Dear Blog, Long Time No See!

Boy, have I been busy over the last few months.  I am trying to finish writing the last substantive chapter of my dissertation and have written approx. 90 pages of this one chapter over the last 2 months.  I am not sure how it got to be so long but apparently I did have something to say about the identity of the rulers of Dynasty XXV!?!?

My daughter has been growing like a weed over the last two months and is now talking non-stop!  I know that is surprising given who her father is! (amused sarcasm)  Since we speak German exclusively at home and speak English when we are visiting with my family, she is using both German and English and has recognized from context which of the languages she should use at any given time.  At less than two years old, Nuria recognizes that there are two words for every object and oftentimes will give the word for an object in German followed immediately by the phrase “in english…..”.   It took me years to get to the point in German where Nuria is right now.  It will not be long before she is correcting her poor father’s German!

It seems to be so easy for young children to pick up new languages.  I am so happy that we have decided to raise Nuria speaking German from the start.  Although we speak German exclusively at home, we do speak English when we are out in public or with my family.  Nuria seems to be picking up both languages very easily.  Many folks are frightened that using two languages will confuse the child, but in our experience that has definitely not been the case.  The only danger seems that you might facilitate the development of a pidjin-type of language development if you start to mix the two languages within the same sentences.  We have been working very hard at speaking exclusively German or exclusively English, depending on context, to ensure that she learns each of the languages properly.  Sometimes it has been hard on the members of our family that speak exclusively English, but in the long run it was definitely the right idea.  Nuria amazes us every single day.

Missing My Ladies

My two beautiful ladies are currently in Germany for a bit of a visit with Oma (grandma in German) and have left a big hole in my life!  Our house is very large without my daughter and wife running around.  The good news is that I have plenty to work on with my dissertation.  I will be taking a summer staycation and use the time to write a bunch of my dissertation. 

I’ll let you know how productive the vacation is when I get back to the blog after my little staycation.

Long Holiday Weekend

Over the long holiday weekend, we were able to fit in a little bit of fun with my dissertation writing. I got the last portions of my lit review very close to submission to my advisor over the course of Saturday and Sunday which freed up Monday for a little bit of family fun.

The first thing that we did on Monday was to head out to Moorpark College to see the last day of the California Cup, an annual field hockey tournament that includes teams from both the US and abroad. This year included teams from as far as Argentina and Taiwan. Nuria was in heaven, running around yelling “Hockey, Hockey, Hockey!” as she saw each person walk by with their field hockey sticks. After spending a few hours out in the gorgeous weather, buying one flourescent pink and one flourescent yellow hockey ball for Nuria and a set of shin guards for me, we headed for home.

After lunch and getting Nuria to bed, I headed out for a quick mountain bike ride (zoomed view) that I was able to turn into my typical mini-epic that consists of Las Llajas Trail to Rocky Peak Fire Road and down the Chumash Trail. If you are interested, follow the two previous links for a few photos of the scenery along the route. The photos are all taken with my phone so please excuse the lack of sharpness in the images.

“But how was the ride?”, you might ask. Well, I like to say that “sometimes you beat the mountain and sometimes the mountain beats you.” Well, on Monday afternoon, I was on the receiving end of a mild beating by the mountain! The steep back side of the Rocky Peak fireroad turned into a little bit of a hike-a-bike section for me. The weather was perfect for my outing, not too hot and not too cold. But it still took a while to complete! I slept very well that night.

“Hockey, Hockey, Hockey”

The title is a direct quote from my daughter Nuria.  She seems to be quite the field hockey fan.  As of a few months ago, she has been grabbing my field hockey stick (which is twice as tall as she is!) and trying to hit the field hockey ball with it.  This had been going on for a while by the time that I checked online and found out that I could buy her an 18 inch field hockey stick of her own! 

So now I when I walk in the room and ask her where her hockey stick is, she will run over and pick up her stick while yelling “Hockey, Hockey, Hockey!”  (She is starting to show signs of being quite the talker, I know, big surprise given who her father is!)  She loves to go out to the grass behind our house and attempt to dribble the hockey ball around with her new stick.  It is very cute! 

Here are a few photos of her with her new field hockey stick.  She still has to work on her grip as you can see in the photos, but, hey, she is only 17 months old!!!   

We have relearned so much about the joys of life from our little bundle of energy!

1 Year Photos

Claudia, Nuria and I went this past Saturday to get our pictures taken in a portrait session at JC Penney.  We thought that we should go in for a portrait session to get a few, more formal photos of Nuria at one year of age.  We have not gotten the photos back yet, but can tell you already that there were some very good photos of Nuria and Claudia.  This is in spite of the fact that Nuria, my daughter that smiles 24/7, refused to smile for almost every photo and decided that the portrait session was a good time as any to stick out her tongue. 

Now that I think about it, maybe it wasn’t a mistake and that is how she really felt about having her photo taken by a stranger in a strange photo studio! 

Nuria is Nine Months Old Today!

Happy nine month birthday to my wonderful daughter Nuria!  She is starting to get her teeth.  She currently is working her first, one of the middle lower teeth.

We have had quite a bit of excitement over the course of the last few months.  We have sold our townhouse in West LA and bought a house in Simi Valley.  We were able to buy a 4 bedroom house in East Simi down the street from where my parents moved to earlier this year.  We loved living in West LA but with the birth of our Nuria we were looking for a slightly slower lifestyle with a few more family-friendly things to do on the weekend.  Speaking of which, Nuria had her first swim lesson last Saturday and absolutely loved it.  She was like a fish in the pool with her Papa!

The only drawback to our new life in the suburbs is the long commute to West LA.  Claudia and I are both getting up at 5:00am these days to make sure that we can get out of the house and on the road for our ~35 mile one-way commute by 6:20am.  That makes for a long day, let me tell you!  But, that having been said, it is all worth it to us.

No Teeth Yet!

Hello World!  Long time no hear.

It has been over seven months and we still have not seen a tooth!  We thought that she might have been teething around her six month birthday but it was not to be.  However, we have read in a number of places that the later that teeth come in, the stronger that they are.  We hope that is the case.  The late arriving teeth don’t seem to have any effect on our beautiful daughter, she is as happy as ever!

I just completed three weeks of paternity leave.  Three weeks alone at home with my daughter and we both survived!  I am a good parent and I can take care of my daughter by myself!  Before I went on paternity leave, I wasn’t so sure that I could do it, but three weeks later my confidence in myself as a parent and my relationship with Nuria is better than it has ever been.  I would recommend that every father take some paternity leave.  It will not only make you a more self-sufficient parent, but it will give you a tremendous respect for anyone that takes care of young children.  Let me tell you, taking care of a young child is alot more difficult than sitting at home and watching soap operas.  In fact, on most days it was 2pm before I was able to get myself anything to eat for lunch!  Maximum respect for all stay-at-home mothers.

Nuria is Six Month’s Old!!

Today is Nuria’s big six month birthday!  It seems like yesterday that Nuria was born at the UCLA Medical Center.  My, how time flies!

She is growing so fast and should be getting her first teeth any day now.  She has been teething for the last few weeks and chewing on everything in sight including Mama and Papa!  The nights have been short over these last few weeks and Claudia and I have not gotten as much sleep as we would ideally want.  Nuria has been waking up during the night due to the pain in her mouth.  Hopefully the first teeth will some in soon.  It is difficult to see your child in pain and not be able to do anything more than give them Tylenol and to try to comfort them by holding them.

Next week is the annual UC Academic Advising Conference.  The conference is hosted this year by UC Irvine and will take place at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, CA.

I have been plugging away on my dissertation lately.  I have to submit a paper by the end of May based on my presentation last year at the Evolving Egypt conference in Hawaii last year for possible publication in a volume of the proceedings to be published in the British Archaeological Reports series.  So, if the article is good enough, I may have another publication by the end of this year!  One can always hope!

We are also in the process of selling our Townhome in Westwood and looking for a home in Simi Valley closer to my parents.  I don’t personally recommend combining early child-rearing, dissertation research and writing and moving. However, sometimes you just have to take care of things at the time that they come up.

Nuria Alexandra Suhr Gordon is Here!!

Our beautiful baby girl was born on Thursday, October 26, 2006 at 2:19pm in Delivery Room 4 of the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, California!  She is the most beautiful little girl in the entire world.  Now you don’t have to just take our word for it, you can see pictures of her on our personal website. 

She is a Bruin just like her Papa!  It took her Papa 20 years to formally become a Bruin, but Nuria is a Bruin from Birth and we couldn’t be happier. 

 She was 7 lbs. 1 oz. and 20″ long at birth and very healthy.  Nuria, Claudia and I stayed  in a private room at the hospital for the next three nights while Claudia recovered from the Cesaerian Section.  We were able to take our little blessing home from the hospital on the following Sunday and begin our lives together as a family.  

 Our little Nuria is a wonderful baby and sleeps between her feedings every 2-3 hours.  We feel very blessed.

The Waiting Game

The time is approaching…we will soon have a new baby daughter!  We finished our baby CPR class and now are waiting for our sweet baby daughter to arrive.   We can hardly wait to meet her!

We already have picked out a name but are not letting anyone know what it is until she is born.  Currently my family is calling her Susie.  This is due to my maternal grandfather being sure that I was going to be a girl and writing on my piggy bank that he kept for me the name Susie.  I was going to be his Susie.  As is obvious, that whole plan did not work out so well.  I only got to know my grandfather for about a year before he died of brain cancer.  So, in his honor, as soon as my family found out that we were having a girl and that we were not going to let anyone know the name until she was born they started to call her Susie.

Last weekend was Claudia’s second baby shower at my parents house in El Rio.  That morning, I attended CORBA’s Fat Tire Festival at Malibu Creek State Park in the morning and joined Claudia and the rest of my family at my parent’s house in the afternoon.

We are getting excited and cannot wait for the big day!