Juma, this morning:
Who let the dogs out? ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff
Who let the dogs out? ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Monday, February 26, 2007
juma fest
Not sure what's up with his eye...starting to blink?
Juma and his best friend pretend to be dinosaurs.
Juma plays outside after last night's snowstorm (only the second one of the winter!)
Friday, February 23, 2007
curriculum vitae
Juma B.
Top Bunk, Second Bedroom
Apartment on the Right
Connecticut, America
Top Bunk, Second Bedroom
Apartment on the Right
Connecticut, America
EDUCATION
Beckham School of Babies
- Baby of Fine Arts of Crying, 2003
- Toddler of Communications, 2004
- Big Boy of Potty-training, 2005
- Smart Kid of Literature, 2006
- Preschooler of Arts, 2006
- Preschooler of Sciences Candidate, 2007
City Public Library
- Patron, 2003-present
- Member, 2005-present
- Swimming Lessons, Fall 2006
- Creative Movement Lessons, Spring 2006
- Tiny Tots Karate Lessons, 2007-present
- Kindergarten Readiness Grant, 80% tuition, need-based, 2005-06, 2006-07
- Cutest Kid in the World (judges: Mom and Dad), 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007
- Strongest Dinosaur Award, 2007
- Best Break Dancer Award, 2006, 2007
- Valentine's Day Card for Mom, 2006, 2007
- A Letter to a Cousin in Germany, 2005, 2006
- Thank You Notes to Grandmas and Grandpas, 2005, 2006, 2007
- Reading
- Going to Bed on Time
- Staying in Bed at Night
- Playing Computer Games (Elmo, Sponge Bob)
- Walking to Friend's House by Himself
- Dressing Himself
- Making Parents Smile
Thursday, February 22, 2007
busy
I took on too much this semester, and I'll really feeling the crunch. I want to keep up the blog, but can't find much time. I think it'd be a good idea to just put pictures up, but we haven't taken any new pictures. Sheesh.
Here's some of the stuff I'm trying to do:
-get outside comments on and rewrite paper on last summer's research on maternal anemia, with an eye toward publication
-design, get ethical review board permission for (got it today!), and conduct a small study on the effects of changing policies on syringe-exchange in Connecticut
-write a concept sheet (with an eye toward writing and publishing a paper) on health-care utilization, based on a large HIV prevention research study being conducted in India
-work
-keep the house in somewhat decent order
-cook, eat, and clean up
-write a midterm taking survey data, cleaning it up, coding, analyzing, and interpreting it
-write a midterm on the epidemiological associations between religiosity/spirituality and health
-design an (fake) intervention for HIV-positive Jamaican youth to get them to take their meds
-read a Swahili-language novel about prisoners who were jailed (without reason, charge, or trial) after the assassination of the first president of Zanzibar
-pay attention to Juma
-pay attention to Justin
-not go insane
Here's some of the stuff I'm trying to do:
-get outside comments on and rewrite paper on last summer's research on maternal anemia, with an eye toward publication
-design, get ethical review board permission for (got it today!), and conduct a small study on the effects of changing policies on syringe-exchange in Connecticut
-write a concept sheet (with an eye toward writing and publishing a paper) on health-care utilization, based on a large HIV prevention research study being conducted in India
-work
-keep the house in somewhat decent order
-cook, eat, and clean up
-write a midterm taking survey data, cleaning it up, coding, analyzing, and interpreting it
-write a midterm on the epidemiological associations between religiosity/spirituality and health
-design an (fake) intervention for HIV-positive Jamaican youth to get them to take their meds
-read a Swahili-language novel about prisoners who were jailed (without reason, charge, or trial) after the assassination of the first president of Zanzibar
-pay attention to Juma
-pay attention to Justin
-not go insane
Thursday, February 15, 2007
back home
With the terrible winter storm all over the midwest and northeast, flights were canceled, so Justin couldn't make it out of Hartford. He waited and tried for the next flight, which was canceled. And the next flight, which was canceled too. He tried to reschedule for today, but everyone else did too, so it's overbooked. He tried to reschedule for Friday and even for Saturday (the day of his Grandpa's birthday, the reason for flying out), but not luck.
So he came back, arriving home almost 12 hours after first leaving the house. We were glad to have him back, but sad he couldn't see his family.
.......
Juma and I did go out and play in the snow in the afternoon, but it's not snow! Not a single snow flake in there. It's all little, flattened balls of ice, sleet, I guess. It's very powdery, and doesn't hold together at all, so there was no hope for a snow ball fight or snowman. Juma played in it like a kid plays in the sandbox, with buckets and shovels.
That lasted about 15 minutes, and we went in for hot chocolate, because it was just so cold outside.
So he came back, arriving home almost 12 hours after first leaving the house. We were glad to have him back, but sad he couldn't see his family.
.......
Juma and I did go out and play in the snow in the afternoon, but it's not snow! Not a single snow flake in there. It's all little, flattened balls of ice, sleet, I guess. It's very powdery, and doesn't hold together at all, so there was no hope for a snow ball fight or snowman. Juma played in it like a kid plays in the sandbox, with buckets and shovels.
That lasted about 15 minutes, and we went in for hot chocolate, because it was just so cold outside.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Happy Valentine's day, everyone!
For our Valentine's Day, we have a major winter storm, a mix of snow, sleet, and freezing rain, with gusts of wind up to 50 miles per hour.
So Juma's school is closed.
But Yale is not.
Justin took a shuttle to campus at 3:45am, then a car service to the Hartford airport at 4am. Then he found out his flight was canceled. And all the flights in his layover city, Chicago, were canceled. So he's sitting at the airport, waiting to see if a flight later in the day will work out. He brought some books to read, but he forgot the power cord on his laptop, so he can't used his computer.
I have two classes that I can't show up to, an essay I can't write, a meeting I have to go to anyway, and paper to edit, a grant proposal to write, and regular homework to stay caught up on. And a extroverted 4-year old who can't possibly play independently for more than two minutes. Or one TV show.
There's a great sledding hill down the block, but the snow isn't good enough to sled on.
Do I win for stupidest Valentine's Day?
At least I get to spend it with Juma, resident cutie-patootie.
For our Valentine's Day, we have a major winter storm, a mix of snow, sleet, and freezing rain, with gusts of wind up to 50 miles per hour.
So Juma's school is closed.
But Yale is not.
Justin took a shuttle to campus at 3:45am, then a car service to the Hartford airport at 4am. Then he found out his flight was canceled. And all the flights in his layover city, Chicago, were canceled. So he's sitting at the airport, waiting to see if a flight later in the day will work out. He brought some books to read, but he forgot the power cord on his laptop, so he can't used his computer.
I have two classes that I can't show up to, an essay I can't write, a meeting I have to go to anyway, and paper to edit, a grant proposal to write, and regular homework to stay caught up on. And a extroverted 4-year old who can't possibly play independently for more than two minutes. Or one TV show.
There's a great sledding hill down the block, but the snow isn't good enough to sled on.
Do I win for stupidest Valentine's Day?
At least I get to spend it with Juma, resident cutie-patootie.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
memories
This past week, I've been bringing to mind some memories from childhood that made me smile. Wilsons, you remember these?
We're all sitting or laying around the living room of the house on Main Street. It's late, and probably a school night. We are gathered for family prayer, waiting for Dad to say the prayer or to call on someone to pray so we can all go to bed. He didn't call on anyone, which usually meant he was going to say the prayer. So we wait. And wait. Did we realize Dad had fallen asleep? Or did we just wait, wondering what was going on. Suddenly, Dad leaps up from his seat on the fireplace hearth and is all the way across the living room in under a second. Everyone looks at him in shock (How did he more so fast?) as he says in exasperation, "Not one soul has gone to bed!" The kids look around at each other in amusement, as someone explains that we were waiting for him. (I'm giggling as I write.)
____
Mom, in her commendable and ongoing effort to have us eat healthy meals (we'll all thank her later for cracked wheat for breakfast and three veggies at dinner when we don't get cancer), she buys The Worst Vegetarian Cookbook of All Time. The problem with this cookbook is that, instead of taking great recipe ideas from places with long traditions of no- or low-meat diets, like India or the eastern Mediterranean, this book tried to adapt the classic meat-and-potato diet of America. I say if you aren't going to eat meat, than just don't bother with hamburgers. That simple.
But The Worst Vegetarian Cookbook of All Time disagreed and tried to pass off Happy Chicken Burgers as actual food. "I tried these on my family, and they loved them!" the book beamed. (I'm making up that quote, but it could be true.) So one summer day, Mom whipped up a mess of shredded veggies, tofu, and who knows what else, shaped them like burgers, and plopped them on the table with all the regular hamburger fixin's.
To the pack of us wild and hunger kids, they did not look appetizing. In fact, they looked a little more like food that had already been eaten, if you get my drift. But Mom had had a hectic day, and was frankly tired of cooking dinner every day just to hear at least three kids complain about the food. So in a preemptive strike, she put warned us firmly, "Not. A. Word."
We were duly obedient and each took a bite of our Happy Chicken Burgers. They were the most awful pieces of slop we'd ever had, but in an effort to be nice to Mom, we swallowed.
To our delight, Mom started laughing. She, too, realized that The Worst Vegetarian Cookbook of All Time had given us The Worst Vegetarian Dinner of All Time. She acknowledged that the Happy Chicken Burgers were simply disgusting and excused us from eating them. We all laughed and laughed, and started making jokes about the burgers and how the author of the cookbook must be insane or lack taste buds to try to pass of this stuff as food. Randall, our resident comedian brother, dubbed the things "Vegetarian Roadkill," and the name stuck.
We're all sitting or laying around the living room of the house on Main Street. It's late, and probably a school night. We are gathered for family prayer, waiting for Dad to say the prayer or to call on someone to pray so we can all go to bed. He didn't call on anyone, which usually meant he was going to say the prayer. So we wait. And wait. Did we realize Dad had fallen asleep? Or did we just wait, wondering what was going on. Suddenly, Dad leaps up from his seat on the fireplace hearth and is all the way across the living room in under a second. Everyone looks at him in shock (How did he more so fast?) as he says in exasperation, "Not one soul has gone to bed!" The kids look around at each other in amusement, as someone explains that we were waiting for him. (I'm giggling as I write.)
____
Mom, in her commendable and ongoing effort to have us eat healthy meals (we'll all thank her later for cracked wheat for breakfast and three veggies at dinner when we don't get cancer), she buys The Worst Vegetarian Cookbook of All Time. The problem with this cookbook is that, instead of taking great recipe ideas from places with long traditions of no- or low-meat diets, like India or the eastern Mediterranean, this book tried to adapt the classic meat-and-potato diet of America. I say if you aren't going to eat meat, than just don't bother with hamburgers. That simple.
But The Worst Vegetarian Cookbook of All Time disagreed and tried to pass off Happy Chicken Burgers as actual food. "I tried these on my family, and they loved them!" the book beamed. (I'm making up that quote, but it could be true.) So one summer day, Mom whipped up a mess of shredded veggies, tofu, and who knows what else, shaped them like burgers, and plopped them on the table with all the regular hamburger fixin's.
To the pack of us wild and hunger kids, they did not look appetizing. In fact, they looked a little more like food that had already been eaten, if you get my drift. But Mom had had a hectic day, and was frankly tired of cooking dinner every day just to hear at least three kids complain about the food. So in a preemptive strike, she put warned us firmly, "Not. A. Word."
We were duly obedient and each took a bite of our Happy Chicken Burgers. They were the most awful pieces of slop we'd ever had, but in an effort to be nice to Mom, we swallowed.
To our delight, Mom started laughing. She, too, realized that The Worst Vegetarian Cookbook of All Time had given us The Worst Vegetarian Dinner of All Time. She acknowledged that the Happy Chicken Burgers were simply disgusting and excused us from eating them. We all laughed and laughed, and started making jokes about the burgers and how the author of the cookbook must be insane or lack taste buds to try to pass of this stuff as food. Randall, our resident comedian brother, dubbed the things "Vegetarian Roadkill," and the name stuck.
Sunday, February 04, 2007
juma's funny
A couple weeks ago, Juma has two birthday parties to go to, both of boys in his class from school. One boy invited everyone in the class, and the other boy's parents invited only a few kids from the class--and asked for discretion so the other kids wouldn't feel bad.
In between the two parties, we invited Juma's classmate over to play. When it was time for us to leave for the party, we told his friend it was time to go home.
"We've got somewhere else we have to go," I explained, avoiding telling him that we were headed to another birthday party.
"Yeah," Juma piped in, "we won't tell you because you're not invited."
I pulled Juma aside, "Honey, that's exactly what we didn't want to tell him."
Oh well.
In between the two parties, we invited Juma's classmate over to play. When it was time for us to leave for the party, we told his friend it was time to go home.
"We've got somewhere else we have to go," I explained, avoiding telling him that we were headed to another birthday party.
"Yeah," Juma piped in, "we won't tell you because you're not invited."
I pulled Juma aside, "Honey, that's exactly what we didn't want to tell him."
Oh well.
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