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.