Nothing But Words

The day after Halloween I posted a picture of Kai in the Samurai costume that Maria’s mother Michiko made for him, but it’s not the greatest picture. Michiko just sent us some pictures she took in mid-October, while Kai and Maria were visiting her in Denver. I’ve scanned them, and these are my two favorites:

Despite at least two attempts on my life by my mother-in-law, I managed to enjoy the holidays in Denver (her preferred method is slow-acting bacteriological poison, so I’m not sure if I’m out of the woods yet). The highlight of the trip for me was our day of skiing at Keystone. I hadn’t skied for at least 10 years, but it turns out it’s like riding a bike – aside from quickly getting out-of-shape-guy-in-his-30s sore legs, it was just like I remember. Going down the kiddie slope with Kai was fun too.

There’s more about the things we did in the photo captions.

I liked Denver. It is a clean, pleasant city. What I didn’t like was the sprawl surrounding the city. I thought Tyson’s Corner (outside Washington DC) was bad, but this is worse. There’s approximately 30 miles between Denver and Boulder, and that space seems like it’s one giant mall. In one mall I saw a Lowe’s and a Home Depot, and 5 minutes of driving later, I saw another Lowe’s and another Home Depot. It was like the roadside images were spooling by on a short, endless loop tape. I’m told that 30 mile stretch was mostly ranchland not too long ago.

Favorite Kai quote from the trip: Kai watched me weigh myself on the scale in the bathroom. Later on, he watched my mother-in-law weigh herself; she had left the door open, so we all heard him exclaim “that’s the same as Daddy weighs!”

A sampling of recent Kai moments:

• Using his fingers to form the shape of a triangle, Kai declared: “triangles are just like squares, Daddy, only pointier.”
• In a particularly affectionate moment, he said, “I love you Mommy, I love you Daddy, …and I love myself.” No self-esteem problems here.
• There’s a pizza shop down the street from our house that Kai and I go to fairly regularly. It’s run by a couple of burly Italian guys. We went the other night, and Kai was excited, so we were running down the sidewalk. He tripped and fell, and scraped his hands, but he wasn’t bleeding. But he screamed and cried as if he had broken both his legs. So I carried him the rest of the way to the pizza shop. When we got to the door, he howled through his tears, “Daddy, don’t let the guys see me like this!” He’s 3 years old and already worried about his macho image. I didn’t wait long though, since it was cold out. So he was still crying when we stepped in, but the guys weren’t around. Instead there was a high school girl behind the counter. Realizing this, Kai then felt free to continue bawling.
• Kai is very affectionate with his friends at school. The kids are usually outside playing when we pick him up, and he usually goes aorund and hugs his friends good-bye before leaving. They seem to think it’s a bit strange, but they don’t seem to mind.
• He’s supposed to nap with the other kids at school, but recently he’s decided not to nap anymore. But he’s good and lays down quietly. However, his eyes are open, and he’ll notice something like a toy block tower, and he’ll notice the blocks aren’t lined up perfectly. So he’ll say, “Miss Dana, can I straighten out the block tower?” She’ll say yes, he’ll get up, line up the blocks perfectly, then lay back down. Then he’ll notice all the kids’ shoes aren’t lined up perfectly…and repeat. (He gets that from me, by the way). Luckily, come January, nap time will be eliminated.

Kai and James riding a mini bike in Denver

Kai and James riding a mini bike in Denver25-Nov-2004 14:52Canon Canon PowerShot S230, 7.1, 5.40625mm, 0.004 sec,

Kai and Maria spent Thanksgiving in Denver with her folks and her sister Yoko. I was supposed to go too, but I came down with a nasty flu before my flight was scheduled to leave, and I didn’t feel well enough to travel (her dad is ill, so it wouldn’t have been good for me to be around him anyway). They had a really good visit. Kai particularly enjoyed riding James’ mini bikes (James is Yoko’s boyfriend) – see the video below.

I was down and out for about 36 hours, and then I felt surprisingly good. I still had another day and half before Maria and Kai came back, so I got a lot done on our 3rd floor renovations. I built a closet in the room that will be our new bedroom (there wasn’t one before) and ran new electrical lines. I still have to finish tearing out the highly flammable fiber board walls (from what I’ve learned, there was a brief period of time, decades ago, when it was actually legal to use wood fiber board for wallboard). Once that’s done the drywallers can come put up the new walls.

Framing for the new closet I’m building in the 3rd floor master bedroom29-Nov-2004 19:36Canon Canon PowerShot S230, 2.8, 5.40625mm, 0.01666666 sec,	I’m about halfway through tearing out the old wallboard in this picture – the boards were actually wood fiberboard, which is a real fire hazard29-Nov-2004 19:37Canon Canon PowerShot S230, 2.8, 5.40625mm, 0.01666666 sec,	The new electrical wiring I put in the 3rd floor29-Nov-2004 19:38Canon Canon PowerShot S230, 2.8, 5.40625mm, 0.01666666 sec,
Kai and Tony (“Jiji”) watching TV at Yoko’s place in Denver25-Nov-2004 17:01Canon Canon PowerShot S230, 2.8, 5.40625mm, 0.01666666 sec,	James’ mini bikes25-Nov-2004 14:24Canon Canon PowerShot S230, 2.8, 5.40625mm, 0.002 sec,	Kai and James riding a mini bike in Denver25-Nov-2004 14:51

Here’s Kai in his Halloween costume from last night. He went out with Maria and some of the neighborhood kids, while I stayed home, serving as the Distributor of Candy. A good time was had by all.

Maria’s mother made the costume for him. Although you can’t tell in the picture, the pants are actually really cool. It’s actually more like a kimono than pants, as they extend up to his shoulders, with strings to adjust the fit on the sides, and a rigid material across the back to hold the shape. Also, there’s a second sword slung across his back.

Let’s take a break from politics and have another look at my beautiful family

Aside from a brief excursion to the Independence Hall area over a year ago, we haven’t taken the time to see any of the local sights since we moved here. It’s so easy to get caught up in your daily routine that you can forget about the fun and interesting things you really should be doing! So a couple weeks ago we finally went out to Valley Forge for an afternoon. As you can see in the pictures, we had a nice time.

Sunday night Kai and I returned from our whirlwind 3-day visit to Newport. This is the first time I’ve made a trip home that wasn’t at least a week long, so it was a bit hectic squeezing in time with everyone in my inexusably large family. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t fun

Kai has developed two strong new interests over the past month: drawing, and playing with blocks. The primary goal of block play is to construct a tower and then demolish it. I figure that’s fairly standard for a 3-year old boy. But what’s interesting is the design of his buildings: the only word to describe them is “organic.” I wouldn’t have thought that was possible with blocks, but he somehow manages to put them together with a minimum of right angles, and he has interesting ideas on how to use the arch-shaped pieces (he’ll typically center them on top of some other narrow piece, so they’re more like see-saws than arches). So far I haven’t been quick enough with the camera to get a picture of one of his creations before he smashes it, but I’ll keep trying.

His drawings are primarily focused on Thunderbirds. Here’s an annotated sample:

Kai’s latest malapropisms:

Glowering and stomping his feet, he said, “that makes me serious!” This was after something happened that annoyed him. I realized he picked it up from me saying things like “stop it now, I’m serious.” He thinks “serious” means annoyed or frustrated.

Wanting more water pressure from the faucet while washing his hands, he said, “make it louder Daddy!” I was about to correct him, but I couldn’t think of an easy word to substitite for “louder,” and besides, it’s cute.

I think this is the first time since I started my blog that I went almost a full week without a post. Maria and I were hit with a number of difficulties: Maria’s father has been diagnosed with some extremely serious health problems, Maria is contending with some health problems of her own, my good friend Jay’s work situation in India has turned into a disaster, Kai essentially boycotted the whole idea of sleeping more than two consecutive hours, and this high-stakes yet cartoonish Presidential campaign has both Maria and I on the verge of shouting from the rooftops.

Over the past few nights we’ve succeeded in turning around Kai’s sleep situation: he’s now “sleeping like a baby” (I put that in quotes since the intended meaning of the phrase, IMHO, bears little resemblance to reality). How did we do it? We took advantage of Kai’s soft-spot: his Thunderbird toys. He’s obsessed with them. Although the recent Thunderbirds movie (based on the much cooler old TV series) was terrible, Kai of course loved it, and it’s resulted in a slew of new Thunderbirds toys on the market. We explained to him that four consecutive nights of good sleeping – illustrated by means of a chart where he would place star stickers every morning – would earn him a Tracy Island (normally we don’t spend that kind of money on his toys, but his Thunderbird toys provide endless hours of entertainment). The parent-toddler relationship is a fascinating composite of love, understanding, discipline, and – when you’ve played all your other cards to no avail – bribery.

Maria hurt her back running, and her doctor says it looks like her ongoing plague of fatigue is a low blood-sugar thing. Now that we know the cause, we can work on a solution.

I’ve been counseling my friend Jay over the phone. He’s in California right now, on what was supposed to be a short vacation from his research in India. But his partners there are reneging on their agreement, and putting Jay in a very difficult position in regard to his expected payments and retaining control of his intellectual property (in case you don’t know Jay, he’s doing HIV/AIDS research). So he’s working on developing a strategy to salvage what he can from a difficult situation.

Another reason I didn’t post much here last week was that I was busy setting up a new website. I worked myself through a cycle of political rage by starting WhereWasW.com, but I’ve already shut it down. The blogosphere is already awash in a flood of political commentary, and to make my own stand out, I quickly realized that I’d have to dedicate the kind of time that I just don’t have. I wrote a couple essays for the site, and I’ll archive them here when I get a chance.

Lastly and most importantly, we just learned that Maria’s father has been diagnosed with bone cancer and lung cancer. It’s probably not appropriate for me to say much more here, since this is a public forum, but please keep him in your thoughts and prayers.