Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 2 No. 76

2009-02-17 23:25 (Kristen) Liam woke up this morning after spending a slightly restless night (around 5 am again...) in a cheerful, sunny mood. He notified me, while still in bed, that I was a squirrel, and he was an usagi* (rabbit, in Japanese), with hand signs and words. I asked him if he went "hop hop hop," and he told me that he went "down down down." It took me a minute to realize that he'd misheard me say "hop" as "up." Clever rabbit. Later on, he wanted to use John's cell phone to call Jamie, but John explained that Jamie did not have a phone with him, and did Liam want to call someone else? Liam thought for a moment, and then told John that he wanted to call the sun, his little eyes all crinkled up with a smile as he did. John and I explained that you call the sun by going outside and calling out "Hello, sun!" John took Liam to Hakobune, which made Liam very happy, and his sunny mood continued on the way home. John told me that Liam was very chatty, and told him a long story about wanting to fly in the Wonderpets' flyboat, but that he had to take his boots off first, because you (apparently) can't wear your boots in the Wonderpets' flyboat. Who knew?

In the meantime, I stayed at home and then took Jamie to skating. Jamie was tired, and punky, and spent a surprising amount of time on the ice, either sitting or making snow angels. I had to coax him back onto the ice a few times, and he was genuinely tired when he got off. So tired, in fact, that he didn't want to go to Charlie White's at all for a playdate, but didn't have a good alternative. Finally, we settled for me getting his DS for him, and that kept him (and, I assume, Charlie, who loves Jamie's DS) happy. Liam, on the other hand, was unimpressed that Jamie had taken his DS with him, leaving Liam with no DS at all.

I managed to get Liam to sleep for an hour and a half, and he fell asleep while eating an apple, just like Jamie used to. He ate his apple when he woke up, but demanded a cookie chaser (blueberry), which he got. Jamie got a lift home, and I met up with him outside our house, just as he arrived. He asked a number of times what we were going to do tonight, but I assured him that we were just having a quiet night in. He was annoyed with himself that he forgot to play with Gary after engrossing himself in the DS and other things, but Gary carried him upstairs anyway, which made him happy. In the bath, I put a washcloth on Jamie's head as he was getting into the bath. Liam exclaimed "Nice hat!" and thought this was great. He put it on his own head, and declared that he was a pirate, arrrr. He also declared that he had a ship, and it was red. The Dread Pirate Liam. Arrr, matey. There was much play in the bath tonight, and John reported, laughing, at one point that Darth Pig was doing something dramatic. Never a dull moment. Liam and Jamie both tried to sleep in the white room (our bed), but Jamie took a long time to do so. Liam took even longer, and eventually I put him into the blue room again, where he fell asleep around 11. I am now tired too.

2009-02-18 23:39 (Kristen) I'm a little sleepy, but I'll do my best to remember things. Feeling ambitious this morning, I took Liam, by bus, to the Science Centre, as I'd promised him another crack at the little grocery store in KidsPark!. We got there around 11, and Liam had a grand time. He put on one of the little Market aprons there, and was beyond cute (and I forgot the camera...arrrggh!) as he went through the food and made sure that it was run through the scanner. He also enjoyed a room that had fake guitars, stage lighting to adjust, and had five songs for kids to choose from and pretend to bop to. I took him over to the other side, eventually, where they have other activities, but Liam was getting hungry. We had lunch, and then I put him into the stroller for the ride home. He fell asleep on the bus, as I figured he would. John tells me that Jamie had a good day at school, and was happy to get some Pigeon books when our Scholastic book order arrived. John took him to Hakobune, and while Jamie wasn't all that forthcoming about his day (it's hard to get him to tell you what he did), he seems to have had a good time.

My dad was in town, and so dropped by to spend the afternoon. Liam woke up halfway through the visit, and it must have been in the wrong part of his sleep cycle, as he just howled for fifteen minutes, saying that something hurt (location undetermined), before settling down in front of the Backyardigans for a bit of a calm down. Jamie was happy to see his grandfather, and I think would have talked with him about planes but was a little shy before it was time for him to go. It was good for them to see each other. John was rushing around, as usual, to get ready for Scrabble, while I made dinner with my dad's help. The kids had snacked heavily before dinner, being unusually hungry, so they didn't eat that much dinner before spending a very lazy evening before bed. We tried to get the boys to settle down to sleep in the same room again with slightly more success than last night. Someday...

2009-02-19 24:07 (Kristen) Getting Jamie out of the house this morning for school was a bit of a mess, but Liam was fine. Both Jamie and Liam were pouncing on me before they officially got up, forcing a very tired me out of bed. John and I took Liam with us to a bank appointment, and then back home. He charmed the bank officer, who commented on how very cute Liam was as he played with Jamie's DS and watched videos on John's iPod. Connected to this was an incident tonight when Liam asked John (while watching Kik's Delivery Service) what Kiki was listening to. It's a transistor radio, but John told Liam it was Kiki's iPod. Liam understood this, but would never have understood "transistor radio." We are dinosaurs.

John took Jamie, Sam, Parker, and Jake over to Sam's for lunch (negating the need for Sam's mom to pack up her two other kids to pick up the posse), and I took LIam to Browning. Liam was hungry, and nothing was right in his world, at volume, until Gary arrived and convinced Liam that having lunch might be fun. Liam was tired, however, and I sent him out early with Ken for his walk. I had him wrapped up in his usual outerwear and blanket, but I should have checked the weather channel first. When Ken called me an hour and a half later, Liam was screaming his lungs out, and I met them coming up Jackman as I was going down. I finally got Liam to tell me that his feet hurt, and I saw that his boots were poking out from underneath the blanket, and that the wind shield was up. I hadn't put it down when Ken and Liam left (Liam hates it), and the wind had picked up wickedly since then. I raced Liam to the Big Carrot, the nearest warm place, and pulled off his boots. His feet were red and like ice, but his hands, even in mittens, were worse. He cried his heart out for another five or ten minutes while I warmed up his hands and feet, and talked to him as they must have hurt a good deal. I talked him into going to the Second Cup for some hot apple cider and a cookie, but he seems to have blamed the pain in his hands on his mittens. He cried every time I tried to put them on (this is a boy who loves his mitties), and I had to give up. I made him keep his hands under the blanket, and put the wind shield down, which kept him surprisingly warm. He started to cheer up at the Second Cup, where he got a frog prince cookie (we shared a bit), and I made him put his hands in my armpits and his feet under my shirt at my waist. Lots of quality mummy time too helped to make him feel better. We went home, and I made dinner.

Gary wasn't available after dinner, so I spent some quality time with the boys and Jamie in particular. He read a little story to me from a Ladybug magazine, and I read a number of stories to him. Liam walked in and out of the stories, as I'd already read two books to him earlier, and settled down on John's lap to watch Kiki on John's laptop while John worked. Then Jamie and I did Lego, and a bit of this and that, before it was time for bed. Liam surprised me by going to sleep quite quickly for him after a little story in the dark about Thomas the Tank Engine. I'll repeat the experiment tomorrow night.

2009-02-20 47:55 (John) I took Jamie to school, Kristen took Liam to Hakobune in the morning. The boys met up for lunch at Hakobune, while Kristen and I had our own lunch at Nataraj. Kristen took Liam out for a walk and to meet a friend for coffee; I worked until it was time to pick everyone up. We went to the Loblaws at Christie and Dupont (now mostly rat-free) for a rare family grocery shopping expedition; I had to spend almost all of it on the phone talking about plans for the World SCRABBLE Championship and Causeway Challenge, boo. Fortunately, Liam was able to explain all of our usual routine to Mom and keep her on the right path, while Jamie curled up in a nest of coats at the front of the shopping cart. Dinner was at Browning, and we were too tired to play Dungeons and Dragons, so we came home early for bed.

2009-02-21 23:55 (John) I took a somewhat tired Jamie to Nisshu Gakuin in the morning, came back and picked up a somewhat tired Liam and took him to the market. When we got there, continuing on with his recent imaginative imperative, he made us run from imaginary wolves that had been following us in cars from the Bayview Extension. He was mostly well behaved, though he eschewed pakoras in favour of a samosa, much to Nupur's surprise. We played at the drop-in centre for a long time, but not for very long at Steve's newspaper stand, which resulted in a half hour of full-blown meltdown, during which I had to carry Liam in his usual arched-back screaming position while pushing the stroller full of groceries. We came home, I troubleshot a remote TSH problem before sending Liam out with Kristen for a much-needed nap and walk while I went to pick up Jamie. Jamie was so tired, he used up his play energy getting into his snow pants, and after a few minutes at the play structure asked to be taken home, almost falling asleep on the way. In the evening, Kristen and I went out to my high school mini-reunion, leaving the boys again with Tom. We got them to bed only a little later than usual, and I hope everyone can sleep in tomorrow.

2009-02-22 24:27 (Kristen) I didn't sleep in; Liam woke up around sunrise, needing to pee, and the slowly lightening sky ensured that he didn't get back to sleep and, therefore, I didn't either. Jamie was up an hour or so later, and that was that. Jamie and Liam had a quiet morning, but were very hungry and ate a good deal. We had planned to see a showing of a Doraemon movie (Doraemon is a famous Japanese anime character) at the Palmerston library, and so I took Liam there in the stroller. He fell asleep, as planned, and stayed asleep for three hours. Jamie and John arrived soon afterwards, and we watched the movie together, Liam waking up for the last bit. We did some shopping in Koreatown, then headed home.

Jamie fell asleep in the car, and slept for an hour. We had a late dinner, Jamie and Gary played together, and then it was bedtime. Liam stayed up with me to watch some of the Oscars, as I didn't see the point in trying to put him to sleep earlier after the three-hour nap. He went to sleep around 10:30, and John reports that Jamie also took a long time to fall asleep.

2009-02-23 23:54 (Kristen) John woke me up this morning, asking if I needed help getting Liam ready for Hakobune. I had completely forgotten that Liam had a makeup day at Hakobune today, and rushed around frantically to get everything ready for departure. We were about 20 minutes late in the end, on a bitterly cold morning, and Liam was not in a great mood. He demanded the Anpanman cookie we'd forgotten about in the stroller when we got to the door, but I promised that I'd run down, get it, and put it into his lunch. I explained to Mr. Saskai, that Liam hadn't been in a very good mood when we got up this morning, and that the cookie was important. Of course, when I picked Liam up, he'd eaten his entire lunch *except* (you guessed it) the cookie that he'd been wailing for earlier in the morning. Mrs. Sasaki said that this is not an unusual behaviour for kids his age. Sigh. I should also note that Liam comes with his own theme music. He has been singing "dum dum DUM" in a downward scale, as if anticipating the arrival of the villain. Hmm. We'd better get started on his law school applications.

Jamie had his friends over this afternoon, and they're all looking foward to going to a special "bring your friend" Cub night tomorrow. Charlie and Parker go to Cubs, and they've invited the rest of the Posse. They're to go in shorts and t-shirts, as the party theme is the beach. It should be fun. We went to Browning for dinner, and I ended up playing Guitar Hero World Tour with Daniel and Ross. Jamie "helped" by singing, or (rather) by yodelling and making mock death metal noises, a la Gary, which was appropriate for the songs we were playing. Apparently, the boys had also spent some good time playing and roughhousing in the basement, and both were quite tired when we got home. Both fell asleep quickly, but Liam has been stirring, possibly with teeth pain.

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

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