The doors opened upwards, like a Dolorean.

The vehicle really was gorgeous. When we were choosing virtual seats, Nora was initially confused that it didn’t have any backseats, where she normally sits in our car.

“Roll it to me, Poppy! Fast!”

I’m sure some car savvy reader can tell me the model of Mercedes?

Every time we rolled it across the table to each other it felt a little bit like that famous scene from Thelma & Louise.

Just what every car doesn’t need: a giant toddler.

We had a great time with the vehicle.

I once not-so-famously declared that “The monkey alarm doesn’t have a snooze button.” I was referring to there being no way to delay having to get up in the middle of the night to deal with a screaming baby. That is still the case, somewhat, as I have to get up on average about 1.5 times per night to spin Nora back around so she’s sleeping the proper direction in her bed or calm her after a nightmare or find her teddy bear which has been brushed off onto the floor. When it comes to getting up in the morning, however, I have devised a bit of a snooze button. Normally she will get up and open the door to the master bedroom where I am sleeping – her mother having left for work hours before – and say whatever is on her mind. It’s rarely “Good morning!” and is usually “Where is Mommy?” I greet her and give her two tasks, putting on her slippers (about 10% of the time she’s already done that before entering) and go take of her diaper, put it in the trash, and then empty the rest of her bladder contents into the toilet. This can take up to four or five minutes to do if she gets distracted doing other things, and I can lie back down and wake up more slowly.

Sometimes I become so impressed by Nora’s ability to reason through a problem or situation that I start attributing more intelligence to her than she really has. For example, she’s quite good at thinking through a dependency tree such as “What do we need to do to get ready to go to daycare?” She can list putting toys away, brushing her teeth, putting on her coat, and turning off the lights. But she, like most normal three-year-olds, does not yet have a well developed Theory of Mind, an understanding that other people have feelings and beliefs and intentions just like she does.

One day last week she was in a pouty mood when we took our daily trip to the grocery store. In the store, she refused to say buenos días to anybody. On the walk home, and later at home, our discussion about her behavior went like this:

Erik: Nora, you have to say buenos días to people.
Nora: Why?
Erik: Because people like that and then they like you and they are nice to you and might even give you things.
Nora: Okay.
Erik: So why do we say buenos días to people?
Nora: I don’t know.
Erik: I just told you. Would you like me to tell you again?
Nora: Yes.
Erik: We say buenos días to people because that’s the nice thing to do and they like it, which, in turn, makes them want to be nice to us. Do you understand?
Nora: Yes.
Erik: Okay, so why do we say buenos días to people?
Nora: I don’t know.

…repeat thirty times…

Erik: I’m going to tell you why, and then I’m going to ask you why, and all you have to do is say what I just said, okay?
Nora: Okay.
Erik: Because people like it and want to be nice to us. Okay, why?
Nora: People like it and are nice to us.
Erik: YES! Good girl!
Nora: [wiping a tear] Can I have a hug now?

Perhaps that was a bit cruel, but it was interesting to see the limits of her comprehension. Every day since, she has said buenos días to our friends at the supermarket without fail.

The only thing better than a chocolate bonbon is eating one with Mommy.

One of Nora’s new favorite games is to take some object, like a ball or a bracelet, and hide it somewhere on her person, usually underneath her, if she’s sitting, or behind her back or up her sleeve, and then ask “Where is [the object]??” What she wants is for her mark the other player to place great importance on finding said object and search around for it. Sometimes she will suggest that the search be moved to another room in the house. After the object can’t be found, she whips it out and proclaims, “I found it! I found it!” I normally only have the stamina for about four or five rounds of this before losing interest. The key to stopping the game, I’ve discovered, is give no reaction whatsoever to her miraculous discovery. If you seem surprised by her reveal, even if you have refused to search, the game iterates again.

The state of the offspring is strong!

The walk up there takes us under the motorway that connects us very conveniently to Santander to the west and Bilbao to the east. I liked how the arrow was pointing right at the Laredo skyline.

Springtime has brought us some adorable little calves. These calves seemed happier than mine after walking up the hill to get there.

The lush green mountainside.

Each of the thirty or so times I’ve walked up to Colindres de Arriba, I have been unable to avoid taking this photograph of the medieval church with the Pico Candiano behind it.

The coats of arms on the houses are those of the families that have owned the land for centuries.

We finally made it up to the church. Nora walked the whole way, but requested the stroller on the way back.

Just then, we heard some bells and saw a shepherd walking up the cobblestone path with about fifty sheep behind him.

Can you count them without dozing off?

The sheep were headed down to a relatively new park to graze. We went down after them and were impressed by the seemingly effortless control the shepherd, with his dog, had over controlling where their captives went.

I took advantage of this foreground subject to capture the view of this old haunted-looking mansion we can see from our house.

Sheeple and steeple.

The visibility was great, and we could clearly make out the hermitage on the Pico de las Nieves.

My walking companions.

A maternal kiss.

On the way home, we stopped at a park to see and saw for a bit. Then we went home and fried up some fresh anchovies for dinner.

We had a lovely day, and I hope you enjoyed these photos.

It took us a while to find the church because Google tried to send us down several pedestrian cobblestone streets that were either too narrow to drive down or had stairs. The church was lovely, and the mass was a standard hour-long Spanish wedding. They had brought the priest with them from where they live in Murcia.

I could’ve taken a hundred photos of the church’s facade if I’d had my DSLR and it weren’t raining. It was gorgeous.

The best part of the wedding was getting to chat and drink with some of the friends I made in my four years in England. No one seems to have aged much in the six or seven years since I’ve seen them, which is good.

And then there’s this guy, Carlos, who looked very vaguely familiar, who we eventually figured out that we knew from one night out with friends back in August 2001, which happens to be the only such night I’ve blogged photos of.

Here we are with the bride and groom. I wish them all the best.

The practice putting green. The course was near the seaside tourist town of San Vicente la Barquera.

With my new handicap of 12, I was in the 13th of 22 threesomes on Saturday, so my tee time was 10:40. Even though the temperature was only about 15° C (59° F), the course was just so hilly that I was down to short sleeves after the first hole. All the golf I had played this year in the States was the lazy American kind where you sit on a cushioned seat and zoom right up to your ball, but this was Man vs. Wilderness Cantabrian golf, and I had to catch my breath before each shot.

The first hole was a steep climb.

Very soon into the round the rain began. This meant donning an impermeable outer layer. I had specifically made a trip into Santander earlier in the week to buy some rain pants for this exact occurrence. It never really poured, but a mild drizzle was maintained for the rest of the round. My woolen felt golfing cap absorbed several pounds of water and had to be rung out several times. I had four spare gloves in a ziplock bag in my golf bag (I learned in Ireland that my golf bag is not water proof when my HD video camera stopped working and needed a $300 repair). It wasn’t until the eighteenth hole that I had any problems with grip slippage. The only casualty of the rain was my scorecard. It was a disintegrating lump of pulp when we finished the round, but the scores of the guy I was keeping score for were barely legible, so we transferred them to dry card and turned it in.

Since there were eight local golf clubs competing against each other, it was possible to form the threesomes such that no one was playing with a member of their own team. My two playing partners on Saturday were an amicable pair. One guy thought he was a lot funnier than he really was. He’s the kind of guy who, when we finished the round and the secretary took our scores, told us that they would send everyone an SMS to tell us our tee time the following day, and said, “Okay, give me your mobile,” obviously asking for his phone number, he said, “But if I give you my mobile [phone] how can you send me a message?” She had to ask three more times to nail the syntax of “Please tell me the number assigned to your mobile phone,” such that he couldn’t escape into jokester-land. Exhausting.

He did, however, tell me a lovely story about how he was invited to the inaugural day of the course we were playing, which was designed by none other than Cantabria’s golfing son, Severiano Ballesteros. During his round, he saw Seve playing another hole and went up to talk to him. He said that Seve was kind enough to stop and chat for a few minutes and have his picture taken. He was a great man. May 7, a week from the date of this post, will be the first anniversary of his death.

We were playing at Santa Marina Golf Club, which was built near this 19th century chapel, which curiously has a tree growing from its bell tower. You can’t build anything in Spain without it being near some stone relic from another time.

I was very happy with my play on Saturday, especially my back nine that started with a string of eight bogeys. The eighteenth hole might be the hardest hole of golf I’ve ever played. It’s a par 5, but I never managed less than 8 strokes.

The rules of the tournament were that only the six best rounds (gross, no handicaps) from each team would be counted. The team from Laredo had a final score on Saturday of 519, an average of 86.5, which included my 93. The next closest team on the leader board had 520, but that was with only five players (an average of 104), so it didn’t count. The actual second place team was 36 strokes behind us with a 555.

Sunday was gorgeous and sunny…but very, very muddy. There was what the golf rulebook calls “standing water” on every square centimeter of the course. I made a slop-slop-slop sound as I walked up and down the steep inclines. If you didn’t visually identify the square meter where your ball landed in the fairway, it was a lost ball, because they plugged down into the mud such that just a tiny square centimeter of the ball was visible. Every single player on our team scored worse the second sunny day than on the first rainy day. That should give an indication of just how difficult an already nearly-impossible course was playing. One guy playing in a pair of wellies looked ridiculous on the first tee, but like a genius on the eighteenth green.

On Sunday I witnessed an event that would definitely win the storytelling competition my golfing group has every year in February. My threesome had finished a hole and was walking to the next tee when we saw a heavy set gentleman from the group in front of us returning to the tee with his driver. His ball had missed the fairway by a couple meters and had plugged into the ground and been declared lost. He teed up his ball and sent it slicing off into the woods. He shouted some Spanish curses about defecating on the mother of the ball he just hit and flung his driver with all his might. His intent was probably to fling it straight down the hole towards the fairway, but he held on to it a split second too long and it went careening over our heads and up to the very tip top of a tree, where it lodged itself securely. We tried shaking the tree vigorously, but the driver wasn’t going anywhere. This was a pretty serious situation, since a driver costs easily $300, which is probably 300€ (400 USD), if golf clubs are priced like other consumer goods. One guy from our group had the idea to use his golf ball retriever, a telescoping tube used to pull golf balls out of water hazards. He extended it out about 6 meters (20 feet), but it was still way too short. I suggested we could throw some rocks, but really I was imagining it either staying there forever or having to hire a cherry picker to fetch it. Just then, the other guy from my group, who was in his late forties or early fifties, jumped up into the tree, which didn’t look at all conducive to climbing, and promptly climbed about 25 feet into the air with the agility of a chimpanzee and grabbed the club. And somehow he made it back down without breaking his neck. Just then it made sense how he could only take the club back until it was perpendicular to the ground and whip it through the ball and hit it further than I can with a full swing. Amazing.

Every time I golf in Spain, I am amused by the fact that there is some law that requires them to put life preservers near the big water hazards. It’s a practice that strattles the line between reasonableness and silliness. I wonder how many golfers drown every year in water hazards in the US. If it’s more than 0.3, I’d be surprised.

The starter (the guy who stands on the first tee and controls who begins when) told us a story of one member of the club that plays golf in shorts, even in the near-freezing winter temperatures. When asked why, he replies, “When I wear pants, my wife gets so mad at me for how dirty I’ve gotten them, that I’d rather play in shorts.”

When I showed my wife this photo, she reenacted the shorts-wearer’s story, telling me that I had ruined those trousers. Surprisingly, however, they came out of the washing machine looking like new.

I shot a 93 the first day and a 95 the second. The tournament officials didn’t bother to properly add up the scores before declaring Laredo the winner. It wasn’t even close.

The best part of the course was the clubhouse, an old wooden structure that, as is common for golf courses everywhere, used to be the house that the owners of the land lived in. The greens were in a pretty bad state of disrepair. Apparently the club is running out of money because there’s a lack of members. And I can understand why. Who would want to pay money to be abused like that every time you play? The course is just too hard. They’ve tried to make it easier by getting rid of all out-of-bounds and replacing the white stakes with red stakes, marking forests as “lateral water hazards”, but it’s not good enough. Santa Marina Golf Club seems to be in a downward spiral where the course is so hard that they are running out of members and money, which in turn makes the course even harder as it falls into disrepair. It’s a shame, because the location is visually spectacular, with views from the sea to the snowy Picos de Europa with rolling hills and luxury chalets in between.

Laredo Club de Golf, the best golfers in Cantabria who don’t have a home course. That’s a bronze Ballesteros behind us.

In the mornings, when we are goofing around reading books or playing with toys, sometimes I’ll wonder aloud about what time it is. When Nora hears this, she goes to find my iPhone wherever it is (sometimes it’s in her hands at the time), and she knows how to exit the active application, lock the phone, and then press the home button to show the lock screen which displays the time. She then holds it out so I can read it, often with a “Here’s the time, Poppy!”

Nora has started following the plot of television shows for the first time. She now responds when Dora asks a question, for example. She likes Dora The Explorer a lot, but her absolute favorite program is a Canadian cartoon called Caillou, about a little boy and his family and the adventures they get into. I had never heard of Caillou before, but Nora already has a Caillou doll that speaks Basque very loudly.

We have applied for Nora to start school in September. For obvious reasons, we requested the school that is literally 20 meters from our front door as our first choice. They choose applicants based on a points system, which ranks criteria in more or less like this, in descending order of importance:

• Does a sibling already attend?
• How close does the child live to the school?
• How close is the parents’ workplace from the school?
• …other criteria involving disabilities and household income.

So we score very highly on the proximity criterion, but there are only twenty slots available for the three-year-old class, and we’ve heard rumors that there is a mass exodus of kids that are wanting to switch from another school to the one we want, so there might be competition. We will hear who got in in May. Our fingers are crossed…

The state of the offspring is strong!

What follows is my original blog entry, which consisted mostly of photo captions. Observations from my present self will be presented in green.

Cornwall is the southwestern peninsula of England, rich in history from prehistoric monoliths to legends of King Arthur’s Camelot. We drove most of the way on Thursday night, and found a hotel just outside of a city called Exeter. Our first stop on Friday morning was St. Michael’s Mount, a mountain/island/fortress/castle on the southern tip of Cornwall. So named because of a vision of the saint seen over the island a while back.

Marga on the large beach, uncovered at low tide. We walked all the way to the island on a causeway built in the 17th century. I think she still has and wears this sweater and jacket.

The harbor on the island. The boats have been beached by the low tide.

Marga halfway up the climb to the castle on top.

Looking for approaching warships

At last! The castle!

A tower from up in the castle

Looking down into the garden

Waves crashing on the rocks

Queen of the castle

Another view of the queen

Erik, admiring the view

Oh no! The tide has covered the causeway! Looks like the harbor’s full (of water)…I hope we have enough quid for the ferry!

Enjoying a little sun before leaving this majestic place.

Looking back at St. Michael’s Mount after the ferry ride

After leaving St. Michael’s, we headed to Lands End, the furthest western point in England. What better place to watch the sunset? This picture is a little boring, but there’s better to come! Scroll down!

Arms-length photography…perhaps I should invest in a tripod…

What a cute couple! …in their early twenties…

The first and last closed refreshment house. I was thirsty too!

Jeez, I was really working the black jeans and black sweater northern european look.

Prints for sale, $19.95.

What a terrible shame that this is the best resolution I have of these photos. The landscape was breathtaking!

Nice how the sun hits the cliffs…

This rock almost fell down. Good thing I was there! (Alternate title: ‘Atlas in Black’)

Apparently my sense of humor has shifted about as much as this rock in ten years.

No caption. I might have to encourage this hair color again. I like it!

Margarita on the rocks

A nice stone wall overgrown with heather and gorse

Sun on its way down

Living dangerously. Nora, don’t ever do this!

We spent all of Saturday in a little coastal town on the northern side of the peninsula called St. Ives. This was a little chapel amongst the many shops.

This is where we experienced our first Cornish Cream Tea. Yum! At the time, I was unfamiliar with the riddle of going to St. Ives. Bummer.

We took advantage of the low tide and had a nice walk on the extensive beach

Marga, barely able to stand the freezing water

Erik, barely able to stand the freezing water

Crossing the little mini-rivers running from the tide pools to the sea could be great fun. Looks like an ad for a clothing line.

More beached vessels. In a few hours they would be floating again.

On Sunday, we went to the biodomes known as the Eden Project. We were mistaken about what it was, as were many that entered. They were just big greenhouses with a million different plants and a million tourists stopped dead in a traffic jam on the narrow winding paths through the 90% humidity domes. Not a pleasant experience, nor interesting scientifically, nor educational. I do not recommend the Eden Project. So we got in the car and headed home, stopping for an hour to park on the highway in a traffic jam. You can see pictures of the Eden project on the panoramas page. Included below. These actually are high resolution.

Lands End panorama

St. Ives panorama

St. Ives surfers

St. Michael’s Beach

St. Michael’s Mount View

The Eden Project

Hi, it’s 2012 me again. Apparently I chose not to blog about one of the more memorable parts of this trip, driving around late at night trying to find a B&B to stay the night. We wanted to stay in Penzance, but all the hotels and B&Bs we checked were fully booked. We ended up driving south to a tiny harbor town with the adorable name of Mousehole, where we found a guy who was just starting a B&B and had just put his sign up on the road, but was not really ready for any guests yet, as the house was still being restored. We must have looked quite desperate because he relented and offered us a tiny room upstairs. We were delighted. We asked about local restaurants, and he recommended a seafood place “just down the road”, so we took off walking down the coast. After what felt like several miles later, we were just about to turn around and head back to the B&B when we came upon the restaurant overlooking the water. I don’t know if it was from the stress of finding lodging at the last minute, the walk down a dark winding road, or the romance of our first solo trip together, but there was something truly special about that meal that we will both remember forever.

Mousehole is an gorgeous little English village with stone houses and narrow winding streets. I recommend a virtual walk around the town via Google. It’s lovely. Finding gems like Mousehole is what makes travel so much fun. As Vonnegut put it, “Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.”

Bowling is hard. Perhaps the rules should be revisited?

Her first innovation to the game of bowling was realizing that a straight perpendicular line is much easier to hit than a triangle of pins.

Her second innovation was to drastically reduce the length of the bowling lane.

Dresses! That thing that says “RANO” is a set of individual chocolate bars with the letters of her name.

Her birthday cake. Zorionak is “congratulations” in Basque.

I love cake photography. Even more than cake.

I had been coaching her all morning about how she’s going to have to blow out candles. The moment has arrived!

Huff and puff and…

Blow!

Yay!

A doll and crib.

Feasting with family.

Here’s your piece, dear blog reader! Enjoy!

Happy birthday, Nora! I love you more than I can put into words. It’s kind of hard to believe that you didn’t even exist just a few years ago. This last year has been my favorite year so far, and I feel as if I’m really getting to know you. I’m very much looking forward to continuing our lives together. Happy birthday, my love!

Contrary to life in the US, life in Spain consists of personally knowing your own butcher (mine is my neighbor, Bruno), seeing – and often choosing – the cut of meat that is fed into the meat grinder to produce the exact quantity of ground meat that you desire, or asking your butcher to slice the chicken breast actually off the chicken and then into fillets for you.

Today, my butcher and his family were proud to be planning to feast on some piglets this weekend. With no provocation whatsoever, he brought the little piggies out of the walk-in fridge to show my daughter and me how adorable they were, even in death.

Morally, my view is that I would rather exist than not, which opens me up to eating a wide variety of animals, as long as they are killed humanely. If you wish to not see dead animals, look away now.

Oink! They look a bit like a barbershop quartet.

Little piggy bottoms.

Five snouts.

They looked awfully cute draped over the counter like this, as if they were awaiting drinks at a bar.

Nora liked them.

This is only the second time she has allowed herself to be picked up by Bruno, our neighbor and butcher.

Cute little oinkers.

While familiar with the phrase “not by the hair of my chinny chin chin”, I never knew that piglets actually have little whiskers on their chins!

If Nora hadn’t demanded my phone to snap pictures, I would never have noticed how interesting they look from her angle down at the ground.

I wish my supermarket friends a marvelous spit-roasted porcine feast this weekend. ¡Que aprovechen!

On a toasted sesame seed bun!

Homemade french fries!

And some faux-german beer from Barcelona to round out a healthy American meal.

Because of Saint Joseph’s status as surrogate father, today is also when Spaniards celebrate Father’s Day. At daycare, my daughter made me a little paper necktie that says, “¡Te quiero, Papá!” and a card that reads, “De tu mano voy a aprender lo que mañana voy a ser.” (From your hand, I will learn what tomorrow I will be). Both are scribbled on in a variety of crayon colors. Silly, but doggone it if a tear didn’t well up.

A proud father.