Happy Holidays!

Happy everything to those who celebrate anything (as well as those who don’t) this time of year! We will be celebrating Christmas here with my family, then New Year’s and Reyes (which is the day Spanish Catholics exchange gifts because it is when they believe the three wise men gave their gifts to baby Jesus) in Spain with Agustín’s family.

We have had a very busy December. The end of the semester meant I was busy with papers and projects, as well as grading a lot of student papers (finally done!). Agustín has temporarily taken on a new responsibility at work that requires him to work Saturdays. But Emilia is just busy having fun! She’s on break from “school” since I finished the semester. These are a few pictures of our recent fun times.

Above, Emilia plays dress up with mom’s tote of winter clothes. It’s so much more fun to wear other people’s hats and gloves than your own!

Emilia tries the stockings on papa’s feet. (You gotta admit, it makes sense!)

And here are a few photos from yesterday’s trip to the Children’s Museum, an amazing place that we would visit weekly if it were closer to home. Unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of her petting the snake, which she was very proud of (she was too scared when she was first given the option to pet the turtle, but later came out of her shell….sorry, couldn’t resist the pun!).

Emilia Turns Two!

Last Thursday we celebrated Emilia’s second birthday. On the day of, we just enjoyed Emilia’s favorite dinner (chicken nuggets) followed by cake at home the three of us. Then on Sunday we had a larger celebration with some friends and extended family. I hear about a lot of kids being overwhelmed at their own birthday parties, but thankfully that wasn’t the case here. As usual, Emilia was shy for the first minute or two, but then lost her inhibitions and got lost in the crowd. It helped that gifts kept coming out of nowhere and there was a cake and singing. Emilia just squealed with excitement when everyone sang “Happy Birthday” to her and the cake appeared. Here are a few pictures of the birthday girl modeling one of her gifts. Thank you to everyone who helped us celebrate!

Growing Family

After more than one year of trying, one miscarriage, and one round of infertility treatments, we are (obviously) super excited to announce that we are expecting our second child in early June. This will come as no surprise to some of you, but is certainly news to many of you, so I’ll try to fill in some of the details.

We learned when trying to get pregnant with Emilia that we are not one of those couples that can nicely plan pregnancies around our personal lives. It took us a full year of trying to get pregnant with Emilia, who defied all convenience by being born one month before the end of my first semester in the PhD program. We ideally wanted to have our second one about two years after Emilia was born; since we knew our history, we got to work on it early. But after about nine months of trying, I finally took my pile of charts (I’ve spent more than two years of my life trying to chart my body’s ovulation signs) to the doctor to ask why I was having so much trouble identifying when I was ovulating. Turns out I am not as incapable as I thought—I couldn’t identify when I was ovulating because, most months, I wasn’t. In the nine months we’d been trying, the doctor said I’d ovulated probably twice. We made plans to start Clomid—one of the most common infertility drugs, which is used to induce ovulation—in the following cycle. I went home with the newfound knowledge that I did in fact know what I was doing with all these charts—that it was just a matter of waiting until there was actually something to identify—and, in some sort of crazy coincidence, I ovulated and we got pregnant before even starting the treatment. That was back in May. On July 4th, however, during my first days at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication in Portland (on a holiday right before a weekend and while out of town for an extended period—I think that’s the definition of inconvenient), I started bleeding and eventually miscarried.

So it was back to the drawing board. Once my body was fully recovered, the doctor okayed us to start Clomid. This involved two early ultrasounds, a week of pills, and a shot to my stomach, all involving very precise timing. Thankfully, the first round was a success, and we found out about a month ago that I was again pregnant. I’m now about 10 weeks along. We had an early ultrasound (because of my history) that confirmed things were proceeding as they should, and have already heard the heartbeat twice. So, we are finally letting the reality set in that we’ll have another kid come summer time, and wanted to share the news with you, our friends and family.

Yoga, Snow & A First Haircut

Here are a few random pictures of recent good times. Emilia has apparently appropriated her doll Gunther’s swimsuit (which is the old-fashioned 1920s full-body style). Although she can’t get the straps over her shoulders, she likes to take off her pants, put on what she can of the suit, and then show me her newest yoga poses (which she learns at school). Above she does her best Richard Simmons impersonation.

And here’s Emilia checking out the first snow of the season. She wasn’t too sure about the snow, but since this day wants to wear her rain boots no matter how suitable (or unsuitable) the occasion.

Lastly, here’s documentation of Emilia’s first haircut. We took her to one of those kids’ hair salons. It was kind of a crazy atmosphere, but Emilia was perfectly content the whole time, particularly since she got to enjoy a sucker during the actual hair cut. We just got her a trim (after all, some of that hair is two years old!), so you really can’t even tell she had it cut (we love those crazy curls too much to do anything more drastic!).

Happy Halloween from Little Bear!

Although this was officially Emilia’s second Halloween, it was the first one we really celebrated with her, and boy did she celebrate! She got several days’ use out of the “bear suit” we borrowed from a friend. Above she’s all suited up for some trick-or-treating, which she seemed to be an expert at. I wouldn’t be surprised if we find her ringing the neighbors’ doorbells for weeks and asking for a treat.

Above Emilia is dressed up and enjoying a small petting zoo at a Halloween-themed birthday party last week.

And here Little Bear is all bundled up for her first hayride at yet another Halloween party last weekend (surprisingly, the only one without nice weather). Below Emilia helps Yaya carve a pumpkin.

Flamenco Fun!

I couldn't help but post a photo of our little Spanish girl in her flamenco dress (a traditional Spanish dress). This was a gift from Agustín's brother and his wife (who would really like to have a little girl to dress up like this). The last time we tried this on Emilia over the summer it was still really big on her. Well, I came home from a morning of studying at the coffee shop last Saturday to find Agustín had spent the morning playing dress-up and photo shoot with Emilia because apparently she's almost grown out of the dress already. Just like her mom, she is not exactly the picture of grace and femininity. It doesn't help that Agustín put a onesie on under the dress, which you see peeking out the sleeves. Oh, and Emilia put the bracelet up on her bicep like that of her own accord. But she sure likes dresses and such much more than I did at that age, and handles heels better than I do even now.

Lots of Visitors & Fun

Wow! September just flew by and we’re already a week into October! The past few weeks have been extremely busy in our household. In addition to school and work responsibilities, we have been busy having fun as well. Three weekends ago we took advantage of a nice warm day to take a family hike at a local nature center to explore the outdoors together (see above and below). Emilia loved running around outside, but wasn’t so keen on her papa trying to show her a frog up close.

Then two weekends ago we had visitors from Madison—two former colleagues (and friends, of course) of mine and their families. I was so busy taking pictures of Emilia with her new friends Belle and Wesley that I forgot to take any photos of my colleagues and I. But the kids are cuter than us anyway.

This past weekend many interculturalist friends of mine were in town for a conference, and I enjoyed meeting up with several of them. We also had one of my closest college friends and her partner visiting us. We visited the Minneapolis sculpture garden and a local apple farm (Emilia loved eating the apples right off the trees--see below), and enjoyed a walk to the park and a sunny but crisp fall boat ride.

Emilia absolutely loved having all these visitors; she acts shy and innocent for the first minute or so around new people, but her true self soon shines through as she calls them all by name (or just “boy” in the case of my friend Kim’s spouse—apparently she doesn’t much care for the name Jason) and orders them to play with her. She kept telling Jason, “Boy make castle!” And make castle he did!

Fall Fun

Just a few quick photos of our fall evening fun in the backyard. Trying to enjoy this nice weather before we're forced into hibernation. And don't worry about the photo of Agustín "throwing" Emilia; all the necessary safety precautions are always taken (and the naked body flying through the air is Gunther, the well-worn, much-loved Cabbage Patch doll that was once mine and now hers, not another small child).

I turned in my written preliminary examination last week, which is a great relief. Yay!!! Now it's just classes, teaching, and on to the next hoop to jump through.

Agustín the futbol star and his biggest fan

Washington Visit

For my 30th birthday (which was at the end of June), my mom offered to take me on a trip. For numerous reasons, not the least of which because I was already leaving Agustín and Emilia for two-and-a-half weeks this summer, I chose to make it a long-weekend visit to my brother Devin in DC. I’d never been to DC, if you can believe it, so it was nice to see some of the iconic sights. And even more fun to see Devin and his girlfriend Noelle, and get a glimpse into their life on the east coast.

One of Devin’s jobs is as a bike tour guide, so he hooked us up with some free bike rentals, showed us around and shared lots of interesting tour guide lore. My favorite of the memorials was FDR’s (a bit off the beaten tourist track, but not far with bikes), shown in the photo above.

We were able to meet up with a friend of mine from the area, who I’d met earlier in the summer at SIIC. Above we’re all enjoying some music in the park before enjoying an amazing Asian-fusion dinner.
Here we are just before a morning of kayaking on the Potomac River.

August Update

Finally uploading the August photos and sitting down to write an update. I can’t believe I’m back to classes tomorrow and summer is officially over. Although I’ve spent a huge chunk of time since returning from SIIC in July writing my written preliminary examination (one of the many hoops you must jump through when pursuing a PhD), we also had plenty of time for fun. I think I’ll tell the story mostly through photos (and it will probably take more than one post).

Earlier this month we went to a kids luau hosted by the city. The photo above is of Emilia with a few of her buddies at the luau. Here’s another of our family on the same bench, and Emilia and papa playing in the grass.



Uncle Devin gave us this soccer (we—including Emilia—prefer the word ‘futbol’) net as a gift. It’s already been the source of much family fun. Thanks, Devin!

Babysitting Nelly (Yaya and Gampa’s dog). Emilia always wants to hug her; Nelly is not amused.

Ice cream at the pool. “Big pool, big pool!” Emilia always says.

“Big spoon, big spoon!” is another favorite phrase, as Emilia seems to think she’s outgrown the toddler spoons. I must admit though, she handles a full-sized spoon rather well for someone who is not yet two.

We all enjoyed watching the Olympics together in the evenings. Our favorites included swimming (“big pool, big pool!”) and gymnastics. Emilia loves jumping, and the first time she saw gymnastics, they were doing the floor routine, so I told her she was going to see jumpy girls. Well, “jumpy girl” is now one of her favorite games. She always wanted to see “big pool” or “jumpy girls.” We found her sport when one day diving came on and she yelled, “Big pool! Jumpy girls!”

Lastly, Agustín and I celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary this weekend. My parents took Emilia and we spent a whole day together, just the two of us. We didn’t do anything particularly extravagant, but it was very nice and rare for us to spend that much time together, alone without Emilia, and, perhaps more importantly, without trying to do anything more than just relax and enjoy each other’s company.

Now it’s back to school for me tomorrow. Where did the summer go?

That’s all for now, but I’ll post an update about my trip to Washington DC (to visit my brother Devin) soon.

Mea Culpa

Sorry such a silent August. I promise I've been writing like a fiend, but it's been for my written preliminary examination instead. I've also been preparing for the course I'll be teaching this fall. And when my face isn't in a book or glued to the computer, I'm trying to enjoy the last weeks (now down to a week!) of summer with Emilia. So, needless to say, I have not had time to get out the other computer, upload photos, and write something witty. But I can assure you that Emilia is cuter than ever. She has very strong opinions about things (like what she will and won't wear, eat, do at any given moment) and conveys those opinions quite effectively in pretty complex sentences. One example: "Socks on, Mini pretty toes bye bye! Mommy, Mini go outside walk park!" ("Pretty toes" refers to her painted nails, which she loves.) I promise photos within the next week or two with some more details.

All in the Family

This past weekend was all about family. My youngest brother, Devin, and his girlfriend Noelle were in town from DC, so we had dinner with them Thursday. Then Friday was my cousin Nick’s engagement party. We wish Nick and Heather a life of great happiness together! If they have half as much fun together as Emilia had dancing at their party (seriously, she was hilarious!), they will lack for nothing.

Our dancing queen!

Sunday, my parents hosted their annual picnic for my mom’s side of the family (see this year’s family photo at top). My mom has nine siblings and a foster brother, so this is no small ordeal. I think I can safely say that fun was had by all, but once again Emilia was arguably the happiest one there….good company, swimming, ice cream, cake…what more can a girl ask for? What more can anyone ask for, really? She is constantly reminding me to simply enjoy every moment of life.

Devin and Noelle looking hip, as usual

Emilia having fun with my brother Jordan’s girlfriend, Tara

Agustín and I even got some time to dork around together while Emilia napped

Emilia "Home Alone"

It seems everyone wants to know how Emilia did while I was gone for 2 ½ weeks. The answer is… just fine. Actually, she was quite content. She spent her days with grandma—going to the beach, the zoo, or the “big pool” almost every day—and her evenings and weekends with papa.

When I returned, I found my little brunette had turned into a blondie! (Which is particularly funny because her passport, which we got when she was three months old, says she has black hair and blue eyes—neither of which is true now. And the passport is valid for five years!)

Language-wise, the most noticeable developments were that she learned to say her own name and to sing “Happy Birthday.” We often call her “Mili” for short, and she now refers to herself in this same way; sometimes it actually sounds more like “Mini,” which is perhaps even cuter. She says sentences like, “Mili bye bye car car big pool.” It’s amazing how well she can get her point across!

And she has learned that the “Happy Birthday” song is associated with cake, so she’s always singing it hoping to get cake or when she thinks cake is soon to come (like whenever we’re at grandma and grandpa’s house, where dinner is always followed by dessert). Sometimes she just cuts right to the chase and sings, “Happy cake to you….” Smart kid!

A big thanks to my mom and Agustín for giving me the opportunity to have such an amazing experience! The problem is, now I want to go back every year!

SIIC 2008

Earlier this week I returned from Portland, Oregon, where I spent two and a half weeks at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication (SIIC). I participated in the SIIC internship program with 34 interculturalists from around the world. As interns, we participated in workshops with regular participants, plus had an additional week of intercultural teamwork training and did much of the behind-the-scenes work. Basically, it was a work hard, play hard, learn and grow a lot environment. It is impossible to explain what an amazing experience this was in words, so I will simply post a few of my favorite photos. My most humble thanks to my fellow SIIC participants!

One afternoon off, a group of us interns made a trip to the Oregon coast, which was absolutely gorgeous!

Karaoke night each week contributed to the summer camp feel.

The faculty and interns with whom I worked during the second session--we had so much fun (oh, and learned a lot too)!

Hanging out in the intern lounge in Bragdon Hall at Reed College.

Stay tuned for an update on how Emilia and Agustín (and grandma, who watched Emilia during the days) did while I was gone.