As you can tell from the balcony view in the previous post, we were at the summer place again last weekend. Ozan positively loves it there. When he's not standing on the balcony shouting and waving at passersby, he's down on the beach, playing with sand (see Picasa page) or, as in this video clip, enjoying the water. He is as into swimming as I am not – definitely gets it from his mother, who is an inveterate swimmer and has been practically since birth. He even seems to like (!) putting his face in the water.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Milestone reached
Ozan has now tried, and learned to like, watermelon. He was suspicious at first, but as you can see here, his fears were quickly allayed and he learned to chow down with the best of 'em.
Monday, July 27, 2009
OK, now this is scary
So we're watching TV just now, and we decide that since we've seen this episode of How I Met Your Mother at least four times, we should turn the TV off. Which we did. Ozan, surprised at the sudden cutoff, goes up to the set and pushes one of the channel buttons, so the TV goes back on. Impressive, but that's not the scary part: I said "Hey Ozan, could you put on CNN for me?" and by God, he DID IT. This entailed pushing the same channel button two more times and then stopping. We've got a little genius on our hands. Or at least a CNN fan.
You like me! You really like me!
Today, I must admit, I Googled myself to see if there were any comments on my recent lectures floating around yet. Lo and behold, I actually found one! This person had very nice things to say about me and my course. Thanks to her.
I also solved a minor little mystery. In one of the lectures I gave in the first session I noticed a guy in the back furiously keying stuff into his iPhone with his thumbs. I figured he was just taking notes in a particularly ergonomically unfriendly way. Turns out he was "tweeting," i.e. posting a running series of comments to Twitter. You can see the results here. They're in reverse chronogical order, so keep scrolling down to get an idea of how my (third) lecture went.
I also solved a minor little mystery. In one of the lectures I gave in the first session I noticed a guy in the back furiously keying stuff into his iPhone with his thumbs. I figured he was just taking notes in a particularly ergonomically unfriendly way. Turns out he was "tweeting," i.e. posting a running series of comments to Twitter. You can see the results here. They're in reverse chronogical order, so keep scrolling down to get an idea of how my (third) lecture went.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
What we're doin'
I came back from a very successful trip to the States last week. In fact, I would say it was one of the greatest achievements of my life – in a very real sense, I worked for 20 years to be able to give such lectures, and it was capped off by the awareness as I finished the very last lecture that this really was the best work I had ever done. (My good friend Dennis attended the lectures, and offers his own synopsis here.) Perhaps the greatest success, though, was when I came home and Ozan called me "Baba" with a clear understanding of what it meant.
The weekend after I returned, we headed off to our summer place on the outskirts of Istanbul. The weather was quite nice, so we took Ozan down to the "beach" (really a sand lot next to a concrete platform on the shore of the Sea of Marmara). That boy was one happy little merman! Meltem carried him out into the water a little bit, and he splashed around and squealed like crazy. He even cried when we tried to take him back to shore. Given his predilection for squirming around on land or sea (including an alarming penchant for throwing himself backward in a kind of attempted rear somersault), I'd say he is really turning into an athletic little guy. The intellectual within him will emerge at some point in the future... I hope...
Whatever else he is, Ozan is certainly independent-minded. He wants to do everything by himself and gets quite annoyed if you try to help out. (Wonder where he got that from.) Today, for example, when I was heading out the door to go to work, Ozan saw me going and decided he was coming too. So he took his own sandals and handed them to the nanny. As she stood there laughing at his cuteness, he lifted one leg way up to try to put his foot into one of the sandals in her hands. All accompanied by his stubborn "Uh! Uh! Uh!" noises. That just made my day.
Anyway, new pix posted on the Picasa page, and here's a video to keep you happy. When we can't take Ozan down to the sea itself, we fill his little inflatable pool on the balcony and let him splash away there.
The weekend after I returned, we headed off to our summer place on the outskirts of Istanbul. The weather was quite nice, so we took Ozan down to the "beach" (really a sand lot next to a concrete platform on the shore of the Sea of Marmara). That boy was one happy little merman! Meltem carried him out into the water a little bit, and he splashed around and squealed like crazy. He even cried when we tried to take him back to shore. Given his predilection for squirming around on land or sea (including an alarming penchant for throwing himself backward in a kind of attempted rear somersault), I'd say he is really turning into an athletic little guy. The intellectual within him will emerge at some point in the future... I hope...
Whatever else he is, Ozan is certainly independent-minded. He wants to do everything by himself and gets quite annoyed if you try to help out. (Wonder where he got that from.) Today, for example, when I was heading out the door to go to work, Ozan saw me going and decided he was coming too. So he took his own sandals and handed them to the nanny. As she stood there laughing at his cuteness, he lifted one leg way up to try to put his foot into one of the sandals in her hands. All accompanied by his stubborn "Uh! Uh! Uh!" noises. That just made my day.
Anyway, new pix posted on the Picasa page, and here's a video to keep you happy. When we can't take Ozan down to the sea itself, we fill his little inflatable pool on the balcony and let him splash away there.
