Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 0 No. 36

2006-06-13 21:11 (Kristen) Jamie fell asleep around 11:30 last night, so I was expecting him to sleep in today. He woke up a little before 9, and asked for breakfast. We came downstairs, had some breakfast, and then started with the day. He watched television for about half an hour, and then I managed to get him to come outside with me to play. We pulled wagons around, and I pulled him in a wagon; I got him to ride a little on a tricycle that Alexandria had left over at our place, and was surprised that he managed to get the pedals to work about 30% of the time by himself. Steering still needs a little work, however! We ended the morning by picking a few strawberries from the garden, chasing off a squirrel that wanted to eat our strawberries with a broom, and pushing the little red wagon down the slide.

He was starting to get a little hungry and a little fractious by 11:45, so I took him over to Browning for lunch a little earlier than usual. Gary came just after us, and Jamie enjoyed eating beside Gary, ordering him around, and otherwise playing with him. He set out for his walk with Ken earlier than usual (1:10, rather than the 1:20 we've been managing lately), and slept for a little less than an hour before waking up as he passed over the threshold of the Second Cup, where I was waiting for him instead of John, as John was getting a crown at the dentist. He ate my cookie, had some chocolate milk, and decided that we had to go to Treasure Island, so we did. Once there, we managed to use the bathroom there at least four times: twice for pee, and twice for "accidents." Oh well; we're still even for the last two days, and I had a diaper in the diaper bag to make up for the two pairs of soiled underwear we took home with us. We picked up John at the Second Cup, and started to walk home. Jamie decided that he wanted to walk, and to pull the stroller behind him as he walked backwards along the street. I was pretty tired, so when we reached the playground, I left him and John there while I went home to crash out.

(John) Jamie spent most of the time climbing the slide stairs the hard way, along the outside of the railing. Like at least one of his parents, when he gets tired he is given to difficult ways to perform common tasks and insisting that everyone around him play along.

(Kristen) John and Jamie came home about twenty minutes later, and met our friend Debbie, who was coming with her husband, Jeff (and arrived soon afterwards) for dinner. Alexandria came by and Jamie played with her, and then with Alexandria, Gary, and Ayami in the driveway before dinner. Jamie was pretty tired and pretty wound up by dinner, which we ate outside, and decided that he had to eat the entire bowl of cherries after using his regular dinner (soba, veggies, fish) as an amuse-bouche. We came inside and Jamie watched television while we (the adults) talked and talked about Jeff and Debbie's wonderful trip to Europe. They've gone home now, and Jamie is now playing with Gary and Ayami again while I blog, and John talks to Alexandria about a speech she is working on for school. Bath time very soooooooon.

2006-06-14 23:42 (Kristen) Jamie was awake at 8:00, and I miraculously managed to get him fed and dressed and out of the house before 8:40 this morning. He was in a great mood, and happy to go on public transit to daycare. We waved "good-bye" to John from the other side of Broadview, and I told Jamie to wave bye. He did, saw his dad wave, and laughed, saying "funny papa." His excellent mood lasted through the subway ride, when we lucked into our favourite seat at the back of the train. At one point, he saw the station name on the wall in big letters, and quickly reeled off "E-G-N-O-Y." I told him that spelled "Yonge" if you read it the other way, but that was the right direction if you were reading Japanese. He nodded, but gave little other sign of interest.

He wanted me to stay a little longer at Hakobune, but once I explained that I had to go to work, he started playing with Mrs. Sasaki, and was gone, barely looking up when I left. I came back at 12:00, and he couldn't get out of the room fast enough, he was so hungry. I also found out that he'd had an accident (of the solid variety), and am thinking of ways to try and prevent this in future, without much success as of yet. We ate lunch on the bench, and Jamie wolfed down a good deal of curry and juice before we went on the streetcar to go home. John was waiting, and took Jamie out around 1:45: Jamie fell asleep as we talked with our neighbour Karen, proving yet again that adult voices are the best soporific.

Jamie slept for an hour and forty-five minutes, and I almost missed the two of them as I walked down to the Second Cup to meet them at four. Our neighbour Iain called out to me as I walked past the school yard with my nose in a book to tell me that John and Jamie were in the playground. I found them and John soon went off to get ready for Scrabble. Jamie and I weren't going, as the annual club tournament will be going on for the next three Wednesdays, and John has to stay later than usual up at the club. Jamie played with Chaerim, Kyup, Iain, and Clare for a bit, playing with a soccer ball and making Chaerim go up and down the slide with him. He also did a good deal of running around the field with the other kids, but still came running to me occasionally to make sure that I was still there and involved in what he was doing. Jamie still calls Chaerim "Pink," as it's her favourite colour and her name doesn't seem to stick for him yet. We walked home with Chaerim, Kyup, their mother Misook, and Iain, before turning around and walking over to John's parents' place for dinner.

I was pretty tired by then, and Jamie was too. We got there, just in time for dinner, and I fed Jamie first before John or his father arrived. (John: I was delayed because the monitor on my iBook has blown up, and I needed to back up my files and then get the laptop off to the service centre, where I hope it will be nursed back to health over under warranty over the next week or two.) Jamie ate very well initially, then was distracted by other things like blocks and toys. He came back to the table a few times, but ultimately ended up watching an hour of Treehouse on t.v. We read a book together after a bowl of mango, and I herded him outside to go home around 8:00. When we got home, we were still pretty tired, and I let him watch Spirited Away with the justification that it was Japanese language practice while I talked with my mom on the phone. Then we made it upstairs for a bath and a hair wash, and into bed. He was very quiet and tired when he made it into bed, although he opted for a story before turning out the light. It was only a little after 10, but he was out like a light very quickly. Tomorrow, John do role reversal: he takes Jamie to day care and I get to stay home and do the dishes.

2006-06-15 23:07 (Kristen) Jamie was up around 8:00 or so; maybe a little after. I was groggy, and not paying as much attention as I could have to the time. He was a little crabby, but we managed to get onto each other's wavelength quickly, thank goodness. He ate a good breakfast, and headed out with John to Hakobune. John says that Jamie had a wonderful day, and chattered on about playing with Hiro-kun, Kai-kun, and Sensei. Christian-kun wasn't there, but he was added to Jamie's narrative after I asked about him. John said that Jamie said that Christian-kun was sad, because he couldn't go to day care today. Hmmm. Obviously not traumatized by the experience of being sent to play with other children. (John: Jamie also said that he himself was both happy to go to Hakobune but sad that Christian wasn't there. Poor conflicted boy.)

For some reason, part of the lunch I sent along went bad, and so Jamie ended up not eating his curry and only a samosa and grapes. When he came to Browning, he ate some avocado and finished an apple on his walk with Ken. He slept for an hour and forty-five minutes again today, and I met John and Jamie walking up Jackman as I walked down to meet them at the Second Cup. John had told Jamie that they could look for the ice cream truck that parks outside the school after hours (rotten truck!), and so Jamie and I went off in search of it while John went to file his business taxes. We got our ice cream and met up with John on the way home again, where John made us dinner while working on getting ready for a major tournament this weekend.

John got us a free pass to see a movie called Word Play, a documentary about crossword puzzles and competitive crossword puzzlers (which was excellent and included a couple of acquaintances of ours), leaving Jamie in the capable hands of Gary and Ayami. John got home around 9:00, and I arrived home about 10:30, as I ran to catch a bit of my book club before they disbanded for the night. John says that Jamie was probably ready for bed around 8:00, and that flossing and brushing his teeth took a long time because of it. He also needed some convincing to get into the bath, and managed to have an "accident" while John was showering. It was his second of the day, the first being much more successful and much less messy. Poor John had to clean it all up before I got home. He also cut Jamie's hair, and put him to bed, although Jamie was awake when I got home. It took a remarkably long time for him to fall asleep, in spite of his fatigue, and we think that it is, in part, due to the change in routine (usually I am the one whom he falls asleep with). I think too that it is because John is too interesting after the lights go out: I do my best log imitation, being as boring as I can so that he just goes to sleep. John tells him stories in the dark, and talks with him, which Jamie enjoys greatly but is sufficiently interesting to keep him from falling asleep as he does with his boring old mom. I could be wrong.

(John) I read him one book (Goodnight Moon) and told him one story after lights out (Three Little Pigs), then emulated a log just like Kristen usually does. It was nice to be able to leave Jamie with Gary and Ayami for a few hours tonight so that Kristen and I could go out on a date. I wish the second half of the evening had gone more smoothly, and that I could just go join Kristen and Jamie in bed now, but I still have a tonne of work to do.

2006-06-16 22:23 (Kristen) Jamie slept very badly last night; he kept kicking, and John says that he did at least six 360 degree turns while sandwiched between the two of us. He finally insisted that I get up with him at 6:40, which is not a time at which, historically, I am at my best. Urgh. I let him watch Thomas and the Magic Railway (at his insistence-it's not a very good movie to me, but has Diesel 10 in it, so I obviously have a different set of criteria for "good movie") while I napped as best I could with Jamie wriggling beside me constantly to get the best possible position. We had breakfast at 8:00, then went upstairs at Jamie's insistence to have a poo. Well done! He didn't eat much breakfast at all, which makes us wonder if it's the heat or if his stomach is off. I know that mine has been: I haven't been hungry for about two days now.

A very tired John and a pretty tired Jamie set off for Hakobune a little before nine. John reports that Jamie was not hungry at all at lunch, and insisted on being carried instead of walking home. Ken took Jamie out for his walk, and dropped a sleeping boy off to me at the Second Cup at 3:00. Jamie ended up sleeping for two and a half hours, which was great, but really could have been longer. We came home, met up with our friend Adam, who is staying with us this weekend, and went out for dinner. Jamie was not hungry again, and only nibbled between climbing on railings and making his trains fall off the table, but was otherwise reasonably well behaved. He had an accident at the restaurant, but only one failure in three visits to the bathroom isn't all bad. We went home, played a little, and then it was time for bed (and not soon enough!). I really hope that he sleeps better tonight.

2006-06-17 24:00 (John) I spent the day running the Can-Am Scrabble Challenge and didn't get to see much of Jamie. I understand that my parents took Kristen and Jamie to the St. Lawrence Market, and that Kristen and Jamie gradually made their way over to the event site at the Metropolitan Hotel through the stifling humidity and smog, staying in air-conditioned malls as much as possible. He was still pretty hot each time I saw him though, and that made the mosquito bite on his forehead swell up even more, to the point where his eyes were just starting to swell shut. Poor boy. He was happy to see me though after lunch, and Kristen was even happier when she came by to pick me up for dinner and Jamie fell asleep on the way up to the playing room.

Jamie stayed asleep on the kilometre-long walk to the Chinese restaurant where we all had dinner, waking up in time to eat reasonably well and then start running frenetic laps around the restaurant. That being our cue, we took the TTC home along Jamie's usual route home from Hakobune, and the familiarity helped calm him down a lot. We bathed him and got him to bed not too much later than usual. Tomorrow's supposed to be muggier and smoggier, so I hope Kristen and Jamie can just stay home and stay cool.

2006-06-18 35:12 (Kristen) Jamie started to have an obvious allergic reaction to a mosquito bite that he received to his forehead a night or two ago. The top of the bite started to weep a little, but the startling thing was that his forehead was swelling, and that the swelling was going down his face, making one of his eyes only able to open half way. This morning, his face was worse, and the effect was somewhat startling. The weather was disgusting, however, and while we had a nice, quiet morning playing inside, there was some question about what to do about his nap.

Jamie doesn't sleep in the house; only in his stroller; for his afternoon nap. I decided that I would take him on the subway, which is air- conditioned, and see if he would fall asleep there. He was pretty tired when we left, dragging Gary and Ayami after us as they came upstairs just as we were leaving. There weren't any buses on the horizon, so I stopped into the Sponge Bob Store (aka The Shopping Bag, our local corner store) to buy Jamie a freezie to keep him cool on the way. We bought a blue one that was almost as long as he is, and he enjoyed eating it a great deal on the way to the subway. He finished it on the platform, not long before the subway train arrived. We got on, and transferred to the southbound train at St. George. He was looking pretty tired at this point, and wasn't insisting on getting up to look out the windows. He fell asleep about four stops before the Eaton Centre, so I decided to get out and do a little shopping while he slept. I spent most of my time in Indigo, and Jamie slept for almost two hours. We went to Roots to pick up a diaper bag on spec (I like them, but want to make sure that John likes it too before we "commit"), which is a very nice navy blue with little straps to snap onto stroller handles. Our old diaper bag is close to biting the dust, so it was time, and the Roots bag, oddly enough, was the cheapest bag we've seen as well as one of the nicer ones. Then we went to look for John, who had just finished up at the Can-Am tournament.

John was shocked to see Jamie's face, as it was definitely more swollen than the last time he'd seem Jamie awake. We got an ice cream cone for Jamie, and drove home. John got on the phone with the public health nurse, who said that it was an allergic reaction to a mosquito bite (well, yeah, we knew that) and that we should just keep doing what we were doing. We ended up staying home for Father's Day, in the cool and the quiet of the house, and ate a dinner that Sai made for us and that John picked up so that he could give his own father a Father's Day gift. Jamie gave John a little decorated box that he made at Hakobune, and a construction paper card that he made at the Early Years Centre yesterday at the St. Lawrence Market. I gave John a book about crossword puzzles and their history, etc. It was quiet, but nice, and we all fell into bed and asleep quite early last night. In fact, I don't even remember falling asleep, and certainly didn't remember to blog. Better late than never.

2006-06-19 20:53 (Kristen) Jamie didn't sleep all that well last night, doing his patented 360s and kicking John often. In the end, we made a sort of triangle shape in the bed, with Jamie and me as the two shorter sides of the isosceles triangle, and John the long side. Ugh. He was in a good enough mood when he woke up, finally, and was content to spend the morning playing trains and cars with me, between eating pancakes and some mango, and watching "a little bit" of Thomas. John and I had to go out to a midwife appointment, to meet Marlene, our backup midwife, and Gary and Ayami took Jamie over to Browning for us. He ate a reasonable lunch, which was nice, and then went for a walk with Ken.

Jamie fell asleep around 2:00, and stayed asleep for three hours. When he woke up, his forehead was markedly better, and I have great hopes that his face will be back to normal (or almost so) by tomorrow. He has an appointment to get his shots (hopefully, we'll be all caught up then), but Dr. Kennedy will tell us if we should wait a little longer. He should be all right: shots aren't mosquito bites. We hung out, en famille, for an hour before heading over to Browning for Monday night dinner. Jamie abandoned me and John quickly to play with Ross's trains (although, when Michelle dared to suggest that they were *her* trains, Jamie asserted that they were, in fact, *his* trains. this was all done, of course, out of Ross's earshot) and to play with Daniel and Ross. He ate a decent meal, if not a huge one, and spent the rest of the evening running around, chasing Gary and Ayami, and generally having fun. The rest of us are watching the hockey game, biting our nails. 1-0 for Carolina right now: auuuugggh!!!!

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

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