as we were landing in San Jose, Tovar fell asleep. When we taxied to the gate, we woke him up after he'd been asleep for 5 minutes, and told him that we were in San Jose. "Yay, Yay!" he shouted in a way that was both excited and half crying at the same time.

Pretty much exactly how I felt.

It's good to be home. Thanks to traumentwerfer for picking us up. It was also nice to come home to a clean home, thanks to our maids coming while we were gone.

Shared adversity, new surroundings, and lack of food/sleep/etc are a great way to bond, and we had lots of great family togetherness moments. There is significant value in that. And really, there is no such thing as Tovar charming too many strangers, or hearing que lindo!, or that we are blessed with the smartest and/or most good-natured 3 year old in the world, too many times. (I'm not exaggerating - he was quite a hit!)

But it was also expensive (even when not at the Ritz), bad for sleep, hard to work, stressful, iffy food (Old San Juan food was great. Other food...well...I didn't expect my tacos to be deep-fried. I am too old for so much fried food), logistically complicated/stressful (3 different hotels after the passport fiasco), generally a lot of time spent on crap like arranging hotel rooms and not much relaxing on beaches with pina coladas (though the pina coladas at Richard's in Vieques were fantastic), etc.

I really hope my upcoming east coast trip is much more of a road warrior type of experience (working all day on planes/trains, etc.)

p.s. dmorr's recent comments on the Ritz were spot on. It was nice, but for the price tag, I'd expect a lot of things they didn't have - a bidet, dimmers on the lights, free parking, insane customer service instead of just good to great. And robots. Somewhere, for that price, there have to be robots. Serving drinks, cleaning the rooms, watching Tovar, I dunno.

I open a package of "health supplies" from the internet.

Tovar: What's that?
Me: That's for my nose, so I don't sneeze as much.
Tovar: What's that?
Me: That's a pill I take, so I don't sneeze as much.
Tovar: What's that?
Me: That's to make sure Mama loves us.

It came refrigerated, which was cool. We haven't tried it yet. I am a little concerned it might boost mania, as there were some vague references to that in my googling, but it didn't sound like a strong or long-lasting effect so I'm not too worried.

This study (PDF) suggests a dose of 40 IU, which seems to be the dosage of what I got. (Well, it's either the dosage of one spray, or of the entire bottle - hopefully the former!)

Yay for weird internet drug experiments based on studies read on the internet and described to the internet. Really, love is all about the internet, is what I'm trying to say here.

I've had very mixed feelings about Tovar lately.

On the one hand, as we've had trouble having more kids, I've felt enormously grateful that we have him. I care an enormous amount about having kids, and it is such a relief (given our struggles) to at least have Tovar.

On the other hand, there are other things I want to accomplish in life, and having a child makes them a lot harder. I find myself wondering whether people with kids ever start companies. Or write books. Or do anything big. It's just such a huge time & energy suck. Even with all the help we have.

It sucks that human biology makes having kids young so important (esp. for the woman). It seems like such a better mid-life event. Go out and be an entrepreneur, or climb the career ladder, sow your wild oats, make your mark on the world, and then when you are ready to slow down, have kids. That makes sense to me - at least, for people whose main satisfaction is from professional accomplishment. For those who are satisfied by family life, starting earlier makes sense.

I thought I was ready, because I had already sown my wild oats, and I do value family life. And at Google, they made allowances for parents, and I didn't mind that I couldn't devote full energy to work.

But now that I have a chance to work on my dreams...I do mind. I feel held back. I want to travel more. I want to pour my energy into my work during the day - and then be able to relax at night. Time with Tovar is rarely relaxing. It is more like another job (a job, as kuddliphish once put it, with an emotionally unstable boss who doesn't speak English and screams at you all the time.)

The most obvious option is to become a semi-absentee parent. It would be more expensive, and somewhat sad, but perhaps it would better achieve my goals. And to delay having more kids, say for another 5 years. (None of this changes that Shannon & I both feel strongly about wanting at least 1 more kid. We want a family. We just want other things too, and are finding it hard to balance them).

In my dream world, we'd find a sisterwife whose dream in life was to raise kids and cook and clean all day...but that seems rather improbable.

(and before anyone says the obvious, yes, this does make me wonder whether I want more kids now. That's part of why I'm exploring these issues. Duh.)

Sunday is family day, and with choiceful out of town at her Big Mind video filming w/ xleste, today was father-son day.

It began with Tovar waking up at 7am, which I have not been so good at doing lately. I brought a comforter into the living room, and napped on and off while he played, getting him toys and bottles when requested. Eventually he said "Get up, dada!" and when I saw that the clock read 10:30am, I agreed. He grabbed my arm and pulled me up, and I started making some new Teavana tea I had bought yesterday, and I let Tovar smell all the teas.

Tovar asked for tea, and normally when this happens I say "No, sorry, tea is for grownups." I started doing this, and then remembered that I had bought a kiwi strawberry herbal tea, and when I told him I had a kind of tea that he could have, he was very excited. He had his kiwi strawberry, I had green peach, and I fed him crackers and guacamole.

Pretty soon it was noon and his naptime, so he slept while I caught up on silly arguments I started. When he woke up, it was time to head to the Discovery Museum! I had lost my membership card, but I checked the mailbox on the way out and the new one was there just as I'd hoped.

Tovar played with water and sand while I sometimes watched and sometimes read Made To Stick on my Kindle. Eventually they closed, and we went out and played in the park. I wanted to get some exercising in before dinner, so while Tovar sat in the shade with our pile of stuff, I sprinted out and around a tree and back, to the great amusement of Tovar and the other young onlookers.

It was a good scene in the park, enough parents and kids to be interesting, but few enough that there weren't crowds for Tovar to get lost in. I did 6 sprints, and found them way easier than the set I did last week. We hung out w/ some other kids, I did some pullups on a brick wall, and eventually we headed out. On the way, a little girl Tovar had met gave him a flower by way of goodbye, which was very sweet and had him smiling for quite awhile.

We headed over to Mudai, an ethiopian restaurant near downtown SJ, and enjoyed a fabulous meal mostly consisting of injera (particularly for Tovar). Ah well, the occasional carb-heavy meal is fine. We called Shannon, who was at a dinner of her own, and talked to her for a few minutes, then drove home.

As we exited the car, I noticed the gorgeousness of the weather, so I grabbed my laptop, a glass of Moscato d' Asti, my didjeridoo, and a book, and we're chillin' outside.

Yay!

I dunno if it's that he's getting older, or that I've gotten to see him more since leaving Google, but I love Tovar so much. He's so fun. I treat him like an adult, and I try to explain to him why I ask him to do or not to do certain things, and he always listens and often understands. For example, I differentiate between "This bothers me" (yelling) and "This could break something" or "This is unsafe".

He loves to be helpful, and sees "it bothers/hurt me" as a perfectly valid argument about why he should/shouldn't do something. He apologizes and obviously feels badly when I chide him. He's smart, enthusiastic, and he makes people around him smile and laugh all the time. I love seeing people's faces light up when he does something cute. He's just a great little guy.

Since most of you don't read babybabble, I'm going to occasionally cross-post the funniest/most important stories. Here is one of each:

The doctors told us a couple days ago about the results of Tovar's "screen" (not sure what for). Everything came back normal, except for one abnormality. "What?" we asked. "He may have a hyperactive adrenal gland." We cracked up, and they looked at us funny. Shannon pointed at me "yeah, him too". They wanted to know more, and were disappointed that I hadn't been diagnosed by an endocrinologist or anything. We mentioned that my heart rate was above 100 for many hours on Tovar's birthing day, even though I was just sitting around.

And here is S's mega-post referencing all the posts in our families 3 journals about the labor/delivery experience.