The Best Money I Ever Spent
I’ve spent money on lots of things, most of them truly regrettable. For instance, the 200 or so CD’s I purchased as a young, single professional, flush with disposable income and incredibly bored. I would take a drive over to HMV every Wednesday, browsing new releases. If nothing looked interesting, by god I WOULD FIND SOMETHING. So every week, that business got at least $15 of my paycheck. Most weeks it was more like $30-45.
Do the math: about $15 x 200 = $3000. This is over a few years, and does not take into account all the $20 DVDs I purchased.
As an older, more *ahem* responsible adult, I’ve grown wiser. This has probably less to do with time + knowledge, and more to do with the fact that our lifestyle now means I carry everything we own from place to place. I simply do not have the physical stamina or strength to schlep non-essential crap from one place to another.
In my last post, I talked about Cole’s discovery of amazing things. One such amazing things which I forgot to mention was the MP3 playing cell phone. I first noticed it used by the waiters at our favorite Goan beach shack, who would babysit Cole throughout our meals there. I would hear some tinny sounding music coming from somewhere behind me, and turn to find Cole on the snooker table, cell phone in hand, grooving out to Rihanna, or whatever pop song was currently blaring from every shack that week.
It was a great way to keep him happy, but it meant he now expected to be able to pick up my iPhone and have tunes playing for him while he whirled around shaking it in his little sausage link fingered hand.
Did I mention that when he gets bored he tends to let whatever he’s holding drop on the floor?
Something needed to be done. I couldn’t have him dropping this phone on a whim. Queue the Rishikesh shop where I added money to my pre-paid phone. I noticed a cheap looking MP3 player in the shopkeeper’s glass counter.
“is that an MP3 player? How much?”
“Uh, 700 Rupee.” about $15US
I got cold feet and walked away, not buying the fairly reasonably priced device. When my son dropped my iPhone off the bed again that night, I immediately regretted it, and vowed to go back the next day and make it right.
The next day, the shop was closed. And the next. And the next day. I was in a panic. I had utterly blown my one chance at having something for Cole to throw around while listening to rockin’ tunes.
One our second to last day in Rishikesh, I went back one more time, not expecting anything, but he was there!
“How much for the MP3 player?” I asked again as if I hadn’t already played this out with him. a week before.
“Uh, 600 rupee.”
Woah, okay. $13 bucks is better than $15, as long as it works. He was eyeing it up glumly though, like he knew it wasn’t going to work. I was scared. I took it back to our room in the Ashram we were staying, and after some frightening false starts, I got it to work!
And as it stands right now, this is the best money I have ever spent. No more stress about the phone, a nice long battery life, and Cole loooooves it. Don’t believe me though, watch him loving it right here.
PS: I am incredibly proud to also announce that I made an ebook that takes all of what I wrote about here on the blog from my time going around India by train. Not only is all the material from the blog (cleaned up nicely) but a lot of tips for how to create your own train adventure in India, what to expect when you get here, how to navigate the toilets (hello essential information!) and a wrap up of how the gear held up and my thoughts on India and the trip, in a way I never got to do on the blog.
Surviving the Indian Railway also has tons, and tons of photos I never got to show on the blog, all laid out really nicely. I am really proud of how great it looks, so much so that there is a ten page preview available on the book’s page. Please give it a look, and you know where to find me to tell me what you think! Thanks guys!
The Restaurant Situation
Recently, Cole has started being a kind of a pain in the butt when we go out to restaurants.
We assumed this was because he has started teething. I am sure he has started this super fun</sarcasm> part of his life, as his drool mechanism is at full capacity, creating a slimy mess in full view of the respectable, non drooling citizenry.
So as it stands, our otherwise tranquilo kid won’t suffer restaurants. Our plan for fixing this?
Keep taking him to restaurants.
It’s a sort of expensive, yet delicious therapy, but if we want a child who can and will behave well out in the world, in front of people, we have to… gulp… bring him out in the world. In front of people. This method just requires a great deal more attention and effort on our part. I think too many parents, knowing what a hassle it can be, just choose to order in pizza. That is also a tasty option, but (I think) by taking that shortcut early, parents are in for a harder slog somewhere down the road.
I would like to take a moment to apologize to those patrons who have witnessed minor meltdowns. We recognize the inconvenience this causes, and work hard to quickly excuse ourselves from wherever we are when he gets too loud. We haven’t become *those* parents yet. We don’t let the little dude “cry it out”. I promise, this is a phase that he will get through sooner than later. He’s already responding to the therapy and getting better.
Now my waistline needs some therapy.
First big parental failing: Sunburn!
Fatherhood Fail edition.
We had an unnaturally nice day here in Bogota this weekend, so we went out to take some pictures and videos of the joint. Cole was in his usual spot, wrapped up close to momma in his moby, which he has grown so accustomed to, he will sometimes pitch a fit once in awhile if one of us does not wrap him up and walk him around.
Things were going well, and we set up for one shot that would take us about twenty minutes of being stationary to complete. I was worried at first, as a small strip of Cole’s face was right in the sun’s path. We decided to flip around 180 degrees though, and on inspection, he seemed to be in the clear.
I was wrong.
It’s would have been bad enough that his handsome visage had been temporarily marred by nature’s rays because I forgot to bring sunblock. I do that. I’m a forgetter of things. Ask just about anyone who knows me.
But nope. Not this time. We had the good stuff in the bag. It would have taken 30 seconds to get the sunblock out, inconvenience a sleeping baby while we gob some stuff on his face and continue with our day. Instead, we come home and an hour later I say “Is that a sunburn?”
Ugh. Hurts my soul when I look at this. It’s pretty much cleared up now, and you would not even know if he felt uncomfortable from it, but I promise I will remember this for some time, and will use generous amounts of spf-whatever to keep this from happening again.
If I am this distraught at a strip of a sunburn, just imagine my first post where I try to explain how I dropped him on the floor for the first time… (Someone please tell me that is a requisite noob parent move? Please?)
Cough on our baby
No seriously, it’s cool*
As you may have guessed from my earlier post on germs, we have taken the stance that it’s totally great if you want to hold Cole and prance him all around creation pretending you had something to do with his being there. It’s great to get him socialized as much as possible before his “stranger danger” sense kicks in, and he starts to freak out when anyone “not momma” is holding him, including me (oh brother, will I ever be sad when that day comes).
There might be consequences for doing this.
On Sunday, we dealt with a recovering baby who had a noticeable fever. We had let him be held by half a dozen people the night before, who had him outside of the room we were in while we ate dinner.
I can’t know for sure that he caught something from one of those people (It might well be the onset of teething), and I am not inclined to be bothered about it one way or another. Baby Tylenol was administered, the fever broke fairly quickly, and we canceled a trip up Monserrate to spend a lazy Sunday with our groggy, recovering son. He’s all better 12 hours later, being held by a young man who tells us he has a sister who won’t let him hold her baby, for fear of spreading germs.
“I think that’s bad.” he says “It makes you weak.”
And I agree with him. And I hope hope hope that doesn’t come back to bite me in he ass later.
*I’m kidding. I will punch you if you cough on my baby on purpose.
Jet lag is for babies
I mentioned in my last post about how we have made the move from Bend, OR to Bogota, Colombia for the summer. For me, this is not a big upheaval. I work East Coast time, so a time shift of three hours is no big deal.* Add into the equation the 8,300+ elevation, and It gets a little harder. However difficult Christine and I found it, Cole clearly had it far, far worse.
I had heard that elevation affects infants and old people much worse than others, and this seems to be the case with Cole. He went on a near 48 hour sleeping strike upon arrival. He would feed all night. I’m sad to say Mommy and Daddy were getting pretty frazzled, becoming the same as pretty much every parent and bowing to the need to whisper while kiddo napped. That was something we really tried to avoid, we wanted him to be able to sleep through regular grown up conversation and before this week, never lowered our voice just because he slept.
Well congratulations to us, we are now one of the more typical parents.
There was a light at the end of this tunnel though. Tonight, I write this after a full night and day of our amazingly well behaved baby boy returning to us. It’s great to have him back, even though I do note that he seems to be starting teething.
*Bogota is EC time zone, minus the daylight savings time. So it’s actually Central Time right now… you know what, it’s complicated. Never mind.
Saying farewell to the security blanket.
I’m not talking about Cole’s security blanket. He’s a bit too young to have one. I’m talking about mine.
For many, many years I have owned (and worn the hell out of) a hooded sweatshirt of some sort. Different years or phases of my life would bring about a change of hoodie, but there has always been one present. It has acted as a sort of shield against the world for me, an invisibility cloak of sorts. It allows me a hood to put over my eyes if I want a nap in the daytime, it keeps the chill away, and it hides me from anyone who’s eyes are keen on looking at thing that are interesting. If you have seen photos or videos of me made over the last say, ten months or so, you have probably seen me in it.
An example:
Click Here if you are unable to see the video.
And another. This is my typical uniform:
It’s summer now in central Oregon, warm enough that the hoodie is getting a little silly, so it’s time to retire this one forever. This time though, the notion of retiring the very concept of the “hoodie” is becoming real for me. I’m a dad now, I shouldn’t need this insulation against the world, this crutch. It is a crappy fashion accessory, and would be impossible to explain to Cole as he gets older. I want a son who has an awesome dad who faces the world head on rather than insulates himself from it.
Despite my hobo uniform, I actually do consider myself at least aware of what is fashionable. It’s time to put that to the test and start being that guy.
Today, I formally declare a moratorium on the hoodie.
Lifestream
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