Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 1 No. 26

2006-04-04 20:35 (Kristen) We got up late this morning (but perhaps not in non-Daylight-Savings-Land) , had a good breakfast, and headed out to a doctor's appointment. Jamie had fun playing with some other children there, and was very good before we whisked ourselves off to Browning for lunch. Then it was in the stroller for a walk, where Jamie slept for an hour before being woken up by a jackhammer. Ah, the sounds of spring.

I came down to relieve John, and took Jamie to the park to go down the "whee." He, instead, ran around a tree, investigated the sand pit, and grabbed the hand of a girl named Emma and made her run around with him for a while. He did eventually complain that he was cold, and so I wrapped him in his blanket and came home. We made it just in time, as a snow squall moved through just as we got home, and I hurriedly helped Trifina (our cleaning lady) pull in all the laundry off the line. Ack!

Jamie spent the rest of the day watching a little Thomas, reading a lot of Thomas books (he, somewhat disturbingly, asks to watch a book, not to read it. Working on this), and playing with whatever and whoever was around. He ate a big dinner, and his insides seem to finally (please! no jinx!) be back to normal. John is finally sick, however, and we hope that it's just a light touch of something and not the stomach virus showing up a week and a half late. We are all going to bed early tonight, and we may actually be in bed and asleep half an hour earlier than usual. Yay us!

2006-04-05 20:33 (Kristen) If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. I slept very badly last night and wasn't a ray of sunshine today. Jamie woke up badly, and needed much calming before he was ready for the day. Perhaps picking up on the fact that I was not in a particularly good mood, he was a little more inclined to need closer attention, and we had one fight about having to wash hands after he picked his nose. Then it was lunch time, and while he didn't eat a huge amount, it seemed enough.

He napped for two hours, and I met him and John at the Second Cup. Jamie was on his second cup of hot chocolate, as he had insisted on carrying the cup to the table. That was fine; he managed to do so without spilling; except that he knocked it over when trying to get the straw out of the little paper cover it comes in. So, it was back for another one. He's very much one for doing things himself lately: feeding himself, dressing and undressing himself, climbing up into his stroller, and doing things at his own pace. It's taking a lot of patience on my part, particularly in regards to the latter, but we're working it out. Surprisingly, it's the most frustrating when he refuses to do things that he can do: climbing up the stairs, brushing his teeth, and so on. We're going through a "developmental stage," where he has to test the rules to make sure that they're the same as they were, and to see what might have changed. I just wish that I felt better, so that I had more patience to deal with this particular phase.

(John) I took Jamie to the Scrabble club without Kristen for the first time, as Kristen was not feeling well enough to go or to stay home with Jamie. Jamie thought it was a marvellous adventure, and enjoyed four hours of my mostly undivided attention. (Wesley Solmon was a great help looking after him while I did the pairings for each round.) We ate dinner, played air hockey, Connect Four, dominoes and Operation, all with modificiations of the rules suitable for a toddler. Mostly that meant doing without any rules except the ones that Jamie came up with. "Papa plays with the red pieces, Jamie plays with the black ones." "Jamie stands at this end of the table." etc. During the Scrabble club's second round, we sat and read and reread books together. He's very much enjoying some little Thomas the Tank Engine books I found on eBay.

2006-04-06 20:50 (Kristen) We slept in this morning, for the first time in a while. I cracked an eye open at 8:45, and realized that Jamie was (in theory) due at Hakobune in less than fifteen minutes. Then I thought to myself that everyone needed the sleep more than they needed to be on time. Jamie woke up a few minutes after me, had breakfast, and John came down a little later to have his own breakfast and to drive Jamie to daycare. It sounds like Jamie had a great day, part of which included going outside with the class. John asked him what happened, and Jamie said that he fell down a big hole and that the ambulance had to come and take him to the hospital. There was a little hole in the sidewalk where some bricks were being replaced, so we suspect that Jamie may have just tripped, or was enjoying telling John a story. He's got a great imagination.

They came home around 1:20, and Jamie set out with a book and a cookie in hand with Ken. Apparently Jamie finished the one he had quickly (it was a little cookie), and insisted on having another before he'd go to sleep. Ken kindly bought him one, and Jamie fell asleep with cookie crumbs on his coat and some red icing around his mouth. In the end, the cookie must have been a good idea because he slept for three hours, quite solidly. I took him to the park on the way home (he's really enjoyed the spring weather), and he played around for a bit. He is getting quite adept at climbing, although the slides are still his favourites. I finally got him to come home around 6:00, but not to go in: he saw Clare from two doors down, and insisted on going to play with her. He played with Clare and her brother, Iain, until close to 7:00, when they went in for dinner, and I called John to help me convince Jamie to come inside. Even after that, it took another fifteen minutes (and a darkening sky and dropping temperature) before Jamie came in for dinner.

We're finished dinner (miso soup, egg, rice, and salad), and Jamie is watching Panda Go Panda! with Gary and Ayami. We'll be off to bed soon, and having another early night so that we can wake up at a decent time for Hakobune tomorrow.

2006-04-07 19:40 (John) I got up early to go to the lab for routine blood test. Early for me these days means before Jamie gets up. By the time I was back, Jamie was up and ready for breakfast, and we managed to get to Hakobune late but much earlier than yesterday. It was raining hard (and continued to do so all day) and Jamie was most insistent that his head stay dry, by a combination of hood and umbrella.

He was happy to arrive at day care and was greeted with a cheery chorus of "Jamie!" from his classmates. He waved me a happy goodbye and sent me on my way. I lay down in the car waiting for my naturally low blood pressure to come back up to safe levels. When I came back to pick up Jamie, he was reading a book about Japanese mass transit vehicles with a friend, and as usual I was only able to get him to leave the room by luring him out with food.

We had lunch with Hiro in the hall, and Jamie ate quite a lot of Nupur's butter chicken, grapes and apples. Jamie was disappointed that the church library was closed, but I learned that they are regularly closed on Fridays. He wasn't especially sleepy when he got in the car, and he was wide awake when we got home. What with the pouring rain Ken wasn't able to walk Jamie, and Kristen (who was up all night with a bad cough) wasn't feeling up to it either.

Kristen gave us a box of cookies for the walk, dressed up Jamie in what he calls his "duck suit" (a bright yellow MEC rain suit) and sent us on our way. When we got to Pape and Danforth twenty minutes later, he insisted on getting out of his stroller, claiming to have had a poo. We ran for the nearest Starbucks, where it turned out that he was just severely overheating from having a shirt, a sweatshirt and a jacket on beneath his rain suit. I stripped him down and let him cool off and was about to set back out into the pouring rain to try to get him to sleep when he caught sight of some "caramel shot brownies". I bought four of them, since he had already eaten all the cookies.

Jamie managed to eat three of them (minus what ended up on his face) and his eyelids started to droop with satiety. He was still fighting sleep by the time I got to Greenwood Avenue, which is the farthest east I've ever walked, and as I ran into my friend Alison at that point, I optimistically turned around and started walking back west. Alison kindly sheltered me with her umbrella and Jamie managed to fall asleep at 14:50 when we got back to Pape St.

From there I rushed to the Second Cup to try to warm up and get some work done, and managed to at least achieve the latter while Jamie slept for two hours. Jamie woke up after the first hour for a sip of apple juice and fell back asleep. After the second hour he amazingly needed more sustenance. He took me over to the counter and ordered a hot chocolate with whipped cream himself, then insisted on carrying it the length of the restaurant without spilling any.

We had left the house with four books, but had made the mistake of taking one but not both of our Thomas the Tank Engine books dealing with the incident of James and the troublesome trucks. Jamie is in a Rashomon-like mood and always wants to read both versions of the story. I turned this into a good thing by telling him we could go across the street to Book City to look for more books.

We actually crossed the street three times as Jamie had a poo in the middle of the street, for the second day in a row. But once we got settled in at the bookstore, Jamie spent a happy half hour reading books, not all of which were Thomas the Tank Engine books.

At 18:00, Kristen called to tell us it was time for dinner, and so I brought him over to meet her at Daniel's house. He watched the not entirely age-appropriate Rurouni Kenshin (Samurai X) with Daniel, while intermittently shouting "Oh no, people!" whenever there was a sword fight.

2006-04-08 21:37 (Kristen) We've been trying to teach Jamie the days of the week using The Very Hungry Caterpillar. On Saturday, the caterpillar overeats and gets a stomachache (about eight items, all of which Jamie knows by heart and in order), while Jamie goes to the Market and eats his way through the Market (hopefully without a stomachache!). (John: samosa, kielbasa, lollipop, apple, pizza, lollipop, inari-zushi, apple juice, no stomachache but a big diaper) John took Jamie to the Market today while I went to the library and had a few research hours. He called at half past three to say that Jamie had finally dropped off, after spending the time after 1:30 being very tired, and lying on the ground complaining that he was tired, but refusing to sleep. He finally did fall asleep after a bowel movement. Yay (a very tired yay on John's part).

John picked me up, and we went to the Loblaws. John parked in the parking lot, and I went in to pick up a few groceries. We drove home, I took the groceries in and put them away, and John stayed with Jamie until he woke up. John says that he slept for two hours, but I think that it may have been a little longer. Mind you, I was pretty tired myself, and not the best judge of time. (John: Jamie slept for 1:58.) Jamie was a little out of sorts when he woke up, and wanted to see Gary very badly. Gary wasn't home, so we worked hard to keep him from melting down too badly over it. A wagon ride and a bunch of Thomas books later, Jamie was happy to munch on carrots and cucumbers (John: I think he's teething) and read books. He watched a little television afterwards (and asked to be fed some Ethiopian chicken stew from Mocha Mocha), and consented (grudgingly) to brush and floss his teeth while John read to him.

He's in the bath now, although it takes longer to get him there than it used to. He insists on undressing himself, but enjoys dragging the whole process out as long as possible. He also enjoys asking for the things that we rarely if ever deny him (books, food) when we want him to do something that he doesn't want to. He's a little too smart.

2006-04-09 20:08 (Kristen) John had a Scrabble tournament to direct and play at in Missisauga today, so it was a Jamie and Mom Day. Jamie woke up in a good mood, and the day started well. We had some breakfast, played with trains, did a little puzzle, and played at the park. Jamie had a lollypop that Trifina brought for him (she was cleaning John's parents' house, in anticipation of their return tomorrow), which kept him happy for a good while, and enjoyed pulling the wagon around.

He had lunch, and played with Gary for an hour before we set out for out walk. Jamie has been falling asleep quite late, and rather than fight it, I decided to let him. He fell asleep at 2:30, and slept for an hour before waking up. Even the magic krispie square didn't put him back to sleep, and so we stayed at the Second Cup, cuddling and drinking hot chocolate for a while. Then we played at the little park across the street briefly before going to let Trifina go home and lock up the house. It was a long and leisurely walk back to our house, where we arrived just in time to meet John. Jamie and John vacuumed out the car, and visited with our neighbours, Frank and Rosemary. Jamie was very polite, and happy to run around.

Inside, he played a little, and ate a good dinner (the first good meal of the day). Now he's watching a little Panda go Panda before his bath tonight.

2006-04-10 22:45 (John) Jamie got up earlyish this morning, at around 7:00 A.M. He didn't really wake up until half an hour later, when I got an apple into him. I'm about 60% sure that he's teething, based on drool flux, crankiness levels and some behavioural backsliding.

Kristen and I looked after him until Gary got up, then Gary played with him until lunch, when everyone went to Browning. For the first time in nearly a week, Jamie slept a "regular" 13:30-15:30 nap. He woke up at the Second Cup with me as usual, ate a Rice Krispie square, arranged four blue teaboxes into a square and said in English and Japanese "Papa, look: a blue square", then had not one but two afternoon poos in quick succession. While being changed out of the first one, he told me as he often does that he is afraid of falling off of the change table. Today he did so extremely politely, using the "desu" form of the adjective: "Papa, Jamie kowai desu." I have no idea where he picks these things up. He can be pretty polite in English too, what with his "No thank you"s and "Yes please"s.

Kristen took him to Treasure Island, and Gary, Ayami and I met them on the way back. We took turns carrying him and luring him home, as he was quite a tired and floppy bunny. He played quietly with Tom and Ayami before and after dinner, and finally perked up when I returned from visiting my parents (just back from Mexico, too close to Jamie's bedtime for us to visit en famille) with mangoes. Jamie hadn't had a decent ataulfo* mango in a couple of months, so he hoovered one and a half, stopping only because we divided the other half mango four ways. He was a fairly good boy getting ready for bed, and I hope he sleeps well tonight.

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

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