FInally!

Finally we are headed out of our poblet and up the coast!  We tried to escape once, back during February break...but if you recall, our German-engineered wonder decided to go kaput, and we were back home in a little under two hours from our departure.

But hopefully, today we will truly escape for the week.  We have a little house in the town center, there are lovely beaches and coves within a twenty-minute walk, castles and windy streets, and local crafty things to spend money on.  And it is Semana Santa, which means all of the holy stuff will be happening as well as everyone prepares for Easter.

Here, Palm Sunday is quite the festa, as children are given elaborately woven palms to take to church (which they wield a bit like weapons), and some of the adult palms can get a bit out of control.

Jordi's mother already gave Monkey her palm, and she promptly tried to 'pat' her brother on the head with it, mistaking it for a giant hairbrush.  Though he nearly lost an eye in the conflict, he didn't seem to fussed about it.

As for the American portion of our Easter celebrations, I contracted my mother to send over some old school Paas egg dyeing kits, malted eggs (which are already gone, eaten entirely by yours truly), chocolate bunnies, and some easter grass.  We'll be doing the egg hunt next Sunday when we have returned home. The real challenge is to find white eggs to dye.  Last year we had to go to a specialty egg shop to find them.  The plain white chicken eggs were housed right next to what was advertised to be a pair of ostrich eggs, but what to me seemed to be large enough to house a baby T-rex.  Exotic, they are, white chicken eggs.  But the color just doesn't really work on the brown...looks a bit depressing.

Well, off to pack.  A much different experience with a baby and toddler in tow...chairs, toys, books, art supplies, tricycle, baby carriers, and the list goes on and on. The car will be so packed, I'm not entirely sure we'll actually have enough room for the children.

Bona Pasqua!

Seriously OMG WTF?

Do you ever have one of those experiences when so many things had to align for it to even happen?  I had one of these today on the tiny commuter bus that traipses around our little town: the Just Tram.  Sometimes I take this wee little shuttle up the big hills to get to the preschool to pick up Monkey Lou.  Sometimes I schlep up these big hills with my double stroller and grab another bus for the final stretch (it is very steep, and I don't like to get all sweaty...Spain is toasty in March).  But, today I opted for the JT.

The JT is full of retirees (jubilats, as they call them here), and rarely does one see someone under the age of 65 aboard.  But today, on the stop after mine, a woman boarded and asked the bus driver which stop she needed to get off at for the Escola Canigó (a local elementary school).  I recognized that she had an accent, and she looked to be an extranjer, like me, so I told her, in English, that I was also getting off at that stop, and I'd be happy to show her.  We chatted a bit, and I found out she was going for a job interview to teach English at the private Catalan school at the top of Sant Just, our town.  The conversation evolved somehow to how we plan to educate our own children, being of bilingual English-Catalan families, and I mentioned that Monkey has some language delay issues.  She responded that her daughter is also behind in language.  We realized that both of our daughters are about the same age, and then chatted about speech therapy.

We got off the bus, and I said something along the lines of the fact that Monkey's language delay is due to her epileptic issues.  She turned and looked at me, stating that her daughter also has epilepsy.  In fact, that she has a very similar, if not the same, type of epilepsy as Monkey Lou.

The strange bit of this is, and we were both a bit shell-shocked, is that their type of epilepsy is rare.  Very rare.  As in one in 150,000 rare.  As in, in the entire world, a population of 7 billion, only about 45,000 people have this kind of epilepsy.  As in, in the city of Barcelona, a population of 1.5 million, only about 10 people have this kind of epilepsy.

Now you see why I was freaking out a bit.  In this city, there is a little girl, about the same age as Monkey Lou, who has basically the same struggles as she does, and her mother speaks ENGLISH!!!!!!!!!

And had I not decided to be lazy and take the JT, and instead hauled myself up the hills today, I never would have met this woman.  Had she grabbed the JT twenty minutes earlier or twenty minutes later, we never would have crossed paths.

I got her email before she headed into her interview.  Are we destined to be great friends?  Who knows.  But I am hoping it will help my mental state somewhat to have someone to talk to (IN ENGLISH!!!!!) that has the vaguest idea of what I go through every day.

I'm not a big spiritual person (my poor, frustrated mother can attest heartily to this), but sometimes, something makes you believe that there are things on this Earth a workin' that are much bigger than your own small self.

Alone Time

I never seem to be alone.  The other day, my in-laws came over to watch Monkey Lou while I ran to the pharmacy to pick up some medication for whatever virus she happened to be battling at that particular moment.  Mr. Bean was passed out on the bed, and my father-in-law told me to just run along, head off to the pharmacy on my own, and he and the Iaia (grandma) could handle the two (really one, as the baby was sleeping).  However, just as the moment to depart arrived, guess who woke up?  That was the end of my solo venture, and I never even made it out the door.  Monkey Lou's particular issues make her quite the handful, so I understand why the grandparents wanted to have all hands on deck when watching her, even though it was for about a 30-minute spell.  So I strapped Mr. Bean up into the baby carrier and away we went.  Together.  As always.

Lately, I've found myself staying up later than my husband, watching random things on the computer or reading equally random information on various sites.  Last night I found myself learning all about Amigurimi, the Japanese art of crocheting little animals.  And yes, it was interesting, but no, I do not plan to learn how to do it.  Not now, anyway.  I've got hats to make!

It is at this time when I am as most alone during the day, with Jordi sleeping next to me and Mr. Bean snoozing on my lap (yes, I know, I should try to get him to sleep on his own, but we have a tiny apartment, grouchy neighbors, and he tends to raise holy hell when he is asked to be more than a meter away from his mama...and God forbid he should wake up Monkey Lou...then the whole house would be in uproar...so yes, my lap is where he sleeps for now, and my lap is where he shall stay).  I keep telling myself that I need to go to bed, yet I stay up...I think mostly because I need this time 'by myself.'

It's as close as I am going to get for the time being.  At least until the Bean gets mobile and starts running away from me like his big sister does on a daily basis.

Pinterest

I've been sucked in.  Man, it is addictive.  And fun.  And, well, I need to get back to pinning random things that I would like to some day try to accomplish, but will likely never attempt as I will be spending all of my time finding other projects I would one day like to accomplish, but will likely never attempt because....

And so on.

Hats and Fits

Well, it's been a spell since I've written anything...not because I've been otherwise occupied with anything terribly exciting.  I've been making hats.  Five hats to be exact.  A rather wonky green hat that Monkey Lou likes to sport around the house, despite the fact that it's been about 60 degrees in Barcelona these past days.

A red hat that was intended for Mr. Bean, but I made it too small and it looks kind of like a Yarmulke.

A blue hat that turned out much better and has a snazzy zigzag pattern.

A purple hat with a cool checkerboard pattern that was also intended for Monkey Lou, but realistically looks much finer on my own head, so too bad Monkey Lou!

And finally, a gray hat with a rather challenging pattern including cables and something called a seed stitch...took a lot of concentration, and due to my unfortunate choice of a rather slippery wool, a lot of grabbing of slipped stitches and some fudging of the pattern where I screwed up because one or the other child demanded my attention and I lost track of what I was doing.

In other news, we had a rather unfortunate episode with our little girl on Monday.  When she does have seizures, they are usually quite short and of the general herky-jerky variety.  On Monday, when Jordi pulled her out of her bath and was brushing her hair, he noticed she was not protesting loudly as is her usual M.O..  When he looked at her, he noticed she was not quite all there and yelled to me to come and check it out...and indeed, something was amiss.  We laid her on the bed, and basically it seemed as if she was stoned.  Her pupils were completely blown out, and she was kind of looking back and forth slowly as if she'd dropped a bit too much acid at a cheesy laser show from the 80s.  She held my hand, and wasn't convulsing, but something was definitely going on.  We checked her temp, which was 99.4 (37.9) which isn't much, but is still something.  She started to tense up a bit, and so we grabbed her and Mr. Bean and ran to the CAP (town clinic - thank you socialized medicine!) which is open until 8pm.  All of the doctors and nurses rushed in, as she was going a bit blue by this point, and hooked up oxygen to her little face.  The pediatric nurse kept noting how calm Jordi and I were during this experience, but I suppose having been through this and worse several times before, you just kind of give in to a quiet, but concerned, observation while letting the doctors do their thing.  Anyway, after a bit they decided to take her in the ambulance to the children's hospital, and after a few hours there, they sent her home.  They said they'd usually keep her overnight, as the seizure was long...but her medication was on the low end, and since we are 'experienced' parents, they didn't see why she needed the night there.  She woke up Tuesday morning, and all is normal.  So...the medication has been raised, and hopefully that's the last of that kind of seizure we'll see for a while.  Don't let the door hit you on the way out, seizure!

We told her preschool teachers what happened when she went back to school yesterday, and just to keep an eye on her if she didn't respond when they called her name or seemed like she was in a bit of a daze.  Their response: 'None of the children respond to us when we call their name!'  Oh well.  I guess they got freaked out, as they called an hour before her pick-up time to see if she could get picked up early.  She was a bit less energetic than normal, and I suppose they were nervous.  She did go down for her nap a bit earlier, but nothing else was amis.  Day by day.

As for me, I'm going to keep working on my hat-making skills.  With my lap baby who has a meltdown when he is less than three centimeters from his mama (and has just spit up his breakfast on my arm, thanks) I need some sort of project that will keep me busy with a minimum of equipment and required space!