June 2006 Archives

For father's day, Jfer got me a Czech Republic World Cup jersey (alas, it arrived only after the team got eliminated). She had asked me if I wanted a player's name on it, and I decided to go with Pavel Nedvěd, who came out of retirement for the Cup and did an incredible job on the field.

The order process aparently went without a hitch and, luckily, Jfer's got the printout of the order receipt to prove it. However, when the jersey arrived, the name on the back was totally hocked up. Somehow, somewhere during the order process the "small letter e with caron" in the name must have been munged into the corresponding HTML entity "ě", which somehow got munged into "and#283;". So what should have been "nedvěd" got translated to "nedvand#283;d" and eventually truncated to "nedvand#283", because that's all that fit on the shirt.

Jfer's in the process of getting them send us a fixed version of the shirt (even though WorldSoccerShop says that they "don't accept personalised returns"). If they don't spring for return postage on the messed up shirt, the geek in me will be more than happy to wear that version, too.

And so it begins... Today, Magda asked, for the first time, "Why?" I don't think it's necessarily inquisitiveness, but more of an easy way for her to get a longer conversation going. Granted, a bit of a onesided conversation, but it's a conversation with the potential to go on forever.

Also, to my delight, she now occasionally refers to Jfer as "maminka", which is the Czech diminutive version of "mama" (think "mamasita" in Spanish). That's how I refer to Jfer when I talk with Magda in Czech, but she uses it even when I'm not around. Pretty neat.

Finally, I'm continuing building Magda's English vocabulary in other ways. She has the annoying habit to "need her momma" whenever Jfer goes to the bathroom. She can be perfectly happy playing with her toys or reading a book, but if Jfer gets off to the bathroom, Magda often gets up, follows her and hangs out at the bathroom door, demanding access. It annoys the heck out of Jfer and there's isn't much I can do about distracting or "redirecting" Magda (which is actually what annoys Jfer even more). So I took this opportunity to teach her to yell "push" when she feels that Jfer's taking too long. I figure it's better than her tears and -- at least from my side of the bathroom door -- it's more fun to watch her yelling "Push Momma, push!" (or "push, maminko") than banging at the door in frustration.

Jfer and Magda attanded a toddler swim class at a local pool a few weeks ago. I got to visit them one time and took some pictures.

Magda was having a blast with pretty much all their activities -- with the possible exception of floating on her back. I think her favority thing was jumping off the poolside into Jfer's arms.

I must say she has much more affinity for water than I ever did. Of course, it helps if the water you swim in is nicely warm.

What a Father's Day weekend... It started on Friday while walking the dogs. Magda was, according to Jfer, "really tired" -- which is generally a good thing, since it means an early and fast bed time.

But when Magda got out of her stroller to walk Homer, she took a couple of steps and, to everyone's great surprise, promptly tossed her cookies all over the sidewalk. And thus began her first encounter with a stomach flu. She proceded to barf on a semi regular basis through Sunday morning; spending most of Saturday sleeping or being lethargic and generally looking pitiful. She couldn't keep any thing down, including any liquids and by the time Sunday rolled around she'd lost 1.5 lbs in weight and her cute toddler belly was all gone. It's really sad when your kids asks for water and you try to explain to her that she really can't have any, since it would just come out; and trying to barf on an empty stomach is even less fun.

I Googled the symptoms and all the places said that gastroenteritis is fairly common in children, that there isn't much of anything to do about it except to keep 'em hydrated (tough to do if they just chunk it up and in general can't stand Pedialyte) and to contact your doctor if they haven't stopped barfing after three days or if they show signs of dehydration. Three days?!? They want you to wait three days, watching your kid suffer? As it turned out, by noon Sunday Magda's stomach had settled down and she had regained some of her appetite. And amazingly, by that night she was almost back to her own self.

Of course, by that time Jfer started to feel bad. Being barfed on made it probably pretty easy for her to get infected. On Sunday night, she was feeling miserable and spending extended and productive time in the bathroom... That night I did my best to not have her get up when Magda woke up a couple of times wanting to nurse. Luckily Jfer's bout lasted much shorter and next morning, she started to feel better so that I could leave them.

Needless to say, I was starting to feel a bit unsure about my #2. I decided it wasn't that bad and went to work, but then headed home before noon as things weren't improving. I ended up sleeping most of the day and my temp made it above 100F, but unlike my girls, I managed to not spew chunks.

So that was my wonderful Father's Day weekend. It didn't help things that I had just finished reading The Great Influenza right about the time we all got sick.

Like any toddler, Magda likes her Os, goldfish and crackers; she also loves her dried peas and corn. The problem with all these things is that they're tiny and can be a mess. When she's in the car or in her stroller, letting her hold the bowl usually leads to a spill. The Snack-Trap bowl helps preventing spills, but you still end up with lots of little bits in the car seat. And if you don't want to deal with a bowl, you'll end up constantly hending her the stuff a few pieces at a time; not the safest occupation while driving...

We discovered that the mess-less alternative to crackers is to let her have a breadstick. We like the United Bakery Sesame Breadsticks that Whole Foods carries, but pretty much anything that's not heavily salted works. She can hold the stick and munch on it without making a mess and without parental interaction.

And she's getting pretty good about keeping it away from the dogs: "No Rose -- Magda's stick!".

Jennifer is busily working on expanding Magda's vocabulary. Yesterday, when Jfer dropped her off by the office, I could hear Magda coming down the hall, greeting my coworkers ("Hi Tim!") and then hapily explaiming "I love you táta" when she saw me. That is totally cool. And then she quickly told Jfer to get on her way by saying "bye bye mama" and closing my office door in her face. :-)

I often wonder how much of what she says is just parroting of stuff we teach her. It's probably much less than what I sometimes think. When we got home, she was happy to see the doggies. At one point, she walked up to Rose and giving her hugs and kisses told her several times "I love you Rosie, I love you". Homer doesn't get that kind of treatment from her...

BTW, I occasionally manage to add a contribution to her vocabulary, too. Magda now calls watermelon (her newest favorite fruit) by its Czech name "meloun". Speaking of watermelon -- cut into half-inch cubes, it's the perfect food for a toddler to practice using her fork on. It's easy to spear, doesn't slide around, and stays nicely on the fork.

Today I said farewell to my trusty old Maxima. When we go the new car a couple of weeks ago, I decided against trading in my old car, since the price I was quoted was unreasonable.

Instead, I posted the Maxima on AutoTrader.com and, a couple of days later, on Craigslist. I'd never used Craigslist before, but man, that thing rocks. I got several inquires within hours, three of which led to a test drive and one to a sale. I probably could have saved myself the money on AutoTrader, but I think it didn't hurt that I included a link to it in my Craigslist post.

And the cool thing is, that I ended up getting about twice what the Toyota dealer offered me as a tradein. Not bad, not bad at all!