Nephew Ferdinand

The Killpacks are bad news for Ferdinand.  Ferdinand is my 2-year-old nephew. He lives here in Turkey with my sister Wendy and her husband Willem. They are the reason we chose Turkey as our vacation spot this time. We had sabbatical and thought it would be nice to go somewhere exotic that also had family to visit. Turkey was the place.

We arrived in Ankara on Sunday evening, July 26th.  Wendy was at the ER with Ferdinand at that point. He had had his toe smashed by someone's chair at a dinner party. To be honest, we weren't actually with him when that one happened, so I'm not sure we can be blamed.

Becca on Ferdinand's Y-bike.

We had a good time with the Nassmacher family after that, mostly relaxing in their nice apartment. We played at the play structures and looked for the rabbits that live in the green space. We went to the mall across the street.

After our trip to Cappadocia, we came back to Ankara. On Saturday, Uncle Willem came up with a fun plan. We rented bikes to ride around a lake near their apartment. Things started out great. Becca was a little nervous, but got more comfortable as we rode. The lake has a paved road around it and some Turkish cafés here and there. There were lots of other bikers riding that morning, and a few cars from time to time. After we'd gone about half way, we had a pileup. Bill and Uncle Willem clipped each other and Bill went off into the bushes. Another friend riding with us stopped to see what had happened and Becca crashed into him and went off into the bushes on her side. I watched from the back in dismay. I saw Bill go down and then suddenly realized that Becca was also down. Then, I saw Aunt Wendy's bike go down.  She had slowed down and was looking in concern after my children and the top-heavy bike with toddler seat tipped too far and fell. It fell so slowly I thought Ferdinand would be no more than shaken, but he hit his head and was gushing blood.

For the second time during our visit, Ferdinand was off to the ER. He ended up with plastic surgery to try to minimize the scarring.

Now, Ferdinand is with us in Kalkan. One of the first days here Becca asked to ride with him in the car. She opened the car door on the slope we are living on and it smacked him in the face. At Anna's birthday dinner he was playing on his chair and it fell over. Kip caught it in flight, but it still fell. He scraped his arm, knee, and cheek.

We all hold our breath when he does his 2-year-old toddlering. Climbing around the ruins at Xanthos the other day, I was terrified he would fall. Trotting around the pool at our villa, we all fear he will slip. We all call out to him to walk, slow down, no running.  He seems to be getting hurt a lot with us around. But I'm hopeful that we've seen the worst of it.

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