Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 1 No. 10

2005-12-13 21:25 (John) When Jamie woke up from his three-hour nap today, I offered him his choice of the traditional Rice Krispies square, a gingerbread man (which he had seen advertised in a poster in the cafe) and a bottle of apple juice. He opted for novelty, then spent a happy half hour licking all of the icing off the gingerbread man and sucking the chocolate out of the inside of his buttons. He thought it was funny that the man ended up faceless, but was understandably disturbed when the man started to fall apart, losing a leg and the crown of his head.

He then decided that he wanted to read a newspaper, and it was not too hard to persuade him that it would be better to do so at a table and not on the floor by the entrance. He liked the letters and the pictures, and grew very excited when I helped him hold a pen and trace over the letters, and insisted on doing so on his own for quite a while afterward.

2005-12-14 22:31 (Kristen) We've started trying to potty train Jamie again, with amusing results. Jamie will announce when he is peeing ("Pee! Pee!") but doesn't give any lead time. So, when the cry is heard, whoever is closest will grab him and run to the nearest potty. Sometimes we make it, sometimes we don't. Around noon today, Jamie peed three or four times in a ten minute period, causing us to wonder where a boy that small was hiding the resevoir. The attempts include one success, one partial success (a problem with aim), and one marked failure. There was much mopping up, but much praise when he finally succeeded.

This evening, we went to the Scrabble club for the first time in over a month. John has been, of course, but with Jamie and me recovering from jet lag, and then Jamie having a slightly off day, this was the first good night since our return. Jamie enjoyed running around playing with the shuffleboard sticks and other things, but was tired by 9:00. We read some books and Jamie did some puzzles (John clocked him doing the sixteen-piece puzzle at a minute and a half, and the twenty-four piece puzzle at seven minutes, unassisted), and ran around some more. He was pretty tired, but didn't drop off right away in the car. My mom called at that moment, and I offered Jamie the chance to talk with "Raggie." He knew right away who it was, and smiled a huge smile when he heard her on the phone. I took the phone away to talk withy my mom, and Jamie protested "More Raggie." I gave the phone back to him, and they chatted away for a few minutes, as Jamie chirped his little "Raggie!" and "Yes!" back to Mom. She'd been asking him if he was in the car, and if he'd been playing Scrabble, and he answered his bright "Yes!" to each question accurately. We were so very pleased, and tickled, by his reaction to her voice--me because Jamie has never had a conversation like that on the phone with anyone before, and Mom because...well...it's pretty obvious why. He fell asleep soon afterwards, and is snoozing beside me as I write.

2005-12-15 21:25 (Kristen) Jamie woke up this morning around 8:20, and after he was talked into getting dressed, he played in his room quietly, eating his apple, until it was almost 9:00 and it was time to go downstairs to play with Mio. He did his usual morning things, and seemed happy when John and I left to have lunch with our former tenant, Chie. We left a list of instructions on what to feed Jamie for lunch and how to get him ready for his walk, and there seems to have been some competition as to who got to take Jamie out. Ken was downtown, and went by the restaurant on his usual walk, Jamie-less. Gary and Ayami had bumped Ken out of the Jamie-walking queue, and were walking him themselves on the Danforth. Jamie was completely asleep by the time we all met up at the Second Cup.

He slept for close to three hours, played at Treasure Island while I did some Christmas shopping, and wanted to walk home in the snowstorm we were having. I was exhausted by the time we reached our street from pushing the stroller through the snow (I am out of shape), and let him play in the snow... I mean walk home from there. He wanted to be carried when we were halfway home, and our neighbour David helped me push the stroller the rest of the way while Jamie rode.

Jamie is very attached to his baby doll, and carries it tenderly around the house. He watched television with it tonight, propped up in front of him. I'm really glad to see him do it, since it shows a real empathy for smaller creatures. The funny part was when I asked him once what his baby's name was. He looked at me like I was touched, and said matter-of-factly, "Baby."

2005-12-16 20:42 (Kristen) Jamie was up a little earlier than usual, but was happy again to play quietly in his room, eating an apple, while I got dressed and ready to go downstairs. He played with Gary and Mio for most of the morning, then we went over to Browning for lunch.

He had a good lunch, and went for a walk with Ken in the afternoon. We were supposed to see Dr. Kennedy at 2:45, but it turned out that we were to see her this morning; we met with her in the hall, and got our question about Jamie's immunization answered anyway, which was good. Then it was home, and a quiet day and evening spent at home, en famille. It was a quiet day, but a good one.

(John) Jamie is speaking in short sentences and longer strings of words these days. He can reliably string together two, three and often four words, and will sometimes try to put together eight, nine or ten. The shorter expressions are fairly easy to understand if you are fluent in English, Japanese and Japanese baby talk. The longer ones you can often guess at, though since the grammar is somewhat freeform and the really long sentences get padded out with "beebly-beebly" in the middle (I'm not kidding), they're trickier.

I had him practising with the tong-style learner's chopsticks that we bought for him in Tübingen, and he can eat with them at least as neatly as he can eat ice cream out of a bowl with a spoon.

2005-12-17 20:30 (John) Jamie's fighting a cold and slept in until 9:15 this morning, to our amazement. We weren't surprised that we slept in too. Jamie and I left for the market late in the morning, and he happily ate his way around it as usual, finishing off a samosa, some kielbasa, some figs and some pizza. The highlight for him was finding a supply of lollipops at Family Foods that the grocer's young son had left for other little children. He fell asleep licking the lollipop and spent the afternoon in the car seat while Kristen and I drove around downtown Christmas shopping. As I write this, he is draped across my typing hands watching a Thomas the Tank Engine DVD after eating a good dinner (my chicken Stroganoff and Kristen's cauliflower), and I'm hoping an early evening will do us all some good.

2005-12-18 20:50 (John) Jamie spent the morning at home, in good spirits despite his nose running copiously. I took him out for his afternoon walk, had a long talk with him about how we were walking on the Danforth and not going for a ride on the subway (it was really a conversation, and he did eventually accept that I couldn't handle the big stroller down the stairs with a shoulder inflamed from shovelling snow) and he fell asleep just in time for us to turn into the Second Cup so I could work for a couple of hours. He was woken up by a child who didn't want to get into his stroller (irony) as his nap approached the two-hour mark, and after fortifying himself with carrot cake and Rice Krispie squares we spent half an hour seeing what the snow had done to the church playground across the street. We discussed and demonstrated the dangers of icy pavement and enjoyed kicking the crust of snow off the play structures. The outing was eventually cut short by the need for a diaper change (always an extra ordeal in snow pants weather), and we headed home after that.

Kristen made polenta and apple sausages for dinner. Jamie's appetite is suffering as it usually does when he can't taste his food. He was happy to munge on apple slices, and had his first glass of egg nog, which he has decided should be called "egg juice".

2005-12-18 23:20 Jamie was still awake when I came to bed, so Kristen went to take a shower while I tried to get him to fall asleep. After a few ideas that didn't work (talking about Christmas just gets him excited), I started telling him a story about going on a train trip in the land of Thomas the Tank Engine. I was on my back with my knees bent, so Jamie climbed up onto my stomach and pretended my legs were a train seat back and gradually drifted asleep, interjecting occasionally to add important details to the story, like how scary and dark the tunnel was, or the significance of yellow warning lines at the edge of a platform.

2005-12-19 22:03 (Kristen) I didn't see much of Jamie after he woke up at 9:00 this morning, as I had some volunteering at our local political incumbent's office that I'd promised to do. One of the other workers and I had a good time talking about our sons (one month apart in age) and the fascinating world of Thomas the Tank Engine. I made it back to say goodbye to Jamie as he went out for his afternoon stroll with Ken.

Ken wheeled Jamie into the Second Cup around 3:00, with the latter crying and upset. It turns out that Jamie Did Not Sleep At All, a very unusual sitation, and I think that I'd have to dig pretty far back through these entries to find the last time he did that. We fed him a krispie*, and took a sleepy-looking child back out into the cold while I did some local shopping, but nada. Finally, I walked Jamie down to our local library, but still no sleep from our boy. Instead he roared about the library, being shushed by his mother. We read a book or two, but he was just too wired to concentrate on anything other than running frenetically everywhere. John came to pick us up around 5:15, and we piled into the car to either go home or shop.

Jamie fell asleep in the warm, dark car at 5:20, just as we were coming to the intersection of our street and the northbound street we were on. So, we went to do our shopping, where John did what he had to do while I stayed in the car with Jamie. We made it to Browning at 6:30, where Jamie woke up as we opened the car doors (the overhead light did it). He was very upset for the first half hour after he woke up, but eventually brightened up into his normal self. He ran about and played with trains, played with Daniel and Ross, and consented to eat a little. His weird behaviour of the day was when he decided to drink his milk and his apple juice through separate straws from separate glasses At The Same Time. Just... yuck.

We're all home now, and Jamie is playing with John. My mom, Anna, Owen, and Rebecca called to talk with Jamie, and he pronounced each name correctly, and with great glee ('Raggie,' of course, being the correct pronunciation of 'Grammie.') Everyone had a good time, and Jamie then ran off to sit on his dad. Bath time in three minutes and counting, and I have no idea when he'll actually sleep tonight, given the lateness of his nap. Wish us luck!

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

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