Archive for April, 2008

Ronin’s Favorite Song

Tuesday, April 29th, 2008

Whenever Ronin is pitching a fit that is not consoled by any sort of human endeavor, we break out the big guns: Bollywood classic “Chaiyya Chaiyya” from the movie “Dil Se.”

She LOVES this song. More than all the other songs. Joshua carries it in mp3 format on his cell phone so he can play it at a moment’s notice. This has saved not only us but quite possibly the entire city of Portland on more than a few occasions when Ronin Operation Meltdown had commenced countdown and YOU NOW HAVE T MINUS FOUR MINUTES TO REACH MINIMUM SAFE DISTANCE!!

Behold: The Magic.

So this is just one scene from a full movie, of which the rest is not bad either. Guy falls head over heels for mysterious train girl and pursues her relentlessly in spite of clear signals on her part to stay the fuck away from her. Because here’s the big plot crisis: it turns out that the beautiful train girl is in fact a suicide bomber and due to explode soon. Once our head-banging hero finds this out he’s all, “My Love, my Future, blowing up people is not the answer! Come away with me because I love you with all my heart [dil se]; our lives together will be as sweet as Urdu poetry” and she’s all, “Dude you are SO CLUELESS. You try growing up in my world where your family is slaughtered before you and you are raped at age 12 by the army and see if you still feel that way. And by the way, do I need to have the crap beat out of you again by a gang of my ‘brothers’ or are you going to leave me alone already?” Anyway, it is a tender love story that takes several hours to play out and it ends rather, um, abruptly. It’s available on Netflix.

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[I don’t quite have all the moves down yet. Ronin likes the head-banging part though.]


Upside Down on the Big Red Ball

Saturday, April 26th, 2008

Grandpa Jeff is back and taking lots of pictures. Ronin loves the ball. It’s really critical equipment around here. I don’t know what we’d do with out it.


Three Months (And One Week..)

Sunday, April 20th, 2008

[We actually bought her a pacifier and she did not care for it. This is how we keep the car peace ’round our parts.]

We took our first trip for Ronin this past weekend. Also our first trip in our NEW 1984 Volvo! Woo! Both took the drive to Eugene surprisingly well. The car performed flawlessly and Ronin slept the majority of the trip or was amused by me making faces and shaking her bucky-ball. The only ones who suffered were Joshua and I when we and 56,720,572 other vehicles were stopped on the freeway in between exits for over an hour waiting for the authorities to clear an accident; they eventually just closed the freeway and rerouted traffic over surface streets to the next exit. ARGH. We barely survived and by the time all the cars got back to the freeway after the detour, everyone who had not spontaneously combusted out of frustration was all bulgey-eyed with anticipation as they gunned their engines to 100mph, flying away into the void. We enjoyed about ten minutes of this before pulling off to get some food because suddenly Joshua was starving to death. I fretted the entire time thinking that all those cars—the ones who were lined up halfway to Washington waiting on the accident—were coming and they would take up all the precious road space before we could get to it. By the time we got back on the road, I was all in knots and when we came to a screeching halt not 20 miles down the road, I blamed it all on Joshua but it turned out to actually be the fault of the factory outlet malls in Woodburn.

It was a bad day for traffic. I don’t know if it is just our rotten luck or if it is always so nasty. The last time we drove to Eugene was in November and we also got stuck in traffic en route to Eugene.

[Since I get up a million times per night, Joshua gets up with Ronin when she’s ready to rock at 7am. I try to go back to sleep. She usually crashes right back out though after an hour…]

Ronin has been making a ton of cute baby sounds these past three days. Ahhhs, ohhhhs, goooos, etc. She just sits there and babbles. She LOVES to go on walks and I (and my sanity… and my ass) can’t really be more thankful for this. She shrieks with delight as we go along, it is really adorable. Eventually she ‘eh eh eh’s and then about a minute later, she is asleep. There is still no real pattern to her nap schedule except that she takes short naps in the day and long naps at night. She still gets up three+ times per night, which is okay with me I suppose (especially when it is only three times and not, say, five; after three times, getting out of a warm bed is suddenly 1000 times more horrendous) but I keep hearing how every single other baby on the planet by this age sleeps at least 35 hours per night and then brings you coffee in the morning. I know not what to say. I’m hoping that, um, my baby’s genius brilliance is too much to let lie for more than three hours at a go.

Speaking of genius brilliance, Ronin can now grasp things. With mild difficulty, but still. The baby brains, they do astound. We brought back a miniature pair of maracas from Eugene and she’ll grab the handle and try to shove the thing in her mouth. She is less coordinated with tools and tends to rub it all over her face before making it into her mouth so we stuck the pacifier on the pointy end so she wouldn’t put out an eye in her zeal. Let’s just say this kid would not pass the touch-your-nose-with-your-index-finger part of a sobriety test. Well, she wouldn’t pass the walk in a straight line part either.

[The above two photos Jeff took when visiting a couple of weeks ago.]


Skylark

Friday, April 18th, 2008

Another photo from Jeff.


Bounce Bounce

Thursday, April 17th, 2008

Ronin loves to bounce on the big red ball but the constant movement makes for blurry pictures. That doesn’t stop Grandpa Jeff though.


Cheyenne Weil, Joshua Coxwell