the bucket

coco's sand toys include: two buckets, one shovel, one rake and a set of rainbow stacking cups. we have managed to keep the cup set complete, which is pretty impressive, considering we share our toys with the other kids at the playground, which is an unspoken rule at our park. in the past week, our modest toy collection has been targeted twice by parents infected with a very unsettling, yet common virus: greed.

the first incident happened when i was gathering up our toys to leave the playground. our blue bucket (see image above) was missing, so i scanned the playground and found it in the sand amidst other plastic toys. i approached the middle-aged father sitting nearby and politely pointed out mine saying, "excuse me, i think that's my bucket", to which he replied, without even glancing at the aforementioned toys, "it's not. this is all our stuff". i said, "oh, okay" and walked away, even though i knew for a fact that it was coco's. i'm not spineless, i just figured it's not worth arguing about a bucket that costs a dollar.

just this morning, i witnessed a similar occurrence. coco and i were walking back to the playground after filling her remaining (pink) bucket with water, when i heard a mom asking her toddler, "isn't that your shovel?". she then walked over to the bench where our things were, grabbed the plastic toy and inspected it carefully. unsatisfied with her findings, she threw it on the ground. this woman is very attractive, drives a luxury suv and has a giant diamond ring. why does she care so much about a plastic shovel? i wonder what i would have done had she taken it.

it saddens me a little to think that i'm going to have to sharpie coco's name on her toys to avoid future confrontations with greedy parents and not possessive toddlers.

naïveté

coco's back and she's more potty trained than ever! ready for summer and (hopefully) ready for preschool, which is only a month away.

meanwhile, i'm filling out forms that make me realize two things: 1. that my hands start aching after two minutes of writing with a pen, and 2. that things might happen while coco is at school. i'm not talking about her being lost in translation or getting her feelings hurt by another kid. those are little things that i expect to happen. i'm talking about big things like THE BIG ONE. it freaks me out that i have to prepare an earthquake bag with an extra set of clothing and a meaningful item from home and pay $10 for an emergency kit containing food and other supplies.

this reminds me of the time panzón and i went to get my second or third ultrasound when i was pregnant. we were so excited to find out the sex of our baby that it hit us like a ton of bricks when the technician said quite indifferently, "the fetus shows no signs of malformation". and then, very causally, "so, do you want to know the sex?". holy crap. there could have been something wrong with the baby. that, it suddenly dawned on me, is why when asked what sex mothers want their unborn child to be, they answer with a (now-i-don't-think-it's-so-)corny, "i don't care, as long as it's healthy".

i guess i'm just naïve sometimes. which will probably come in handy when coco decides she wants to give scuba diving a shot or turns seventeen and wants to go to france for a semester. i'm just thankful that other people (people in schools and hospitals) give these things more thought.

el sarcófago

this is our car. oh, how it glistens under the california sun! see how it takes flight like a magnificent bird! it can also, if you have good arranging skills, fit a large amount of ikea furniture in the back. did i mention it has a sun roof? it's such an awesome car that i've even learned to live with its maroon interior, which is leather, by the way.

however, lately there had been sightings of oil on our driveway. i immediately pointed out the spots, which had been growing larger and larger, to panzón. i also pointed out several bird droppings that decorated the hood. he checked the oil and said that everything looked ok. everything, except the poop, of course, which he didn't clean. but neither did i, so i couldn't really complain.

anyway, weeks went by and alas! the car *almost* broke down yesterday. in all probability the transmission was to blame and repairing it would cost more than the car itself! el sarcófago is priceless. we couldn't possibly afford more than that!

this morning i was already thinking about ways to survive temporarily without our only car: panzón rides his new foldable bike to work anyway, coco's new school and the park are both at walking distances and trader joe's is only a couple of blocks away, as is whole foods... when panzón called to tell me it was not the transmission after all! from my somewhat limited understanding of the subject of mechanics, it was something a lot cheaper. who cares what it was!

after this scare, i vow to keep el sarco poop-free, even if it means doing more than pointing it out to panzón, like handing him a bucket and a sponge, and maybe even getting my t-shirt a little wet for motivational purposes only.

hair

this may be obvious for people who have known me since childhood, but i'm going to set the record straight for all of the newcomers: coco has my hair. my light brown, curly, unruly, truly adorable hair. i somehow lost it along the way. puberty? bleaching? pregnancy? negligence? it's a mystery.

i think i sensed the change and tried to do something about it sometime around my tenth birthday because i spent the $100 i got from a family member and spent it all on a brush. one mason pearson hair brush. ñaña, my childhood friend, swore by it and she had nice hair. plus, it came from england. i probably used it twice. i never brushed again. seriously, i don't even own a brush.

come to think of it, my hair has only looked good in three stages of my life: 1. early childhood, when it looked exactly like coco's; 2. late adolescence, when i was a hair model and got my hair colored (platinum blond) and cut (boy short) every month, in front of an eager-to-learn group of hairstyling students; 3. that planchado express era during my early twenties, when i got my long hair straightened for only 40 mexican pesos at least once a week.

other than that my hair has been either just okay or an absolute disaster, as was the case in barcelona, where i did not get a decent cut in two years. these days my hair gets the same treatment as my teeth, except for the brushing: once a year in mexico.

our park's a dump

(no photo for this post on account of nudity)

coco and i were at the park the other morning, just enjoying the sunny day and making a castle with damp sand, when something caught my eye. it was the bare bottom of a kid hovering over a mound of sand. it appeared as though he was practicing the ancient art of taking a crap in the great outdoors, right there next to the plastic playground slide.

i looked over at a nearby bench where three nannies were sitting, chatting away, unaware of the unsanitary occurrence i was witnessing. coco was too busy packing sand into a bucket to notice and the kid had stopped straining after producing nothing, so i decided to give the woman responsible for the kid a chance to react. but when no such reaction came and the boy's penis loomed in front of my face, i had no choice but to shout, "¡este niño se bajó los calzones! ¿quién viene con él?", which was a huge mistake because coco, who speaks spanish almost exclusively, immediately stopped what she was doing, turned around and proceeded to stare at the kid's genitals in amazement.

the whole thing obviously had a lasting impression on coco, who brought it up at dinnertime as the highlight of her day.

leaving barcelona

we gave back the key to our miniscule loft on the morning of the second day of the year 2008. we wanted to stay until the very end, just like when we had arrived almost two years earlier when, wanting to move in as soon as possible, we had slept on towels and sheets because our mattress hadn't been delivered yet.

we celebrated new year's eve with a couple of benjamines, personal-sized bottles of cava (the spanish equivalent of champagne) and twelve wishing grapes each. we could barely hear the crowds of drunken people just a couple of blocks away, muffled by the thick walls of our old building into a quiet rumbling sound. the next day the streets were dead silent and the thick rug of broken glass that covers las ramblas every noche vieja was swept up and taken away by an army of small BCNeta! trucks as if nothing had happened.

the woman from the rental agency appeared at our soon-to-be ex-address at ten sharp and rang the alarmingly loud intercom. the space looked just as we had found it: empty, except for a ladder that we had lovingly added and two-month-old coco, fast asleep on her little raft, floating peacefully into oblivion. apparently, the lady was in a hurry and matter-of-factly rushed us out, slamming the door and ushering us out of the building into the now bustling street.

we wanted to take one last walk around before squeezing into our previously packed car and driving an hour or so to reus, where we would hibernate for a month, waiting for coco to be old enough for traveling overseas. it's very unsettling to feel so vulnerable in your own neighborhood, to have to pee and not be able to do so in your own bathroom. and i had to pee. so, we went to the only place that we knew we could count on near plaça catalunya, even though i always complained about it, el corte inglés, the famous spanish department store.

it was crowded, as always, and we waited while the sluggish elevators opened their doors to spit people out and gobble them up again repeatedly until it was finally our turn to be squashed with strangers. upstairs there was a very long line for the restroom, and by the time i was done, coco needed to be fed and changed. so we took the elevator again, which took infinitely longer than the first time, to the diaper changing station located on the children's level. there was also a lactation room, so i figured i should pump for coco's next feeding while we were there.

when we finally managed to step outside the five-level store, several hours had elapsed, it was getting dark outside and it had started raining heavily. after helplessly waiting for the rain to cease, we made a run for it, feeling horribly irresponsible for not having a rain cover for the stroller and trying our best not to fall on the slippery pavement.

we were drenched when we got to the car. we were so tired and so sad that it was actually quite comical. we drove slowly in the dark with the car's yellow lights illuminating the raindrops that the windshield wipers immediately swished away. coco was asleep and we drove in silence. then, two little bright white dots appeared in front of us. they kept growing and growing until we realized that a car was coming toward us on the slow lane of a four lane highway. i was so scared that i didn't even scream, i just thought this is it. cars kept passing us on the left, leaving no room for our red golf, but panzón managed to change lanes at the very last second and we made it.

yes, leaving barcelona was hard.

adiós, chupi

the other night right before bedtime, i mentioned to coco that her pacifier, which she calls chupi, was getting kind of gross and that we would have to throw it out soon. the next morning, she continued the conversation by asking, "we are going to buy a new one, right?", to which i had no answer. panzón got me off the hook by diverting her attention and later that day, after some thought, i told her that we would not be getting a new one.

i told her the truth, that she's too old to be using a pacifier and that it could be harmful for her mouth in the long run. she yelled out, "¡mama no!", and went running to her crib. i imagined a toddler protest scene: coco with the pacifier in her mouth, stomping her foot and holding on to her crib with all of her might. but she actually took the chupi out, kissed it several times and said goodbye. she then, to my utter amazement, threw it in the trash can. i almost cried.