New steps

Just a few thoughts tonight on our big boy at not-quite-three-and-a-half.  Michael has been in a buoyant mood lately, and although he alternates with stubborn, automatic-oppositional mode like a teenager (first response to most questions these days is "No, I don't want to!"), the good times are pretty great.  I just love how he has been coming up to me lately and saying, "I love you, Mama."  Heart melting :)  He likes to make tea for me in the mornings by turning on the Tassimo machine, opening the tea bag, putting it in my mug, and pushing the button to start.  Sometimes this results in torn tea bags and tea scattered on the floor of the pantry, but hey, I sweep several times a day anyway.  Michael also helps stir things cooking on the stove, and I am supervising and emphasizing safety so hopefully we won't have any accidents ... my thinking is, better to teach how to be in the kitchen safely than try to make it prohibited, an impossibility in any case.  Michael's favorite line is quoted from It's the Easter Beagle: "When the water starts to boil, let me know!"

Speaking of quotes, the kid is ridiculous in memorizing his favorite movies.  I imagine lots of kids do this, but I think it sets him up for theater someday because he'll have no trouble memorizing his lines.  Tonight after we put him to bed he kept quoting Great Pumpkin scenes over and over.  I'm just glad he also has memorized the Our Father and the Hail Mary.  I'd feel guilty if the only things he memorized were cartoons :)  So hard to keep him in one place, though.  Tonight, prior to the Great Pumpkin rendition and in the middle of the Hail Mary, he abruptly switched topics.  "Blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.  Snoopy has a tail!" I affirmed that yes, stuffed animal Snoopy has a tail, and we were able to finish our prayers.

Until recently, for whatever reason, Michael wouldn't talk to anyone in Spanish unless he knew they were native speakers like Elizabeth or Stefani's dad.  He just humored anyone else talking to him in Spanish.  But the past week or so he's been casually dropping lines to us.  Pretending to see Elizabeth's dogs out the window: "Dónde están los perros? Oh, allí están!"  Playing barefoot at a little playground after the rain tonight: "Está lloviendo.  Están mojados mis pies.  Y aquí está mojado. Y está mojado en el otro lado."  Scolding Malcolm: "No toques eso, hermano!  No thank you!"  Commenting on his dinner: "Yo no quiero comer nada."  I feel pretty fortunate to be able to get what he's saying and answer in Spanish ... otherwise, he'd be outpacing us pretty quickly and we'd have no idea what he meant half the time!  Elizabeth is very proud :)

The other big thing for Michael lately has been potty training.  Aunt Amanda did the amazing job of teaching him how to go when she watched him for a weekend last month.  After a whole week of him successfully going, I took him to BK for a special lunch.  Michael loves chicken and dip (just ketchup), and apple juice like you wouldn't believe.  He was very happy to put on the crown and wore it the whole lunch.  I was talking to a friend last week about how we want to protect our boys from that (inevitable?) cynicism and "too cool" attitude down the line, because this innocence and sweetness is so wonderful.  It's nice to have a little boy who likes to wear his Burger King crown :)

España - La comida

I'm not a foodie by any stretch, but when it comes to Spanish food I will go to special restaurants, seek out tony grocery stores like Central Market, and buy imported food from catalogs because it's not available most places and it's just that good.  Using my limited, non-foodie vocabulary to describe it, I would say that, while similar in some respects to other Mediterranean fare with lots of seafood, liberal use of olive oil, and plentiful baguettes, the Spanish are unique in the types of meats and soups they have, along with the whole tapas culture.  Paella is a unique rice and seafood dish that's very tasty.  Jamón serrano/jamón ibérico is the national dish, and you will see cured legs of ham in pretty much every restaurant (and home, at least in my experience):

America needs more jamón hanging around

A bocadillo de jamón (ham baguette) is pretty much the perfect lunch for me.  Or a bocadillo de tortilla (with Spanish potato/egg omelette).  Or a bocadillo de bonito (with line-caught tuna).  Mmm.  Yep, pretty much any of that.  I also love the Spanish varieties of chorizo - dry-cured sausages.  The texture of the Spanish chorizo and jamón is different than any other country's types of those meats.  The FDA doesn't approve it here, so it does have to be imported here specially to restaurants and distributors.  I wish it would catch on here more. Here are a few pictures of the many delicious meals we enjoyed on our trip.  It makes me happy just thinking about it.  (By the way, Mike likes it too.)

Stuffed chicken breast, jamón and eggs, and french fries at El Trebol in Toledo

A local Belgian-style beer and regional wine (from La Mancha) at La Abadia in Toledo

Selection of grilled meats at La Abadia in Toledo - I liked everything except the morcilla (blood sausage)

Absolute favorite: tapas of champinoñes (mushrooms with jamón and seasonings), jamón, chorizo, queso manchego (goat's cheese) and bread at Mesón del Champiñón in Madrid

Me, very happy to be at Mesón del Champiñón

España - Toledo

On the third day we were in Spain we went to Toledo.  That is where I studied abroad, and it was quite a feeling to be back there for the first time in twelve years.  When we got up to the Plaza de Zocodover, the city center, I saw the Number 6 bus drive by and remembered taking that out to the last stop on the line every day to the family I lived with.  We didn't go back to the school I studied at, but as we headed down the stone street to the cathedral I remembered exactly where I would veer off to the left to head to the Fundación.

Toledo is a special place.  We stayed outside the walls in a nice little hotel.  The Euro-quirky thing here was that you had to use a key card not for the door, but to turn on the power in your room - the lights wouldn't work otherwise.  That was new to me!  The proprietor was very nice and I got to chat with her in Spanish a little about my time here.  One nice thing about the whole trip was that my Spanish worked fine and almost everyone accepted me speaking it.  My accent was also normal here - my South American in-laws have always made fun of my Castilian accent, but I fit right in back in Spain :)

In Toledo we visited the Museo Santa Cruz, which wasn't open when I was there before, and which was free since it's under renovation.  We also saw the Cathedral, which was constructed in the 13th and 14th century, and the Iglesia de Santo Tome, which is where El Greco's famous painting El Enterramiento del Senor Conde de Orgaz is housed, but which is also a functioning parish.  I felt a tremendous sense of peace being in the little parish, with familiar church bulletins, pro-life posters, and the lit red candle to indicate the Blessed Sacrament was present.

The sense of Church history in this city and Seville in particular were incredible.  Unfortunately, one of the brochure translations in Toledo had some ridiculous wording about how, "today, this stands as a memorial to architecture, artwork, and common values of the West," or something like that.  It's incredibly obvious that these aren't any such things; they are monuments to the faith, and not a generic conception of "faith," but faith in Christ.  When you think about how Spain was under Moorish rule for over seven hundred years, a period of time that must have seemed interminable, the significance of each church and cathedral raised after the reconquest of each city becomes apparent.  One of the neatest features of the Toledo cathedral, also, is a room that has a picture of every bishop of the city dating from the 4th century to today, with many spaces on the wall for bishops yet to come.  That kind of history makes a deep impression.

Hiking uphill to Bisagra Gate into the city

This store made us think of Theresa

Mike by the side entrance to the Cathedral

Beautiful architecture

You weren't supposed to take pictures in the Cathedral, but all of the Japanese tourists were ignoring the signs so eventually Mike also  did take some pictures of the chapels and interior

There were vestments and hats dating back 600 years

After dinner in the Plaza de Zocodover

Word issues

Michael's first real couple of sentences/replies have been in Spanish in the last week, which probably shouldn't surprise us but it is pretty funny.  On Friday when Mike and I got home we asked him, "Qué comiste hoy?" (What did you eat today?) and he answered, "Comí manzanas y melón!"  (I ate apples and cantaloupe!)  Then, all weekend he kept putting his hands over his ears and, not necessarily at the same time, making monkey noises.  I figured out he was being a monkey so I went with it, making the same noises and telling him that monkeys have to eat nicely and listen to their mommies.  This morning Elizabeth told me they had been playing monkeys by making the noises and pulling their ears out, so everything made a lot more sense (i.e., why Michael ran away from his Aunt Theresa on Sunday pulling his ears out :).  I told him, "Michael!  Tienes que usar tus palabras!"  (You have to use your words (to tell me these things)!)  He looked at me a moment and then answered very dramatically, "No pueeeeedo!!"  (I caaaan't!!)  Nice.