Emilia Changes Gunther

Lately Emilia has been playing with my old Cabbage Patch doll, Gunther. Today she decided to change his diaper. She pulled a diaper, wipes, and changing pad out of the diaper bag and went to work. Here is photographic evidence of her earliest attempts at motherhood. Or maybe she’s trying to tell us she wants a baby brother or sister? While the finished product could use some work, she definitely has the basic steps down. She could even teach her grandpa a thing or two!

Summer is Here!

I’ve been meaning to update the blog for awhile now, but somehow haven’t found the time despite the fact that I finished my PhD courses over a week ago. Yay! Things were pretty crazy the last two months and especially the last few weeks (see the dining room table below, where I spent many, many long hours), but now the summer should be more relaxed. I’ll be working on my preliminary examination paper, but apart from that, just enjoying the summer with Emilia.

Here are some pictures of all the fun we’ve had since my coursework ended.
Emilia trying on her new Keen sandals she and her papa bought while shopping together.

My purses are a favorite toy for Emilia. Here she is swinging a purse over her shoulder and heading to the car to apparently drive herself to work? We’ll have to teach her you don’t go out into the world wearing your pajamas.

Emilia is apparently picking up her papa’s organizational skills. Whenever I dump the clean laundry on the floor, Emilia picks out all her clothes and arranges them neatly on the kitchen floor.
I just really like this photo of Emilia and her papa.

We scored this great Cozy Coupe car at a local garage sale and Emilia has been having a blast pushing her “car-car” around the cul-de-sac.

Tonight we had dinner at our place with some friends and their two kids—ages five and one. Emilia was in heaven! Here she is with Liza.

Then we got out her flamenco shoes (see January 23 post), which are still a little big. She’s already better at walking in heels than her mom!

The kids had so much fun together (in other words, got so dirty) that we decided to throw them all in the bath together at the end of the night.

Helmet Head

Agustín got a Burley bike trailer for Christmas from my parents that he’s been itching to use with Emilia. Our local fire department sells bike helmets for a reduced price every Thursday evening, so the two of them went up there last week while I was at class to get Emilia a helmet to go biking with Papa. Well, apparently she was not a happy camper while getting fit for the helmet, so when they got home, Agustín got out his helmet and put it on (what a dad!). Seeing that, Emilia happily put on her helmet and didn’t want to take it off. Thankfully, Agustín even thought to snap a few pictures. Now, when Emilia sees her helmet in the garage, she says “hatta” and points to her head. When she did this while we were playing outside yesterday, I put it on her. Then she insisted I put mine on. So there we were, two helmet-headed lunatics with no bikes. If any neighbors saw us, they had to have been thinking I’m an extremely over-protective mother.

Cutie with a Mean Streak!

Emilia came home from school one day last week with her hair in pigtails, and it was so cute I couldn’t help but post these photos. We’ve tried to repeat this look several times since then, but Emilia won’t sit still long enough. I think part of the problem is that Agustín and I both lack any of the necessary skills for doing a little girl’s hair.

Apparently Emilia is going through some sort of mean streak. Don’t get me wrong, she’s a sweet little girl the majority of the time, but has taken to scratching and biting when she doesn’t get what she wants or if another little kid is trying to “share” a toy with her. So there’s a lot of “gentle,” “don’t bite mommy’s leg,” “don’t hit papa’s glasses,” “no scratching,” etc. going on these days.


Favorite words these days are leche ("laykay"; milk in Spanish), jacket (“jacky”), shoes (“sooz”), hat (“hatta”; I’m trying to convince her this is no longer part of the routine, but we still wear the winter hat outside more than necessary), and outside (“sah…sah”). And one of her favorite things to do is to carry around her shoes and jacket in an attempt to get someone to take her outside. She also loves our shoes and slippers and will bring them to us. It’s so funny when we walk in the door and she sees us, turns and runs away, then comes back with our slippers. I knew there was a good reason we didn’t get a dog!