Tag Archives: luca

Luca at Year One

By Ed Fladung | February 5, 2010

Luca at 11 monthsLuca and his abuelito Francisco

Today is Little Man’s first birthday. Year One. On this day February 5th, one year ago, Luca came into our lives. It’s been a long, strange, hard, wonderful year. A year probably very typical to any new parent and yet so totally foreign to anyone who hasn’t broached that life passage yet. Lil’ Man has grown so much, I can’t believe it. More than that, Marcia and I have grown as well. Grown up. Aged. Deteriorated. Gotten younger at heart. Pushed. Pulled. Exploded. Lost. and Found. The one thing this year has represented to me, above all else is ‘Love’. Unselfish, pure Love for another human being. If I could, I’d put all my experiences, hopes, dreams and desires into him and extinguish my life from this existence, like a mother spider whose young are hatched and her ultimate gift to sacrifice her body for her babies’ survival. Yes, cryptic. But most parents probably feel the same kind of love towards their kids. That’s the kind of ‘Love’ that I have learned this year. And I’m glad the person I get to share it with, is this gentle, brash, glowing, feisty, shy soul we call ‘Luca’. Sometimes I ruminate to myself, I wonder who he was in his last life. I’d love to have met him/her.

Here’s to Luca’s first birthday. chocolate cake for everyone (quite coincidentally, daddy’s favorite).

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Field Notes

By Ed Fladung | January 4, 2010

Holy crapola it’s been a long time since I last posted. holy bad bloggerer. The last few months have been hectic. Lots of loose ends, clogging up the tubes in ol’ duders head. Let’s try to de-knot the filaments and come up with something reasonably organized. ok here goes….

ATl FishATl Fish
Surfwise, my homie Marco (ATL Surfboards) hooked me up with a new twin keel fish and I’ve been rocking some really nice sessions with it. I surfed it for most of that giant ‘Eddie Aikau’ swell in early December. It’s ace. Our surf mosse has been on a leash-less kick lately, and my log is starting to feel the effects of being jammed into the rock headlands at my local break a few too many times. But it’s all in the name of communing with the ocean, wave and board slightly differently. You really do ride differently and almost more consciously, when not strapped to the board. I definitely observe the chest high rule though: if it’s above chest high, the leash goes back on.

rob's garageRob in the garage whipping up handplanes for xmas gifts (!)
JP / MoonlightJP at Moonlight
maggie + rob cookin' pizzaRob + Maggie makin a da pizza
For the holidays, we went up to San Diego to spend Xmas with family and then on to Los Angeles, to hang with the old LA homies. Along the way I visited the surf mecca of Encinitas, stayed with Rob + Maggie and caught up with JP at Moonlight. I spent the weeks leading up to our trip jamming the internets looking for used hulls. I was all over swaylocks and spent nights on end reading through the infamous Post your Hull pictures Second Thread at last count I was on page 38. If you’re a hull/stubbie junky, this thread is a goldmine, beware it’s a total time suck.

Liddle KP 7'4Liddle KP 7'4
After trolling swaylocks, craigslist and annoying the hell out of Graham with too many questions, I finally hooked up with a bloke from the OC who was unloading a 7′4″ Liddle KP in great condition for a great price. I snagged it. Yup, I’m submitting myself to the eerily lit world of hull fanatiks. We got back from LA on New Year’s Eve and since then the ocean has been dead. I haven’t even had a millichance to get the Liddle wet. So looking forward to a maiden voyage. I’d like to send a special shout-out and thank you to all the people who I talked with along the way on my adventure to acquire said hull: Ryan Lovelace, Mary Surf Sister, KP and a very cryptic Erin Ashley, all true and good quality peoples.

Andrew + alaiaAndrew + alaia
Meanwhile, Andrew has been down here on his mexican sabbatical for the past few months and his pet project has been shaping his first alaia. He bought a bunch of Perota planks and had them glued up. Perota is a dark mexican hardwood, which is a Koa substitute. I bought a plank too, but I’ve had too much going on, to get out there with the jig saw and we don’t have a planer so it’s all elbow grease. Andrew’s stick is shaping up, I suppose I’ll learn from his mistakes.

Luca at 10 months
And in family life, Luca turned 11 months today. Last night was the first night of Operation Ferber. We’ve had sleeping issues with Luca since day one, on a good night he wakes up twice, on a bad night he wakes up 4 or 5 times. It’s been a rough 11 months. So last night we used the Ferber “cry it out” method. Little Man cried his face off for a full hour and fell asleep holding the bars of his crib. He proceeded to sleep for ten hours straight. no bottle, no midnight feeding. We haven’t slept ten hours in forever. And when he woke, he was the sweetest loving kid. It was a good night.

Lastly, I have a million photos stacked up in the ‘puter and nowhere near enough time to process them. one of these days i’ll bang ‘em out and post em here. until then..

… stay up.

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Luca at Nine Months

By Ed Fladung | November 7, 2009

Luca is now nine months old and you shall know his velocity.

Little man is starting to get the gist of the whole communication thing, he’s starting to use grunts for “put me down” and weird humming, mmm, hummmm, mmm sounds for “pick me up”, along with a range of arm and leg motions. He’s starting to eat more solidish food and yes, it’s been confirmed that he is indeed of Mexican origin. His favorite of the moment is black beans, that’s ma boy. This month has been all about the deepening of our bond. I’ve felt closer to him in the past couple of weeks than I have since he was born, or should I say that I feel that he is becoming more accustomed to having me around. Probably because he’s finally waking up to the fact that there are two of those adult things that change your diapers, feed you and give you rad hugs: the one with the boobies and the other one. The one with the scratchy-ass beard. We’re finally into the “falling on your head” stage, I don’t think I’ve heard Luca cry this much, ever. Constantly falling, hitting himself in the head or face. Just pick him right up and show him his “peekaboo kisses” book and it is all good.

For some reason the Canon G9 (which does HD btw?! – just figured that one out, smarty panties) had the video setting all messed up and these clips were the result. I think it got set on the “take a video frame every half a second” setting. Add some music and viola…

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Luca at 8 Months

By Ed Fladung | October 6, 2009

ed-lucaphoto by Isaiah Seret

Yesterday marked Luca’s 8th monthversary. Little man has finally gone mobile, crawling up a storm and terrorizing anything with green leaves on it. He can deplume a plant in minutes. He’s also got a nack for standing up in his crib and walking around the crib in circles. It’ll be days before this kid learns to ride a skateboard and he comes into the house saying “daddy, I think I broke my arm” (flashbacks to when I was a kid). Luca has also established “Object Permanence” which makes hiding things we don’t want him eating/munging-up behind our backs all the more harder. He’s now twice the size of Marcia, gives her piggyback rides around the house and offers to drive when we go anywhere. The kid is 8 months old and is already wearing 18 month old clothing, he is healthy and that’s a good thing, considering he will never know the taste of meat/carne.

Luca has officially entered the talker phase with an unending barrage of baby gibberish, aimed at anyone who could possibly give him attention, friend or stranger. He is a big coquette, flirting with all manners of humanoid bipeds. It’s ironic that he was born of two rather introverted parents, Luca is most surely a people person. An interaction with a new friend on an airplane, in a store or just on the street: Luca’s energy level is amped like a double shot of espresso and he makes friends wherever he goes. Old and young, the only group he has yet to dent is the middle-aged, disaffected, traveling salesman category.

You can’t win em all, kid.

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Me & My Man

By Ed Fladung | August 31, 2009

me and my man II
me and my man

We’re still up in Upstate NY, exchanging hurricane swells for sweet corn, heirloom tomatos, herb salad and as many different kinds of root beer as I can get my hands on. Little Man’s two bottom teeth came in a few weeks ago and he’s been enjoying his first tastes of hard foods, he’s diggin’ on hard crust bread, watermelon, banana, butternut squash, green grapes, oatmeal and a ton of other good foods. We’re here for another week or so, and then back to the uber hot-humidness to catch up on my tube riding technique.

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Luca at 6 months

By Ed Fladung | July 29, 2009

Luca @ 25 weeksthe boy and his mom

The soundtrack for this entry: The Vaselines – Son of a Gun

In the past few weeks, Luca has entered a race to see just how fast he can get mobile. From using his stomach muscle to power himself up to a sitting position, to using his arms, to hanging on to the edge of his crib and hoisting himself on to his knees, he’s a ball of swiftly moving body parts. I’m thinking he’ll probably skip crawling and go right to walking. Little Man doesn’t mess around, he is on the move. Anything within arms reach is fair game for him and day by day his range-of-squirminess increases. This kid is gonna be a menace to all the breakable, delicate things in my life very quickly.

Luca’s passion is one of the defining characteristics of his personality. He has a real and vibrant passion for life and you can see it in everything he does. We may still have to get up 5 or 6 times a night and he may get cranky during the day, but he never cries unless there is something genuinely wrong (usually hunger or tiredness) and even then his cries stop cold as soon as he knows we’re on the case. With all the sleep issues we’ve been having over the past few months, this is a total blessing.

When Luca is hanging with mom, dad or abuelita (who’s been staying with us the past few weeks) he’s a constant ball of smiles and weird enthusiastic gurgles and odd noises. A verbal gibberish outpouring of sincere lust for life. After I duck back out of the home office after a few hours of diligent work, he looks up at me, mushes his face, rises his eyebrows, puffs his chest out, his arms shoot out like missiles and he issues the infant version of “What’s up, Pops!” in big, boombastic, bellowing yalps.

This kid is stoked on life.

Luca @ 25 weeksthe boy and his abuelita

Of course there’s another highly significant event that happened this past month: Luca is now officially an American citizen. He has a US Passport and “Consular Report of Birth Abroad” (his birth certificate). After months of arduous haggling with various Mexican government agencies and then scavenging ridiculous streams of garbage paperwork requested by the US government, we finally submitted for his citizenship and a few weeks ago we received everything back.1

Luca is officially a gringo!

I’m telling you all this, now, a week before his 6 month birthday2 because next week we’ll be busy preparing to leave Mexico to spend the month of August in Woodstock, New York. Luca will finally be meeting my whole extended family: my grandfather/mother, uncles, aunts, cousins and assorted rad personages. Emails are sent, the family is psyched and starting to foam at the mouth. Basically, we couldn’t go back to the states until all Luca’s paperwork was submitted and came back approved. That took almost 6 full months between the two douchenozzle bureaucracies.

Now he’s bonified and we’re outta this joint for an extended period of time up north in Gringolandia. It will be the longest period of time I’ve spent in the states since I moved to Mex almost five years ago. I’m beside myself. But honestly, I’m most looking forward to giving my family a chance to get to know Luca and spend quality time with him. That’s priceless.

Happy Birthday Bwoy.

  1. If you are a US citizen and are thinking of having your child abroad, take my advice: don’t even think about it. The paperwork is fucking ridiculous, time consuming and a total headache. All for what? The birth is a little cheaper? I curse international borders and government bureaucracies for making it so hard for us to travel ↩
  2. what exactly do you call a “month” birthday ↩
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Luca at 5 Months

By Ed Fladung | July 12, 2009

Luca @ 22 weeksHe prefers the “white spine” vintage years. less car ads.

Well, after four days with no internet access and what looks like months of waiting for one ahead of me, I broke down and got myself a Telcel 3G mobile internet connection. I can go anywhere and use my computer, yippeee!1 It costs $45/month with a limit of 3GBs/month, we’ll see how that lasts me.

On with the real story…

In the midst of our insane pack-a-thon and moving schnazmatalia, Luca turned 5 months old on July 5th. To say that these past five to six weeks have been the hardest so far, would be the largest understatement in the short 6000 year old history of this Earth2. Shortly after Marcia’s mom left town at the beginning of June, Luca started waking up 5 and 6 times a night. The first few days were grueling, sometimes all he needed was to burp and others he’d be up for an hour or so and we’d have to pace him around in the house in his stroller, finally get him to bed, only to have him wake up again 45 minutes later. We held out hope that this was just a phase he was going through and it would pass in a few days. Marcia and I were walking zombies and days turned to a week and one week turned to two and so on.

We noticed right away that both his day time and night time sleeping habits had changed. During the day, he would sleep for maybe 45 minutes at a time, no more than twice a day. And at night, if he slept for 3 consecutive hours at a time, we considered this a good night. The days were killing us both, as Luca demanded attention from at least one of the two of us all day long and his lack of sleep was apparent in his moods. He’s a very playful baby, smiling, happy and engaging with everybody, but when he’s in a bad mood, look out.

Luca @ 20 weeks

We began dreading the nights. At times, Luca would wake at full cry. Our ‘tricks’ of getting him back to sleep started to lose potency. We saw multiple doctors, no one could find anything physically wrong with him. Everyone we consulted was telling us to do various versions of the cry it out method. After the second full week, I was agreeing with them. I couldn’t stand it any more. But Marcia stuck it out, resisting the method, looking for something kinder and gentler. Marcia began to take more of the nighttime waking burden, as my grouchiness and groggy clumsiness only woke him up more where her soft touch would often get him back to sleep in minutes. Luca would often wake at between 5 and 6am and as hard as we tried we couldn’t get him back to sleep. So I began to get up with him and start our day, giving Marcia a few consecutive hours alone to catch up on sleep.

As two weeks turned to three and then four, I had begun to resent Marcia for not agreeing to the cry it out method, I just wanted this to be over and it seemed like the easiest/best way out. I was also a little resentful of Luca. It was hard dealing with him and in some ways I shut down and angered easily. I caught myself a few times and ironically, the more I re-engaged the easier dealing with him became. We slowly started to mold to Luca’s erratic sleeping habits. We learned new tricks and ways to constructively deal with him. And just in the past week, in the new house, we’ve both begun to see the light at the end of the tunnel. We’re taking active steps to maintain his schedule, which we really hadn’t done before, for some odd reason – Marcia is very clockworkish – and Marcia and I began to understand how each of our strengths and weaknesses could be played off him.

Luca @ 22 weeksprunes and papaya – keepin’ it regular, ya huuuurd.

The tide really began to turn when we noticed that in different moods, he responded differently. And if you looked closely you could kinda tell what he needed: to be rocked in his stroller, held and rocked, bottle, booby, taken for a walk, to sit upright, etc… I guess we’ve really begun to listen to him. Things really crystalized when we realized that during the day he is truly tired and wants to sleep but can’t. It’s like he’s missing the sleep button. Seeing little bags under his eyes, it’s plain to see that he’s not happy either.

We’re now going into the 6th week of this craziness and he’s sleeping regularly in 3 hour intervals at night, getting up a few other times, but for no more than a quick “chupa” and back to bed. His tantrum hour seems to be 5-6am, on good nights I have to stroll him around the house and on bad nights I have to stroll him around the half-vacant “coto” we live in. fun. But somehow it’s getting easier and we feel like we’re in this together, all three of us. We are trying to find ways for Luca to sleep more and he wants to sleep more. We’re hoping that increased solid foods and daily exercise (swimming in our new community pool) will help get this kid – at the very least – a little more regularized.

It’s been a rough month!

  1. feel the sarcasm ↩
  2. According to Arizona State Senator Sylvia Allen (R) ↩
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Field Notes

By Ed Fladung | July 8, 2009

Danny Hess 5'7shaper’s mark by Danny Hess
Arrrggg, I am in moving hell. We’re doing the biennial “schlep all your crap from the old house to the new house” thing. This new house is something different. It’s ours. For the second time in my life, I am a homeowner. It’s the first time for Marcia. We are both wonked out from the home buying process. We’re also walking zombies, Luca is keeping us up all night. Our days are filled with packing, sweating, moving, cleaning, sweating, throwing crap away, packing, cleaning, sweating, moving, etc…. It’s a new house, so nothing works. Construction dust everywhere. Scorpions and spiders. All I can think about is getting wet.

The new house won’t have a telephone line for easily another month, so I’m looking into a 3G tether service for my computer. what. a. hassle. can someone say iphone plus 3G tethering?

I spent the 4th of July sliding water hills on a slowly growing swell. I test drove a friend’s Danny Hess 5′7″ quad. It was slightly heavy out of the water, but inside, it’s quite amazing how floaty it is. The waves I was on were a little mushy so I need another go ’round but I’m in awe of its tight response. Add this board to the dream quiver list.

Two nights ago I had one of those sunset sessions that you spend entire years waiting for. Picture perfect sunset and head high swell with overhead clean up sets. I had some really nice, fast rides with the single fin pumpkin seed. I managed quite a few ‘cheater fives’, did I mention the board is 6′2″? I love that pumpkin seed. I sat in the water and watched the entire sunset from start to finish, maybe 15 minutes of pure zoned-outness. The sky was super clear with a few puffy storm clouds on the horizon. The blues, purples, yellows, oranges and reds were crisp and uninhibited, there wasn’t a single shade of grey to be seen. Amongst a million other things that the heart desires, I need to “acquire” a water housing.

Working on an exciting, big, new project here in Q.Peepslandia. Still in the conceptual stages, but really hoping this thing takes off. It’s a family business (the best kind). I’m totally stoked on it. We’ll see where it leads.

In other news, they say that the army has closed highway 200 about an hour south of Pascuales, so if you’re thinking about going down to Michoacan via 200, try to contact locals in the area for more info. Supposedly, there is some altercation between the semi-autonomous communities in Michoacan and the army. Obviously I don’t know much, but that’s what I hear. If anyone knows anything more and has links, have at it in the comments.

WRT lack of internet: posting will be very light. stay tuned.

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Me & Lil’ Man

By Ed Fladung | June 26, 2009

5046_1175417706187_1250408962_30480967_3621711_n

My father took this photo a few weekends ago.
It was Luca’s first time swimming in the pool.

He loved it.

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Luca at 4 Months

By Ed Fladung | June 4, 2009

luca at 16 weeks luca at 16 weeks

Little Buddha.

The boy turns 4 months old, today, and yet it seems like it’s been more like a year. Seriously, I can’t believe it’s only been 17 weeks, I can’t even imagine my life without his warm smiling presence. What the fuck did we do with all that free time?

This past month Marcia’s mom had been staying in town, helping us during the day, spending time with the boy. Her help has been a godsend to us both and was the impetus for my first surf trip away from the boy. That trip was so very necessary and although it recharged the stoke factor1, I still went to sleep at night wondering if little man was sleeping ok and if his little brain was developed enough to miss the white, hairy, male parental unit. Somewhere along this past month, the boy hit a massive growth spurt and jumped from 0-3 month old clothing straight to clothing for one-year olds. He’s definitely gotten a lot chubbier these past few weeks, but he’s also grown like a sprout, some 10 centimeters in a month and change.

Despite outwards appearances life has been pretty rough recently, here in Mexico. The economic depression/downturn and the one-two punch of on-going damage from media-induced swine flu and drug-war hysteria put Mexico’s tourism industry into a full nelson. Life can be very stressful here and you most certainly have to elevate the hustle to a whole nother dimension. When the stress hits paralysis proportions, I just take a half-hour break and spend some quality time with the boy. He’s like the anti-stress. All that worrisome crapola in the back of my head settles down and for that brief period of time, all is good. I always thought that having a kid would make my life more stressful2 but it’s actually the opposite. Luca chills me out like nothing I’ve ever experienced. Even when he’s cranky, tired and crying, I sit down with him, hug his little dough-boy body, listen to his chuckle and I’m right as rain.

Sometimes, I look at him and I look at Marcia and I look at him, and I say to Marcia, “Where the hell did this little human being coming from?”. Having kids is a “trip” and I do mean that in the psychedelic/surrealistic/philosophic manner. If you’ve never really thought about just exactly where the soul/mind/consciousness comes from, having kids will get that conversation started. Luca may be a combination of our DNA, but he is almost certainly his own person, with his own set of likes and dislikes and although his experience will shape who he becomes, the observer is already in place, watching. His mind is there observing the world, and I’m pretty sure that part did not come from either of his parents.

On a different note: Luca – I’d like to say that it’s a wonderful experience to be your dad and I’d like to apologize for putting your junk up on the internet. Your mom and I love you more than you could possibly know.

  1. considering the total dearth of good swell up where I live ↩
  2. It defintely does light a fire under your ass to get things like family finances more stable ↩
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Luca at 12 weeks

By Ed Fladung | May 6, 2009

Luca
Luca
mama and son

Slideshow (7 photos)

Yesterday, the 5th, marked Luca’s third “cumple meses” (monthversery?), his twelfth week or as most normal people would say: he’s now three months old. The past month has flown by and as we leave the so-called fourth trimester, we can actually see the light at the end of the tunnel. Some semblance of a schedule is slowly creeping back into our lives and we no longer feel like a lost out-of-orbit large planetary object that was unceremoniously stripped of the planet classification.

Luca was already a pretty big baby. Long and stringy (just like his poppi was). but now he’s getting a bit gordito and I feel in a few weeks Marcia will have trouble picking him up. He’s now the size of most 8th graders and a few days ago he asked me for the keys to the car 1. Luca wakes us up each morning at 6am (just like his poppi did) and I spend a few hours every morning hanging out with him while Marcia gets a few uninterrupted hours of shut-eye.

This is our time to bond, before the day starts, before he gets grouchy and cries for mommi. He’s a big talker, gurgling his own brand of gibberish. For those two hours, we spend the time talking about our dreams and hopes. I echo him back in similar gibberish and slowly morph the words in to english, “huuuurrruuuoo” slowly morphs into “Heeeellloooo”. We have a few “notes” that I know when I say them, are sure to elicit a smile and a mini gibberish session at any point in the day, regardless of mood or hunger level. It cuts through the tough times and I see his brilliance streaming from within. This is our little connection.
–
Offered as a counterpoint to the why-so-serious portraiture studies above, here’s a video of Luca laughing. This video was taken at the 8 week mark and features his abuelita Martha.

  1. lil’ joke there ↩
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Lil’ Man turns one month old

By Ed Fladung | March 5, 2009

Luca at one monthLuca at one monthLuca at one month
Luca at one monthLuca at one monthLuca at one month

Photos by uber destination wedding photographer extraordinaire Elizabeth Lloyd.

So one month ago to this day, Luca came into our lives with the intensity of a shotgun blast. He has managed to keep us on our toes and not give us a split second for quiet contemplation. It’s been an awesome, tiresome, sleep-deprived, glorious month. Each week seems to present an entirely new twist in the caregiving of this magical little man. He’s definitely softening me up. I know kids do that to you, but man, this kid has my number.

Marcia and I still can’t quite believe that we are parents. Capital “P”. Personally, I’m not sure if it’s a good idea for anyone over thirty to have kids. I say that with a smile, but in some regards I completely mean it. Having kids is for the young n’ less cautious1. We know we’re still in the first few months and all the sage advice we get says that the first three months are the hardest and that life will change after that. They call it the “fourth trimester”, as the baby is still essentially a fetus. And they are most certainly right. Despite the inherent awesomeness of having Luca in our lives, the past month has been loooong and haaaaard.

On the flip-side, there is something amazing about the cocoon like environment that we’ve created in our house in response Luca’s arrival. This process is one of those unexpected delights in becoming a parent. We are on a mission, the three of us – together – and our little house is The Headquarters.

Here’s to one solid month. woo-hoo!

Relatedly, I’ve been thinking about creating a blog specific for ‘Luca’ updates, videos, photos and stuff. Rather than have it here on QP. I’m sure the vast majority of people who happen by QP don’t like looking at baby photos. Still mulling it over.

  1. as caution applies to using contraceptives ↩
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Field Notes

By Ed Fladung | February 22, 2009

The water is once again relatively cold here and for the first few days back, I tried to tough it out with no wetsuit. My .5mm flight jacket was stolen along with my board in Ticla awhile back. So I finally busted out the 2mm Xcel Infiniti full suit I bought in LA last summer. It’s truly superhero quality. I can see why people dig wetsuits. It especially comes in handy for the dawn patrol and that last half an hour of the day after the sun has set and the wind is still blowing. I think the closest I will ever come to feeling like a superhero is dropping in on a head high wave with a full wetsuit on. Question: Is there a proper way to get out of this thing? Since you basically have to get out via the neck, I feel like I could possibly over stretch that part. Anyone with experience?

On photography: I’ve been taking an O.G. Lubitel 166 Lomo medium format camera out to the beach with me for sessions. It was a bequeathment to me, from my grandfather Edmund Jr. I’m racking up a nice bag of exposed film. Gotta send it off to Mexico City or the states, though, to get developed. What a hassle. Can’t wait to see the returns.

Luca - 17 days

In baby land: Luca is finally sleeping on some kind of schedule in regular 4-5 hour spurts. that means we only need to get up once maybe twice in the middle of the night. This kid is awesome. Unfortunately I have a wicked lung cough, add some allergies into the equation and my head feels like it’s underwater most of the time. I finally broke down and got some Claritin. And finally, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Martha, Marcia’s mom, has been staying with us since we got back from the GDL, generally taking good care of Marcia, making sure she eats properly and leaving me to slide back into work mode and giving me breathing room for a few surf sessions. Martha leaves today, though, so there are dark clouds ahead. I’m gonna have to cook at least two solid, square meals a day. Veggie style. No more feeding my girl quesadillas and pasta. We’re talking rounded meals here. That requires deep concentration. I’d talk about the joys and frustration of breast-feeding but y’all don’t wanna hear about that. trust me.

In “The Wire” land, we made it all the way through Season 4. The Wire is truly the best show on tv, bar none. The five season story arc is so tight, it makes Lost look like, well, Lost. Edward Burns, the show’s creator is definitely “genius” level. We are intensely looking forward to Season 5. I gotta admit, I shed a tear when Stringer Bell met his demise and I think Omar is certainly one of the coolest characters on tv and Bubbles is my man. Marcia is looking forward to McNutty being back on the unit for Season 5. People underrate Season 2, but I agree that it’s still the B+ in a room full of A+’s, though I did wanna see Ziggy catch a bullet, he deserved it. Marcia and I have taken to calling each other McNutty and Bubs. It’s sad to think we have only one season left and this show is no longer on the air. Truly a great series. Where does Edward Burns go from here? TV will never be the same.

momma ganga

And lastly, my parents are off on an insane six week trip through India. We stocked them up on as many little tidbits of useful information as their brains could carry and sent them on their way. Their minds are about to be blown. I miss India so much. I’m feeling super jealous, right about now. Here’s some of our photos from India (if you’re relatively new to this blog: we passed through India and a few other places on our honeymoon, two years ago): Varanasi | Rajasthan Part 1 | Rajasthan Part 2

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Dawn Patrol Alarm Clock

By Ed Fladung | February 13, 2009

Luca
Dawn Patrol Alarm Clock
You can thank Chum for the title of this post!

A quick check-in to say ‘Hi’ and a big huge thank you to all the people who’ve written to us through this site, facebook, email, etc… it might take a while to get back to you all, my backlog of unanswered emails is intimidating. Thank you all so much, we feel the love!

Dad + Luca
“Oh yes, I have spread my seed.”

Today marks a week since Luca was born so everything is still “Babies Babies Babies”, but slowly adjusting to our new sleep(less) schedule and getting some type of structured routine back in place. We’ve been up in Guadalajara since Dec.28th, assuming Luca would be born sometime in early January. We missed that by a full month, so we’ve been here, waiting, for a month and a half now. Brutal. We love Guadalajara, but we miss our little beach town. I miss the ocean. I miss surfing. We miss our friends. It’s been easily seven weeks since I last hit the water and my gills have long dried out. Saturday or Sunday we’ll finally be heading home, if Luca’s pediatrician gives him a clean bill of health. And next week I’ll rotate back into work mode.

And lastly, my “New Dad Survival Kit” which is in no way definitive or complete:

new dad survival kit
Top to bottom:

  • Flip Video – portability and price and good quality too. total win. maybe spring for the HD version
  • Be Prepared: A Practical Handbook for New Dads – a nuts-n-bolt guide to figuring out how that new little human being works. This book is essential reading for DIY dads
  • Your Amazing Newborn – a heavily researched look at newborns, their psychology, abilities and how they develop. I’m particularly interested in the six different states newborns go through from “active sleep” to “active alert” to “the crying state”. Awesome!
  • LeRoy Grannis, Surf Photography of the 1960s and 1970s – Epic! cuz a brotha gotta have some down time. I picked this up at Ghandi Books in Guadalajara for $10 new. It’s the spanish version, but how cool of a find is that?
  • and lastly, not shown: The Happiest Baby on the Block – The New Way to Calm Crying and Help Your Baby Sleep Longer – a DVD of hardcore soothing tactics. A must for babies whose “crying hour” is in the middle of the night. The cover looks corny, but the techniques work wonders. there’s some sample clips up on youtube
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Luca Fladung Vara

By Ed Fladung | February 8, 2009

Luca

Hello all quality personages.

We are happy to present to you the newest member of our family: Luca Fladung Vara was born on Thursday night, 2/5/09 at 11:48pm. He weighed 9.9 lbs and was 21.25 inches long at birth. Big Boy! He measured the same as his father when he was born. Marcia is doing great and baby is slowly getting the breast feeding thing down. Dad is tired, but happy. The grandparents are all super happy and try to steal him from us every chance they can get.

Will write more. for now, here are some photos of little turtle boy:

kisses – Marcia, Edmundo, Luca

Luca

Posted in life in mexico | Also tagged , , , | 19 Comments