Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 2 No. 64

2008-11-25 22:41 (Kristen) Jake had a dentist appointment today, so there was a change in plans as to who took what child where today. I took Liam to Hakobune instead of John because Jamie needed someone to drive him to skating, and so John drove him there (after I gave him detailed instructions that he insisted missed essential details such as Jamie prefers to sit on *this* and not *that* side of the change room...). I came back with Liam, who fell asleep in Broadview station as I moved us from subway car to bus, and John came back home with Charlie, whose mom was not having a good day, and with whom Jamie was happy to have a playdate. When Charlie's mom came to get him, she laughed when I ruefully told her that they hadn't had much exercise, but that their thumbs had (I don't think that Charlie put Jamie's DS down the entire time he was here, and Jamie watched Pink Panther cartoons). They did enjoy the cookies I'd baked for them (frozen dough kit, natch), and it was a nice, quiet afternoon. The rest of the day went equally quietly. I got Jamie to do some reading with me after he declared that he *knew* how to read and didn't need to practice...John had already gotten him to finish off five pages of Japanese homework, so he was well educated today. Liam fed me more of his Hallowe'en candy as he's down to the chocolate now, which he doesn't like. There was much giggling during the bath, and the boys were asleep sometime around 10 yet again. We try to get them asleep earlier, but we're not succeeding yet. Tonight will be another night of arguing with Liam about not nursing at night. I'm tired enough now that when he wakes up I almost let him nurse, which causes stress when I wake up enough to realize what I'm doing. I'm also tired enough that I don't wake up with his first grumbles and protests, so he's harder to soothe back to sleep. John has offered to take Liam into bed with him, but we'll wait until whatever virus is rampaging thorugh his system calms down before we ruin the sleep patterns of yet another parent in the house.

2008-11-26 10:00 (John) Jamie and I got up early to go to school for Visiting Scientist Day, but the VS's daughter was sick and cancelled, so I have an unexpected free morning to catch up on work from yesterday, hooray. As I type this, I have Liam on my lap watching Totoro on one screen while I work on the other. Liam is the perfect age for this right now, as the movie is just full of things for him to proudly identify and call out, and the level of dramatic intensity is optimal. So far, he's only really gotten upset when the girls blacken their hands and feet with the makkurokurosuke and don't immediately wash up. My favourite scene is still the brief one where everyone is asleep in their futon, with Satsuki and her dad sleeping straight and Mei rotated at an angle. Jamie has outgrown the need to rotate constantly in his sleep (on a vertical axis at least); Liam is still heavily into it.

2008-11-26 00:45 (Kristen) Tonight, Liam spontaneously decided that he wanted to sleep in the same room as Jamie. John and I, being no fools, took him up on it. So, Liam is now asleep in the little pull-out bed that usually is stored underneath Jamie's (if you didn't know it was a bed in its 'put-away' state, you'd think it was a large drawer). This means that I'm going to bed *by myself* in a few minutes--or at least until Liam wakes up sometime in the night. Then I'll get up and go get him, but for now, I get some sleep sans child. Wow.

John and I have been working on this 'master plan' for a while, but it's better that Liam make the decision for himself. Having the boys sleep in the same room is what we'd ultimately like, along with a weaned Liam. Liam continues to be night weaned, but only woke up close to dawn last night, which reduced the amount of negotiation. However, once he's awake near dawn, he's pretty much up and looking for friends, who in this case is John. He does know that he should be quiet when John's asleep ("Papa nene, shhhh", with finger to lips) but it's hard for him to contain his early morning glee. This morning he was up at 7:30 without a shadow of a doubt, and I don't know how long before that he was snoozing lightly. Ah: a quick check of the Environment Canada website tells me that sunrise was at 7:26, so thank goodness for winter's late sunrises.

Jamie went to Hakobune today, where he was surprised and scared by a sudden fire alarm. He said that someone had pulled the alarm by accident, but it did lead to a useful discussion of what causes fires and what to do if there is a real fire. I lost track of time so Liam slept until 4:20, which was bad in the end as he wasn't asleep until after 11:00. Both boys and John disliked the 15-minute white bean soup that I made for dinner, so everyone was a little hungry too. Too many shallots, I'm told. This complicated Liam's ability to fall asleep, so I was shovelling food into him as he sat at my computer, watching Totoro at 10:30. I am very tired now, and will now go to bed.

2008-11-27 23:49 (Kristen) Both boys are asleep in the same room tonight. Liam took a longer time than I expected to fall asleep (tooth?), but Jamie was out like a light. John told Jamie that Liam was going to be sleeping in the bed beside him, and that if Jamie woke up in the night and Liam was there, that he should stay to keep Liam company. Jamie was unsure about this, but John pointed out that Liam would be scared if he woke up there by himself. Jamie bravely said that he'd come and find me in the night if Liam woke up crying to tell me that Liam was crying. Good boy.

Jamie was very thoughtful over all, today. His friends were over in the afternoon (Sam, Jake, and Charlie; I don't know where Parker was), and Sam was in tears because Jake kept winning at MarioKart (guess which one has a Wii at home and who doesn't). Jamie and Charlie spent a good deal of time trying to get Sam to feel better, up to and including allowing Sam to win. Jamie and Charlie set up an agreement at one point that everyone would let Sam win, but Jake then reneged and won anyway. Jamie was pretty upset, but instead of crying or otherwise kicking up a fuss, recused himself from the proceedings until he was feeling better. I don't do that very well; I was very pleased with him. He has a good heart.

Jamie finished reading a book about Little Critter and his class visit to the firehouse, from which he'd been reading about six pages a day. He was pretty pleased with himself, and rightfully so. Liam did his cutting "work" and is starting to get some good manual dexterity. I may buy another copy of the cutting book so that he can try doing it all himself from the beginning and without the large amounts of help I was providing at the first. He loves to cut with scissors, and is also into mazes, like his brother.

2008-11-28 44:16 (Kristen) I finally found a good home for most of our baby stuff, and so John and I dropped it off at for baby Seamus after taking Jamie to school and Liam to daycare. It was strange to have it go (at least five big garbage bags worth, diapers, wipes, and all sorts of things), as it has been in our house since Jamie was born (more or less), and because it is another milestone, in a way, in the growth of our family. However, the clear space in the house is needed, and time does march on. I have two Rubbermaid bins, however, full of the stuff I couldn't bear to part with yet. Baby steps. It was nice to see Seamus in the bouncy chair, and to know that the stuff was going to have a good home.

We did the usual rush of "pick up Jamie, drop off Jamie, have lunch, then pick up Liam" of a Friday, and got some work done in a very crowded Aroma before getting Jamie. Dinner was at Browning, and both boys had fun. Jamie rolled some dice for his D&D character, which is something like the gremlin that my friend Denise played back in high school: Denise wouldn't formally play, but would swoop in with her gremlin and do things that were not in any player's manual or rule book, then sit back for a while. That's Jamie. The boys went to bed around 10:00, but Liam wouldn't settle down until 11:00. I suspect he didn't have enough dinner and was hungry, but don't know for sure.

2008-11-29 20:29 (Kristen) Amongst any group of people, you expect a wide range of joy and tragedy. This is particularly true if you're a parent. Most of us will have healthy, happy children with no complications. Some will have complications that will challenge and worry their parents, sometimes only through childhood or adolescence, and sometimes for life. Once, in a very great while, you hear or know of someone who loses a child, as we did today when we learned that our Scrabble friend Craig Rowland's infant nephew, Werner, died today. He'd been born with heart problems, but we'd all hoped for the best to happen, and now we've heard the worst. Craig has always been a wonderful friend to me and John, and to our boys, and we are so sad to hear about this horrible loss for him and his family. We will hold our boys especially close tonight.

It was, otherwise, a normal day. John took Jamie to Nisshu Gakkuin, where he sounds oike he had a good time. He was exhausted when he got home, though, and has been very mellow since. He was haunting the basement door for Gary's return from work, and raced downstairs to be with him as soon as he could, despite offers to put together Lego, play Super Mario Galaxy, and have books read to him. Liam has been very insistent on doing his "work" today, and has gotten much better at cutting and mazes. Some synapse has just made a vital connection, I think, which will make doing "work" much easier. He is working hard on numbers from 1-10 too.

Liam has very much liked videos with music in them. He has a Classical Baby: The Music Show DVD, and I introduced the boys to Fantasia yesterday to great success. The boys are well, and Liam is starting to accept that he's not nursing at night any mire. The boys stay in their own room until about 6 AM, if I'm awake at 1:30 to deal with the middle-of-the-night awakening and keep them in their own room. This morning, I woke up with Jamie between me and John, and Liam crying for company in the blue room. It's not quite like being with a newborn.

2008-11-30 08:42 (Kristen) I forgot to add that Liam, yesterday, found a little dragonfly craft that Jamie had made with a popsicle stick and some construction paper at Hakobune. John told Liam it was a dragonfly, which Liam promptly decided said "whoosh! ROAR!" as he ran about with it. Jamie has a little joke that he's shared with me for a while, where whenever he eats a raisin in his cereal or in his cookie, he says 'Mummy, look at this raisin." I dutifully look at hte raisin, and then he pops it into his mouth and says "I ate it." THis has become somewhat ritualized, including my comic looks of deep annoyance at being asked to acknowledge Raisin #1257. John took the joke up another notch yesterday in the car when he added "Now look at the other side" to the middle of the routine. Then Liam piped up with "look raisin!" *maternal headdesk*

2008-11-30 00:53 (Kristen) We took the boys Christmas shopping this afternoon, trying to figure out what in the world Jamie might like for a present. Because he just had his birthday, with some pretty wicked loot, it's hard to know, and we haven't been near any toy stores for a little while. John walked Jamie through Science City, where there was a cool toy from Quercetti that is like the Mini Digicolor that he got for his birthday, which he really enjoys. He also saw a robot-like toy that he knows John bought for him, and has been demanding to play with, even though he knows it's a Christmas present that he wasn't supposed to see. It's going to be a *long* December. We also thought about ordering the boys (a shared gift) of a play tent with tunnel and parachute, because we *know* that they'll play with them, and Liam would like toy food (Melissa and Doug wooden food) and a dinosaur, and anything that has numbers or letters on it (he's into numbers and the alphabet, and counts to five to himself for fun), but we're still thinking. We've told ourselves that it's going to be a more restrained Christmas than last year, and it was easy until today. Now we have too many ideas.

John and Jamie's big news is that they finished all 242 stars in Super Mario Galaxy. They are very very pleased with themselves, and Jamie is officially the best Super Mario player in the house. Ross came over to watch them try to get the 240th star, and was amazed that a five-year-old was that good. Frankly, he smokes us all, which gives John a great deal of amusement since a good proportion of the sites on the web about SMG are about how it's too hard to complete. All right, it's just a video game, but they've been working hard at it for months, and deserve some props.

2008-12-01 00:52 (Kristen) Liam wasn't feeling that well last night, and woke up a few times. He had diarrhea all day, which was no fun for him at all, but he kept on motoring and even ate well. Hopefully it's just a mild bug and will move on. He's still unhappy tonight, but managing to sleep.

John left on a trip to Massachusetts today, and will be back on Monday. The boys are doing well with just me around, and I was aided today by Jamie having a nice long playdate with Sam at his house, and by dinner at Browning. Jamie had a lovely time at Sam's, and the boys played really well all afternoon with Transformers and other robot-like things. I picked up Jamie around 3:30, and Liam and I stayed for tea, play, and another hour. It was very nice. Jamie came up with a new "knock knock" joke: Knock knock. Who's there? Luk't this raisin, Mummy! Then there is the sequel: Knock knock. Who's there? Luk't the other side, Mummy! Sigh.

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

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