the chords. It's a little difficult to tune the guitar, however, as he does insist on turning the machine heads which results in some questionable tuning. My ear is getting better... I think that it won't take much effort to have Jamie learn a musical instrument when the time comes.

2005-07-16 26:00 (John) I took Jamie to the St. Lawrence Market with my mom as usual this morning. It was stifling hot, and we were all tired, but Jamie behaved well and got more than the usual number of comments about his cuteness. He fell asleep around 15:00 on the way home, and slept for two hours as Kristen took him out for a walk. I fell asleep myself then, and have been asleep most of the time since then, as my busy schedule of the last few weeks has caught up with me.

2005-07-17 24:45 (John) I continued to catch up on my sleep today, and am writing this stub of an entry because Kristen is catching up on her work from spending extra hours looking after Jamie during the day. It rained steadily for much of last night and today, leaving two inches in the wading pool (and a nearly full rain barrel) after two weeks' drought. So we spent the morning indoors eating and watching DVDs, then took Jamie out for a walk in the warm rain down to the Second Cup.

He fell asleep on the way, and we sat watching the steam swirl off of our iced drinks in the jungle-like heat and humidity. When Jamie eventually woke up, Kristen took him down to the Eaton Centre to shop for next February's trip to Mexico at end-of-summer sales, and to pick up a new Rubbadubbers for me before I tire of the old one. The new one includes "Tubb the Train Engineer" though, so it may be a while before we can watch the rest of the episodes.

Dinner was Huachinango Tikinchik that I cooked at my mom's house, with rice, greens and salad that my mom made.

2005-07-18 23:24 (Kristen) Jamie's turned into a real little tv addict, and it may have something to do with the fact that he can operate the VCR and the tv. Much of my time lately has been spent trying to come up with things for him to do that doesn't involve the tv, otherwise he'd spend about five hours a day watching a rotating roster of movies and shows. I'm OK with some tv; this much, however, isn't good. Like most adults, I'm getting familiar with most of the kids' shows on Treehouse and TVO's Crawlspace. I realized that I was in trouble when I started thinking "It's 11:00, time for Peep and the Big Wide World," and was looking forward to watching the antics of Quack (my favourite character), and to what scientific idea they'd be exploring in that episode. Jamie liked "Conjunction Junction," from Schoolhouse Rock, because it has trains.

On Sunday, I bought new clothes for Jamie for next summer, and bought some size 3s because it's so hard to predict what he's going to look like next year. He's a tall, skinny little kid, and I like baggy clothes on him because he gets heat rash in tight clothes. For now, he's firmly in the 18-24 category for some makes, and in the 24-month/two-year-old sizes for others. We opened a box that arrived from our friends Sherrie Saint John and Gregg Foster today to find that Sherrie had gone and "had a blast" at Baby Gap: the box was full of little socks, shirts, shorts, and rompers. All in all, five days worth of clothing, which corresponds almost exactly to the length of our stay in Reno, where we'll see Sherrie and Gregg. Jamie's going to look fabulous in them, and he's still got a little room to grow still. The child is well dressed, and ready for anything.

Jamie played with Mio this morning, ate well, and had his walk with Ken. He was quite overheated in the soupy weather when he got back, and so we cooled off in the pool while we ate raspberries. He helped me in the Big Carrot by holding the loaf of bread we were going to get until I realized that he was trying to take a big chomp out of it. He mimics us very well, and can very clearly say "book" while making the sign for book, whenever he wants to nurse. He knows that I like to read while he nurses, and so makes sure that I get a book when he wants to nurse. Whenever he looks at me and says in his clear little voice "book? book?" that he's about to ask to nurse.

Jamie impressed both me and John tonight by peeing into a cup while in the bath. He started and stopped about five times, showing that he does possess bladder control, and can draw "o"s. He and John ceremoniously dumped the cup into the toilet and flushed, saying "bye bye pee!" Our boy may be more ready than I thought to train. He has been patting his front for the last day or two, and I think has been trying to tell me when he pees, like he does when he poos. I've had him in disposables more than usual, however, and it makes it harder to tell if he has. Tomorrow, I'll have him back in cloth, and we'll know better.

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

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