Holidays, Fall and Winter

We didn't travel this Thanksgiving.  It was just the three of us, Suzanne, Lillia, and me, offering our thanks around our table.  Suzanne and I were thankful for the same things: our lives--which are truly blessed, our families, each other, Lillia.  I'm sure Lillia is thankful for these things, too, at least as she understands them.  Lillia was also thankful for pumpkin pie (as was I).

I bought a new laptop with a video camera built in, and Henry, my brother-in-law, showed me how to set up Skype on it so we could video conference with family in New Jersey over the holidays.  It was quite the hit, especially with Lillia, who kept returning to the closed laptop asking to speak with Grandma Joan again. Here is the moment of that first connect, captured by Henry in New Jersey.

Janet, Joan, Betsy in front.  Molly and Ken behind.  I believe they are all amazed by my new beard.  And of course Lillia by video.

And speaking of holidays, here is a picture of Lillia, after a hard evening of trick or treating on Halloween, still wearing most of her butterfly disguise, cleverly designed by mom to baffle the authorities during that evening of extortion:

Notice she has already removed her antennae. Clever girl. She will prove useful to La Famiglia. 

It is 18 degrees and snowing.  Suzanne says the grey sky today is reminiscent of the battleship skies of winters of her childhood in New Jersey. Lillia was, of course, refusing to dress this morning, insisting that naked and shoeless is best.  This is one of the unexpected drawbacks of central heating.  I opened the front door for a moment with her in my arms wearing nothing but a diaper (Lillia, that is) and suddenly she saw my wisdom, allowing me to dress her without further argument.  

Anyway, a few pictures from the last few weeks, before Denver became the large Frigidaire it currently is:

Suzanne, my wife and mother to la principessa, and Benjamin, the long-suffering King of Bunnies.

Our backyard, nicely gnawed by said King of Bunnies, mere weeks ago.

And now, staring into the refrigerator of our backyard.  Where is that pie, anyway?

So long, friends.  I'll try to write again soon.

Tom

We're Ba(ck)

Well, Lillia is still cute, even if her old man has been a remiss blogger. Here she is with a gaggle of Iberis sempervirens at our front walk.


We HAVE been gone a lot, and I doubt there are many looking at this blog these days since I have been so remiss at regular entries, but here goes:
First off, here is a picture of Suzanne and Lillia in the Florida Keys in late April, which we visited for a medical conference in Miami. Following this photo, Suzanne tossed Lillia to me with surprising athleticism.
Luckily, I caught her.

Next while I stayed home, holed up in my basement doing 72 hours of continuing medical education video courses, Suzanne traveled with Lillia, her aunt Betsy and Uncle Henry, to the north east to see cousin Molly (below, with mom Janet and Uncle Henry in background) graduate from the Maine College of Art, with her BFA in Painting. Quite a trip, with Lillia tossing her cookies at the bottom of the jetway on the flight out to Boston, but recovering, as always, with much grace. (no pictures of this, thankfully.)


Lillia, taking in Molly's pictures at an exhibition.

Returning from Portland, they were able to stop in New Hampshire, to visit the Tardiff's and baby Anna, who was from the same orphanage in Yangchun as Lillia.


Swapping old times over apple juice and muffins.


Next stop, Linden NJ, where lillia danced with Grandma Joan...

...and later snacked on milk and cookies.

Lastly, a few pictures from Lillia's 2nd birthday. The cake was Suzanne's famous orange cake.
Many were there, including Cobin, below...


...and Judy and Elayna, above, who were also from our travel adoption group.


Finally, a picture of Lillia passing through the gate to the Plant Asia exhibit at the Denver Botanical Gardens. It has been a beautiful spring.

And now, the news (and an explanation of the "clever" title of this blog entry):

Lillia has turned two, and her language skills are slowly improving, though if you are a believer in the Denver Developmental milestones, she is quite behind the curve in language. She is a delightful girl, loving, cute, and very smart, well-coordinated and dexterous, but not quite ready for language as we know it. She has difficulties with consonant clusters and consonants in final position. Until recently all final consonants were replaced by /p/ or left off, so that sit becomes "sip" and plane becomes "play". She is starting to pronounce /t/ in final position, but has a long way to go. When she speaks she only uses single words. We are working with a speech therapist, and are not quite ready to turn management of the family stock portfolio to her yet.

Of course there are many other ways to gage intelligence then loquacity--and Lillia is quite bright. We are working with baby signs that are based on ASL, which helps somewhat with her frustration, and ours.

We expect the language lobes to kick in any day now, at which point, many friends have said, life as we know it will be over.

Love, Tom (and Suzanne)

Events and Pictures

Some pictures for the Lillia-deprived. Sorry about the infrequent posts. We had been snowed-in and curmudgeonly but Spring is breaking and the snows are losing out to the strong Denver sunshine. Some recent events:

So here is a picture of Lillia coming down the stairs into our basement to attend our impromptu Superbowl party. Our neighbor, Barbara, holds her.

Lillia explaining to guests some of the finer points of the game.

Peter, Barbara's main squeeze, and Lillia. That is David, Karen, and baby Simon in the background.

Lillia and Zara on a play date in our basement.

And down the slide.

This is a picture of Lillia at Cobin's first birthday party, down the street, on a sunny February day. Excellent cake, by the way.

Watching the talent show perfomance at the CCAI Chinese New Year Celebration. It is the year of the golden pig. Tom is an ox, as many of you may have guessed, Suzanne is a dog, and Lillia is a rooster.

Michaela, a couple months older than Lillia, visiting with mom, Michelle, and brother, Chris. Michaela is from Hunan province.

Goodbye, Friend

Jackie was our beautiful golden bunny. We lost her late Wednesday night to GI stasis. She had started to go off of her feed three days before, and we had taken her to the veterinarian who prescribed antibiotics and dropper feeds that morning, but Jackie died that night. She was 6 years old. She leaves behind Benjamin, her mate, who is two years older, and a grieving family.

We don’t know where Jackie was born, but she was found as a stray in Wyoming when she was a bit less than a year old. She was eventually brought to the shelter of the Colorado House Rabbit Society, where Suzanne and I adopted her as a companion for Benjamin, who had lost an earlier companion two months before. Jackie bossed Benjamin a bit at first, but they were a well-matched pair, who groomed and cared for each other, and never fought.

Jackie was a gentle and friendly bunny, who enjoyed being held and petted, and who loved to dance and gambol in the house and in the open air when she was able. Her fur was dense and soft. There was a certain spot on her back that when scratched, she would groom with abandon anything that was in front of her. She was a beautiful animal, and she was taken from our lives too soon. We will miss her.

Lillia is fine. She was wary of the bunnies and has only recently started showing real curiosity about them. Now she seems astonished by the very idea of bunnies. I am not sure whether she knows Jackie is gone, but Benjamin is needy, and together we are all spending a lot of time with him. Lillia smiles as she approaches Benjamin cautiously, and then pats him on the side.

Some pictures of Jackie and Benjamin:




Goodbye, friend.

Happy New Year!

May 2007 bring everyone love and peace.

Tom, Suzanne, and Lillia.

White Christmas

We had a white Christmas for, I believe, the first time since we’ve lived here (7 years). Now, I know that all of you who don’t live in Colorado picture us Denverites digging our way out of our snow caves in the spring, our new cubs born during the winter blinking in the unaccustomed sunlight. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are in the rain (and snow) shadow of the Rockies, and only get 15” of moisture per year. As Tom likes to say, Denver has two seasons: hot-and-dusty and cold-and-dusty. It’s even more unusual to get heavy snow during the winter months; our heaviest snow months are March and April. But here we are a week after the blizzard, still bouncing in and out of icy ruts on the side streets and we’re expecting ANOTHER heavy snowfall starting tomorrow. What’s going on here?? Looks like Lillia is getting her wish for non-stop blizzards.

Our neighbor’s south-facing roof last Friday. Guess which way the wind was blowing?


Unfortunately, Lillia has come down with RSV (respiratory syncitial virus), so she probably won’t be playing outside during this next snowstorm. She’s also had an upset stomach, so we spent a lot of time on Christmas Day cleaning up vomit. Ah, the joys of parenthood.

A couple of Christmas photos, pre-vomit:



Presents are as much fun to sit on as to open.


Lillia is adept at taking off pants and skirts. When she learns how to get a onesie off, she'll run around naked all the time, even in winter.

More later.

Suzanne

Blizzard

While the Great Blizzard of '06 has stranded 5000 passengers at DIA, indefinely suspended mail delivery, bus service, and garbage collection, and even (gasp!) shut down the shopping malls, Lillia wishes we could have a blizzard every day.

Lillia is always willing to pitch and help.

Lillia and her best friend Isobel, who lives across the street, get a ride from another neighbor.

The happy passengers.

Lillia and neighbor Patrick with the igloo Isobel's and Patrick's mother is building.

Tom attempting to excavate one of our cars .

The Prius is staying put for the time being.

Back indoors, Lillia looks very dashing in the tree skirt.

I've spent the past two days baking panettones for all and sundry. Which reminds me, I'd better go and check on my loaves upstairs. More later.

Suzanne

Tlaquepaque Redux

We are finally better, having come to the conclusion that almost all of our meals in Mexico were really great. But moving on to some final pictures...

So what does Princess Ramiken do on her final day in Mexico?

She provides an interview to a group of schoolboys in the Tlaquepaque market.

She teases daddy by practicing "tumbling exercises" close to the edge of the pool.

She confers with Princess Brisa, heir to Quinta Don Jose.

She communes with Chiquita,the Quinta Don Jose mascot who is reportedly the outcome of a breeding experiment involving 10 types of dogs and one type of bat. (I believe Chiquita was attempting to teach Lillia the basics of telekinesis.)

"Kiwi. Kiwi."

A soft focus moment.

Sick Days

Suzanne and I have both been sick the last couple of days. Lillia, of course, is well, as she has the most powerful immune system on the planet, tested and tuned in southern China. More from our trip maybe tomorrow.

Tom

Tequila!

As Napa is to wine, Tequila is to, well tequila. The town is home to many tequila enterprises, and surrounded by vast fields of agave, the plant from which tequila is derived. In a moment of inspiration, the Spaniard colonizers added the step of distillation to what was essentially an indian wine derived from a kind of cactus, and in an instant, made the margarita and modern civilization possible. Some photos:

Two pictures taken near the entrance of the Cofradia estate, showing neat rows of agave.
These had been trimmed to encourage the plant to grow more leaves, increasing the size of its pina heart and the output of juice per plant.

Each plant reproduces by sending out runners, which are collected and planted for the next generation of crops.

When the size of the pina (also the Spanish word for pineapple) approaches the size of Lillia, the plant is cut loose from its root and the spiny leaves are removed.

Yes, Lillia, the field workers carry a life-size model of you so that they can judge when it is time to harvest each plant. Yes, I agree, it is a quite clever arrangement.

The pina are then cut in half.

They are tossed in a gas oven and roasted by the ton.

This is the interior of an oven at a smaller tequila distillery.

Abel, our guide, brings us a piece of the roasted agave, which is about as sweet as a roasted sweet potato. If you click on the image, you should be able to get a better look at the roasted pinas behind him.

The roasted pinas are then crushed for their juice. This was done at one pointed with large mill stones. Now the process has been mechanized.

My friend "Lefty" Gonzalez reminds me here to make an appeal for industrial safety at any and all of these steps. So please, mind the slippery floor.

The juice is collected in large vats--these hold 18,000 liters each-- and then fermented.

Following fermentation the juice is then distilled.

Here the freshly distilled tequila is being drained into a plastic bucket where a worker (not visible here) is checking its specific gravity. No, I am afraid they don't sell it by the bucket. The largest bottle I saw was a mere 5 liters.

The clear tequila is either then bottled and sold immediately, or placed in oak barrels to age a bit and further develop flavor and color. These white oak barrels were brought from Canada, where they were originally used to age whisky.

The final product, in 5 liter bottles. It is recommended that no individual consume more than 1 bottle of this size per day.

A final note: no pictures here of the town of Tequila itself. There was a festival going on during our visit with a requisite 200 decibel explosion every 15 seconds or so, which drove us out. I asked a local what the festival was about, to which he responded, "EH?"

Tom