September 2006 Archives

I just did the math and realized I’m approaching trip #300 on the Cambridge-King’s Cross mainline. Which means I’m not too far from 600 hours spent on this train. And that’s roughly a full month. Of life.

(Note to self: be sure to add that one to the ledger next time anybody asks, “Where does the time go?”.)

So. In an effort to make sure these days with Em don’t simply bleed together like so many stations whizzing past, allow me to press pause and name some things that are new, of late:

“Uh-oh”. Emmie loves saying this. Imagine a fast, sharp intake of breath, like Emmie wanted to dive underwater, followed by a too-long pause and a long, exhaled, “ohhhhh”. We hear this one over the baby monitor a lot; at nap time, there’s nothing Emmie likes so much as to throw bunny out of the crib, and then say “Uh!….ohhhhh” over and over again.

Selective media consumption. Emelyn’s old pull-any-random-book-and-flip-through-the-pages routine has been supplanted by a more demanding practice: She now pulls specific picture books from the toypile, and proceeds to toddle your way, waving the book at you. Meaning, she wants to be read to, stat. (Or suffer the consequences.)

Crying. See also ‘suffer the consequences’, above. What can I say? Emmie’s more prone to crying these days, because it’s no longer simply about being hungry or tired or teething or hurt. Instead, Emmie has become sharply aware of the Great Injustices in this world, like ‘No Freedom to Chew on Electronics’, ‘Oppression Against Those Who Would Eat iPods’ and ‘Failure of The State To Provide Fundamental Right To be Carried And Held On Demand, Regardless of Whether The State Really Needs Two Free Hands At Just That Moment’. And so on.

Going Owwwwtside. Emelyn’s internalized the ASL sign for ‘more’ to mean ‘I want’, and now she uses it incessantly, along with pointing. One of her most frequent sign-language demands is [I want] / [points to door]. Additionally, she’ll also will say “Owwwhhhht”, meaning outside. A lot of the time, she’s happy enough to go look at some of the nearby flowers, but increasingly, she wants to visit neighbour Helen’s place across the street, where there is a cat and a chair full of plush toys to visit. (And Helen, of course.)

The Hat. Did you see that bit in the latest video where Emelyn’s cruising around the living room wearing her bicycle helmet? Not our idea. Leave the headgear lying around, and next thing you know, there’s Emmie standing in front of you, clutching the pink helmet and wanting it put on. A fashionista, I guess.

4am wakeup. Dude. Emmie. What is up with this one? Please go back to sleeping through the night… please?

It was a run-of-the-mill weekend here. Fine by me — last week seemed altogether too compressed, and it just felt like we needed this one. (Az and Em had been sick all week, and after Istanbul, I was playing catch-up all week at work.)

Anyhow, the easiest way to describe how we’ve been keeping occupied is to point to the video. Really not much going on, as you can see, but we’re having a good enough time of it:

Not much to tell, save that I’m in Istanbul for a couple nights, while Azure and Emelyn are keeping an eye on things in Cambridge.

I think I’ll have to chalk this up as one of the weirder 48 hours in my life — this is an unapologetically business-y business trip, and as such, I haven’t seen much apart from hyper-modern office buildings and exceptionally nice restaurants.

My room, though, is directly on the Bosphorous, and this morning I ate my breakfast right on the water, watching a panoply of tankers, ferries, and yachts ply the channel. And when I got back to the hotel this evening, I had a tiny bit of time left to wander around Bebek — I’d been hoping to find a suitable gift for Emmie, but the closest thing I could spot was a onesie that read, “My other car seat is in a Porsche”.

Had to pass on that one. (If only for strictly factual reasons.)

Dinner was pleasant enough. I needed to avoid a repeat of last night, where I dined awkwardly alone in a very fancy fish restaurant, Poseidon. So tonight I wound up eating a köfte sandwich, instead, from a snack-hut-thing about a block off the main strip (and maybe 15 yards east of McDonald’s). As far as I could tell, this place had everything going for it — harsh flourescent lighting, a group of old men smoking and sipping tea, Rubbermaid furniture, and a flow of bus drivers who kept darting in and running back out clutching hot dogs.

Like I said… ‘twas pleasant enough. I even topped off the meal with a wee dram of Turkish coffee. Though I made the same mistake as I invariably do at Don and Lorna’s, namely, I got greedy and took one sip too many, and hence wound up with a mouthful of coffee grounds. Cleanses the palate, at least.

Anyhow. Home tomorrow AM, and now it’s the weekend. Whoo-hoo!

Well, that was awfully nice. It probably doesn’t sound like much of a holiday - seven days just sitting at home - but for Em and me, ‘twas Quality Time of the finest calibre.

The best part? On regular weekends, I’ve noticed that Emmie always tends to be more affectionate on Sundays. (Azure’s clued into the same thing.) After my absence during the workweek, I suppose, Saturdays seem a bit strange to her, like she doesn’t quite know what to make of the dude who’s suddenly loafing around the living room. By Sunday, though, she’s figured things out again. Point being, this vacation was like seven straight Sundays. I had Emelyn biting at my ankles and clambering up my knees pretty much the entire time. Good stuff!

And good timing, too: Last week we crossed the threshold between ‘Emelyn Can Walk’ (a few cautious steps here and there) to ‘Emelyn is Walking’ (such that she now prefers it to crawling, half the time). I’d a-been sore had I missed that, and so I’m tickled that I didn’t.

In lieu of a Club Med vacation, our big purchase for the week was a Hamax bike seat, now sitting stately on the back of Azure’s bike. You never know until you try, of course, but turns out that Emmie is a big fan. (She just loathes wearing a bike helmet, is all.)

We made three little trips over the course of the week - first a visit to the Green Dragon in Chesterton, where Emmie saw ducklings; then an outing through Grantchester Meadows to the Rupert Brooke, and finally, a simple ride through Coldham’s Commons, which is a series of fields not far from our house. Cambridgeshire’s geography may be flat and unapologetically pastoral, but it makes for some nice cycle paths.

We did make one trip further afield, to London. There we visited with Jen (who grew up on Waldron Island with Katrina) and Soumaila, and their 5 week old baby, Amara. As Amara is still a very wee and sleepy baby, Emelyn wasn’t all that interested in her, but she was quite captivated with the open/close button on Jen’s DVD player, and all the other blinkenlights near the TV.

The six of us also popped out to Corham’s Fields, just across the street, which is a really lovely children’s park near Russell Square. Emelyn hit another key developmental milestone there, namely, she chased pigeons for the first time in her life. IMHO, it ranked among the cutest things she’s done yet, given that she was toddling around in circles, squealing, with me holding one hand and the other one raised in the air, furiously signing ‘bird, bird, bird’.

That’s mostly it. There were some good pub lunches here and there, a very nice evening out at Cotto for Az and me (thanks, Helen!), and, of course, one big healthy dollop of lazy time for me to fritter away with various Nintendo/Apple/Nikon/Sony-branded electronics.

(* You’ve watched the videos, seen the pictures, read the blog - but did ya know that I also spent the week leading a ragtag band of soldiers in a tactically brilliant, if terribly time-consuming, campaign against the treacherous Black Hole Army? Or that Azure donated some of her own time to aid an Italian plumber and a sapient, anthropomorphic monarchist mushroom joined in a quest to rescue Princess Peach? We are busy, busy people!)

For those preferring the naturalistic filmmaking technique of cinéma vérité, here’s a five-minute-long and mostly-unedited video showing Emmie eating blueberries. And then eating more blueberries. The current working title is ‘blueberries’.

Not the most entertaining featurette, admittedly, but as they say in these parts, it does exactly what it says on the tin.

Seriously, though, the kid is crazy about blueberries.

I’ve been at home all week, having taken the week off work to simply spend some time with Azure and Emelyn. Lots to write about, later — but I’ve already stayed up too late compiling this video. Hi!