Mr. (and Mrs.) Luth Travel in India

I've been home from India for thirteen months. It was about time to get organized and get to work on photos. Over the summer I completed a book about the three treks we had taken while on our expat assignment. For some reason chronicling those trips seemed like a more controlled experiment. The next planned volume was all of our domestic travel within India. It involved sifting through thousands of photos (which I had neglected to keep well organized) from nineteen different trips, recreating a 400 - 500 word summary of each of those trips that wasn't just a recitation of what we did, and organizing it into 332 pages.

A few things I realized while putting this book together:

• Neemrana may be one of my favorite places in the world. For anyone travelling to India that has an extra day, I'd highly recommend making the stop halfway between Delhi and Jaipur. It's a fantastic fort palace that they continue to renovate and makes a great one night getawway from Delhi. We discovered it for the first time in 2004. In total, we've returned five times since.
• Eleven of our 19 trips were to the state of Rajasthan, including multiple trips to the aforementioned Neemrana, Jodhpur, and Udaipur. While I really enjoy looking at the photographs from Jaipur, it remains one of my least favorite places in India; extremely touristy and, personally, I think it's a shame that it's the only Rajasthani city many travellers to India visit as part of the golden triangle along with Delhi and Agra.
• We stayed in some ridiculously nice hotels in India. Nicer hotels than we'll probably stay in for the rest of our lives (though having the ability to travel at the tail end of an off season, or in the case of Udaipur in late May right smack dab in the middle of off season, certainly helped make those places more affordable).
• There were a number of strangers we decided to trust along the way. I love having pictures of those (former) strangers - they bring back stronger memories than simply looking at a picture of the Taj Mahal.
• As a general statement, I have incredible family and friends. More specifically, I appreciate having had so many of them visit us (and allow me to direct their travel schedules to my own benefit) and having so many familiar faces sprinkled throughout our travels and the book.

While I'm pretty sure there's only a handful of people that will take the time to look at the book and even fewer that will read and look at the entire book (admittedly, I'm not sure how excited I'd be to look through over 300 pages of someone else's vacations), here are the links to the book in all its glory:

Blurb Bookstore - Preview

Apple Bookstore - Free

"The Gift of Motherhood"

One of the battles I elected not to fight during this whole pregnancy thing was on the classes to attend. OK, so maybe I battled the quantity of classes, but knowing my wife, I knew there would be classes. Even though I'm relatively certain that, over the course of history, more babies have been born to parents that didn't attend classes than born to parents that have, I knew there would be classes.

Rather than spreading out our required learning over the course of three Wednesday evenings, we binged on expectant parenting and took it all in last Saturday on a session called "The Gift of Motherhood" scheduled from 9 - 4.

Overall, the day was less worthless than I had expected. How's that for a rousing endorsement? On the positive side, during the morning session the instructor did a nice job of explaining what the physiological changes are that take place in the mother's body during and after labor. For some reason, having an explanation about what's actually going on inside (and now knowing what the word effacement means when the doctors use it) gives this whole experience a sense of reality and logic rather than it just being referred to as a miracle or magical.

Every expectant mother there was accompanied by a supporter, with one exception, all of those supporters were the spouse (one woman's husband wasn't able to join so her mother came). As a means to help all of us idiot first-time fathers to understand what our wives were going through, we were forced to where a 35 pound weight suit, complete with breasts and all. Maybe I'm more sensitive than the average father-to-be, but I'm not sure how putting on a weight suit makes me any more sensitive or understanding. I get that my wife has gained weight during the pregnancy. I get that that sucks. I get that that can't be comfortable. I've probably gained 35 pounds since my low weight in India. It sucks. I get it. Wearing a weight suit isn't going to make me a better parent. On the other hand, other than watching David Schwimmer fall of a table on Friends, seeing me in the weight suit is one of the few times you'll hear Lindsay laugh out loud, so it had that going for it which is nice.

Just before lunch the group went on a tour of the birthing section of the hospital. This was another aspect of the class I had made fun of prior to attending. How many other medical procedures are there where you visit the hospital for a look around to get comfortable with your surroundings? While I was skeptical, I must admit that helped to understand the their process, when we'll move from the birthing suite to the recovery suite (yes, it's obnoxious that they call them suites, but I'm using their nomenclature, not mine), and what to expect throughout our stay. It didn't hurt that they also mentioned that both mom and dad get a massage during the stay. Nice to see our healthcare dollars being put to use.

After the tour, the class took a slight turn toward the realistic. They showed a video of three mothers going through labor, answering questions about what it was like, and finally, showing the actual births. I hadn't seen an actual birth on video since high school. They showed it in biology class as a means to understand the reproductive systems but the true motivation behind showing had to be birth control. Seeing a similar video 20 years later was no more "meaningful" or "beautiful" - it was still, honestly, pretty gross. Based on the look of horror on Lindsay's face, it was safe to assume she was going through a similar set of emotions.

Once the scare tactics ended, there was swaddling and diaper application for beginners. Probably things I could have figured out on my own, but always good to get a refresher. I'm pretty sure the last diaper I changed was for the kids I babysat next door when I was in high school. And yes, I realize the fact I have niece and nephew that are eleven months old whose diapers I've never changed makes me a crappy uncle. Even worse that I'm the godfather to the nephew. Something tells me I have more than my fair share coming my way in the next few years.

As we progressed through the afternoon, it was obvious that we didn't have enough material to prolong the class until 4pm. I got that same feeling you get in college or grad school, especially when it's a once-a-week class where it's obvious you're going to get out early. You get giddy. You get excited. It's like you've found time. And so at 3pm when the class ended, we merrily made our way to the car, hit Park Avenue in Winter Park, got a coffee, shopped a little, had an early dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, Prato, and made it home by 6:30pm. Not a bad little reward for a day spent in class.

I had expected a painfully slow day filled with people prolonging the class by asking unnecessary questions (everyone knows people like this); thankfully, there was only one extraneous question-asker in the class and the class wasn't that bad (I know, another ringing endorsement). Could I have become a father without attending? Absolutely. Where there parts that annoyed me? Absolutely. Do I regret going? Not terribly. If nothing else, I learned that the late afternoon circuit in Winter Park might be a regular thing once baby arrives and before baby becomes mobile.

Overall, I'd call the day a success.

It's Not Delhi Belly, Weeks 31 - 35

I didn't realize it had been since before Christmas that I had last posted weekly pictures. That being said, I'm not going to waste much time because there's not much time to waste. Here are the last five installments, all taken here in Orlando; no more travel for either of us until the little one arrives. Since we're not travelling, it's always nice to know that two of the more notable guards in the house, Raji (week 32) and Sharky (week 35) have her back.

And yep, she still looks GREAT (not that I'm biased or anything).

Week 31

Week 32

Week 33

Week 34

Week 35

Environmentalism vs. Cost Containment

I'm not the most environmental fellow, but I'm certainly not anti-environment. I freely admit that. What bothers me is when hotels feel the need to make me feel like I caused an oil spill. I simply hate those annoying little signs instructing me to support their environmental efforts by reusing my towels. Do they really expect me to think their true intentions are as altruistic as those little signs would lead me to believe?

I would take those little cards a little more seriously if they were a little more honest: "Not only would you be helping the environment but you'll also be helping us reduce or contain our costs in a highly competitive industry with increasingly shrinking margins." In fact, I might even pay attention. Or better yet, more hotel chains could go the way of Starwood Properties. At least the fine people there had the decency to introduce the concept of gainsharing into their environmental efforts by throwing a few extra reward points your way for electing to forego room cleanings during your stay. Seems fair enough and is certainly a cost effective way to reward guests for doing the "right" thing.

On the other hand, I mean, it's been well over a year since I've had a cleaning crew picking up after me each and every day; why would I need that same level of service just because I'm staying away from home? For me, there's an inherent expectation built into the "deal" I make with a hotel: I pay you for a room, you give me clean towels every day.

The more expensive the hotel, the fewer of those little cards I want to see.

The Registry

I'm in no way a handyman. In fact, there are about four house projects for which I'm qualified: hanging blinds, installing dimmer switches (quite the advanced project for someone of my skill level), hanging shelves, and assembling any type of furniture involving an Allen wrench. Even with this limited skill set, I can work my way around Home Depot or Lowe's and have a relatively decent idea of where to go and what I'm looking for. In my younger days, I would roam around those stores with a befuddled look, crisscrossing the store, and generally getting more and more frustrated by the minute.

These days, home improvement stores have been replaced in the befuddlement department by baby stores. Even though I'm eight weeks away from becoming a parent, I have a horrible (actually, it's not really that horrible as I don't really like the stores, but as an expectant parent society tells me I should feel horrible) feeling that I'll never quite get comfortable in the big box baby stores, which made for a somewhat frustrating evening. An evening spent clearing off the registry.

I thought clearing the registry would be a relatively easy task that would resemble a quick look the remaining items, confirming what was still needed, and quickly shoveling items into a cart as we moved briskly through the store. This expectation came to a crashing halt within minutes of entering. Nine minutes to be exact. You never know how long nine minutes is until you've watched your wife walk around an infant clothing section looking for mittens, a hat, and socks, none of which, mind you, were on the registry. Somehow my expectation of crossing things off a checklist had morphed into some sort of sick shopping expedition. Part of the issue was that when she registered she knew about as much about baby stores as I do now (she's easily at a more advanced level).

You might also be asking yourself, isn't "T minus 8 weeks" a little early to be clearing off the list? To be honest, I don't know. What I do know is that the fact that it wasn't done was causing stress in a person to be named. Since my job is basically to remove as much stress from that person to be named's life, I didn't ask any questions or put up a fight. We found the earliest night that worked and it's one less thing on the list.

Even though I'm smart enough to know my stress reduction role, I'm not going to lie, my attitude didn't start out terribly well. When Lindsay showed me a $60 theremoscan electronic ear thermometer, my response was something like this, "Did you have that when you were a kid? Are you still standing here? Then I think we can probably do without." I'm all for technology and realize there are things available that weren't thirty-plus years ago, but I drew a line at a $60 thermoscan electronic ear thermometer.

Shortly after the thermometer incident we found ourselves in the pacifier section. Like any normal person, I expected to find a few different types of pacifiers but I didn't think an item so simple would deserved its own L-shaped interior section with shelves from floor to ceiling. I was sorely mistaken. I had no idea what the differences were but thankfully we had been told, "just pick out a mix of them and the kid will figure out which one he or she likes." That's exactly the kind of randomness that could change my attitude.

Eventually we worked our way around the store though I still had to push a little bit; when shopping with Lindsay she can easily regress into dawdle mode which means she can take far longer than necessary to get around a store. I'm fine with this, I think it's somewhat therapeutic for her (though it's usually at Target), I just tend to be more fine with it when I'm not involved.

On the bright side, it's one less thing that needs to be done. We're in really good shape on the material side of things - the nursery is 95% complete (the remaining 5% being finalizing what to put on the walls) and the house stocked to handled a newborn. Over the next few weeks, we shift out attention to the classes. Let's just hope the little bugger sticks in the oven long enough for us to complete the classes. And yes, I've gently tried the argument that there are far more babies raised in the world by parents that didn't attend a class than those that did but that's one of those areas where I've decided it's not in my best interest to push. Those classes are nowhere near as ridiculous as a $60 thermoscan electronic ear thermometer.