Insert clever title here

I'm too tired to think of one. But you can enjoy this video nonetheless.

Be vewwy vewwy quiet

I'm hunting the wild Ozan in his lair: under a chair in the kitchen.

The white stuff

The other night we looked out the window and surprise! – we were having a snowstorm of the biggest, fuzziest flakes I've seen in a long time. (For you language buffs, in Turkish this is called snowing "lapa lapa.") It snowed hard for a long enough time to get some accumulation, and a couple of families in our complex took advantage of the situation to go have a rare snowball fight. Our own future snowball-hurler was snoozing soundly.



Interestingly, since Istanbul is so big, and probably also because of its various elevations and the effect of the Bosphorus, not all parts of the city got snow. For example, Meltem's parents didn't see even one snowflake. Lucky us! Luckier still that it all melted overnight, or there would have been hell to pay on the roads the next morning. Such is life in our fair town.

Life of the party

You may have enjoyed the photos of Ozan's birthday party on the Picasa page. Here is a video I shot with my cell phone of Ozan playing with balloons. I swear I have never seen him so happy. Unfortunately you can't see his face much in this short clip (my phone only does 15-second videos), but you can hear him squealing with delight.

Our happy boy turns 1

Today is Ozan's first birthday. (He shares it with Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln, who I hope feel honored by the coincidence.) If you want to see how far we've come since the "Welcome!" picture on this blog, check out this video:



Backstory: While feeding Ozan his dinner, or at least attempting to, Meltem bent down to pick up something His Majesty had thrown floorward and bumped her head on the table. Well, this just absolutely cracked up Ozan. In fact it marked the first time he ever laughed without us trying hard to make him laugh. So naturally Meltem, ever the good sport, intentionally "bumped" her head several more times and I caught his beautiful "kahkaha" on video for you.

UPDATE: As we were filming the above, the camera's batteries gave out, so I had to switch to my cell phone. Here's the video from that, in which you can see Meltem eliciting Ozan's giggles with mock self-abuse.

And here's a picture of the Man of the Hour with the "cake" (really a pie) that Meltem got him on his actual birthday.

An Ozan sampler

To make up for the long silence, here's a nice video from the other night, in which you can see Ozan showing off some of his talents, including babbling, blowing kisses, and demonstrating his rather unnerving strength.