Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 1 No. 14

2006-01-10 12:08 (John) Tai-Tai called while Jamie and I were sharing our breakfast cereal this morning, so I put the phone down flat on the table and activated the speakerphone. Jamie and my mom started chatting about food, and then before I could stop him, Jamie offered my mom a soggy raisin from the cereal, smushing* it into the screen before picking it back up and eating it himself, just the way he does when he offers food to his beloved diesels.

Anything worth doing is of course worth doing twenty times, as Jamie proceeded to demonstrate. I don't think we'll be doing the same thing tomorrow though.

I have belatedly added a few photos from our London trip to the blog. Interested readers can look back at November 17, 18 and 20 for some photos that our friend Kate Doe took of Jamie while out for walks with Laraine.

2006-01-10 20:49 (Kristen) Mio was sick again today, and will likely be feeling pretty rotten again tomorrow, as she fights off the Killer Cold. Icky icky icky. I'm almost over it, and it's been almost two weeks, but I hope that Mio can kick it faster than that. Jamie saw her for the first time in a day or so tonight, and ran to her full force and locked his arms around her legs before dragging her off to play trains. I think that he was just happy to see her, and needed a little assurance before he'd let her go.

2006-01-11 23:39 (Kristen) I forgot to mention yesterday that Jamie talked John into buying him two balloons at It's My Party, the local party (natch) store. Jamie chose the colours--pale blue and pale pink. It made John feel a little self-conscious walking down the street, but had Jamie to blame if necessary. Jamie then cleverly manoeuvered his dad into taking him to Treasure Island, where Jamie played with trains and John bought Play-Doh for lots of fun.

Today, we got up early to go and visit Hakobune Daycare, where we have been thinking of sending Jamie. Jamie was interested in the toys, rather than with the other kids, and was somewhat startled when they started a song circle with piano. He did join them for snack time, however, and was nice and polite as he sat with the other children. He was interested when the other boys went to the bathroom after snack time, however, and did imitate them to a degree. It's good for him to have other role models his own age who are interested in going to the bathroom. Finally, we left, and he wasn't that interested in going. John will take him tomorrow for a first morning, and we hope very much that all will go well. The day care operators seem very nice (an older Japanese couple and a younger assistant), the kids were all very well behaved, and the place was clean. They speak exclusively Japanese, and I think that Jamie will be happy there, interacting with other children. Now I just have to get over my maternal separation anxiety.

Jamie ate on the way back home, after we did an errand or two, and then fell asleep after watching the backhoe across the street for a bit. He slept for three and a half hours (and would have slept longer, if I hadn't awakened him), and was utterly full of beans for the rest of the night. He ran about at the Scrabble club, playing with the games in the games room, and seeing how fast he could run. We read a few books, and John tells me that Jamie was playing with an older boy (about eight) at the pool table at one point in the evening. The boy was playing pool badly, but putting up with Jamie rolling the balls back at him and then (accidentally) shooting them back at Jamie. Jamie kept saying "thank you! thank you!" to the boy, incessantly, while wearing a large grin. John finally told the boy that Jamie would only stop if the boy said "You're welcome." The boy thought about it for a minute or two, then said in a sullen, eight-year-old tone of voice, "You're welcome." And, of course, Jamie stopped. We have ways of making you be polite...

He stayed awake on the car ride home, but slept once we got inside, around 10:15. Tomorrow, we get up at 7:30 to get Jamie all ready for day care. Groan.

2006-01-12 20:43 (Kristen) We got up nice and early this morning to get Jamie all ready for his first day at Hakobune. I got up before him, and so managed to get breakfast ready and his clothes laid out before he woke up. Then it was the whirlwind breakfast, and he and John were out of the house on time at 8:15. It was apparently a good thing that they left early, as rush hour traffic turned a twenty minute trip into something much longer. I'll let John tell the rest of the story.

(John) I took Jamie in the big Zooper (stroller), correctly predicting that the buses on Broadview would not be stopping two bus stops from the subway station to take on new passengers, so we made it quickly to Broadview station in five minutes. We then had to wait for three subways before I found one with enough space that I could - taking advantage of the wedge shape of the tricycle stroller - force us aboard. And at Spadina station, I should have known better than to take the escalator up from the subway platform to the streetcar platform, since at that hour the queue for the streetcar reaches back to the top of that escalator. A brisk walk down Spadina and we were there only five minutes late, which didn't seem to matter because we were the first ones there.

Mr. and Mrs. Sasaki helped Jamie settle in, and I observed mostly at a distance for 45 minutes, interjecting only occasionally to help interpret some of his more cryptic utterances. Mrs. Sasaki got Jamie to bring all the box bricks across the room to build the elevated railway, which he managed to do four (!) at a time, yelling "takusan! (lots!)". After I left to go and shop and fret on College Street, Jamie apparently cried twice asking for me (and was quickly placated with Thomas trains), but when I came back a little before noon he was not especially interested. He instructed me to take off my coat and then went back to playing with some trains. I eventually had to lure him out of the day care with food, and we lunched in the church hallway. All in all it went better than I thought it would. His Japanese language skills are certainly appropriate for his age, and his separation anxiety is minimal when he's kept stimulated with food and toys. Jamie was a little edgy from all the new experiences, but he's resilient, and quietly enjoying being at home now.

On the subway on the way home, the loudspeaker announced a breakdown at Warden Station. Jamie excitedly told me that Gordon and the Breakdown Train (both characters from Thomas the Tank Engine) were at the station. I gently corrected him that it was Warden, not Gordon, and he equally gently but firmly corrected me back. "Gordon." He's more stubborn than I am.

(Kristen) When I caught up with John and Jamie at 1:00, they were waiting on the corner for Ken to come and take Jamie for a walk. Jamie had been asking about me, so I went with Ken and held Jamie's hand until he fell asleep... conveniently outside the Second Cup. Jamie slept for a little less than an hour and a half, and when he woke up (almost instantly after Ken dropped him off), I took him over to Treasure Island for a little while. Then it was home, and Jamie (who had wanted me to carry him the whole way back) ditched me in favour of Gary, whom he had not seen all day. We played, watched some of Ice Age, ate dinner, and then had a small excursion to the local Dairy Queen to celebrate the hot weather (+8 C in January? Unreal). Jamie ran around and burned off all the calories he gained by eating some of everyone's ice cream, then we came home. Gary went with us, exchanging child wrangling for a banana split. I should go rescue him from Jamie, who is stuck to him like glue.

2006-01-13 21:55 (John) Jamie's first words as he woke up this morning were the auspicious "Please Day-Care?". We made it to Hakobune more or less on time, whereupon he said "Papa no work". Uh-oh. I corrected him: "Papa work, Jamie play." He offered "Jamie work, Papa work?" and we settled on "Papa play, Jamie play". I tried leaving after 30 minutes, but he grew teary. I tried again at 45 minutes, and he faked a potty incident, then when we both were out in the hall tried to persuade me to join his escape bid. At the one-hour mark, I told him I had to go look for his lunch, and left the room. He pondered my plan (and the cars that he was playing with) for five seconds, then ran after me and pounded his little fists on the metal door while yelling at the top of his lungs "Papa! Paaaaa-paaaaa!" I opened the door briefly, thinking incorrectly that reminding him of the (faked) need to arrange his lunch would settle him, and spent a very long five minutes getting everything together to leave for the morning while listening to Jamie screaming.

When I returned at 11:45, a woman who was picking up her daughter for the first time was trying the door, and asking if it was normally locked. I said I wasn't sure, as it was only my second time. Emi opened the door for us, at which point the woman's 18-month-old daughter, who had been quietly playing, burst into tears to (quite successfully) punish her mom. Then Emi told me that she'd had to lock the door because Jamie had managed to figure out how to turn the fairly stiff, round doorknob, which had previously been thought to be beyond the ability of potential escapees, and twice managed to escape custody and run screaming "Papa!" to the top of the stairs.

We ate a fairly quiet lunch together in the hall, joined by 5-year-old Hiroki and his mom. Jamie offered Hiro one of his precious grapes, Hiro looked at it as though it were a booger. His mom said "What do you say...?" and Hiro replied "Iran! (I don't want it)". We subwayed home, met Ken at Broadview Station, and he went out for his walk relatively quietly.

I should add that yesterday Mrs. Sasaki asked if Jamie knew how to take off his clothes yet. I said no, having seen no evidence that he could, and not knowing that it was supposed to be a developmental milestone. Last night getting ready for the bath we asked him to take his own clothes off, and he managed everything without difficulty. Maybe we should be asking him to do more around the house!

2006-01-14 20:00 (Kristen) Jamie woke up at 8:20, after John left to help out at the Oshawa Scrabble tournament. He was somewhat awake, but not fully. We went down to eat, but Jamie was not that interested in eating. We managed to get some food into him by having him sit on my lap and eat my eggs before he started in on his. Apparently the eggs on the neighbouring plate are better than the ones on your own. We played together until he got bored with me and went off to find Gary. Gary found a good outlet for Jamie's string obsession by tying a plastic fish to a roll of string, and playing "fishing." This kept Jamie entertained for a good while until John got home.

(John) I took Jamie to the market, and having misunderstood how he had spent his morning, encouraged him to eat as much as he liked in his stroller. This amounted to an apple, a samosa, two inches of turkey kielbasa, two cups of grapes, the topping off my pizza and a cherry muffin. When he still appeared to be blitheringly tired but unable to fall asleep, I remembered that he needs food *and* exercise to before his afternoon nap and let him run all over the supermarket and he eventually fell asleep in the car at 14:40.

He woke up an hour later though as Kristen tried to bring him inside, and so we've had a quiet evening in, acting like a family of very tired zombies.

2006-01-15 24:00 (John) Jamie ran a mild fever last night. It felt like about 38°C (100.4°F) and it was disturbing his sleep, so we gave him some medication and he settled back down. We kept him home from swim class and play group to be on the safe side. He was not especially hungry in the morning, sucked on homemade frozen juice pops and snacked lightly. He fell asleep unexpectedly at noon, watching TV on Kristen's shoulder, and stayed asleep for almost three hours. Soon after he woke up, he vomited up all of his breakfast, necessitating a bath for Kristen and Jamie and laundry and disinfection duty for me. He watched Totoro, had a very messy diaper, and then gradually felt better as the afternoon and evening progressed. By the time I got back from barbecuing for Daniel and Ross, he had apparently eaten a fair amount of soft food, and seemed to be feeling better.

2006-01-16 21:01 (Kristen) We got Jamie to sleep early last night, on the theory that he was still recovering from his GI infection. It backfired when Jamie was awake at 6:30, crabby as all get out. We had three major meltdowns before 8:00, which were enjoyed by the entire household, over such important issues as not knocking on Gary's door to wake him at 7:00, and if it was permissible to eat honey toast in the living room (compromise: yes, if Mummy feeds it to you). I was pretty glad when Mio took over at 9:00.

Jamie apparently spent most of the morning playing with trains, and ate a moderately good lunch. He slept for over two hours, and then met up with me at the doctor's office. John, who had taken him out for his walk, said that Jamie was desperately unimpressed with him when John started pushing him away from the local toy store (and its Thomas the Tank Engine table), and was not mollified by being told that he was going to see me. "No Mummy! No Mummy!" He got not happier in the doctor's office, when I shared my Orangina with him but drank the last bit myself. He cried for the Orangina for five minutes, and Dr. Kennedy was surprised--she said that she'd never seen him so crabby before, and thinks that he's fighting off another cold. It's either that, or the lingering effects of yesterday's illness. Be that as it may, it was a challenging day. We went home, and watched some "bull" ("Bully for Bugs," an old Bugs Bunny cartoon that Gary found for Jamie and that he finds hilarious), and a new Thomas the Tank Engine DVD, with "Thomas and the Jet Engine," another new favourite.

He was in a better, if still contrary, mood when we went to John's parents' place for dinner, and had some Indian food--a traditional meal on the night before John's parents depart for Mexico. He watched a show on television called something like "How Clean Is Your House?", which features exceptionally messy homes being cleaned by two women with sequined rubber gloves. Jamie was horrified, and kept talking about "messy" for some time. We came home around 8:45, and Jamie is now in the bath with John. I am praying for a longer sleep tonight!

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

Back to Vol. 1 No. 13, or up to Jamie Chew's Web Log Archive. or forward to Vol. 1 No. 15.