What my nearly 2 year old nephew calls his family members and why, second nephew edition

my first post on my first nephew

his mom: mami

his dad: papi

The difference having an older sibling makes. Nephew M has been listening to his brother talk for most of his life, so his pronunciation is arguably better than his brother's was at that age. If you don't feel like clicking through to my previous post, Nephew C (the oldest) said mama and dada at this age. I know it's 1 letter off, but mami and papi are the correct words.

his brother (3 years): Cistian (he cannot pronounce Rs very well yet)

his maternal grandmother (my mom): mom (in a Spanish accent). This is because whenever my mom is around him, he's always hearing me, my siblings, and his parents call my mom Mom. It's hilarious. My family has more or less given up on getting the kids to call my mom anything other than Mom, plus their paternal grandparents have usurped the abuelito/abuelita titles (although they do add their first names to them).

his maternal grandfather (my dad): Lito, sometimes 'ito (see previous post for explanation)

his aunt (me): Tia Amy. Readers of my first post in this series will remember that my older nephew C called me Tia and called all his other aunts Otra Tia (other aunt) at this age. Karmatically, M will only ever call me by his other maternal aunt's name (my sister-in-law). This is because there is a Lovevery book where the child protagonist goes to the doctor and the nurse is called Nurse Amy, and also because Amy is easier for him to say than Michelle. He fully 100% means me. (In case you're wondering, my older nephew C will only call me Michelle these days, despite calling his other aunts Tia [name]. I like to think it is because of our bond.)

I have not heard M address or talk about his other aunts or any of his uncles (my brothers live out of state and are not around much), so no idea for those. Ditto for his other grandparents. He calls his cousins by name. He is so cute and smart like his brother, but with a mischievous streak. I love those kids.

What my nearly 2 year old nephew calls his family members and why

his mom: mama

his dad: dada

his brother (3 months): baby or bibi (beebee). You would think he'd call the baby bebe as he only speaks Spanish (and a handful of English words), but he only uses the English word because it's a family habit to say "baby" in English even if the entire sentence/conversation is in Spanish. No one knows why. We all do this all the time and he's heard us do it, hence, baby. I think bibi is him saying baby in affectionate baby talk about/to his brother, like his adult family members do.

his maternal grandmother (my mom): mom (in a Spanish accent). This is because whenever my mom is around him, he's always hearing me, my siblings, and his parents call my mom Mom. It's hilarious. My sister's trying to emphasize she's Abuelita, so he occasionally calls her 'ita (Lita) now (see why below). 

his maternal grandfather (my dad): 'ito (Lito). It was decided early on that my sister's (and my) parents would be abuelito/abuelita and my brother-in-law's parents would be abuelo/abuela to differentiate them, and my dad decided he wanted to be called Lito, which is of course the second half of Abuelito. It's an extra-affectionate way of saying grandpa. For some reason saying ita/ito is easier than saying Lito/Lita.

me (his aunt): tia (aunt in Spanish). Although now he is starting to glancingly say "tia 'shel" or another adorable mispronunciation of my name. I love it.

my older brother (his uncle): tio (uncle in Spanish). My sister is also trying to get him to say his aunts and uncles' names, so he occasionally attempts a "tio 'ado". 

my younger brother (his uncle): otro tio (other uncle). lmao. He left before our nephew could grasp Tio Jon.

my sister-in-law (his aunt): Tia Amy, clear as a bell. One of his favorite books has a nurse named Amy in it, so he got her name right away even though she and my brother were only here for the weekend.

his paternal grandmother: otra mom (other mom) to differentiate her from 'mom' (my mom). lmaooooo  My brother-in-law also calls his mom Mom.

his paternal grandfather: I am not sure! I have never heard him address his grandfather when I'm around. I will have to ask my sister.

his paternal aunts: otra tia to differentiate them from me. lmaooooooo. Yes I am very smug about this. He is starting to say "Tia [name]" though so it won't last long. He also initially called Amy "otra tia" until he learned her name.

his paternal uncles: one can only assume otro tio, although I've never heard him address them since he wasn't talking as much the last time we all hung out.

his cousins: I think the only one he really knows/remembers is his older cousin Daniel, whom my nephew addresses by name (Spanish pronunciation). If he talks to/about his little cousins (two of his aunts had babies before and after his brother was born), he probably calls them baby as well (or otro baby).

I love hanging out with my nephew. He is so smart and curious and inquisitive and is picking up language like gangbusters. He'll run around and say/yell the family member's moniker when he sees them or when he wants their attention. It's so cute. He'll also grab or point at stuff that belongs to/he associates with us and say our names. I love that little guy.

long rambly 2020 post, mostly about a restaurant

 I miss Souplantation. My family ate there at least every other month, sometimes up to a couple times a month, ever since I was small. I know the layout of that restaurant--the buffet sections, the tables and chairs, the shitty bathrooms that were somehow untouched by the decor update in the 2010s--better than I know most of my relatives' houses. We sat at the corner round table in the side/front of the restaurant as often as we could, calling it "our table". Dad would sit with his back to the corner, mom would sit at his right with her back to the side parking lot, I would sit at his left, and my siblings would sit between me and mom. We usually had to forgo our trays, as there were six of us crammed at that table. I loved the muffins and cookie bars, the pizza and focaccia bread, the range of possibilities at the salad bar (even though I'd pretty much always get the same thing). Their ranch and blue cheese dressings are the best I've ever had. Even the dull plastic plates, cups and trays were familiar to me. I always seemed to get a fork with bent (inward) tines. 

When the pandemic began, I thought everything would go back to normal in a month; two, tops. I never dreamed that restaurant would close. Small indie mom & pop restaurants? Yes, sadly. But not successful salad bar chains like Souplantation/Sweet Tomatoes. There was a Sweet Tomatoes in Walnut Creek, which we ate at a couple of times when visiting my brother and sister in law, and a Souplantation near the LA airport! I can't believe we're never going to eat at Souplantation again. We last ate there for mom's birthday in February, the whole family, including my siblings and their spouses who live far away. None of us had any idea. Nobody did, really. I honestly kind of feel like a family member has died. 

This is what I would get whenever we went to Souplantation: the Chinese wonton salad, because I only like salads other people have prepared for me, and all the other prepared salads had meat; peas and corn, cucumber slices; other vaguely ethnic side salads that were either cabbage-based or quinoa/other similar grains-based; the flavored croutons; and a little waxed cup each of ranch and blue cheese dressing. Then I would get pasta, usually macaroni and cheese or occasionally fettucine alfredo, or a different pasta if it sounded better than the mac & cheese; and a soup if it wasn't too hot outside (usually the unhealthiest vegetarian soup). I'd get four little slices of pizza, two little slices of focaccia bread, and a cup of water. We always got water because it was cheapest, but occasionally dad would have a coupon (we always used a coupon) that required one person to get an actual beverage. I had their strawberry lemonade a few times; it was delicious. I'd eat the salad first, to get it over with, then the vegetables, then the other salads (which were usually tastier). I'd dip the foccaccia bread and the pizza pieces into the dressing cups, alternating bites and dressings. For dessert I'd always get a brownie muffin, or the lava cake if we stayed until their dinner menu (lunch was cheaper so we often went right before the cutoff time), as well as a gluten-free muffin (mmm, coconutty) or occasionally a blueberry muffin with honey whip butter. I got ice cream a lot when I was younger, from a soft-serve machine that always had chocolate and vanilla; the middle one was always a choco-vanilla swirl. I can also recite my other family members' orders by memory, but I'll spare you that. When I heard the news, I panic-pinned a bunch of copycat Souplantation recipes, but it won't be the same.

This year has really taken a lot from us, hasn't it? I really didn't think it was a big deal, at first. I had lived through the H1N1, swine flu, avian flu, several other scares like that. I was actually excited to work from home in my pajamas, sprawled on my purple chaise lounge with my laptop. I enjoyed sleeping in, too; it is now kind of impossible for me to wake up before noon. I miss putting together cute outfits and doing makeup looks and shopping without worrying about contracting a deadly disease. I miss going to church and seeing my friends. I miss hugging my friends and family. I miss my extended family; I haven't seen them since my mom's birthday party. Some were sick and couldn't attend, so I haven't seen them for longer. I haven't seen my dad's side of the family since... maybe my dad's birthday? Did we drive up then? Or maybe my uncle's 60th bday party. One of my cousins and his wife had a baby, and I haven't been able to hold her because I was getting over a cold before covid. I haven't seen her since I dropped off a pasta dish a few weeks after she was born. She's 6 or 7 months old now, and doesn't know me. We used to get together with my mom's side of the family (the CA ones) every month or so, since there was always a birthday or holiday to celebrate. This is the longest I've gone without seeing them. 

I miss seeing my family without feeling guilty about it. I always drove to my parents' to have lunch with them every Saturday, and usually stayed until the evening (I stayed the night if I had laundry to do). I decided to socially isolate from everybody except them, but then my sister and her husband came to stay with our parents for the summer (which of course I'm happy about) and my aunt and other brother and sister in law come over and have lunch with us a lot and then my brother in law's sister will come over to hang out with him and my sister, and none of us are wearing masks or keeping our distance. This pandemic must be so hard on all the other latinxs and POC. I know people who hadn't seen their families in months, because they all lived in separate apartments/houses. I feel bad about that, but I don't want to wear a mask around my family, and I don't want to stop seeing my parents and sister & brother in law. My mom is going to start working with covid patients in September. I should probably stop coming over then, but I don't want them to be alone. My sister's working in a nursing home, and that's dangerous too, not to mention my brother and sister in law are doctors and work in hospitals. What can you do, though? To round up this paragraph of things I'm doing wrong during the pandemic, I've also eaten at restaurants a couple of times with my family (sit in, for my dad's birthday), shopped more than once a week almost every week since May, and had a pedicure a month ago.

If Lotus Garden closes down too, I'm going to lose it.

If my father's wildest dreams came true...

My youngest brother and his fiance would both be doctors in our hometown's medical centers, get married,* settle down in a very nice house five minutes or less from my parents' house, and give him grandchildren.

My sister and her husband would leave New York City and move back to our hometown, get a job at the local medical center's rehab department (my sister) and financial department (my brother-in-law), live in a nice house five minutes or less from my parents' house, and give him grandchildren.

My other brother and his wife would find jobs in the IE branch** of a big tech company such as Apple  (my brother) and local medical center's pharmacy (my sister-in-law), move into a very nice house five minutes or less from my parents' house, and give him grandchildren.

I would allow my father to set me up with a nice young man he met at the gym or Sabbath school, and we would get married and move into a charming house in our hometown five minutes or less from my parents' house, where I would work for the local university or public library (and my husband would probably be a doctor at the local medical center), and give him grandchildren.

We would all be very entangled in each other's lives, have a weekly dinner, and go on vacations together like the Modern Family family.

*this is already happening obviously 
**does not exist

from a dream

they showed us the answer in a painting, unveiling it before all the assembled dead, and it made no sense at all to us (it somehow left us more confused than we were before we had been given an answer), but it helped us so much to have something to talk about, my aunt said

I see my grandmother in her room, all of us gathered around her bed, and I know I am dreaming
I try to wake up and return to the room; she is gone but the bed is still there; I am still dreaming

it is unsettling to dream dreams steeped in fantasy and fairytales, the dark rules-bound side of it, when it includes my relatives, some of whom are not dead and all of whom I know would not approve

A typical Sunday breakfast with my dad

My dad wants to eat a bolillo so he gets me one too, disregarding what I say. I cut up the half he gives me and put half the Big Frank and cheese omelet he made me into it, adding a prosage sausage patty and some homemade guacamole to make a sort of vegetarian Egg McMuffin. "Wow," my dad says judgmentally, spooning more guacamole onto his spinach/mushroom/cheese/onion/Big Frank omelet. Then he makes me split a banana with him.

My Monday Morning Commute

Two Hispanic middle-aged ladies sat across from me on the train this morning, quietly chattering to each other in Spanish the whole time. Towards the end of the trip, a crotchety white man told them it was the quiet car, a term I translated for them. They asked me if I was going to school, which school, and what I was studying. They were nice and I thought, "Wow, it's a lot like talking to my grandma." Then one of them said, "If a boy tries to kidnap you, fight him, scream!" and I was like "Holy cow it is exactly like talking to my grandma."

El Año Viejo

The traditional songs about a new year beginning seem melancholy and seem to focus on friends (Auld Lange Syne, My Dear Acquaintance [A Happy New Year]). The only Spanish song I know of on the same subject seems happier and counting-my-blessings-y (it's a scientific term), but that may be because the rhythm is so danceable. (this version is the best I can find on YouTube. Viva Celia Cruz.)

Good things that happened in 2011:

• I survived my first year and the first quarter of my second year of grad school
• I started a great job
• I got my driver's license
• I read some great great books and saw some good movies
• I hung out with my friends
• I bought a new laptop
• And a Nook 
• I did some library volunteering in the summer
• My brother and I bought our parents a new desktop computer
• My parents sold our minivan
• My little brother started college
• My mom started a new job she likes
• My sister studied abroad in France and Argentina (she's there now)
• and just got engaged
• My best friend's little girl was born, as was my cousin's second child. Babies are the best
• Said bestie^ graduated from nursing school and passed her boards and is now an RN
• I started this blog
• I got involved with Change.org and learned that if a lot of people click-sign petitions, stuff actually happens. It's a start.
• Other stuff I can't remember (these items are just in the order I thought of them)

Bad things that happened in 2011:

• My paternal grandmother died.  This has been the hardest thing to come out of this year.
• We just learned that my step-great-grandmother passed away too. She was my grandmother's stepmother.
• Natural disasters all over the world of varying intensities and horribleness such as tsunamis, floods, tornadoes, earthquakes and wildfires
• Steve Jobs and Elizabeth Taylor died
• Political crap, such as awful and/or sexist laws and the way OccupyWhatever protestors were treated. You will never convince me that it is okay to pepper-spray an 80-something year old woman in the face.
• The State of Georgia killed Troy Davis
• My maternal grandmother has had some worrisome medical stuff happen. She fainted twice a few weeks ago.

I was a bit worried I'd have more stuff in the Bad section than the Good, but I'm glad that's not the case. I think 2011 was somewhat better than 2010, but it still was rather difficult in parts. Here's to hoping 2012 is great.

Number of books read in 2011: approximately 139

Siempre, siempre, Abuelita, yo recuerdaré...

In my earliest memory I am walking through the rooms in the Eagle Rock house, which we moved out of when I was two. The rooms are dark, but sunlight spills across the polished wood floors. I pass my little brother who is lying or crawling on the floor and see my grandma stuffing an old pair of jeans and an old red plaid flannel shirt of my father's with crumpled-up newspaper. She explains she is making a scarecrow to decorate our front stoop for Halloween. Later it will scare me whenever I pass by it, even though I saw it being made.

One of the most interesting things about life is how quickly one becomes used to things. When my grandma lived with us, it was like she had always done so. When she was gone, either to visit my uncles or live in her house in Mexico, it was as though she had never been. I remember thinking in the past that her frequent absences might prepare us for when she would be gone.
The woman I came home one day to find up in our eight-foot fig tree (which was at the top of a thirty-foot hill) sawing off its branches by hand became a frail little slip of a person who had to be lifted out of bed, enormous brown eyes and bones showing through skin much paler than it used to be. The woman who cooked and baked delicious food for us could no longer keep anything down. This was not the end we wanted for her. It was not the end she deserved.

It's strange not having her here. I'll forget sometimes and think, "oh, I should tell her hello/about the job I got/etc.", then remember I can't. We just sort of assumed she'd always be here, that she'd take care of our kids the way she took care of us. I miss her. We knew this was coming, but it's still hard.

New laptop!

I bought a new computer and I love it. My old Macbook is about five years old and is way too slow, has far too little memory/storage space, and runs very hot and loud (not to mention, it's dirty, the part I rest my wrists on is splitting into pieces, and the keyboard's full of crumbs). My new Macbook Pro has a backlit keyboard, a fancy glass screen, cool new features, and tons of hard drive space (and it's cooler and lighter, even). I'm really happy with it. The only hassle has been with transferring all my old stuff onto the new laptop (and that's just because of me. I keep getting distracted). My iPhoto library has been transferred, but now I feel like I need to go through it and correct the tagged Faces, delete/fix blurry pics, etc. I just installed Mozilla Firefox and transferred all my Firefox bookmarks (no small feat; I really need to go through all my bookmark folders and delete what I don't need), as well as my iTunes library (I think. I'm pretty much relying on my Computer Engineering major brother to make sure I'm doing everything right). Oh, I also figured out how to make my screensaver display an RSS feed of my LibraryThing books; in trying to find the instructions, I discovered how to put a LT widget on this blog (in the sidebar thingie. Now you can see what books I have, and it links to my LT profile so you can stalk friend me). I need to make sure my iTunes library is complete and install Office for Mac 2011, set my Desktop to rights, and eventually I want to start using the Apple money I got due to their Back to School promotion (I can use it to buy music, iBooks, and apps. So excite). My little brother bought a new laptop at the same time, and it's so cute to see him all excited about his own brand new computer since this is his first one. He's bought some bright green accessories for it. I can't believe he's going away to college! Sniff.