The Small Family   

Happy November to you all! This week’s blog is so titled for two reasons. First, “apple” is one of Theo’s new words this week, along with “fish” (which sounds like “shhhh”), lion, and “pepper” (peh-pah!). Theo says “apple” slowly and deliberately, with two distinct syllables: ap-ple. It’s quite cute to hear him pronounce it so very, very carefully. Not sure why he’s picked up on “pepper,” as none of us really likes peppers, and thus we really don’t eat them or have them around. There’s a picture of some in one of his books, and he’s just become obsessed with that particular book page lately.

The second reason for this blog title is the newest member of our “family”—my new computer. Yes, I have finally jumped ship and gone from a Windows PC to a lovely iMac. For anyone wondering why, I’ll elaborate. Anyone not interested in boring computer chat, skip the next two paragraphs! My Windows laptop has been acting really quirky for a few weeks—suddenly the audio hardware couldn’t be found on it, the right-mouse-click feature stopped working, the darn thing slowed to a snail’s pace, Word kept crashing, etc. Given that I have a VERY busy few weeks of work coming up in November and we can use a tax writeoff this year, we figured we might as well replace my computer sooner rather than later. (It was almost four years old, and I had nearly maxed out the hard drive space, so it wasn’t really worth trying to salvage. A lot of the books I work on require a LOT of hard drive space, so I really needed something bigger.) And so, I began researching and found that a Mac might better suit my needs—namely for three reasons. One, stability—my coworkers who work on both platforms have far fewer problems with their Macs than their PCs. Two, I’ve been told that the Mac monitors are much easier on the eyes and help prevent eye fatigue and strain. The older I get, the more trouble I have with my eyes when I work long days, so this was a plus to me. And finally, the rather amusing reason: Macs are more babyproof than PCs! The new iMacs have one cable (unless you hook up a bunch of extra stuff) and one button, and that button is located on the back of the monitor, where curious button-pushing toddlers can’t see it. Ah, bliss! Theo is a great lover of pushing any and all buttons he can find, so a single hidden button was MUCH preferred to a PC tower with lots of fun buttons on it.

Anyway, I’ve had my new iMac for all of 48 hours and am learning the ropes on it, and so far I’m pretty pleased. Fingers crossed that it turns out to be a good purchase. As one of my coworkers assured me, “Buy a Mac, and you’ll never look back.” We’ll see if he’s right… I have to say, if nothing else, it was the easiest computer setup I’ve ever had—Apple did virtually everything for me before handing off my new gadget. Bliss!

But back to more interesting topics. Halloween! One of my favorite holidays, in general, though this year Theo decided to go as a tyrannical kangaroo. That’s right—not just any kangaroo, but a tyrannical one. But let me explain…

This was not our best week. Theo has been on the tail end of a cold. And not sleeping overly well for a while. And cutting his top two canine teeth. All of this makes for a grumpy guy. Add to that the fact that he seems to have reached another developmental stage where his brain is ahead of his abilities. That is, he knows what he wants to do, but sometimes he’s not able to do it. And when that happens, the little perfectionist immediately starts stamping his feet in fury and squalling. I’m not sure where this perfectionism came from, as his father and I could never be accused of being perfectionists. And his maternal grandfather wasn’t a perfectionist at all. (Notice the thinly veiled sarcasm in these sentences. Theo comes by perfectionism quite naturally, having been descended from a long line of perfectionists!) Anyway, we try to remind ourselves how frustrating it must be for him—he’s a sharp enough cookie to know what he wants, and when he can’t accomplish it, I’m sure it’s frustrating. But yikes, after a day of foot-stomping and temper tantrums, we heave a great sigh of relief when he conks out for the night. :-)

So, anyway, this week has been very up and down in terms of Theo being delightful one minute and a tiny tyrant the next. I think Halloween evening was really the apex of all this…he was delighted to have free run of the mall (they sponsor a great trick-or-treating event that tons of little kids attend), but he got very irritated with any limits imposed on him. At 18 months, he obviously doesn’t really understand the concept of not touching things in stores, so it ended up being us constantly redirecting him to trick-or-treating areas and making sure he didn’t rip anything off the racks in the stores! Ah, I think next year will be a much different Halloween experience with him. At any rate, he was an absolutely adorable kangaroo, if a crabby one.

Lucky for us (and Grandma Diane), Theo was a cheery guy on Friday night, when Grandma came over to babysit him for a couple hours while we went to dinner and to pick up our new computer. Theo got favorable reports from Grandma, who said she slept quite well after spending 2 ½ hours with “the Energizer bunny”!

Theo was reasonably cheery for Halloween morning, too. We drove out to the Davis Farmers’ Market for the second weekend in a row because they were having a lot of Halloween festivities for little ones. Theo wasn’t too interested in the organized activities, but he did enjoy having the run of Central Park (where the Farmers’ Market is held), and we enjoyed a nice morning out in the cool, sunny weather.

On Sunday, Chris and Theo spent some quality “guy time” together while I went to the Sikh Festival for a photography workshop field trip. The guys watched football, walked to Starbucks and the park, and of course went to the grocery store. (Does Chris EVER miss a chance to go to the grocery store?!) I got good reports on my little monkey from Chris—they had a fun day together.

Last year it was overcast and cool for the Sikh Festival, but this year it was sunny, beautiful, and almost a bit TOO warm. By the end of the festival, Kim, Amber, and I were tired and hot, but we had a good time. I borrowed a fancy lens from the school, so I had fun playing with that (although it weighed a TON, and my neck was feeling the weight of it by the middle of the day). The most exciting part of this, perhaps, is that we’re all getting published in the online version of the Sacramento Bee (our newspaper). One of the Bee photographers teaches at Sierra College part time, and our instructor arranged with him to have all of us get at least one photo published in the online edition of the Bee on Monday (11/2). One lucky person gets a print picture on the front page of the Bee, but I sincerely doubt it will be me. My two best shots were “detail” shots, and I think they’ll want an overview shot for the front page. Still, it’s pretty exciting to have one or two of my pictures published online for our paper! If I had a link to the exact site, I’d put it here…but I won’t know it until Monday. If I get ambitious, I’ll go back in and edit the blog with the correct link on Monday, in case any of you want to see. (Update: The link to the online Sac Bee photo gallery is http://www.sacbee.com/photos/gallery/2298472.html. I have two images in there--#8 and #20. Exciting!!)

Before I sign off for the week, I have to give a huge congratulations to my cousin Katy and her fiancé Kevin, who got engaged this past week. They’re getting married in September, 2010. Congratulations to them both!!