Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 1 No. 64

2006-12-26 23:30 (John) We got up around 8:00 this morning, which meant that we each slept between six and seven hours, so we were a little tired and holidayed out. To recharge our batteries, we (Jamie, Liam, Kristen, Grammie and (cousin) Anna) drove to the mall to shop the Boxing Day sales. Jamie, who was the most tired, still enjoyed spending time in Mrs. Tiggywinkle's Toy Store and in the children's playroom. He also picked out a very colourful pair of slipper socks for Kristen at Eddie Bauer's and insisted on buying them for her. Liam spent four hours asleep in his car seat, with it buckled into his stroller while indoors. I made good use of my annual pilgrimage to the Eddie Bauer Boxing Day sale, and helped Anna with a few necessary purchases at La Senza Girl. Kristen bought a coat at Eddie Bauer that she had almost paid full price for before Christmas, and some clothes for the kids. Laraine was very helpful looking after the kids, and she was quite happy to sit with the stroller and take the weight off the cast on her foot.

I got Jamie to fall asleep in the car on the way home from the mall, and he slept there for 75 minutes, waking up eventually because Laraine's darkened garage was too unfamiliar for him. Both kids are a little stressed about being away from home, but it's nowhere near as bad as I thought it might be. Jamie is a little hyper when tired, and a little worried when exhausted; Liam is harder to console when he wants to go to sleep, because of the lack of familiar sites.

When Jamie woke up, we went to Jennifer's house for dinner, and it was a relief to be able to send Jamie downstairs to play with his cousins in rotation, and to pass Liam around among his extended family. We left at a reasonable hour and got the kids to bed on time, though as I write this Liam is back up and shrieking with an upset tummy, but he just had a poo so we're hoping he'll be back to sleep soon.

2006-12-27 25:00 (John) Jamie has been confused about Anna since he arrived, and finally decided to clear the air. "Is that Becky?" "No, that's Anna." "But she's big." "Yes, she gets bigger and bigger, just like Jamie." "Is she three?" "No." "How old is she?" "Why don't you ask her?" "Anna, are you three?" "No." "Are you five?" "No." "Are you FOUR?" "No." "How old ARE YOU?" "I'm 11." Then Kristen tried to remind Jamie how many 11 was on her fingers, ran into trouble and called me over for help.

Jamie has been delighted with the light snow on the ground here, such as it is, and seizes every opportunity to play with it, practising making snowballs and learning all sorts of other useful winter skills from his cousins. When we were getting ready to take Anna home in the morning, I sent the two of them out to play in the snow for fifteen minutes while I loaded the car; and when we got to Jennifer's house, Anna and Owen played outside with Jamie while I went grocery shopping.

I picked up Jamie and cousin Owen, drove back to Grammie's house and got Liam, who had been playing with Grammie while Kristen worked. The four of us and Owen drove to have lunch with Grandpa (Kristen's dad) at a Vietnamese pho/sushi bar in his neighbourhood. Jamie and Owen got very excited at the prospect of bubble tea, though in the end Owen balked at the price and switched his order to Sprite, and I didn't finish mine either because it was the icky bubble tea made from powder. Liam slept through lunch: this is becoming a regular habit, enough so that I think maybe we should be scheduling all of our grownup activities for the lunch hour. Jamie ate his eda-mame and gyoza and enjoyed being read to out of his new Thomas the Tank Engine magazine (that I had found while grocery shopping) by Owen and me.

I drove all the way back to Orleans to drop off Kristen and Liam back at Grammie's, and to pick up Jennifer with Owen's Christmas money, and we went to the St. Laurent mall, hoping that Jamie would fall asleep on one of these twenty-minute drives. No luck, either because Owen was keeping him well entertained, or because Jamie was well rested from last night, or most likely because we forgot to make him pee at each stop. Jamie enjoyed Toys R Us, where we found a pop-up book about a little yellow bulldozer, and some lower case magnetic letters, and Jennifer bought him Diesel from TTTE at his request. We stopped to rest at the Second Cup, split a Rice Krispie square and had some hot chocolate, and again failed to go to the bathroom.

We dropped off Jennifer and Owen, went to get Mom, Liam, Grammie and Rod, end Jamie finally peed, but was too excited at the prospect of dinner at Jennifer's house with his beloved cousins to be able to fall asleep. After a quick dinner of Jennifer's yummy turkey soup, Kristen, Jamie and I went to visit the Ottawa Scrabble Club at the Gloucester Public Library right next to her high school alma mater. We were warmly (and in Mitzi's case, loudly) welcomed, and managed to play three games, with the help in particular of Mitzi Pollak and Emilie Henkelman, who came dashing to take Liam as soon as their games were over. Liam was quite charming, though he got bored of watching Scrabble toward the end of the third hour, and needed to be walked around the room to smile at all the other players.

When we got back to Jennifer's around 22:15, Jamie was happily watching TV with his cousins, after an evening of quietly playing with them. He was mildly pleased to see us, not at all eager to leave with us, but willing to be persuaded, and fell asleep in his chair eating a popsicle while waiting for his bath. I bathed just Liam, and will retire as soon as I finish this entry.

2006-12-28 22:00 (John) We spent the morning at home, receiving visitors: the Engelbrechts and Becky and Anna. Jamie and Liam were tired from their short night of sleep, but held up reasonably well considering over the course of the day. Liam rolled over from his back to his front for the first time, while surrounding by adoring fans on Grammie's living room rug and reaching for Dad's sock, and repeated the trick two more times before that became old hat.

I ferried the extended family down to Place d'Orleans (mall), keeping Jamie with me in the car the whole time hoping he'd fall asleep. Jamie enjoyed standing zombielike (Scrabblers: it's in MWCD, I checked) at the train table at Mrs. Tiggywinkle's (toy store); Liam slept briefly but then spent the rest of the afternoon awake and absorbing his surroundings.

I think Jamie's happiest moments of the day were spent in the back of the car with his cousins Anna and Becky, seeing what would make them laugh, even though this was pretty much anything once he got going. He loves his cousins so very much, it makes me wish he had some older sisters to play with at home.

Everyone came over for dinner at Laraine's, but left early to go home to bed. Jamie fell asleep as he was climbing on to the couch to wait for me to come back from driving two carloads of people over to Jennifer's house, making for an interesting photo that was quite easy to take, as he held the pose for half an hour before I carried him up to bed.

Liam, as usual, started fussing around 22:00, and was distracted for a while just now by his first taste of apple (or any food) in a mesh bag baby feeder, but is trying very hard right now to scream himself to sleep. Liam's gastrointestinal bug of the last few days has passed (his poo is now yellow again, not green) (Kristen dissents, saying the colour just indicates how long the poo took to pass), and Jamie's drooling finally stopped a few days ago just in time for Christmas, so we can't (or shouldn't) complain.

2006-12-29 17:00 (John) Jennifer and family were busy spending a last day with Jason's visiting brother Jeremy and his wife, so we were on our own today. Jamie woke up at 8:00 after sleeping for 11.5 hours with one bathroom break at 2:00. I took him downstairs for his morning popsicle and raisin bread, then played cars with him until Mom came down with Liam. Liam was in a sunny mood, looking forward to a day of chewing cloth alternating with napping.

I took a brief nap, then Grammie woke up and shared her cereal with Jamie, who washed it down with another popsicle. I spent the last hour of the morning taking Jamie to the local playground to go sliding down hills on a crazy carpet, experimented with friction by throwing snowballs across a skating rink, and determined which play apparatus were safe and not scary in the wintertime (all but the tall spiral slide). He was not particularly eager to come home, but I was getting tired, and when Jamie crossed Grammie's threshold, he fell theatrically onto his face, and stayed on the floor while he was rolled over and undressed.

Mommy fed Jamie a little more of our dwindling supply of Nupur's Raani Foods butter chicken. Nupur, if you're reading this, the Loeb on Tenth Line in Orleans doesn't seem to have your product after all! We'll manage though, even if I have to make some curry myself. It was funny the other day when he had his first bite of curry at Grammie's house. He had a moment of cultural dissonance, asked me if the meal was a Hakobune obento, and when I said "It's like an obento", he decided to compromise and say "Itadakimasu" as a carefully chosen middle ground between just digging in as at Grammie's house and singing grace as at day care.

I lured Jamie out into the car after lunch to go shopping for snow shovels. Laraine has no idea what happened to hers, and Jamie said he would like one too, so he can shovel Grammie's driveway. He fell asleep just short of the parking lot of Canadian Tire at Ogilvie and Blair, so much of this was typed while waiting for him to wake up there.

2006-12-29 21:00 (John) Jamie and I bought snow shovels at Canadian Tire, then the makings of dinner at Loblaws, and got back to Grammie's house around 17:30. I made dinner (chicken rosemary medaglioni* with roasted tomato and cremini mushroom sauce, with sauteed asparagus with basil, and peas), Jamie set the table and ate well, and introduced us to the notion of honey garlic toast. After dinner, I went to bring Owen over, and we are slowly beginning to get ready for bed now.

Liam spent the whole day indoors, mostly playing with Grammie who was helping Mom get some work done. He had a little more apple in his baby feeder, and has had a generally happy day.

2006-12-30 17:00 (John) Kristen tells me that a day or two ago she was listening to Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue on her iBook when Jamie asked her to stop. He called it "dragon music", which led to an interesting conversation about what the music portrayed the dragons doing. Jamie has matured a lot intellectually in the last few months, and he's recently passed the tipping point where it's more rewarding to listen to him than to talk to him. He absorbs everything he sees and hears, processes it, forms theories about it and tests it.

Tonight in the bath, as he was trying to build a drawbridge out of combs and stacking cups, he explained to me that they're called drop-bridges because you can drop them. I had to explain to him one of the other meanings of "draw", but it occurs to me as I'm writing this that he might have been confused by a Thomas The Tank Engine toy that is in fact a bridge that collapses in the middle. We have combs in the bath his hair has straightened out so much in the dry winter air that I need to be much more careful about cutting it. We have more than three combs, because the first two are always in Jamie's hands.

We got up at our usual 7:45, and I fed Jamie breakfast until Liam and Kristen woke up, the napped for half an hour until it was time to take Jamie and Owen out sledding. It's a comfortable -6°C (21°F) today and we had another two centimetres (an inch) of snow on top of several centimetres' accumulation, so the slopes were in good condition. Jamie watched Owen and me go down the hill separately a few times before deciding it was safe, then went down with me a few times before deciding it was more fun to sled with Owen. He got home tired, but not quite as tired as yesterday, and spent a little bit of time shoveling Grammie's driveway with his new shovel.

Then Jamie, Owen and I drove to Jennifer's house, where we exchanged Owen for Jason, Jeremy and Roslyn (sp?), to take the latter two to the airport. I hadn't planned on taking Jamie, but his ears perked up at the word airport, and I was happy to take him. We dropped off my in-law-in-laws, watched a few planes take off and then Jamie fell asleep at 12:15 on the drive home, the earliest he's had his afternoon nap in months.

When we got back, I kept Jamie company in the car in the garage for an hour or so. Then Grammie, Mom and Liam got in the car to drive to Kristen's old friend Badger's house. Jamie woke up in the commotion, but he had been asleep for nearly two hours, and was in a good mood, especially when we immediately offered him lunch (more of Nupur's butter chicken). He did shout at Kristen to "Calm down, Mommy!", but I can't tell whether he was joking because he knew Kristen was just raising her voice to be heard from the back seat, or he thought she was really getting cross.

Becky, Anna and Owen arrived soon after at Badger's house, and we partied until early evening. We have some sort of get-together with Badger and his family at least once a year, but it's a rare enough event that it's fun to see how the kids have grown since the last one. This time, Jamie just ran off to the kids' room to play and needed little or no supervision, which is a bittersweet feeling for a parent. Maybe he would like just a little supervision?

Liam was on his good behaviour, smiling and making friends with everyone, until his early evening gas hit. Or it could have been that he really missed me when I left to drive the first carload back to Orleans. He certainly calmed right back down each time I used Tom and Michelle's guaranteed baby soothing technique (hold the baby facing away from you at arm's length, bounce him gently up and down while walking up and down stairs), and freaked out again when I stopped. Kristen says it's gas though, because he passed immense quantities of it when he got home, but I prefer the "Missed Dad" theory.

(Badger's wife) Jeannette carried Jamie out to the car for us through the snow, and they had an interesting conversation about the fish that is painted on the front of their house. Jamie said it was like Elmo's goldfish Dorothy (I only know the fish's name because Jamie mentioned it), but that it was named "Jamie".

When everyone was finally home, Becky and Anna helped Jamie burn off energy dancing to pop tunes, Anna read books to him, and after the bath Jamie came running in to show how Anna and Becky had put his hair up for him. When Anna started to read a Daniel Cook book, she sang the first line of the TV show's theme song, couldn't remember the second, but when Jamie chimed in with it (I won't quote it because I don't know it myself), they then sang the rest of the song together. I wish they lived closer to us so they could play all the time.

2006-12-31 22:00 (John) Our New Year's plans were up in the air until this afternoon. I had planned on taking Jamie and his three Ottawa cousins sledding this morning, but Anna and Owen came down with the stomach flu that Becky had had on Boxing Day. Jamie had a good night's sleep and woke up at his usual 7:45, though I played possum for a little while thanks to Becky. Liam slept in until around 10:00, and I only noticed he was awake when I went upstairs to get a book and found him giving the bedroom ceiling a huge grin. I guess he had happy dreams last night.

Jamie, Becky and I went out for an hour late in the morning, and as usual Jamie came back so exhausted he could barely drag his snowsuit-ed body home. I put him straight into the car, then Becky, Kristen, Liam and I drove back down to Chinatown for lunch with my visiting brother and family. Jamie fell asleep for a minute or so in the car, but we managed to get him awake in time to sit groggily through dim sum, though he was too tired at the end to eat more than one piece of his favourite turnip cake.

Both kids fell asleep on the ride back out to Orleans, which let me stop to run a few errands, picking up the rest of what I thought we'd need for the people I thought would be eating dinner. Then I napped in the car in the garage with Jamie until he'd slept for two and a half hours and brought him in so we could get dinner underway. Liam was still asleep too, and stayed asleep for a little while longer.

We made ozouni* (Japanese New Year's soup, with mochi*, made by me), toshikoshi zarusoba* (Kristen), curried herring, crudites and dip (Jason) and gomame* (caramelized dried anchovies, provided by Aunt Alissa). It was the busiest I'd ever seen Laraine's kitchen, what with Liam waking up in the middle, Jamie getting hungry before the food was ready and needing yesterday's leftovers reheated for him, and the large number of helpers and diners.

Everything's been tidied up now except for the herring, the crudites and the anchovies, which are out for Laraine to nibble on when she gets home from dinner with her boyfriend. The Dahls are watching movies in the living room waiting for midnight. Kristen gave Jamie his weekly shampoo tonight while Jennifer looked after Liam. Liam spent most of Jamie's bath on his back in the dining room where Becky used to like to lie as a baby, babbling for ten minutes to Jennifer about how wonderful his life was. Then he got tired, and almost fell asleep on my shoulder, but decided at the last minute that he needed a quick nurse, and is in bed now with Jamie and Kristen.

Happy New Year, everybody.

2007-01-01 23:05 (Kristen) Despite our late night last night, Jamie was up by 8:00 again. I don't know why he's doing this, but it has taken some adjustment on our parts. John, actually has been getting up with him, which is an enormous treat for me, as I am the one who usually does it. I tried to stay asleep for a bit longer, but Liam needed to nurse, and I couldn't get back to sleep. Anna was already up (Jamie hd gotten up because he couldn't wait to have a popsicle) to help John, and Grammie was up to make a turkey for dinner tonight. The Dahls had stayed overnight, and they stumbled up, one by one, to join us in the family room/kitchen. The kids played, and I got some work done while John went back to bed to sleep with Liam, who was still sleeping. They came back down around 10:00. The Dahls went home, and Jamie helped Grammie make sweet potato pie.

Dinner was to be a large affair at Rod Matheson's house, and Anna, Liam, John, and Jamie and I went down in the car early, hoping that Jamie might fall asleep. I was dropped off with Liam at a local coffee shop nearby, and got some work done while John and Anna convinced Jamie to have a nap. He finally dropped off and we went to Rod's. Liam was a hit, and consented to not only be carried by Mrs. Engelbrecht but actually fell asleep in her arms. He has een making strange over the last few days, but he seems to be getting over it. He certainly didn't do it tonight. He was passed from person to person while I worked and John followed a tired Jamie around the house. John says that Jamie ate more than he did, which is likely as Jamie is capable of putting away heroic quantities of stuffing, turkey, and cranberry sauce. We had a lovely time, and Jamie ended the evening off by watching a video on John's computer with Becky. We're all home now, and Jamie went to sleep right away. Liam is burbling away in the living room with Grammie while I write and John packs the car for our return to Toronto tomorrow.

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

Back to Vol. 1 No. 63, or up to Jamie Chew's Web Log Archive. or forward to Vol. 1 No. 65.