Christmas fun

There's something so satisfying about seeing Ozan open and enjoy a present – in this case, a puzzle from Nana.

New pictures are up

I've finally uploaded about 40 pictures Nana (=mom) took when she visited last month. Some of them are absolute masterpieces. Now back to the grind...

Dancing at Club Kelepir 2

Here is more dance footage than you can shake a stick at. Yes, this is how we spend our nights at MelbaBlog Central Command HQ (we certainly don't spend it posting to this blog, as you can tell!).

Dancing at Club Kelepir

Up for air

Summer, and the wonderful indolence that goes with it, is emphatically over. Both Meltem and I are exceedingly busy now. I myself have extra responsibilities this year, because I'm now "academic coordinator" for our Humanities course (whose skeletal but well-intentioned web page you can see here). So over the past two weeks I have been dealing not only with beginning teaching, but also with registration and the insanity that goes with it. Prime example: The Registrar somehow neglected to put the requested 25-student-per-section quota on the class sections, with the result that – since word of our coolness got out and 350 students showed up – one section alone had 100 students! I had to herd students from overcrowded sections into undercrowded ones, often in the teeth of conflicts and complaints. Thank heaven that's over now, and things should settle into the normal semesterly grind. I'm also teaching at TIPPS, of course, as many as 30 hours a week (which reminds me, today's SAT day). So my aforementioned summer indolence is but a fading memory, and I have to cram as much personal stuff into my one day off per week as I can.

Another aspect of our overly full lives right now is our ongoing apartment hunt. After getting burned twice (once with a place that turned out to have been built illegally, once with a place whose seller chickened out at the last minute), we've decided that it's a pipe dream to think we're going to get a place in our current neighborhood, and we're going to suck it up and accept commuting as an ugly necessity of life in the big city. Last week we looked at a few places in a developing neighborhood called Göktürk, about a 25-minute drive from here. Next week we'll look (again) in the neighborhood on the Asian side where Meltem's brother lives. Our right to stay in faculty housing doesn't run out until February, and Meltem has filed a request for an extension, so it's not like we have to grab a place right now, but it sure would be nice to have this end on a successful note.

Anyway, that's how things are here. Now, since you're more interested in the doings of His Majesty than in those of his parents, I have finally put up new pictures of Ozan on the Picasa page, mostly from our recent trip to Polonezköy where we took him to an open-air zoo. Enjoy!

The beat of his own drum

Who needs music? (I don't remember what was showing on the TV but God, it sounds annoying, doesn't it?)

Walking his turtle

Ozan takes his turtle for a stroll.

Who's the boss

Ozan puts me in my proper place. I'm not posting the excerpt in which he knocks me silly with a spoon – that's too humiliating.



Some translation is in order: First, Ozan says "Go," which is his word for anything round. Then Meltem asks him "Where did we go today?" and he says "Atta," which is Turkish kiddie talk for "out for a walk." There follows a series of questions about where parts of my body are, which Ozan passes with flying colors, natch. Then we ask him how old he is; usually he holds up one finger, but we haven't gotten him to say "one" yet. This is the point at which he decides to whack me with his wheel-thingy. Finally Meltem asks him "Where did Daddy go today?" and he rubs his fingers together, which here as elsewhere means "money," i.e. I went to work.

How I spent my summer vacation

Well, it wasn't all like this, but this sure was the best part.

Alive and well (and dry)

August was a slow month for blog posts, sorry 'bout that. I'll try to make it up with witty repartee and funny videos.

By the way, you may have heard about the floods here. Our home neighborhood (near the university) wasn't affected, but the neighborhood right next to our summer place was devastated. If you saw pictures on the news of cars getting washed out to sea amidst collapsing houses, that was Selimpasa. Thank God our summer place is on a hill. We're expecting more torrential rain this weekend, alas.

Dog day doings

Here we are in the middle of August (where does the time go?). As I write this Meltem and Ozan are at our summer place, while I am holding the fort back in Istanbul for a few days. Meltem just finished teaching in the summer school and thus needed a good rest, while my schedule is in fact picking up steam as kids come back from summer vacation and realize they need to study for their SATs. When we went to the summer place as a group last Friday, Ozan was extremely cute when he recognized where he was – hey, this is the place where I get to run around and play in the sea! It's great to see him developing memories of his favorite places.

Since I am festering in solitude without my wife and child to keep me company, I've been watching recent videos of Ozan's doings, a few of which I share with you.

This one was shot when we visited Meltem's friend Nihan, who lives on the Asian side with her twin daughters. Ozan was cranky that day, but in this video he's very cute as he brings an offering to one of the girls.



In this one, Ozan has, for reasons best known to himself, donned a fabric box as a hat, and is now busily playing with his shape-turtle. As you can see, he has precious little time for interference from the likes of me.



Finally, this video shows the zany hijinks that characterize our apartment in the early evening, although for some reason the camera chose not to focus very well.

Li'l swimmer

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.

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.

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.

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.

More Ozan doings

We recently had the family over for either my birthday or Father's Day – I honestly can't remember which (!). Great fun was had when we broke out the bubbles, as you can see:



And this one I shot just today. Ozan apparently decided to play sandal delivery boy.

Bouncing back

OK, let me take a moment out of my busy schedule to fill you in. Ozan has now had his first childhood illness, to wit: exanthum subitum (just had to use that cool Latin name). Also known as "sixth disease," which is what the doctor here called it – and I thought, what the hell were the first five? –, this means our poor little guy had a high fever for about three days, then a blotchy rash for a couple more. He was also whiny and cranky for about a day or two after that. The most worrisome part was the fever, which breached the 40ºC (104ºF) mark. We kept going in to his room in the middle of the night to put cool cloths on his head and arms; very heartbreaking. But as I say, now he's over it, and let me tell you that for the past 36 hours or so he has been just unbelievably cheerful, all smiles and wanting to play. I am really coming to understand the joys of parenting.

Toddling and babbling

Sorry we've been out of touch. Maybe these videos of Ozan's latest antics will make you forgive us. Also, more pictures on the Picasa page now.

A walk in the woods

Today we went back to the Atatürk Arboretum, having discovered it when Dad and Susan were here. During non-trafficky hours it's only about a 20-minute drive, and it's really peaceful and beautiful. Ozan got to try out his budding walking skills amidst nature's greenery.