Belated Easter Update

This is a bit belated, but my mom just sent me these photos from our Easter celebration, and I wanted to post a few. We got together with the Minnesota faction of my dad’s family at my grandma’s house (Emilia’s one surviving great grandparent) on Easter. Emilia absolutely loved my grandma’s cat, Sugar, as you can see here (and Sugar tolerated Emilia).

Emilia loved the plastic eggs my grandma had hidden around her house. We took a few home and she practiced putting them together and taking them apart for a week. Below she's playing with one with Uncle Jordan.

And below Emilia gets a "zerbert" from Grandpa. You probably can't tell in this photo, but Emilia and Grandpa Scot are hair twins; Emilia's is just a cooler color and more "cute" than "Mafia."

In other news, Emilia is rapidly adding to her Spanish and English vocabulary, saying at least one new word daily. She loves repeating things and has recently repeated words and phrases as complicated as ‘Happy Birthday!’ and ‘applesauce.’ She kind of trails off at the end, but I think even an objective observer would identify what she’s saying. One day last week, on two occasions I smelled a stinky diaper and when I looked at Emilia, she looked up at me and said, clear as day, “Poop!” She’s making associations! What a proud day!

Fun at the Children's Museum

Today my mom and I took Emilia to the Minnesota Children's Museum, where she had a particularly good time playing in the "Habitot." Here are a few of my favorite photos.

Personal Leadership

I apologize ahead of time to those of you who read this blog for one reason and one reason only; this post is not about Emilia. Gasp! The reason is because I spent last week in Crestone, Colorado, (a very small town 4 hours southwest of Denver) at a Personal Leadership Seminar. Although I missed them dearly, it appears Emilia and Agustín faired just fine without me.

The seminar was amazing! Basically, Personal Leadership is a methodology for “anyone who is living and/or working across cultural differences (national, ethnic, religious, etc.) or in situations of uncertainty and transition”; it teaches you to more effectively use these experiences for learning and personal growth. (Check out http://www.plseminars.com/ if you’re interested in learning more.) It's something I'm really interested in for both personal and professional reasons.

One of the highlights of the week was spending time with some incredible people from around the world—the U.S., Japan, Germany, France, Denmark, and Bulgaria (and many from multiple places). I won’t include their names here for reasons of privacy, but here are a few of my favorite photos. My interculturalist friends reading this might recognize some colleagues.

Emilia on Ice

A week or so ago we took advantage of a little "warm" weather to take Emilia out for her first sledding experience, pulling her along on the lake at my parent's house. Okay, maybe you can't really call this sledding, but we did pull her over a few bumps.

We Have a Walker!

Emilia has finally decided she’s sick of hanging out down around her friends’ knees and it’s time to do more of this walking thing. She’s been practicing for many weeks now—taking several steps at a time and then deciding to go the rest of the way on all fours—but in the last week or two she's realized going upright might be more efficient. Personally I think peer pressure played a part. Walking has only fueled her curiosity. Here she is exploring the cupboards (she really gets into it!).

She’s also quite a talker and her vocabulary is rapidly expanding. One of her favorites is “bye, bye,” which she yelled to all of the cashiers (one at a time) at the supermarket the other day while waving to them like the Pope in a parade as her papa pushed her along in the shopping cart. Our favorite, however, is probably “ya está,” (three syllables!) which loosely translates to ‘all done’ (that’s right, she’s officially bilingual!). And she answers her cell phone "hola" or "hi" depending on her mood. Of course, this bilingual thing can be confusing. Agustín thought “caca” meant poop until I informed him it was Emilia’s way of asking for a cracker. You can see how that could cause problems!