Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 0 No. 89

2005-07-19 23:55 (John) Jamie continues to be pee- and poo#- focused, telling me each time when he's soiled his diaper. He also thinks that passing gas "Gack!" is hilariously funny, and I look forward to a few years of fart jokes. He continues to expand his vocabulary, and is developing the ability to make closed syllables (consonant-vowel-consonant) with two different consonants. He ate well, drank well, played well and napped well today, what a good boy.

2005-07-20 23:40 (Kristen) I asked Jamie today what his favourite word was, and he said "No!" Ladies and gentlement, I present to you, four months early, the Two Year Old. It's No! when I ask him if he wants more kisses, No! when we ask him if he wants more mango juice, and No! when we tell him that he can't watch any more television. It's a step away from "oh no," which is said in a tone of shock or regret, or disapproval. It's hard not to laugh, though, because it's so darn cute..

We picked raspberries, and discovered that it is almost cherry tomato season, which is almost as good as raspberry season to Jamie. He went for a walk with John, and slept for almost two hours, after going to bed very late last night and waking up an hour or so earlier than such a late bedtime would demand. He was a little grouchy because of the lack of sleep, but he's sleeping well right now, and so should I.

2005-07-20 24:00 (John) At my mom's house, it is already tomato season, and Jamie was at the cherry tomatoes with a vengeance, bringing back memories of those weeks last summer when his diapers bore a strong resemblance to tomato sauce.

At the Scrabble club tonight, I noticed that Jamie can now see the top of the ping-pong table, and if he wants to play foozball* or pool, he can drag a chair over and climb up. He can also serve a ping-pong ball, though his aim needs work. He's growing up so quickly. He still hates sandbox sand in his sandals and loves the moon though.

When I showed him today's photos, he happily relived the gorging on tomatoes and the moon following us home in the car. He then checked to make sure that shaking his head side to side looking at a picture of the moon was almost as good as the real thing.

2005-07-21 24:45 (John) We picked our own first cherry tomatoes and cucumber of the season, and Jamie was a little disappointed that there were only a handful of the former so far, but made up for it with raspberries. At lunch at Browning, I arrived as usual half an hour later than everyone else, thanks to a barrage of e-mail messages and phone calls. Jamie was almost ready to go out on his walk with Ken, but dragged me to the dining table and sat down with me to have a little bite. He wasn't hungry, he just wanted to make sure that I ate properly. He's a very thoughtful boy that way.

In the evening, Tom came to ask me what a particular hand gesture meant. I told him it meant "thank you" (touching his hand to his lips), and Tom said that Jamie had been practising taking blocks out of Ross' hand and thanking him. For some reason, Jamie is at his politest with seven-year-old Ross, who is the last person in the world to notice it.

(Kristen) Jamie was distressed when he saw Daniel hiding underneath a play tent that is in the basement at Browning, and called out to me while trying to drag Daniel out from under it. He was also distressed to see Daniel and Ross plahing a game of "sandwich," which involves one brother making the sandwich out of cushions and the other being squashed in the middle as the filling. We had to show him repeatedly that Daniel and Ross were not hurt, despite the yelling, but it took a lot of convincing. He repeatedly would try to help whoever was the filling. Thoughtful, brave boy to actively help those he thought were hurt. He has a lot of empathy for a little person: I was reading today that toddlers of his age aren't supposed to have much. They haven't met Jamie.

Jamie played well today, says Mio, and was in a much better mood than yesterday. He managed to snag both Mio and Ayami for about twenty minutes to half an hour this afternoon, and was just delighted to bask in their attention. It was a good Jamie day.

2005-07-22 23:33 (Kristen) Jamie slept for a good long time last night, catching up on his little 'zzz's. I heard him talking clearly in his sleep for the first time, as he said "dakko? dakko?" then started to cry. "Dakko" means "pick me up" in Japanese, and obviously someone was not picking him up. Poor lamb: I picked him up.

It was rainy this morning, so he spent it playing indoors. By lunch tiime it was clear, and so he went for his walk with Ken. He wasn't hungry much today, and didn't eat a great deal at lunch or dinner. He is very easily distracted, and once his dinner concentration is broken, it's hard to get him to eat. He came home and had about fifteen minutes of quality mummy time before Mio came back and took care of him for a couple more hours so that I could get a deadline met. Jamie played outside, and enjoys pushing pieces of sidewalk chalk through a hole in the porch railing. The hole is slightly larger than a picece of chalk, and he can do this for a while.

In the evening, John and I went out for dinner to celebrate our anniversary (19 days late, but better late than never!) and left Jamie with Tom and Michelle.He blew us a kiss on our way out, and that was that until we got back. He didn't miss us: he played with Tom, and Daniel and Ross, and ate ice cream. He ate the ice cream with a spoon all by himself, refusing help, which waas funny since he makes me feed him and refuses to do it himself. Guess it just depends on who is holding the spoon.

John and I spent a good amount of time discussing Jamie, and I only called John Jamie twice.

2005-07-23 23:31 (Kristen) John had to get up early this morning, and so Jamie and I woke up together around nine, after John had left. In an effort to do something different, I took Jamie out almost immediately in the wagon to a garage sale down the street. We bought a little truck with two cars for a dollar, and headed back home for breakfast. Jamie ate, John came home, and then after John had rested, he took Jamie out to the market. Jamie fell asleep for most of the trip, and woke up on the way home. When they arrived, John went for a cool bath to cool down from a hot trip and a nap, and I took Jamie out again for a walk.

When we got back from our walk (around 5:00), we headed out to our friends Reid and Luisa's annual watergun and pool party. John and I had discussed whether or not Jamie would want to go into the pool: Jamie has slowly warmed up to the splash/wading pool in the back yard, but has been singularly uninterested in bigger regular or wading pools. When we got there, Daniel and a few other kids were in there, and Jamie was interested in what they were doing. I got in, and we let Jamie walk down the ladder into the water (and into my arms). He clung to me at first, but soon I had him swooshing around in the water, his chest against mine, and kicking away (when he remembered). He even got splashed on the face and got his hair wet, and didn't fuss too much: when he was upset by a particularly big splash, Peter and his son Jonathan would blow bubbles inthe water by putting their faces in full and blowing air. Jamie was fascinated (he loves bubbles) enough to stop being upset and start enjoying the ride again. He was so happy, in the end, to be in the pool that he didn't want to come out. I got tired before he did, and after we took a short break for dinner, he demanded to get back into the pool for another long swim. We're going to look for swimming lessons for him very soon, and get him some flotation devices in the meantime.

Jamie fell asleep in the car as we swung by Marilyn Mercer's part (a former neighbour of John's parents) to pick up John's dad. First John went in an then I did, but Jamie woke up when I was inside. He settled down eventually, but I ended up walking him home the last block while John took his dad home. He was pretty tired, and after a speed bath to wash off the chlorine, he was in bed and asleep.

It turns out that Marilyn found a toy peddle car that belonged to John when he was a kid, and is giving it back to us for Jamie. It had been used by Marilyn's son when he was a baby (he's now 18), and Jamie is just going to flip when we clean it up for him. He wants a pedal car so badly! And this one is *red*.

2005-07-24 22:30 (Kristen) Jamie woke up after a restless night to a rainy morning. We tried to get ourselves together to go to the park, but it started raining as we made it to the sidewalk outside our front door, and had to content ourselves with playing with chalk on the front porch.

He didn't nap at his usual time, and stayed quite stubbornly and vivaciously awake until 3:30 or so. Then he demanded a nurse, and fell asleep around the time that we had to head up to the community centre where the Scrabble tournament that John was helping out at was. We tried to gently translate him into his car seat, and I almost made it before he started and woke up. He didn't fall back asleep, and was wide awake when we arrived at Earl Bales. He ran around, played fuzeball, rode the trolley for transporting long tables, and was a little live-action version of Pong between two walls, laughing uproariously the whole time.

He didn't fall asleep on the way home either, which I had expected him to do. He was very interested in anything that could remotely be called a tunnel, crowing with delight when we went through underpasses. We ate dinner at home, went to bed early, and had an otherwise quiet day.

2005-07-25 22:44 (Kristen) We woke up around 9:15 or so after a rough night. John wasn't feeling well so he was restless, I was working until 1:35 or so and went to bed late, and Jamie was waking up every hour or so. I changed his diaper around 4:30 or so, since it was sopping (an indicator of shallow sleep), and that helped a little but not a lot. We're unsure why Jamie has been so restless at night and is having trouble sleeping. I'm sleep-deprived enough, however, that it is a question that will have to wait until a fully-caffinated latte has percolated through me.

The project that kept me up until 1:35 had me busy all day in trying to meet a deadline. To help, Gary and Ayami, Ken, and Tami all helped to keep Jamie entertained while I worked. Mio is on holiday this week to deal with some unexpected visitors from Japan, and if we didn't appreciate her before (and we did appreciate her) we do so from the very bottoms of our hearts now. I didn't see much of Jamie today: when I went to Browning to collect him at 5:00, he just looked up from where he was sitting and discussing a train calendar with Ayami and shot me a look that said "who the heck are you?" He figured out pretty quickly that I was the Milk Lady, and we bonded again. Glad that I'm good for something in his life...

He has been watching Ross, who bounces along the tops of furniture like a monkey. Monkey see, monkey do, and Jamie has been trying to do the same thing. We're trying to convince him that this is a Bad Idea, but he's not believing us yet. We ate dinner at Browning (the usual Monday night salmon fest) and came home around 9:00. Jamie helped John to take the garbage to the curb, and then had a bath with me before going to bed. He was pretty tired, but still held on for a while before succumbing to sleep.

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

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