Erik’s Blog

Parking in nearby beach tourist town, Laredo, is really a nightmare in July and August, especially for those of us that go there year round. But never is the parking problem worse than on the last Friday of August, when Laredo hosts their famous Batalla de Flores (Flower Battle), a parade of floats with 100% real flowers. So this year we came up with a parking strategy.

I’ve been walking a lot lately, so we decided that I would drive the car to Laredo in the morning, park it as close to the downtown parade site as possible, and then walk back home. I took Nora with me since she isn’t any extra work on walks (when bribed with cookies), but she is a handful to care for around the house. Then, at 17:00, we set out walking to Laredo. Immediately the sky began to look ominous, and about halfway there, it began to rain. We managed to find a little shelter and soon the rain slowed and then stopped. We got there late for the initial lap (for the judges to see the floats), but we caught the entire second lap (for the awards to be given) and a little of the third lap (for the awards to be paraded, literally, around the town).
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Ever since migrating back north after her three week hiatus in southern Spain, there has been something very peculiar about Nora, besides being able to walk: it has been an absolute pleasure putting her to bed at night. Only the very tip top of her consciousness protests the day’s end. She cries when we shut the door and turn out the light, but only as long as the air in her lungs from the previous breath lasts. She totally understands what being put in the crib means. Tonight I forgot to take off her shoes before putting her in the crib, and she was already lying down with her head on the pillow by the time I bent down to take them off her. It’s really super-eerie for her parents, who remember her lasting up to and past the ninety minute mark of bedtime wailing. I suspect the phrase, “She never ceases to surprise me,” will only become more and more true in the coming years.
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Today, my internet friend, Andrea, posted a video of her daughter, Eva, who is three months older than Nora, exhibiting one of the most annoying toddler behaviors: dropping whatever cute thing she is doing and coming to examine the video camera her parent has clutched so importantly. It’s a very reasonable thing to do, but awfully frustrating for the documentarian. While I was playing the video, Nora heard Eva talking and entered my office. So I propped her up on my desk and showed her the video. The resulting video (captured with my new HD-recording iPhone 4) reminds me a little of the green screen game they play on Whose Line Is It Anyway?, where one improv “contestant” is placed in front of a green screen and has to guess, from the commentary of the other contestants what is going on behind him.
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As I mentioned a month ago, there was some very mild concern about Nora’s slow development in both speaking and walking, and an appointment was made to see a specialist. Well, we just got back from the specialist today, on her seventeen-month birthday. We were initially surprised that our appointment was in the Rehabilitation Department of the Valdecilla hospital in Santander. “We don’t need rehabilitation; we need habilitation“, I quipped. After some reflection, however, it makes sense that experts in the task of learning to walk and speak would probably best serve the people in a center for injured adults that need to relearn those skills.
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It’s been over a week since I’ve seen my daughter, and I miss her a lot. Her grandparents will be bringing her back on Sunday. If words from the front line are to be beleived, Nora is being extremely well behaved, is being polite to strangers, and even offering up her cheek to be kissed by total strangers (giving kisses is reserved for loved ones). Perhaps this kiss reception was learned with her “friend” Carla.

Carla is the daughter of one of Marga’s best friends from Extremadura. Nora and Carla first “met” last June in Madrid. Even though Carla was born 25 days after Nora, she is waaaay more advanced than Nora by just about every available metric. She walks freely, speaks several words, follows instructions, and gives people kisses…man, does she give some kisses! Carla’s parents suggest that it might be from spending 7 hours in daycare every day (Nora spends 3) with older kids that challenges her to excel. Nora won’t be where Carla is now for another four months.
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I am unable to watch this video without laughing. It’s my favorite video I recorded last weekend. It demonstrates both how Nora does a good job of commanding her mother to do her bidding and just now irritated she gets when her great-grandfather does or says anything. I declined to subtitle it because the conversation is so mundane. At one point, she does call him something that sounded to all the Spanish ears like “malo” (bad).
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While she’s down in Extremadura, Nora is spending a lot of time playing the pool or simply with water in buckets. It’s pretty cute how she flexes her knees enough to get just a little bit more of herself wet, and then repeats that motion, going a little lower each time until she’s sitting down. She did the same in the larger wading pool.
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Last Friday, August 6, my wife and I headed down to Extremadura to see our daughter, Nora, who had been down there the entire previous week with her grandparents and great-grandfather. It was a little disappointing not to be able to present her to our friends down there, as most of them had already seen her earlier in the week. She clearly recognized us (whew!), but was pretty unenthusiastic about it. We were immediately merged into her ordered hierarchy of people she likes to be with:

1. Mommy (Marga)
2. Abuelo (her grandfather, Juan)
3. Abuela (her grandmother, Marce)
4. Daddy (Erik)
5. …everybody else…
6. Bisabuelo (her great-grandfather, Ramón)

She spends a good portion of her time in her great-grandfather’s house prohibiting him from touching things. If he puts his hand on a chair or table or toy or glass, even if the object is across the room from her, she will race over (still holding someone’s hand) shouting, “No no no no no!!” and remove his hand from the object in his home that he had the nerve to touch. It’s actually pretty cute, and I think she understands that it’s a bit of a game. He certainly does.
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Sometimes when Marga gets back from picking Nora up at daycare, they stop by to see me before going on a walk. I often have music playing in my office when I’m working, and sometimes Nora starts to dance. Only after watching her for a while last week did I think to get the camera to record a little of it. Pretty cute, if you ask me.
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The plan for our summer vacations was for Marga and her parents to take Nora down to Extremadura, where we usually go in August, last Saturday, and then I would go this coming Saturday to visit for a week and then Marga, Nora and I would come back the following weekend. However, last Thursday, Marga’s boss fell off his motorcycle and broke his shoulder, landing him a week in the hospital and putting the kibosh on Marga’s first week of vacation. It was a tough decision, but we decided to let Nora go with her grandparents to Extremadura to leave us childless for a week.

At least I have this heart warming video I recorded last Friday to remember my daughter this week without her.
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