Today Ivo said...

"Sandy." - My heart leapt! He said it again and in a helpful context - "Sandy Mama." I cried!!! That crazy happy teary - ok, yr the greatest thing on the planet and I'll be happy to just stare at you for the rest of my life - kinda cry.

After morning chores, Ryan Ivo and I went to Caves, Fridays and then to tea street. Everything was fun and fine. Found Ivo 4 more long-sleeves and a pair of quilted pants. And a pea coat for me! Yesterday, Ivo got some new shoes. They are red and black and when a guy wears them, it reinforces his superhero status.

Ivo used my camera for the first time today - he took 2 pictures. This is the better of the 2 - and it's not half bad!

Ivo can say: pen, big pen, I want fly (which means pick me up and spin me around while I hold my fists out in front of me...), robot, buy shoes, new shoes, movie, brush teeth, shirt, camera, picture, chair, bed, blanket, car, scooter, kids, yucky/blech, yummy, yea/no...

He eats more stuff (and mostly can say): eggs, grilled cheese sandwich (the kind made with wonder-type bread), potato, pizza, broccoli, tea, lemon juice, hot chocolate, ice cream, cake, cheese cake, chocolate cake, chicken, noodle, rice, bread, soup, fish/yu, carrot, apple, banana, cracker, candy, peas, ketchup, french fry, mango pop...

Today he was playing a game involving a pen and 8 printed pages of paper, where he asked "want 2? 2 want 2? K." and would jot notes down. He did this repeatedly throughout the day like he was playing waiter or something. Also in an incessant way. Sometimes I told him, "I want 5" or 1 or 4. After awhile, he relented and agreed that I could have a different amount!

Ivo riding SuperBreadMan

This is from 28 Dec 2006 - after lunch and the dr. Ivo rode 3 different rides - this is the riskiest - slippery and without sides holding you in - note the belt.

Also the dinosaur sweatsuit is from his great aunt Joanne and equally great Uncle Bob.

Ivo on the slides in Taipei 24 December 2006

Here is a little bit of video from my camera. The light's a little funny - but we have more from Ryan's video... coming soon/later!

These slides are just like the ones at the park near Cuyler's former residence in Mu Zha... We miss Cuy!!!

Also, want to mention how coordinated and balanced Ivo is... He's been alternate stepping up and down stairs for a month or more...

Ivo is a big boy

We went to dinner at Fubar last night. It was sindy and a little cold so we ate inside. Dwayne showed Ivo a short video of 2 dinosaurs and a pig farting. Ivo loved it and kept talking about it and asking to see it again. We searched it on youtube when we got home. This is it.









Here are a few pics of Ivo from Thursday 28 Dec 2006. I had a dr's appt during which Karin watched Ivo (for the 1st time!). They had fun and afterwards, we all went out to lunch. No lunch location worth its salt is too far from the 10nt rides, so... Baby is perfect and weighs just shy of 2kg!




















And a couple more from Christmas day.

Overall, Ivo enjoyed his birthday and Christmas. We all had fun. By the end, he had lost interest in opening presents by himself and would hand them to Ryan or me saying "Baba/Mama do." At the same time, by the end, he knew that something cool was inside the wrappings. He opened presents from the 23rd-27th. We didn't force him to finish on Christmas... So many new things... Such fun toys. Mary brought him (and Baby Burl's first presents!!) on Wednesday 271206. Pics of them to follow!

time discrepancy on blogger and

The first pic is Ivo saying "Two!"

Flying down the slide like Superman

I posted the last one at 8:52pm not 7:52pm - I guess blogger doesn't know that Taiwan doesn't observe daylight savings time...

Since the earthquakes aren't gonna let us sleep for awhile, here are those park pics...

Also, I was wondering how Rosie O'Donnell expects us to believe she didn't know squinching her face up saying "You can imagine in China, it's like, ching chong ching chong ching chong Danny DeVito ching ching chong chong ching drunk The View chong " wasn't gonna be offensive - in addition to not being funny. I can't understand why she doesn't acknowledge her misstep and really apologize.

Aside from being a minority and living in one of the most cosmopolitan cities on the planet, she's in entertainment/media/celebrity-ville - didn't she hear about Shaq's racist gaffs of 2003? He used the exact same "ching chong" -among other slurs - while talking about Yao Ming of the Houston Rockets and Wang Zhizhi of the LA Clippers. Weird, Shaq's also a minority...

My college roommate was a 1st generation Chinese American. Her widowed mother sewed in a sweat-shop in Chinatown, she attended Stuyvesant High School (before it moved down-down-town) and then NYU on scholarship. Excepting one guy - who they called "White-boy," all her high school friends were Asian Americans. Not all were Chinese, but all were Ivy Leaguers. She went to the least exclusive university of the bunch. In spite/because of all this, she railed against the stereotype of Asian-Americans all being smart, all being anything.

This was back in 1987 - at the beginning of what ended up, derisively and in many ways, dis-armingly, known as the Politically Correct movement. This was before the 1992 hooplah-struggle over the Western canon and the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' "discovery."

Do North Americans somehow believe that positive sterotypes cancel out racism...

Christmas Ivo and more

We all went to Taipei for Ivo's 2nd birthday. Took the bus up friday night after an Xmas party at my school and left Sunday afternoon.

Very fun!

On Saturday, we went to the Taipei Astronomical (sic) Museum. Lots of fun for just 40nt + 70nt for the super spaceship ride on the 4th floor. Lots of info (all in Chinese) about constellations, the history of astronomy and space travel. Nice interactive stuff - lots of buttons to push! My camera had been acting funny, so we used Ryan's video camera for all pics - coming soon to the blog.

Saturday evening, we went to Taipei 101 to look at Xmas scenes, Santa and the book selection at Page One. While festive, no trees or santa to be seen - just tons of people. So many that Ivo couldn't walk 2 steps ahead without being engulfed in the crowd. It was too much - and seemed likely to be the case in the adjacent malls - so we beat feet back to the hotel.

This year really drums home the importance of celebrating Ivo's half-birthday with much fanfare... cuz no matter how unabashedly atheist you are and regardless of living in a non-Christian country/continent, December 24th is always gonna be overwhelmed by the baby jesus, the shopping, the santa etc.

Ivo opened a few pressies up in Taipei and most at home. Pics coming soon . Thank you to grammie & grampie, great aunt Joanne and uncle Bob, grandma and chrissy, ally and mikey for all the excellent long-distance swag! Love to all.

Here are some pics of Ivo objecting to wearing a footie/jammie zip-up thing. He doesn't care for socks or sleeves - but is coming along... Also opening pressies at hotel and playing in the nearby park from 23-24 December 2006.

Wow - big earthquake just hit - and we're still swaying! Not only in Ivo 2 - but the big tsunami was 2 years ago today... And another one!!! All the dogs are barking and neighbors out on the street. And aren't we happy we're not at Taipei 101 now!

First one was 6.7 located in Hengchun, Pingdung County - that's right outside Kending... Second one not posted yet...

Ivo drawing on the whiteboard

This is from the same day Monday 18 Dec 2006, a mere 6 days before Ivo turns 2!

Ivo loves Michelle! She's a fun jie jie!

Ivo sitting at a desk Mon 18 Dec

This was taken in my classroom at st jason, taichung.

We don't know why Ivo seems to imitate gun-wielding... but he does. I hope he just thinks he's pointing at people.

Ivo at St Jason

Ivo came to school with me yesterday. We spent about an hour playing, went to the post office and then back to school to meet Papa who came to take him home.

He loves playing with the kids and even says "want kids."

Also, Ivo answers the questions; "how old are you?" and "how are you?" in one word: "TWO!" He often fixes his fingers in some imitation of a V-shape, either to indicate 2 or to imitate the victory sign that is almost compulsive among Taiwanese photo-posers.

Poor Ivo on a hard day's night

Yesterday was a great day with a short and early nap after grocery shopping and eggs. Then we went to the science museum followed by Cave's book store for a xmas lesson given by a former co-worker of Ryan's. We met Kevin an Kaia there. Very fun!

Ivo's favorite part was the game at the beginning. He got to throw a sticky ball at the whiteboard and then got a balloon.

After the bookstore, we all went to eat, then to the park and then to starbucks. Ivo had his first hot chocolate. He loved it! We went home, played and Ivo fell asleep. He woke up a little while later and never wanted to go back to sleep. He wanted to nurse a lot, and did - but not in a way that ever leads to sleep and involves lots of scratching me. So after an hour of that and very sore, I told him no more booby just bao bao. Then he screamed and cried for a couple hours. Both Ryan and I were with him - he was never crying alone. He was very angry. Finally Ryan held him til he fell asleep.

Today, I still feel sad and exhausted. I heard a story on NPR that started out talking about holiday airline travel, the liquid/gel restrictions and some notion of retraining both passengers and security staff... Then halfway thru it turned into a story about soldiers going off to Iraq and/or coming home from. It was so sad. And I just feel terribly weepy.

Ivo n Dylan at Friday's on Saturday

We had rushed all morning to get to the PO - not enuf bao bao or playtime for Ivo's taste... We piled into the car, got to the PO which was CLOSED! Boo Hoo:( We cheered up and headed to Tiger City to eat at Chili's... Being Saturday around 1

pm and raining, there was no way to park anywhere near Tiger City. We tried.

So we headed to Friday's on Ing Tsai - and who was sitting there? Dylan and Heather on a break from their xmas shopping! Yay! Happy Happy and superfun!

Ivo's already got 'em beat!

Just read about "technology isolation syndrome" in an article on BBC. This is a condition in which use of mp3 players and video games is blamed for shrinking and shrunken vocabularies. The British company, Tesco, commissioned the study because their young hires can't seem to answer phones and "lack basic verbal communication" skills.

The study claims that the vocabulary of teenagers in Britain contains just over "12,600 words compared with the nearly 21,400 words that the average person aged 25 to 34 uses."

I believe this but I think it's simple-minded to blame poor vocab/language skills on technology. Also how does this augur for the great American/British conversation skillz debate. I mentioned that article in this post.

More later.
Ivo-Dash just fell asleep. To use Ivo's measures: 'Big' day! 'Baby' nap.

Ivo n Ryan peruse their xmas n bday swag

A package, a package ,a beautiful package arrived from Grammie and Grampie! Ivo was confused and angry that we didn't open it after susu (uncle mailman) gave it to us. He was 10x happier when Ryan got home and the 2 of them opened it together!

They put xmas and ivo gifts under the tree. They opened Ryan's pressies - NB hat and shirt! We ate pepperminty chocolate cookies!!!!

Ivo says Kismis tee!

Ivo LOVES Christmas trees and is amused by most of the xmas decorations he sees. As with everything, other peoples' stuff is more interesting or, at least, excitibg than ours.

So here are some tee appreciation pics. He strikes a superhero pose in one shot. For those with a keen eye, yes, these shots were taken at a McDonald's - which Ivo calls, "ee i o" -- They sell corn with raisins and fruit juice and 10nt ice cream. They have playgrounds - inside. Clean toilets, soap in the bathrooms... It's an awful company... I feel horrible succumbing - just about as awful as I feel after eating the "food."

But it's been raining the past 2 days and the boy needs to go somewhere...