The Power of Wii

Yesterday, Vivian wanted to play the Wii. I selected nine holes of golf and handed her the wiimote.

When my dad was here this summer, I had created his Mii - complete with a bald head and a fringe of white hair and nice big glasses.

So, Vivian looks at the TV and sees my Dad's Mii with a golf club and said "Daadu".

Gan Ma

Vivian jabbers all the time. I ask her: "Vivian - are you silly?". She replies: "No. I funny". At breakfast, after eating her yogurt, she looks at me and says: "Bacon, piz." And she tells Jo: "I love you, Mommy". But she can be slow about some things. She calls every other cat by it's name, and yet insists on calling both our cats "Abbie". And she won't say "Grandma", though Carol may be her favorite person in the whole world.

I missed the actual event - I was in Austin, and Jo and Vivian and Carol were at Nicolle's last Sunday. And Vivian said "Gan Ma". The effect on Carol? From what I hear, you couldn't tell that Carol had just finished walking 13 miles earlier that day.

Aminal Sounds

Typical pet trick that Jo and I have had Vivian perform all week for anyone with five seconds to spare:

"Vivian - what does a dogie sound like?"
"Woof woof" [used to "ffff ffff" - just so darling]

"And what does a kitty cat sound like?"
"Meeeaaawo" [very long and with much feeling]

"And what does a cow sound like?"
"Moo moo" [subdued and low]

"And what does an elephant sound like?"
"Waaw waaw" [with wrist in mouth and fingers waving up and down like a tiny trunk]

Halloween

Halloween came and went and sorta caught us by surprise.

We thought we had put more prep into this one than ever before. I spent days making a great big papier mache head and Jo bought fabric and snakes to make her outfit and she made Vivian a lovely costume. But on Halloween evening, we were just pooped. We moved the couches out to the deck and had a great afternoon chiling outside. Here's a picture of Carol and Vivian horsing around on the couches out back.

Vivian's cousins showed up, and got dressed. Jo had painstakingly put each one of their customes together - and they came out great. Devon looked more glamorous than Hannah Montana in her Rock Star outfit and blue hair.


Vivian took her costume off after trick-or-treating and decided to spend the rest of the evening in her diaper - very classy. Carol never put on her "woman of the night" outfit (we had a hard time explaining to the kids that their grandma was going to dress up as a "hoe" - a garden tool). I couldn't move around with my giant papier mache head on and all that was left of my costume was a green face. And Jo's one-eye in the middle of her face got smudged early in the game.

But the guests had great costumes. There were pretty corpse brides and vampires and sexy cops and pirates and egyptian girls and big fat loosers and Joe The Plumber and prison inmates and jelly fishes (yes, really), and the Popeye family and priests and nuns and my favorite - squash-ball-through-the-head, and many more. We didn't get pictures except for the following:

Boo

There's that little human girl in Monsters, Inc that the monsters name Boo. Vivian was Boo for Halloween. Here's a picture of Vivian in pigtails (one came off, and Jo wasn't home - and Vivian and I had to put it back together). This is a just a practice run. Once the pigtails came off, I ended up with a few more pictures of Vivian.

Diwali

We went to the Shahs for dinner to celebrate Diwali. And about a week later, we had dinner at Madras Pavilion with Simran and Jeanne. Vivian got to see a diya at the Shahs and in the lovely Diwali greeting card that Guri Uncle and Surjeet Auntie sent her from New Delhi.

Here's a picture of almost everybody who was at the Shahs that evening - Jagruti is taking the picture. Vivian's outfit is the matching Christmas gift that Surjeet Auntie made for her and Simran last year. And in the next, Vivian is hamming it up with Manju and Kaka.

Baby Alexandra

When Alexandra was about a month old (she came to this world a bit early), Grant took the now famous photograph of Alexandra who was almost as long as the two iPhones she was laying next to.

The other evening, Vanessa was away in South Africa for a wedding, and we had Grant and Baby Alexandra over for dinner. After dinner, we sat Vivian down in the big leather armchair and handed Alexandra to her. They hit it off. And when it was time to take Alexandra back, Vivian wasn't too happy to give up her baby.

Whee Ride

In India, a bicycle seats five (man on the seat, wife side-saddle on the carrier over the back wheel carrying infant, son on handle bars, daughter side-saddle on top-bar). Jo had a brilliant idea and bought a contraption on Amazon so we can start heading in that direction. Here's what the product picture from Amazon looks like:
On Saturday, Carol and Jo and Vivian and I found a semi-flat 2-mile section of the hill country and went for a spin. Vivian loved every bit of it. On the downhills, she'd grab her helmet with both hands (to stop if from flying off?) and scream "wheeeee.....". On uphills, she'd push her head back to look up at me a shout encouragements "Go daddy, go".

When she woke up from her nap, she asked Jo if she could go on a "whee ride". In the evening, when it got dark and stormy, Vivian and I stole out shoe-and-helmet-less and rode up and down the driveway a few times. She just absolutely loved the wind in her hair - and couldn't stop laughing.

I see some bicycling in our future.

Proud to be Red

My friend Saqib forwarded me an email that engaged in Red State bashing. How the Blue States were high tech and Harvard and lettuce growers and sequoias and wine. And we were mosquitoes and Ole' Miss and Rush Limbaugh and 3X sizes and creationism. My response:

Send us a postcard from hell, you godless socialist homo liberal lefties.
Texas - Proud to be Red. Go Palin Power!

Odors

At the Halloween Party, I confessed to Gwen about my super-sensory experience of smell. In the middle of the night, when I am half-alseep, I can smell everything. The lingering smells of yesterday's lunch. Dry cat food in another room. Soccer shoes on the porch.

The last few nights, it's been the smell of stale urine. The sharp smell of uric acid - like on a hot summer day when you walk into the head of a sailboat where the seals on the plumbing aren't working like they should. This morning, super-sensory smell moved into broad daylight and waking hours. I sit and tap a few keys on the laptop, and then wander around the house, sniffing and flushing all the toilets again. Even take a shower again. Finally, I give up and assign it to my stuffy nose and some as yet undiscovered neurosis.

Then I found a curious little white HEB plastic sac under my chair. It had a well-used diaper in it. Eva must have left it as a gift for her cousin Vivian when she stayed over the night after Halloween.

O!

Vivian - you are projected to have a new prez. May be we can still go to NZ - for a vacation.