Day 334 - Playground

Thought of the day: Lila made a "train" tonight by connecting her paintings and drawing made at home and in her preschool. I was impressed by the length of her train. She had done a lot more than I had at her age. The world is getting a lot more competitive over the past few decades and children are quickly adapting or are made to adapt quickly. As long as she is enjoying her experience and is not overwhelmed or overstimulated, it's not necessarily a bad thing. With choices and opportunities abound, it's the duty, burden and pleasure of the parents to help them navigate through the maze of early life.  It's a long and arduous process but, at the end, there's no greater pleasure for any parents than seeing their children emerge as wholesome and well-rounded individuals ready for the world at large.

Photo of the day:

Lila in a playground in Boulder. With so many walls to climb on, it's no wonder that she developed an interest in climbing so early. I don't think I have seen a climbing wall of any kind until I was already well into my twenties!

Day 333 - Bikes

Thought of the day: The caliber of photographers on Google+ is simply amazing. Indeed, many of them are professionals doing that for a living. I am following a number of them and the photos showing up in my stream really made me pause before I dared to post anything of my own. My past experience on Facebook was the exact opposite - the quality of most of the photos there were so poor that I felt out of place to post anything with an artistic touch. Similar things may be happening to the non-photo posts as well - the posts on Google+ are often thought provoking and interesting while most posts on Facebook are none of that. It can become self-enforcing after a while - Google+ gets the great shots and profound thoughts while Facebook gets the average, mom-and-pop style shots and random posts. In an ideal world, people would move to one social network - Google+, of course:-), because it's open and less sinister - and use Circles to maintain separate public and private images. You can share your great shots and interesting thoughts with the public and your fuzzy shots and not-so-inspiring thoughts with family and friends as they are the ones who would welcome anything from you. Sadly, the real world doesn't work like that as it's easier not to struggle with something new and it's far less work to just share whatever comes into your mind with whoever is listening and most people would probably do just that. Unless Facebook messes up badly, I'm not seeing people migrate en-masse to Google+ in the near future.

Photo of the day:

Ready to leave - this is not an interesting photo for the public consumption, but this is one of the only photos I took today...

Day 332 - Denver Museum

Thought of the day: We visited Denver Museum of Nature and Science today. One of the most interesting exhibitions was Expedition Health which gave us the opportunity to learn some amazing facts about human body through creatively designed activities and games. My favorite game was the brain wave game where two players sat at the opposite ends of a table trying to push a marble towards the opponent using brain waves. When you are more relaxed, the brain generates alpha waves which will put the marble in motion. Both David and I did a competition with Jasmine and we both lost spectacularly. The result was not too surprising as children are mentally more relaxed than adults. Their minds are not as cluttered and confused as ours. That partly explains why children are capable of learning fast and effortlessly as a relaxed brain is also more open, alert and focused, all of which are good traits for learning. That may also explain why they tend to be more creative as a relaxed brain also tend to be more creative. I learn something new of children all the time and my experience today have certainly increased my respect for them even more. 

Photo of the day:

Denver Museum of Nature and Science.  The "T-Rex Encounter" exhibit is very cool - it looks so real that we had to carry Lila out of the exhibit screaming because she got so scared by one of the mean-looking dinosaurs! I guess they are too much for a toddler brain to handle.

Day 331 - Restaurant

Thought of the day: Sadly, we haven’t camped for a single time this summer. With the weather getting colder, the chance of going camping this season is getting slimmer as the light is getting softer every day. Camping trips in the summer are like ski vacations in the winter - missing them is like missing some of the essence of summer. Sure, we have done a lot of other interesting activities, but I wish we had given a higher priority to camping.

Photo of the day:

One thing we have done a lot during the summer is eating out.  There are a lot of good restaurants in Boulder to choose from, including this Mexican restaurant where we spent the evening at.  It had a great ambiance and good food.

Day 330 - Hot Tub

Thought of the day: A friend pointed me to an online enneagram test today. The test identified my dominant personality type. It was pretty fascinating for me as I had never given much thought to personality types and how much impact they might have on our behaviors, actions and emotions. With enneagram, some things that didn’t make much sense to me before started to make sense. In many ways, we ended up where we are, doing what we are doing because of who we are and our personalities have a lot to do with it. Enneagram can be an invaluable tool for one to understand his elusive self and subsequently to rise beyond himself.  There are also some neat theories on how personalities evolve over time and through experiences in life. Another interesting aspect is the compatibility and interactions between people of different personality types. It’s a tool employed by therapists to work out issues in relationships. In any case, I am excited to learn something new - new for me at least - and is eager to learn more about it.

Photo of the day:

Lila in the hot tub while I took a photo from the top.  I am sure enneagram has something to do with me being here at this particular time and taking this particular photo at this particular spot. If I had a different type of personality, I don't know what my life history would have been but I'm pretty sure that this photo would not have been on this blog - in fact, this blog probably wouldn't have existed in the first place.

Day 329 - Energy Monitor

Thought of the day: I volunteered in the annual vision screening event in Jasmine's school today. All day long, kids lined up grade by grade and had their eyesight tested by volunteers. It was my first time doing this and it had been an eye opening experience for me. I got to observe the remarkable physical and behavioral differences between kids from different grades. It's amazing how much difference a single year of age difference can make at this early stage of life. An idea just popped into my head: I want to make a photo book for Jasmine's 10th birthday so she, and we, can see how she has changed from year to year. Our minds mostly live in the present moment and it's easy for us to forget how we or our loved ones once were. "Old" photos will help us recall memories buried deep inside us and help us see the whole person and how her present self came into being. Just like annual vision charts record the vision history, photos record the life history. It would be a pretty interesting and meaningful project to reconstruct a life using photos.


Photo of the day:

Jasmine's climbing gym employs an 100kW solar system to offset a quarter of the electricity usage in the building.  It has one of David's energy monitoring devices installed and the real-time energy information is prominently displayed on the wall near the entrance. The device has a detailed memory of 30 years so you can reconstruct your energy usage history over a long span of time. Hopefully, your usage will trend down over time as you learn more about energy efficiency, pay more attention to your footprint and take steps to reduce it. So, in a way, the device captures your history of becoming a green citizen.

Day 328 - Reflection

Thought of the day: Lila appears to be a natural climber. She just had her first climbing lesson yesterday and it was as if she had woken up and discovered a whole new world in front of her. I have been taking her to a climbing gym twice a week for Jasmine's climbing lessons and Lila loved one of the easier routes there. Today she somehow figured it all out and free climbed all the way to the top. She was so excited about her new accomplishment that she kept doing that over and over and over again. I had to literally peel her off the wall so she won't overexert herself.  The way things are heading right now, I am spending more and more time in the climbing gyms with the girls and it won't be long before I might be motivated enough to sign up for climbing lessons myself!

Photo of the day:

A wall display inside a cafe with the reflection overlaying the original image. I keep returning to cafes just like Lila keeps returning to the climbing wall. Her temptation is riskier but much healthier than mine.