Our backyard forest will be gone soon... :(

Nos mudamos a esta casa, hace casi 9 años. Para los que no la conocen, esta en una calle cerrada, de esas que tienen una glorietita al final, que por acá se llaman "cul-de-sac". En la parte de atrás, y del largo de toda la cuadra, hay un terreno grande, con una casita. El terreno estaba muy al natural, dando la impresión de una cabaña en un bosque. Hace pocos años, la casa se desocupó e intentaron venderla. Ha habido muchos contratiempos en todo el proceso. El terreno ha pasado de manos más de una vez. Aunque el terreno se puede subdividir en 6 lotes, la ciudad les requiere que tengan su propia calle. Nuestra buena suerte se acabó. Hace unos días apareción una reja temporal de metal alrededor de la casa. Hoy empezaron a derribar una casita grande de pájaros, y otras cosas. Se me olvidaba que en algún momento se "mudaron" ahí muchas personas indigentes. Tuvimos que llamar a la policía y aunque la vaciaron, el dueño nunca regresó a cerrar la casa bien.

We moved into our house almost 9 years ago. For those of you who haven't been here, we live in a quiet cul-de-sac. Right behind us, along the whole block, is a huge lot with a small house, almost like a cabin. The land was kept very natural, so it was like having our own private forest. A few years ago, the house was vacated. The worse part was when some homeless people moved in. We had to call in the police who made them leave. However, the owner never did come back to lock the house again. It has been sold and resold a few times. Developers apparently think it is a great find: it can be subdivided into 6 lots, and it has great location. However, the city is apparently requiring them to have a good sized street. Well, our good fortune is over. A few days ago, a portable fence appeared around the house, and today, demolition began. They started by tearing down a huge bird house and some other things.

Hoy Arantxa empezó a llenar un calendario que le había dado hace tiempo. Me preguntó cómo saber qué día era hoy y empezamos a llenarlo con los eventos importantes en su vida. los escribe o usa estampas. Para Arantxa es muy importante saber qué sigue. HAce tiempo le hice un calendario semanal en un pizarrón blanco. Marqué con plimón permanente los 7 días; busqué y edité imagenes de Word para representar las actividades que tenemos, y luego les puse imán. Con plumón de pizarrón blanco podemos marcar los eventos ocasionales, cumpleaños, etc. La idea le gustó tanto, que me pidió más imanes y ahora podemos marcar misa, el día que limpian la casa, el que llegan las verduras, etc. Todo eso lo hice cuando me cansé de contestarle todos los días, qué actividades tendríamos ese día. En México, la mayoría de los niños va a la escuela , preescolar, o kínder todos los días. Por acá, la mayoría van 2 o 3 veces a la semana. Obviamente, el día más anticipado en su vida es el primer día de escuela. Nos faltó completar el verano, ya lo haremos al rato.

Today Arantxa started filling in a calendar I had give her some time ago. She asked me how she could tell what day was today; and we started filling out with the important events in her life, either by writing or using stickers. For her, it has always been very important to know what comes next. Last year I made a weekly calendar for her out of a white board. I marked the 7 days with a Sharpie pen; I looked up and edited Word art images to represent the activities, cut them and magnetized them. We use regular white board markers to write down the date and jot down special events such as birthdays and outings. I did that when I got tired of answering her constant question, what we were doing that day. It was especially confusing to her as she did not go to preschool every day. She loves the calendar so much and asked for more magnets, now we have: mass (church), produce delivery, house cleaning, etc. For reference, in Mexico most kids go to preschool, and preschool is every weekday in most of those. The day Arantxa is most looking forward to right now is her first day of school! We did not finish this morning, so we'll complete the rest of the summer later today.

Linda hermana

Creative dessert

We had great weather for Memorial Day weekend, and we ended up inviting ourselves to Marielena and Marina's house. The girls had a blast together, playing with Marina's American Dolls, running in the playground, etc.

Go back in time, a few years, and you'd see little Marina coming to our home where we frequently had a dish with m&ms or other treats. The kids, of course, loved them, and it was our prerrogative as childless uncle/aunt. Ultimately, the parents ended up putting the chocolate on a higher/out of sight place.

Fast forward again. Marielena has this cute and creative m&m dispenser. The girls had eaten some, and after the regular dessert Lorena announced that she was going to have more m&ms. We gave in to ONE last piece; she complained but took the offer. A while later I caught her with her mouth full of chocolate; and even later she grabbed some right in front of Pablo. Pable felt good about having stopped her, but Marielena had seen her eat some from her other hand. The following day, I came downstairs to find Lorena eating a huge lollipop courtesy of the Polish grandparents, before breakfast. Without any words I had to toss it away. The worse part of the crime for us, had been her directly disobeying us. I explained later that next time we were to have dessert, she wouldn't have any since she'd already had sweets.

Our weekly dinner with the Davila's was at our house this Tuesday. We grilled some burgers, and we were prepared for a lot of drama when dessert was brought out. I sat with Lorena and hugged her, while everybody else enjoyed their frozen treats. She tried to negotiate "a little tiny taste" out of everyone with no luck. The kids continued playing outside and having a good time. That is when we saw this:


"This is my dessert! Broccoli is my dessert. I am having dessert." And so she did, she thoroughly enjoyed it, went up and down the slide with it, and she even asked me to save it for her while she played some more.


Today, Lorena had her long day at school, and she always comes home exhausted from not taking a nap. She ended up falling asleep on her little couch while waiting for our dinner guests to arrive.



ARantxa found her asleep a little later and this is what she did...


When Pablo's friend and his daughter arrived, what they saw was Arantxa marching in front of Lorena, playing a loud flute; so not exactly the "sweet, tender big sister" we had just seen. In her defense, having guests for both of them is super exciting, even when you don't know them; Arantxa wanted Lorena to share in that moment of greeting the guests, and share her joy, like she usually does.

On Facebook and reconnecting...

I had signed up to Facebook a while back, and lost some time enjoying playing around with some of the features. It was however, pretty much very rare to find people I knew there, but that is changing.



In the past few weeks, I've found people I hadn't heard of in ages. I found Verónica F., my best friend from 1st grade and all the way to junior high. I did get to hear from her through others occassionally, but not in a while. I learned that now she is married and has a baby girl. I even got to see pictures. Pretty cool! It was also funny because just a few days earlier I had been thinking about her and our complex world of LOGS. Our elementary school had painted logs that were used as benches. We named most of them, and our very favorite was a big green one, El Tronco de la Risa (The Laughing Log), which made us laugh every time we sat on it. There was also an orange one "el tronco de la mala suerte" (Bad Luck Log); and whenever we sat down on it, bad things happened to us. We did theorize that we probably were "programming" ourselves, but once Lizette R. sat on it. We tried to convince her to get off, but she wouldn't listen to reason. We were concerned, so we even tried forcibly removing her, but Lizette was always stronger than us -and mostly she was not afraid of use her full force. After we all lined up to go back to the classrooms, Lizette got distracted and bonked her head against a wall. She got a huge goose bump. That was the proof we needed that the logs were indeed magical, and they did not only affect us. This must have been around 3rd or 4th grade. We stayed with the logs through elementary, mainly because it was fun. At some point later on, we even wrote a comic strips with the logs and ourselves as characters. Verónica we drew with pigtails, and our version of me had 2 braids, my favorite hairstyle.



I also reconnected with Leslie R, who was my friend in preschool in that same school, and for a while in early elementary. I have a few fond memories of her, but also one of the weirdest days of my live as a young kid. I was invited to lunch and then we probably begged for a sleepover because it was a school night, so it was probably unplanned. We had fun, but early next morning, she was not feeling well. Now, in my house, when you were not feeling well, you still were sent to school, with an aspirin to make you feel better. And yes, the children's aspirin boxes already had that warning: do not give to kids as it might be related to Reye's Syndrome; but nobody cared. Back to the story, Leslie (this is all from my memory of course), decided she was not going to school, so it was arranged that her aunt would pick me up. I knew her aunt, Miss Blanquita, who among other things substituted for the English teachers, and I also knew she had 3 kids in the school, Denisse in our grade but in a different classroom. I simply remember that it was a very long ride to school that day.



A few years later I was "promoted" to the classroom where Denisse was. I always liked Denisse, she got along with everybody, including us the outcasts. She was one of the few in the "A" classroom who did not care that much about grades: a nice refreshing change in that über-competitive room, where an 85% in a test was received with great shame and grief. Miss Blanquita was my English teacher in 6th grade. She was an awesome teacher, and it made me feel very special that she asked me for a word in English if she did not know it; or maybe she was just asking to be nice.



I am naturally, speaking of Miss Blanquita and Denisse since they are now also my friends in Facebook.



Ivan M, who I met in our senior year in high school also randomly found me there. He said he had looked for me in other directories, but had had no luck. He was thrown off by my location, but says that the adventurer spirit of my profile picture gave me away. Ivan was already living a very interesting life when we were friends. He had come from Nicaragua to Mexico to stay at family friends' house and study there for a year or two. Things in Nicaragua got really bad, so he was unable to return for several years. Naturally, he was more mature than most of us. He now is back in his homeland, married and with a daughter.



I also reconnected with another high school friend (sophomore year/4to prepa), José Carlos. I had heard nothing from him in many years. He had a band with a friend, and we collected autographs from him; claiming one day they'd be worth a lot of money. Imagine my surprise to find out that he is still playing in a band, with the same guy from junior high. I got to listen to some of their music, and I have to go back to hear more.

There are more people, a cousin of my cousins, distant cousins and uncles/aunts; a bunch of my former students from Mexico's Tec. Since those guys are younger, there are a lot more of them in Facebook. The ones I have added as friends were from the bicultural program which was a bilingual and competitive program. It has been no surprise to see than scattered all over th world, many of them Ivy League alumni or curent students. It has been great to see how smart kids like those, can really do so well when they have peers of a similar level, and a good educational ambience.

Sorry this was only in English. I want to get going with this blog. I am really tired of the MSN spaces failing; I can't stand that many times people have been unable to read my blogs see my pictures.