Jamie Chew's Web Log: Vol. 3 No. 29

2010-02-23 23:58 (Kristen) Jamie was off for most of the day, as he spends Tuesdays at school for lunch and then had a playdate with his friend Connor. When I dropped Jamie off at school, Connor notified Jamie that Jamie was coming over (agreed) but that he had some bad news: there would be no swords or light sabres at Connor's house after all because they had been banned (confirmed by Connor's mom later, who said that there had been Incidents on the weekend requiring the ban). They were bent together, seriously, discussing options when I left. John took LIam to Hakobune, and we were wondering if he was fighting something. When John came home with Liam, he was clearly fighting something. In fact, he fell asleep on my arm, on the couch, while I was playing Super Mario Tennis for him an hour or so later. He slept for an hour and a half, then woke up with some protest. He ate dinner, and his stomach seems to be fine so far (knock wood), but the fever is giving him a headache and he's pretty flat when he's not on Motrin. Poor baby. Jamie did a metric ton more of homework both before and after dinner, and was good about it.

2010-02-24 23:35 (Kristen) Liam had a bad night last night, as he ran a fever and slept restlessly, with many dreams and nightmares. To make it up to me, the universe gave me a Jamie who was just about perfect in getting himself up, fed, and ready for school with me. Liam spent a quiet day at home. When Jamie came home for lunch, Liam ran excitedly to the door, declaring "Jamie! I missed you! I love you!" Jamie responded in kind, and they played together until lunch was ready. Liam continues to be fussy, but ate enough to keep himself going at least a little longer. John picked Jamie up from school at the end of the day, and they did a whack of homework again. John had to be at the Scrabble club early for its 35th anniversary celebration, and I couldn't take Jamie to judo because Liam was still sick, so our friend Tom drove Jamie up and back from judo. Friends: can't live without them. Jamie really enjoys judo, so it would have been a real shame if he'd missed it. He wonders how long it will take to get a yellow belt, and was full of talk about 'perseverance' today. It's his new word, but something that Jamie has no lack of in his life. Liam and I hung out in front of the Olympics while Jamie was out, but he needed to go to bed earlier than Jamie. After he fell asleep (about three minutes), Jamie and I watched the Canadian women's two-man bobsled team win gold and silver at the Olympics. He was glad, he said, that I got him to watch it with me. It was nice to see people crying with joy for a change, and it was a nice note to go to bed upon.

2010-02-25 22:40 (Kristen) Liam was still running a fever last night, and woke up early. I had to convince him, with much resistance, to stay in bed until the alarm went off. He really wasn't feeling well; his nose was running like a faucet by the mid-morning, and he has a cough now that sounds hoarse (yes, we're keeping an eye on it). He fell asleep around the end of the US-Canada women's hockey game, and has stayed asleep more or less since--he keeps waking himself up coughing, cries and screams his annoyance and betrayal, and then falls back asleep with help. It could be a loooong night. Jamie, in the meantime, is healthy and doing his best to stay that way. He was giving me a preview of his report card (apparently he has been told he should check his work over before handing it in), but I'm not worried about it. He was in a great mood all day, with only one or two little bobbles. He did 8 pages of homework today, which he was pretty proud of. We read about ten pages of Bone, which went slowly because the story is getting complicated and there are a lot of words and phrases he doesn't know. He also loves to dissect a story while reading it: why is this? What is that? Look at that in the picture over here! and so on. This is part of the reason while reading a book takes so long around here, and why Jamie doesn't like to read a book by himself: no Mom or Papa to answer his ceaseless slew of questions. He enjoys himself, though, which really is the purpose of the exercise, as I have to remind myself: his style of reading and mine are so very different. I should, however, ask my mom and dad about this before I makes these claims. We spent the evening in the living room as we watched the Olympic hockey game and did homework. I tried to get Liam to do other stuff today than play video games, and was partly successful. As there is no way he's going to daycare again tomorrow, we'll try again to reprogram his brain to play with toys and colour. Or play with Lego. Or something.

2010-02-26 46:22 (Kristen) Liam was feeling worse today, with a stronger fever and headache than yesterday. So, he stayed home while Jamie went off to school. He watched a lot of television today, which is unusual, and slept for four hours in the afternoon: also, as we all know, an unusual thing for a boy I've described as the natural enemy of sleep to do. He was completely uninterested in food after nibbling on a waffle and on a rice krispie square, but drank a lot of water. He fell asleep during the Olympics, and was out for the night, with occasional periods of waking up, screaming, and wanting more water. Jamie, in the meantime, came home with some really cool work he'd done at school, and John and I marvelled at how he's really grown in ability since the beginning of the year. John and Jamie went to Browning for dinner, and Jamie killed another eight or so pages of Japanese homework. Pretty awesome for a six-year-old. He also had a makeup music lesson, and did very well: he's picking up theory very well. Clever boots. Off to bed.

2010-02-27 22:30 (Kristen) After another bad night, where Liam had a very high fever and seemed to be delirious at times, we got up to decide that Jamie wasn't feeling well enough to go to school and that Liam was really not doing any better. In fact, he was very lethargic all morning, sleeping but not really sleeping, and refusing all food. He was, however, drinking lots of water, so I wasn't as worried as I might have been. However, John and I decided that I should take Liam to the walk-in clinic to see what was up. After a surprisingly short wait (it was not busy), the doctor looked Liam over and said that he was a very sick little boy and that we should take him to Sick Kids for a chest x-ray and some blood work. Well, ok then. We did just that, and John brought Jamie along. Liam started to revive after he had some Tylenol, which was interesting as the Motrin we'd been giving him hadn't brought the fever down as well as the Tylenol did. John ahd Jamie reviewed Jamie's knowledge of the 80 kanji characters that Japanese kids need to know for first grade and found that Jamie knows them all and can accurately and clearly write over 60 of them. Yay, Jamie! He was very proud of himself, and rightly so. In the meantime, Liam had a chest x-ray, had people look at him, evaluate him, examine him, and eventually decide that he had a crackling in his chest but that the x-rays were inconclusive. In the end, it was a) an asthma attack brought on by an upper respiratory virus (unlikely, as he hasn't shown any signs of asthma before), b) the beginnings of pneumonia, or c) a rather nasty virus going around. Who knows? In the end, we have puffers and such to make sure his chest stays clear, and will be visiting our family doctor on Monday, as soon as we possibly can. Tom and Michelle came by to take Jamie home to play with Daniel and Ross for the evening, while John, Liam, and I left the hospital a few hours later. The fun part was that the woman who helped Liam out last time by keeping him happy through his finger operation was there again, and recognized us by Liam's scream when he was being given some ventalin that he didn't like. Liam is now richer by a stuffed dragon. And people wonder why we bring our children to Sick Kids. We are tired, and Liam is sleeping, somewhat restlessly. John and Jamie are sleeping in one room, and Jamie has finally run out of questions and is asleep. I hope that we all sleep in tomorrow morning.

2010-02-28 22:56 (Kristen) Another night of fever with Liam, and we all slept in late with the exception of Jamie, who seems to have slept well. It was a quiet day, on purpose, which was good. We spent a good part of the day watching the Olympics on television, which started to grate on Jamie by the end of the hockey game. I was a little on edge watching it, and not really paying a lot of attention to him, which led him to exhibit some attention-getting behaviour until the game was over, I got my brain back (we won! yay!), and I set him up with a copy of Harry Potter on the upstairs DVD player. This is why we have it. Liam sat, quiet and sleepy on the couch, until I lifted him in the air suddenly to celebrate the winning goal. Note to self: do not do that again. His fever started to come up again near bedtime, and John and I had a quiet moment of fright as we realized that the doctor who had sent us to Sick Kids had been worried that Liam had encephalitis or meningitis; we knew that he didn't, by this point, but I'm glad that I hadn't clued in earlier. We're really looking forward to seeing our family doctor tomorrow.

2010-03-01 23:30 (Kristen) Jamie and John were off to the dentist today, as Jamie had lost a filling on a lower back molar, and John had an extraction planned. John reported back to me that Jamie had wanted to tell him something during Jamie's procedure, and managed to write it out on a piece of paper for John. This is something that he could not do six months ago, even, and we're pretty pleased by this development. John and Jamie had lunch at Browning afterwards and then Jamie went to school. Liam was starting to show the first signs of getting better this morning: he ate half a waffle, and was starting to chatter in his usual way a bit. We took him to see our doctor at 4, who had a good look at Liam after our story of the weekend. Liam seems to have had a particularly vicious flu, and John told me later that a number of children from Hakobune have been away sick: the likely source, it would appear, of Liam's illness, as we haven't had it ourselves (yet). He still isn't himself and is frequently listless and sleepy, but it's getting better and we're seeing flashes of his old self. He played video games for the first time in days today, which I was oddly relieved by until my old reflex "Why don't you go play with some toys?!" kicked in. Jamie had his music lesson today, which was nice, and spent the evening with John over at Browning. Liam fell asleep around 8 or 8:30, and Jamie was in bed around 10.

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

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