New granddaughter's first day

I'm feeling like a very fortunate fellow. My second grandchild was born this morning (August 31, 2010) at 5:54 AM. Mother and daughter Yaiza are doing great and looking great! We have been running around all day visiting at the hospital and entertaining big sister Ayla, now two and a half. Friends and family are asking who she looks like. I don't know. Here she is. Probably just like any other mixture of Swede, Norwegian, Israeli, German, Swiss, Yemeni, Finn, Scot, Irish, and Scot Irish. Her hair is quite dark now and her eyes are sort of standard newborn bluish gray. Being an infant, all this may change. One thing is certain. She sure looks good to me.

Here are a few more photos of the people in Yaiza's world today.

Visiting Granddaughter

Hey, we're in Kansas City spending time with our 7 month old granddaughter and her parents. This is a real treat for us and it's a lot of work. Babies are a lot worse than bosses for making ambiguous demands designed to multitask you to death. The redeeming thing is that they are a lot cuter than bosses.

Our princess seems to be a baby of great robustness and strength. She's in the ninety-something percentile of size in all dimensions such as length, weight, and head size but a little slow in the hair growth department. Despite the pink outfits, our daughter is always receiving dubious compliments from strangers such as, "Great baby. He's going to be a bruiser isn't he."

Ayla is her name. This is a girl's name in both Finnish and Hebrew, so it recognizes respectively her paternal grandfather and grandmother. It is also notably the name of the protagonist in Clan of the Cave Bear, that bright, courageous, and decisive little Cro-Magnon orphan girl who had the misfortune to be found and raised by thick-witted Neanderthals. Our daughter read the book when she was a child and emphatically announced, "If I have a daughter I'm going to name her Ayla." I have suggested to her that she probably identified with Ayla, particularly the part about being raised by thick-witted Neanderthals. Disclaimer: She does not always find my lame attempts to analyze her psyche particularly accurate or amusing.

Back to Ayla. She is in the exploratory stage now. That means she instantly grabs anything in reach and stuffs it in her mouth, with both hands, to assess by gnawing. For instance, she can grab a paper table napkin, stuff the whole thing in her mouth and gum it to shreds in the moments it takes a stiff-backed grandparent to bend over and pick up the spoon she just tossed on the floor. Her two parents, four grandparents, and four surviving great grandparents have provided her with a wealth of colorful, jangly, child-safe baby toys to satisfy her intellectual curiosity but, as her father notes, she definitely prefers the choking-hazard non-toys in her surroundings.

Ayla is impatient to crawl so she can more quickly reach fragile and dangerous articles. She can do push ups and she can stand up on her feet with her face mashed into the floor but she hasn't gotten all four limbs operating in sync yet. Her current traveling method involves the snowmobile technique wherein she uses her face like a sled runner (lubricated by a stream of saliva like a snail track) while her powerful legs serve as the traction propulsion device. Then she takes a couple of rollovers before assuming the snowmobile again. This can get her from the highly engineered baby teething toys to the skull and crossbones hazards as quick as a flash.

We take lots of outings with Ayla. She likes stroller rides, I guess because of the jiggling motion and changing scenery. She even tolerates latte stops if there are enough straws and table napkins to eat. Here are some pictures of some of our weekend outings. One notable stop was at an adult exercise station in one of the parks. This was particularly pleasing to Grandma who seems to be the genetic source of the boundless curiosity and energy passed to her descendants. Click any image for a larger view.

Granddaughter Swimming

Anna and Ayla have a swim in Kansas City motel pool.

Click snapshots below for a larger image. These were taken in Kansas City while Catherine helped Anna and Ayla survive a series of motels after starting her new job there. They were awaiting availability of their new apartment and the arrival of Joonas from Columbus with the moving truck.

Current Granddaughter Pictures

After a steady string of Venezuela posts I'm going home to family now. Here are some new pictures of the foremost thing on my mind, our new granddaughter Ayla. Click to enlarge. For any visitors who don't know me, the handsome gentleman with white hair is not me. He's Aimo, Ayla's other Grandpa from Finland and Israel. I'm the ugly guy at the top left margin of the web page with a brazen parrot trying to steal his gold tooth.

I'm a Grandpa!

I'm a grandpa. My wonderful daughter and son-in-law Joonas had Ayla Catherine Ojanen on March 13.