Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 1 No. 1

2005-10-11 23:32 (Kristen) Our boy is twenty-three months old today, and he celebrated by waking up around 7:10 to nurse. He used to fall asleep when he nursed, but now he just fusses, and so when he wakes up, we're both up forty-five minutes later or so as I decide that the tossing and turning are no longer restful. He went to bed quite late last night, so he was very tired this morning and not all that perky. The grey day outside was not inspiring, but Mio did get him to play ourside for an hour or two eventually.

I had a doctor's appointment, so I left Jamie in John's care for lunch. They had some chicken noodle soup together, and Jamie was in his stroller by 1:15. He was asleep by 1:25, which lead us to think that he sleeps well if you take him out between 1 and 1:20; any later, and he's too tired to sleep easily, and it takes much more work to get him to sleep. He slept for a long while; close to three hours; and woke up gently and in a much better mood. He did, however, ask for a rice crispie square, which he knows that his dad will provide. He surprised both me and John by asking, also, for an "ao* ice" (his word for a blue freezie). The only time he has ever had a blue freezie was at the dentist last week, after he woke up from the anesthetic. The nurse told us that he would not remember anything, since he had taken a sedative with a mild amnesiac. We weren't sure if he really remembered, so John said "we don't have any at home." Jamie then said, helpfully, "Bay eki*(station)?" which clinched it: he remembered where we were, geographically, before the visit to the dentist, and connected it to the blue freezie afterwards. Argh. He doesn't seem traumatized, just having a blue freezie crazing. There's that, at least.

He spent most of the night playing with Gary, watching Pingu in the basement with him. Gary joined us for dinner, and Jamie hung out watching tv and playing with trains. Gary was definitely the prefered flavour of the night as Jamie was not interested in playing with me. Sigh. Jamie made up for it later, by giving me many kisses once he was in bed after his bath, and saying quite clearly "Love you, mummy" repeatedly, followed by said kisses. He was also very cute as his stuffed animals (Pink Hippo, Leon, and Brown Bear) all frolicked on the bed and gave each other kisses as they passed by.

2005-10-12 22:54 (Kristen) I think that, despite whatever the weather is doing, Jamie should go outside and run his little legs off tomorrow morning. It's been grey, miserable,and often quite wet outside for days now, and he's getting a little stir crazy. Mio did take him outside for a bit, but Jamie didn't fall asleep until 1:45 or so for his afternoon nap, and only slept for an hour and a half. A good part of the nap difficulty may be his teeth, which are bothering him something fierce. He is running a low-grade fever (either that, or he gets warm and cool frequently), and stuffing his fingers into his mouth. He wants to eat ice all the time, and doesn't really care if it has a flavour or not (although the blue freezies that I bought yesterday were a big hit). If I let him suck on a piece of ice between mouthfuls, he'll eat a whole meal. He won't otherwise. Poor mite.

He had fun chasing birds, but since he woke up in an utterly foul mood after his afternoon nap, it took a lot of work (and a Rice Krispies square) to get him to finally feel better. He was still tired and uncomfortable, though, and he spent the evening at the Scrabble club doing the things that he *knew* I was going to say no to, and then stomping his little feet in irritation and frustration. He likes me to know that he's mad at me. It's hard not to be amused by it, which I know is the worst thing that I could do. However, I can easily not rise to the bait 80% of the time (that 20% when I'm tired is when I give him to John). He did enjoy playing with a little boy a few months younger than him named Leo, and they had a great time chasing each other and stomping on a dolly truck with a wooden floor that makes a great booming noise when you stomp. He was in mimic mode, and gave Leo a kiss when Leo's father did, which was sweet but surprised Leo a little. Finally it was time to go home, and he fell asleep in the car. I remember loving to ride in the back seat of the car on rainy nights, and how easy it was to fall asleep to the sound of the windshield wipers and the hiss of the tires on wet road. I hope that he feels the same.

2005-10-13 09:30 (John) I just heard Jamie in the next room refuse to wear a shirt because it was green ("no midori!"), which I think is the first time he's expressed a sartorial preference.

2005-10-13 23:41 (Kristen) We took Jamie back to Dr. Dann for a checkup, and he was pronounced tobe recovering exceedingly well from his surgery. He was very good when Dr. Dann checked out his teeth, and enjoyed the freezies we brought with us. He doesn't seem to have any trauma from the experience in the whole, and has emerged only with a love of freezies. We'll have to take him to the dentist every three months for the next year for flouride treatments to make sure that we've done in the bacteria that were so aggressively causing the cavity in the first place. There was a woman who had been in with her three-year-old around the same time, and she said that her son had nine (!) cavities. They were all small, but he just didn't have any enamel on his teeth worth speaking of, despite her burshing his teeth twice a day. It could be so much worse for us.

We told Dr. Dann about Jamie's low grade fevers (just a degree, if that, above normal), and passion for anything icy cold, and he confirmed with Jamie's x-rays that the poor lamb is working on three molars at once. The bottom left should, true to pattern, emerge first, with the bottom right likely to be the last as it is still very far below the gumline. We hope that it will be soon. Jamie ate a decent breakfast but just didn't get into lunch, and just nibbled on foods he normally likes very much between densha* sessions. He s pretty good at the monofocus. He slept for three hours before John and I took him on the subway to Dr. Dann's, and then he ate a samosa and helped me and John to eat our ice cream from Dessert Lady in Yorkville (brown sugar and cinnamon/candied ginger for me, Granny Smith apple, lemon, and raspberry sorbet for John). We went straight to Tom and Michelle's for dinner, where Jamie spent a good deal of time playing with the elaborate track setup that John made for him with Ross's train set. Jamie sopped up his chili with his garlic bread, ate well, and played with trains some more with Daniel and Ross. Finally, it was time to come home. He was pretty good until lights out, when we decided that he really needed some Tempra. It's doing its trick now, and we're very glad for it.

Our former tenant, Chihoko, came for lunch today and we had a great time talking while Ken Sagara took Jamie out for his walk. We hope that Chichoko will come back to visit soon, when Jamie is awake, as I know that he would have a good time playing with her.

2005-10-14 21:47 (Kristen) So, Jamie was up at 7:30 this morning, which is later than usual. I credit his good sleep (more or less) to the Tempra. He did wake up early in the night, however, crying and kicking, but was put back to sleep with a little "straw." We suspect that the chili was not agreeing with him (he had a little- he soaked most of it up with his garlic bread), and that we'll hold off on his eating chili for a little while. The tipoff was that he went back to sleep while sleeping on his stomach.

Jamie had a good play day. In the morning, he played with Mio and his trains. In the afternoon, he napped for two hours before waking up just after John arrived to relieve me (Ken had walked him and then dropped him off a half hour previously). So, instead, I took Jamie to Treasure Island to play with the trains there while I hunted for birthday presents. I picked up the Thomas 60th anniversary train set, which comes with Thomas, Annie and Clarabelle, Henry, a station (which was the clincher), a raised covered bridge, and a stop and go booth. We're returning the Annie and Clarabelle that we bought at Toys R Us, and will try to get either the passenger coaches or the boxcars. Those will be for Christmas now, since $140 on Thomas track makes for one complete birthday. I can't imagine him really being able to focus on much else once we have that thing set up, anyway.

Oh...don't tell Jamie.

Given the amount of time that he spends with the trains, it makes sense to invest in Thomas paraphenalia. Also, any future siblings will get a kick out of it too. There are as many girls at the Thomas tables as there are boys, which I find reassuring. I am thinking that we can get him puzzles and trucks for Christmas, and maybe we should start thinking about a toboggan and a tricycle too for then. It's just too much fun buying toys for Jamie.

Jamie ate a huge dinner, which I attribute to appropriate doses of ice, and to his sitting in the high chair instead of on a regular chair. It's been much easier to get him to eat since we started getting him to do that again. He played "bye-bye!" with Gary, Mio, and Taka, and watched very little television because he was too busy chasing people. We decided to floss his teeth and brush them after dinner to try and cut back on the amount of time it takes us to get him ready for bed, and he wasn't that interested in the process. In fact, he bit me as I was trying to floss his teeth. This led to a long discussion of when you say sorry for something, and that he had to say "sorry" to me. It only took twenty minutes (slight sarcasm on the "only") and some role playing by Big Bear and Little Bear to get him to apologize. Sorry to me is hard for him, and this is apparently normal, but he's learning that he has to apologize when he hurts someone.

We played together after tooth brushing, and we started getting ready for bed. Now it's only 10 PM and we're all washed, and Jamie is in bed with John, watching a short Rubberdubbers episode or two before the lights go out. What a notion.

2005-10-15 23:00 (John) After a morning spent running around, playing trains and watching Pingu with Gary and Mio, Jamie happily waved bye-bye to Mummy as we drove off to the St. Lawrence Market, just the two of us for the first time in months. It took us about four hours all told, moving slowly at times due to encumbrance, distraction or fatigue. Jamie fell asleep after eating his samosa, so I walked him down to Loblaws in his stroller and back again, and he would have stayed asleep more than two hours, except for the bells of St. James' Cathedral. As much as he enjoys them, I must remember to park further away from them.

On the way home, Jamie was alert and delightedly describing everything he saw. We passed two bicycles, and he shouted first "Densha!", then "Densha Ni!", which is Jamie-ese and not that far off from Japanese for "Bicycle!" and then "Two bicycles!" His favourite numbers are two and five, and he recognizes spoken numbers up to ten.

(Kristen) Tonight, as I was putting Jamie to sleep, I noticed something interesting about his hands. He has taken to fussing and picking almost compulsively as he tries to fall asleep: sometimes it's his eyelashes that he's tugging on, and sometimes it's cleaning his nose with a kleenex. I had a little epiphany tonight, and thought that it might be a comfort/excess energy issue, which I share. So, to give his hands something to play with instead of picking at his eyelashes, I put Brown Bear (a small Beanie Baby-like stuffed animal) in his hand and he calmed down almost instantly. He needssomething that he can fuss with, almost without thought, so that he can sleep. One more example of shared genetics.

When John and Jamie came home from the market, I made the mistake of pointing out a Second Cup bag with a rice crispie square in it. It turns out that the square was old and no good, but I'd already called Jamie's attention to it. So, we set off to the Second Cup in search of a "crispie." On the way, we ran into Gary and Ayami, who was on her way to work, and then played in the playground for a while. The weather was blustery, and Jamie loved the rainbow that we saw on the way home. Gary played with Jamie for a while and so did Mio while John and I cleaned the fridge freezer. John made spaghetti with homemade tomato sauce for dinner, and Jamie insisted on having a mountain of parmesan cheese on the top. John grumbled in mock exasperation that Jamie was just like John's dad in the amount of cheese that was necessary on his pasta.

2005-10-16 21:45 (John) It was a blustery overcast day today, and after spending the morning playing indoors Jamie had a hard time falling asleep for his afternoon nap. He's always hated wind blowing in his face, and it was really gusting today. After half an hour, we decided that as long as we were both awake it would be more productive to chase pigeons instead, and after half an hour of that we were happy that Mom came to take over.

She got Jamie to sleep about an hour late, but it was a fitful nap. He woke completely up at one point, but fell back asleep on my shoulder looking at birds fighting for bread crumbs. He yelled "Dakko (pick me up)!" later on, but without waking up. He slept for about the normal time (almost three hours), and I caught up with him again at my Mom's, where I was gratified that he calmed right down from his post-nap grumpiness when he saw that I had cooked huachinango tikinchik (Mayan snapper), and gleefully chanted "Papa ummamma (Dad's (making) food)!".

2005-10-17 21:45 (John) We spend much of our time trying to figure out Jamie's behaviour. Why does he nap for an hour one day and three hours the next? Why does he eat two or three times as much one day as another? What determines his moods? Like any good social scientists, we have enough contradictory theories to provide multiple explanations for any observed phenomena and no real inclination to rigorously test them.

Today for instance he ate half a large bowl of my cereal, right down to the soggy bran bits that are almost always my share, when for the past few weeks he's only wanted a couple of raisins. Theories? He had a craving to fill a particular nutritional deficiency? More likely, his molars are easing up on him, so his sinuses have cleared and he can taste his food again. Certainly not that he didn't eat enough last night. And then all through the rest of the day he ate and ate. Maybe he's working on a growth spurt.

I dropped by my parents' house (Pearls), after watching Jamie for his three-hour-plus nap (it's a good time to work on my thesis), and I left him in my mom's care for half an hour while I helped my dad with his computer. They spent the time eating (udon*), and Jamie did a fairly thorough job with a brush and dustpan on my mom's porch, then went outside and swept her gutters for her. When I was done, we spent another half an hour or so playing with maple keys ("guru guru down down whee!"), which Jamie thought were very cool.

Dinner at Browning, the highlights of which for Jamie were Dad's barbecued salmon and Ayami's apple dessert (a la mode of course), and the mandatory playing with Ross' vast collection of trains in between.

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

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