American in Spain

I think that perhaps we waited too long to make the transition for Nora from her crib to a real bed. Lately she has been sleeping very poorly in her crib, and it’s clear that it’s the size that is bothering her. Or at least it’s clear to me, as a larger-than-the-average-bed individual. You know those nights we all have occasionally where no matter what posture you adopt, you’re just not comfortable. As adults, we moan or sigh, but a two year old cries.
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Nora continues to excel lingually in both English and Spanish. Oh, wait, she didn’t used to. Her English got a much needed boost on our fortnight (a flight attendant asked why we were going for only four nights) visit to the United States. When we arrived, she was speaking about 20% English, and when we left, she was using English about 90% of the time, even with her mother.

As parents often do, I had high expectations for her to not confuse the two languages upon returning to Spain. However, she did, in fact, speak a few sentences to her abuelos in English. I had to teach my mother-in-law that “me too” means “yo también” and what a “potty” is. She said, “Oh, I’ll remember that for sure, since my pharmacist is named Poti.”
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This morning it was raining, so we couldn’t go outside for Nora to release her toddler energy in the playground. At one point she started going on and on about “Se acabó el turno” which means “The turn is over”. It makes about the same amount of sense in both languages. My best hypothesis is that it’s something that the daycare workers tell the kids as they rotate one child out of a high chair and put another one in. Or perhaps when they are forced to share toys? I’ve certainly never said it to her in Spanish, nor have I heard anyone else speak those words.
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It was like flipping a switch. My cute loving toddler turned into a hateful monster.

Nora had a cold last week, so I got her some cough medicine at the local farmácia. It cleared up her cough, but also gave her an upset stomach, diarrhea and vomiting, which made for a terribly long weekend, during which she insisted on watching this video of herself about a thousand times, each time tearing up when her onscreen doppelgänger got upset.

Somewhere among the “Oh, poor thing, she’s so sick,” whining, twenty-four days before her second birthday, a special, dreaded, kind of behavior arose: The Tantrum.
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The other day, Nora was in my office chastising me for something in her gibberish language, so I got out the video camera. While I was taping, her mother called her into the living room to put on some sunscreen in preparation for an afternoon trip to the beach, so I walked with her, with a slight detour into the kitchen. The result is a sort of Nora’s-eye-view of our front hallway, kitchen and living room.
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