Fuh Fuh Phonics

When Vivian sings "Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater", it's not just a nursery rhyme. Ms. Mary cleverly hid a lesson in Phonics in there. Vivian usually pauses mid sentence and says "Peter Peter - Puh - Puh".

So Jo and I have dutifully followed up. Every now and then we ask her what a word starts with and she comes up with a completely random unrelated sound unless it's Peter.

We are in India and due to some recent bouts of late night parties, Vivian's sleep times have been a bit irregular. So she's still jet lagged. This morning she woke us up at 330 am and told us to ask her what things start with. We began simple:

"Peter?" I asked.

"Puh puh Peter" she replied.

"Mommy?"

"Muh muh mommy".

Jo and I exchanged glances.

"Vivian?" I asked.

"Vah vah Vivian".

"Arun?"

"A a Arun"

Hmm - something had happened.

"Dog?".

"Duh duh dog".

I looked around the dark bedroom for inspiration.

"Picture?"

"Puh puh picture".

"Curtain?"

"Kuh kuh curtain".

"Bed?"

"Buh buh bed".

"Fan?"

"Fuh fuh fan".

You get the idea. Over the course of the next half hour we went over a majority of the words in Vivian's vocabulary and she mostly got them right.

Little Sister

Vivian usually claims that she'd be almost as happy with a little brother as with a little sister but we don't have to worry because we are going to have a little brother and a little sister. But this little conversation, as recorded by Jo, indicates otherwise. Vivian often wakes up from a nap and hits us with an out-of-context yet fully formed question. This was no exception:

Vivian: Why does grandpa pee on the fish bowl?

[background: a pexiglass trash can sits next to the potty in Grandpa's bathroom upstairs. The trash can has little colorful fake fish and swirling blue fake water at the bottom and the fish appear to swim around. Vivian likes it. When she tries to play with it I tell her that it's got pee on it. Further questioning usually results in my telling her that grandpa's pee may have splashed on to the trash can given it relative position to the potty and pee stream]

Arun: Because boys stand up to pee and sometimes their aim isn't very good.

Jo: They should just sit down to pee.

Arun: If you have a little brother he will stand up to pee.

Vivian: If mommy has a boy baby he will stand up to pee and he will get it all over the place and he will clean it up. BUT we aren't having a little brother - we're having a little sister.

Arun: We don't know. Will you be happy if it's a little brother?

Vivian: Yes. BUT we're not having a little brother. We're having a little sister.

Arun: It could be a little brother or a little sister.

Vivian: We're not having two babies. Just one and it's a little sister.

Cousins

Maybe a regular reader of this blog can tell that there is a sudden slew of posts tonight. And perhaps a more careful analysis would further tell her that there are more photographs among tonight's posts. Well - I finally found my camera-to-USB cable (the old Mac had a camera-to-Firewire cable but Steve seems to have dumped more the PowerPC processor).

So this should have been posted back in summer when Aaron and company visited. It has become customary (can I say that when something has happened twice? When I can I say "tradition"?) to herd the kids to the red bench and have them make funny faces (without much prompting) while I take pictures. Several of the 9 cousins were napping or otherwise incapacitated - but I have a representative group. And the second picture is obviously in the pool. Much fun was had, several tearful seconds were spent in timeout and parents changed many a poopy diaper.

Five and Who's Counting

I have been happily married to Jo for five years. Can you believe that? She can't.

So we dropped Vivian off for her "vacation with Grandma" (thank you Carol) and took off to the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone. Or more accurately - to a Four Season's that is conveniently located near the parks. Short hikes and striking mountain views and storms and hot chocolate and breakfast in bed. The pictures are: the Tetons from the famed Old Mormon row, the new 21 million dollar visitor center , Jo at the National Museum of Wildlife in Jackson, Jo in snow on the way to Yellowstone, and Jo waiting for Old Faithful to do its thing.

Parent-Teacher Conference

Yes - we are now adults. Jo and I have been to our child's first parent-teacher conference.

Ms. Mary was terrific as usual - saying nice things, calming worries, and boosting morale while telling us that Vivian was smart, interactive, an abstract thinker, and the owner of a healthy sense of humor.

All this reminded me of my worries and thoughts from Vivian's first day of school. And that I hadn't posted any pictures. Brandon was with us on that day. His mother had just delivered her baby by herself in the passenger seat of a Honda Pilot earlier that day. Here we are leaving the house - Vivian is proudly carrying her lunch bag. In the next picture Vivian's in class high-5-ing Ms. Cass.

While I'm going on about school, here's a picture of Vivian and me getting ready to bike to school. It happens infrequently but we are both quite proud of it.

Ghost Bike

We started a modest project on the third anniversary of Arjun's death back in August.

The good folks at the Yellow Bicycle Project, a short trip to east Austin, and a small donation secured enough parts that could be assembled into a semblance of a bicycle.

Simran, a few cans of paint, and a half hour out-doors on a lovely Saturday afternoon transformed the bicycle into a ghost bike with sufficient indications that white wasn't it's original color.

Jo thankfully whittled down my design that involved rebars and concrete into a quick trip to Lowes with Vivian and a few minutes with the skill saw.

We took the bike down to 360 on a beautiful Dia de los Muertos morning. Simran played the violin. Jeanne brought the marigolds. Vivian sat on the grass and smiled.

Halloween Pictures

OK - it's November and the stores have moved on to Christmas. But here are some pictures from Vivian's second Halloween party of the season (for the first, she went with Grandma and was dressed as a Texas cheerleader. Go Horns).

Vivian went shopping with Mommy and picked out her costume - she was a butterfly. Then Amy added some absolutely terrific face painting. Ava (neighbor, not cousin) was a very cute lion and Ms. Eleanor was a cat-flower - unique and exquisite as ever. They trick-or-treated two blocks. Much fun.

Air Uke

Several months ago we were at North for dinner and Vivian noticed that a band was playing in the plaza outside. She decided to strum along with her air guitar. I had forgotten about this iPhone video till Vivian's parent-teacher conference the other day (her/our first). Her teacher told us that in music class she is the only kid who can strum a ukulele. Watch out Sir Paul.

Gas Hotel

Like everyone, Jo and I chat about all kinds of inane stuff when driving. Problem is that these days Vivian sits there in her car seat and soaks it all up and then has a hundred questions.

So there we were driving through a part of New Braunfels we hadn't seen in a while. I point out to Jo "...and look at this new big-ass hotel here". A few seconds later, from the back seat: "Excuse me. Mommy - I have a question for you. Why did Daddy say there is a Gas Hotel there?"

Old Mac

Last night Vivian gave a rousing performance of Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater to Uncle Tom and Aunt Ana and Brian and Kim and Tracy and Grandma.

She must have learned it at school recently - she's been singing it while sitting in her car seat the last few days. So the full stand-up performance was new to us too. When she got to the part about putting the wife in the pumpkin shell, she covered her mouth with her hand like someone would when saying something a bit risque or shameful and shook her head from side to side. And then she ended very dramatically with "where he kept her VERY VERY WELL". Much applause.

Then she decided to follow this crowd-pleaser with Old McDonald. Back in the day she used to cycle through all the animals and delighted in mimicking or imagining their sounds. Now here she was, standing in front of a real-life farmer.

As she warmed up to her first "and on that farm", I must say I was a proud and expectant dad. Would she dazzle Uncle Tom with her brilliant knowledge of farm animals? Or would it be exotic jungle animals? Or sometimes she threw in something more unusual like "dolphins" and "jelly fish". What would it be? Poignant pause. And then she finished: "...he had a.......poop. Here a poop, there a poop, everywhere a poop poop".

Alas - sometimes Vivian and I sing it this way while she's sitting on the toilet - to encourage the appearance of aforementioned poop. Little did I realize that this is the version she'd trot out to the visiting fam.

Halloween

For the second time in ten years we didn't have a Halloween party. The last time was five years ago when Jo and I were on our honeymoon. The honeymoon continues... but this time Vivian was the excuse. She wanted to trick-or-treat and we were too lazy to do both.

Vivian dressed up as a butterfly and then got her face painted by Amy. Eleanor was a flower. And Ava was a lion!

We visited about half the homes in our two blocks and by the end Vivian's candy bucket was too heavy for her to carry. She knows how to trick-or-treat.

That's because we practiced hard the night before. We walked out the front door and shut it behind us and knocked till Mommy opened it. Then Vivian said "I need candy".

It took many more tries before she said "trick or treat?" instead of "I want candy". Just one more step in the long path to getting kids to say an euphemism or something obtuse or polite or ritualistic instead of what they really want to say.

I'll have the pictures from Halloween up soon. Meanwhile, here one of Vivian showing off her pumpkin that Simran gave her.