si tu puedes!

Today, Amado and I were leaving Berkeley Bowl. We were walking to the car, which was parked on the street, when we saw that there was a garbage truck in the Berkeley Bowl parking lot, picking up the Berkeley Bowl dumpsters. Well, most of you know Amado's love of the garbage truck. So we stayed to watch.

Little did I know that this show was gonna go on and on. They are really turning out a lot of waste over there at the Berkeley Bowl. Dumpster after dumpster was hoisted up, its contents tossed into the truck. Now, this is actually very interesting, I now know, since Amado has shown me the light. But I do have my limit. I mean, jeez, we were standing there for like 10 minutes. So then, I break the news to Amado, look, man, after this dumpster we are going. Okay, he agrees.

Of course, the truck stops mid-lift of this dumpster. Lord. I am trying to be patient, can't believe I didnt give the "last dumpster warning" on the previous dumpster. So in my impatience, I say, "come on, camion! sigue, sigue!"

Amado jumps right in. I guess my urguing must have reminded him of "La Pequena Locomotora Que Si Pudo" because he started cheering on the camion de basura. "Sigue, camion de basura! Si tu Peudes! Si tu pedes!" He picked up a little rythm with that one. "Si! Tu! Puedes! Si! Tu! Puedes!" he is chanting, jumping up and down with his little arm in the air.

And it worked.

The camion roared back up and lifted the load into the truck. Its amazing what a little cheering and support can do. Amado turned to me, completely satisfied and said, "wow, yo ayude este camion." Not surprised, just proud.

amado and tariq ali

my baby, when he was a baby...hanging out with tariq ali

three

today, my boy is three! my computer battery is about to die, so i'll leave it at that and write more later. please send him all your love, good wishes, and prayers for a happy day and year.

no cell phones, please

Today, Amado and I were outside playing soccer. My phone rang, and I thought it was one of my students who has really been struggling, so I wanted to pick up. I apologized to Amado - I really try to not take calls when we are playing. I feel like its disrespectful to him and makes him feel like he is less important than my phone calls. Its just a personal policy that I try not to break. But today, I thought it was this student, so I picked up, and it turned out not to be that student, but I got stuck on the phone for a few minutes because I had picked up in the first place. Arg.

So, as I hung up the phone, I apologized again to Amado and asked him if we could keep playing. He didnt give any kind of attitude or anything, but before we started playing again, he said, "Mami, con este juego no se permite telefonos".

"Si, mijo, te prometo" I told him, feeling kind of bad.

"Porque necesitamos correr rapido, y el telefono se puede caer". I thought it was interesting that he was kind of diluting his pointed message, by telling me it was because my phone could break and not because it was rude for me to take a call while we were playing.

"Si mijo, y tambien porque estamos jugando juntos, y necesito enfocar en ti" I said, trying to make explicit the intervention I thought he was trying to make.

"Si mami. Pero tambien es porque tu necesitas enfocar en la pelota" he says, as it whizzed by me.

more pics from our day off

pictures by Hossam