The past few days have been fairly uneventful. You might think, "Well then why are you updating your blog?", and the answer is: so that my parents won't call me asking whether I died. This will really happen.
It also helps me keep all my friends up to date, so they can not email me for months at a stretch and then go "Well I was all caught up on your life from the blog." You all suck. You suck like Tibetan whores. I bet you didn't even know Tibet had whores, did you? Take it from a guy who's never been to Tibet.
Drooley McColicton and the Colic-tones got his first set of vaccines this week. The doctor said that would make him fussy and problematic, but either he was wrong, or it was lost in the background noise of Gabe's regularly scheduled colic madness. I guess that is the good thing about colic: your kid's crying can't really get much worse. The other day Ioana asked me how colic could possibly have survived natural selection. I have no idea.
The big change for this week is that Gabe has started "socially smiling." It's funny, because he's always smiled when he's dreaming, so it's not like he didn't know how. But for whatever reason babies don't consciously smile for several weeks. Now he smiles when someone he recognizes comes over, which is a heart-melting weapon of mass destruction that honestly makes up for all the colic and then some. I still don't know how colicky caveman babies avoided getting eaten by dinosaurs, though.
The other big news for the week is that I am old. Here is how I know: Shaquille O'Neal announced today that he is retiring. When I saw the headline, I thought, Wow, that guy pussed out sort of early. Then I click on the story and it says he's been playing basketball for nineteen years. Now, I'm not a basketball guy. It's probably the professional sport I am least interested in, which puts it behind soccer, quidditch, and that weird Olympic thing with the dudes frantically scratching up the floor with rakes while sliding down a bowling alley covered in ice.* So it's not like I've been following The Shaq's career that closely. But still, if you had asked me "When did he start playing basketball?" I probably would have said, I dunno, what day is today? But it turns out that he's not a wuss, I'm just an old man for whom 19 years passes in the blink of an eye. I worry that I'm going to go out for a cup of coffee and come back to find Gabriel gone to college.
Everyone reading this blog knows me personally and is now going "You don't even drink coffee." Good point, readers.
We also registered Gabe with another part of the Romanian government, because it turns out -- and this was a pleasant surprise for me -- the government here actually pays you money for having a kid. It's like the anti-China. Not only that, they pay you money every month you keep the kid alive, which I think is a pretty good incentive. It's only about $75 a month, but in Romania that goes a fair way.
And now it's just a slow countdown to the Black Sea. Our ESL students have their big final exam on Monday, so I've been spending way more time than their money is worth writing the test. I also promised everyone metric-chip cookies at the end of class, so I need to get on that.
Moment of Zen:
* You know what else they love to watch on live TV in Romania? Weightlifting. I just do not get this. I mean, either they lift it or they don't. It doesn't seem very exciting. It's pretty much, That guy sure lifted that! Oh, this other guy didn't lift it. It's like watching someone shoot free throws for two hours. In, in, missed, in, missed, I can hardly stand the tension. It's better than soccer, I guess.
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