Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 2 No. 63

2008-11-18 23:56 (Kristen) We are all pretty draggy today, as we fight weekend exhaustion or colds, depending upon where we were this weekend. Liam is getting better, but my nose is running like a faucet. Jamie is bagged, and John wishes he could sleep much more than he is.

Jamie has been full of questions: more than usual, it seems to me. He is asking about everything, mainly vocabulary: what does that word mean? What does this phrase mean? I expected all the "why is the sky blue, Mummy?" questions a year ago, but they never really showed up. Now they are fast and furious, and I have had to explain to Jamie that I love that he is asking questions, but Not Now! He also hurries on to the next question before he's listened to the answer to the first, so there is much backtracking and "What did you say?" which sometimes makes me crazy. Deep down, however, I'm glad.

Liam spent the morning at Hakobune, and Jamie at Jackman. I took Jamie to skating, and then to Jake's for a playdate before we brought Jake back here for one as his mom took his brother swimming. Jamie did homework and Liam played, and then we went to the Silk Road again for dinner to celebrate Jack's 85th birthday. The kids had a good time, and Liam's post nap grumpiness disappeared as he inhaled large amounts of chicken and broccoli. Tomorrow I have to get Liam to the dentist by 10, and we'll be off and running with another day.

2008-11-19 23:04 (Kristen) Jamie was very excited when he saw the snow falling this afternoon, and greeted the snow with much off-the-wall craziness. He talked with me on the phone, and I could barely understand him as he sang out about the weather.

I took Liam to the dentist this morning, and he was pretty manic as I discussed what we were going to do about his cavity with the people there. We'll be taking him in on Dec 9 and hope that he won't be needing the root canal that they're saying may be necessary. They won't know until they're in there with x-rays. There is no way they're doing anything on that tooth without heavily sedating the boy first, that's for sure. Liam and I headed home after our appointment, while John picked Jamie up and took him to Hakobune. After lunch, Liam and I went for a walk, and he slept for about three hours. Most of it was outside as I got some emergency yardwork done, since the oncoming snow made it necessary to get a lot done before winter arrived. He likes being bundled up in the cold, and I think that's why he slept for so long.

The evening was spent doing the usual homework, Liam's "work," watching Backyardigans, and playing video games. Jamie played with Gary for at least a few hours, and the boys went to the bath around 8:30. They both took a little while to go to sleep.

2008-11-20 24:21 (Kristen) The snow was thick enough on the ground this morning that John took Jamie to school on the sled, and pulled his friends around too. He got a good cardio workout today. The real excitement was when Charlie came over for lunch, and his and Jamie's backpacks disappeared from the schoolyard while they were playing with John there. It's a good neighbourhood, and we're assuming that another parent, harried like us, grabbed them in error. The only real stressors are that Charlie's backpack had the DS in it that he was bringing to our house, and Jamie's new (and somewhat expensive) shoes are in his. Arrrgh. We've checked back at the school three times now, but will wait until tomorrow, just in case, before panic.

The kids have all been very tired. Jamie had a spectacular meltdown as John was leaving to take him and Charlie tobogganing, and Charlie did when it was time to leave for home. Parker, who joined Jamie and Charlie at the hill, had melted down earlier in the day when he was invited to join the boys at lunch but his nanny said no, she needed to check with his parents first and they weren't available. They did have a great time on the hill, and Parker is the daredevil of them all, to his mother's suprise. After, John and Jamie did homework, and then John got dinner from T&T. We were all tired at that point, but still managed somehow to be in bed a little later than we should have.

2008-11-21 24:28 (Kristen) I was so sure that I'd posted blog last night, and written it too. Fail! Fail, I said! That would be a 'no'...

Today started well enough. John came home after depositing a very tired and somewhat cranky Jamie at school, but with the news that Jamie had his backpack back, and Charlie too. Turns out an overzealous teacher had taken them inside, assuming that they had been left behind, and put them into a classroom. Charlie was so happy to be reunited with his DS that he kept pulling it out, creating, in effect, a new "workstation" as kids crowded around him, and causing Mrs. Mikoza to institute a "No DS in the classroom" rule. Oops. At least he has it. I took Liam to Hakobune without incident, and he slept in the afternoon for me after a small mitten and blanket fight ("No!" "Are you sure? " "No!" ... five minutes later ... quiet acceptance of blanket, but just because Mom insisted...but no mitts). We all picked Jamie up at 4, stopped to see John's mom for about twenty minutes, and then went to Browning. Jamie, amazingly, finished his homework there after dinner before the four man MarioKart mayhem. Liam and Tom spent some time together, as usual, and then it was home to bath and bed.

John tells me that Jamie's amazing barrage of questions is a developmental milestone that kids reach at age five, right down to the not waiting for the answer before heading to the next question pattern Jamie has. We swear that he barely draws breath as the questions pour out of him, and only to finance the next question, as it were.

2008-11-22 24:45 (John) I took a somewhat tired Jamie to Nisshu Gakuin in the morning, feeding him tamago-no-gohan in the car on the way to save time. I picked up Kristen and Liam, drove Kristen to the Eaton Centre to go shopping while Liam and I went to the St. Lawrence Market. Liam took a few bites out of a whole bunch of things: Nupur's samosas and pakoras, a Stonemill muffin, California-maki, etc., and would not stay in his stroller as he wanted to practice running away from me and hiding. Ha, ha. Fortunately, he is well known to the staff of his favourite hidey-holes, including the kitchenware shop with his favourite spoons and banana cases, and the grocery store. He's at an optimum point in his life for getting lost: he can run at a good clip, but is short enough that he can't be seen behind most furniture. Afterward, we picked up Kristen and went to Mountain Equipment Co-op for more running and hiding and a little replenishment of my winter accessories. I dropped the two of them back off at the Eaton Centre, then went up to pick up Jamie. He and Sora-kun played out in the cold for an hour, until they were the last ones left in the playground, and they only agreed to go home after negotiating a possible future playdate. The rest of the day was very quiet, as I hope tomorrow will be, after a long and busy week. On a sad note, my Nikon D40, which I have used to shoot for the last year and a half or so of blog photos, has a broken shutter, and I'll likely be without it for a few weeks.

2008-11-23 23:44 (Kristen) The boys were up around 8, I think. I've been trying to night wean Liam again, and we've made it through three nights of no nursing. It involves him waking up at various times of the night (I have no LED clock in the room, so I have no idea what time it is), we have a conversation in which we discuss when the next nursing time might be (when the sun comes up ... NOW! ... when the sun comes up ... NOW!), we circle around the issue a few times, I ask him questions about why he woke up, and then we either cuddle back to sleep or we go to the bathroom. I should add that, after a week of dry nights, he was allowed (at his request) to sleep in his Big Boy Underwear all night. He made it through with flying colours. Yay, Liam! However, I am feeling a little sleep deprived after our late night discussion fests.

The morning passes quietly, with breakfast (Liam nibbles then runs to do something else, returns to nibble, then flees again) and an attempt or two on my part to read books to the boys. Liam can't make up his mind and keeps wanting a different book every time I pick up the book he's asked for, and then one thing after another interrupted me and Jamie. I made the boys lunc a little late, and took Liam off with me for a trip to the optician, as I'd fallen asleep on my glasses the night before and broken them. Boo. Both opticians were closed so I fixed the glasses myself in desperation (not perfect, but the lens is back in the frames) and took the sleeping Liam to the Second Cup with me. After I settled in, he woke up in the stroller. Thinking the boy awake, I picked him up and sat down with him, but he fell asleep again, almost instantly. I let him stay like that for an hour before we went to buy the milk we'd set out to get (Papa milk! Papa milk!) and to join the party over at John's parents' house. John's sisters and their families had come into town to see John's parents before they fly to Mexico next month, and the kids had a great time seeing their aunts, uncles, and cousins. We ate dinner at the Silk Road, and left around 7:30, when the boys (full of food) started their pre-meltdown routines.

The boys were as good as they could be when we got home, and we actually got some book reading done. Then it was bathtime, and bedtime. Liam had a hard time falling asleep, and was out until well after 10. Surprising, really. Jamie was asleep much earlier than that. He'd ridden his bike to and from the restaurant, and I was thinking about how his dad used to ride his bike all winter too, when we were first dating.

2008-11-24 09:00 (Kristen) I forgot to add that, last night, Liam showed his practical streak very clearly again, and reassured his father and me that the supernatural will not get the better of him. In the bath, John was using a small hand towel to pretend that his hand was a ghost, complete with Japanese ghost equivalents of "wooo wooo". Liam gave one good look at the approaching "ghost," and shoved a bath cup over its "head." I worry about Liam in many areas, but it's nice to know that this won't be one of them. I was also notified that Jamie has a second girlfirend, Bianca, in his class. !!!! This impressed his cousins, and prompted me to encourage his father to have a "man to man" talk with his older son sooner than expected. Actually, I'm very happy that Jamie, even in the sex-segregated world of kindergarten, can have male and female friends.

2008-11-24 23:10 (Kristen) There isn't much else to report about the rest of the day. John, Liam, and I went out in the morning, and I picked up a copy of Imagine a Day for Jamie with his birthday gift certificate from Auntie Millie. Now he can give the book back to the school library, as he's had it for weeks and really doesn't want to give it back. Jamie went to soccer and lunch at Jake's house, and then to the Science Centre with them, so I haven't really seen him much today. Ken took Liam for a walk, and arrived at 2:30 at the Second Cup with a wide-awake boy. Huh. Oh well. We did a little of this and that, and headed home in some rather miserable weather. Dinner was at Browning, and we had to feed Liam some emergency dinner before anyone else to preserve our eardrums and the back of his head. He still likes to pitch himself backwards when he's having a meltdown, and the injustice of banging his head always makes things worse for him, if that's possible. After some MarioKart, we headed home and put the boys to bed. Liam fell asleep quickly, but Jamie didn't fall asleep until 10:05. Another night of weaning Liam, and we'll get tomorrow started.

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

Back to Vol. 2 No. 62, or up to Jamie Chew's Web Log Archive. or forward to Vol. 2 No. 64.