We baptized Ian this past Sunday, June 9, 2013. Personally, I don’t believe that splashing some water on a baby means anything at all, but some people I care about do, so I was happy to participate, especially since it meant having a big party to celebrate the birth of my son, something I do feel very happy and celebratory about. It was the very first mass I’ve attended in the town church that has been ringing its bells next to my house for the past eight years.
(more…)
The biggest event this month was Nora going off to camp for three days and two nights. Her preschool has been doing this for seventeen years, and the kids love it. Nora was pretty excited about packing her suitcase, with her stuffed animals and flashlight and bathing suit, and myriad other items on a list we were given. In the weeks leading up to the trip, she kept commenting on how she was really going to miss us, and especially Ian. She also never tired of saying that she was going to pasarlo pipa, a Spanish expression meaning to “have a great time”.
(more…)
It’s really hard to believe, but my daughter is already finishing her first school year. Like in the States, school isn’t mandatory until age six, but study after study shows nothing but advantages of a good preschool education. For a post she’s preparing, my blogrollmate, the very popular Kaley, from Y Mucho Más, asked me for an interview about my experiences in the Spanish education system. Her questions were excellent, and it felt sort of like an exit interview after this first year.
(more…)
Today Ian turns one month old. It’s been both a long and a quick month. He’s grown quite a bit. While he weighed less than his sister at birth, she was only 3.6 kg at the one month mark, and he’s already up to 4 kg. His size difference is already noticeable, as he’s much larger, especially his head, than he was at birth. Probably because he never stops eating. All the parenting pamphlets say that newborns need to eat roughly every three hours, but apparently Ian can’t read the pamphlets, because he’s hungry pretty much every hour.
(more…)
Well, we finally had our first incidence of one of my children making the other cry with pain. To be honest, I was surprised that it was the little guy that initiated what every prognosticator of sibling relationships assures me will be at least a dozen year conflict. Let the record forever show that “He started it!” Although it wouldn’t take much of a baby lawyer to throw charges of premeditation into doubt. He was only 16 days old.
My infant son was looking so adorable on his changing mat, which his sister got plenty of use out of, and I had the idea of having her lie down with her head next to his, for a cute sibling photo shoot. I only got one good photo before things turned ugly.
(more…)
As expected, we had some pretty enormous change in the state of the offspring this month. They’ve doubled in number!! Our son, Ian, was born as healthy and robust as I’ve ever seen a newborn. He doesn’t seem too pleased, however, to be outside, and very much prefers to be pressed up against his mother as he is accustomed. The little bugger has an absolutely voracious appetite, often draining both his mother’s breasts and still wanting more, which we supplement with formula.
(more…)
Somewhere around her second trimester, my wife calculated that if she could hold out until her due date of April 25th, then her maternity leave would butt right up against a five day weekend in August, created by a national holiday and a local holiday and a puente. We had a minor scare a fortnight early, but she made it…right up to midnight on April 25th, when her labor began. She let me sleep an hour from 12:30 to 1:30 before waking me and telling me to go downstairs and clean up some dishes and crumbs from dinner the night before to make the house tidy for our guest who we were about to call.
(more…)
As I write this, I am a week or two away from the birth of my second child. Until about a week ago, I wasn’t really nervous or excited, but then we started sorting through the baby clothes and preparing the newborn stroller attachments, and I started to get pretty excited. Yesterday I pulled the crib down from the attic and somehow managed to remember where all the screws and joints go to put it back together. It’s really starting to sink in now.
(more…)
When I shared the final photo from this post a few days ago, it got much praise on the social networks. One of my friends told me that when she first saw it, she assumed – as is always possible with my photos – that it was a Photoshop fake. She said that it looked “too perfect”. I had also noticed the especially pleasing aesthetic to the photograph, but it took me a bit to put my finger on it. What is amazing about the original photograph is the perfectly spherical appearance of my wife’s belly.
(more…)
Looking back, there haven’t been that many new developments this month. Nora did turn four years old, which was important. Her writing has improved to the point where she can write her name every time without problems. My parents have been visiting for a week now and the forced use of English is good for Nora, although it certainly doesn’t seem to be causing her any extra stress or difficulty. She’s off from school now for eleven days of Spring Break.
(more…)
