Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 1 No. 15

2006-01-17 22:05 (Kristen) As our loyal readers may have inferred, Jamie has been Way Cranky for the last few days, a state which has included a few full blown toddler tantrums. We've known that something is wrong, because this just isn't his normal behaviour, "terrible twos" not withstanding. After waking up at 6:50 and dragging me downstairs, he consented to some cuddling time on the couch for two twenty-minute installments before making his rounds looking for "his people." He got John up by 8:00, which was a feat in and of itself (poor John is at the end of his rope) , and once again I was happy to pass him off to Mio and crawl off for a nap and some work.

Ken took him out for a walk, and John met up with him at the Second Cup. Then John took Jamie out to the toy store to head off another fight with He Who Has A Plan That Cannot Be Changed. They came home when Jamie started to ask for me, and when they got home he said "hi!" to me, got a hug, and ran off to find Gary and Mio. We had a a dispute over freezies in the living room, which stopped when I put him in front of the television long enough to distract him into eating a bowl of grapes and raspberries. That improved things (I remember my mother referring to the hour between 5 and 6 as "the witching hour," and I'm starting to see why).

Dinner was apple sausages with baked cauliflower with cheese, and he ate well enough. It was then that I decided to look for that tooth again... you know, the two year molar that has been "imminent" since October. No drool, but psychotic crabbiness...yes. There it was. A two year molar has broken through, and explains all. Poor guy has been beside himself with pain for two days now, but he's halfway done now, as one side has completely broken through. I've drugged him in time for the bath, so I hope that he'll sleep well tonight, and not toss and turn like he has for the past two nights. Wish him luck, poor little mite.

I should add that he successfully stood on the toilet and peed into it twice tonight (he likes standing there). We also had an amazing tickle fight with Gary, Ayami, and John that was very very funny. My sunny boy shines through.

2006-01-18 23:20 (John) Jamie has been happier since we decided he could have as many homemade popsicles as he liked, and since we switched to children's Advil from Tempra. Not sure how best to deal with the molar unless it breaks through very soon though, as he has no appetite for anything but popsicles when in pain, but then notices he's ravenously hungry as soon as we give him a painkiller. So tonight for instance when Kristen finally gave him the Advil at around 9:00 he spent an hour and a half trying to catch up for missed meals. Hmm.

Mio spent the morning looking after Jamie, then I took him out for a two-hour nap, he insisted on a visit to Treasure Island, then we went to the Scrabble club. That was our day. My parents are settling in okay into their hurricane-ravaged house; my aunt Nobuko's two-week X-ray shows her broken leg knitting well.

2006-01-19 10:30 (Kristen) Jamie slept through the night last night for the first time in four nights. I credit this to switching to Advil. I haven't stuck my fingers in his mouth today to check on the tooth's progress, but I did dose Jamie again before he went to day care. It should last until his nap is over this afternoon. After sleeping solidly for seven hours, I'm feeling positively giddy.

2006-01-19 21:23 (Kristen) Jamie made it to day-care with John this morning, and he only yelled for John for five minutes. That's because he switched to "Mummmmmyyyyy!" (mother buries face in hands). John says that he did settle in but got really irritated when anyone tried to comfort him. The piano still really startles him, possibly because it is a really loud, reach-the-back-of-the-church, kind of piano. We're going to work with him on that tomorrow. We were congratulated on dressing Jamie so well, and I admit that I've been putting some effort into it. He was wearing a new outfit that I bought for him with some Christmas money from his great aunts, and did look quite dashing.

He ran to meet me from the bus stop when he and John got off and Jamie saw me coming. He gave me kisses too, to match the ones he gave me this morning before he left. Puddle of mother. Ken came out to walk Jamie, and John went home to sleep. Jamie fell asleep about ten minutes into his walk, holding my hand while I chatted with Ken. I went back to the Second Cup to wait for them to return, and Jamie slept for just under two hours by the time he woke up and devoured a krispie. I took him to Treasure Island, where his fans were happy to see him. He got tired, or his teeth were bothering him, after an hour and I had to take him home. He didn't act up, but he couldn't make up his mind what he wanted, and was just dragging me around the store, crying. He calmed down outside, possibly because the change in scenery made it easier for him to be distracted from the pain.

We met up with John at the Second Cup, and Jamie played with a cute little terrier named Bella before we headed back. He walked most of the way back up Jackman, walking on ridges and edges, before he tired and wanted to be carried. He snacked on dinner, played train by grabbing all the people in the room and going around and around the house. I was the engine, Jamie and Gary were the "silly freight cars," and John was the caboose. Jamie ended up playing with Gary, Taka, and Mio for the rest of the night, and I'm about to go down and claim a boy for bath and bed.

2006-01-20 21:35

(John) We had more or less a rerun of yesterday, except that Jamie was feeling not quite as chipper, and was therefore a little bit noisier, clingier, and hard to please. I sure hope his tooth finishes breaking through sooner. At Hakobune he finished making his oni* mask for setsubun*. One of his classmates excitedly pointed out to his teacher that he had an invisible evil Jesus on his knapsack; I've been wondering since whether it would be better to have a visible or good one. Jamie spilled his curry on the subway ride home, but is otherwise getting to be quite good at riding public transit, and can get on and off streetcars by himself, leaving me to carry the increasingly unnecessary stroller.

After the usual nap/walk with Ken, Jamie went with Kristen to Treasure Island, then to Browning for dinner. It's an earlyish night tonight, then early to the market tomorrow so that we can deliver leaflets for Jack Layton during Jamie's nap walk.

As I write this, Jamie is in the bath with Kristen practising phonics with the foam letters. He knows all of his capital letters cold, but hasn't yet got the phonetics thing. Last night I tried spelling NO and OK for him, and when I pointed out that "OK" spelled "oh... kay...", dragging my finger slowly across the word, he put on his Stubborn Smile, dragged his finger back across the word and said "noooo...". Maybe we'll switch to Japanese, where according to custom you may read characters whatever way you want.

2006-01-21 23:14 (Kristen) Jamie woke up at 8:20, right when his medication wore off, and wanted to go downstairs. He was in a relatively good mood, and because there were some thing that I wanted and I hadn't been to the Market in a while, we all decided to go together. Jamie wasn't thrilled about getting into the car, but was more into it by the time we got there, and he was able to watch some pigeons eating grain left out for them. We made it to Nupur, who was thrilled to see him, and he wandered around the north building while I watched, and John made his purchases.

He got put out because I wanted him to sit in his stroller and eat his samosa, rather than run around and eat his samosa (choking, food everywhere, the usual maternal concerns). That elicited a storm of crying, but he seemed over it by the time we got to the south building. Then he was upset because he was asked to climb the stairs, instead of being carried up (he is more than capable of walking up the stairs, and I was tired). That set off another storm of crying that took much longer to ease. We went to the fish store, where I didn't know the routine, and set off another jag of crying, because I took him away from the lobsters. I was exhausted, crabby, and quite unwilling to ever go to the Market again by the time we made it back to the car, and set off for Loblaws.

We still only have one side of the evil molar poking through, and I am praying to any and all listening deities to get the rest of it through as soon as possible, thank you.

Jamie liked Loblaws, and ran around a good deal before melting down at the end. It was after one, and he was tired. We got home close to one thirty, when we saw Mio and Taka, who were babysitting Daniel and Ross, taking the boys to Dairy Queen. John thought that Jamie would like that, so I took Jamie along, with arrangements to meet up later. He ate a good deal of ice cream to make up for the food that he hadn't eaten earlier in the day, and fell asleep relatively quickly around 2:45. John and I walked around delivering flyers for the Jack Layton campaign, pushing Jamie along, but he was sleeping only lightly. He woke up at the 45 minute mark, and had to be pushed quickly back to sleep. I walked John home at 4:15, an hour and a half later, and was going to take Jamie back out again: but it was a moot point. Jamie was up and chatty, and John took him over to Browning to play with Daniel and Ross. I met up with them half an hour later, and Jamie and I didn't end up leaving until close to 7:30.

Dinner was two "special eggs", some broccoli, and some slivered carrots, which went down well. Gary and Ayami looked after him while I cleaned, and delivered him upstairs at 9:40. He bathed, and was slightly wound up when he got into bed. Still, it was about 10:40 when he finally fell asleep. Tomorrow we go swimming, and he seems to like that idea. We'll see about playgroup, depending upon his mood.

2006-01-22 12:45 (John) I've posted today's photos early, so that I can pack the camera and its accoutrements. Jamie went swimming for half an hour this morning, his last class before we leave early tomorrow morning, and then played at the community centre until it was time to come home for lunch. I spent the time at home packing. In the afternoon, Kristen will take Jamie out for his walk and I'll drive around doing our last errands.

We should be able to update the web site tomorrow afternoon or evening from Puerto Morelos, and I will be checking my e-mail daily while there. Our tenants will as usual be looking after our house in our absence.

2006-01-22 22:45 (John) The cab will be here in less than six hours to take us to the airport, and Kristen and Jamie are asleep. Mio and Taka ended up taking Jamie out for his walk, which freed Kristen and me up to run errands together, and let Kristen get to sleep at what would normally be a reasonable hour. We all managed to get together at Browning for a farewell barbecue, with Gary and Ayami looking after Jamie in the evening so that we could get the house in order for our departure. Jamie is very excited about the trip tomorrow. I have explained to him the itinerary, and he is enthusiastic about each step. Wish us luck.

2006-01-23 19:55 (John) Kristen and I were up at 4:00 this morning, Jamie slept in until I put him in the airport limousine car seat at 4:30. He then stayed awake apart from catnaps through the drive to the airport, U.S. Immigration (where he obligingly pitched a fit to get us through the Special Services and Crew line), the one-hour flight to Detroit, the three hour layover there, the four-hour flight to Cancun and the drive to my parents' house. He did however fall asleep at 6:00 local time (7:00 back home) on a walk to the zocalo, and we have high hopes that he will sleep until morning.

He was for the most part an extremely well-behaved traveller. He asked for Gary along the way, but we told him we couldn't go back home to get Gary because Tai-Tai was waiting for us in Mexico. He adored the intra-terminal tram system at DTW, spending perhaps two hours of the layover riding it, and the rest of the time watching it.

He seemed to remember his way around my parents' house from a year ago, which surprised me. He knew the way to the ocean, which he was very interested in seeing again, and he also dragged me into the hotel pool, having become fond of pools in his weekly swim lessons with Kristen.

The town is looking better and worse after Hurricane Wilma than I imagined. A full report and photos will follow as the trip progresses, but for now I'm off to bed myself.

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

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