I'm in England

And so is Lily.

Very quickly before Lily wakes up from her nap:

We were here for a long weekend to celebrate Lil's birthday with English family and friends. It was fun and at the end we were exhausted after three weeks in the US for Christmas, two whirlwind weeks back in BCN, and a weekend here. So Lily and I decided to stay on for another week and a half while I'm still unemployed and recover!

While Ray and Lisa have been at work, we've plodded through the English countryside in Lily's new Wellingtons and rain coat (thanks Nana Lisa!), gotten over our fear of crossing the road in this country, hiked over to the next town to buy thank-you notes and hot chocolate and all-over revived ourselves!

Now we're ready for lots of visiting:
* Friend Mal and baby Aldous at the London Zoo tomorrow
* Me sans Lily to see Megan and Marty and some DJ on Friday
* The McAndrews and little Delia on Tuesday
* As well as a visit here at home from cousin Hannah over the weekend while her parents continue to get used to new bundle Baby Sam

Lily's just woken up, so more later!

really long video I dare you to watch it

Counting

In English


In Spanish

28 weeks lily

This is what happens when lily stays at home with mum all day.

How I spent my Christmas vacation (in no particular order and without New Year's photos)

Amendment

I just found these photos on Oli's computer in a temporary folder where I had put them, meaning to blog them.

Oli's parents came to visit us in November and we took the scenic cable car from Barceloneta beach to Mont Juic.

PS - There was a fire in the city on this day and we got an aerial view of it before walking past it later in the day.

Predictions

Some of our blurry New Year's photos, taken just as the camera battery was dying, offer a glimpse of years to come:


Kevin wins the 2020 elections to become the first president with hair cancer:



Canoodling with dubious environmental and bank lobbyists causes whispers on Capitol Hill.



I can't think of any amusing predictions about this photo, but I welcome yours.

I just wish you'd asked first

I feel Colin’s recent post. The cold tummy feeling is also creeping up in me as we part ways with our Chicago friends again. As I wrote in some of my Christmas cards this year, in the last few years, late November has brought a certain building excitement as I know the time to reunite will soon be upon us. I think that we have moved on to a new stage in our friendships in which we can take comfort in the knowledge that despite distance and diverging interests, our good old friends are out there thinking about us as much as we think about them at happy and sad times, that we can and will all come together from time to time to discuss life’s joys and challenges and to dance, dance as if we were…dancers.

Check out the nice New Year’s photos on Colin’s blog.

Cold tummy feelings aside, I just know they’re going to find a cure for hair cancer in 2008.

Happy New Year. Let’s take it on with moxie.

Who's watching the watcher

I just wanted to clarify that the "Art of the YouTube resonse video" post below was erroneously posted by Oliver under my name. I would almost certainly never write, "Who's watching the watcher?" Almost.

~

kid quotes

Home for the holidays and hanging out with my niece (4) and nephew (6), the following interesting phrases have come up:

While eating ice cream -
Marisa: "Ow, that nut just hurt the special part of my mouth."
Jacob: "Oh yeah. You mean by where the spitmaker is."

After spending 15 minutes outside re-wiring the Christmas lights on his own, crying due to coooold hands -
Jacob: "I had to stick my hands in the snow to touch the power strip."

And the best ever, while riding to school with his mom at 8:30 in the morning -
Jacob: "So Mom, did you know that people were trying to kill Jesus?"

Chomsky would love this stuff.

Settling in?

So perchance we are finally settling in. We made a trip to the Encants outdoor market that's open on the weekends in search of a few items to warm up our emptyish apartment. We found a nice blue wooden chair for Lily there. Later at IKEA, we found a mismatched table and red chair to go with the initial find, a felt mobile of bunnies and sheep, and a rug with roads and castles on it. So, all-in-all, Lil has had a pretty cool learning area added to her now-much-cooler play area. In the street the next night, we found a cool worn blue wooden table which is playing the role of end table for the time being.

The little table and chairs have helped focus Lily's oft bountiful energy such that we can actually get her to sit and talk ABCs and animals for 10 minutes or so at a time. She has also taken a great interest in writing in the last weeks. Grasping her fat crayons like pencils, placing her elbows firmly on the table and hunching over her paper so that her nose is only an inch from it, she spends long periods making wispy strings of pretend cursive. She also reads nonsense stories to us in a garbled Lily language, running her finger over the words on the pages of books or backs of DVD boxes. And finally, she loves listening to nursery rhymes, and I quite enjoy watching her drag the big nursery rhyme book from the coffee table to our bedroom at bedtime.

Lily home video

Poor Elmer

Today Lily was doing really well with her diaper off, running over to the potty a few times during the morning to do pees.

Later I went to make a cup of tea, leaving her playing in the family room. After a minute, she started shouting and crying, so I went to go see what was wrong. I was completely shocked to find Lily had shat on her toy elephant, I think by accident. This however, was not the source of her stress. The shit on her hand was.

It will be a while before I recover from the sight of that turd on poor Elmer the Elephant’s hind wheel, and I don’t know if Elmer will ever be the same.

Art of the YouTube response video

Watch our friend Dave's Art of a Bike Messenger video, filmed on the streets of Chicago:




And our response video of Lily watching his video:



I would like this post to initiate a discussion of the implications of this revolutionary type of response video and leave you wondering: Who's watching the watcher?

Get involved with Skype (Americans!)

Us lonely travellers stranded out here in the entrails of oblivion quite fancy a good old skype conference call, with video if you prefer, on the day of the Giving of Thanks. I know most of you have got a decent internet connection and laptop so why not download the program and enjoy some live video conferencing with Lily, Angela and myself.

My username is 'olibeaks', Angela's is 'AJRuiter' and Rooney's is 'Kevin-Rooney'. Get involved.

Home for the Holidays

Hi. We're here cooking dinner with Kevin Rooney, who, it seems, will be our flatmate for about 9 months. Actually, he's cooking and Oli and I are hanging out near him. Our internet connection comes in strongest in the kitchen, so I'm reading up on all the Chicago blogging I've missed out on in the last months and I sure do miss you guys. Heavy Metal Drummer came up on my playlist earlier (the Seeleys were just here for a few days and brought my computer out from England, so I can finally listen to MY music) and I was all, "Oh, Chicago and being a young and whatnot" (That's not a gloss but is actually what I thought.).

Let it be known that Lily and I will arrive in Chicago on December 14th, and Oli on the 21st. We'll be about until the 8th of January, staying in Tinley Park but planning to make visits to other parts of the Land of Lincoln.

Lily says, "Hi guys."

~

Tibidabo

Those of you who read Angela's January 2005 entry "Tibidabo: The Last Temptation of Chaos" on her old blog (http://valesoyamericana.blogspot.com/2005_01_01_archive.html) may particularly enjoy this video.

Selling up and moving on, with Radiohead

Potty on, Wayne. Potty on, Garth.

And potty on, Lily. We had our first pee on the potty today.

I had tried the whole no diaper in the house thing while we were in the Barceloneta flat, but that just led to Lily holding in poo and pee and doing them slyly on our balcony when I had to pay attention to cooking dinner. So I figured she needed a little more time to be comfortable and would open up (haha) to the potty thing with time.

In our local Oriental Bazaar shop Lily fell in love with a little plastic potty (in photo), so we bought it right away. At home, she would sit on it from time to time, then jump up after about a second to see if anything had materialized. Now that we are more settled and she likes her potty, I set yesterday as the day to give real potty training another go.

Yesterday I once again realized that long periods of diaperlessness wouldn’t work as she holds it ‘til I look away. But short periods when it’s quite certain she’ll have to go (after waking up in the morning, after nap, when making grunting poo noises) do work. So now at these times we pull the potty into the family room (the bathroom is next to our flatmates’ room and they don’t want to hear me talking about pee-pee and poo-poo for ten minutes at a time) and play with other things until Lily has to go.

This morning was the first go with the new method, and what do you know, within two minutes she sat and peed. I was so surprised when she stood up and there was actually pee in the potty that I spilled my tea everywhere, including on me. I was able to snap a quick shot, seen here. My tea in the background is actually all over the table and floor, but you can’t really tell. Let’s see if we can get a same-day repeat but all the same, well done Lily!