josie

Baby girl

Jordi

Yo -

This is Jordi. She or he has been living inside of me for 13 weeks now. That is sooooo Jordi.

Jordi is the Catalan version of George. As St. George is the patron saint of Catalunya, everyone here is named Jordi. Thus, this is the in-utero name we have applied to our child in order to avoid calling him or her 'it' and also because we like poking fun at Catalunya.

Colònies 2011

So colònies is like camp in Catalunya. Kids as young as 4 go on overnight camp trips (staying in buildings, not tents!) with their classes. Lily will be going on her first one next week, to a seaside camp.

There are a vast number of companies that have rural or coastal houses or complexes where schools can take these trips. Sometimes they include 'monitors' or camp counselors that can lead the kids on different activities, sometimes the school staff do this. They also usually have a cafeteria with staff who provide the food.

Some of these places also let families pay to come for weekends or weeks and hang out/meet other families. Think Kellerman's in Dirty Dancing.

Some of the parents in Lily's class thought it would be fun for a bunch of us to go do this....and we did.

We went to Pou de Glaç (Ice well), one of may complexes run by a company called Rosa dels Vents.

The kids went off with a monitor in the mornings and afternoons to do things like bake pastries, go on a zip line and do an obstacle course in the woods. Parents did a higher zip line, wall climbing and archery. It was all very laid back, so if a kid wanted to stay with his or her parents, or if you preferred to go on a walk instead of doing the activities....it was just fine.

We ended day one with a post-dinner birthday party for some of the kids from Lily's class, and a dance party hosted by the camp monitors. Lily had some MOVES out there on the dance floor with her little friends. I was having fun dancing, too, but at 10:40 she stopped dead and said quietly, 'Mom, I just can't dance anymore. Can I go to bed?'

Check out all the Colònies 2011 photos here.

A weekend with Sika (Cap de setmana amb la Sika)

This weekend we had the class mascot Sika spend the weekend with us. Each kid in Lili's class gets a weekend and draws a picture and writes a sentence about what Sika liked doing with them. You can also add a sheet with some photos and descriptions, and then on Monday the kid gets to talk about what they did with Sika. Is nice.

Here is Sika:

Here is Lili's picture about what Sika liked:

'I liked playing with Lili's cars.'

And here is the longer version of what we did. Click for full size.


Translation:

On Saturday my dad, Sika and I went to Sitges. We had a lot of fun on the train. We wanted to build a sandcastle but it was too cold, so we ate roast chicken and french fries instead. I was really tired and fell asleep on a bench, so Dad and Sika played alone.

That night I made Sika a little table and she ate her dinner under our table. I also made her a bed with my dolls' pillow and blanket. Before bedtime we read a Charlie and Lola story.

On Saturday Dad showed us how to make paper airplanes we we threw them off our balcony.

Later we went to Nora's house to play and have lunch. Nora, Sika and I really like cous cous!

Angela's Saturday afternoon paella recipe

Start with lots of fish broth and non-long-grain rice. (Rice not pictured.)

Heat some olive oil and grated garlic in a pan. Paella pan preferable. After a minute, add rice and fish broth. 1x rice to 2x broth. Med-high heat.


Add some tomato slices.


Add small prawns. (If you learn that rice takes 900 years to cook on your stove, as we have learned on ours, you can add these guys later so they don't get over-cooked.)

Add saffron.

Add frozen peas. Or regular ones.

Have a beer.

Like this.

Go do some laundry.

Keep adding fish broth and rotating the pan until the damn rice is almost ready. Add mussels. These are open because they were leftover from dinner the night before and are just being re-heated by the steam. Not sure how advisable that is.


Add cockles.



Cover and when your shelled items are open, it's ready!

Feed to undeserving but cute people.

Fin.

it's gonna gonna gonna rain from Oliver Seeley on Vimeo.

Lili is 5!

Today our baby is 5. Five years ago today, Oli was at London getting grilled by the US government in the embassy, I was in Oak Lawn, IL at Christ Hospital and Lili was getting born!

To recall all the gory and cute details of her first two weeks, read these blog posts.

Otherwise, today we've had a pancake breakfast and will have her favorite dinner (spaghetti!) with a special dessert of her choosing from the bakery, tomorrow Oli's parents are coming over from England, on Friday her friend Violet will go with Lili to an indoor play place, on Saturday we're staging a pirate treasure hunt birthday party with neighbors (Oli will be the pirate - what a dad!), and next Saturday there will be a co-party at her school with other classmates who are turning 5 around now.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LILI!

Lili's Christmas concert

Lili's group start at 3:20. Look for the blond pony-tail in the center of the top row.

xmas 2010

Untitled from Oliver Seeley on Vimeo.

Christmas Cookies 2010

Lily vs. Paintbrush

Lily draws on the computer using Paintbrush.

Letter to Santa

Some home movie footage of Lil and Angela writing their Christmas list, with a special guest appearance by everyone's favorite log.

Taller de camisetas

Lily and I were invited to this event (It's a shirt-making workshop):



It involved everyone buying or recycling blank shirts and bringing buttons, cloth scraps and fabric paint to spend an afternoon making improved shirts. There was some awesome stuff made (I await images via Facebook).

I mostly supported Lily as she made this:



...while intermittently speaking to people and trying to focus my thoughts. Very late in the game I came up with this:





It's not so amazing, which was difficult for me to bear since everyone was making such cool things, and it's not even finished, but, I ripped up an old stained shirt of Lily's that had a print I liked in order to make the white arrow. So, it's sentimental. And recycled. At the same time.

PS - I want a sewing machine for Christmas, Santa.

Carretera de les aigües

A great Barcelona outing that we don't do as often as we'd like is walking Carretera de les aigües.

For thse who don't live in Barcelona, the city is trapped between the sea and a small mountain whose peak is called Tibidabo. A big flat path called Carretera de les aigües runs along the face of the mountain that overlooks the city. We've done it a couple times since it is pretty easy to get to, but next time, we definitely want to rent some mountain bikes, with a kid seat :)

For those who do live in Barcelona but have never tried it out:
- Take the ferrocarril L7 to its last stop, Avinguda Tibidabo.
- Walk up Avinguda Tibidabo, or take the blue trolley, to the base of the Funicular de Tibidabo.
- Don't take the funicular, but rather, head right, round the curve and further up 'til you reach a parking lot. This is the beginning of the path.
- If you walk south for about an hour, you'll reach the Funicular de Vallvidrera and can go up to Collserola or down into BCN where the funicular will drop you at the Ferrocarril stop Peu de Funicular.
- From the main flat path, there are a number of small windy paths that go off up and down in the scrubby woods, up to Tibidabo or Collserola.

Calamares

Lily loves calamares. But for some reason, we haven't made them at home for a really long time. Bought some from the market and put Lily to work. Last time we put breading on fish she loved making it, so now if we bread things, she does it all on her own and I just have to throw it in the pan or hot oil. Noice.

Word wall -or- Oh my gosh, a post!

It's been a while...and is time we post something here!

What's new is the Word Wall. Funny thing about living in another country is that even though Lily will come out of this thing speaking three languages, if we don't help her out, she won't be able to read or write English :(

Thus, the Word Wall.

Lily and I started working our way through the Dolch Word List a few weeks ago. To get her psyched, we started by making a pretty mosaic poster for our wall. Then got down to learning.

A few days a week, sometimes before school, sometimes after dinner, we pick a word from the current group we're on, sound it out, then cut letters and pretty colorful things out of magazines to make a card for that word. It then gets stuck on the wall.

Then, from time to time we'll randomly ask Lily to grab a word off the wall and bring it to us, and we ask her to sound it out to prove it's the right word. She can also send us to get words. We've also started making silly phrases by putting the cards on the floor and changing their order.

Lily was not initially impressed by the 'learning something new' aspect of the task. The first time I tried to get her to sit down and look at the word list and sound things out, she was pissed. I actually had to be all mean mom and say "You're going to sit here and learn letter sounds or go sit in your thinking chair!" - I'm sure that's standard practice in pedagogy. In any case, as soon as she worked out the first word ('cat'), she was so pleased that we've rarely had to revisit that phase. In any case, I try to keep the 'sessions' to 10 minutes or less, and often to just a few seconds so she doesn't get bored and resentful...though I'm sure we'll have to keep varying the activities every few week, or she will anyway.

Any other ideas on teaching phonics, reading or writing?

We haven't really ventured too much into writing because my Lil gets hot headed. I can remember my sister trying to teach me borrowing in Math and how I screamed at her 'No, you CAN'T DO THAT!' when she 'took' 10 from one column and put it in the next....so really, have no idea where Lily could get this stubborn thing from.

Anyway, she can write all the letters, but getting her to make words is like [insert simile about how difficult something is here].

Wales from Oliver Seeley on Vimeo.

The Marker Prince

The Marker Prince from Oliver Seeley on Vimeo.