Penguin's Coming

Here's Evan with his stuffed snake tied around his head Rajasthani style. Remember the raven that said "Hangman's coming"? Yesterday we were talking about it. Evan said "Daddy - do you remember that bird in the zoo that was talking? It said 'Penguin's coming'. Why did it say that? Did they have penguins in the zoo?"

Sleep Over

It's that magical milestone. The first time they sleep over at a friend's. On Saturday night Jo dropped Evan and Vivian at Ava's home. We understand that they went out for dinner and then spent the evening together. Some sleeping may have also taken place. In the morning they were fed a hot delicious breakfast of silver dollar pancakes and then they went for a walk in the dog park. When we went to pick them up, they were reluctant to leave. We understand why. It's an arrangement we could all get used to...

Rosedale School Park

It's been months since I have posted photos from a trip to the school park. Meanwhile Vivian has learned to climb the poles that hold up the swings - like a coconut plantation worker from Kerala. And the kids took turns sitting on my shoulders and swinging while the other took photos. The last picture - of Vivian and me - may be the first ever photo that Evan has taken of something other than his finger covering the lens.

Where's Mommy?

On Friday Jo had a party to go to. Ava came over and she and Vivian and Evan had dinner and then played very well. Completely unsupervised. I think I may have yelled back there once telling Evan to lay off the potty humor when it got a bit thick.

The next morning Jo left home at about 630am to meet Nicolle for a 5K. Evan was sitting on my lap eating a PBJ sandwich when she left. Vivian didn't see or hear Jo leave. In a little bit she woke up and dressed in her fancy princess dress and danced while Evan played music. Then Evan joined in the ballet.

Later, after breakfast at Upper Crust he dressed up as a pirate and "sailed" around in his ship while brandishing his sword. Then we left for Vivian's gymnastic class. While Vivian did that Evan and I hung out at the playground next door. Still in his pj's. From there we went to a recycling expo for kids at the Austin Nature Center where we met a couple of Vivian's classmates. And then we went with them and their parents for lunch to Shady Grove. We got back home at almost 2pm and Evan was still in his pj's. Somewhere along that morning Vivian noticed that something was different and asked "Hey Daddy - where's Mommy?"

iPad or Not

This is what Crenshaw's looked like on Saturday morning. iPads everywhere. These kids are waiting for their gymnastics class. All of 5 minutes maybe.

I noticed this mainly because the day before on the drive back from school Vivian said that she had asked Santa for an iPad (then she said "daddy - can you please turn on the NPR news?"). She and Evan have easy though controlled access to Jo's iPad. And similarly to our iPhones. But they don't ask very often and sometimes a week or more goes by without a finger touching a screen. My friend has two kids about the age of ours. They each have their own iPads.
To iPad or not to iPad?

Teacher Conference

The other day I walked out of the bedroom and heard Evan humming "tea-cher con-fer-en-ce". It's that time of the year.

Vivian's went off well. At least better. If this one hadn't, I would have had a hard time convincing Jo to keep Vivian at Magellan. This was the first conference with her teachers in first grade (that's a photo of her class window from the street). She is learning Spanish. Her teachers say that she understands it pretty well and is beginning to speak it. Doing pretty well in other areas. Time management continues to be a problem. But we knew that. And she's not getting much by way of role models at home. Sometimes it feels like Vivian is the slowest person on earth.

Unless that's Evan. Slow doesn't describe it. He can take 5 minutes to walk 10 steps from the front door to the car. When he's in a hurry.

But in other areas his brain is going through some sort of a growth spurt. A month and a half ago he could not identify a single letter of the alphabet or say what word starts with what letter. He didn't color inside the lines and scribbled when he drew. Here are some sample worksheets from Grace Garden from the first week of October (on the left), just before Halloween, and then from last week. What happened here?

One day he asked me how to spell "tv". I said T-V. That set of his spelling mania. He started out spelling cat and bat and a few other words. Now he is focusing on what letter a word starts with. He can get it right most of the time - even with new words. We aren't about to rename him Einstein or anything. But he may be smarter than I thought.

His teachers this year did not call him Sweet Evan (like they did last year). He seems to have solved that problem. And they did say that "he's an energetic child". I like euphemisms when they are applied to my children.

Evan Not Smiling

This was Evan yesterday when Jo woke him up prematurely from his nap for his swim class. He wasn't scowling but barely not. With him there is no happy medium. Which means he is acting like a clown or he looks like this.

St. Edwards Park

On Saturday we returned to Edwards after a long break. The long dry summer and then the flash floods in October had left their mark specially on the creek.

The kids started off with a tailgate breakfast from Taco Shack followed by an hour of strolling, making and floating boats and trying to get as muddy a they could.

Hangman

Here's another photo, thanks to Beth, from the zoo in Clovis. Is this the reason why those things are called boas?

But this isn't the weirdest thing we witnessed at the zoo. There's this raven. In fact we heard about this raven from Beth the night before. I think the real reason she took us to the zoo the next morning was so we didn't think she was crazy (sorry - didn't help).

Beth was there on Halloween on a school field trip. When she reached the raven cage, this huge black raven with a mighty beak turned his head and stared at her out of one eye and then muttered very clearly in a low husky human voice:

Hangman's coming.
Need to talk to Joe.
The end is near.

The day we were there, the raven didn't oblige us with the whole conversation. But he did repeat "Hangman's coming" over and over again. Very spooky.

Goldilocks Planets

Time for a science post.

The company my Dad used to work for, Indian Detonators Limited, acquired their first computer in the 70's. During one summer Alu spent some time programming on it (my parents deemed me too young, too stupid or both - so I spent that summer dismantling more alarm clocks and radios). I remember the first program Alu returned home with was for the Drake Equation. He had one of those old-school accordion-folded printouts and explained to me that he knew how many communicative civilization there were in our galaxy. I was impressed. He had asked the Great Computer a question. And the Great Computer had replied. And then I was disappointed when I realized that he had plugged in estimates for seven variables in a simple equation. It felt like a parlour game, not real usable knowledge. The answer, as it turns out, is between one thousand and a hundred million depending on what values you use.

A decade or so later I discovered one of my favorite Calvin and Hobbes strips.

Since the 1960's when radio telescope technology became precise enough, SETI has been listening for aliens. They tune their radio telescopes to the radio frequency that corresponds to the radio emission of natural hydrogen, the most plentiful element in the universe, and point the telescope towards different stars. This assumes that the aliens would choose to transmit at that frequency, that they would and could transmit radio waves, and that they exist or at least existed in the light cone that we are now viewing on earth. SETI even has a protocol in place for what to do when they detect such a signal (tell other astronomers first, then the UN and other scientific bodies, don't send a response signal, etc.)

In 2009 NASA launched Kepler. It has a photometer - a very sensitive camera that detects the brightness of objects, in this case stars. When a planet passes in front of it's star the brightness of the star is slightly diminished. When viewed from deep space, earth causes the brightness of the sun to decrease by just 84 parts per million when summed up over the 13 hours it takes to cross the center of our sun. So the instrument is very sensitive. Further, to cancel out noise, natural variations in the brightness of a star, and non-center crossings, Kepler needs to record multiple crossings. Giant planets close to a star can orbit around the star quickly - Kepler found some that do so in just a few hours. But rocky planets the size of earth and about the same distance from a sun-like star pass in front of their star about once a year. So that's one observation per year.  

Kepler has stared open-eyed and unblinkingly at the same 150,000 stars for four years and noted every change in their brightness. From these measurements scientists are beginning to get a much better idea about the number of rocky earth sized planets that are the right distance from their star - in a habitable zone for life as we know it. Planets that are not too hot and not too cold. Goldilocks planets.

Humans have wondered whether we are alone for as long as we have looked up at the night skies. Till recently, we had no basis for believing that we weren't. But there were those who thought that there is nothing exceptional about the earth. Copernicus convinced us that the earth isn't the center of the universe and Kepler (the person) worked out the laws of planetary motion. Then a mere 15 years ago astronomers using earth-based instruments spotted the first planet outside our solar system ever. Till then we had no proof that the trillions of stars out there had planets like our sun does. The first exoplanet was a huge jupiter like giant. Eventually this observation led to the Kepler spacecraft. In December 2011 NASA confirmed that Kepler had spotted two earth-sized planets. They weren't in the Goldilocks zone but it was hailed as a  "watershed moment in human history". 

Kepler had equipment problems this summer and can no longer gather useful data. But using data already collected, ten days ago scientists concluded that there may be approximately 40 billion earth-sized habitable planets in our galaxy alone. 

This more or less nails down two factors out of the seven in Drake's Equation: what fraction of stars have planets, and what fraction of them could be habitable. Another factor relating to the rate of new star formation in our galaxy is known. That leaves four factors unknown. These are: the fraction of habitable planets where life actually develops, the fraction where intelligent life develops, the fraction where intelligent life emits signals detectible from space, and the number of years that an intelligent civilization emitting detectible signals does so. 

Till we have more data, the first of these fractions is a complete guess. Life could develop in every planet that is habitable or in none. On one hand we could be the exception in the entire universe. On the other there's no reason to believe that. Once life develops, how often does it become intelligent? In our case, life on earth started 3.5 billion years ago. Primates have only been around for the last 75 million years. Stable species like the dinosaurs did very well for 150 million years (far longer than the 200,000 years that anatomically moderns humans have been around) but they didn't show signs of intelligence (in retrospect, neither may we, but that's a different factor). And as spectroscopy gets more precise, we may not need radio signals from aliens to indicate their presence. By studying starlight that passes through planetary atmospheres we may be able to search for telltale gases.  So the third fraction - detection of signals from intelligent life - may be going up. 

The last factor is another crapshoot. Once a life form gets intelligent, how long before it destroy its habitat? Are there cosmic events that cause mass extinctions in every world? Evan & Vivian, will you or anyone be around to ponder this in a couple of decades?

Party Like It's 1999

In about 20 years you should get a laugh out of this, Vivian & Evan.

The other evening we were in New Braunfels picking up the kids from Nicolle and Michelle's. I had to take a photo of the board announcing the price of gas. It hasn't been this low since 1999. At least that was my first thought. Then I checked. In early 1999, the average cost of gasoline in the US was about $0.92. I've attached the graph. Go to the url (http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?f=W&n=PET&s=EMM_EPMR_PTE_NUS_DPG) if you want to see more detail.

Best Present

We send off our children to school to learn other languages. I'm sure Vivian's Spanish will be better than my Hindi. And I certainly couldn't replicate instructions accurately in any other language. So I shouldn't sneeze at others who try. But the other day Jo and I doubled over with laughter when we read the instructions that came with her new apple peeler.

Baking Homework

The other day Vivian's English homework was to read and follow complex instructions. She came home with a seven-step recipe for making pan de muerto (we nicknamed it "bread for the dead") and needed to take the finished product back to school. Evan wanted to help badly. He thinks he's a hotshot in the kitchen now that he goes to Ms. Tami's cooking classes. But Jo distracted him long enough for Vivian to get it done. And she did very well.

Mainstream

The other day I drove past this graffiti in downtown Austin. Gandhi on a scooter. A few hours later I found masala chai flavored ice cream at the grocery store. The transformation is complete. We are now mainstream. "Namaste, bitches" - to quote my American friend.

Happy Diwali

That was six days ago. So a belated Happy Diwali and happy Kali Pujo and Sal Mubarak to you all. We didn't celebrate this year. But the day before Diwali, Vivian had her Fall festival at school and her class needed a game. Jo came up with "pin the flame on the diya" and they made up giant pictures of diyas and played with blindfolds. Jo also made a big poster with photos of Diwali celebrations from India. Here's a photo from two years ago - Vivian painted this diya at her pre-school in Hyderabad.

Clovis

On Thursday morning we arrived at the Cannon Air Force Base bright and early. The ceremony - the change of command - was precise. Then we went for a reception and a tour where Evan solemnly announced to Aaron that he too was going to be a pilot. After that we went to Aaron and Beth's home where eight cousins played their hearts out. Evan remembered wrestling with Aaron from his last trip and had a rematch - soon followed by a free-for-all when all his cousins came to his rescue. The next morning a trip to the local zoo. And then an eight hour drive back home. The kids fell asleep somewhere before Coleman, Texas and we carried them to their beds. This morning they awoke still fully dressed from the night before and ran into our bedroom to wake us up for breakfast and so they could play with (neighbor) Ava.

Driving to New Mexico

Aaron and Co. moved to Clovis, New Mexico a few months ago. BFE. But the funny thing is the number of people who have driven through Clovis. Just not to Clovis. Ask around and you'd be surprised. I've driven through twice.

We picked Vivian up after school on Wednesday and drove on. Right after dusk when it got dark we reached the outskirts of Sweetwater. Thousands of red blinking lights greeted us in the darkness. They all blinked on and off in synchrony and about once every two seconds or so. It was weird. One moment you were surrounded by this surreal landscape of red lights and nothing else. And then just darkness and that instant when you think you have finally gone freaking mad. And then the red lights are back.

Wind turbines. They tower over 250 feet above us and have a blinking red light on top to warn aircraft. The area around Sweetwater has the largest number of wind turbines in the western hemisphere. Evan said they were alien spaceships and one eye-ed robots.

We reached the Texas border after 7 hours of driving. Along the way we passed through towns or saw signs for towns with interesting names. Early (the puns continued for miles). Earth. Texico (at the New Mexico border). Sudan (logo "American lives here". Really?). And Shallowater ("Our pride runs deep").

We finally got to Clovis at 11pm. Then we gained back an hour. It was cold and windy and stank of bullshit from industrially fed cows at the feed lots. But this time I couldn't drive on through.

ps.

This is a post script to the party post below.

At the Saheli dinner there was a silent auction. We bid on a few items. One was a evening of dining for a party of eight - at a home in Austin. I've known Sameera and Professor Ghosh for years and have eaten superb bengali food at their home several times. So I had no reservations in bidding up the item. But at the very end I had to buy off another professor who was also set on it. I told him that we'd invite him to our dinner and that he and his wife would be the guests of honor. Now Jo needs to find six other people to spend an evening with two professors. The conversation will be brilliant!

Another silent auction item was for archery and riding classes for Vivian. Like the first, it was donated by another Saheli staff member. She casually mentioned that she knew something about archery. Turns out she won a bronze medal for the US in the Beijing Paralympics and is consistently rated among the top archers nationally. Holy shit, Vivian.

Party

It was a weekend of partying. Vivian & Evan - just in case you grow up wondering what your parents do when you are with a sitter. Friday evening Victoria (aka the Whole Foods babysitter because that's where we found her) came over to sit. It appears that the two of you and Ava made sure that she earned her money. That's when we went to the big Saheli dinner. Our friends around the table and their generosity made it a great evening. The two client stories made it a memorable event. When someone shines a light briefly on the dark and seamy side of humanity, we remember what we hide - that under the thin patina of civilized behavior, humans have a capacity to inflict physical and mental pain on each other, even the ones closest to us.

Then on Saturday we dropped you off (in a Cabela's parking lot exchange) with Aunt Cole. You spent the rest of the weekend with your cousins going to Wurstfest and doing other fun things. While we went out with the parents of your friends from your Grace Garden days and killed as many brain cells as we could (mostly legally) manage. Fun times for all, specially that feeling of waking up the next morning and knowing that you are safe and somewhere else.

SPD

Evan's good friend has SPD and is in the autistic spectrum (sensory processing disorder is a problem faced by many autistic people, but is not the same as autism). On Friday Evan met O for a play date at the park. They played really well for almost two hours till it was nap time.

O's mother mentioned that O sees the world in black and white. I asked how. She said as an example he doesn't understand idioms. Like the time when she said "let's play it by ear" and then there was a lot of explaining to do. We were reminded of Evan's "throwing someone under the bus" episode.

Then it was time to leave. O wanted to know what was next. His mother said that he needs to know what is happening next. Jo and I exchanged looks. Evan is always asking about what is coming up. From the moment he wakes up with "What am I doing today?", to "How long is it going to take?", doesn't matter what it is.

As we were leaving, there was a noise of some kind and O covered his ears. Evan doesn't do that as often any more but that was another thing he used to do a lot of.

Hmmmm. May be this explains why you are such an odd ball sometimes, Evan. A very sweet and loving odd ball. But an odd ball.

Halloween

Halloween in absolutely by far Evan's favorite holiday. He has asked us about it every day for months. All the fall and halloween related activities in Rhode Island got him even more juiced up. He knew he wanted to be a bat months ago and never wavered while Vivian went from witch to Taekwondo girl to ninja back to witch. She eventually settled on "the little girl from the movie Paranorman who was killed by people in her town because they thought she was a witch".

Halloween morning Evan woke up bright an early and got dressed as a bat and went to school. He had a parade there and then the never-ending Fall festival that Jo volunteered for all morning. Then I got him home while Jo went on to volunteer at Vivian's Fall festival for the afternoon.

Me: "Evan - it's time for your nap"
Evan: (for the hundredth time) "But when is it going to be dark so we can go trick or treat?"
Me: "After you nap. Sleep now."
Evan: "What if I don't wake up and I miss trick or treating?"
Me: "Evan - I promise I'll wake you up."
Evan: "I'm ready for my nap daddy."

When he woke up from his nap it wasn't "dark enough to go trick or treating" so he asked again another hundred times while time herself stood still. Hours later it was six! The kids got dressed and went to Amy's house to get their faces painted. I filled my gym water bottle with a wine bottle and followed. When I got there, Vivian looked scary. Amy had pained some realistic "wounds" on her and Vivian had her game face on. Evan got himself a painted set of fangs and a black bat nose. Ava was a spectacular Wonder Woman. Eleanor was Tinker Bell. And Theodore was the most adorable of them all - a very very cute lion. And we set forth in a large group.

The kids walked down six blocks, turned up one block to Ramsey and walked back. They knocked on almost every door and spent over two hours with hundreds of other children and had a great time. When we got home they got to empty their bags on the dining table and eat as much candy as they wanted. They were done in 15 minutes and went to bed tired and buzzed.

The next morning when they jumped in bed with us:

Jo: "Vivian's school has a great program where we can given them our candy and they will pack it up and send it overseas to our troops"

Vivian: "How long can we eat our candy?"
Jo: "Oh - may be another day or two and then we'll take it over"

Evan: "I don't want to give them my candy."
Jo: "Not now, Evan. You can eat it now."
Evan: "No - I don't want to give my candy to anyone forever"

Transgender Surgery

Yesterday morning Ava and Vivian and Evan played on the trampoline. Then they came over to play indoors. I overheard them talking.

Ava: "Vivian, do you know that with surgery a girl can become a boy?"
Vivian: "What?"
Evan: "And with surgery a boy can become a girl"
Vivian: "What is surgery?"
Ava: "I don't know"
Evan: "You can put boy parts on a girl to make a girl into a boy"
Ava: "And you can put girl parts on a boy"

Silence, while they ponder this.

Vivian: "And then you'll have to cut the boy's head and put a girl brain into it to change it into a girl"

Dias de los Muertos

Vivian woke up on Saturday morning and instead of jumping into our bed as is usual for Saturdays, she went straight to her drawing table. A few moments later she appeared with this and solemnly gave it to me and them jumped into bed. She said "it's Dias de los Muertos today, and this is a picture of me and Grandpa."