Happy 2009!

You may have noticed that there have been a dearth of updates on the LemonDrop Kid blog of late (well, of the last couple of months). We still dearly love Sofian, but things, as many of you have heard, have been crazy. The house is under construction, my business has been brisk, the holidays came crashing down on Seattle with about a foot of snow (no exaggeration, really), I headed off to San Francisco for the Macworld Expo at the beginning of the year, etc. etc.

I'm also trying to figure out how best to get updates about the boy up through the series of tubes that is the Internet and broadcast at the right spot for folks to enjoy. The last couple of months, I've really become a Facebook addict, and have found it very easy to post short snippets of things there. We've also not been taking as many still photos as usual lately because we have a new video camcorder (which is really pretty sweet -- this tiny, tiny gadget records high-def quality video... more on that in a minute). I'm looking around at ways to easily update both the blog and my Facebook section, but if you've been thinking about joining Facebook, this is a good reason to do so. It's actually a lot of fun connecting with folks.

Anyhoo, here's what the LD looked like around Christmas time:



Mamalama and Papalapa (now known as Mayamaya and Paiapaia, as given by Sofian) made it in from North Carolina, but Tutu and Tomtom (names unchanged) weren't able to make it from Portland because of train closures. They were supposed to be here this weekend, but Washington state got flooded out this last week and their train was canceled again. Hopefully, no natural disasters will occur in the next week and we'll see them this coming Thursday.

Here's Sofian (or Tofian as he's started calling himself) and Mama out in the snow:



And here's the boy in the snow:



To really appreciate the HDness of the video, go to the YouTube page for this video and click on the Watch in HD link that appears below it lower right corner (you can do that with all the YouTube clips that are posted here).

This is probably my favorite clip from Christmast morning. We got Sofian a stuffed monkey that had lots of zippers and buttons on his clothes, but the boy was a little nervous about the introduction. Luckily Paiapaia was there to add comfort (the two of them really bonded on this trip).



Sofian has really been getting into music lately, and he's been requesting a couple of songs over and over and over. It started with Jack Johnson's "Good People" (to which Sofian would cry out "people!" during the chorus). And then, after putting together a playlist of other people-related songs, "People Power in the Disco Hour" became the next Sofian hit. But currently Number 1 with a bullet on Sofian's hit parade is the final credits song from the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack (great movie, btw), "Jai Ho". Here's Sofian getting jiggy to the Bollywood tuneage:



And here's the song in the film (starts about a minute into the YouTube, and it's a slower mix than is on the soundtrack) -- both Parie and I are trying to learn some of the dance moves from the video to keep up with Sofian:



Alright, that's it for now. Remember, you can always see the most recent videos at my YouTube channel and catch the most recent photos at our Flickr photostream.