Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 3 No. 18

2009-12-08 24:15 (Kristen) We decided, after Liam had a bad night, to keep him home. We also kept him home because his eye was red, swollen, and glued shut with evil green goo, requiring me to make an appointment with our doctor right away after I dropped Jamie off at school and her office opened. Dealing with Liam in the morning meant that I had to drop Jamie's lunch off later in the morning, but that was fine; it was his Pokeball lunchbox, which suited him just fine. I picked him up after school and brought him home right away so that he could do homework and suchlike. Liam stayed behind with John, and the boys played while I prepared the outside of the house for an oncoming storm. The evening itself was quiet, with homework, reading, and other fun. Jamie is reading a book that I bought him about bats, and a read-a-book from school about tigers. He seems to be enjoying both. Liam was difficult to put to sleep again tonight, and I'm not enjoying it very much at all.

2009-12-09 24:19 (Kristen) The first big snowfall of the year has landed on us, and the boys were delighted. It was already turning to slush by the time I got Jamie out the door (and I am cursing the extra time winter clothes take once again), and we got to school in the rain. He had a very hard time not stuffing his hands into every patch of white he could, and I regretted not being able to let him. I went back home to look after Liam, who hates his eyedrops with all his might. I had no idea there were so many little muscles around the eye that can be clenched tightly to prevent mothers from giving their children eyedrops. I took Liam out with me to pick up Jamie, since Liam wanted to see the snow, and because John made a tiny snowman that lived on our front porch that made Liam think snowmen. We walked there, picked up Jamie, and then I let the boys play for about twenty minutes as the rain had finally stopped. Liam walked through every piece of slush he could find, and at one point was in a sea of slush that looked like the fractured surface of the arctic pack ice. I was thinking that he was going to float away on an ice floe for a moment. Jamie spent his time throwing large chunks of snow at the wall of the school or through the chain link fence nearby for fun (with his friends). We took longer than usual to go home because it was the first snow, and it really is asking too much to ask two boys to hurry home through that. We got in, ate dinner soon after, and watched a movie before Jamie did his math in a hurry, read a little, then went to bed. Once again, it was hard to get Liam to settle, and I'm not entirely sure why this is. Going to Hakobune will be a good thing for him, I think.

2009-12-10 23:40 (Kristen) Liam has been picking up unfortunate phrases from video games the other kids are playing. From Soulcaliber IV, it's "Round 1! Fight!" The less violent and even pacifistic games hold little phrases that can cause trouble for a small child. In Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Dance Party, the Venuemaster, when waiting for someone to do something, cries out (in a suitably unimpressed voice) "Boring!" This is now Liam's rallying cry when he is waiting for someone and thinks it's taking too long. *mother facepalms* He's also obsessed with the anime opening sequence of Tales of Symphonia, and I'm trying to track down the OVA to preview it for suitable Liam watching. He seems to like anime, and will watch Fruits Basket with me. I don't really have any other child-acceptable anime: FullMetal Alchemist is just a little too intense...

The weather was fine enough in the morning, but the wind in the afternoon was vicious. When Liam and I went to get Jamie, the wind just sliced through us and made Liam very very unhappy. We took more time than usual because we had to get Charlie's DS so that he could come over to play with Jamie, but the boys also needed to check out each chunk of frozen snow to see if it could be thrown or otherwise messed with. When I got home, I found that the windchill was -17, which explained a good deal. I spent a good part of the rest of the day baking cookies for the Hakobune Christmas party tomorrow, and the boys enjoyed taste testing. In face, there is a vocal segment of the house that is demanding more cookies, and NOW.

2009-12-11 23:48 (Kristen) Jamie was up easily enough but Liam really really didn't want to wake up. When he did get up, he was cranky and miserable and vocal about it. I fed him porridge in the care, as it was the day of the Hakobune Christmas Pageant, and we were late. We did, in the end, make it on time, and Liam was fabulous in his white shirt and dark dress pants as he danced and sang with the other kids. He was very serious about it, and I was surprised at how much work he clearly put into it. We were very proud, and slain appropriately by the cute. Afterwards, we ate snacks and talked with other parents and ran around madly with other kids as was appropriate to each. One parent said that it was strange not to see Jamie here, and I was very pleased that Jamie is remembered, and made such an impression. Afterwards, we went to MEC to buy a new winter coat and snowpants for Jamie, who has shot up over the last month and now has at least half an inch of wrist sticking out from the cuffs of his old coat. I always feel frugal buying coats and snowpants like this, because I know that Liam will get good use out of them too. Liam spent his time running around the upstairs at MEC, and played with a couple who were trying out tents in the tent section. I told Liam not to go into the tents with his shoes on, and he just took off his shoes. Sigh. At one point, I turned my back for a moment to talk with an employee in the shoe department whie Liam was "trying on" shoes. I turned back and he was gone. A staff member helped me to find him, back in the tents as I realized eventually, because he had No Shoes On, and therefore it was OK to be in the tents. Words were spoken, hands were held, and small children were kept very close afterwards. We went home and I picked up Jamie, but we didn't do much after that until it was time to have dinner at Browning. John was home early, exhausted, but I brought the boys home around 9, and it was lights out soon afterwards. Liam is continuing to have difficulty settling at night, and I'm going to have to work out something to calm him down because it's not all that much fun at the moment.

2009-12-12 22:25 (Kristen) Jamie went off with John to Nisshu Gakkuin, and Liam slept in until after 9:30, so he didn't go with John to the market. Instead, John, Liam, and I went on up to Nisshu Gakkuin ourselves for around noon, as John and I had a parent-teacher interview with Jamie's teacher there. Liam scored a piece of pizza because it was pizza day, and that and the DS kept him mostly amused while John and I talked with the teacher. Turns out that Jamie's doing great; he aced a test he'd done a few weeks ago that was supposed to see how well he could function in Japanese without someone reading the instructions to him: he's soooo busted now. I'd been a little worried, but clearly all is well. Our interview was pretty much a repeat of the interview we had with his English teacher: doing well, nothing to worry about. Whew!! I took Liam with me on the subway home, doing a little shopping along the way, and racing home using the "Going to the moon!" song to keep us moving. Jamie and John were already there (Liam and I were slower than I thought), and did five pages of homework before the night was through. John will be in Mexico next week, and so he wanted to get a good run at Jamie's homework dealt with before he left. Liam played with this and that, doing some homework as well. He gets irritated when I correct the way he holds a pencil, however, so I have to be careful not to push him too hard.

2009-12-13 22:36 (Kristen) Again, it was a lazy Sunday for the most part. The boys were allowed to stay in their pajamas until after lunch, and they spent the morning watching cartoons in the tradition of classic childhood. They also had some timbits before breakfast, courtesy of a Scrabble player who had come over for a meeting with John about school Scrabble, which heightened their energy levels quite a bit. In the afternoon, John had some trouble getting Jamie to focus on his homework, so that we ended up being a little late for the going-away party at the Silk Road Cafe with John's parents. In the end, all was well, and the boys packed away their usual impressive amount of chicken and broccoli. John's parents were well, and happy to be going south. We walked home via their house, with many goodbyes, and got the boys ready for bed. Liam is still taking his eye drops, and I've figured out that I need to wrap him up like a burrito in his comforter--"bunnying" him, if you will--to put the drops in. He still hates the drops, but he loves being wrapped up "like sushi," he says, so that would explain why he asked me to put his medicine into his eyes this morning. I was puzzled as heck until I figured that one out.

2009-12-14 22:45 (Kristen) John left very early this morning. Jamie was already in bed with us, and he woke up not too much longer after John left. Liam, however, was fast asleep until I woke him up at 8:30 to wrap him in a blanket and put him in the stroller to accompany Jamie and me to school. We went back home, and Liam spent the morning playing quietly until it was time to go to Browning for lunch. Ken came back with Jamie, and we had a lovely lunch until it was time to walk Jamie back to school. Ross had left before Jamie, and he was running pell mell after Ross when he reached the corner. Ross was already across, and a woman I know from the playground, on her way to school, identified Jamie and said that she'd noticed him chasing Ross, and would accompany Jamie acroos the road to catch up to Ross. Jamie apparently gave her a very suspicious look before being reassured that it was all right, and did. The mother told me, as I ran up after, what she'd done, and that Jamie had been very suspicious! I was all right with it, but it was a little strange. I saw Jamie inside, and went on to go Christmas shopping with Liam. I got back in time, picked up Jamie, and we all went home to veg before dinner at Browning. That was fun, and the boys were good and ate at last most of their meals. Jamie, at one point, asked me with real concern if I wasn't supposed to be at Trivia, and I thanked him with a kiss but reassured him that Trivia was over for the season. We were home by 8:50, talked with John on Skype, then went straight to bed. Both boys complained that they weren't tired, but they both fell asleep quite quickly.

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

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