Phobias, Purees, Hoots and Hooves

On Saturday night, we met Jack and Julie at Angel’s hoping to enjoy the fresh patio air , but not long after I took the photo at right, the rains came down and we had to relocate into a more crowded, noisier dining room. Over a dinner of enchiladas, tacos, fajitas, and carne asada we talked about parenting classes (the next Lewis is coming out some time around the 10th of June), arachnophobia (Jack), suriphobia (me), entomophobia (Julie), ranidaphobia (Mari), among other delightful topics. And then we consoled ourselves at Sweet Occasions.

Emilio refrained from sampling the Sweet Occasions fare. But after surviving his first encounter with warm rice cereal earlier in the week, he graduated to his first taste of home-cooked sweet potato puree and then apple sauce over the weekend (prepared by his loving mother in the food processor given to us my Emilio's grandmother and granddaddy). At this rate, he will, no doubt, be plowing through the hot sauce with us on our next visit to Angel's.

As you can see in the photo at left, Emilio broke out his outdoor shorts this week. It's a good week to be in Chicago. Temperatures are cool (in the sixties mostly), it's light out late, and cherry trees are blossoming throughout the Lakewood-Balmoral neighborhood.

It's also getting easier and easier to turn over Emilio's giggle box these days and I frequently indulge. This past week he has started playing an "echo" game with both me and his mother. He'll hoot like an owl and we'll respond in kind. Pause. Repeat with slight variations. Pause. Et cetera.

He also enjoys telling me long, wordless adventure stories about his hair-raising encounters with various villains and supernatural creatures, vividly illustrated by violent leg kicks and defensive arm thrusts. The intensity is impressive, believe me. Think: Fred Flintstone revving his Flintmobile. Or Shaggy and Scooby preparing to flee from the Ghost of the Week. Or Silver* galloping to the rhythms of the William Tell overture.

*Mistakenly referred to as "Trigger" in an earlier version of this blogpost.

The Munchies

One of our parenting guidebooks says babies should start trying out solid foods when they double their birth weight. We think Emilio is a little bit shy of that milestone (we'll know for sure when we go go in for a check-up Wednesday), but since another of our books says you shouldn't wait until after your baby is six months old, we decided to give Emilio a taste of organic rice cereal on Wednesday. It went about as well as could be expected. He didn't eat much at first, but that's normal. We'll keep giving him a little bit everyday and increase the portions incrementally. It's quite a challenge to hold and feed him, so we may have to buy a high chair soon.

The weather has started getting better here and it's also lighter later, so we've been going on walks. Yesterday, when I came home from work, I got off the El a couple of stations early, at the Lawrence stop, and met Mari and Emilio at the Borders bookstore there. Mari bought a book that her book club will be reading soon (When the Emperor was Divine, by Julie Otsuka), and I bought the 2006 Pulitzer Prize-winner for fiction, March, by Geraldine Brooks, which imagines the Civil War experiences of Mr. March, the absent father in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. As you can see in the photo at left, Emilio wore the people-stomping shoes that los abuelos brought him from Spain.

After we got back from Borders, we headed up to the Oops store on Clark. We intended to send María Rosa the flash drive she left here, but once we got there, we decided that for safety's sake we first ought to copy the data to Mari's laptop. We got a chance to talk to our favorite Oops store employee, who is pregnant and expecting a child at the end of June. She hadn't seen Emilio in a bought a month and said she was really impressed by how much he has changed. She told Mari that she would like to join Mari and Emilio for a neighborhood stroll some day. No doubt Mari will take her up on that offer soon.

While Emilio and I are at home alone together, he sits calmly for long stretches while I tap away on my laptop. Sometimes toys are involved. Sometimes not. As I've been working on this blog entry, Emilio has been gnawing on a chilled teething ring. After he tired of that, he became absorbed in thought. One of his favorite genuflection positions is with right leg fully extended and toes firmly grasped by right hand, as illustrated in the photo at right. I tried this same position myself last night, but couldn't quite pull it off.

When I get the sense that things have grown a little too studious, I sometimes try to lighten the mood by telling jokes. This past week I came up withone that just gets Emilio belly-laughing every time I tell it. The joke begins with me saying "E - mi -li -o" in a high-pitched, up-and-down singsong voice that some sports fans use to taunt the players on rival teams (as in "o-ver-ra-ted"). The punchline of my joke involves a transition to a chant in a lower voice register: "poo-poo poo-poo-poo." As you can see in the photo at right, though I've told Emilio this joke several times, it has not grown old yet. He breaks up every time I tell it.

If the humor of this joke doesn't strike you as uproarious, it's probably just a father-son thing.

Hasta pronto, abuelos

Los abuelos took a taxi to O’Hare Saturday around 2 p.m. (that's la abuela saying goodbye to Emilio in the photo at left) after a patio lunch at Angel’s (bacon, eggs, English muffin, fruit plate, scrambled-eggs-and-chorizo) and one last stroll through Andersonville. Though they came in winter (freezing temperatures) and left in summer (I broke out shorts for the first time on Friday and sandals on Saturday to enjoy eighty-plus temperatures I though Chicago had forgotten), the week flew by.

On Wednesday, we rented a Pontiac Grand Prix and headed to the Woodfield Mall in the Chicago suburbs (Schaumburg). After cleaning them out, we descended on a nearby Babies ‘R’ Us and los abuelos really got down to business. Somehow we were able to fit all our purchases in the trunk and with help from María “The Map Lover” Rosa, we made our way Long Grove (population: 6735) to check out its covered bridge. We couldn’t pass by an “all-you-can-eat broasted chicken” night at the Village Tavern (established in 1847) so we soon found ourselves adding our voices (“No Beer?!?”) to the audience-participation German drinking songs directed by the Village Tavern's featured keyboardist Roger Pauley (I think I got the name right, but a Google search turns up nothing, so I may be remembering it wrong). The broasted chicken, chopped steak, lamb chops, and sweet potato fries got great reviews. The less-than-warm soups and French fries, not so much. And though none of us are big fans of live music in restaurants, I tried to talk the group into appreciating the anthropological value of the ambience.

I was doing a pretty good job of finding an alternative homeward route through the Chicago suburbs until Jaime started praising my navigational abilities, at which point I turned left toward Canada when I should have turned right towards home. Fortunately, I realized mistake before we got to the passport control center and was able to reverse our course and get to within six blocks of home before Emilio made it known that he didn’t wait a moment longer for his supper.

On Thursday, los abuelos volunteered to babysit while María José and I got in our second Evanston movie in a week. They later informed us that Emilio enjoyed his first taste of Diet Coke, seemed fascinated by a television show about the Vatican, and wisely limited himself to two drags from one of María Rosa’s cigarettes.

Friday’s family outing featured a ride around the Loop on an elevated CTA train and a stroll through Chicago’s glorious Millennium Park. Though the Crown Fountain was experiencing technical difficulties, Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate sculpture, a.k.a. “The Bean,” was in full-working order. Finding yourself on the surface of the Bean is a “Where’s Waldo?” experience. For the first time, we were able to walk through the gate itself (scaffolding stopped us last summer) and when we did so were able to join the ooh-and-aahing hordes as one of our number tossed a football up towards the curved mirror on the Bean’s convex underside (which, I have since learned, Kapoor refers to as the “omphalos,” or “belly button” of the Bean.) It was hard to tell how far the highest point of the mirror was from the ground, and the higher the football got, the more impressed we were. As the real football ascended, it got smaller, but its descending mirror-twin got larger (that's María Rosa, María José and Jaime enjoying the spectacle in the photo at right).

There was a twenty-minute wait for tables at the Grant Park grill, which the Spain Gang decided to forego, thereby saving me from an afternoon of agonized fantasizing about the cheeseburger I would have missed out on by spending the afternoon in my Corn Dog office. While I was heading northward, María José led the Spaniards on a long march from Millennium Park up the Magnificent Mile to the Water Tower and then across Chicago’s Near North neighborhood to the Red Line El Stop at Grand.

For some reason, nobody was eager to join me on a walk around the neighborhood when I got home from work that night—even though the weather was great (?!). Emilio was game though, and once he’d signed on for a Baby-Bjorn Jewel run, Jaime couldn’t resist. We bought formula, lemon juice, a pineapple and dill pickles (for María Rosa) and took the long way home. A hot deep dish pizza from Pizza Capri arrived soon after we did.

María José has observed that Emilio has been whimpering a bit more than usual since los abuelos left us. Her initial diagnosis: empty nest syndrome. We all hope los abuelos come back soon.

Candle Five

As of Monday, April 10th, Emilio has been around for five months. Chicago celebrated with seventy-degree temperatures and los abuelos and María José and I took the young man for a two-and-a-half hour stroll by Lake Michigan. Along the way we noticed for the first time that Emilio, sans pacifier, was sucking away on his thumb. Though at least part of the time his stroller was completely covered with a blanket (as in the photo at left), there is some debate about whether Emilio’s cheeks got too much sun during the outing.

There is no doubt, however, that my bald head did.

When we got back to the house, I went to my Corn Dog office. I stayed there until closing time and then met up at Sweet Occasions with the family Spaniards and our friends Lisa and Fernando (known to many of you as the generous folks who loaned us the car we used to get to the hospital when Emilio decided he was breaking out). We're waiting until Emilio either doubles his birth weight (9 lbs. 2 oz.--we think he's up to 16 and 1/2 or 17 lbs. now) or we get the go-ahead from our doc (next apointment is April 26th) before we start feeding Emilio cereal. Whenever we think of it, though, we give him a chance to smell some of the foods (such as chocolate mousse) he'll eventually be taste-testing.

Lisa (seen in the photo at left, enjoying one of Emilio's drolleries) is in a nursing program at Truman College and is thinking about becoming a midwife. Recently she observed a Caesarean delivery at Weiss Memorial—Emilio’s old kicking grounds. Tomorrow, she is leaving for Florida, where she’ll be hooking up with extended family to celebrate Passover. I asked Lisa what the Spanish word for Passover was and she confessed that the only translation she has been able to find is pascua judia, or “Jewish Easter.” She doesn’t care much for that translation, and I don’t blame her. María José noted, however, that the Spanish word for Easter--“pascua”—is itself clearly derived from “Passach,” the Hebrew word for “Passover.” So in Spain, at least, the big holiday of the spring is “Christian Passover.”

So on behalf of my son and my wife, let me be the first to wish all our Christian friends and family a Happy Christian Passover!

*

And They Taste Like Strawberries

As the silent thousands who read this blog on a regular basis well know, it was not very long ago that Emilio's feet got to know Emilio's hands. Since then, they've spent a lot of time together. Today, however, for the first time that María José and I know of, Emilio's toes became acquainted with Emilio's mouth. And thanks to his mother's quick dash for the camera, the moment has now been recorded for posterity.

It was, clearly, a momentous day in Emilio's world.

It was also a momentous day for Emilio's parents, who went on an Evanston movie date together for the first time since the night of November 9th, 2005. Somehow we managed to talk los abuelos into babysitting (you can see from the photo below how much they dreaded the prospect).

Before the movie started, Mari and I were able to get in a sushi picnic (for the record: sushi underwhelms me). Meanwhile, back in the 'hood, los abuelos and a sleeping Emilio enjoyed a long stroller ride through residential Andersonville; engaged in brave and unequal combat with the family remote controls; sought elsewhere for news of Barca's momentous match with Racing Santander; napped; laundered; and marvelled at the amazing green-ness of some people's feces. I am told that Emilio worked on his pacifier aiming skills.

Los abuelos aterrizan

Los abuelos arrived at O’Hare on Thursday while Mari and I were both teaching class and took a taxi which got them to our Foster home five minutes after Mari got home from work. Since then Emilio had been serenaded, tickled, cuddled, tickled, rocked, photographed, held close, closely observed and showered in praise. Many, many gifts have been given, including: a small library of books en español specially chosen for Emilio by his abuelos and a particularly beautiful storybook sent by his tios Gerardo and Gimena; an assortment of lotions and creams (whether for Emilio or María José, I’m not entirely sure); two CDs chosen for me by Jaime--one featuring Spanish guitar and the other, Yo-Yo Ma ; a lightweight “summer” wallet also chosen for me by Jaime; a Noah’s ark of finger puppets sent to Emilio by Teresa—a long-time family friend; two cartons of Spanish olive oil specifically requested by María José; several months worth of Cinemania—also a María José-pleaser; and a drawer full of catwalk attire for Emilio, including several sweaters and shoes, and very fashionable fleece-lined raincoat.

On Friday, María José went to school and Jaime and María Rosa followed a few hours later, daring to make the hour-long, two-bus trip on their own while Emilio and I hung out at the house. While they were out, Gerardo called and told me all about his most recent trip to Argentina—which was highlighted by a polo match at an exclusive resort in the Andes mountains. Seen here catching up on his reading in Mascardi Lake (the only place he could do so without being harassed by the local wasp population), Gerardo told me his only regret is that rain prevented him from visiting Circe (María Inés and Alejandro’s island retreat). In October, he is going to go on a business trip to Brazil and he expects that he will be able to make a short visit to Buenos Aires then. He is already imagining what kind of disguise he can take with him next time that will keep him from being recognized when he visits the casino the abuela Inés is so fond of (for the moment he’s thinking: fake moustache, sunglasses, and a long rain coat). Gerardo also confessed to me that in addition to joining a number of protest marches, he has also—against the advice of his grandmother—participated in strikes protesting the French government’s unfair labor laws. Vive la revolucion!

While I was on the phone with Gerardo, Jaime and María Rosa got a chance to admire the world-famous Belmont-Cragin Immigration Mural and hear lots of kind words about Mari from her colleagues and bosses. After that, the Ruiz-Blanco Trio headed back to the neighborhood to meet Emilio and me for lunch at the Corner Grille, on Clark and Foster. Audrey, our favorite singing waitress, brought us meatloaf, hamburgers, Cajun penne pasta, and focaccia sandwiches prepared with the usual flare by Chef Joel. Audrey volunteered once again to babysit Emilio and shared the good news that she has been invited to be the lead singer of a new blues band (hopefully we’ll get a chance to hear them soon!). Next on the agenda: Sweet Occasions desserts—a Danish, peach cobbler a la mode, and a slice of chocolate cake that got tag team treatment from the women. We then retired to the home front for laundry labors, intercontinental phone calls, jet lag battles, a warm bath (for Emilio), a gym visit (my first in, approximately, an eon), Google Earth explorations, and a thrilling victory by the Mavericks over Brazilian phenom Fabrizio Oberto and the conference-leading Spurs (Oberto, as it turns, is the cousin of one of Gerardo’s friends).

On Saturday morning, los abuelos cleared the shelves at Jewel, got more laundry in action, and made plans to take a snow-suited Emilio on his first stroller ride. I spent the afternoon in one of my "offices"" and around 4:45 the Ruiz-Blanco quartet dropped in for a visit. When I got home around about an hour later, the house was empty, so I grabbed the camera and managed to intercept the walkers as they approached the Foster finish line. Emilio, they say, slept the whole time.

A Blustery Day

Emilio and I made it to Jewel and back on Friday afternoon without getting wet, and Emilio even managed to stay awake almost the whole time, checking out the houses, porches, trees, brick walls, alleys, cars, blowing leaves, and fire engine sirens. The temperature was in the sixties (first time I’ve been out this year in nothing more than a t-shirt), but some of the wind gusts reached forty miles an hour and I suspect that these mighty winds played some role in Emilio’s alertness. When Mari got home around four, it had started to sprinkle and the temperature started to drop (it didn’t take long to drop into the forties), but we were happy to go on another neighborhood walk with her and a second Jewel visit became our excuse for going out. This time we needed an umbrella (going, but not coming back), and I wore a long-sleeved shirt and a light jacket, which, as you can see in the photo, served both me and Emilio—who slept the entire time.