Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 2 No. 67

2008-12-16 22:40 (John) Kristen took Liam to Hakobune for the morning, while I was an emergency substitute assistant parental classroom cookie making volunteer, along with Stewart and Jasper. When we came home, Jasper melted down because he thought he was getting straight into the car and back to his grandmother's house to see his mom, but I eventually quieted him down with grapes, cookies and milk, recognizing all-too-familiar signs of toddler hypoglycaemic unreasonability, not to be confused with Liam's current cutting-a-molar unreasonability. Jamie went to Jake's for a playdate while I talked about the fate of the Scrabble universe with the powers that be, then came home and as usual unlocked Mario Kart Wii characters (Birdo today) and did his homework. Liam tried yet again to sleep with Jamie and me in the blue room tonight, but couldn't quite get the hang of it, and as I write this is happily chattering away to Mom in the white room.

2008-12-17 23:00 (John) Mrs. Sasaki told me that when she gave Liam his self-made Totoro hat to take home, he strode proudly to his mark and posed, ready to begin the Totoro dance. She was afraid he would be disappointed that they wouldn't be performing, but when she explained that he could do the dance at home anytime he liked, he was delighted, which explains why he was doing it for much of yesterday. I found out today why he's been theatrically pretending to sneeze for a few days: it's because he's been watching the old Frosty the Snowman program on DVD.

Jamie had a bit of a rough day at Hakobune, because the church was doing fire alarm testing, and the bell rang at inopportune moments while he was trying to pee and then eat lunch. He burst into tears, I think because he's fighting a virus; he has a little rash on his torso, and he complains of being tired.

Liam has been waking up ravenous since he was weaned, and today was probably the most extreme case. After eating a little bowl of porridge, he happily grabbed one of my waffles (or as he corrected me "MY waffle"), ate it, and started in on another before waddling off from the table.

When Jamie and I came home from Hakobune, the boys both wanted to help me shovel snow, and who was I to argue. Jamie helped throw a little snow, at first with his shovel, and then with his hands because it was more fun that way. Liam pulled the big black sled back and forth between the driveway where I filled it up with snow and the back yard where I emptied it. Very strong, very determined.

Because our community centre is closed for four weeks for the holidays, we had a third of the Toronto Scrabble Club over after dinner. Kristen played the first two games while I kept the boys busy in the living room with my computer, the portable DVD player and the Wii. Both kids were tired and quiet, and cooperative. Liam at one point wanted to play Scrabble himself ("MY scrabble!"), and carefully placed tiles on all the bonus squares on a board. I remember Jamie doing that when he was little too. Then Liam found the blank and quizzically touched his finger to his chin and asked where the missing letter was: "Miss! Miss! Nai!", theatrically looking around the room for it.

(Kristen) I finally got Liam to fall asleep in his bed in the blue room tonight, so that he and Jamie are sleeping in their room and John and I will be sleeping in our room. I fully expect to have one, if not two, boys in bed with us by morning, but it's an excellent start.

2008-12-18 22:33 (Kristen) Last night, when I was flossing Jamie's teeth, I did it from an angle that I don't normally use, so that the light was shining full onto his back molars. I stared at his back left molar for a moment, stuck my finger in there, and exclaimed to John, "he's missing part of his back molar!" Emergency phone call to the dentist, and less than 24 hours later, we find out that yes, Jamie has indeed broken his back tooth, and that part of it is gone below the gumline. He's not in pain, but this is not a good state of affairs. John took Jamie to see Dr. Da Costa, who sent them to Dr. Dann (again), saying that the tooth would have to be pulled, as he didn't think that there would be enough left for a crown. If the tooth was pulled, then we'd need a spacer (orthodontia) to ensure that his six-year molar, which is thinking about coming in next year, would shift over, causing mass chaos on the bottom left half of his jaw and eventual braces. OK.

Dr. Dann was able to see Jamie right away, and so John took him there after his appointment with Dr. Da Costa. Jamie was fine with the process of x-raying his front teeth, but gagged when they tried to x-ray the back teeth. Eventually, John hit on the idea of playing a game on Jamie's DS, with Jamie watching. That distracted him enough that they were able to get the x-ray. On the other hand, part of me would have been happy not to have the x-rays, because Jamie has 10 (ten) cavities, and will need crowns on two teeth (the broken one, and one other). We obviously have been doing this wrong. Do not ask me how much this is going to cost: it is bad enough that John can't talk about it yet. We are not in happy moods today. That is all.

On a happier note, John took Liam with him and Jamie to school today as it was cookie decorating day. Liam had a fabulous time, and Ms. Mikosza enjoyed having him around. She quizzed him on his colours (knew them all, natch), and he coloured while the other kids were doing their work. John reports that there was a spelling lesson. which went like this: "Spell 'he'...good...spell 'me'...good...'spell 'we'...Jake [Jamie's friend], it's 'we,' not 'Wii." John brought Liam home around 11:00, and we went back out again to get Jamie 20 minutes later (Liam had let us know about a 'code pee' first). After lunch, Jamie went to a playdate with Makaiya, and then to the dentist. Liam went for a walk with Ken, and then came home to play with me. Tonight, I talked Liam into falling asleep in the blue room again, and he fell asleep in less than 20 minutes. I was shocked, but happy that he seems to be finding a routine to settle down and sleep after being weaned.

2008-12-19 23:45 (John) Toronto has a much-derided habit of overreacting to snow, and I'm not sure Environment Canada's referring to the three storms that are supposed to dump 60 cm of snow on us this weekend as "Snowmageddon" is helping. I took Jamie to school in the big black sled for the last day of classes before the Christmas break; he lay prone on the sled and was starting to disappear under fallen snow by the time we arrived. Kristen took Liam to Hakobune in the big blue stroller, after I spent half an hour cramming him full of two or three bowls of Froot Loops and milk. I picked up a tired Jamie (he is still fighting some sort of virus) and dropped him off for lunch with Liam at Hakobune, while Kristen and I had lunch at Nataraj. Then Kristen took Liam out for a walk in the snowstorm, I did some Christmas shopping in the neighbourhood, and then sat at Aroma and watched the snow fall. It took a shovel to dig the car out three times on the way to picking up Jamie, so yes, it was coming down fairly hard. Jamie kept Liam amused in the back seat by playing DS games on the slow ride home. I dropped everyone off, spent half an hour shovelling out the driveway and windrow, then spent the rest of the evening picking up my visiting cousin Takako at YYZ. The rest of the family had a quiet evening at Browning, and was in bed not too late, though Liam has been up once already with nightmares, dental pain or both.

2008-12-20 23:45 (John) Jamie woke up with a slightly higher fever than yesterday, regular appetite, fatigue and malaise (not willing to walk up and down stairs), and asked to go back to bed after breakfast rather than to the Christmas party at Nisshu Gakuin. I drove down to the St. Lawrence Market and did the bare minimum of shopping, then up to Japanese school for the day without Jamie, as I had been assigned parental hall monitor duty. Jamie apparently slept in until noon while Kristen (not feeling well herself) tried to keep up with a very energetic Liam (who has the same spots that Jamie had a few days ago, and may therefore start running a fever soon). We had a very quiet and early evening, with the boys in bed and asleep by 8:45. Jamie just woke up with a fever headache, we'll drug him now and I'm off to bed to keep him company.

2008-12-21 23:23 (Kristen) Jamie woke up feeling lightly better but not great, while Liam was happy bouncing boy. After a quiet morning, John took Liam out grocery shopping for Christmas supplies, which I am sure Liam appreciated greatly. I stayed behind with Jamie, who was quiet and slightly bored. We started to set up the Christmas tree, but had to stop after we found that mice had chewed through the box that we had stored in the garage with ornaments in them, and ruined a bunch of them. The Christmas lights didn't work properly either, so John headed out and bought some more at Canadian Tire (where the only the tacky ornaments were left, he says) and picked up food for us at Silk Road. Jamie, however, was not feeling quite so well any more, and when he fell asleep and I had a hard time waking him up, I took his temperature. 104.5 F. Not so good. In with the Tylenol, which dropped the fever down to acceptable levels, and Jamie was soon playhing MarioKart and eating hot and sour soup. Whew. Liam hadn't napped, so he was tired, and we just put the boys to bed. Liam tried to fall asleep with John and Jamie, but gave up at the end and came to sleep with me in the blue room. He came in, flopped down, and was asleep in less than a minute. Easily a new record.

2008-12-22 08:50 (John) We got up at 6:15 this morning, left Jamie (no fever this morning) with Gary and drove Liam to the dental clinic. Liam was less fractious than last time, and accepted the oral sedative, much to our surprise. Thanks to the earlier hour and keeping boots on to the last minute, we also had no problem keeping him hydrated and warm enough for the anaesthesiologist to insert the IV. We're waiting right now to hear what can be done with his main problem, the decay in his extra tooth and its neighbour.

2008-12-22 09:40 (John) Dr. Dann reports that he was able to perform the pulpotomy and restoration on the supernumerary tooth, meaning that Liam will keep the tooth for now. He has to come back in six months to see if the pulpotomy was successful in removing all the decay. We'll keep our fingers crossed until then that there were no weird side canals in the tooth.

2008-12-22 21:45 (Kristen) Liam slept for an hour or so after returning from surgery, and slowly woke up. He was pretty vague for the first freezie, and then slowly got the hang of them, and, by the time we left, was asking for the purple one. His once bifurcated tooth has been filled in, and now looks like an unusually large front tooth. I hope that it holds until he's six, and it falls out on its own. We took him home via Starbucks, where he got a grande green tea frappuccino of his very own, and to which he clung ferociously until he got about half of it into him. Ice and sugar likely went a long way towards helping him to feel better. He was awfully wobbly for the rest of the day, though, and needed to be watched as though he was 13 months old again. You can imagine how Mr. Independence enjoyed that. His appetite was good, and he was not in any obvious discomfort over the course of the day.

Jamie was good for Gary and Ayami. He woke up at 7, when we left, and Gary went back to sleep at 10. Ayami looked after him until we got home at 2, and said that Jamie was easy to look after and not too demanding. Whew. We did some tree trimming, and Jamie helped Ayami wrap some presents by holding the tape for her. Jamie did end up playing downstairs with Gary and Ayami for a while longer, as I had my hands full with Liam and John had fallen asleep upstairs after an unusually early and stressful morning. We went to Browning for dinner, and the boys were so tired that we had them home not long after 8, and in the bath. Liam fell asleep very easily, but Jamie had a much harder time winding down to sleep. It'll only get harder as Christmas gets closer.

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

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