Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 1 No. 86

2007-05-29 21:16 (Kristen) I am taking new antibiotics and have a steroid inhaler for my cough. John is starting to come down with some variety of the ick. (John: I refuse to admit this, I just feel run down from a late night out last night.) Liam has a freely running nose, and a brand new tooth. Jamie is obviously disturbed by my continuing illness. Ken gave Liam a pizza crust to gnaw on during his afternoon walk because Liam's teeth were killing him and he needed something to bite. It was Liam's first exposure to wheat (we were going to wait a few more months), and it may have given him the hive I found on his neck an hour later. Dr. Kennedy is getting sick of seeing us all.

On the bright side, Jamie is active and continuing to play by himself much more, with more pleasure. Liam ate two and a half jars of baby food today, along with apples, soba, and some asparagus. He can free stand, if he's not aware of it, for up to 15 seconds. Jamie made dinner this evening when he made (with help from John) the broth for our soba noodles. He was very proud. Liam is the Kamikaze Kid, as he tries to pull himself up on bookshelves, mouth powerbars (not the food kind), and pull himself up on anything he can find. He also swims across the floor at terrific speed. He loves anything that goes vroom. We're all off to bed soon, and not soon enough, really.

2007-05-30 23:47 (Kristen) John took the boys to Hakobune, and then Liam went with John and his dad to buy Jack a new computer. John brought Liam home around noon-ish, as he needed a drink, and Liam fell asleep while nursing. John left Liam with me while he went to pick up Jamie, Liam and I fell asleep, and I didn't seeJohn or Jamie for the rest of the afternoon.

John picked up Jack's computer and brought it over to his parents' house for an exciting afternoon of installation, made more tricky by their ISP provider. Jamie played with John's mom for most of the afternoon, as they pretended to be high-speed trains going up and down the driveway. The grassy area between the two paved strips that were the tracks was designated to be a river, and the blades of grass, apparently, were needlefish. This kept Jamie happy for a while. Liam and I woke up around 3:00, and Liam continued to be happy overall but easily overset. I think that there is a tooth still making its way through (that one on the bottom, in particular) causing him to burst into tears for no reason at odd moments. Both kids have coughs, but they don't seem to be disturbing their sleep, or otherwise getting in the way like mine has been.

Jamie ate dinner with John at Browning, and then came home to play trains, play with Sachiko (who is leaving for her permanent homestay tomorrow evening), and watch only a little television. He only watches tv when he's bored or needs to calm down/decompress, and he's been (by choice) watching very little. It's a complete 180, and all on his own terms, which delights me. He's utterly consumed by the idea of video games, however, which may be the inevitable Next Big Thing.

2007-05-31 22:40 (Kristen) Jamie was up around 8:00, and Liam was up soon afterwards. John took both boys with him again as he dropped Jamie off at Hakobune, did some grocery shopping with Liam, and then brought him back home. Liam wasn't so interested in food today, but did enjoy a big fat nurse before we went over to Browning for lunch. Ken took him out for his afternoon walk, with chew toys, and Liam slept until around 3:00. John and Jamie got stuck at John's parents' house, as Jamie decided that Tai-Tai was a great playmate and he didn't want to leave. We all met up at home around 5:00, when Jamie played a little with Sachiko. Sachiko has left for her new place, and so we have the house to ourselves again. Jamie found Gary and ran him ragged for the rest of the evening, and John did some work while I hung out with Liam. Liam needs a lot more stimulation, and I'm not sure if it's the tooth or just being older and less content to stare at the ceiling and gurgle. I tried to feed him more traditional solids, like rice, salmon, and umeboshi*, and while he enjoyed it to some degree, he prefers purees because they're easier to swallow. Jamie was eating a lot more "adult" food at this age than Liam is, and I'm going to keep trying to get Liam to do this too. Today's new food was oatmeal. Yay!

2007-06-01 23:15 (John) Kristen is still gradually improving, and can talk for minutes at a time, sometimes, without coughing. I took the kids to Hakobune, then stopped at Computer Systems Centre to get a store credit on the old Seagate hard disk and apply it to a new Lacie external FireWire drive for Kristen's old iMac. The staff there appreciated Liam's iPood onesie; Liam enjoyed chewing on my pen (still working hard on that sixth tooth, he has both lower central incisors, both left lateral incisors, and the left upper central incisor) and listening to the Rolling Stones' Satisfaction but nothing else in the store attracted his attention.

I brought Liam home to Kristen so that I could take a nap, then she took him out for a walk while I went to get Jamie. Jamie was hot and sweaty from the heat, but not minding it too much. I think the heat was making all the kids a bit clumsy though, so I was not surprised when he and Kai managed to run their heads into each other so hard they were bawling for minutes. We stopped in at Pearls as we have the last few days, so that we could have an afternoon snack, and I could get a half hour's work done while Jamie played with Tai-Tai. Then we came home, Kristen took the kids over to Browning so that I could finish setting up her new hard drive, and then I followed for the first celebration of my 43rd birthday and Daniel's 14th. Liam celebrating by eating more real food than I've ever seen him eat, and I'm worried that he's going to be up with a tummy ache. Grilled zucchini, salmon, asparagus, canned peaches and peeled quartered grapes, mostly. I'll let Kristen take over from here.

(Kristen) I had read in the blog that we were feeding Jamie his firrst chicken curries around this age, and so I chopped some chicken up finely and fed it to Liam. He looked surprised, but has been happy to eat it. I think that he needs to eat more "real people food," and judging from John's comments above, he's more than ready for it. Jamie was very happy that I read him one (short) bedtime story tonight; that missing part of his routine has really bothered him. It's nice to know that it is important to him for us to read together. The kids are otherwise fine. Liam has a cough like mine, but seems to be coping well.

2007-06-02 17:00 (John) Jamie slept poorly last night, waking me up around 5:00 to go to the bathroom. I thought it would be nice if Kristen came along with us to the St. Lawrence Market this morning for a festive change on this my birthday, and our various longtime vendors were delighted to se her. Her presence turned out to be quite helpful too, when Jamie, who had been getting tireder and tireder all morning, started screaming in the car that his ear Really Hurt. So instead of going up to the Nisshuu Gakuin Bazaar, I dropped Kristen and Jamie off at the local walk-in clinic while Liam and I put away the groceries. Then I drove back to the clinic, swapped boys so that Kristen could go pick up the drugs for Jamie (antibiotic eyedrops for his eyes, which are running a steady flow of green mucus, much as did Liam's and Kristen's in past weeks; and oral antibiotics for his ears - one would have expected aural) while I tried to get Jamie to stop screaming by watching Treehouse Television. The latter didn't work, but the Tylenol (acetaminophen) Kristen brought home did, and after a few hours of everyone taking turns passing out in front of the TV, snacking on fruit, or wiping each other's eyes, we all calmed down enough for me to come upstairs and write this. We had planned on going out to Asuka with my parents and aunts, but it looks like a quiet, early night in instead.

2007-06-03 22:55 (John) Kristen continues to improve day by day, and today her voice was sounding almost back to normal. Jamie really doesn't like his eyedrops, but they have stopped the flow of green mucus, though his eyes are still quite pink. His fever came and went, with a little help from Tylenol every now and then. I think his antibiotics are working. Liam was doing not too badly, though his nose is still full of green mucus. I spent the day with trigeminal neuralgia, I think set off by temporomandibular inflammation in turn triggered by living in a sea of nasty viruses and bacteria the last several days.

This all made for a fairly easy to enumerate list of family activities. Jamie didn't eat much, played video games with me (Marble Madness and MarbleBlast), and watched TV, including his first ever viewing of one of my favourite# films, Miyazaki's Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro. I figured he was already obsessed with guns and swords, what possible further harm could Lupin do? I'd forgotten about all the grenades.

I mowed the lawns and Kristen edged them, with Liam keeping her company and enjoying the fresh air for a while. Liam is standing up better and better each day, heaven knows that's all he wants to spend his time doing. That's all I can think of now, I'm off to try to anaesthetize my jaw.

2007-06-04 22:55 (Kristen) We all slept badly last night for one reason or another. For John, it was because he had what turned into a case of trigeminal neuralgia, and the pain was keeping him awake. For me, it was John being awake, then Liam, and then Jamie waking up at 6 something needing a drink. I managed to get both boys back to sleep, and Jamie stayed asleep until almost 10. I woke Liam up at 11:15, because I was afraid he'd not sleep again all day. John was not in good shape, and this was disturbing Jamie considerably, to the point where he kept asking John to do this or that to show that he was all right. I took the boys over to Browning for lunch, and this went well. Gary was there and played video games with Jamie, which helped him quite a bit. Ken took Liam out for a walk, and Liam slept! Yay!

I picked Liam up at the Second Cup, did a few errands (including getting a new painkiller for John, which is working, yay!), and picked up Jamie from his video game session with Gary. I talked Jamie into going shopping with me at Sobey's, and he enjoyed helping me carry the basket all around the store. Then we stopped at the Dairy Queen for a snack, and came home to do some gardening. Jamie burned out around the same time that Liam did, and I was not all that happy myself. We went in for a time out, and then got ready to go to Browning again for dinner. Jamie ate his dinner with supervision, and Liam inhaled some corn, asparagus, and salmon. The boys had their usual good time, and we came home for a bath and bed.

Jamie has been really really brave about his eye drops. He cries still when it's time, but he grits his teeth and lets me put them in quickly, purposefully sitting down in the right position. He is genuinely almost phobic about things in his eyes, and so for him to be so obviously brave in the face of one of his big fears nearly brings tears to my eyes every time. He's trying so hard. For two nights now, I've been able to put Liam down before Jamie gets out of the bath, which means that Jamie can have his stories sitting in my lap, and we can have a cuddle while he falls asleep. He's so very happy about this too, and it reinforces my thought that he needs some extra reassurance with my illness, John's, and his own to deal with. It really makes me happy to see him happy.

Before Liam was born, it was hard for me to imagine loving anyone as much as I did Jamie. With Liam here, I realize that I love them both equally but differently. They're different people, but both remarkably rewarding in their own ways. Liam is a lot of work right now, as he is so physically active but utterly unable to discern between what is going to hurt him and what isn't. It makes me exhausted, but he's so happy to be able to move, and get around on his own steam.

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

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