Cats & Dogs, May 2008

One of these days I'm going to catch a better photograph of Little Nio together with his favorite pet, Samuel. "Favorite" is relative, since he's our only pet. Samuel is our Siamese cat who has been with me ever since he was a tiny little kitten.



This is one of the earliest photographs I have of Sam, back when I was still a bachelor living alone in Flat Phibun, behind the Ministry of Commerce.



This other photograph of Sam was taken several years ago, while I was still living alone down in Pattaya.

We're not at all afraid of Samuel's reaction to Little Nio. He's very domesticated and we try to keep him clean. Despite being a house cat, who has never ventured outdoors, we give him an invigorating shower every so often. We're actually more worried what Little Nio might do to the poor kitty. Our son is a bit heavy handed and his coordination still needs a bit of work. Without knowing it, Little Nio just might hurt Samuel, who in turn might accidentally scratch the boy.

We just have to keep watchful eyes on both of them.



Here's Little Nio getting a big sloppy smooch on the cheek from his Mommy. For those of you who think we should shower our child with as much love and affection as we possibly can, don't worry... he's pretty soggy already with all the smooches he gets.

This was taken when we went to visit our friends, Trevor and Khun Nok (whom Little Nio met a year ago). We were invited over to their wonderful new home for a fantastic barbecue, where we all got sufficiently overstuffed on very delicious food.



Little Nio also got a chance to meet their dogs, Sammy (the Golden Retriever) and Bobby (the little Black Pug). Both dogs are wonderful pets with awesome personalities. Little Nio was delighted with them both.



From left-to-right: Sammy the Golden Retriever, Mikhail (a friend of Trevor), Bobby the Black Pug, Khun Nok, Little Nio, Uncle Trevor in the back, and myself. We had a really great time that afternoon and are looking forward to another opportunity to catch up with Nok and Trevor again.



A few nights later, Little Nio had a chance to attend an indoor football match. It was a friendly competition between the designers and architects, versus the CAD operators of my design firm. After both teams had scored more than ten points against the other, no one bothered to keep score. It was just a sporting opportunity to have a good time. Here's Little Nio with his Mommy hanging out at the sidelines.

Hontiveros-Pagkalinawan & Navarro, May 2008

My first cousin, Pia Hontiveros-Pagkalinawan, came to Bangkok from Manila for a two-week visit with her family. Her husband, Rwin, who is a police superintendent back in the Philippines attended some seminars at the International Law Enforcement Academy here in Bangkok.

Tita Pia is one of the daughters of Little Nio's Lola Chit, who is the younger sister of my father, Lolo Jun. One of these days I should attempt to map out the family tree so that Little Nio can see how he is connected to everyone else.



Here we all are at our home, with the dining table converted to a card table for a serious session of "Canasta". From left-to-right, My wife, Kanittha, then that's me carrying Little Nio, then Tita Pia's daughter Zoe, then my cousin Tita Pia, their eldest son Zach is seated, with their youngest Zed, and finally Tito Rwin.



While the four of us played "Canasta", the three older children watched several movies in the family room. Zach is on the left, with Zed lying down on the sofa behind, and Zoe seated on the right. Little Nio went up to his room to try and take a nap.

On the weekend we decided to rent a van and go off to Ayutthaya. Despite the heavy duty shopping they did manage to squeeze in some cultural activities... like riding elephants, wondering around ruins, and visiting a couple of small museums.



Just after the elephant rides. From left-to-right: Tito Rwin, Zach, Zed, Tita Pia, Zoe, then Little Nio being carried by Daddy, then his Mommy, and then finally Pa Kut at the end.



Here's Little Nio with his Daddy feeding the elephants.



We were also able to do a bit of walking around the ruins. My wife, Kanittha, then an Indiana Jones reject carrying Little Nio, and then Pa Kut. We're standing if front of some of the ruins leftover from the destruction of the ancient capital of Ayutthaya.



Here are the Pagkalinawan's stopping to strike a quick pose while walking around the market stalls surrounding one of the local temples. Tita Pia all dressed in blue, with Zed holding on to her. Zoe stands to the other side of them, with Zach behind her. You can see Tito Rwin in the back, waving.



All that walking around got us all tired and we sat down to a long leisurely lunch. While we started eating, Little Nio decided on taking a power nap first.



On the last evening of their visit, we were all able to get together for dinner at their hotel, Rama Gardens Hotel. We had dinner at "Capriccio's", which is the Italian restaurant of the hotel.

Swimming and the Hexagon, April 2008

My wife, Kanittha, took this photograph of Little Nio and his Daddy enjoying the pool in front of the clubhouse to our village. After a while the garish decor of our village isn't so offensive that you are able to ignore it without too much effort.

Personally, I suspect it's because I'm having way too much fun enjoying the company of my son to worry about the architectural crimes being committed by residential developments like the one we live in. He's growing up too fast, and keeping pace with him is as much as I can do. I suppose all those other things are just background clutter.



Here's Little Nio posing with his name. "N-I-O" in the pool. His Daddy is somewhere underwater holding him up.





Summer is almost over and the monsoon season with its heavy rains is almost upon us here. Little Nio takes his Daddy swimming as often as possible before it's too late and the rains force him to take to the indoors.

We've also gone and recently purchased a hexagonal shaped playpen. Very sturdy, very heavy duty. It's become a mini-activity center for Little Nio.







It's a place for drinking a bottle of milk.





It's a great place for taking a quick power nap.





And it's also a great place for hanging out with stuffed toy friends and doing a bit of exercise.

One of the other things that Little Nio has started to do is to role play. Or perhaps he is merely reliving a past life with very strong residual traces of a Mexican luchador? Highly unlikely though... he doesn't even have a mask.





Here's Little Nio standing in his hexagonal playpen, strangely reminiscent of the octagon that is an icon of the Ultimate Fighting Champion (UFC) competition. It's one thing to grow up unafraid, but perhaps training for the role might be going a bit too far.




This video clip shows Little Nio displaying his foot stomping skills. We suspect that he's actually copying his Mommy stomping out cockroaches. Here's his game face.

Sonkran, April 2008

We didn't go out of town for Songkran (Buddhist Thai New Year) this year. It actually can get very dangerous on the roads during this holiday season with the accident rates being alarmingly high. We stayed in Bangkok and simply went to have a nice family lunch together. Here's Little Nio with his Mommy, waiting for the lifts at Siam Paragon.



Posing near the pond right outside one of our favorite restaurants at Siam Paragon, Café Chili. It's located on the ground level of the mall and it serves fantastic northeastern (Issarn) style food. My wife, Kanittha, is from that part of the country and she gives the cuisine here top marks.



Back home after lunch, Mommy teaches Little Nio a few important rituals to pay respect to the Buddha during this religious holiday.



Here's Little Nio with his Daddy standing in front of the house.



It's a really good sign that a child is curious about his environment and Little Nio has shown nothing but a healthy interest in everything around him. Despite barely being able to walk, he shows tremendous manual dexterity and mechanical capacity. Not only will he try opening drawers, but once he finds something interesting he will try to find out more.



The colored photos in this catalog look interesting, but for all we know he might have spotted a real bargain with some of those discount prices.

A Typical Day, April 2008

Here's what it's like to spend a typical day with Little Nio.

We catch up with him at dinner... nothing like a bit of fried chicken and some french fries. Even if the chicken ends up on the floor... it still tastes like chicken.







Little Nio is a very healthy eater. He pretty much eats anything, but we've been very cautious about introducing him to new foods. Right now the only things that we haven't introduced him to are really spicy Thai foods and some seafoods. That can always wait till later on.



Here he is, just barely awake. His Mommy is still fast asleep beside him. Little Nio still sleeps in the big bed between us, but he starts out sleeping in his own crib. In the middle of the night, when he gets lonely and starts whining, we move him in between us. We're going to try moving him to his own room in a few more months, but right now we're all enjoying cuddling up together.



Wide awake now. Just finished having some bread rolls for breakfast. There are crumbs all over the place, so Little Nio has to stay in his crib while Mommy sweeps up after him.



Waiting for bath time. Having ditched his clothes, Little Nio struts around the bedroom in his birthday suit.



Here he is with Mommy taking a bath. He used to like taking his bath in the tiny tub all the time, but being a big boy now Little Nio sometimes prefers to sit down for his bath.



Right out of the bath waiting for some clothes.



The gratuitous butt shot to keep audience interest in this blog.



The finished product after the bath. Here's Little Nio all smiles with his Mommy. And that, was basically what a typical day is like.

Walking Already, April 2008

This first video segment was taken on the same day as the "snacking" images on the previous post. Little Nio is really excited about walking around.



This second view clip was taken earlier today. Little Nio walks away from Daddy to his Mommy and back again. He's been walking around for quite a bit and is not much into crawling. You can see that there are still a number of boxes that need to be unpacked, but having boxes around are actually much safer than hard edged furniture pieces.

Gone Swimming, April 2008

Settling in to our new home has been like putting on a favorite pair of comfy shoes.



A lot of things still need to get done for the house, so here we are stopping for a quick lunch at a small restaurant at Home Pro, which is a huge store that pretty much let's you take of everything for your house. It's a D-I-Y paradise.



Back at home, Little Nio and his Mommy watching TV and snacking.







Little Nio really likes to experiment with different foods. He knows what he wants to try, and he'll reach out and try it. And, when he is done with eating, he simply stops. If it just happens to be in his mouth at the time he gets full, he hits the overflow valve and it comes right back out.



One of the things that we've started to enjoy here at our new home is the wading pool at the club house.





Little Nio has a little floating car that we use for when he takes to the pool. He wasn't entirely sure what this was all about at first, but he really enjoyed himself once he got the hang of things.









One of things we should share with you is that Little Nio had swimming lessons when he was only three months old at Kasemrad Hospital. Actually, that's how my wife, Kanittha, found our new home. Whenever she would take Little Nio to his swimming lessons, she would see the construction site and the big sign boards from the elevated highway going to the hospital.

We wanted Little Nio not to develop any phobias for the water and be able to learn how to float at a very early age. Actually, all babies do know how to swim. They know this instinctively as they spent the better part of a year floating around in the womb, we just wanted to remind him what he already knows.