Spanish Visitors

This past weekend Agustín’s cousins Pilar and Emilio spent a few days with us. Pilar is living in Washington DC for a few months and her brother Emilio is visiting her right now. They are only our second Spanish visitors since we moved to the U.S. five years ago, and we had a lot of fun showing them around.

On Friday Agustín introduced them to suburbia with a long (and somewhat wet) bike ride around some local lakes and took them shopping for gifts to take home.

Saturday we went to the Gophers vs. NDSU football game then went to my parent’s house for dinner and a boat ride (boat rides, I guess I should say, as our visitors tested out the kayak and paddle boat as well); thankfully we had the most beautiful weather in weeks that very day.

Sunday we had burgers at a sports bar (one of Agustín’s favorite aspects of U.S. American culture) and took a very windy walk on Nicollet mall (in Minneapolis) before Emilio and Pilar headed back to DC.

No Longer A Baby?!

My how time flies! My mom is already asking if we have plans for Emilia’s first birthday (a little over a month from now) and last night we had dinner with a few other couples with babies—a five-month old and twin four-month olds—and someone commented that Emilia is “not really” a baby anymore. What?! Where did the time go? Actually though, she’s really at a fun age right now. She has several “words,” including mama, papa, do (dog), baba (bottle), bebe (baby), and ba (ball). She uses most of these rather indiscriminately, although baby is the one she uses most frequently and appropriately. This is because she has a doll (see photo above) we refer to as ‘baby.’ When I have my hands elbow-deep in dirty dishes and Emilia is attempting to open the still-not-baby-proofed cabinets, I say, “Where’s baby?” and she takes off in search of her baby. Can you really be a baby when you have your own baby? And last night she kept looking at the other little ones at the dinner party and saying “bebe” (pronounced beh-beh).

Anyway, here are a few pictures. My friend who works in children’s publishing sent us several bilingual board books (thanks again, Ann!). I think Emilia can read better than we think. Here she is eating the book entitled ‘Vamos a Comer!’ (Let’s Eat!) and throwing ‘Vamos a Disfrutar!’ (Let’s Have Fun!). Curious irony, no?

Downward Dog—Emilia now practices yoga daily.

And here she is acting innocent. Hmmm....

Emilia's Gets De-Tongue-Tied

Today Emilia had her first surgery. Thankfully it was a minor one. She was born tongue-tied, which means that the piece of skin that attaches the underside of her tongue to the bottom of her mouth extended almost to the tip of her tongue. Until Emilia was born, I never knew tongue-tied was a real medical condition. Anyway, it wasn’t causing her any problems (often tongue-tied babies have trouble breast feeding because they can’t latch right), but we were told it could cause speech impediments in the future and she wouldn’t be able to do things like lick an ice cream cone. So, because Agustín wants Emilia to be able to roll her Rs like a good little Spaniard and because it seems virtually impossible to be considered good parents by children’s standards if we deprive her of the ability to eat ice cream cones (not to mention it’s what the Ear, Nose, Throat specialist recommended), we scheduled her for a frenulectomy, and today was the big day.

So I packed Emilia chock-full of milk early this morning, then she had to fast for several hours before being put under anesthesia. Later we took a trip to the children’s day hospital where Emilia got all decked out in the cutest little hospital-blue pajamas I’ve ever seen and then had a ball playing with all the new toys in the patient waiting room. They gave me the option to be with her or not while the “sleep team” did their work, and I opted to stay with Emilia. She sat in my arms very calmly as they put a tiny plastic mask over her face and she nodded off.

I was whisked away to the family waiting room, where I guiltily indulged in a little non-academic reading for the first time. But before I even got half-way through my first ‘In Touch’ magazine (honestly, more Hollywood info than I ever needed), the doctor came in to tell me everything went great. He’d done a little clip and put in a few dissolvable stitches to prevent re-growth. Emilia was a little sad and cranky coming out of the anesthesia, but has been improving throughout the day. The doctor said the pain level will be like having a canker sore for a week or so. Thankfully Emilia is a big fan of grape-flavored Tylenol—the only thing that she doesn’t like about it is that the dosage is not nearly as much as she’d like.

I don’t have any photos from the hospital, but these are a few cute ones from the past week. Recent highlights include Emilia’s ability to clap and wave bye-bye (when she feels like it).