Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 2 No. 71

2009-01-13 34:07 (Kristen) It was Liam's Hakobune day, and Jamie's skating day, but it was made much easier by Jake's mom offering to take Jamie to and from skating for us. That enabled me to go and work for a few hours and for John to do the same. Jamie came back with the posse, and they played, more or less fractiously, for the afternoon until it was time for us to go for a checkup with Dr. Dann (all is OK). Both boys were very tired; Jamie had difficulty doing anything asked of him without an argument, while Liam was very fragile (tooth, I suspect). Liam fell asleep some time after 10:30, despite a shorter nap and waking up easlier than usual. Jamie fell asleep right away, utterly exhausted.

Liam's language acquisition is going through an exponential leap, which is amazing to se. He parrots everything we say, and is delighting Jamie with his willingness to try new words. "Say sky!" "Sky!" etc. The funniest bits are that Liam now says "OK" to everything, in a slow, deliberate fashion, but positively. He also likes to stand around with his hands on his hips, in imitation of someone in this family, I know not who... when he is being more serious or forceful. Jamie is also growing up, but his changes are becoming more subtle. His speech is smoothing out of that preschool-style flood of childish talk, and is sounding more grown up when he searches for his own words. He's also taller, and is starting to lose a certain kinetic quality that I associate with him as a smaller boy: just a growing maturity, I suppose.

2009-01-14 20:13 (Kristen) John's off at Scrabble this evening, Liam is making a "big mess" with pencil crayons and then cleaning it up, and Jamie is off with Gary. Jamie and I had fun reading two Mo Willems books for early readers from the Elephant and Piggy series. Jamie read both "I Can Fly!" and "I Am Invited to a Party" to me, with many giggles and much laughter over the pictures as Piggy and then Gerald the Elephant do silly things. Then we watched Horton Hears a Who together, which he remembered watchig on the plane to Florida. Liam has been cycling through this and that activity, and I really should get him to run up and down the stairs or something a few times, because he's not going to go to sleep again until late if I don't. Last night, I fell asleep with Liam sometime after 10:30, which is no good for my productivity. I should note that John has a joke that when Liam needs to pee in the bath, John will call out "Code Pee!" to summon me to help Liam onto the toilet (John is usually in the bath with Jamie at this point). Liam will now call his own "Code Pee," letting me know that he has an urgent need to be ferried to the bathroom. He pronounces it pretty well.

2009-01-15 19:30 (Kristen) I didn't see much of the kids until the afternoon, as I had a dentist appointment in the late morning (just a cleaning, thank goodness). John dressed Liam for the bitter cold, and Liam decided that he just had to wear the penguin hat that his auntie Jen had given to him last Christmas. He put it on, made sure that it looked good, pronounced himself a "pingu" and told John that he was a papa pingu. It was pretty cute, I'm told. I picked Liam up at the Second Cup from Ken, and took him to get Jamie at Jake's. They played there for a little longer than usual, and then I made Liam and Jamie walk home. Liam made it half way, while Jamie was unhappy to walk the whole way but managed it. They both ate large dinners after eating large breakfasts, and I'll be drugging Liam before he goes to bed tonight in the hope that the food, the exercise, and the drug will help him to fall asleep earlier than 11:15, like last night. If he falls asleep before 10, I'll be ecstatic.

2009-01-16 58:51 (Kristen) It was a normal enough day, with Liam at Hakobune in the morning, and Jamie there in the afternoon. It was a little more challenging to get there, as a massive power outage in the city had taken out part of the subway system along with power for 250,000 people just to the west of the daycare, but we had it easy in comparison as we did have power, heat, light, etc. Warm mother moment came when I went to pick up Liam, and Jamie asked if Liam could stay and play a little longer instead of going for his nap. I really enjoy seeing them play together, and enjoy each other's company. It usually involves lots of wrestling, but not always.

In the evening, we went to Browning and played some Guitar Hero World Tour, and other things. Jamie and Ross very much have a younger brother/ older brother dynamic between them, and it's funny to watch. Liam was asleep sometime around 11.

2009-01-17 34:59 (Kristen) We got up early to get Jamie off to Nisshu Gakkuin, and John picked me and Liam up for a quick St Lawrence Market run. At one point, I tired to sneak off at one point, and Liam let out a huge yell of protest. John tried to drag him off, and got two steps, maybe, before Liam dug in his heels, yelling. I walked over, and quickly realized that I wasn't sneaking off. "Do you want to go to see the lobsters?" I asked, and he turned off the waterworks like that. Three men at a table a foot from us laughed in surprise, and wondered what I'd done to calm him down: they'd been expecting a screamfest, I expect. One wanted to give Liam an Academy Award for his performance, and I could see it happening someday...

We went to pick Jamie up early, as it was a parent-teacher day. We had our interview, and it was pretty much what we'd expected: Jamie is doing very well, but has trouble moving from one task to another. This is an old problem that has been more acute lately. She did say that he zones out during story time, and it's because Jamie never reads a new story without peppering the reader with a billion questions. As she can't stop to do so (fourteen kids in the class, a story would take all morning), he stops paying attention. Very interesting. He was exhausted, and fell asleep in the car on the way home. With one thing being another, I didn't get out with Liam for a nap, and Jamie woke up when we got into our driveway. John had a nap, and the kids played quietly for a while. Dinner was very ad hoc, with people eating a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and we tried to put the kids to bed early. We failed, but Jamie was asleep by 9:30 and Liam by 10:00. Lately, that's early.

2009-01-18 21:57 (Kristen) The boys and I punked about this morning, after getting up sometime between 8:30 and 9. Realizing that we needed some exercise, I kicked Jamie and Liam outside with some choice phrases from my mom for Jamie: "You'll enjoy it once you get outside," etc. He would have spent the whole day in his bathrobe and pajamas, playing with his DS, if he could have. Both boys enjoyed playing in the gently falling snow while John did some shovelling, and came inside for some soup. Jamie spent the rest of the afternoon seeking out Gary and being high maintenance for John. I took Liam out for a run to the Big Carrot, and he fell asleep in the middle of the store. Sigh. I let him sleep until 4, then woke him up. I offered to let him play on the slides, but he changed his mind at the last minute and wanted to go home.

Jamie and Liam are finished their baths now, and Jamie is running around with his pajamas on his head, saying that it's "Funny Hat Land" in the bedroom. There is also some sort of last-minute freak out going on, which I hope will get rid of sillies instead of creating new ones. *is full of doubt* Jamie has been watching me do Sudoku puzzles to relax lately, and while I was out with Liam, he did a four number Sudoku that John made for him, and created an impossibly hard Sudoku for me. It was a very sweet thing for him to do.

2009-01-19 23:20 (John) Liam told his first knock-knock joke today, making up his own after listening to Jamie tell a few. The punch line was "Push... Push you!", after which he pushed me over. Clever boy. Tom pointed out this evening that Liam has no problem with first/second person distinctions, and is in fact speaking quite clearly in six- or seven-word sentences, either describing things he's happy or proud about, or being very precise about what he would like you to do. His most touching phrase today though was "My (I) miss Becky!", which he repeated over the course of the afternoon; apparently his cousin was in his thoughts, and I was glad we were able to leave a voice mail message for her.

Sam's mom took Jamie to soccer, then dropped him back off for us with the Posse (including Junior Posse member Harry, Sam's brother), who all played remarkably quietly and well this afternoon, spending a good deal of time in imaginative play with the tent and tunnel, rather than their usual video game fest. Jamie was still pretty wound up by the end of the day, but had no problem falling asleep, doing so as soon as his head hit the pillow as he has all week.

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

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