American in Spain

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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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We are considerably less stressed/terrified about the impending birth of our son than we were about our daughter, four long years ago. For instance, for Nora, we had the crib bought and put together a full three months before its first use, and this time we haven’t even considered bringing it down from the attic yet. The baby car seat and stroller attachments are still stored in my in-laws’ attic as well. I don’t even think we’ve bought a single item of baby clothing yet.
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This morning we went to our appointment for the third sonogram of this pregnancy. While I was waiting on the curb for my wife to drive up and pick me up, one ambulance and four police cars sped by going towards where she was supposed to be coming from. She was five minutes late, and I started to get worried. Soon, though, she drove up and told me that she’d just driven by an accident and the motorcyclist was still lying on the ground with his helmet on. Yikes. I’m not sure if it’s good or bad that we beat him to the hospital.
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