Day Two: East Lansing visit

I took Robby to Kellogg Conference Center for his new faculty orientation today then drove around East Lansing a bit. Someone had recommended living in the Bailey area, which is the neighborhood directly north of campus (north of Grand River Road). It's a cute little neighborhood with small, old houses. I saw a few people taking walks & walking their dog. It reminded me of Havertown, Pennsylvania. I drove up to Burcham Ave., where Deddy once lived for a month, until I hit East Lansing High School. It has an enormous campus with a student population that's half of most high schools in Los Angeles. It has large playing fields and a state-of-the-art football field (of course). I also passed a large middle school with a football field (oh brother). Burcham eastbound became windy and residential - condo complexes & tract housing. Then I came down Okemos Road and returned to my uncle's house.

The streets here are surprisingly empty. As I drove around at 8am, I was surprised by how few cars and people I saw on the big and residential streets. I hardly saw anyone leaving his house for work. I have a feeling that when next Wednesday arrives and students return to Michigan State University, the streets of East Lansing will be bustling and noisy. Still, I'm surprised to see so few residents of East Lansing out and about.

Touching Base: LA > SF > LA > HI > SF > LA > MI

It's been a long time since I've written in this. Life got kind of crazy at the end of June. My last day of teaching was on June 24th, and on that day we bolted to Napa Valley, California, for a wedding at Cornerstone Winery. We spent a few wonderful days living in North Beach (Little Italy) in San Francisco, where Atticus got to watch old Chinese people do calisthenics at Washington Square Park, we weaved through the congested Stockton Avenue with the stroller to get some good dimsum, & we saw boys plankingat Union Square in downtown SF.

We came back down to LA and spent a few weeks recuperating. I

successfully defended my dissertation proposal on July 27th, and when Robby spent a week in Germany, I went to live with my parents for a week.

Everything has been all fun & travel since the dissert

ation proposal defense. I had a girls' lunch date with Rebecca and friends in Villa Blanca, a restaurant in Beverly Hills owned by a participant in "Real Housewives of Orange County." The food was all right, every dish was chipped, the flowers in the centerpiece fading, and the menus falling apart.

Then I went to

a Japanese salon in West LA and cut 24 inches of hair. The stylist convinced me that I shouldn't get a boy cut, so I got a bob. The next day Robby went to Beverly Hills for a cut & shave, & he cut his 24 inches of hair too.

Then we drove up to San Francisco for a 1 week trip to Kauai with my sisters and t

heir families. I forgot about this blog (forgot that it was part travelogue), so I'll have to make my comments about Hawaii brief. I haven't been to Hawaii since 1987, & I've never been to Kauai before, so it was a

ll a new experience for me.

We stayed in Po'ipu, the south part of Kauai, at the Wyndham Resort (Koloa Landing). They had good airfare & hotel dea

ls, and we rented 3 condos for 3 families. There were 9 adults and 6 kids in total. Our condos faced a large children's pool that was no more than 4 feed deep. Atticus played in the 1

-foot area. Brenneker's Beach was the best place to go snorkling. Sheraton Beach was a great place to learn how to

surf. Spouting Horn was a quick, fun trip. Lydgate Park had an awesome baby beach. Tip Top Cafe for breakfast was good. We couldn't go far because the babies had to take their naps

every afternoon. This meant no long drives to the north side of Kauai nor long car trips to Waimea Canyon nor long hikes.

On the day

of our departure, United had a problem with our plane that it ignored in Los Angeles. As we sat on the plane and waited to depart, the flight crew had to decide whether to ship the missing mechanical part from Honolulu or fly us all to Honolulu & leave from there. After a few hours of waiting at the gate, United canceled our flight & sent us to a Marriott for the night. It was a huge headache, especially with small children, no milk, butt wipes, or diapers. I am still pretty irate about United's failure to fix the problem in Los Angeles, where airplane parts are plentiful.

We took a 9am flight the following morning. Atticus was wonderful in the plane, so time went by quickly. As soon as we landed in San Francisco, we hopped in our car and drove down to Los Angeles. We stopped at Harris Ranch for dinner and arrived to our home at 10:30pm. It was quite a doozy of a day.

Two days later, we drop off Atticus at my parents' and hop on a plane to Michigan.

I learned that Spirit Airlines really sucks. DON'T fly Spirit Airlines. Sure, the flights are cheap, but it charges passengers to choose seats ($10), for carry-on baggage ($35 online, $40 at the gate), and to print boarding passes at the airline counter. We didn't see anything of this coming, so we were totally taken aback by all the charges.

Now we're in Michigan to drive around and look for potential neighborhoods in which to live. Robby had a new faculty orientation tomorrow, and I'll hang out with my uncle all day.

Latest photos (kind of)

Atticus is a little sponge when it comes to verbal language. He is constantly imitating us. This evening, I said, "See?" to Robby to reinforce how right I was about something, & Atticus stood behind me and said, "See?"

Besides, his usual "baba," "mama," & "agua", he also says...

"up": Robby taught him this one

"po po": maternal grandmother

"bubble"

"scheisse": German for "shit"

"Chapu": our babysitter Liliana's son's nickname, which means grasshopper in Spanish

"dirty": for his diaper

Below is a picture of us at Robby's graduation. He hadn't officially finished his dissertation yet, so it was a pretty anti-climatic day for him. But he'll be uploading in the next day or two. Then the diploma will arrive in a few weeks. Then we'll be cutting our immensely long hair. My hair is so long that it drapes down to my butt and sometimes I tuck it into my pants by accident. I'll be very relieved to cut it short short.

He Grows Exponentially

Atticus has spent almost 10 days at my parents' house because Robby was gone last weekend for the ICA Conference & this weekend for a bachelor party. My, my, he has grown immensely from hanging out with his three older cousins (8, 5, & 3 years old).

Here are list of new things he can do now:

1. he can now peer over the breakfast table on tippy toes
2. he can say "po po" (title for mother's mother)
3. he can nod & shake head on command (in Chinese)
4. he comes down the stairs more quickly (backward on belly)
5. he likes to stick pointy things into electrical outlets and pull out plugs (all the clocks & lamps are unplugged now)
6. he takes hard things & bangs them into other hard things
7. he likes to feed himself using a spoon
8. he blinks when i blink at him
9. he really loves maya because she entertains him. mei mei can talk to him forever. she'd take his feet & pretend to smell them, then say, "ewww! stinky!" audra likes to watch him get his diaper changed because she wants to see if she has pooped. she likes to bathe next to him too.
10. he was clingy toward po po when i was gone over the weekdays.
11. all his teeth have come out, but he doesn't like to brush.
12. he has learned how to open a pen cap (already knows how to work the clicky pen)
13. he likes to draw with pencil.
14. he stands on empty boxes & climbs on stools.
15. he imitates animal noises that i read from a book ("whoo whoo, cheep cheep, mooooo, meow")
16. he says "ba ba" all the time. he misses robby. i think he is happiest when we're all together.
17. he has suddenly started preferring being held before he sleeps. oh oh. bad habit!
    

it's hard to capture his idiosyncrasies with a cameras. his fat little fingers just aren't as cute in a photograph.

Enjoying LA theater

Robby & I have been fortunate enough to find a wonderful babysitter who will watch Atticus as we explore LA theatre. Three weeks ago, we saw The Cripple of Inishmaan at our neighborhood Kirk Douglas Theatre. It was absolutely excellent, though the numerous bittersweet twists and turns in the plot left is feeling a little dizzy and unfulfilled.

Last weekend, we saw a modern adaptation of Moliere's Tartuffe, a hilariously bawdy play about a clever impostor who worms his way into a nobleman's family by acting devoutly religiously, gains the favor of the nobleman, & tricks the gullible sap into giving him the entire estate. We saw this funny play at our neighborhood theatre The Actor's Gang, which is run by actor & director Tim Robbins. It almost went bankrupt last year, but was miraculously saved (by generous donations?). The theatre sits at the corner of Washington Blvd. and Culver Blvd. in a small, beautifully renovated train station.

Yesterday, we returned to the Kirk Douglas Theatre to see Rodger Smith's Juan and John, a one-man, autobiographical story about a young boy's baseball obsession, his dealing with the 1965 violent altercation between San Francisco Giants' star pitcher Juan Marichal and Los Angeles Dodgers star catcher John Roseboro, and his childhood growing up in South Los Angeles during the Watts Riots and Vietnam War. He interviewed both baseball players and write this play using their words and his experiences. It was far more didactic that Robby would have liked. I found it too didactic in some places too, but it was very moving. Stories from the 1960s and '70s are particularly touching to me because I can't imagine the kind of turmoil Americans were going through then - civil rights movement, anti-war movement, Vietnam and napalm. That era presented many defining moments for America.

We have another play to attend at the Kirk Douglas next week. I love not knowing anything about the play before I see it. The experience of witnessing a story unfold with no knowledge of where it's going is such an exhilarating feeling.

Hello, Goodbye, Plane!

Yesterday afternoon, we fed Atticus in our backyard. He wandered around, pulling small oranges from the trees & trying to attach them back onto the branches. He meddled with some potted plants and fell over on some upturned creepy crawlies. He stuck his hand in dirt and waved to passing planes. & he tried to step on our neighbor's tomato plants.

Yay, summer!

He held Robby's iPhone up to his ear (like a boombox) and danced while it played Yo Gabba Gabba songs. We are starting to love Yo Gabba Gabba. Oh no!

Cripple of Inishmaan

Yesterday, Saturday, Robby, Atticus, and I attended the Espe Family Day Care parents' luncheon. Espe made a wonderful lunch for us & we sat at tables outside & familiarized ourselves with the babies' parents. Then Robby and I left Atticus with Lilia & went to see The Cripple of Inishmaan at the Kirk Douglas Theatre.

It was a fantastically hilarious play about a small community of people on the island of Inishmaan, off the coast of Ireland, in the 1930s. A Hollywood director has come to Ireland to make a film about the Aran Islands. The people of Inishmaan are all eager to try for roles in this film (or, as they call it, "filim"), including Cripple Billy, the town cripple. He is an avid reader & starer of cows. The characters on the island are all characters: Eileen, Kate, Slippy Helen, Bartley, Babby Bobby, and Johnnie Pateen Mike. They are all horribly mean to each other, but the play is laugh-out-loud funny. We had a good time.

This Irish cast has been touring for 8 months. They're heading to San Francisco next.

During intermission, I was standing in the lobby when a pair of sunglasses dropped out of the back pocket of an older, well-dressed woman. I picked up her glasses & handed them to her just as she turned around. She looked mildly distressed. "Oh," she said. She wiped the lens & said, "They're brand new...Fendi...$350," she said under her breath with eyebrows raised.

Oi.

We always feel like foreigners when we attend theatre. The theatre-going population is always old and White, & Robby & I stick out like sore thumbs. We think that theatre is the best kept secret anywhere, & we can't figure out why younger people don't take advantage of it. We chalk up the absence of younger people to the cost of the tickets. It's really worth it though.