Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 2 No. 91

2009-06-02 01:00 (Kristen) John got up and took Jamie to school while Liam and I continued to sleep in the gloomy morning. WHen I woke up it was 9:45, and Liam and I were due at Hakobune at 10:00. John had let us sleep in, and had phoned ahead to tell sensei that Liam and I were going to be late. Still, ack! We raced out the door and made it there by 11. Jamie had a playdate at Jake's, then we all converged at home. The boys made a card for John (well, Jamie did and Liam signed, with help), and gave him some matcha latte as well for his birthday. First, however, we went to John's parent's place for a birthday dinner with John's parents and John's aunts, which was lovely, and the boys had a great time. Traditional birthday cake was eaten, but the cake has chocolate cookies in it and so was Not Acceptable for either Jamie or Liam. Liam complained that cookie got into the whipped cream that acts as icing for the cake, in fact. Both boys rode their bikes to Tai Tai and Ho Ho's, and Liam actually is starting to get the hand of riding the run bike. Cool!

2009-06-03 25:11 (Kristen) It's Wednesday and I've had a headache, so I'll be brief. It was bubble tea day today, as I had both boys and picked Jamie up at Hakobune. Liam and I had hung out at a small playground in the Annex while waiting, after John dropped Liam off to me at the end of my haircut in Yorkville. I had walked Liam to the Annex with no success in getting him to sleep, so we all had bubble tea instead. It was a very quiet day, which was probably a good thing in the end. I read to Jamie from the first chapter of Paddington, and while he's complaining that there aren't enough pictures, we're muddling along.

2009-06-04 25:14 (Kristen) John was up very late last night, so I took the boys to school this morning. I slept in too, unfortunately, so it was a bit of a rush. Neither boy likes to rush, so that was a bit of a drag. Liam insisted on riding the rocket stroller back home, where we puttered until it was time to get Jamie. We picked him up, ate lunch at Browning, and then sent him off on a playdate at IKEA with Jake and his little brother CHarlie. I gather that they were very loud. Liam went out for a walk with John, me, Michelle, and Ruth, but Ruth was far Too Interesting for Liam to consider falling asleep and so we all walked back, in the end, to Browning so that Liam could watch Pingu while we talked. I took Liam home around 3, gardened, saw Jamie come home, and puttered some more. John took the boys to the schoolyard to ride bikes for a bit, and reports that Liam can not ride the runbike for 15 squares of sidewalk by himself. Yay, Liam! His main problem is that he gets too excited when he goes quickly, and starts to wave his arms making the bike skew all over. The boys went to bed late, too late in Jamie's case, and possibly too late for Jamie, as he'd fallen asleep in the van on the way home from IKEA.

2009-06-05 46:54 (Kristen) John left for Albuquerque early this morning, and Jamie woke up at 6:45, when he left. He stayed in bed until 7:15, but was up after that. Liam and I got up and shared some breakfast, then took Jamie to school. I took Liam to Hakobune, went back for Jamie, and brought him to Hakobune as well. I enjoy my subway rides with Jamie; we always have fun and talk. I picked up Liam after lunch, and got him to take a rare afternoon nap between 2 and 3:30. We got Jamie, went home, and had fun while waiting on the bus at Broadview about who should drive the bus: the pigeon, the giraffe, or the driver. The driver won. Dinner was at Browning, and Liam watched about every Pingu episode available on YouTube. Jamie played, and we eventually came home very late to talk with John briefly on Skype, look at the roadrunners and jackrabbits in Albuquerque, and go to sleep.

2009-06-06 22:55 (Kristen) I let the boys sleep in because it was going to be a very busy day. I got them up at the last minute, fed them breakfast on the subway, and dropped Jamie off at Nisshu Gakkuin. Our friends Peter and Leslie called to see if we were up for a visit to Queen Street as we were getting back to the subway, and it sounded like a great idea. We headed down to Bakka-Phoenix, where we waited while Peter, Leslie, and SImon dealt with unreasonable traffic and transit. When they arrived it was noon, and we all had lunch at Little Tibet, which was lovely. Liam ate almost a whole bowl of soup on his own (with big fat homemade noodles), and played well with Simon. They are almost of an age, with only nine months between them, and it's a lot of fun to see how well they get along. I think that we'll be setting up more playdates for these two. We parted ways again at Bakka, where Liam was showing real signs of fatigue, and I put him in the stroller to walk him to Queen and Spadina. He fell asleep, and we raced up to get Jamie. I was a little late, as the traffic was horrendous, but Yutaka's mom, Caroline, was there and kept an eye on a perfectly secure Jamie until I got there.

Then it was off to ToysRUs to get presents for Jake and Charlie, and onto the 100 bus to ride to the party at Playground Paradise. Liam, of course, had to pee for most of the ride, and Jamie was so excited that he couldn't stop asking if each stop was ours. We made it there just in time, and the boys had a fabulous time running around and around and around until their hair was all sweaty. They ate pizza, cake, and veggies, and then went back to play some more. Then it was off home with loot bags. Jamie insisted that he was too bored to live, and I got him to tell me a story. When we got home, he dictated another story to me, and illustrated it. Liam zoned out in front of the television, and it was early to bed. The moment it was time to go upstairs, however, Liam insisted that he was hungry. I had trouble believing that, however, given the amount of food he'd eaten (two pieces of pizza), but there may have been some truth to it as he didn't fall asleep until 10:30. I didn't detect tummy grumbles, which would have been there if he was really hungry, but he should have fallen over and gone straight to sleep. Jamie sure did.

2009-06-07 23:16 (Kristen) Jamie was up early this morning. I am not sure when, but he did ask me at one point if it was all right if he got up. When I got downstairs with Liam, around 9, he was ensconced on the blue armchair, watching television and playing with his DS. He and Liam played for a bit, and we had a late-ish breakfast. The boys were very patient while I vacuumed the house and did general housecleaning chores: remarkably so. It was a very pleasant morning, in fact, with the boys taking time out to play with toys and Jamie to do some checking over of his story from the night before. He also did some lovely drawing. We had a late lunch to go with the late breakfast, by which time the boys were tired of being in the house. It was cloudy but not raining, so I declared that we were going out to do some grocery shopping and play at St. Barnabas. Jamie was tired and punky after a sedentary morning, and somewhat oppositional. We had a "discussion" about his general grumpiness, which resulted in some sulking, but exercise soon blew the cobwebs out of his brain and he was happily running down the street and walking on all available ledges. Liam failed to fall asleep despite a promising start, and the boys played at the playground while i sat and did some work. I like that playground, and the boys had a great time together. We had a quick snack at the Second Cup, and then picked up our groceries at the Big Carrot. I had dressed Jamie and Liam in the matching shirts that I bought for them with Christmas money from my mom, and they were very eyecatching as they ran about in complete glee on the way home: three people, at least, stopped me to say how cute they were in their matching shirts. And I had to agree. I took photos of the boys in front of my amazing iris display in the front garden, and the colours of the irises matched the colours on my boys. Perfect! We played outside some more with Sam, Ben, and Luke, and Alexandria, who looked after the boys while I went in to change to go to a celebration of life gathering for Shannon Reynolds, a university friend of mine who passed away two months ago. I dropped the boys off at Browning, where Liam melted down as I tried to leave. Tom reports that the Pingu of Pacification worked its usual magic, although Liam almost fell asleep in front of the television and had to be run around to prevent disaster. The boys had their usual good time and Tom fed them chicken katsu, so all was good. I picked them up a little late, just after Jamie started asking when he was going to go home, and brought them staright home and straight to bed. There were no complaints, so they must have been *very* tired.

2009-06-08 22:59 (Kristen) The morning went well, as the boys and I woke up and managed to get out of the house and to our respective destinations without incident. Jamie went to play with Sam and the rest of the posse after school, while Liam and I did some shopping after I picked him up from daycare. Liam didn't go to sleep, although it was a close call, and so I took him with me for a bit of a play at Sam's house. Sam, Harry, and Georgia have amazing toys, and Liam appreciates this and expects his time to play too. John's plane landed around 4, and called when he was close to home. I took the boys straight to Browning, where John met us a few minutes later. They were delighted to see their dad, and enjoyed the traditional gifting of toys after a parental trip. The rest of the evening had a very tired Liam watching lots of Pingu while avoiding eating much dinner, and Jamie played Bookworm Adventures with Gary. We headed home early, around 8:15, and the boys were in bed with lights out around 9:10. Jamie was tired too, as he'd been up for about half an hour in the middle of the night with a nagging little cough (no sign of it during the day). Liam was overtired, and took longer to sleep, but sleep he did before 10.

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

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