Focus on Maya: Face Wipes

Tonight we were enjoying a lovely (as the British would say) bowl of spaghetti that mamma had made. Julian and Amanda had finished and went into the front room. Maya and I continued eating. Maya had given up using her little fork and was grabbing handfuls of spaghetti in her hands (thanks to Amanda for having the insight not to give them red spaghetti sauce). Then when she realized her mouth and hands were dirty she wiped her face with her sleeves and then her hands with her shirt front. Mind you, she did it so quickly and skillfully that I thought, "wow, she's got this face wiping business into an art". No chance for me to get a napkin, nothing. Her movements were so elegant that here I am writing about it. Really I was mesmerized by it all. But now I have to curtail it and be quicker with the napkin next time.

Bath Robes ... (more to come)

Much to my surprise I found out that my mom (Baba Dora) had bought the kids some bath robes. Take a look ...

My Phone's Face Warp Function

One night when we were stuck in traffic Julian and I discovered a cool function on my phone. You can take a photo of somebody's face, then the phone allows you to warp it into lots of funny things.

Here's your challenge...see if you can tell which of these photos are morphed and which are not. These are from our trip to Paris to visit Laura and Jeremy.

Now here are some cool movies that we took today. Julian, Maya and I were enjoying the sun while mamma was spending the day at a Spa getting hot rocks throw on her back and other forms of torture. But she sure smelled good when we picked her up...and seemed quite relaxed too, maybe we'll make this a regular habit.

This one is just for Jeremy... a video of a performer by our millenium bridge, banjo and all.

And here is the family sharing in my new obsession: Franz Ferdinand.

Vat is Dis Ridiculous Obsession Vith Freench Fryes AND the Stupid GPS (revisited)

Two things today:
I've realized that French Fries (or however you choose to call them) are to kids what a glass of whiskey is to an alcoholic. See the picture above at Old McDonalds (as the kids call it). Julian is wearing his Elliot the Dragon jacket. That was supposed to be just for Halloween (5 months ago) but he loves it and Amanda and I as parents are ready to shove in the mud anybody that makes fun of our little dragon. But most people really find it fun and we like to see him running because his whole dragon bottom jiggles along with the wings.

The second things is, I don't know if you remember last month Julian reminded me that I should watch what I say. I had called our GPS unit in our car "stupid" and he'd reminded me then and many days later that it's not stupid. By the way GPS is now a standard word in Maya's vocabulary as well...even Amanda wasn't sure what "GPS" stood for but we all recognize it as the talking box that gets us to where we want to go, well, that is at least after 10 or 20 "recalculating" adjustments after Chris continues to miss the turns. But the lady on the GPS says it in such a nice way that it would be more effective for me, I think, if she'd say something like "Yo, DUDE, you missed the turn again, for crying out loud ! I'll see if I can figure out how to get you back on track. AGAIN. " There's a point to this rambling. By now if you're like me you would have forgotten what this whole story is about. Not Julian. Now a month after the original incident last night he got up at 1 am crying in his bed, so I came over to comfort him. He said he wanted me to lay down next to him. Then he got ready for sleep again. I was too tired to move back to our own bed so I decided to stay. Then right before we both passed out Julian said: "Dada, the GPS is not stupid !". What the ????? How the heck does he do that? For myself I can't even remember 5 minutes ago anymore (Alzheimers is setting in) yet they remember "Gee Pee Ess" and stuff that blows me away. I study how the brain supports communication but I should be studying kid's memory. How they remember all of this stuff sometimes with just a single exposure is mindblowing. Oh yeah and also what's addicting about ketchup and french fries.