Here's what's been going on...

Lots has been happening over the past few months since my last regular posts.*  


But before I get started again, I want to keep things a bit in order, here's the catch-up on the past few months----you can either read the bits or scroll through like a sort of flip book.  Some of the topics I've been thinking on and will revisit in the future, others are just bits....


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I've been culling.**


One of the items in the photo below went to Goodwill, the other stayed, just in case of emergencies.  Can you guess which one?  It all depends on whether or not you think it is more likely that my future self may one day:

a) work in a suited up corporate environment 

b) stay out all night dancing

I also went through boxes and boxes of papers, letters and one menu from a restaurant I frequented in college. I even found a handful of notes from my sixth grade bully.***

Elliot learned lots of things, like drinking from a cup,****  

Escape...

And all about fish...

We took family photos.

Elliot turned one. 

Husband and I went on our first trip away. He can drive with his eyes closed.  Yes, he is that good.

We flew to Key West where I was appalled by some of the sights, but enjoyed the chocolate covered Key Lime Pie anyway.

Husband stuck mainly to the more conventional seafood. 

Elliot and I went to the beach with the Jackalope and his mom.

We went to the Easter Beer Hunt.  

Elliot scored three pieces of chocolate and three beers. 

We went to a birthday luau pig roast.   It was awesome.  Seriously awesome. 

I got to try a bit from each section of the pig.  Even the brain.***** I have a new appreciation for pork. 

And somewhere along the way, I got pregnant.****** Two will arrive in late October.

See you next week...

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*And I want to get back to it.  It's good for me---it gives me a few minutes of amusement and creativity for myself, much like I imagine it is for a non-professional ballerina.  They may still work out just to keep their muscles in shape and to revisit their skills, but it's not what they do anymore.  That's probably the most concrete way I can explain it.  I like to write.  I used to be a journalist and probably one day I will be again, but in the meantime, I like to try to keep it all a little bit in shape...

**Everything happened so quickly when Husband and I got married and moved that I didn't go through anything.  It either went with us or went into storage here. So I've had LOTS to cull through, including giving more than half my clothes to the Goodwill. 

***I don't know why I kept them, but I'm glad I did.  Twenty-five years past, I have a much better perspective on the whole experience.

****This is a big deal.

*****It tastes a bit like savory marshmallow.

****** This is a big part of the reason for my absence.  We're really, really excited. (Well Husband and I are.  I'm not sure Elliot gets it yet.) But overall, we've been busy and I've been TIRED.  I feel better now.  And by Two, I mean that's its name in the meantime, not the actual number of babies.

A Short Story Involving Cake*

Today is Husband's birthday.  

He is now a number that I cannot tell you, but it's a good round one. 

Husband is not an easy birthday boy.  

He half-heartedly pretends that he would rather than we skip it all together, but really does like it when we celebrate just a little bit. 

Four years ago today was the first time that we celebrated together.  He and I had a been dating about four months and we were pretty serious about each other, so of course I was going to do something to celebrate the day.**

I started with asking about what kind of cake he would like. I am firm believer that it is massively important to blow out candles on the actual day, for luck, one to grow on, etc...

He said it didn't matter.  And of course it did, so I asked what I thought were questions that would lead to the correct answer:

• What is your favorite cake?
• What is your favorite dessert?
• What did your mom make for you every single year for your birthday party?
• If you were starving and the only place to eat within a thousand miles only served sweets and all kinds of them, what would you order?
• If you were famous and I was a reporter for Teen Beat magazine tasked with writing your fan page, what would go into the blank space next to "On my birthday, I like...?"

All of these were met with blank stares, but he was thinking.

Finally he said, "I'd really like a chocolate loaf."***

Of course, having gleaned this bit of information, I was not going to comment on it at all.  I just promised  that on the appropriate day, I would deliver a chocolate loaf.  

But the thing is, there is no such thing***.

So I called Kathleen, who knows everything.  She cooks and bakes and really, foodwise, her only fault is that she is a vegetarian.****  

And we thought and thought and poured through her myriad cookbooks and scrawled notes and recipes lying about her kitchen.  

There was not one loaf cake anywhere.  

And no, I wasn't going to call (One Day Would Be) Husband and ask.  He made his request with such authority, that clearly it was a thing and we couldn't find it. 

So we kept looking. 

Finally, we decided that it must be another name for Chocolate Pound Cake, which is much more challenging to make than you would suspect.  And we didn't have all the exact ingredients nor did we have an exact recipe, but because dear Kathleen is a pro, we just decided to dump some chocolate into the mix.

In retrospect that may have not been the best idea because by the next evening, the chocolate loaf had hardened to a consistency closer to a rock than a cake.  

But dear (One Day Would Be) Husband chomped through several pieces and (pretended) to love every bite of it. 

It turns out that Chocolate Loaf Cake was another name for a familiar kind of cake.   What he really meant was a chocolate cake sans frosting, which, I suppose if you look at it in the strictest definition, that is exactly what it is. 

So the next year and every year since, that is exactly what he gets.

Tonight, we're going to have a little tiny family birthday party, which is exactly what Husband wanted.  

But this weekend, we were at the BigD's house picking up some things.  And she loves birthdays, so she planned a little birthday breakfast brunch for Husband and it went just like this...

Elliot and I played...

While Claudia rapped cooking instructions to BigD...

Elliot showed his toys to Bill...

Then it was time to eat...

Claudia sat across from me...

And Elliot and I sat across from Claudia...

Then we all sang and BigD cut the (cheese)cake...

And then we had a family picture...

Then Elliot and I took turns eating cake...

Mmmmm Mmmmm Good....

The end.

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*This weekend, I ran into a regular reader of this blog...And she said, "So when are you going to be blogging again." I started to explain that I had been blogging, a little.  She interrupted and said, "I know, I know, your stuff hasn't arrived, but that's not why I read you.  I read you for the funny stories, when will you post more of those?"  I was a bit stung and didn't even bother to explain while I've been feeling a bit funny lately, I hadn't been feeling all that amusing.  I told Husband about it and of course he made me feel better and got me thinking about things. And along with a few other thoughts, I decided that today I would try to post a funny story, because she's been one of my longest readers.  And she's not the only reader.  There is actually a pretty respectable number of people just like you who click here every single day.  And if you are one of the ones who comes around for the funny stories, I'm working on it. This is my best effort for the day and they'll be back again soon.  

**I've found that birthdays can be fraught with danger.  There is always a history of how things should or should not be done and that coupled with new(ish) dating can equal all sorts of conundrum-like situations.

***Oh my gosh!  I promise you that four years ago, these were not the answers I got from google.  There must have been a chocolate loaf trend since then.  No joke.  This would have made my life soooooo much easier. 

****I kid, I kid.  I do love some steak though.

We're back and no H is not my middle name

It's been more than three weeks* since my last blog post, and to be fair that one was pretty weak.**

(This is currently how we eat dinner.  We have no table yet and the pizza is frozen.  We are hobos.  Hobos with wine*** and nice chairs, but hobos nonetheless.)

Yesterday the plumber came and finished the repairs.  Over the past few days, we've had most of the cast iron pipes replaced as well as all the piping in the kitchen replaced, the damage which was found by the crew replacing our furnace and all the dusty dusty ductwork underneath the house.

I mention that because while it sounds boring (and it is) those pipes and ductwork, I suspect, are our anniversary trip.  Yep, a first-time-traveling-sans-the-little-man trip to somewhere that does not allow children**** may now be stuffed underneath the floorboards in the crawlspace.

But things are getting done, but it's been a transition.

Right now, as I type this, I am sitting in what most likely (in the not too distant future) will be the man-room*****/office.

I am surrounded by boxes, many of which are labeled "BOOKS/PAPERS."

When we got engaged, things started moving ultra-fast, so we could get all hitched up and move overseas.

In the process, (almost)Husband went to Norway to start work for a few weeks.

I packed up my apartment and moved things.  We were in such a hurry (packing, wedding planning, etc...) that, instead of sorting through much of it, I just tossed it into boxes and put it all into storage, intending to deal with it when we moved back.

In retrospect this may not have been the best idea, at least not completely.

I really don't need all those paperbacks including that unread copy of The Tao of Pooh, given to me by suitor whose name has long been forgotten, mainly because after that gift, there were no further dates.  But also because I abhor the vast majority of cartoon characters and especially loathe ones that lisp.******

But I do have every single one of my reporter's notebooks******* as well.

And on the top of the pile in one of the boxes was one of them with the notes from one of my favorite moments, in which I was confused with a major deity.

It was late in the evening in a nightclub in New York, after an award show. My intended interviewee was a southern rapper redneck type, who is not actually one bit Southern, but has perfected the redneck act to a tee. At the time, he was rumored to be engaged to a large bosomed actress, who once favored red swimsuits and had always favored musician types.  My orders were to ask him about the wedding plans, to get any detail at all.

The club was dark and smoky.  The music was at top volume and every conversation varied between shouting and speaking close into each other's ear.  My target interviewee was well into his bottle and had commanded the deejay booth.********

I walked up and it went something like this:

ECD:  Hi

SouthernRapperRedneck:  Hey darlin.'  What's your name?

ECD:  I'm Elizabeth from NameOfMagazine. I just wanted to come over and say congratulations about your engagement.

SRR: Uh.  Thanks.

ECD:  (I am not quite sure exactly what I said here, I scribbled "Chatter about wedding, etc...")

SRR:  That's none of your f***in' business. Get the f*** out of here.

ECD:  Well, alright, thanks so much.

And I turn to leave. I asked the questions.  He declined to comment.  So at that point I consider that part of the evening done. Oddly enough, SRR does not. He grabs my upper arm, holding me tightly enough that I cannot move.

SRR:  Seriously, get the f*** out of here.

ECD:  I would sir, but you're holding onto me.

SRR:  Who do you think you are!!?!!  Jesus H. Christ!!?!!

ECD: No sir, I don't.

SRR: Smartass!  Seriously, get the f*** out of here.

ECD:  I would sir, but you're holding onto me.

SRR:  Who do you think you are!!?!!  Jesus H. Christ!!?!!

ECD: No sir, I don't.

SRR: Smartass! Seriously, get the f*** out of here.

This went on for a few minutes, in varying forms.

He got more irate, I got calmer and more amused.

Then his manager pried his fingers off me.

And while I did not get the details of the upcoming nuptials, I did have a hand shaped bruise on my upper arm for the next week or so.

And I had forgotten that until I just read it again and I still think it's funny.

So that's something.

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*Or thereabouts. I could figure out the exact number of days but that would require me to find a calendar, count the days, etc... and I just don't care enough to do that, and really, I'll bet you don't care enough either...

**Hilarious, but weak. 

***Dear PC Police, Let me explain. First of all, I think most hobos tend to have wine, so that's apropos. But I do not mean to be insensitive to the plight of legitimate hobos, both past and perhaps present, I merely mean to identify somewhat with the act of carrying around all of one's possessions on one's back, or in one's suitcase, if you will.  Sincerely, Elizabeth

****Listen, there's no offense meant and we adore our little guy (and also many of the children we know), but to be clear, we adore our little guy.  If we're going to spend some cash to go traveling without him for a few days, we don't really want to hang out with strangers' children.  

*****I suspect that if you are married and are reading this post, the term "man room" needs no explanation.

******Yeah, yeah, yeah...but even in light of this shocking fact, it's pretty likely that Elliot will have a pretty alright childhood anyway. 

*******Except for the drawerful from my last semi-fulltime job.  One morning I came in, sat at my desk, opened my drawer and found it completely empty.  The mail clerk, misunderstanding a request to clean out some old file cabinets, dumped out three of my key drawers, including files, notes, tapes, a calendar from that current month and all of my personal items.  I spent the rest of that day, not reporting, but climbing through the three dumpsters in the bowels of the AJC building.  No kidding.  It was two years' worth of notes and ideas, including loads of interviews I had conducted for upcoming stories.  It was a BIG deal. And so I dumpster dove, all in vain.  I did not find one of my own things, but I did find really interesting unshredded expense reports.  These did not make the experience worthwhile, but did make for some interesting reading.

********Hey, don't judge.  This was a publicity event.  The famous people who were there were mainly B-list and below and were clamoring for ink. Every single one of their publicists knew exactly which magazines were sending reporters and to a certain extent, what the content of the questions could be...And also, to be fair, I saw SRR perform at another magazine's celebration about a year later.  He killed.  No joke, it was an awesome show.  I did not interview him that time, so I cannot say for sure if he was still confusing reporters with deities or if it was just a one-time event.

Happy Thanksgiving, Peoples!

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.*

(This is Husband's Turkey Day card.)

I love Thanksgiving.  It's a day of good food eaten with people you love unemcumbered by present pressure.  There is usually some kind of drama, as there is when people are in big groups, but that drama almost always gets worked out and becomes a funny memory.  Mainly, to me, it's all about taking a minute to be grateful for all the good things.

Also, I LOVE the fried turkey**, next to key lime pie, it's my very favorite food in the world.  Seriously.

But in years when I haven't made it Georgia for the holiday, I've had some great ones as well.

My sister and I were guests of LisaD's family Thanksgiving in Brooklyn the morning after we spent happy, chilly hours watching the Macy's balloons getting blown up next to the Museum of Natural History on the Upper West Side.  I hosted a friends' Thanksgiving in my tiny apartment in the West Village complete with a champage fountain.  And this year is going to be great, too.

Husband, Elliot and I have been invited to have Thanksgiving at our best friends' home here in Stavanger.  It's happening tomorrow night and there will be the requisite turkey*** and ham and best of all, assorted goodies and important ingredients imported all the way from Denver, smuggled**** in a suitcase carried by an American who has come all the thousands of miles for a real Norwegian-style holiday.

We couldn't be more excited about it.

But tonight, we're having our own little family Thanksgiving---not with turkey, but with Asian BBQ'd pork and cheesy potatoes.  The dishes may not be the "appropriate" ones, but the thankfulness for our good things and happiness is all there.


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*That, and other peoples' birthdays.

**If you're not familiar with it, imagine this:
Take a thawed turkey and a special turkey hypodermic needle.  Then shoot the turkey full of buttery cajun goodness all underneath its turkey skin.  Then drop it into boiling peanut oil. Remove it from the oil about 45 minutes later and enjoy its cajun, buttery goodness.  And also enjoy the fact that it's less calories and more healthy than the turkeys cooked in the oven for hours and hours.  Seriously.  (AMENDED---I actually looked it up.  According to the American Dietetic Association, with the skin on, fried turkey has two more fat grams than the same serving size of conventionally prepared turkey.  Take the skin off and it's less because very little of the peanut oil soaks in...Of course there are lots of mitigating factors...ie the amount of butter you inject but that is often a wash because a conventional turkey is rubbed with it and then soaks in it for hours.  Also fried turkey is not dry and is extra tasty, so there's that....)

***Not fried, but prepared by an Englishman who knows what he's doing.  Don't be sad for me, I'll get the fried goodness at Christmas, so all is well in my world.

****If you are the custom authorities reading this, don't believe a word.  I made it all up.  So pass along, nothing to see here.

Do these socks make my feet look fat?*

Over the past few weeks, I've also been asked:

"Now that you're heading back does this mean you're going to be shutting down or renaming your blog?"

The short answer:
No and no.

The long answer:
Striped Socks and Skinny Jeans was never really about stripes, socks, skinny and/or jeans.**

It's always been about figuring out how to navigate where I am---which right now has been Stavanger, Norway and soon will be Atlanta, Georgia.

I've written about gettting hitched up, being newly married, traveling and having a baby, as well as other weighty topics such as wombats, how not to be burgled, glitter and tobacco.

I've even had contributors.

None of this will change.

So I'm just going to keep on with what I'm doing.

Please feel free to stop back by anytime.  You're always welcome.


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*Horizontal stripes are often not considered a great idea on most body parts unless you are very very brave.  I am not.  But stripes on feet?  I kind of like them.  They just seem friendly.

**The name came from my very first trip to Stavanger, which was not Husband's first trip.  (He's American, but had lived here before, moved back to the US.  Then we got hitched up and moved back to Stavanger for a few years.)

It was early in 2008 and as it often is in these parts, Stavanger was cold and rainy.  But being the optimistic sort that I am, I immediately tried to figure out how to make the dampness less annoying.  And I began with my feet, which if you've ever had really wet and cold feet, you may know that often that makes all the difference.

If you every happen to drop into Stavanger, and really most of Scandinavia, you'll notice that women tend to wear close-fitting pants or leggings, often jeans, tucked into knee high boots. I am convinced that it is less (or at least equal) a fashion statement and more of a practical one.  

On dark, dank days, the last thing you want to do is get the hemline of your pants wet.  Then not only will it eventually creep up your pants, but also will track into your home.

Which brings me to the next bit, the striped socks.  Unless it's a place of business, shoes are never worn inside.  Once you step over the threshold into your home, the shoes are removed.  And really, no one wants to see holey socks.

Also, I just like stripes.

Homeward Bound

So it's been in the works for a while, but we've just gotten the final final details...we're packing* up and heading back to the United States.

We're going back to Atlanta, so I guess it's a good thing that the house we own there has never sold.

We have about thirty days left and will touch down in Atlanta the first week of December.

So there's lots to do and lots to report, but right now, that's what I have for you.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++




*And by "we're packing" I mean "the nice people hired by Husband's company." Thank you nice people.  Thank you Husband's company.

Norway is safe, but...

Let’s be clear.  Norway is a safe country with really low crime rates.*

(This is our dear Lillie.  She sweet and friendly and looks much much scarier than she is actually is...unless she senses some sort of danger to her people.  Then, if you are the dangerous one, trust me, she is too.)

When we went to Spain, we forgot and left some accessible windows open. A few weeks earlier, our car, filled with baby stuff and our stroller, was left unlocked and parked on the street in front of our house the entire six weeks we were in the United States this summer. 

Husband has lived in Stavanger a total of almost six years and other than one incident with his wallet has never experienced any sort of incident.**

In the almost two years, I’ve lived here, other than some parking tickets and working on immigration papers, I’ve only had two incidents with the police. 

The first was when I was about 14 months*** pregnant.  At the time we lived across the street from a mosque and on the holy days, dozens of cars would illegally park, many directly in front of our house.  It was cold and snowy and I worried about not only where to park, but then tromping up our hill, big and pregnant and wearing slippery shoes.

I pulled up next to the police car parked at the bottom of the hill, explained how pregnant I was in case he couldn’t see.  Then I asked if he could do something about all the cars, particularly the ones parked in front of my house. 

He said, “I don’t do that.” 

And I replied, “Well what do you do?”****

The second time was yesterday when Husband and I went to the police.  We intended to either make a complaint or report a crime.

It all started on Tuesday morning.  I was running up and down the stairs straightening up before the cleaners arrived.*****  Elliot was safely deposited in his playpen and the dogs were laying about downstairs.  All of a sudden, on a run upstairs, the dogs went NUTS, barking their heads off. 

I went downstairs to check on it and told them both to sit down.  Milo went to his corner, but Lillie got even more agitated, placed herself in front of the door, kept barking and bared her teeth.  

That when I noticed the big man-shaped shape through the frosted glass in the door. 

I stood there for a moment intending to open the door and ask if I could help him or what he was doing just lurking about on the doorstep.  But then I thought that it might be the wild boys who live in one apartment downstairs wanting to talk to Husband about the trashcans or maybe the Mormons in the other apartment.  Both are kind and harmless, but I didn’t have time for either, so I ignored it.

Also, the shape never rang the doorbell or knocked, so it really made me a bit nervous.  What if something happened to me and Elliot was in the house?  And a host of other sorts of bad thoughts, etc…. crossed my mind.

And while I was standing there, pondering these things, the shape receded and footsteps thumped down the stairs.  I leaned out the front window to see who it was. It wasn’t one man, there were three men, all dressed in jeans and ski-ish jackets and they were big.  And I couldn't understand the language except for one bit: “Hun er americansk”******

And then I forgot about it.  The cleaner arrived.  I put the dogs up and out of the way and Elliot and I went to meet our friend Jenny at a baby store.  She is pregnant and Elliot was helping her peruse the merchandise, by sitting in things like baby cages and strollers when my phone rang.

It was the cleaner coordinator who said that that police had just come into our house.  The woman cleaning was startled, but also worried because they were looking for me.

The door was left unlocked because the cleaner was going in and out.  And the cleaner had gone around the corner to the kitchen to get something.  

When she walked back around, there were two big men standing there, in our living room.  

Everyone involved jumped.  

And the men asked if she was the woman who lived there.   They flashed some sort of badge, said they were the police and were looking for me.

Standing in the baby store, I panicked a bit and called Husband to make sure he was okay.  

Once that was established I told him what happened.  We catalogued my list of offenses and determined that other than a parking ticket that isn’t even due yet, I’m pretty much in the clear.

He called the police to figure out why the officers came to our house.  

Also why they walked right into our house.*******  

They had no record of it. At all. But asked us to check back.

So overnight, the more we thought about it, the more we were worried about it.  

If those men weren’t police, that’s one scary thing.  

If those men were police, what were they doing just walking in our house?

So Husband, Elliot and I went to the police.  And as Husband put it, “We are here to either register a complaint or a crime.”********

And they had no record of any police coming by our house for any reason at all.

So people, lock your doors.

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*According to NationMaster, if you look at just burglaries per capita, Norway has just 1.15 per 1000 people,  which ranks 38 out of 40. As a comparison, the United States is 7 times higher per capita… In case you are interested, you can find more Norwegian crime stats here

 and here and here.

**He left a door unlocked in our first apartment when he was walking the dogs.  The next morning his wallet was gone from the table beside the door.  He canceled the credit cards and was in the process of reapplying for a passport.  A few days later, a man knocked on the door and returned it with everything intact and in place save the 200NOK cash that was inside.  We’re pretty sure it was the thief, but really, that’s what you get for living next door to a drug house.  We didn’t realize it when we moved in and moved out soon after.

***It felt that way, trust.

****Perhaps I was a bit snippy, but really it’s so safe here, you rarely see police anywhere.  No joke.

*****Don’t judge. The thought of cleaning bathrooms grosses me out beyond belief and we are not even dirty people.

******She is American.

*******This is a whole other issue.  No one should just walk into my house, ever, unless I know you and think it’s okay, even if you’re a police officer.  The very thought just is WRONG.

********Related to the point above, if it had been the police, we would have also would have wanted to report a complaint AND a crime.

Kind of Blue

Spanish Holiday

Last Saturday morning as we drove the 82 kilometers between the villa we rented and the Alicante airport, I counted 14 double decker buses roaring down the roads heading to the area we just left.

The windows on the fronts and the sides were almost full glass.*And every seat was filled with enthusiastic visitors of the geriatric sort.

Apparently, in the non-summer months**, the Costa Blanca region of Spain, where we took a little holiday last week is the European version of Palm Springs and most of Florida all wrapped into one.

And, in this area, if you weren't a local or an imported retiree snowbirding, you were a family with small, younger than school-age children who were doing the exact same thing we were.

This is not a bad thing, if you are us. We wanted a bit of a break, in the sunshine and because we travel in a pack of three, it was important that Elliot was welcomed in places that Husband and I wanted to be, like restaurants that served tasty local food and once a pub.

And without a doubt, he was. We couldn't walk down the street without being stopped with a "Guapo bebé."*** And when he occasionally made a little noise when we were out eating, that was completely fine.***** Someone would say, "Oh oh that is what babies do. Guapo, guapo."

And it was a great week, full of good things like fish:

Two headed fish

Two fish that turned into

This:

(I promise you, one day, you should come over and eat what Husband cooks. When he has the time, he's good. And when I say time, I mean time. He is also slow. But that's okay. We like to visit.)

We had lots of good food out as well...here we will soon have paella***** on our plate for lunch. Elliot started out asleep, but when he heard the main course arrive...

He woke up.

Who could blame him really? So eventually, everyone ate.

We spent a happy afternoon at a place called Munda Mar, which is no kidding, awesome. It's a small-ish zoo with great exhibits and hilarious access to the animals. Elliot loved the fish, especially. When we go back to the US, whether it's for good or for a visit, we're going to hang out at The Georgia Aquarium.

And it was just right. There was just enough sunshine. So we'd sit out every single day.

And eat out in the sunshine.

And then visit all day.

And visit all evening.

And that was our holiday. It was just exactly right.

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*Once, when my brother and I were little (in the pre-dear sister days), the BigD and our dad took us to Florida to ride the glass bottomed boats. These buses were like that, but different. Not boats, not bottoms, but still noses pressed against glass, totally excited about the view.

**In the summer months, it is more akin to Panama City and Myrtle Beach, all wrapped into one.

***Also, in a pottery shop, when the owner admired Elliot, she also told me in great detail that he needed to have some time on the beach because he was too white. That it was okay to be worried about the sun in July, but not in September, that we should leave immediately and go to the water. He would be fine. I'm pretty sure that's what it all meant because I know blanco, bebe, la playa, julio, septiembre, various verbage of tengo, tiene, guapo, etc... This went on a long time, then she shooed up out, all the way to the door and pointed up to the sun. But never once stopped clucking and smiling at Elliot. The Spanish are multi-taskers.

****Not grumpy noise, he rarely makes those. The noises are squeals or laughing or just general babbling. He likes to visit. Shockingly enough, my son is social.

*****For which we were mocked when Husband pronounced it (paella) on an installment of HKS a few days ago...I cleared it up with a Spanish friend of mine who is from the Basque region and apparently there are five (maybe more??) regions of Spain, each with a slightly different accent, which in over-simplified terms translates into different stresses and uses of the "ll" and "c." Trust.