Summer in Davis

School started yesterday in Davis, which means summer is starting to end, which means we're due to share an update (or at least the bits of our summer we've haphazardly managed to document in photos):

Liam has settled wonderfully into life in on-campus family housing. He's taking advantage of all the perks:

• play time with friends like Elle in the sandbox right outside our door

• activities at the community center like finger painting

• and this other great new thing called birthday parties where they have another wonderful thing called chocolate cake (if you haven't happened upon chocolate cake, Liam suggests you ask around--you'll love it!).

Liam continues to adore reading books. He will take us on many-hour book reading marathons to the point that we have to insist that it's now time to go outside. He also loves talking (this is how he puts himself to sleep) and can parrot almost anything, usually to our amusement and sometimes to our dismay. Recent funny phrases have included:

• "I love my California home." (Said at 3a.m. during a diaper change when Grandma Sally was here taking care of him).
• "What's your whole name?" (Said to every person he meets--he recently learned that his whole name is "Liam Kiran Waring").
• "Get a job, Hippy." (Taught to him by his Uncle Brian, who, at least for this month, is unemployed).
• "Can I have some of your naan?" (Said to an Indian neighbor tonight when she brought by food).
  

Tim has been working hard on the first chapter of his dissertation and took two weeks to attend a summer school session in Italy on networks and innovation in Trento.

The conference center was up at the top of a cliff connected to town by a gondola (of the cabled variety, not punted). Here's a sampling of the view he enjoyed:
And here he is at some vineyards near the conference center:
Before flying back home to us, he made a quick stop in Venice (where he looked at, but didn't ride in a punted gondola):


My (Katie's) biggest task has been growing a baby (yes, we're pregnant again and due in late February).I've been sleeping, almost as much as Liam (not the best for picture taking), and am gradually regaining my energy as I exit the first trimester. Life for me has included teaching two community college classes during the summer term at my old haunt, Berkeley City College. I enjoyed taking a 6:25 a.m. train there and then riding up to campus on my bike--Liam and Tim actually joined me on the last train/bike trip:
I continue to write for 3-4 hours every day while Liam and Tim enjoy some play time together. My travel highlight was our family trip to Waterton, Alberta, to meet up with my mom's extended family. Unfortunately, my parents couldn't make it because of my mom's imminent back surgery (the surgery has since happened and Mom is up and driving and walking again!), but we enjoyed the company of Brian and Anna and all the wonderful Bulger relatives:




We're doing well and, though quite busy, we're enjoying life as a young family. Health is on our minds these days. First, for our parents, and particularly Marie at the moment, as she deals with some serious back pain. And, second, with national and California-based health care, particularly a public option, for which Tim and I have tried to commit to doing at least one bit of activism a day.

We think of our friends and old home in India often. The other day on our morning walk, I pointed out Detura flowers to Liam, and reminded him that they line the road leading to our old home in Kodai.

"We're going to Shelton Cottage right now?" Liam asked.

Oh, how I wished we could just time travel over there and say hello, even just for an hour.

But, for the moment, all three of us "love our California home." Come visit us!

Summer Travels

Tim traveled to Trento, Italy for a summer school on networks and innovation:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/25536359@N00/sets/72157621748485997/

Bye to Kodai, Back in Cali

We're now back "State-side," as they say in south India. We love being in the U.S. for a number of reasons, but we still miss our many wonderful friends and our old home in Kodai.


The journey to our new home was a long one. At the end of April, we bid a sad farewell to our friends and 'family' in Kodaikanal.


Then we spent two weeks in Thailand with our friends Dio and Judith. (Liam still says "Member Dio and Judith?" and "Member Catalina Elephant?" (see below)).

Then we visited our families on both coasts before returning to Davis, CA, where we're set up in campus family housing. We're in the full swing of life here, writing, working, parenting, cooking, sweeping, cleaning and sleeping (without the help of Rani and John), but we've been welcomed by some great friends and really like our new home. Here's Liam getting to know his neighbors:


We just returned from a wonderful hike in the Sierra Nevada with some old friends.

See MORE photos by clicking below, and come visit us, if you, too, are "State-side":

http://aliandcedar.com/gallery/v/others/warings/Bye+Kodai+and+Beyond/

What a great inauguration that was!

One of the best I've attended in recent memory, at least. Liam and I had just come back from a nice walk, and we were a bit under dressed, both for the occasion and for the weather!


You know, now that he's president, it makes me yearn for the good old days when we'd go hiking, and Barry would come in a full suit. What a nut!

Happy New Year!

Dear friends and family,

Happy New Year, and Welcome to 2009! We’re looking forward to what this new year will bring—our return to the U.S. in May, seeing friends and family whom we’ve missed, and acquainting Liam with people and places that we consider home. We’re also feeling very hopeful about the new presidential administration, so much so that we’ve been proudly wearing American and Indian-made Obama shirts. In fact, everyone we know is feeling hopeful, including our gardender, John, who told us something that went like this:

John: “On television they are saying Obama is giving all American free loan for buying house, not bad loan, like credit card, but good loan.” (We’d been counseling him and our babysitter/cook, Rani, about good loans given by women’s self help groups vs. predatory loans given by banks who mortgage family jewels).

Katie: “Everyone?”

John: “Yes, everyone is getting this loan for free and then buying nice house, maybe two rooms, metal roof, very nice.”

So, even here, expectations for Obama are high.

Though we’re certainly looking forward to next year, we are deeply grateful for the year we’ve just completed, and to the people who have made it so great. Tim has now finished his field work (and likely all data collection for his doctoral dissertation), which most recently involved playing economic games on a mobile computer lab with villagers like these gentleman:

From Happy New Year 2009

Tim’s now having fun analyzing the data and writing papers. He also hopes to complete one last side project on the cultural transmission of the labyrinthine chalk drawings called kolams that women draw outside their doorsteps each morning. Kolams are a very beautiful Tamil tradition:

From Happy New Year 2009

Katie has completed multiple drafts of her young adult novel set in Tanzania and just recently sent the latest version off to an agent. We’re all keeping our fingers crossed, but we’re told that getting books published can take as long, or longer than the actual writing process, which was two and a half years in this case. She’s now beginning to sift through her journals and outline a memoir about life with a certain baby in India:

From Happy New Year 2009

More than any of our other work, we’ve enjoyed getting to know Liam as he gets to know life. He is now a beautiful, pot-bellied, 1.5-year-old toddler.

From Happy New Year 2009

He loves to talk and sing—some of our favorite words are “Bye-la-Killi-Koo” (bicycle), “Cumbatoot” (computer), “Chapata” (cheese paratha—a favorite Indian food), and “undi” (baby-talk version of the Tamil word for vehicle, Vundi). He’s also busy learning a lot of Tamil from mornings with his beloved babysitter Rani, who calls him by his Indian middle name, Kiran, and who takes him out to visit his other Tamil friends like the boatman, Raja:

From Happy New Year 2009

Liam loves his parents, Rani, John, all dogs and cats, most foods (especially the South Indian rice and lentil dumplings called “Idly”), playing outside, “rowing” boats, talking to grandparents through video chat, and reading books (a current favorite is The Little Engine That Could). We recently traveled for a week on the plains and he was thoroughly impressed by the overnight trains, on which we failed to sleep due to a certain wiggling little boy sharing a narrow birth with one of us.

From Happy New Year 2009

He also loved the autorickshaws (“Auto”) that got us around Madurai and Chennai. We now discuss trains about 12 times a day and autos at least twice or thrice.

From Happy New Year 2009

Other highlights of the year have included:

• Getting Liam to mostly sleep through the night and in a crib (finally, after much delayed parental learning, we have beaten sleep deprivation back, and feel, dare we say it? Normal! Well, almost.)

From Happy New Year 2009

• The very generous visits of many family and friends from home, including all of our parents (who also happen to be top-notch grandparents), both of our siblings (Uncle “Bye-un” and “Anterah”), Cousin Pete, Uncle Tom, Todd and Sus, Kate and Ed, Megan, Durell and Suzann.

From Happy New Year 2009

From Happy New Year 2009

• Celebrating the Indian festival of lights, Diwali, in November, with a number of local friends.

From Happy New Year 2009

• A full monsoon season that filled the reservoirs here, cleaned up the roads, felled many trees, and filled the sky with mist and clouds.

From Happy New Year 2009

• Our trips to Kyoto and Nishinomiya, Japan; the backwaters of Kerala; and the international city of Auroville.

From Happy New Year 2009

• Our helpers, Rani and John as well as Tim’s research assistant, Vetrivel, who have helped us keep ourselves fed, our garden looking good, our child well cared for, Tim’s connections in the villages strong, and, in general, our initiation into parenting ridiculously civilized.

From Happy New Year 2009

From Happy New Year 2009

• The wonderful surroundings here—a beautiful lake just down the road, regular guar (the massive Indian bison) sightings just outside our gate, and gorgeous mountain-top views rimmed in flowering rhododendrons and endemic shola trees—some of which we try to get out and enjoy each day.

From Happy New Year 2009

• Shelton Cottage, one of the two oldest houses in Kodai, which our generous friends, the Lockwoods, have allowed us to house-sit for the last year and a half. Thank you so, so much! What an opportunity this has been, and a time we will always remember.

From Happy New Year 2009

• And finally, our wonderfully international, multi-aged group of friends here, who will always make Kodai feel like home, even after we leave.

From Happy New Year 2009

We are already dreading the sadness we will feel when May rolls around and when we will say goodbye to this beautiful place, our nice friends ,and the comfortable lifestyle we have here in India. At the same time, we anxiously look forward to living in university housing in Davis and seeing those of you whom we miss so dearly. It’s been just about long enough.

Love, Katie, Tim and Liam

From Happy New Year 2009

The Prince(ling) of Devali

The Indian festival of Devali (aka Dewali, Depavali, etc.) has come and gone, but Liam was dressed up nicely. He looked like a proper little Indian prince in his beautiful dress given him by the Vetrivel family. The one problem of course, being his pasty skin color. Ah well, you can't have everything, I guess. Here are a few shots.

The Family, before we head out for Devali celebrations.


With the Vetrivels


A lovely Kolam that Subashini made for Devali


Liam, celebrating the joys of water the next day.

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.

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!"

"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.

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.