Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 2 No. 97

2009-07-14 22:53 (Kristen) Today, we took the boys to Wasega Beach after their morning at Hakobune. We have friends with a cottage that they rent every year, and they generously open their home to visitors while they're there. We packed up the beach toys and swim suits, grabbed Daniel, and headed out to pick up the boys. The boys were very wound up, and Daniel was very useful as he sat in between them, keeping them fed, watered, and amused. We arrived around 4 in the afternoon, enough time to grab frappuchinos and consume them before arrival. We went down to the beach, where Liam went with me into the very wavy water, while Jamie stayed on shore to help recreate a scale model of Ankor Wat with John, complete with elephants. The waves were quite large, but Liam still went out with me for quite a bit until he was tired of getting sprayed by water every time a large wave went by. It was a good thing, as my arms were getting tired from holding him. We played on the beach until it was time for dinner, and Jamie spent a lot of time watching Dr. Who with Ronnie and Daniel ("I like Dr. Who!") The boys and Daniel slept in a room together, the boys in one bed and Daniel in the other (when Daniel slept, being a teenager). The bed was a double lower bunk underneath a single upper, and Liam was *fascinated* by it. This is why we do not have a bunkbed in the house, or at least not yet. The boys were exhausted, and fell asleep remarkably quickly, given the company and new environment.

2009-07-15 22:53 (Kristen) This morning was all about more beach. First, however, Jamie woke up at 7:15 or something horrible and insisted that I get up with him, as he didn't know where things were and was less able to entertain himself than usual. I realize that I take for granted that Jamie, when we are at home, doesn't wake me up in the mornings anymore. He goes downstairs and watches television, which isn't all that great, but he is intrigued by the idea of being able to make his own breakfast. We were ready for the beach in the early afternoon, and it was a lovely long day there. Liam, by the end of the day, was more than happy to hold my hand and walk out to chest-level (for him) water for fun and frolic. By the end of the day he was willing to walk into the water by himself looking for rocks and shells by the water's edge, which was less good. We spent a great deal of time looking for rocks to throw into the water, and both boys love the sound of wet pebbles and shells together falling into the water. Simon and his parents showed up around noon, and there was much play with him too. Jamie has been fascinated by my new water bottle, which has different mushrooms of varying degrees of edibility on it. We told him that Simon's dad is the only person in the world that he is allowed to go and pick wild mushrooms with (Peter being a botanist), and so he was interested in talking to Peter about them. We stayed for dinner, and then hit the road back home. Both boys fell asleep, but Liam woke up as we were getting off the highway, and needed to be extracted and put into bed, stat. Jamie woke up too, but took longer than Liam to go back to sleep.

2009-07-16 22:53 (Kristen) For some reason, I've only been blogging every three days or so. I'm unsure why this is the case, but it means that I can remember today better than the last two, and am less likely to forget funny things that Liam has said, etc. My left shoulder is all sore, thanks to carrying Liam around in the water for so long, and we have brought the usual half bucket of sand back with us in our clothes, etc. We all had a great time, and it was a lovely time out of the city. Today, the boys' new babysitter came over. Her name is Waka, and she's from Japan, and is going to look after the boys two mornings a week this summer. This will let me get some work done during the days, instead of getting no sleep at nights. Yay! The boys sound like they had a good time with her, as I was only disturbed once, by LIam looking for some companionship in the bathroom. They spoke Japanese the whole time, and Liam's spoken Japanese is starting to take off. Yay, again! In the afternoon, we pulled Jamie away from the television with a crowbar and made him ride his bike around. We saw Jake's new house, which is empty right now, and Jamie and Liam had a blast running around the house with all the space. Then we went off to find Charlie and his family, to play in the schoolground. Liam and Jamie had fun playing with them, until it was time to go in. We picked up dinner at the Big Carrot, came home, and vegged until dinner. After dinner, John took the boys to a playground that Jamie had wanted to try out, and they stayed out for about an hour and a half. The boys were tired when they got home, and fell asleep quite easily. Yay yay yay!

2009-07-17 23:28 (Kristen) A fairly uneventful Friday, as Fridays go. We were up early, off to Hakobune, and there we stayed for the morning. I had hoped to go swimming with the boys after daycare, and we got all suited up and by the pool before we found out that we weren't able to swim in the teaching pool at that time... arrgh. We went to have a snack at the nearby Starbucks while waiting for John to get us, and we spent most of our time on the grass outside because they were too wound up to be inside. I was the Yelling Mother for large parts of the day to that point, which wasn't fun, but didn't realize that the boys' behaviours were due to fatigue until Jamie fell asleep in the car on the way home. Which explained *much*. He slept for almost an hour in the car, as we parked in the driveway and did things around him. After he woke up, we went to Browning for spaghetti, and hung out until it was bedtime. Liam had not a speck of trouble falling asleep, while Jamie, for some reason, had trouble falling asleep before 10:30...

2009-07-18 50:11 (Kristen) I didn't see much of the boys today, as they spent a good deal of the day with their father while I worked at home. I got up in the morning to feed them breakfast, and John took them out for three hours to shop at the St. Lawrence Market and to play at various interesting playgrounds. Jamie keeps a running list in his mind of playgrounds that look interesting as we drive past them in the car, and stumps us with general descriptions of where they are when he decides it's time to go and check a particular one out. Later in the day, John took both boys to a playground by Withrow school, down in Riverdale, after Jamie had been angling for a few days to be taken there to try out their purple slide. The boys were good and tired, but still went to bed a little late.

2009-07-19 26:15 (Kristen) Today, we just couldn't get ourselves up and out. The kids hung out in their pajamas until lunch, watched television, did stickers in their sticker books (Charlie and Lola for Jamie; an Usborne book of shapes for Liam), and were pressganged by their father into helping us put the laundry away. Jamie did not a bad job of it. With his newfound knowledge of where his clothes were kept, and which drawer in his dresser held what types of clothing, he even picked out his own clothes for the day. Later in the afternoon, after much hemming and hawing and half-laid plans gone awry, I packed up the kids for an afternoon at the Second Cup (blueberry Italian sodas are Jamie's new thing) and the playground. We played with Charlie and his family at Jackman, went to St. Barnabas after Liam fell and scraped up his knees a bit, and then waited until John came. Liam also banged up his hand, and was a bit of a disaster area all around. We went home, had a simple dinner, and some quiet time before bed. Liam in particular, was exhausted, so we put the boys to bed early. They were both asleep by 9:45, which is half an hour earlier than the last two nights. Yay.

2009-07-20 47:33 (Kristen) I forgot to say that we've taught Liam to say "Make it so," a la Captain Picard. He's picking up a few phrases like that, which reminds us to be more careful about how we speak around him... The day had a rough start as I'd stayed up late working, and slept in a bit. I managed to get Jamie and Liam out of the house without a tantrum, however, which felt like a large accomplishment. Jamie's friend wasn't at Starbucks this week, and I'd had an odd premonition that this might happen. So, I brought our swimming things for Pool, Round 2. We made it down, swam for about 20 minutes, as Jamie spent a good deal of time goofing around before hand, but managed to get Jamie to kick while keeping his legs more straight and more under water. Yay! Big results re speed while he held onto a flotation device. Getting him to move quickly out of the pool and ready to pick up Liam at 1 was much less fun. It was a hard afternoon, as the boys wound each other up higher and higher. We went to Jake's new house to play with Jake, Parker, and Charlie (the younger), which was fun, and helped the boys to burn off some energy. They played with Sam, Ben, and Luke a bit, and ate dinner at Browning. It was late when they got to bed, which meant that they fell asleep quickly, thank goodness.

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

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