Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 1 No. 29

2006-04-25 23:38 (Kristen) Jamie woke up close to 9:00, and had a quiet morning in his pajamas while John and I started to finish up our packing for our trip to Boston and Long Island. When we were playing, I managed to get a look into his mouth, finally, and found the new molar that I suspected had been causing Jamie grief. It's half-way through, and very white and sharp-looking.

Gary took him to Browning for lunch, and we followed soon afterwards. Jamie ate a good lunch, and despite some initial resistance, agreed to go for his walk with Ken. He slept for an hour and a half, waking up just as he was wheeled into the Second Cup. He demanded (and received) a hot chocolate, and drank most of my lime soda again. I took him around with me on some errands, and then to Treasure Island. He enjoyed himself there (as usual), and then John called to say that I should drop him off at his parents' house and get some work done at home before dinner. Yay! Jamie had a good time in the back yard grazing on vegetables, and John and he came to greet me as I was rounding the corner onto Playter. Nothing like your son coming at you with a big hug out of the blue to make a person feel good.

Jamie ate a big dinner, possibly because he hadn't snacked earlier on anything more substantial than a guava. He played the piano (he resolutely calls it the 'panayo'), watched a little television, and rubbed his father's shoulders. We came home to Gary and Ayami, who played with him while we got him ready for the bath. He fell asleep late, and it'll be a long day tomorrow as we drive to Montreal. Wish us luck.

2006-04-26 23:38 (John) I got up before Kristen and Jamie and went to pick up our rental for the week, a red PT Cruiser (whee). Gary entertained Jamie while we loaded the car, and we were eventually on the road at 11:45 A.M. We drove for an hour keeping Jamie entertained by pointing out trains and feeding him lunch. Then he fell asleep for an hour, which was just about enough time to make it to my brother's house in Kingston. I took a nap there while Jamie played with Ian's trains and trebuchet, and we were back on the 401 an hour and a half later, including a stop at an electronics store to pick up a patch cable to connect the DVD player to the Cruiser's car stereo.

We amused Jamie for the next hour by feeding him more, playing with a magnetic doodle set, observing more trains, and singing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” a few hundred times. We stopped where we thought was the halfway point around Prescott and let Jamie run around a bit until it started to rain, then put Madagascar on the DVD player thinking that it would last us to Montreal. It did last us until the first of a few traffic jams in the greater Montreal conurbation, and we weren't too far into a second showing by the time we got to Justin's office to pick up his house key.

When we arrived at Justin's residence, Jamie was tired and a bit cranky from too much disruption of routine and also because the promised and much hyped playground outside was soaking wet and not available for play. Kristen looked after him while he ate some curry and watched “Spirited Away”. We got him to bath and to bed with only a little more effort than usual, and to sleep with aa lot more work than usual. We'll try to get on the road a little earlier tomorrow and hope that an earlier arrival will make for an easier day.

2006-04-27 22:38 (John) We're safely here in Westford, but busy putting Jamie to bed. More later. Okay, now it's later. We didn't sleep too well at Justin's, so we were all pretty tired when we got up. Kristen and Jamie got up and dressed at 7:00 A.M. and went shopping for bagels. Jamie walked all the way to the bagel store and back, even slower on the return than on the way as he was delayed by having to eat bagels. Jamie thinks Montreal bagels and cream cheese are the best, even better than edamame*. I think he ate four bagels today, but I'm getting ahead of the story.

By the time they made it back to the large playground outside Justin's condo, Justin and I were loading the car. Jamie and I spent a while playing in the park, climbing, swinging, running, and generally trying to burn off energy while carrying a bagel in each hand. He got into the car with a minimum of fuss, then ate two and a half bagels before sinking into a carbohydrate stupor, or possibly a nap, for half an hour. He woke up a little before the U.S. border, which we crossed with little incident: just a brief interview while a dog sniffed around our car.

Jamie has been asking every now and then if he can go home, and it seems to just mean that he is tired and wants to sleep. So I tell him what our next exciting destination is and that I'll wake him up when we get there if we wants to close his eyes, and he's fine with that. On our way to our first rest stop in Burlington, he was fresh and awake though, and played with his Dora the Explorer magnetic doodle set while waiting for us to arrive at our destination, the Ben and Jerry's ice cream shop at Church and Cherry.

We took a little detour along the waterfront when we arrived in Burlington, ending up at the end of a long access road where we found a father teaching his son and daughter how to fish. We got out to stretch our legs, and Jamie, while quite reasonably afraid of falling in the cold, deep waters of Lake Champlain, was fascinated with seeing a real fishing rod for the first time. (He spends a lot of time playing with a toy fishing line at home, dragging a fish through several rooms and then reeling it in.) We spent ten or fifteen minutes chatting with the family and then told Jamie it was back in the car for ice cream.

I mistakenly dropped Kristen and Jamie off five blocks south of their destination, but Kristen said it was good that he got the exercise. Jamie had some chocolate ice cream, but not as much as usual, perhaps because he was full of bagels. After ice cream, we lined up for 45 minutes (!) to get excellent dumplings from a Chinese street vendor who splits her year between Burlington and China. We bought gas at what works out to CAD 0.80/L (compared to 1.05/L prices back home), apples, grapes and carrots for the remainder of the trip and then hit the road again.

Jamie started asking about going home again, so at Kristen's suggestion I rolled down the windows a bit and the fresh breeze put him right to sleep. Every time he stirred, I cracked open the windows again, and he slept that away for an astounding 3.5 hours, all the way to Westfield, including one 15-minute rest stop when I fell asleep myself!

We checked in, went for a swim in the hotel pool, grabbed a quick bite to eat at the hotel restaurant and managed to get a surprisingly tired Jamie to sleep in a crib ("Jamie like a little baby!") at 11:00 P.M.

2006-04-28 23:27 (Kristen) Jamie slept wonderfully well in his crib last night, which we had pressed up against our bed so that I could touch Jamie's hand if he stirred. However, he only slept for eight and a half hours, and was awake around 7:00 again. Sherrie, who is putting us up in her suite, had arrived at 5:00 or a little after, and was a Pretty Tired Camper, managed to sleep through the Toddler With No Volume Control. John had to wake her at 9:00, when she gave Jamie her present: a Spiderman Go-Cart (which has a Spiderman action figure in a go-cart that moves when you pull it back). He spent a good part of the morning with Spiderman, and learning the theme song to the old cartoon ("Spiderman, Spiderman, does whatever a spider can"). It's one of the few songs that I can remember all the words to, and I'm not likely to forget them soon at this rate.

The morning was also spent playing with his magnadoodle, and at the pool. He loves the pool, but gets tired after half an hour. It doesn't stop him from wanting to stay in the pool, and it was very difficult to get him out of it this morning. Mom was turning blue, but he didn't care: more pool! We found John at the Scrabble room to get his lunch order, and picked up Chinese food at an upscale Chinese place just down the road. Since this is outlying suburban Massachussetts, sidewalks are things that happen elsewhere and I kept Jamie in the stroller until we got there. We got the food, came back, and ate some excellent chicken with eggplant before I finally got Jamie to sleep, around 2:10. He slept for two and a half hours, and woke up badly so we cuddled for another half an hour before he was ready to start the rest of his day.

He was tired, and we did comfort activities like watch Thomas the Tank Engine, play with Spiderman, and set up his trains. John came up for dinner, and we had leftovers from lunch. I took Jamie swimming one more time, and he was the one to get tired first, although he wouldn't admit it. We came back to the room around 9:10, for the ritual tooth flossing and brushing. I saw something suspicious in his mouth, got him to open wide, and found yet another new tooth: the bottom right, the first time a tooth has come in out of order. Usually he moves in a counter-clockwise movement through the mouth, ending with the bottom right, but the top right is officially the last one. Yay! Then it was bathtime (with more renditions of "Spiderman"), three books, and asleep in the crib a short time later. I'm planning my day around his waking up at 7:00, which means he'll wake up at 9:00. Sigh. Tomorrow: a trip by commuter rail into Boston proper.

2006-04-29 23:32 (Kristen) Jamie woke up at 7:30, and we managed to get him dressed and downstairs to the breakfast buffet. Jamie enjoyed the waffles and honey toast, and the joy of feeding himself in a restaurant. We got into the car and John drove us to the commuter rail station in Lowell, fifteen minutes away. Jamie was thrilled from the outset, as a freight train went through only feet away (with a fence in between, of course) from us as we got out of the car. He loved the trip into Boston, and even forgave me taking us one stop in the wrong direction on the T. I asked him if he was having fun, and I got the sunniest smile and a "yes!"

We met with our friend Pat at Park, and she took us to Porter Station near Harvard. Jamie was getting tired and a little overstimulated, so we spent twenty minutes running around and trying to get some sillies out. We didn't succeed well, so we went to pick up lunch at the local Japanese grocery store. We stopped off at a children's bookstore a few blocks south, which turned out to be a storefront for Barefoot Publishing, and which had a book that Jamie really liked called "Come Here, Cleo." We bought that, and continued on looking for a place to eat when we realized that Jamie had fallen asleep (it was 12:15) without lunch. Aargh. Pat and I ate lunch at the very geeky Science building at Harvard, and walked to the Fogg Museum to browse about. Jamie woke up soon after we got into the Fogg, after sleeping for an hour and a half. He was hot and hungry, but not in a mood to deal with either well. Pat watched him while I stood in a looong lineup for the bathroom at the COOP, then we took him for a play at Curious George meets Wordsworth's, a children's bookstore/toystore in Harvard Square. He calmed down in there, but it took some effort to get him out. We picked up iced tea at a lovely tea shop that I have forgotten the name of, and Jamie drank mine while we all sat in the sunshine in a little corner park, and blew bubbles with some bubble fluid and a wand that I brought for just such an occasion. We went into Schoenhoff's, where we bought a copy in Japanese of "Make Way For Ducklings," and where Jamie made Pat and me read to him from children's books in various languages. I can fake a passable Italian accent, apparently. Jamie was having trouble with his volume control again (two volumes: loud and louder) as he was excited by the books, and after a quick circuit, we left to catch the 6:00 train back to Lowell. The T was very crowded, but Jamie was good and stayed in his stroller until we got onto the commuter train. He finally got a reasonable amount of food into him, and we read "Come Here, Cleo" and "Blueberries for Sal." The funny part of that was that the conductor had not heard the story before, and was sitting nearby, listening. She was hoping, she later said, that we would get to the end before the train reached its final destination!

John picked us up, and brought us back to the hotel, where Jamie was happy to play a little with John and was entertained by a Scrabble player named Brett Constantine who is able to juggle five balls at once. Jamie was rapt as he watched, and tried to juggle two balls himself when Brett dropped them. He would hold them, grin hugely, and throw them into the air. He was also very good at getting them out from under a table for Brett. He socialized, and camed with me upstairs to dinner. It was a lovely buffet for players, and Jamie particularly enjoyed the broccoli, to the mock horror of one of our tablemates. He also ingested some cheesecake, hoping for more chocolate, and a lovely little creampuff. He met up with Cara again, who kindly lent Jamie her Leapster. Jamie loves these things, and as they are supposed to be "educational," I will likely get one for Jamie someday soon. There were plans to meet at the pool, but Jamie was just too tired and overstimulated to deal with that and everything else, so we just came back and went to bed. He decided that he wanted to fall asleep next to me rather than in his "nest," and so I let him and he is now sleeping in the crib. A quiet day, as much as possible, tomorrow.

2006-04-30 21:24 (Kristen) Jamie woke up close to 8:00 this morning in not the best of moods. It took some hard convincing to get him to go downstairs for breakfast, although he seemed to enjoy it a good deal once we got there. He was fixated on the pool, and we finally succeeded in getting there around 10:00. We spent some time there with Emma and Kai, Sherrie's niece and nephew, and in the end we spent 45 minutes there. He really didn't want to leave, but I was getting cold and he was too (although he wouldn't admit it). We spent the rest of the time until lunch playing with trains.

Jamie had some pizza for lunch, and drifted off around 2:00. He woke up at 3:30 or so, and spent some time with me and John before we packed up the car and headed out to Sherrie and Gregg's house. We'll stay here for a day or two before we go to Long Island. Sherrie showed us around the town, which is right on the Atlantic Ocean. Jamie saw the beach, and talked John into taking him to play in the sand for 45 minutes. He loved it, and played mainly with the little bulldozer that I'd brought for this possible contingency. He was horrified by the local dogs, however, who are only allowed onto the beach during the winter, and today was their last day before a beachless summer. A dog chose to pee in the sand a few metres away from Jamie, which he though was beyond the pale until he saw another dog come along, sniff where the first dog had peed, and then pee there itself. This little canine ritual was repeated a few times before Jamie's appalled eyes before they left, and the (possible) side effect has been that Jamie has been excellent at using the bathroom tonight. Even when he was wearing a diaper, he asked to use the toilet to pee. Yay!

We got Jamie away from the beach by promising him ice cream from the local ice cream shop, Captain Dusty's. We drove back to Sherrie and Gregg's with our cones and cups of ice cream, unpacked the car, and settled in. Jamie greatly enjoyed exploring their house, and had fun playing with Sherrie. We had dinner, played with the toys in Sherrie's house, including two balls with streamers and some little bean bags that yell when you drop them on the floor. Jamie thought the one that burped was hilarious, which reminded us all of a particular tenant of ours. We finally got to bed around 10:30, read our books, and Jamie went to sleep very quickly.

2006-05-01 24:09 (Kristen) We all slept well last night at Sherrie and Gregg's house, and Jamie slept on an air mattress beside our bed. He only woke up once, and once I slid down beside him he fell asleep again quickly. In the morning, he woke up by asking to hold my hand, and then he came into bed for a quick cuddle before he asked to go downstairs for breakfast. We ate, and playe for a bit, before John got up, and Jamie had fun playing with his dad for a little while. He was quite set on going to the beach, despite the blustery day, and so John took him there (Jamie refers to it as "sand") while I spent some time at a lovely local bookstore, Manchester By The Book. I bought some books for Jamie, and one or two for myself, before Sherrie came by to take me to the beach and to John and Jamie.

It was windy on the beach (which Sherrie says is called Singing Beach), and so John had dug a windbreak for Jamie in the sand. When the wind came up, Jamie would lie down inside it, and he would sit up and play with his bulldozer when the wind was light. They ended up staying for an hour and a half, and Jamie was happy to see us when we arrived. Jamie was finally admitting to being cold, and so we whisked him off to Captain Dusty's for some ice cream with skittles on top. Then it was back to Sherrie and Gregg's for lunch (grilled cheese!) before I finally got Jamie out for his walk at a quarter to two.

The coolness of the day, coupled with time on the beach, meant that Jamie slept for almost three and a half hours and we finally woke him up with anapple. Then it was more playing with trains, little slam beanbags, exercise balls, and Spiderman, which occasioned many many renditions of the Spiderman theme song. Sherrie found her copy of Cat Steven's Greatest Hits, and played Jamie "Peace Train," which he had enjoyed yesterday. We sang and danced while dinner cooked, and Sherrie made salad, and sat down to dinner. Jamie ate a good deal of manicotti, in addition to the bagels with honey and cream cheese (not at the same time) and other munchies he managed to get. The evening was quiet, and Jamie watched some Thomas and Kiki until it was time to play the "floss our teeth" game, and the "mummy's going to take your clothes off if you don't first!" game (both of which were fun tonight). Then it was bathtime, and bedtime. We've had a great time with Sherrie and Gregg, but have to get up early tomorrow to catch the ferry to Greenport, and our next destination.

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

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