This Week in Mommyhood

You mothers out there, do you ever have days where all you want to do is shut out the world and have it be just you and your kids? That's how I felt this past week. While caring for Cati is difficult, it's simple. There's no double meaning in anything she says. No judgment. No criticism. No unrealistic expectations. No being extra nice so she can stay up late. She's so straightforward. Agua means water and not milk or some hot button issue. I know what she needs on a day-to-day, hour-to-hour basis and there's no way I can fill her with those horrid feelings of disappointment. Basically, my relationship with her is easy and low maintenance when compared to the energy it takes to maintain most adult relationships in working order. So I just wanted to get away with her and have things be easy. Of course, that will never happen and on easy days that's just wishful thinking.

This was a big week in our family. Abuela, Alex's grandmother, had her 90th birthday party on Saturday. She said all she wanted on her birthday from us was Cati and since that's not going to happen we did the best we could: we got her a gold charm of a little girl to wear with the two silhouette charms she has for Alex and his brother. Abuela did get a lot of Cati time though and she was well celebrated. It amazes me that there are 89 years between these two amazing little ladies.

Before the party I thought it would be a fun game to count how many times someone said the baby looked like her grandmother. Then I realized that would be depressing because I would quickly lose count. Sure enough, everyone said she looked just like her grandmother so I made it a point to carry Cati as much as I could just so that people would know I, in fact, was the mother. One person even told me we needed to have a son so that he could look like me (this person might have been trying to make me feel better after being the 30th person to say Cati looks like her grandmother). Speaking of which, quite a few people said we needed to get started on a sibling. Even if I planned it, it wouldn't have worked as perfectly as people spontanouesly asking about #2.

For the first time in Cati's life she had a meal that was not prepared by me! I took her a day's worth of food on Saturday but there were so many people and so much activity in the kitchen that I skipped out on heating up her dinner. Instead, she ate off of my plate and ate arroz con gandules (rice and pigeon peas) and carne puerco (roasted pork). This comes after a very exciting week of Cati really exploring her Colombian (empanadas, bunuelos, arepa de choclo, pan de bono) and Cuban (croquetas de jamon and pollo) roots and becoming very interested in what I'm eating. One day she even ate some of my chicken pesto pasta after reaching and grabbing for it.

Other than that, Cati is such a sponge and hilarious and imaginative. One day I said "Se acabo" (it's finished) and the coordinating hand motion and ever since Cati does the hand motion whenever she finishes anything (like her lunch) or whenever things run out (like the water at the end of bath time). Then she does hilarious things whenever she hears a loud sound. If she is holding something, she will drop it and then run as if she just realized she was holding a grenade and needs to get as far away from it as possible. Lastly, she's imaginative and has taken putting the phone to her ear and saying "allo" one step further. Now she actually puts hand to ear and says allo and, at one point, she put my compact mirror to her ear and did the same. She's amazing!

Can you believe we are almost three months through the year? I'm so ready for April!