Third birthday party, numbers one and two

We began the third celebration of Lily's birth, which will be a week-long event spanning two countries, on Sunday evening in Mantra, our friends Antony and Marta's tea house.

Bad weather made us call off the beach picnic we had originally planned, and illness and busy schedules kept the attendance small, but Lily had a very very good time, and looked nice, too.

It seemed like everyone enjoyed her antics ad playing with her. There was coloring in an anti-conformist-coloring-book that we found on the café game shelf, 

creating bases on a cushioned platform (the coolest feature of the tetería), 

decorating the house-shaped cake with raisin windows and doors, knocking Lily down and covering up with pillows, and so much more.

Good gifts were received: a piggy bank we can paint and necklaces, one of which is so cool that I want it.


Antony and Marta were so thoughtful, bringing us munchies, staying on top of the drink orders and serving Lily a Cacaolat that she was very pleased with.


We ended up singing Happy Birthday four times (English, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese) and each version received a big hooray from the hippies populating the café. (Note: the cake had a chimney, but Lily ate it just before we sang.)


Paulo was the one who introduced us to the Portuguese version, and man, it definitely beats all other birthday songs. Lots of increasingly loud chanting of the birthday person's name = good fun.

Things went so well, that Lily even put herself and her doll to bed at the end of the party.



All in all, a very good time, a party where I actually got to speak to everyone and felt like Lil had a great time.



This morning we awoke and Lily was very excited to wear a dress to school and bring a copy of one of her favorite songs "Aire de fiesta" to class for her party. On each child's birthday, his or her classroom photo goes on a big birthday poster, the class works together to decorate a paper crown and the child's dining chair, and there is singing, dancing and a balloon for each kid to take home. Although she looks a bit serious here,


she took off dancing as soon as the photo was over.


Side note: This morning after dropping Lily at school, the fog on Tibidabo was amazing:


When I got Lil from school, she was well happy, especially because of her paper crown and green balloon. She and I had a lovely afternoon together and when we got home,she got to open her presents from us (an elephant dining set), Matt (sticker book), and Oliver's Uncle Iain and Aunt Wendy (small squishy baby whose diaper you can change - a big plus in Lily's book).


After dinner, she, Oli and I meant to go on a bike ride, but the rain and a looooong game of Monster on the Bed held us up. To be honest, I think we all enjoyed that even more because it just sort of happened.

Thursday night we're off to the UK for the big Bear Hunt birthday party.

50's housewife, more fish and storm chasing

Some days Lily just wants to wear a dress. She'll come home from school, happen upon a dress in a laundry pile or in a cupboard and ask me to put it on her. Then it gets worn until bedtime, when we invariably pass through a tense, albeit brief, moment of strife when the dress must come off. On her last dress donning occasion, she also rediscovered the cooking gear she got for Christmas. The result was June Cleaver.


Having left arrangements to the last moment, Matt ended up kindly passing Mr Fish onto our friend Claire for safekeeping while we were away in the UK for the holidays. Upon our return to BCN, we took about a week and a half to finally go pick him up. Claire had offered to keep him if we didn't want a fish anymore, but in the end, we thought Lily would miss him. We then bought two more fish and a bigger aquarium. Lily cannot be happier. She hugs the tank and sighs, "I loooove my fish sooo much."



The lighter orange fish is the original Mr Fish, the new orange one has been named Kankro, and the black one is Emro. These last two are from a cache of weird names Lily uses lately.

We've been in the international news the last couple days. Or rather, the deadly hurricane-force winds ripping through southern France and northern Spain have been. Howling wind has sounded on and off for for days. It raged all night Friday and Saturday morning we awoke to a wounded city.

Before Oli and Lily arose, I went out to get pastries and fruit. Our courtyard was a sandstorm, I could just barely move forward into the wind, motos were strewn about and a massive quantity of garbage and recycling dumpsters was piled up at the end of the road. Elderly couples clutched one another and some turned back, abandoning their plans. On my way home, with the wind pushing at my back, I was actually blown past our gate and had to clutch onto the garden wall to drag myself back to the entrance.

Things calmed down later and we went for a walk to assess the damage.




Later Matt went with us to the center and we walked past Port Vell to see how downtown and the beach had fared.

It ain't right

On a weekday morning a few weeks ago I was waiting for my friend Carlos in the central plaza in Barcelona. Suddenly a loveably scruffy guy with a small notepad came up to me and told me he was with El Periódico de Catalunya, a major newspaper. What did I think of President Zapatero's announcement the day before that he would create a new Ministry of Sport?

I said that while I had heard the announcement, I really didn't have much of an opinion about it.

Yes, but what do you think?

I don't know. I guess because I have a child I think physical activity is important? But really, I repeat, I have no opinion about this.

*Furiously scribbling* So you think promoting physical activity among the public is positive?

I guess. I guess it's important that people stay active. But really, I haven't given this announcement much thought.

Ok, my photographer is just going to take a photo. *Other man rushes in from side. **Click** *

It comes out Sunday. *Runs away*

---

No joke, it really happened that fast.

I didn't remember to get El Periódico that Sunday, but Carlos remembered that I had told him about this encounter, and as his mother keeps all her copies of El Periódico for weeks, he rooted around and surprised me with this clipping this week.

My repeated "I have no opinion" comments were edited out, and my Spanish kindly made more eloquent. I am pretty pissed that I'm on the lame minority "pro" side. Jeez, if he was going to jump me like that because he needed to fill some page space, he could have at least made me look cool.

HmWha? A post about Lily? That's cwazy.

Lily and I went to see El Show de Barrio Sésamo at an old theatre downtown tonight.

She got a big kick out of the performance but for me, the highlight of the evening was Lil dressed in a lovely gown topped with a ruffled jacket, walking down a dimly lit red velvety passageway in the theatre, looking at me with a delicate smile and saying, "I'm farting right now, Mummy."

She giggles and tells me her fart status quite often these days.

She's begun a really great new stage which has seen her eating meals without any fuss (we give credit to us and a new approach we tried on the meal problem but it could be that she just got older), taking great interest in the physical workings of the world, being easygoing, and just generally being cool and adorable.

She had the first dance class yesterday at the civic center next door. Quickly obvious that we need to wait at least six months before she'll be ready to do it, but it was a positive experience for her over all. Also positive for me because the fee was refundable. In all seriousness I was very proud of Lil for how well she conducted herself during the class even though she was nervous. She never joined the group, nor did the other three-year-old who had turned up, but was really interested and talked a lot about what she watched. Humorously, a common question was, "Why are they doing that?" I guess it would be pretty hard to get how flexing and pointing your toes 50 times or pretending to be dogs on all fours is somehow related to the ballet she's seen in books and on TV. Anyway, Lily agreed that she didn't want to continue for now but wants to try again when she's bigger.

Has anyone else noticed all my recent posts are only about Lily? I need to diversify.

~

Streamlining

The house has been needing some tackling: removal of junk we don't use and general washing of surfaces. Today I went at the family room and Lily's bedroom, hotbeds of straggling superfulous toys and craft materials. Surfaces were wiped, un- or mis-used things were recycled or binned. Furniture was rearranged. The end result was a much cooler room for Lil, I think.

Yesterday, before the cleaning began, Lily and I strung up some string and used mini wooden clips to hang some first-word flashcards all around her room. I stole this idea from Simon Hartrich's bedroom in the Kedzie apartment, where, if I remember correctly, the alphabet was strung around the room.


Anyway, it has taken away some of the bareness caused by the high ceiling in a room filled with small-person furniture.

Other new features include:

A revised kitchen area, that now has a baby's bed on the kitchen counter. Not sure about how that works, but....it does. Note the string with clips for Lily to hang artwork. That moon is her symbol at nursery school.


Bedside trinkets - IKEA lamp, souvenirs Georgia and Mircea brought Lily back from China, a Mentink original stencil, and a plant recovering from our time away at the holidays.


A closeup of the Mentink.


Fun hangy things: A felt mobile from IKEA and a wooden spinner found in a shop in the old section of town. Two faithful friends, Elmer the Elephant and Bouncy Black Sheep top the bookshelf. They're waiting for the right tallish lamp to come along to sit behind them.


A cleaned up Marmite jar to hold the marbles and bouncy balls that populate the corners of our home.


I quite like the boudoir I've created. Oli found that little chest of drawers in the street on his way home one evening. The mirror was left by the girls who lived in our apartment over the summer, the musical jewellery box came from Santa, and the dreamcatcher was purchased for one euro today in Barcelona. All-in-all, a good space for a Lil to get herself in order.



My favorite part of the room: the bookshelf flanked by a reading chair and baskets of bags, baby clothes, aprons, ballet slippers and tutus. Ask yourself why you don't currently have these things in your bedroom. Consider the improvement they might make.

Looking ahead to February...

It's been so long since I've blogged that I wrote no pre- or during holiday posts. We're already planning Lily's 3rd birthday party, which will take place in the UK.


Oli's mum has hired the Masonic Hall in their hometown as the party location and rented Tumble Tots, a group that bring an indoor bouncy castle and other gym equipment for the kids to play on. Using this equipment, some packing bubbles, a giant parachute and blowing bubbles, we'll create an obstacle course on which the kids can recreate the events in the books We're Going on a Bear Hunt. Add in bear-themed party gifts and a quiz about Lily for the adults to compete in (bottle of wine for the winner), and I think we've got the makings of a pretty cool party.

I did it!

Been up all night publishing changes to the website.

The pages that have not been made pretty will be in Jan. I'm only paid for a set number of hours a month. ~

In which after many days of irritation and hormones, we go to Tarragona

Saturday and Monday were holidays (Constitution Day and the Immaculate Conception), so we had today, Monday, off work and school. Most locals were disgruntled that Constitution day fell on a Saturday. Sometimes it will fall on a Wednesday or Tuesday and the Immaculate Conception on the Thursday or Friday, resulting in numerous days off work. Just a sorry ol' 3-day weekend this year, folks.

All week Oli brought up how he wanted to rent a car and drive up north to a Pyrenean village and ramble in the woods, which is what most people do to get away from the city at this colder time of year. in the summer, you go to coastal towns and beach it up.

For various reasons (money, lack of proper preparation, Oliver not having his driver's license here in Spain, me being very hormonal, etc) we kept going back and forth about this plan. In the end, we did a fair amount of research and have pinpointed a couple places we'd like to go (Olot, Llívia, Parc Nacional d'Aigüestortes)....in Feb, March or April, either with the VW if it's here, or in a rented car.

This weekend, we took a sensibly priced day-trip by train to Tarragona, and it was just what the doctor ordered.

As usual, we left our house running like maniacs, throwing stroller, coats, bookbag, shoes, Lily, into the elevator ten minutes before the train left the station next door. In the end we caught a train that left 30 minutes later, but still made it to Tarragone for noon.

The train station is on the sea, so we hiked up a big hill that took us to the top of the New Rambla, the main thoroughfare of Tarragona, which dead ends at a cliff overlooking the sea. Then we rambled down he rambla, quickly getting off it and wandering up little side streets, coming across tiny plazas where Lily rode a merry-go-round and we found a reasonable place for a tapas lunch. Luckily, it was 57 degrees F so we sat out on the terrace in the plaza. We were ignored by the waiter, normal treatment for guiris, but it was particularly annoying this time since Lily was getting tired and cranky. Eventually, after many waves indicating we needed service, I went inside carrying a crying Lily and guilted the waiter into coming to serve us....8 more minutes later, about 35 minutes after we had arrived.

At this point Americans and British might say, why didn't you just leave? Well, they probably would have done that to us anywhere; even in BCN you come across plenty of restaurants where if you look foreign you get ignored because the proprietors know they don't have to cater to you because there are enough local clients. We were in a proper Catalan city, thus the ignoring only increased. We already had drinks and the food looked good, so why bother changing to start the same process over?

Anyway, the food was good. After lunch we went searching for a warm sunny place to lay down and rest. Siesta fever had set in. We headed toward the Roman amphitheatre, which we thought would be perfect, but never made it since we had so much fun wandering and playing in the crumbly streets behind the cathedral. I cannot stress how quiet it was here, we decided due to a combination of people being out paseando as it was Sunday, resting during siesta, and being away in the countryside for the long weekend. The silence, coupled with the fresh air was enough to make the trip worth it. I kept taking deep breaths and feeling my nerves healing themselves. Ah.










Eventually we came upon the cathedral itself, at which point Lily attacked Oli, pinning him on the ground. As street vendors packed up boxes of junk into their cars, my husband and child rolled around their plaza in the sun.








Check out Oli's face and body in these close-ups. I have not laughed out loud, and so hard, in a long time. Wow. Wowy wowza.




From the cathedral, we went in search of a good place for coffee. Oli and I got caught up in discussion, Lily fell deep asleep in her stroller, and we were enjoying walking too much to stop, so it was a good hour or so before we ever got that coffee, which turned into an overpriced Irish coffee for Oli and a weak yucky tea for me at a cheezy place on the rambla.

Lily awoke cranky, but some walking along the rambla, past the Christmas tree and main fountain helped, as well as reassurance that we were indeed on our way to the train station, which we were.

We caught a cramped express train home, but Lily made it all fun by wandering between Oli and I, who were sitting in different parts of the car, asking Oli for permission to play with a noisy fold-down chair, receiving an answer of 'no' because many people were sleeping, walking to me to tell me why she wanted to play with it, that Daddy had said 'no,' and that she didn't understand why because he likes noise, then returning to start the process over. Everyone around us was amused to see a little blonde thing speaking ever so seriously in an English/Spanish mix to her mom, responding to mom's Spanish questions, and reporting back to Dad. Made it hard to read the interview with Clint Eastwood I was sooo in to (sarcasm) but easy to pass the hour ride.

From there, home, found bookshelf outside on curb, took it in and added it to Lily's room, dinnered, and bedded.

Worky

Check out what I've been working on:

Old page
Draft of new page (New photos are being taken this Friday and when on the homepage, will fill the space next to the text.)

School's YouTube channel