Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 3 No. 25

2010-01-26 23:58 (Kristen) I was up at 7:00 this morning to get Liam to the hospital for 8:30 so that a doctor could look at his finger and tell us how it was doing. I woke Liam up a little before 8, armed with breakfast, and we got right out of the house and onto the bus. He ate all his breakfast on the train, and we managed to get to the clinic almost on time. The clinic was amazingly fast, and the resident said that Liam's finger was doing very very well, and that we should wrap it in gauze for another four days or so before moving to band-aids, as band-aids are rather sticky (and we don't want sticky right now). Liam hates seeing his finger, and cried until we hid it with a washcloth: then he was fine. We finished up at the clinic, then walked to Hakobune, where Liam was somewhat reluctant to go in until he had a cuddle. He took his "koopa." I ran around for a bit, then came back to get him, and we headed home. After some Pikmen, I took Liam with me to pick up Jamie, Charlie, and Jake, and to take them to Jake's house for some playtime. Jamie was pretty tired when I got him home, but he did half his homework well. Liam was doing well, despite some resistance to having his bandage changed, and I went off to my book club meeting. When I came back at 10:15, the boys were still awake and had not been behaving, as John told me. It took some effort to get them to go to sleep, and I don't know why they were so wound up unless they were just that tired. John reported that Liam and Jamie spent a long time playing toether in the bath, which they haven't been able to do together for a week, and they enjoyed being able to do so again.

2010-01-27 23:44 (Kristen) The boys are getting excited about our upcoming trip to Mexico. John and are doing lots of packing, and getting everything ready. The boys are asking us when Grammie and Becky are going to arrive, and when we're going to be able to go to the beach. It became clear that Liam was expecting to go to Wasega Beach, and wasn't all that pleased when he learned it was going to be a different beach, but he seems to be coping. Errands were run today, and Jamie, Liam, and I ate a spicy tofu dish for dinner that we all enjoyed. Spicy isn't always a problem with them. In the evening, it was time for Jamie's judo class. He was tired, but still put in his best effort, and I think still really enjoys judo. He was impressed with some of the throws the black belts were throwing about, while Liam is fascinated with the kendo practitioners. He had a shower at the centre, John picked us up, Timbits were provided, and we headed home to bed, late again.

2010-01-28 24:08 (Kristen) John and I didn't get much sleep last night after doing lots of packing. The boys were a little slow getting up too, but we all managed to be where we needed to be on time. We picked up Liam, did some last minute groceries, and I went to pick up Jamie from school while John and Liam did necessary things around the house. We hadn't been home for too long when Becky and Grammie arrived. The boys happily played with Becky while Grammie and I made dinner and John packed some more, and drew wonderful pictures of our fish, Ponyo. I didn't know that there were so many heavy armaments around our fish tank, but clearly I didn't look properly. After dinner, Jamie played with Gary for a while, while Ross came over to visit with Becky and to be pressganged into being Liam's Super Mario Bros. Wii slave. The boys still went to bed a little late, but fell asleep quickly. They're all excited, and so are we, to be on a plane tomorrow.

2010-01-29 21:48 (John) Our trip to Mexico has begun fairly smoothly. We were pretty much all set twenty minutes before our planned 10:00 A.M. departure, filled in some time with Super Mario Bros. Wii (still haven't recovered all of the seven levels' progress that Liam erased), and some more with preparing the kitchen for post-plumbing drywall repair in our absence.

We bundled into two warm, idling cars outside in the nippy -14°C sunny weather, waved goodbye to Ayami and headed down Pottery Road. I got as far as Bayview before I realized I'd left my wallet behind, one of the very few mission-critical inventory items. For one thing, it's got my Aeroplan Elite membership card that gets us into the Air Canada Lounge.

Leaving Laraine and Becky at the Brickworks, I zipped back for the wallet, and we hit the road again. I was a little nervous about losing Laraine, who was not familiar with the route, but as she was also not familiar with the current Toronto vogue for road safety, she had no trouble keeping up with my lane changes in heavy traffic. We parked at the GTAA reduced rate parking lot, took the monorail to Terminal 1, checked in through the empty Executive Class queue, paused to attend to Liam who was tired and ran into a ledge at temple height. No waiting either at security, but the express people mover was out of order, so we made it to the Air Canada lounge about 90 minutes before departure.

The kids sat down to watch YTV on the giant screen in the kids' section, while we all took turns at the buffet. Everyone ate and drank well, except for Jamie, who after a large quantity of crudites, olives, bread, fruit salad and soup said "I want some real food, like a hot dog or a hamburger". I suspect he is continuing to grow, he is eating like a teenager.

We were the first to board our flight (Elite members with small children, doubly eligible for preboarding). For most of the flight, Kristen sat on an aisle seat blocking in the boys on window and middle, while I was on the facing aisle seat one row back, and Laraine and Becky were two more rows back. Toward the end of the flight, the boys wearied of video entertainment, food (we had lots with us, but I gave in and bought Jamie a chicken pizza) and DS games, so I stepped in as the relief parent and kept the kids entertained with explaining the approach and descent and what lay ahead.

The Cancun baggage handlers obeyed the priority baggage tags for a change, so we made it out fairly quickly, got the green light at customs, were met by a van my aunt had hired, and I got my usual crash reactivation of my fluently mangled Spanish chatting with the driver.

We settled into our rooms at the Hotel Ojo de Agua, my parents delivered food, and I'm about to take a nap while waiting for everyone else to come back from ice cream at the zocalo.

The kids have been deliriously happy and excited all day, but extremely well behaved. I am pleased.

2010-01-30 21:00 Jamie woke up at about 7:30 this morning. I hustled him out onto the balcony and gave him his tropical haircut: about a half inch shorter all round, and a lot thinner, especially at the back. Based on observations from later in the day, I need to thin it out even further. We went down to the beach with Becky, visited my mom, then came back home an hour later as Kristen and Liam were waking. I repeated the haircut with Liam, then everyone went out for breakfast at Mama's Bakery and I stayed home to go back to sleep. (They did bring me back a sticky bun.)

My parents' tenants inflated our dolphin for us (vinyl, with handles for a rider, about five feet long), and the boys delightedly played with it in the surf until lunchtime. Jamie had enchiladas again, but also sampled everyone else's grouper filets. After lunch, we had some quiet time in the heat of the day, before returning to the beach for sand play.

At Liam's request, I made some Super Mario Bros. toad houses out of sand (make a large sand castle with a bucket, then sculpt away everything that doesn't look like a toadstool). By the time they were finished though, his imagination had taken him on to Mario Tennis. The following conversation ensued. Dad: "Look, Liam, toad houses!" Liam: "Them are not toad houses." Dad: "They look like toad houses!" Liam: "No. Mario Tennis have no toad houses." Dad: "But what are they then, if they're not toad houses?" Liam: (mustering all his three-year-old gravitas and daring me to contradict him) "Muffins."

My mom and I split cooking duties tonight. She made a noodle stir-fry, I made frijoles refritos, and fried bananas. Everyone has eaten their fill and headed back to the zocalo again for shopping and ice cream, leaving me to take another nap.

2010-01-31 22:00 (Kristen) Yesterday, I changed Liam's bandage and decided that it was time to reduce the amount of bandage to just a fingertip bandage from a gauze pad and a half roll of gauze. I thought that Liam would be happy at this sign that his finger was getting better. No. Instead, he screamed and cried and demanded gauze. Why? I am not sure. Possibly he is afraid that it will be hurt, and that the gauze will protect it, or he is just afraid of seeing it, since he hates the sight of the wounded finger more than anything. In the end, we wrapped a placebo layer of gauze around the bandaid, and we're all living with that.

John and Jamie once again were up earlier than me and Liam, but not by much. I made breakfast (Mexican scrambled eggs: eggs, tomatoes, and avocados, which are red, white, and green like the Mexican flag), and then Becky and Grammie arrived for more of the same. We headed down to the beach, eventually, for much sand play. Unfortunately the lovely weather turned around 11, and the wind shifted direction to the north. We went up to the Ojo for lunch, where we ordered two orders of fish and one enchilada, and decided to split it four ways. Liam was more than a little put out that his pescado a la mantequilla was to be shared, and Jamie wanted more fish too. In the end, both boys ate more than a full adult-sized portion each of food. I think that we're feeding them well. Because it was spitting rain, and because the lions were feeling somewhat torpid, we went back to our room for some quiet play. Liam just lay on his back and did nothing on the bed for a while, which was very unusual, and indicative of some fatigue, but he didn't nap. Perhaps he should have. By 7, he was tired and clumsy, which meant that when he tripped and scraped his knee on the way to the zocalo for ice cream, he was in a very delicate state. He screamed for a while, and demanded to be carried to the zocalo, and limped visibly and with great effect when made to walk on his own. We made it back home after ice cream (lots) and demands for more ice cream (Liam), where it was time to change Liam's bandage again. He screamed enough that he exhausted himself utterly and fell asleep on the bed while the lights were on and I was about to brush Jamie's teeth. It was a bit of a relief to the rest of us that he was asleep. Jamie was good and went to sleep soon afterwards. I have no idea what the weather is supposed to be like tomorrow, but I imagine more of the same. Grammie and Becky are off to Chichen Itza tomorrow, so we'll have a quieter day, either way. Jamie in particular has been delighted to have Becky here, and was visibly crestfallen when he found that she was taking a nap this afternoon instead of being free to play on the sand with us. He has been showing a little more independence, running between floors and between rooms by himself (with adult ears open and supervising, of course) and has been asking for even more independence. It's nice, but surprising, and has required some adjustment in my thinking as I try to find the right balance between independence and necessary adult supervision.

2010-02-01 22:00 (John) It was my turn to sleep in this morning, and the boys got Kristen out of bed early. We're without Becky and Laraine today, as they've headed off to Chichen Itza to explore ruins for the day. We headed down to the beach as usual around 10:30, built drip castles, dug holes, splashed in the water (Jamie managed to immerse his face for the first time), and had our usual lunch at the hotel restaurant. In the afternoon, Kristen napped while I played quietly with the boys. We went out for dinner at Hola Asia with my parents (Liam scraped his knee again on the way, and is accumulating quite the collection of injuries: black eye, double scraped knee, smashed finger, ...), where I enjoyed the Thai fish cakes, Jamie hoovered a virgin pina colada, and Liam ate an awful lot of pad thai with his fingers. Becky and Laraine met us for ice cream, we walked home and went to bed a little earlier than usual.

(Kristen) Jamie woke me up early, a little after dawn, and I could have been happier about it, I suppose. He is very insistent: "Mom! I need help with this! Mom! I need help with that!" And so on. We spent the morning on the beach, and John got Jamie to put his face into the water. When Jamie came running out to tell me, I was alarmed at first until John explained that it was *deliberate* and worth praising Jamie for. I corrected myself. The boys and I made clothespin cars and played with those for a bit while John slept in the afternoon, and then I let them play DSes so that I could fall asleep. They then, unbeknownst to me, woke up John and kept him up for the hour or more that I was asleep. By the evening, Liam was blithering and tripped again when we were walking to Hola Asia. Becky and Grammie had been on a trip to Chichen Itza, so we kept looking for them returning in the zocalo when we were there: they arrived just at the end of dinner, but joined us all for ice cream. Jamie was disappointed that it was raining when we came out of the ice cream shop, as it meant no playground, but Liam was tired enough that John's parents drove us back to the hotel to avoid another Liam disaster involving blood and bandages. The boys fell asleep relatively well. They're eating enormous quantities of food, and are enjoying their trip very much.

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

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