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(via Dr. Dave)

Vocabulary Lesson

My favorite phrase in the boy's burgeoning vocabulary:  "no-rain."   A sample usage:  "Daddy, open the no-rain?"

Here he is, holding the no-rain over himself and his grandpa.

Bird Feed

Even after seven months, the Boy is still obsessed with birds.  Chasing them.  Looking at them.  Mostly chasing them.



Here's the second part of the video:

Surf and Sand

The boy had always been weary of sand, even as he has always loved water.  Up to last summer, the beach had always been exquisite torture to him:  he was always excited about the water, but absolutely horrified about the sand.  He would jump into our arms, stare longingly at the waves 10 feet away, but always refuse to even get NEAR sand.  Even at water level, he would realize that there was sand underneath, and he would basically get back in our arms and ask us to take him back to the safety of concrete and pools.

What a difference a few months make! 

This past trip, I prepared by buying him some swanky red surf booties (anti-sand).  We also had all these coping strategies drawn up in case we needed to deal with him nixing our beach time.  We even bought him sandcastle-building tools, acquainted him with them beforehand, so that he would have gadget-like accessories that could help him confront sand without actually touching it.

Well, all that was not necessary!  He basically WALKED to the water's edge this time, and by just following my example, stood there waiting for the waves to come, and after a minute, started playing with the wet sand with his bare hands.



In the end, we had to DRAG him away from the beach, and then spend about 15 minutes trying to rinse all the sand in his booties, limbs, and other places - including his shirt pocket, where he had "stowed" some sand so that he could play with later.

Two Weeks of Costa Rican Sunshine and Family

This was a great trip.  Two weeks of quality time with the boy and my parents did me a whole world of good.

I am completely relaxed - the maelstrom that usually surrounds family visits was virtually non-existent, yet I managed to see all aunts and uncles and most of my cousins here.  We really didn't do anything new - J. and I have a routine while in San Jose, and even our beach trip was to the same place as last time.

Here's a brief photo slideshow:

Now that the boy is two, it has been a treat watching him interact with my family.  It helped that he had a developmental "spurt" in the month of March, and it was pretty evident in the trip.  He's expressing himself verbally a lot more, he's finally eating a bit more, and he's definitely less tentative in the way he explores the world.  Even with some health problems, my parents were able to fully enjoy playing with him.

"Birthday to You"

Happy birthday, J!

This is our last day in Costa Rica, and we've already spent the morning eating pastries at Jasmine's favorite bakery, Giacomin.

Photos, videos and stories, coming soon!

Off to Warmer Climes

We're sick of being indoors.  I miss my parents.  So, we're off to 80-degree and sunny, blue morning skies for a couple of weeks.

Here's some boy photos to tide everyone over until we resume blogging shortly.

Scooting along.  He sooooo needs a helmet.

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And, the painful potty-training process has kind of begun.  But he's already used up all his reward stickers without actually doing anything.  Bad parents!  Bad parents!

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In the meantime, I'm going to snuggle up to my George RR Martin novel.

Website Operating Hours?!?

There are so many things about government that are incomprehensible to me.  Add this:

The US Social Security Administration WEBSITE has operating hours!

Here they are:

"Monday through Friday - All Day (except 2:00 AM - 3:00 AM)
Saturday 5:00 AM - 11:00 PM
Sunday 8:00 AM - 10:00 PM
Holidays 5:00 AM - 11:00 PM"

My only guess is that the hamsters that turn the little wheels of bureaucracy really do need to rest sometime.

Mambo Prince

Yes, he likes dancing.

(music - La 33's "Pantera Mambo"; diapers - Pampers)

25 Random Things - a Meme

I hate writing navel-gazing memes.  Somehow, Facebook made me break down and finally complete one, even though an appearance of this phenomenon in the New York Times implies that this trend has jumped the shark.

So, to recycle this content to my non-Facebook friends and family, here's my list of 25 Random Things About Me:

25.  When I was a child, I wanted to be a pilot.  My parents strongly discouraged this, citing the dangers of flying.

24.  Sure enough, the two pilots that I knew growing up (my pediatrician and a cousin who flew 747s) have since died in plane crashes.

23.  This never stopped me from taking flying lessons, en route to a pilot's license, during grad school.  My parents still don't know that I have done this.

22.  I only got a 1/4 way through with flight hours and test prep, as I took a sabbatical from grad school and went to live and work in LA.  I never finished.

21.  I did manage to skydive in LA, because I wanted to face my fear of heights.  This was not as bad as I imagined, and I feel that I don't need to do this ever again.

20.  The only time I was truly afraid for my life was at my sublet in LA.  My uncle helped me find a place via a supermarket tear-out flyer.  It turns out, my really nice landlord was part of the Chinese mafia, and the maps he had in his office were for an illegal substance delivery service.

19.  It wasn't the gangster that I was afraid of, however. My flatmates were a latchkey kid and his mom, the aforementioned gangster, and a couple who hung out all day and had a lot of friends visiting in the evening.  The couple turned out to be a husband and wife prostitute team.  Their friends? Clients.

18.  The mom and the female prostitute got into a huge argument, with the mom yelling at the top of her lungs to call the cops and that she was going to kill the other lady.  The mom followed up by pursuing my other housemates with a big butcher knife, trying to chop down doors.  She somehow found the gun stash of our landlord, but at that point, the police came.

17.  I was hiding in my own room the entire time, and, needless to say, I moved out the next day.

16.  I hate moving.

15.  This stems from having lived in 7 cities in 3 different continents, attending 7 different schools through high school. My aversion to moving has intensified through the years.  Since I was a kid, I have always wanted to establish roots somewhere permanently, and had a yearning to belong somewhere.

14.  Yet, I love traveling.  Not business travel, but leisure travel.  And, not hyper-vacations, where people cram as many items to do and see (as if in a race to check off some list) as they can.  The type of travel that I love is micro-travel:  going to a place for at least a week or two, and exploring the six square miles around the place that you are staying.

13.  Since graduating from architecture school, I created a secret travel fund/account, and only revealed it to my wife when she said, "I'm burnt out from my job, are you ready to move on to another job and/or city?"  We got to travel for 20 months, with additional funding from the Bush administration for an academic research grant to South America.

12.  I have a love/hate relationship with academia.  I love the research portion of it, but hate the politics of it.

11.  In fact, I hate politics in general and people who play political games.  This might be because I grew up in a huge family, and saw its fracturing consequences on a daily basis.  I just refuse to get involved.

10.  Hearing about intractable religious-political situations, such as what is happening in Gaza, truly boil my blood.  I can't listen to NPR.

10.  However, I like getting involved in causes (some of them marginally political) that I believe in, from education to community-building projects.

9.  I love my community and diverse neighborhood in Brooklyn, and would not trade it for any of the Balkanized monied ghettos of Manhattan.  I guess I have finally established roots somewhere, sharing an amazing life with my family.

8.  My wife, my soul mate, amazes me every day.  Thank goodness I made a good first impression at her potluck party -  I made a killer lasagna, whereas the rest of the attendees each brought ice cream or drinks.

7.  My parents never taught me how to cook, even though they did that for a living and are great cooks.  I learned my way around the kitchen by picking up Julia Child's "The Way To Cook" when I was a teenager and learning about how to think about cooking as a set of general techniques by the way of Jacques Pepin.

6.  I almost never follow recipes.  My dishes always have to do with what we have in the fridge, and coming up with a meal by (maybe) buying an extra ingredient.  I do get into phases, where I want to perfect a certain esoteric dish or technique (like Brussels sprouts) or, my latest fetish, bhengan bharta.

5.  My wife is totally sick of eating eggplant right now, but she's been patient with my experiments and all the different permutations I've been churning out.

4.  Even though I sometimes revel in minutiae and trivia, I am a generalist at heart.  That's why I studied architecture, work in "strategic consulting," and love both highbrow and lowbrow things in life.

3.  Patience is not my strength, although I seem calm and zen in the midst of my peripatetic existence.  It's definitely something I've been working on since my early 20's.  My wife and son have been my best teachers in this aspect.

2.  My one wish for my son is that he grows up happy, curious and fearless.

1.  I have been slowly introducing him to my many obsessions, including travel, flying and airplanes.  At the same time, I'm making sure that he has no desire to become a pilot when he grows up.