Today was a zoo day for father and son. The only bad thing was that I got a little bit of sunburn (fortunately, Alexei didn’t). I was pretty impressed with how quickly we were able to get out of the house. We set a personal best record by arriving at the zoo entrance before 11am.

Even though there was a nice strong breeze most of the day, it was still pretty hot. When we arrived home a bit before four, I decided it would be a good idea to reward ourselves with a glass of lemonade. Mind you, we had been drinking water all day long, but there is something to be said for sitting down and enjoying the simple pleasure of a sweet chilly beverage with your offspring.

Alexei wasn’t too keen on waiting for me to pour it; he wanted to drink right then and there. When I finished diluting the lemonade a little bit, we headed into the living room and sat on the floor. My son came over and sat down on my leg, ready for a sip. I gave him one and then took one myself. To my surprise, he got up. Looking at me, he started making some strange motions with his right hand and saying something I’d never heard before. After a minute or so I guessed what he might be saying, but wanted to make sure.

The motion was something like a fish swimming through the water, like in a Sabbath school song he sings. And the word sounded like, “ish?". Thinking back, a few days ago we had taken the whole box of Goldfish crackers along with a glass of lemonade and sat down on the floor together. He remembered and was asking me for the ‘main’ part of the snack.

To confirm, I asked if he wanted fish, to which he replied, “Da.” Then I asked if he wanted reebki (Russian for fish). Another da. Finally, I tried to confuse him and asked if he wanted a leftover chocolate bunny from Easter. The smart aleck smelled something fishy and responded NO with a wag of his head. Even though he passed all my tests I made him point to exactly what he wanted in the kitchen. I needn’t have done that because it was, in fact, Goldfish he was after.

Whether or not I interpreted his gestures and words exactly as he intended me to, I’ll never know. Nevertheless, it was pretty amazing to witness Alexei communicate what he wanted but had never expressed before. Instead of just sharing some lemonade with me, my son gave me a magical moment that I’ll have the privilege of reminiscing on for the rest of my life.

Goldfish. The only fish that smiles as you eat it.

When Anastasia and I decided when she would return to the workforce as our family’s breadwinner, I expected that she would really miss her son. To try and soften her adjustment, I came up with the idea to surprise her with the blow-by-blow highlights of Daddy Daycare…in real-time. To that end, I grabbed a Twitter account for my son.

For those who may not know, Twitter is a micro-blogging site. That means that you can write up to a 140 character message letting the world know what you’re doing, sharing something interesting (or most of the time not-so-interesting), or just spamming anyone who cares to listen.

Over the course of a day, Alexei and I make somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 15 updates. If you would like to keep abreast of our doings, feel free to follow Alexei. On the other hand, if you don’t want to sign up for yet another service on the web, you can view the five most recent ‘tweets’ in the rightmost column of Alexei’s page.

In computer programming, there is something known as a “Hello world” program. It is a way to get one’s feet wet on the road to learning a new programming language. It also boosts your self esteem and makes you feel like you can actually do something, albeit as simple as printing one line that says simply, “Hello world.” Twitter is a unique web service in that 1- at its core it is very simple: a person writes a very short message and other people can choose to read it, and 2- it has an enormous user base. For these reasons and some others that would probably bore most people that may read this, writing a program that interfaces with Twitter is being called Hello world 2.0.

Here’s the clincher: out of the 30 or so days that I’ve been tweeting for my son, his mother followed him in quasi real-time once. All the other days I’ve printed her out a hard copy of the day’s tweets for her to read in one sitting when she gets home. So much for all this high-tech wizardry…

[NOTE] On the outside chance that this is the first time you’ve heard about Twitter and are thinking about taking it for a test drive, here is an informative quick read: How to introduce yourself in the social media. Once you get all set up, don’t forget to follow Alexei. Enjoy!