Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 0 No. 30

2006-05-02 23:55 (John) We slept in a little until Sherrie woke us up to tell us our waffles were ready - what a great hostess. Jamie was not especially keen on leaving, and is coming to loathe the very notion of a red PT Cruiser, but was coaxed by the promise of riding the ferry from New London to Orient Point. Kristen was also slow to leave the house, in her case because of the first bout of morning sickness in a month or so.

We drove through heavy rain and late rush hour traffic to the first service area on the Masssachusetts Turnpike, then took a ten minute break to buy gas (the car computer said we would run out a few miles short of the ferry) and an ice cream for Jamie. Then we got back into the car and drove like a maniac, making it to New London two minutes before our reservation was to expire.

I spent the crossing asleep on a bench. Jamie apparently wandered the ferry, ate a pretzel and some watermelon, and lamented the fact that he is much too short to play racing car video games. When we got to the offices of the NSA in Greenport, Jamie had a quick tour, then went out for a long walk with Kristen, eventually falling asleep for two hours.

When he woke up, I walked with Kristen to the nearest beach, which was sodden, but afforded a good view of cormorants, dead crabs, seashells, and a wonderful wooden play structure in the shape of a boat that kept Jamie busy for quite a while.

Jane is as adept at entertaining small children as she is entertaining their parents, and dragged out box after box of toys when we came home, and didn't flinch as Jamie sent dozens of marbles under her couch and double-dipped the tapenade. Jamie ate a good dinner, watched a bit of Thomas, then went out for a walk with us (and John and Jane) to watch people fishing for squid and an idling diesel engine pulling a double-decker commuter car. One guess which he found more interesting.

At his request, he went to bed without a bath and with very little fuss. We are also delighted that he managed to make six successful visits to the bathroom today while wearing underwear, and managed a car ride and a stroller ride in underwear.

2006-05-03 22:30 We woke up around 7:30 at John and Jane's house, long after Jane had left for work, but while John was still puttering about. It took us about an hour to get ready to go, and at John's suggestion we left immediately to catch the 9:00 ferry to New London, an hour ahead of the one that we had booked.

Jamie spent the ride playing with a three-year-old boy named Ryan, while I napped on a fairly gentle crossing. Once in New London, we spent ten minutes driving around failing to stumble across the only Starbucks in the city, and instead stopped at Greene's Books and Beans to get Jamie his requested hot chocolate with whipped cream, from an extremely helpful and solicitous barista.

It took us three hours to drive up to my sister Kristina's house because of continued torrential rain, and Jamie's newfound (and highly praised) determination that he was not going to pee outside of a potty anymore and consequent refusal to pee in a diaper in his car seat. Jamie did nap for about an hour of that drive, as did Kristen.

Kristina fed and entertained us for three hours. She had laid on an extremely varied spread, as we'd neglected to mention that Jamie was an omnivorous and non-fussy eater, and in any case he was much more interested in playing with her Duplo trains (which he knew from Hakobune) and track (which were new to him). He was not especially happy to leave, but we told him it was time to go find a pool to swim in, which was loosely speaking true.

Another four hours later and a few pee breaks later, around 19:30, we finally arrived at the Radisson Hotel in Utica. I dropped Jamie and Kristen off to go swimming and went to hunt down the Minar Restaurant on French Street, the only Indian restaurant in town. The owner was chatty and friendly, the food was adequate. The sauces were actually quite good, but the chicken in the murgh makhani was mostly gristle and bone, and not especially appropriate for Jamie to eat. He enjoyed it anyway, though he was disappointed that the samosas that I had told him I would get (and had paid for) had not been included in our order. If we ever make it back here, I will ask them for the missing samosas then; I'm too tired to deal with it this evening.

We'll set out around 10:00 tomorrow morning, and hope to be in Toronto not too late in the evening.

2006-05-04 19:56 (Kristen) We had a very nice stay at the hotel last night, and woke up all together in the bed this morning. The king-size bed was so large that we all had our own areas, and there wasn't the usual kicking and confusion of limbs that we usually experience. That was quite luxurious all on its own. We headed downstairs to breakfast, where Jamie was more excited than hungry, although we knew that he was quite hungry. He ran around the mostly empty restaurant, and John and I took turns following him about. He was happy and particularly charming. and our waitress got a balloon for him, which he loved. I finished up breakfast while Jamie and John ran about, and couldn't find them when I got up. I went to the room, just in case, but they weren't there. The phone rang, and it was John: apparently, they had gone into the pool area next to the restaurant with the balloon, and it had popped. Jamie was quite surprised and scared, and they were looking for me. I came down (I had John's room key, which you need to use the elevator), and Jamie told me all about it.

We checked out and got onto the Interstate around 10:20. Jamie was still quite wound up, and it took a little while to calm down. We made good time, and stopped around noon to get some ice cream, try out the swivel chairs at the tables, stare at the soft drink dispensers, and have a pee. Jamie had spent the morning in a diaper (a little recidivism), but changed into "big boy underwear" at this point. He was acting tired, so we got some lunch into him and set up the DVD player. He still wasn't asleep by 2:00, and when I turned off the DVD player to get him to sleep, he broke down loudly into tears. Finally, we stopped off at an exit in Hamilton to look at a passing freight train, a pair of geese, and some dirty pools of water. He calmed down enough to tell us, once we were in the car again and on the road, to tell us that he really needed to pee. We got off the highway again, and spent some quality time in the more industrial section of Hamilton. We found a Pizza Hut, and the needed pee happened. Jamie also ordered a little pizza, which he ate a quarter of before finally falling asleep after three. I am guessing that he really needed to pee, and couldn't fall asleep before he did, but hadn't made the connection.

He slept in the car until after we got home, and John and I unloaded the car. I unpacked inside, and John stayed out in the car with Jamie until he finally woke up. He played with Gary and Ayami until dinner, and is spending a quiet evening with us before bed tonight, and Hakobune tomorrow.

2006-05-05 23:45 (John) We're still pretty tired from our weeklong trip, and showing it in different ways. I keep passing out mid-thought, which makes driving hairy; Kristen went to write the blog tonight and twenty minutes later had written not a word; Jamie is more attached than usual to the familiar and the routine, but fortunately we're finally home and able to offer them to him.

We put Jamie in his old crib last night, to experiment with him sleeping apart. He can climb easily in and out of it, even in his sleep, and demonstrated this ability at around 4:00 A.M. He and Kristen slept in until about 8:00, but Jamie and I still managed to get to Hakobune just after they opened at 9:00 A.M. Mrs. Sasaki told me that several of Jamie's classmates missed him and were asking after him during his absence last week; Kai's mom sat down and talked with me and said that when Kai comes home from daycare it's "Jamie this" and "Jamie that", except for last week when it was "Jamie wasn't there!". Kai is one month younger than Jamie. Jamie seldom tells me anything about what happened at daycare, except under direct questioning, and then he'll agree with whatever the question seems to be leading to.

Today being Boys' Day in Japan, Jamie made two construction paper koi-nobori. They look great on our front door, but next year I must remember to obtain and hang up real banners outside.

After the usual nap/walk with Ken, Jamie woke up fairly quickly at the Second Cup. I think I need to find a new way to squeeze work hours out of the day; his afternoon naps seem to be shortening. I bought him a blue balloon to replace the orange one that popped at the Radisson yesterday, and then met Kristen so she could look after him during my shiatsu massage.

Dinner tonight was Michelle's birthday party, for which Michelle actually took an hour away from World of Warcraft. It was very nice to spend time with her. Jamie was fairly well behaved and stayed at the dinner table a long time, even if it wasn't all spent in one seat. He eats for a while between Kristen and me, then goes to sit in Gary's lap, apparently in the belief that this will make Gary eat faster and play sooner.

2006-05-06 19:45 (Kristen) Jamie insisted on falling asleep beside me last night, and so we transferred him into the pack and play after he'd fallen asleep. I don't know how long he stayed there, however, but I do remember him climbing out of the crib and over me to sleep between me and John at some point in the night. He then proceeded to sleep with his feet by my head and his head by my knees, and in his usual bar of the H position between me and John. He was quite restless, and woke up around 7:45. He insisted on getting up, but he was very groggy still. I suspect that he fell asleep for a minute with his eyes open in the bathroom, holding his toys. He didn't eat much, beyond an apple, and became quite crabby around 10:00. He wasn't willing to deviate beyond a fixed idea, and it took some work to get him into the car with John to go to the market. Iain and Clare played with him for fifteen minutes or so while we were waiting outside, which was a big help.

John says that he put Jamie into a diaper in the Market because Jamie had to pee, but he was utterly unwilling to pee in the scary, dirty bathroom that they have at the Market. Jamie is quite particular about where he will and will not pee, which is understandable, really. He fell asleep around 2:15, and stayed asleep until 4:00 or so. He was sociable, and read some books, played with some trains, and watched a little television until dinner. Gary and Ayami came upstairs an hour ago, and Jamie grabbed them tightly and hasn't let go since.I'm not sure if they've had dinner yet, so I may be rescuing them soon.

(John) Jamie was a little tired, I think still from the trip, though he may still have the same sinus infection I have, as his voice sounds hoarse, especially when he wakes up. He was happy to go to the market, chattering away with Tai-Tai all the way there and making a great giggly game of drinking her juice from a cup but only when the car was stopped so as not to spill. At the market, he pulled the stroller everywhere, insisting he was an engine, except when he wanted to eat something, when he climbed into the stroller.

At Nupur's, he requested and ate two pakoras as well as his usual samosa, and he would have eaten a lot more turkey kielbasa except it would have cut into his playtime at the Early Years Centre. He was obsessed there with a book called Feelings by an illustrator named Aliki, largely for its cover which shows a 16-panel story about a boy who buys an ice cream cone and is happy, trips and drops it and is sad, calms down and buys another and is careful but happy. High drama for the toddler set. I had to "read" the story to him six times, and would still be there reading it for him except that they closed the EYC early again.

Jamie fell asleep in the car as we pulled into the Loblaws, so my mom looked after him while I shopped, and then I kept an eye on him in the driveway until he woke up a couple of hours later.

2006-05-07 21:22 (Kristen) Jamie crawled out of his "nest" again last night, and was up by 7:30. I staggered downstairs with him, and he was willing to eat two "ices" (fruit and frozen yoghurt) before having a little honey toast. I had already suspected that his final second-year molar was making an appearance, but the request for ice first thing in the morning and some small epidsodes of drool over the course of the day (including some unusual bursts of temper) make me think that tooth #4 is about to appear. I'm going to be glad to see the last of these things until he's six.

Jamie helped John and me in the garden (his peas are starting to sprout), and is very good at moving dirt about and watering things. The garden is rather weed-ridden, so we uprooted some and put down grass seed in their place. (John: Jamie also helped me mow the back lawn by keeping a hand on the push mower, helped weed it by carrying buckets of weeds to the yard waste bin, and helped transplant a black raspberry bush by carrying tools and backfilling holes.) We finally came in around 11:30, and Jamie played with his trains until it was time for lunch. He ate lots of grapes and a samosa, and played with Gary and Ayami until it was time to go for his walk. We learned last night that Jamie is easily distracted from the notion of having to pee...he told us twice that he had to, and then decided that something else was more interesting,and "pee all gone." Then there was an enormous accident involving carpet and a couch. We know better now, and when Jamie announces "pee!" we take him to the bathroom anyway, despite protestations, and we've had no accidents today.

Jamie took a while to fall asleep, but slept for almost three hours when he did (which he doesn't do much anymore). (John: part of what kept him up as we walked out to Donlands station was that he wanted to stop and watch each lawn mower in action, and it seemed like there were two on every block.) He was groggy and not all that sociable when he did wake up, but managed to come into John's parents' house for a bathroom break and dinner. He didn't eat that much again, except for mango, and was quite contrary at times. John agrees with me that there seems to be some tooth action going on, and so when Jamie comes out of the bath, we'll give him a little something to help him sleep. Poor thing.

2006-05-08 21:19 (Kristen) Jamie woke up a little after 7 this morning, and I was able to keep him in bed until around 7:30, but that was that. He did his usual "fall asleep beside Mummy, crawl in with us in the middle of the night, and wake up between us" routine, complete with parent kicking. He isn't so much into his "nest" anymore, which is a shame, but we'll keep working at it, if only in the hopes of getting a good night's sleep sometime in the next five years.

He has been quite train centred again, and spent a good part of the morning getting Thomas stuck in the mine, and using different combinations of engines to get him out. I'm not sure why the disaster scenarios, but it may be combined with the fact that he finds more things scary than he used to. I suspect a cognitive leap, since a heightened sense of the scary often accompanies new mental plateaus.

I got him out on his run bike relatively early, and he spent time learning how to get the bike to "go" on his own, although I was not allowed to remove my hands from him while he did. He's starting to get the hang of it, and if we keep trying, he may actually be able to ride on his own by the end of the week. When we weren't on the bike, we blew bubbles with the bubble liquid that Jane Williams gave him in Greenport. We spilled the liquid twice, but still have a little less than half a bottle left. Jamie was starting to get the hang of blowing bubbles and actually got a few lovely streams of bubbles into the air although he usually blows too hard, or too close to the wand. He also enjoyed chasing the bubbles a good deal. I was going to go to John's parents' place to pick up the milk that I forgot there last night, and was going to take Jamie with me. John came down to watch Jamie while I got myself ready, but neither he nor Jamie were around when I came back out. I finally called John on his cell, and he told me that Jamie had dragged him across the street and found a hitherto unknown path (John: I've only been living in this neighbourhood for thirty years) down into the Don Valley between two apartment buildings. The dirt path led down to the valley floor and to other, more established hiking trails through the forest there, and an area full of little bridges. Jamie then dragged him through and back to Pottery Road, and made John carry him 3/4 of the way up the (very) long and steep hill, where I was waiting for them at the top. Jamie had claimed to be tired, but when he saw me at the top, he got down and *ran* the rest of the way. We celebrated the nature hike with a trip to Dairy Queen, then headed back home.

Jamie and I played with more bubbles, and Jamie played with Tulip, the cat two doors down. He's very good with Tulip, who is still very much a kitten, and Tulip was happy to have someone to play with. He also played a little with Teddy, a little boy from down the street, who is 19 days younger than Jamie (and easily a few centimetres taller), and whose mother is expecting a baby twelve days after we are. Funny how the world works. Jamie came in for a pee, and didn't want to leave his trains for lunch at Browning until Gary came by and convinced him to go. He wasn't all that interested in eating, and would much rather play with Ross's trains, so Gary and I fed him in the living room. Then it was time to go out with Ken, and his daily walk.

Despite the early morning and all the exercise and food, Jamie only slept for an hour. John took him to the park at the school, and I met them there at 4:00. John was in the sandbox with Jamie, who was happily playing with sand and turning a pale grey colour all over from the dust. John went home, and Jamie was happy to climb up and down the apparatus like a monkey, and to play with the Tonka backhoe of a little boy named Asher. Asher was very good, since he had only received the backhoe and its companion bulldozer earlier in the day, and Jamie was very good about sharing too. Eventually, there were five children and only three trucks, and Jamie finally ended up on the truck-less end of the stick. It was well after 5, and Jamie was having difficulty dealing with the situation: he wasn't angry, just sad, and constantly following the child with the favoured toy around saying, "Please? Please?" persistently. I decided that it was finally time to go, and pacified Jamie with some peach iced tea, but he was upset, and cried at going for the lost bulldozer. He was happier when we reached Browning and Ross's trains again.

He spent his usual happy evening at Browning with his favourite minions, and snacked on ice cream, watermelon, and the usual dinner fare. By the time we came home and got Jamie into the bath, he was blithering. I asked him to take his clothes off and was blocking the door out of the bathroom, when he suddenly had the saddest face in the world, rather than have a tantrum. I held him on my lap and hugged him, while John and I looked at each other and John said that we should just consider a tantrum to have been held, since Jamie was just too tired to actually have it. He went to bed easily, and fell asleep in two minutes after his books had been read to him.

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

Back to Vol. 0 No. 29, or up to Jamie Chew's Web Log Archive. or forward to Vol. 0 No. 31.