Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 2 No. 22

2008-02-05 08:30 (John) The boys were up with the sun at 06:30 and Kristen looked after them for an hour while I got up more slowly. I have to take my parents shopping in Cancun for the day, and it looks like she and Laraine will have their work cut out for them looking after the boys. Jamie ate his cereal quickly and is encamped before Lilo and Stitch, leaving Liam to roam freely around the house investigating its engineering, asking how things work, what they do, what they're called, etc., all on a very short fuse.

Jamie has a little of Liam's cold, but the wounds on his foot are healing well. Liam's cold is a little better, and seems to be otherwise fine.

2008-02-05 21:00 (Kristen) The boys were up around 6:30 this morning, not long after sunrise. John and I had fallen asleep early the night before again, and weren't that tired when we got up. John slept a little longer after I took the boys downstairs for breakfast, and we ate raisin bran with Froot Loops scattered on top for breakfast with whole milk. Yum. The Froot Loops are a special treat, and are rationed out. We watched Lilo and Stitch, and Jamie lamented at one point in the day that he wanted Stitch as his dog to be his friend, and he is in helpless envy of the little flying cars that Lilo and Stitch have in the closing credits. If anyone has knowledge of how to get little child-sized flying hovercars with retractable wheels, please get in touch with us.

Jamie was exploding with chatter all day. His imagination is overflowing with ideas about robot battles, and what his imaginary cousin is doing (he or she lives on Mars), and how this item is bigger and stronger than that item, and on and on. Liam was just wild first thing in the morning. John was to go to Cancun with his mom and dad, and so he was gone by 10:00. At that point, it was decided that we would go out to Mama's Bakery for a coffee and a muffin. It was terribly crowded when we arrived, and there was less seating than last year, so we went on to the zocalo. There, nothing was open. Downcast, we headed back to Mama's, where a table had opened up for us during our quest. Liam was in the backpack, as Jamie is still having trouble with his shoes and so rode in the stroller. Liam fell asleep for close to two hours in the backpack, which amazed me (the length of the nap), but given his behaviour earlier, I shouldn't have been surprised. We ate, and read a book, and then headed back home and over to the Ojo de Agua for lunch. Liam woke up when i moved the stroller, but that meant that he could join us in eating. Jamie asked for me to have an enchilada, and for him to have a quesadilla, and Liam happily ate all the salsa that came with the chips (lots of diced onions, tomatoes, and (I think) cilantro). We had a great time, and the boys played together for a while until they stopped listening, and it was time to go home.

We went to the beach after lunch, and the boys played well enough in the sand, but they both *really* wanted to spend their time in the ocean. It was tricky having both boys in the water at once with me, but Liam clung to me whenever he wasn't demanding that I swish him through the water, and I had to keep reminding Jamie not to go more than an arm's length away from me. They both loved the waves (it was a little rougher today, with a wind blowing off the ocean directly onto land), and were reluctant to go in. They showered the sand off just as John came back from Cancun. John came back with a Mega Bloks robot and robot dog set, for both boys to play with, and much much fun was had with them. Jamie really wanted to go back out swimming, and so went with John and his mom, complete with mask and little flippers. They were gone for a while, and Jamie was in a great mood when he came back (went in with John twice, I think I heard) (John: yes, with goggles to protect his eyes from the waves, and flippers that are just a little big for him), so it must have gone well. Liam is wearing pull-up diapers now, thanks again to John's shopping trip, because he keeps trying to take off his diaper whenever someone goes to the bathroom so that he can do it himself. He succeeded in peeing in a corner, but has not peed yet in a toilet, But he's working on it quite seriously, and given his track record with long-term plans, I expect that he'll be making progress soon.

I made dinner this evening, and everyone had a good time. Liam was ready for bed by 6:45, however, and a little hair pulling on his part around 7:20 sealed it (a sure-fire way to know that Liam is ready for bed is when he starts systematically annoying his brother). He fell asleep almost instantly. Jamie came up at 8:20, and did more or less the same thing. All the fresh air and exercise is doing both of them a world of good.

2008-02-06 12:00 (John) This just in: I invited Jamie to come over to my parent's house just now to play MechQuest while I blogged, and he said "No thank you, this [Mega Bloks Rescue Heroes] is my best [favourite#] game now." Kristen was floored, and high-fived me for finding something that Jamie likes better than a video game. I chose the Rescue Heroes because although they're recommended for kids up to age 3, I knew Jamie would still get a lot of enjoyment out of them, more so because we don't have to worry too much about Liam wrecking them or losing pieces.

2008-02-06 21:30 (Kristen) The days start very early here, and it's hard to remember what happens from day to day. We hang about the house in the morning, or do some errands before it gets too hot (usually around 10:30). We also like to get a coffee and/or pastry at Cafe d'Amancia, or at Mama's Bakery. Mom and I are the ones to take the boys out on these excursions; John will often stay home to work, or rest if he can. We eat lunch, and Liam goes down for his nap. Today, Liam was difficult to deal with early, and ended up having a nap at 10:30 AM: a little early, it turns out. He slept for two hours, and we hung about until it was time to go to the beach (our favourite afternoon activity). Jamie and Liam both love the ocean, and are as eager to get into the water as Jamie was to stay out of the water in previous years. The weather is hot, and so we stay under the beach umbrella, in the shade, as much as we can when we're not in the water. John takes Jamie swimming in the shallows, and Jamie has his own mask and little fins to swim with. Liam loves the ocean too, and will run up to it, with me in tow, to get buckets of water to pour onto the sand at our umbrella, to make sand castles and "soup" with (Jamie favours broccoli, cheese, and egg "soup").

In the evening, we made dinner, and the boys loved the fish that John made (huachinango* tikenchik*, a local delicacy: see our household recipes page). The boys are playing more and more together, and better (although there are always the odd rough patches to work through here and there). Liam had slept again around 3:45 for an hour, because he was too tired to stand and very screechy, and wasn't ready for bed at 8:00 like he has been for the last week. Mom and I walked him to the zocalo and back (John was asleep with Jamie, who fell asleep with no trouble). Liam finally fell asleep around 10:00, and I fell asleep a bit later.

2008-02-07 21:30 (Kristen) This morning, we were all up at 6:15 or a little afterwards. I had wanted to go to the early morning yoga class that John's aunt Jean runs at her yoga retreat, Villas Shanti, and so John and my mom watched the kids while I did so. They met up with me after I was done (I could hear happy voices in the vestibule as we were concluding), and Jamie especially enjoyed running about the yoga room. Aunt Jean helped him to stand on his head, and to do a proper spin (keep your eyes on one place), which Jamie greatly appreciated. Mom and I took the boys to our usual post-yoga meal at Mama's, and we did some groceries before coming back to the house. Later in the day, I discovered that a "gun" (actually a backing board, or possibly a surfboard) to his Rescue Tech figure was gone. We all looked around, and I finally found it in the grassy median near Mama's. Whew! We all hate losing pieces to things, but since we almost always find them, we're not sure we're teaching Jamie that you have to be careful with your things or they'll be lost.

The boys have been good. Jamie watched Anpanman videos, and Liam almost fell asleep in the backpack around 10:30, but avoided that fate until 12:45. He slept for an hour and a half. John is out swimming right now, trying to cool off (the day is very hot), and I'm glad to be sitting under a ceiling fan. The boys are watching a Pythagoras Switch video, and all is well with the world for now.

(John) Much of my day was taken up with trying to go for my first snorkel of the trip. I came over to drop my computer off in my parents' strongroom, and as my dad went to check on the accessibility of the WiFi router for me, he gouged open his toe on the rusted foot of a slide swing. I left Jamie and the computer with Laraine and took our nurse friend Nancy Bell and my dad to the medical clinic by the zocalo. While the local doctor was anesthetising, cleaning and stitching up my dad, I bought him a pair of zori that he could wear with his injury. My dad is on antibiotics, anti-inflammatories and will get his tetanus shot tomorrow. I then drove around unsuccessfully looking for Jamie's toy gun (see above) before returning home briefly while Kristen went out looking. On the bright side, it was the Best Snorkel Ever, as in one outing I saw pompanos, a two-foot turtle (that my mom petted while it rested on Great Rock), a good-sized eagle ray and a school of a dozen squid.

2008-02-08 10:00 (John) Jamie has three mosquito bites on his left leg and foot, which are doing what they usually do and swelling up into very painful welts. He's taking it okay, but won't be able to fit into a fin for a few days at least. I'm treating it with steroids and antibiotics topically and will add Benadryl if he isn't better tomorrow. Liam has a bad case of heat rash at his diaper line on his back, we're just observing it now.

2008-02-07 20:00 (Kristen) We spent the latter part of the day on the beach, enjoying the cooler temperatures. Liam loves to run along the edge of the water, and particularly loves to take a bucket to the ocean, fill it up by himself (because he isn't a baby, you know), and try to carry it back to the area we're sitting at on the beach. Jamie loves to swim with his dad, but it was getting late in the day when the chance arose, and John had already had his swim. So, I went into the water quite late with Jamie and John's mom, who wanted to swim with Jamie. It took us a few minutes to get used to swimming together, but we got the hang of it, Jamie and I. Sai's friend Nancy called us over to another area of the shallows, saying that she'd found a couple of flounders. We swam over, in about four feet of shallow water, to where Nancy was. Nancy needs a little work identifying her fish, as I looked down upon what she called a flounder, to realize that the fish on the bottom was, in fact, an electric ray that was getting agitated by the people surrounding it and pointing at it. I hauled fin and boy very quickly away from the area, and decided that, as I'd been concerned about rays anyway (they come in close to shore late in the day), I was not risking it any further with my boy on my back. Jamie thought that the speed with which I headed for shore was pretty funny, and is interested in learning more about a fish with an electrical charge. I had a beer: my first in at least two years.

We ate dinner at the Ojo restaurant. Jamie had a great time playing with two older kids (maybe 6 and 8), swordfighting with bamboo driftwood, and communing with people close to his own age. After a good time, we headed in to sleep. We've been feeling pretty crowded in the bed, and so Liam and I are going to sleep with my mom, and John and Jamie are going to sleep in the other room. We hope that John will get a better night's sleep for it, as Liam is not a peaceful sleeping companion.

2008-02-08 21:00 (Kristen) Liam and I slept in this morning for the first time, crawling out of bed around 7:45. John and Jamie were up much earlier than that, at 6:15, and were more tired than me and Liam. Mom and I took Liam out for a walk to the zocalo in the morning to do a little shopping, and had a coffee and a croissant before heading back home. Jamie hung out at Tai-tai and Ho-ho's (Jack's foot is improving well) until we got back. I had a job interview by phone at noon, and both boys were great while I was on the phone. Jamie was quiet, but needed to have a small vocal freakout to let out all the energy he'd kept in check for the fifteen minutes that I was on the phone.

In the afternoon, John, Jamie, and Grammie headed out the beach while I stayed behind as Liam (finally) napped. I found out later that they only made it as far as the pool, as Jamie found the two boys that he was playing with the night before there. Jamie stayed in the pool to play with them, and then stayed by himself, for about an hour and a half. He only came out when his fingers had prunes on their prunes. Liam and I came out soon afterwards, and we all headed to the beach for more volcano building and bucket filling. Both boys enjoy the beach immensely. When we were done, we had dinner again at the Ojo, where Jamie ordered enchiladas for himself and for me. He loves enchiladas (he calls them "those things that start with 'e'") (John: they're made with "torpedos" (tortillas)), and notes carefully what everyone has for dinner. When Grammie switched from her usual sopa de lima to spaghetti, it was commented upon. Liam ate almost a whole container of pico de gallo by himself, and both boys happily ran around before it was time to come home. We're in early tonight to avoid mosquitoes, but I know that Liam would prefer to be outside, looking at the stars.

(John) Kristen told me that the shock of her afternoon came after Liam's nap, when Liam let out a howl of pain and came running to her. From the fact that he had the little back-door key in his hand, and he appeared to be running from an electrical outlet, she deduced that he had pulled a Swain (so named after the childhood experiments of popular physicist John Swain).

2008-02-09 21:53 (Kristen) Jamie and John were up at the crack of dawn again, while Liam (who fell asleep late again last night, after we put him into a stroller in desperation and walked him to the zocalo and back) woke up a bit after seven. The boys were getting on each other's nerves early (and on mine as a result) by 10:00, and so we packed them up and took them to Mama's for some food (Jamie had woken up starving and eaten breakfast with John but his hollow leg was empty again). Jamie had fun playing with a little girl his age there, and Liam made smiles and passing eye contact with her little sister. It reminded me that the boys have been doing very well playing only with each other and us, by and large, and it's good for them to find some other companionship where they can. Jamie has been absorbing some of the playground prejudices about the opposite sex ("If you pee in a pink toilet, you will turn into a girl"), so it was good to see him play with one of the Other, as it were.

It took a lot of work, but I finally got Liam to nap around noon. He slept fitfully, but lasted for close to two hours with some help. In the meantime, John, my mom, and Jamie had gone to the ocean but stopped at the hotel pool when they saw Dylan and Devin, the two boys he played with yesterday. Into the pool went Jamie, and a pleasant time was had by all as they ate lunch (the restaurant is beside the pool) and watched Jamie and his friends have a blast. The boys played for most of the afternoon, swimming and exploring around the hotel on the beach, and (of course) talking Star Wars and sword fighting. Liam came along with me, and we had a lovely afternoon as Liam played with the big boys and alternately took a bucket and filled it up in the ocean before dumping it out and going back for more. John's parents and others came by to chat on their way from here to there, and my mom and John pronounced it a lovely time just sitting and resting. It made me realize that soon the boys will be off playing with each other or other kids and I'll be able to do this on a regular basis. What a concept. At the end of the day, John, Jamie, Liam, and I were in the ocean washing off the chlorine of the pool, chasing each other, and having the very best of times as we laughed and splashed and played. It was very very good.

To get the kids out of the ocean, we dangled forth the idea of ice cream at the zocalo. It worked, and we managed to get changed and dressed and out the door within an acceptable span of time. It was getting dark as we walked home for dinner, and realized that Jamie had fallen asleep. It wasn't that surprising, as he had looked completely exhausted as we were going into the ice cream place. One rum raisin ice cream cone and he was out. (John: he was actually too tired to finish the stub of it, and when I saw him staring dazedly at it, I offered to finish it and his head flopped over.) We brought him in and just put him to bed (it was 6:15), and he's stayed asleep since with one bathroom break. Liam, on the other hand, was very tired but wasn't about to give up the ghost so easily. By 8:30 he too was in the stroller and its magical soporific qualities had him snoozing too. I hope that he'll fall asleep in bed tomorrow night! We expect a very early morning out of Jamie tomorrow, and we'll try to spend the morning at the pool with Dylan and Devin before they leave to return home to New Hampshire. I think that Jamie will miss them.

2008-02-10 21:19 (Kristen) The boys were up around 6:30 or so after a good night's sleep. (John: Jamie had slept for 12.5 hours.) Jamie sat down with John to do some homework after breakfast, and so I took Liam for a long walk along the beach. We gathered avocado pits, splashed in the water, played with sand, and cuddled as we walked along the beach and had a glorious time. We came back as Jamie was finishing up his homework, and had made a robot costume out of a cardboard box. Jamie talks about JamieLand a lot, where everything is better: peacocks are more beautiful, and things are faster than anything around here, and Baikinman and Anpanman are real. It sounds like a good place to live more and more, all the time.

We spent the morning by the pool, saying goodbye to Devin and Dylan, and making new friends. I pulled the boys around the pool, along with two or three other kids, and finally (around 11:00), came inside with Liam because he was tired. He was asking to come in, politely, but when I was getting him some lunch to eat first, he was somewhat problematic. When Liam is tired, he goes around doing all the things he isn't supposed to: dumping out the garbage and turning my burner off are just two things. He ate lunch, and went down for his nap. (John: I took Jamie down to the beach to wash the chlorine off, and we played in the shallows for a while, with Jamie mostly riding piggyback while I snorkelled.) Everyone else returned soon after for lunch, and ate too. Liam slept for around two hours (and I napped for part of that with him), and then we puttered around until it was time for me and John to go out for dinner with Jean and Jack Loew (John's aunt and uncle) at 16:00. (John: Jamie and I had spent much of the afternoon at the Pagoda: he watched Anpanman videos while I uploaded blog photos.) We left the boys on the beach with their grandmothers, who seemed to handle it well when Liam started to cry when John left (I'd hidden, because it was a given that Liam would scream if he saw me leaving). They apparently took him to the seaside, where he happily played with buckets and water.

I am told that the boys ate an enormous amount of food each, and played until they were cold but still didn't want to come in. They hadn't been inside for too too long before John and I came back, around 18:15. The boys were in bed by 19:30. John read to Jamie: part of Jamie's homework assignment this morning had been to say what he did at morning, noon and night, and he had said that at night in Mexico he just went to sleep, though in Toronto he got a bedtime story first. Jamie and John talked for a few minutes until Jamie fell asleep at 20:00. I had more trouble getting Liam to fall asleep, which he did only after I closed the door and let him run around the bedroom burning off all his remaining energy. It's a cool and rainy night in Puerto Morelos, so everyone should sleep well.

2008-02-11 10:30 (John) We slept in until about 7:15 this morning, because of the cool, rainy weather and the absence of the morning sun's rays through our bedroom windows. I made Jamie his cereal and we did his Japanese homework, while Kristen tried to keep Liam busy while eating her own breakfast. Liam doesn't do breakfast. When Grammie got up, she, Kristen and Liam went to the zocalo to get Grammie some coffee; I imagine they are sitting at the Cafe de l'Amancia right now.

Tai-Tai came over to play Karuta with us with the set Jamie is making as part of his Nisshu Gakuin homework. In our house rules, we spread out the hiragana cards randomly faceup, then take turns drawing from the deck of poem cards, reading the poem and seeing who can get the card that begins with the first letter of the poem. Much hilarity can ensue as each reader tries to weasel in different ways: noisily drawing breath, feinting at the cards, reaching for the cards with two hands, etc. We also play a harder version, a cross between Karuta and Concentration, where the hiragana cards begin facedown, and each player beginning with the youngest gets a chance to turn over one card. Jamie's got a good memory and competitive spirit and always wins the harder version without our needing to handicap him; we give him a little bit of a head start with the easier version.

Jamie said he was hungry again at 10:00. I offered him leftovers from yesterday: rice, curried broccoli or chicken pibil*; he asked me to mix them together, so he's eating Indo-Mayan fried rice in front of the TV now watching Backyardigans. I'm waiting for the rest of the family to get back so that I can take my dad to the doctor to change the dressing on his foot.

2008-02-11 21:43 (Kristen) My mother has been reminding me, with a little too much glee, of how I stopped napping at 18 months of age. This is because we've had some difficulty getting Liam to nap today. We took him to the zocalo in the morning to get him away from the television and his favourite game, "Let's select the right DVD and put it in the DVD player before taking it out immediately, so that we can go through the DVDs again to find the right DVD and repeat the process." I am not fond of this game, and will do a lot to get out of it. The weather was nice and cool, and we did, indeed, have coffee at d'Amancia before doing some shopping and heading back to the house. Liam (possibly because he didn't walk on the beach) failed to fall asleep despite my trying a few times between 11:00 and 1:00 and his having had a bad night previously. I finally put him in the backpack, and went for a long walk along the beach with my mom. Liam fell asleep after about five or ten minutes of walking (about 1:15). He slept until 3:00, when I woke him, as I realized that it was going to be a three-hour nap, and he wasn't going to wake up before 4:00 at that rate. That would mean that he'd not be asleep before 10:00, which is like midnight around here, given our Yucatecan hours. Bad, bad, bad. So, we went to go and find my mom.

We found her, cerveza imbibed, and went home to get the boys ready for a hair washing and dinner out. The boys were pretty good about having their hair washed al fresco (we boiled water and used that in the courtyard), and Jamie and I only had one fight getting ready (we made up later). We had a very pleasant dinner at David Lau's restaurant, and Jamie ate three pieces of his Hawai'ian pizza. Liam only grazed lightly, and spent most of his time with either me or John out in the zocalo playground, running about. When Jamie was done, he joined the zocalo crowd, and we all eventually ended up out there, playing and talking. The kids ran about and Liam was looking suspiciously tired by the end of it (Jamie was clearly tired), but I didn't believe him. We were pursued home by a thunderstorm, and watched it from the back patio until John came home. We put the boys to bed, and Liam was clearly exhausted but still too wound up to sleep. I brought him downstairs, fed him some more, and he watched Backyardigans with Grammie, cuddled into her side, until he was ready to go back upstairs to bed. He fell asleep in less than five minutes a bit after 9:00, which was a speed record compared to the last few days. Jamie was, of course, out like a light.

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

Back to Vol. 2 No. 21, or up to Jamie Chew's Web Log Archive. or forward to Vol. 2 No. 23.