Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 2 No. 83

2009-04-07 22:41 (Kristen) Part of the reason that I was a little bit cranky about Liam's trouble falling asleep last night was, I now realize, because he's been falling asleep like a dream for the last two weeks or so. The fallback to the previous three to four months of sleeping difficulties was pretty hard to take: it's not the despair that kills you, it's the hope, as they say. The boys were awake before 8 this morning, as Jamie came in to chat with us about where his DS was and Liam called "Mummy? Where ARE you?" from his own room. Up and at them. John had a day-long school Scrabble tournament to ru, so he dropped Jamie off at school but was otherwise unavailable until 3:30 or 4 this afternoon. I bought a day pass, took Liam to Hakobune, came home, picked up Jamie, went with Jake, Jamie and Jake's mom to skating, and then had Jake's mom drop me off at the subway at 12:40 so that I could go to get Liam and Jamie could go to play with Jake at his house. Skating was a little rough as Jamie wasn't into it, but I attributed that to a lack of substantial snack/lunch before class. I was worried about Jamie, given his goofy mood, but he was good with Jake today. They played, enjoyed themselves, and were happy when I came to pick them up (with a sleeping Liam in the stroller). Jake and Jamie came to our house to play while Michelle took Charlie to swimming, and the boys had a good time playing with Lego, a rousing game of Ladybirds, snacked, and otherwise kept themselves happy. Jake went home, and I managed to keep the boys away from the television until around 5:30. Yay, me. We read books, did this and that, and then ate dinner. John was exhausted, and slept for a good part of the evening, so the boys and I ended up watching television, talking, and playing. Jamie played with Gary for an hour, and then it was bedtime. Liam is fighting a cold, I think, and took a while to fall asleep again. It wasn't such a fight this time, as I was more ready for it, but he's still having trouble settling down. The weather has been vile lately, so he's not getting a lot of outdoor time and exercise. It is likely adding to the situation.

2009-04-08 23:28 (Kristen) Jamie refused to believe that it was time to wake up this morning because it was too grey to be morning. It was, and we were behind, so it was, if not a mad rush, then a controlled fall towards getting Jamie out the door to school. Liam was unhappy that Jamie went off without him, but spent the moring eating so it was all right. There was less television than usual, as Liam has been interested in discovering the wide variety of toys that we hadve in this house. At least someone is playing with them... I was exhausted, and had trouble keeping my eyes open for a good deal of the morning. I took liam for his walk around 1:30, and he slept until 4. Ooops. He did not go to sleep until close to 10:45 tonight. He may also have been a bit hungry, as he snacked before dinner and so didn't eat much. Jamie was in a good mood when I got home with Liam, and had a maze ready for me to do while Liam did some "work" with us for the first time in a little while. Liam has forgotten a few of his letters, so we're trying to refresh his memory. John went to Scrabble, so it was a quiet evening full of housework and other exciting things.Well, for me, anyway. They played, watched a little television, and read a book with me before bed. Jamie is having his friends over tomorrow, so all the housework I've done today will be for naught...well, not really, but it does feel a little like cleaning up for the burglars.

2009-04-09 19:30 (John) After about a year of Jamie's nagging, we caved in and got him a copy of SCRABBLE Junior. I was surprised that all four of us were able to enjoy a game together. We relaxed the rules just for Liam, allowing him to play tiles anywhere in a word and not just at the beginning, but he was just as triangle-acquisitive as the rest of us. For the record, the final score was Jamie 10, Liam 6, John 6, Kristen 5.

Liam has spent more time with the game after dinner, explaining to me what is going on in all the illustrations. In particular, he is convinced that the uncomfortable look on A is for Ape is because the apex of the A appears to be embedded in the Ape's genitals. He says the solution is to pull the ghosts off the bikes, ride the bikes to the rocket, take the rocket to our ship in outer space, press the red buttons, make the rock drill go round and round (whoosh!) (the rocket is actually the rocket drill, from the Backyardigans' Journey To The Centre of Earth), then dig into the earth until we find the ape and extract the A.

2009-04-10 23:02 (Kristen) Yesterday, I had a rash and felt very tired, with joint pain. I was feeling worse this morning, even after a long night's sleep. Jamie had gotten up earlier, but Liam didn't wake up until 9:30. This, to me, meant that he was not going to nap in the afternoon. We puttered around until John was awake, then I went to the walk-in clinic for an hour while John looked after the kids. I got the usual "virus of unknown origin" story, which sucked but could have been worse. A minute or two after I got back, Jamie's friend Makaiya showed up for a playdate. Liam was happy to have another kid to play with too, and they did reasonably well playing together despite Jamie being somewhat tired and pokey. John took Jamie to play with Charlie at the park in the late afternoon, while Liam came down with a case of diarrhea, complete with hurting tummy. Poor boy. We're cycling through the illnesses around here, which is part of the reason why we've cancelled our family trip to Providence in two weeks. John will go by himself, as planned, as he'll be working at the National School Scrabble Championships. Maybe next year.

2009-04-11 20:49 (Kristen) The boys were up around 8:30, which was fine by me. I was a little stiff from sleeping on the mattress in Liam and Jamie's room, where I've been bunking since Liam and I started showing signs of illness. Liam wasn't 100% when we got up, but improved steadily over the course of the day. Jamie went out with John to do the grocery shopping, and John reports that he was a big help. Nupur and Robin were delighted to see him and commented on how tall he is getting (he's really grown since January). Another woman commented on how polite Jamie was when he was asking Wei at the green grocers if he could get a lollipop for himself and one for his brother. Jamie was insistent that Liam have one as well: what a good big brother he's been, lately. Jamie also insisted on buying a little ham for dinner tomorrow night. The woman at El Gaucho, where they bought it, said that the pineapple, etc. decorating the little ham was in the shape of a happy face because it was the last ham she decorated before the hectic Easter weekend.

Liam and I vegged out until I took him for a walk to pick up some other groceries that we needed for dinner. I made tandoori chicken, dal, a green apple raita, green beans with soy sauce and ginger, and basmati rice for dinner. Liam wasn't all that interested in dinner and Jamie didn't like the dal, but it was otherwise well received. I think that the boys need to be exposed more to these things before they can really decide if they like the foods or not: luckily, we have a *lot* of it for leftovers. Serves four: four what?! Jamie eventually went downstairs to play with Gary, and John has taken Liam out to T&T to buy ice cream. Hence my ability to write a blog entry at this unusually early hour of the night...

2009-04-12 22:37 (Kristen) We woke up about twenty minutes before egg time; we do a big outdoor egg hunt with our neighbours and their kids, and they were all set up with the plastic eggs and their children were raring to go. We managed to get ours outside with some complaint that they hadn't eaten yet, but once Daniel and Ross arrived, they were ready to go too. Liam grabbed onto Tom, and made him pick up eggs that Liam found (his own hands on the dirt, even for an egg? Don't be silly!), and Jamie ran around finding eggs too. After half an hour or so, all the eggs were all found, and we were warming ourselves up at Ben, Sam, and Luke's house with good company and some fun before heading home to relax for the morning. Liam and I went for a walk to little avail, and went back home. I noticed that Liam had a rash on his arms and legs, just like the one I had on Thursday, and went over my own new symptoms (swollen hands, achy joints). Working on a hunch, based on something our family doctor had once mentioned while looking at a rash of Jamie's, and armed with the Internet (fearsome tool), I figured out that Liam and I seem to have something called Fifth's disease or slapcheek, which is one of those childhood diseases that is better to get in childhood. Sigh. There's nothing to be done about it, of course, but we'll get it confirmed on Tuesday if we can. In the evening, we had the ham that Jamie had John buy for Easter dinner, and played some board games in a desperate effort to get the kids to stop watching television. I put Liam to bed at 9, because he was so tired, but he still took an hour to fall asleep. I think that he's uncomfortable with the rash, which is understandable, but it should pass in a couple of days and that should be that. Jamie went to sleep around 10:20, or a little after, and I suspect that both boys will sleep in tomorrow morning.

2009-04-13 22:54 (Kristen) Jamie came in to find me at 8:45 to say that he was very hungry. I got up, went downstairs, and came back up a little later to wake up Liam, who looked like he could have kept on sleeping for another half hour or so. I'd been hoping that Liam would nap in the afternoon, but he didn't: despite more exercise and less television than usual, he still didn't nap, and didn't fall asleep until 10:15 tonight. John suggested that the rash he has, thanks to the slapcheek, is likely making it uncomfortable enough for him to inhibit sleep, which seems likely. Instead, Liam and I walked around the neighbourhood for a bit, and he was fine with that. John and Jamie had gone to take John's mother to the oral surgeon for an emergency dental extraction, which ended up taking close to three hours. Jamie was a little concerned, as he'd heard that people can die during operations, but told her "gambatte" ("do your best"), held her hand, and checked on her solicitously and frequently, John said. Good boy.

Liam, on the other hand, spent his afternoon being (in order) a frog, a ghost ,and a robot (robot...robot...). He played with his toys, played a little with me, and was in a good mood overall. When John and Jamie got home, he was delighted as he'd missed them, but his first question was to wonder where Jamie's DS was. He'd missed that too. We went to Browning for dinner, and Liam was Tom's best friend all evening. At one point, he went to sit in Tom's lap while Tom was eating, spotted his own plate across the table, and asked "Why my food over there?!" in a slightly incredulous and put out tone, as though his food should have followed him to Tom's place on its own accord and had somehow failed. We all had a good time, then came home and went to bed.

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

Back to Vol. 2 No. 82, or up to Jamie Chew's Web Log Archive. or forward to Vol. 2 No. 84.