Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 0 No. 94

2005-08-23 24:31 (Kristen) Jamie had another rough night last night, and given the amount of drool, it's for the usual reason. I have given him some tempra tonight, and I hope that lets us both get some sleep.

Jennifer is behind me, and will help me to tell you all (we're in the South, so y'all is acceptable) what Jamie has been up to. For breakfast, they went to the bottomless buffet, where they stuffed themselves on breakfast items. Then it was off to the indoor playground, where Jamie had fun roaring around. Jen notes that Jamie is afraid of other children, and won't play in the same areas that they do: he stiffens and is unsure of himself. However, he is very fond of Simon Koenig, and will call out "Simon!" and run to him whenever Simon is nearby. Simon is 2 1/2, and the master of funny faces.

Jamie fell asleep around 12, and woke up around 1:30, while we were all having lunch. He went up and down the escalators with me for ten minutes, then dragged his dad off to look at people playing video games. He and Jen spent the rest of the afternooon playing at the playground, and catching some cool cartoons on TV between snacks. When I met up with them, it was after 6, and Jamie was very happy to see me: two unsolicited kisses and hugs. Jen says that Jamie was unhappy knowing that I was in the playing room but that he wasn't allowed to go in himself.

After we roared around a little, we went in search of dinner. We placed our order, and ate it up in our room, rather than subject Jamie to another night in a restaurant. It was a good move, as he was quite tired and ended up having an early bath. He was in bed, and asleep, by 9:00. Tomorrow night, we should have him in bed at 8:00 at the latest, as we prepare for our trip home early Thursday morning. It has been a great deal of fun, and it has been so good for Jamie to get so close to his Auntie, but it's time to go home.

2005-08-24 24:20 (Kristen) Jamie slept in this morning, and wasn't even awake when I left to go to the tournament room for the final five games of the National Scrabble Championship. John and I were very busy all day, and only saw Jamie at lunchtime. He had some difficulty sitting, and was insistent on spending his time with John, who he hasn't seen much of at all this week. He did take some time to make friends with Melanie Wiegand (13 months). I explained to him, as he was climbing near her and not minding his feet, that he had to be careful around little babies: that he was a big boy, and had to take care of the littler ones. He seems to have taken that to heart, as I saw him, not a few minutes later, coming back along a row of chairs with something in his hand. Melanie was not in her seat, where she had been just a moment earlier, and I saw the first real look of disappointment on Jamie's face: like he had been frustrated in a plan, somehow. A moment later he brightened, and roared off across the room to deposit a brightly-coloured candy wrapper in Melanie's hand. It was so cute.

Then he went off for his nap, and I came up after the tournament was over and all had been put away to meet Jennifer and Jamie. John had wanted to go to a Basque restaurant (as we had been told that it was a good cuisine that you could find in Reno...who knew?) and so we piled into the cab to go to the restaurant. Apparently, according to the cabbie, it was not the best part of town, so I made a mental note not to wander. Jamie sat well for the first half of the meal but was just tired, crabby, and inconsolable for the second half. John and I took turns taking him outside, and trying to teach him about proper restaurant behaviour. It was an uphill struggle, however, but Jamie was consoled by the sight of a freight train further down the street, and by another freight train at a level crossing not half a block away. He was just thrilled, but very teary when I told him that there would not be any more densha*. Reno seems to be a freight train hub, but possibly the place where "the wrong side of the tracks" originated, as the town is bisected by the rails.

We headed home, stuffed completely, and decided to let John and Jamie play at TumbleTown while I got Jen to play Dance-Dance Revolution with me (a very funny dance video game) and a round of pinball. Then it was home to bed, with a very tired little boy. Tomorrow we get up at 5:30 AM, and it's going to be a very long day for all of us. However, at the end, we should be home. Wish us luck!

2005-08-25 22:00 (John) We got up at 05:15 to catch an 08:00 flight to Denver. Jamie stayed asleep all the way to airport security, where he woke up when the security guard insisted his stroller had to be X-rayed. He was well-behaved on the trip, and enjoys travelling by plane, especially through Denver, where the terminals are linked by an unmanned rail system.

We said goodbye to Jennifer, who has done a fabulous job of looking after Jamie for us this week, and boarded a flight full of Scrabble players to Toronto. Jamie (and I) slept most of the way, but were still fairly tired on arrival.

Jamie grew increasingly excited as we neared home, and we excitedly talked about the people he would see. He was delighted to visit Daniel and Ross and play with their trains, and disappointed that he wouldn't be seeing Mio until the morning.

Dinner was at Pearls, where my mom had prepared a sumptuous welcome home banquet of salmon and swordfish, plantain, Chinese greens, salad, rice, miso soup, and a few other dishes I am too tired to remember. We're off to bed, to catch up on a week's sleep.

2005-08-26 22:00 (Kristen) Jamie was awake around 8:10, having slept from 10:00 on: he seems to have avoided the jet lag that plagued me today. I crawled out of bed around 10:30, and blessed Mio for coming today and taking care of Jamie in her usual calm way while I was a vegetable. Jamie was also very happy to see Mio, and happily spent the morning watching TV, reading books, playing with trains, and eating. He also played with the flashcards that John's mom made of a few hiragana letters (spelling out Okaerinasai*, or "welcome home") and left on the coffee table. Jamie had so much fun with them, in fact, that I hope to get John's mom to make a full set so that we can start flashcarding Jamie on his hiragana. It's never too early to start learning your alphabets!

Jamie napped for two hours in the afternoon while John and I sat at the Second Cup and relaxed as much as we could. Then I went off to the FIDO store and found out how much it would cost to get a new SIM chip: I seem to have lost my phone in the Denver airport, and haven't managed to locate it yet. So, I will not be reachable on my cell phone for a few days until I either a) find it or b) get a new phone. My number won't change, fortunately, but it's a damned expensive inconvenience.

After Jamie woke up, John and I took him to Withrow Park for a bit of a run. He enjoyed himself very much, and actually put his little feet into the water of the very cold splash pad. John followed him around while I sat and read in the shade. It was deeply pleasurable to watch the two of them together. We then went to visit Tom, Michelle, Daniel, and Ross before heading out to dinner at the former Silk Road Cafe (now Taste of the Silk Road) with John's parents. Jamie was relatively well behaved for the first twenty minutes, but got itchy legs after that. To curb his itchiness, I took him to the bookstore across the street to buy him two books (>Bear and Ball and Busy Penguins) to read at dinner. It worked for about another ten minutes before John took him out to the park across the way to let me finish eating. I've realized that our trip to Reno was excellent in all ways except for dinners, as eating with Jamie in a restaurant right now is more frustrating, challenging, and stressful than it was even a few months ago. The thing to work on before the next big trip is table manners. This will be interesting...

Jamie had a reunion visit with Gary when we got home, and then his usual bath and bedtime. He hasn't woken up yet tonight, which may mean that he isn't cold or teething at the moment. That's a nice thought.

(John) Thanks to a week of running around indoor playgrounds with Auntie Jennifer, Jamie has become markedly more athletic. After dinner tonight, he was scampering up ladders and climbing walls at the playground that only two weeks ago he wasn't ready to try.

2005-08-27 21:00 (John) I took Jamie to the St. Lawrence Market by subway, the first time he'd ridden it since we got back. He was excited, but trying to stay cool about it. He dined well on fruit, samosas and kielbasa, played at the park, and in the splash pool near the Market.

(Kristen) When Jamie came home around 2:30, he was tired but still game. I popped him into the stroller and took off for the library, thinking that he'd fall asleep pretty quickly. He fought the good fight until we were actually inside the library, falling asleep as I browsed the graphic novel section. It always amazes me when he falls asleep inside like that. I picked up my books, waited for the rain to pass, and headed up to the Second Cup. Jamie slept for almost three hours (as he usually does on rainy days), and woke up close to six as I made no effort to keep him asleep after 5:30.

It was a quiet evening in, and John and I let Jamie watch Totoro for the first time in a few months. He loved it as much as he did before, and so we watched Totoro, had dinner, and read books for the rest of the night. I had been thinking that, with the exception of the two plane flight days , that Jamie was pretty much day weaned. He did ask to nurse this evening, but was pacified with food and some water. When I was brushing his teeth tonight, however, I was shocked to see a large cavity on one of his front teeth. John confirmed that it was the cavity he'd seen yesterday, but I had been looking at the wrong tooth that time. There's no missing it, and I'm just floored: neither my sister or I had cavities at this age, and I don't think that our eating habits were that much different than Jamie's. So, we hit the Web, did some reading, will call the dentist on Monday, and deal with this as best we can (including a number of changes in our lives, eating habits, and other habits).

One possible explanation (amongst many) is that nursing at night is part of what is causing this problem. So, tonight I started night weaning Jamie by putting him in his stroller and walking him to sleep. It took about forty minutes, but he was calm and sweet, if a little chatty at first, and I think that this will be the routine for the next few weeks, until he learns to fall asleep without nursing. This way, the only person traumatized is me. (smile) I'm unsure what we'll do with his waking in the middle of the night, which is where most of the nursing occurs. I think that I'm not going to get a lot of sleep for the next little while, but a lot of exercise walking around the neighbourhood. Charge up the iPod, it's going to be an interesting few nights, at the very least.

2005-08-28 23:46 (Kristen) Last night, I took Jamie out for two walks, both approximately forty minutes in length to get him to sleep. We decided, finally, to let him nurse after 5:00 AM, as we could brush his teeth when he got up. We all slept in, not surprisingly, and so started the new tooth-brushing regimen around 10:00 or so. Today, we have talked to Jamie a few times about needing to sleep without nursing, and ways that he can comfort himself back to sleep. We met a friend of Ayami's in the park tonight, who said that she told her 2 1/2 year-old daughter that her breasts hurt, and wore bandages on them to convince her not to nurse! That apparently worked, and I'm thinking that I may try it.

We went to the Eaton Centre today to buy a replacement cell phone for me, and then out to Queen West for some wool shopping. I bought some lovely cotton wool to make Jamie a sweater, which he will be able to wear for his third birthday, at the rate I knit. Fortunately, I have that size in the pattern. Jamie fell asleep around 3:00 or so, and so only got to enjoy the bus and subway ride there, but not back. He woke up around 5:00, pretty much on schedule, and watched a little Babe with me and read books. Then we saw Alexandria (Jamie tries to say her name, but it comes out "Dida" or somesuch) and she pointed out a large slide that was to be thrown out somewhere down the street. Ten minutes later, it was in our back yard, and Jamie is going to love it once we get it properly set up. Then it was off to John's parents' place for dinner, where Jamie did much better at sitting at the table and eating with a fork, not to mention drinking from a cup.

Then it was off to the park, in a vain attempt to burn some energy off the boy before it was time for bed. Once again we explained that he would be going to sleep tonight without nursing, and we discussed the fact that the little captain figurine from his bath boat was asleep, and didn't nurse first. He seemed OK, and fell asleep in about half an hour in the stroller. Unfortunately, he woke up when I put him to bed, and that was less good. John's idea, after Jamie didn't fall back asleep, was to let Jamie watch a video on the computer in bed to help him to fall asleep. John has now fallen asleep twice, but I can still hear Jamie's chirpy little voice coming from the bedroom, and it's almost midnight. I think that we'll go back to the stroller tomorrow.

2005-08-29 23:50 (Kristen) We finally got Jamie to sleep last night around 2:00 AM by putting a hysterically tired boy into a stroller, and walking him down the street, John pushing and me walking backwards so that Jamie could see me holding the bottle in his mouth. We were all feeling a little fragile and traumatized this morning, after I woke up around 9:00 and John and Jamie around 9:30. Jamie had slept for just eight hours, rather than his usual ten, and so I was expecting a little bit of trouble.

To prove me wrong, he was good this morning, playing with Mio, books, and his trains. I discovered that if I keep the television on to something that he isn't interested in (in this case, the coverage of Hurricane Katrina), then he ignores the television and goes off to do other things. This could prove to be very useful indeed.

Trouble started when it was around 12:30, and Jamie started to act tired. Mio was just leaving, and Jamie hadn't been acting very hungry, probably because he was so tired. I took Jamie for a walk for a bit, and expected him to fall asleep. He didn't: instead, he stayed awake and started to fuss when I brought him home around 1:15. John was still shredded from last night (basket case, he calls it), and so I decided to take Jamie out again for the last push to sleep. He played a bit with Gary and Ayami before we went, stopping his fussing to be happy with them rather than with the Mom-woman who was putting him in his stroller and making him try to sleep. He had classic toddler signs of extreme fatigue, right down to "nothing is right, and I'm going to yell about what I just asked you to do." Somewhat stressed, I put him back in the stroller and set off for his walk.

Well, I didn't know that my son could yell that loudly, and for that long. I was three blocks away and he was just winding himself up, getting more and more upset by the second. It was just like the night before, and I was dismayed, to say the least, at this development. Fortunately, I met up with our friend Kurt (of Kurt and Alison), and he pushed the stroller back home for me while I held a more and more hysterical Jamie in my arms. Lifesaver. Then I yelled inside for John to get Jamie's bottle, which I stupidly hadn't brought with me, and he came outside right away with the bottle so that we could try the trick we'd tried last night. Well, that didn't work. Gary and Ayami, who were both home, came racing outside to make sure that Jamie wasn't being harmed in horrible ways, and watched while I picked Jamie up yet again, and tried to get him to take the bottle. Finally, he took the bottle (insisting on holding it himself), and started to calm down. Finally, he fell asleep in my arms, his head resting on my shoulder, little hiccups of a reflexive sob here and there as he drifted off to sleep. I put him into his stroller, Gary and Ayami crept away, and John took him to the Second Cupt for a restorative cup of tea (for John), and I went inside to shake for a while, and have something to eat.

Jamie is a reasonable child: it is one of the pillars of my universe that he is so, and that I can trust him to be so. He is also not quite two, but I have never seen him wind himself up like he did this afternoon, ever. I think that it was because he was so very tired, and probably hungry because he didn't eat lunch properly (although he did have part of a late breakfast before we went out the first time). Just another day in Bad Mother Land. (Mom: there is self-deprecating humour here, nothing to worry about!) However, we do not want to repeat this at all, ever.

Jamie woke up around ninety minutes into his nap, and John called me with the sound of a crying Jamie in the background to say that he was on his way home. However, Jamie fell asleep again and so I watched him after John got home for an hour while he slept. He woke up beautifully, me armed with grapes of pacification, and we went to dinner at Tom and Michelle's.

So this is why John and I were so terrified of tonight, night three of Operation Night Wean Jamie. We had our bath, and I read him a story, and I gave him some Tempra for his mouth, as he had been talking about mouth pain today and drooling like crazy. We listened to a little music, and Jamie started to dance to "Yellow Submarine", so we all did as a family. Heh. Then John let him watch some Totoro while I had a bath, and we both joined Jamie in bed with his bottle. In the end, he didn't even really need it: we listened to music again, talked, and Jamie made slurping noises as he pretended to nurse through my t-shirt, laughing. Finally, he lay across my chest while I rubbed his back and John talked about what we do on subway trips. He fell asleep, the darling, all on his own without nursing for the first time in ages. I hope that he will continue to do this if we keep this routine for him. Hope hope hope hope. It's so much better than screaming trauma for everyone, to say the least.

In other news, Jamie's vocabulary, and his conceptual abilities, continue to grow in leaps and bounds. He imitates all sorts of words, particularly whatever word you end a sentence with (he does a credible attempt at "submarine"). He talks about "Nom" and his sons "Dayal" and "Rice" (Tom, Daniel, and Ross). He loves to point at people and say their names, and then slyly enjoys mixing them up. "Ross?" (pointing at Tom) "Nooo!". He also has learned the concept of an object not being another object. For example, he pointed to his zucchini tonight and said "not fish." Clever boy.

We have a dentist's appointment for the end of September for Jamie with a dentist who specializes in children (Jamie will need to be sedated or put completely under when he has his teeth worked on). Jamie was very good about brushing and flossing his teeth tonight, doing both himself followed by parental "touch-ups." We'll see what the dentist has to say about Jamie's condition, and what we can do to prevent it in future, other than cutting back on the juice, raisins, and such. John and Jamie are asleep now, and I think that I will too. Good night!

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

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