Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 1 No. 85

2007-05-22 18:27 (Kristen) Liam needs to be watched constantly. When he isn't, he pulls himself up on the shelves, tries to pull shelves down on himself, stuffs playground mulch into his face, tries to walk on his own (and falls down immediately), and any other of a million damaging activities. He used to require feeding at a terrific speed. Now he prefers if you dawdle, and likes to feed himself Teddy Graham cereal in between bites. It's quite exciting to a degree of exciting that is rather exhausting. However, he also gives big, fat, open mouthed baby kisses, ri glomming onto your chin or a cheek. It's pretty cute, and makes up for much.

2007-05-22 22:30 (Kristen) Jamie was up around 8:15, and Liam wasn't far behind. John took Liam with him when he took Jamie to a make-up day at Hakobune, and says that he was a good and sunny boy. Liam fell asleep on the way home, however, and so John or I sat in the car with him until he woke up an hour and a half or so later. John took him again to pick up Jamie, and the boys were tired but active when they came home. Jamie helped John to mow the lawn, and Liam watched. Then John had a rest, and I watched the boys for a bit before John took them out for a walk to the Big Carrot while I made dinner.

Not much more to report, beyond the usual bedtime stuff. Liam is wide awake and causing trouble in the living room, and keeping me company while I blog. He's also tuning the radio, which is just sooo exciting. Must go.

2007-05-23 22:09 (Kristen) I was up early this morning, because I couldn't sleep, and got the lunches and breakfasts ready for the kids. Liam was up first, followed by Jamie, both of whom got John up at different times. We all drove in together, and Liam had a short nap as we wandered around the neighbourhood near Hakobune. We picked up Jamie and Sachiko, and came back for a bit. Jamie found Gary, and clung to him for the rest of the day, pretty much. He is quite bothered by my being unable to speak, and is acting out and arguing in a different way than usual, or failing to pay attention when I ask him to do things he doesn't want to do because I can't call out to get his attention. Poor guy.

On the other hand, Liam is cutting two teeth today, in addition to the one that he just cut (bottom and big front left). He also can free stand for ten to fifteen seconds. He needs to stand at all times, and scarfs Teddy Puffs at a ferocious rate. He's quite the guy. He's sleeping lightly, and I hope that he'll stay asleep for the rest of the night.

2007-05-24 23:02 (Kristen) Jamie and I had a stupid fight this morning, which I traced to the fact that he needed to pee. Needing to pee changes Jamie's personality like a blood sugar low affects a diabetic: he gets combative, unreasonable, and difficult to deal with. Then we all realize "oh! he needs to pee!" and the problem goes away just like that. Just like this morning. Sigh. Liam's nose began to run, which wasn't great, but seems to indicate that he's still about two days behind on the cold that I have. Oh: it's not really a cold anymore. We saw our family doctor today, and I have otitis, rhinitis, sinusitis, conjunctivitis, and laryngitis. That's it for the itises today. I am taking big fat pills, which will (I hope) clear up my ears and the rest of m esoon. Jamie is coming to terms with my inability to speak, and we're trying to connect on other levels. He's spending a good deal of time with Gary, and we've agreed it's nice that Jamie has someone to go to when his home life gets too much.

It was an average Thursday: I took the kids in to Hakobune before coming back for my doctor's appointment. John went to pick up Jamie, and Ken took Liam so that I could have a nap. Ken dropped Liam off around 3, and John and Jamie came home, laden with groceries, around 4. I later found that they had discussed that there was no "nurse nurse" section at Loblaws, although Jamie though that it could be near the baby section. Much three-year-old humour ensued. Ha ha. They also had to buy a box of crackers with Elmo, because Elmo was stuck in the box, and needed to get out. Elmo would also say "ow" if you shook the box. More three-year-old-humour, with John just as much into it as Jamie. I set up the pack'n' play for Liam, and he's cool about it. It's all right, but it's still a little hard for him to pull himself up on his own, that is what makes the world go around, really. Today's game was to make Liam stand on his own, and then catch him whichever way he fell. He thought it was hilarous.

2007-05-25 22:30 (John) Kristen got up and made the kids breakfast the way she usually does, then I took them out so that she could go back to bed. I dropped Jamie off at Hakobune, then took Liam to his monthly visit with the Roots of Empathy programme. The kids were excited by how much he had progressed in his development: he stands if wobbly, has teeth, and eats food! Food was this month's theme, and I was worried that he might not be hungry, but he performed well, grabbing his own dry cereal before letting me feed him a large quantity of our shared miso gumbo alternating with swigs from his water bottle. Heather had asked that I offer him something new, and Kristen had prepared a container of quartered grapes. He was enthusiastic about them, though I think they all ended up in his lap after he'd sucked them dry.

Not surprisingly, he fell asleep on the brief car ride home, and stayed asleep on his full tummy for an hour, long enough for me to answer all my morning's calls and close my eyes for five minutes. I left Liam with Kristen briefly for Ken to pick up to take out for his walk, then went to pick up Jamie. Jamie was sweating from the hot weather, but still insisted that I spend twenty minutes building robots for him and his friends before we could leave. When we got home, Jamie decided we were going to Browning, which is where we spent the rest of the day, joined by Liam when Ken brought him back from his walk. Jamie wanted to watch much too much of the Crazy Frog DVD that Gary bought for Ross, and Liam was happy to spend most of his practising cruising while I dabbed at the runny green mucus that dripped steadily from his nose.

Dinner was Tami's chili, and we came home relatively early, so that we can get up early to go visit a Japanese Saturday school that we're thinking of sending Jamie to in the fall.

2007-05-26 22:55 (John) Kristen seems to be gradually recovering, though it will be a few days yet before she can speak, and I'm guessing a few weeks before she's herself again. I had the boys for most of the day, so let me see what I can remember of our day.

Liam had woken Kristen up sometime before 07:22. I know this, because at 07:22, Jamie asked me to wake up and play video games, and I told him that if he didn't stay quiet for the next 23 minutes, I would be too tired to go to Centre Island. Given that he asked all winter long when Centreville (the amusement park on Centre Island) would be open again, he showed admirable restraint in asking me to check the time only twice, at 07:35 and 07:43.

Kristen fed the boys breakfast, then I took them out on our first outing of the day, to visit Nisshuu Gakuin, the Japanese Saturday morning school that we would like him to attend beginning September. We ran into Junko on the way in, which was convenient, as she was able to give us directions to the Ms. Noguchi's office, which despite her general instructions was not especially easy to find. Liam fell asleep in the car and stayed asleep through the transfer to stroller, a minor miracle, so he was easy to manage during the brief interview and classroom visit; Jamie's thoughts were clearly already on the Island the entire time, and the only time he came out of his reverie was when he noticed the smell of chlorine from the adjoining community centre pool and asked where the pool was (in Japanese, at least). He seemed a little freaked out during the classroom visit, possibly by the fact that he didn't know anyone there, and stood rooted to one spot as I walked around with Liam, trying to coax him over to look at what the kids were doing.

Then we drove down to the St. Lawrence Market. I allowed for two hours to shop with the two kids. It's tricky, but I've done it before, and it involves a sling for Liam and a stroller for Jamie (who is trained to eat and walk at the same time) (and also warned Tom against the evils of drinking and driving, but that's another story), frequent rests and at least one visit to the valet shopping parcel drop-off. As I was sitting at the fountain though, while I fed Liam some of my miso gumbo and Jamie played with a boy a few months younger (tag, robot tag, and evil crab robot tag, don't ask me what the rules are, but they're all apparently hilarious games), my aunt Tomoko found us and offered to help with the rest of our shopping. I don't say no to such requests, and Jamie decided that Tomoko's job would be to push him in the stroller, which left me to run around picking up groceries with Liam in the sling. We finished 30 minutes early, which left me with an hour free after I got home instead of the planned half hour.

Liam fell asleep on the ride home, so Kristen sat out with him in the car until he woke up. Jamie said he was tired too, and lay down with me while I closed my eyes briefly, to make sure I didn't actually doze off and miss our Centre Island date. Then I loaded the big stroller up with a fairly well guessed list of what I thought we would need for the afternoon, and walked over to Browning with Sachiko and the boys.

We made it to Centreville a little before 15:00, stuffed everyone full of pizza to give them either stamina or at least something to throw up on roller coasters, then started wandering around the park. Curiously though, Jamie didn't want to go on any rides, not even the Centreville Train ("the cowcatcher is scary and the tunnel is too spooky"), though he seemed to enjoy looking at all the rides as long as I didn't pressure him too hard about the train. Liam likewise seemed happy to wander around in the stroller, only needing to be let loose once every hour or so to stretch his legs, but instead of his usual two-hour nap at 13:00, he had a thirty-minute catnap at 15:30.

By about 17:30, both kids were melting down from overstimulation, too much sugar (in Jamie's case) and not enough sleep (in Liam's), so I took them out of the park to run around on the grass, then walked over to the hedge maze. When the park closed at 18:00, Jamie was too tired to walk, or even run a straight line, but accepted Tom's offer to carry him all the way home. This almost made up for Tom insisting that Daniel share the grape slush that he bought at the evil ice cream truck at the foot of Bay St., but not quite, because the late sugar rush send Jamie totally over the edge and it took all of our efforts to get him calmed down and into bed at around 21:30. Liam took even longer to calm down, I think because we haven't developed as large an arsenal of calming rituals for him, which I now think we should make a development priority.

Well, that's about it, and I'm blitheringly tired so I'm off to bed and I'll leave it to Kristen to proof this in the morning!

2007-05-27 14:15 (John) Kristen and Liam had trouble sleeping last night. Kristen ran a mild fever, and Liam was having trouble breathing because of heavy green nasal mucus flow and dental pain, so we're probably back to see the doctor on Monday. Liam's nose stopped running around lunchtime again; Kristen's voice has been coming and going all day, and she has developed a somewhat productive cough.

Liam and I slept in until nearly 10:00 A.M. and spent the morning doing chores, Kristen felt well enough to take Liam to the Second Cup in the afternoon, and Jamie and I will head out to join them as soon as Jamie finished eating one of Nupur's naans.

Jamie and I had had natto* for brunch for the first time in a while. He has some favourite words and phrases, and loves to experiment with how words sound. The natto* was first "amakute oishii", then "karakute oishii", sweet, sticky, and my favourite#, "chopsticky".

2007-05-27 23:10 (John) On the way to the Second Cup, Jamie invented a new game, called "How do you make...?". He asked me how you make houses, utility poles, bushes, schools, bricks, playgrounds, rocks, cars, people and pigeons. My answers all began with "You start with a..." and continued respectively with an excavator and cement mixer, a tree, a seed, a big excavator and a lot of cement mixers, clay, a bulldozer, a volcano, an assembly line, eggs and eggs.

We spent longer than we had planned at the Second Cup, with Jamie working on his Kumon books while I did some coding, because we arrived without rain gear just as a downburst let loose. Eventually the rain let up enough for me to run home with Jamie (safe in the stroller) and get raincoats and umbrellas, and we all made it safely to Browning for salmon and scallops dinner a day early (to accommodate Peter, Laura and Jon's schedule). We made dinner, then juggled kids and dinner conversation. Liam wanted to spend all his time at the corner of Browning and Broadview pulling up dandelions and watching buses go by, which is very much like Jamie two years ago (and for that matter Ross or Daniel at that age); Jamie was still quite keyed up and flitted back and forth between the dinner table and the living room.

Kristen's fever returned in the evening, so she took Liam home to bed early; Jamie and I followed an hour or so later, during which I played Bananagrams with Tom, Daniel and Ross while Jamie alternately role played with a stuffed mouse named Mousey and an unnamed spaceship, and came to see what we were doing. I'm not sure exactly how to describe it, but I think Jamie has climbed another rung on the developmental ladder. He's become a much more independent boy, and what I like most about it is that he's leading most of our conversations now, and always taking them in unexpected directions.

2007-05-28 23:25 (Kristen) Liam woke up at 1:30, needing to be walked and soothed back to sleep, and it was another fairly restless night until we woke up around 9:00. Jamie played with trains and otherwise played, mainly by himself, while I made breakfast and fed Liam. John came downstairs and had fun playing "hide" with Jamie, which consisted of laundry baskets and a comforter on top of them, fort-like, and much mad giggling. Lunch was at Browning, and Ken took Liam for a walk while John took Jamie to Withrow Park.

John says that both Hiro-kun and Taiki-kun, from Hakobune, were at the park with their mums, and there was much talk about school in the fall. Taiki-kun will be going to Nisshuu Gakuin, and Hiro-kun's mom was talking about getting into Jackman (and the problems of getting into the catchment area). Jamie had fun playing with his friends. We all met up at the Second Cup, and spent a good deal of time there before heading to Browning. Jamie was too tired to focus on his work, but found the focus to do some cutting and render a piece of paper into confetti. Not much thought required, but some manual coordination work, I suppose! The boys and I went to Browning for dinner, because John was playing Trivia tonight (as I have no voice, I wasn't up to playing). We ate dinner, and played, but went home at 8:10, to try and get into bed early. It didn't work out that way, of course, and the boys were in bed around 9:30. Jamie was utterly wired, and only fell asleep after John got home. John and I talked about trivia in utterly boring voices and that finally send Jamie over the edge into dreamland. Liam had a lot of trouble falling asleep, and is sleeping only lightly, I'd say. I've given him painkillers and decongestants, and I can only guess what's bothering him so much, the poor lamb.

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

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