Sunday, October 19, 2008

Infestation!

We love wildlife of all sorts.
Okay, so ticks aren't very cool, and neither are mosquitoes, but leeches are kind of fun to be hard-core about. Gross, but that's really it. No big disease problems with leeches, you know? Well, last weekend we had our tolerances tested yet again. This time the wild came to get us. An infestation of insects that apparently came in through the bathroom and caught Liam while he was sleeping.

Our more knowledgeable friends say that they are flesh-eating homoptera.

We were thankful they didn't eat too much of Liam's flesh. He seems to be in good health now, though, thankfully.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Liam makes his first call


It was a busy week.
We had friends coming over on friday, and were planning a hike on saturday. Katie and I and Liam were trundling around town knocking off errands. We had to pick up a mattress, buy a wok, find some graph paper, get hair cuts, swap the jeep the mechanic had loaned us for our vundi (truck), buy groceries, deliver groceries to friends, pick up other friends, help them buy groceries, and deliver them and their groceries to their house. You know, busy. During all of this Liam is in orbit around us, talking and babbling away. His favorite things are Vundis (vehicles of any sort, preferably moving) and Babu (cell phones, so named because our mechanic's name is Babu, and I speak to him on the cell phone from time to time.) Liam sometimes carries on fake conversations on the cellphone, which we let him handle because it can be locked. These conversations usually go something like:
"Babu."
"BABU!"
"Hellah, Babu"
"BABUUU!"
He probably had 5 or so imaginary conversations with Babu that friday afternoon as we bustled about. It all worked, though. We got our grocieries, our friends' groceries, our other friends and their groceries, the vundi and everything sorted out. The weekend was good, we had an infuriating hike with too little water during which we got lost on a steep hillside in 8 foot tall razor-grass, but found our way out, sliced as we were, and back to the road. At the end of the weekend, my parents called from Vermont to catch up. Turn's out that they recieved an interesting call friday morning, east coast time. They say it went something like this:
"Warings"
"Babu."
"Hello?"
"Hellah, Babu."
"BABUUUU!"

Thursday, October 9, 2008

"Daddy" is in the Lexicon now!

Liam finally added the word "Daddy" to his lexicon the night before last. You can tell how important "Daddy" is, by seeing the words which came before "Daddy" was added. There are just a few:

Mommy

Rani - our maid's name

John - our gardener's name

fruit

cup

book

moon

dog

cat

up

down

no

cow

tree

teddy bear

rain

camera

baby

rock

drum

rhino

vehicle

door

computer

and...

candle

I am honored to occupy such an important position.

Saturday, October 4, 2008

Kupity

There is no arguing that Liam is at least as much a Tamil baby as he is American. This comes through, of course, in language. He has many Tamil words, including fruit (Palam), and flower (Pu), and he gestures the Tamil greeting "Vanakum" on command. Of course, he's got lots of english too, "chee" for cheese, "tee" for tree, "moom" for moon, and "cow."

He has also recently enjoyed adding a very Tamil-sounding suffix to some of his words. "-itty" can make many words sound Tamil. For cup he usually says "Kuppie", mom is "Mommie". When he wants to escape from the current situation (often in someones arms) he says "Dowm," and when he talks about the Suess-like baby book about monkeys drumming he says "Dum-ity." That along with the concept of "Yepadi," what in Tamil, has apparently given him the idea that he can, and perhaps should, add "-itty" endings to his words. So now with have "Kuppity," "Mommity," and "Dowmity" to accompany "Upitty" (in this case meaning 'pick me up', the opposite of "Dowmitty"). And now, "Combitty" for computer.