The life and times of Oscar Marcos Perez-Cytron. Born Thanksgiving Day 11/22/01.
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
If you want to add something to Oscar's baby-blog, send an email to megan@alpha60.com and we can set it up so you can post...
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
1:08 AM posted by Oscar
Well Spirata III and Happiness III have sealed the deal. Last night, I checked on them before I went to bed (they are nocturnal and are always doing interesting stuff at 2:00am). They usually like to hang out on opposite ends of the terrarium (unless they are getting it on). Last night, they were in the same corner, but Spirata was turned sideways. I could tell something was up. I know these snails! As it turns out, Spirata was laying eggs while Happiness watched. Dozens and dozens of white eggs.
Now we are faced with a moral conundrum.... Do we put the eggs in the wilderness and risk causing untold destruction to the environment? Do we destroy them (I shudder at the mere thought)? Do we flush them down in complete ignorance of whether the sewage system is hostile or friendly to communities of snails (leaning in this direction)? Do we keep a few, just to see what happens?
I have to admit, I've grown fond of these snails. After laying the eggs, the volume of which seemed larger than Spirata's shell, Spirata was completely spent. Tonight when I checked on her, she had retreated deep into her shell. I picked her up and put a drop of water on her, just to see if she would move and she did. It took her a full fifteen minutes to unfold herself and come out of her shell. I gave her cucumber (her favorite) and water.
Maybe I'll ask Oscar's teacher if she wants some. Oh, yeah, and Oscar went back to school yesterday. He's happy to see his classmates, but has been completely worn out the past two days from playing and running around. And he told me he's tired of speaking Spanish and doesn't want to speak it with me anymore, because he already speaks it too much. I know the feeling.
After school today we went to the Retiro with Dan and Jeannie and got to meet Kike Ramon, their brand new little baby. He's adorable and Oscar loved getting to meet him. It was nice to just sit under the trees in the dappled light and eat and relax. I'll miss these lazy days when things get crazy again, but I definitely need to get back to the beehive...
Aside from the guitar, another big quality of life improvement has been the introduction of "Heidi" into our lives. This is a 52-episode Japanese series from the 1970s that people in Spain love and for good reason. The design was done by Miyazaki--same director who did My Neighbor Totoro, the best children's movie I have ever seen. We are on episode 10 and Oscar loves it (and so do I). I never read the story as a kid--though now I'm really looking forward to reading it with Oscar when he gets a bit older.
It's the story of a girl whose mother dies (don't they always?) and she gets shuttled around until she ends up on top of a mountain in Switzerland with her crusty old grandfather. Everyone thinks that she will be miserable in such an isolated setting and with such a seemingly unfeeling old guy, but Heidi loves the freedom of learning to tend the sheep and running in the meadows barefoot, sleeping on a bed made from hay, watching the seasons change, communing with birds and deer and listening to the fir trees whisper deep philosophical advice to her. And, seeing Heidi's way of being and her total unaffected joie de vivre, the grandfather finds that humanity isn't as hopeless as he had previously thought. And all that is just in the first ten episodes.
So Oscar is so taken by all this, that he begs us constantly to pretend that we are in the story. He says "Mama: you be Heidi, I'll be Copo de Nieve (snowflake, a small goat)/or pitchi a little bird, Papi: you be Pedro el Cabrero (Peter the goatherd)." For one whole day he didn't say anything much beyond "naaaa", staying almost entirely in character. It's hard to pretend that you are in the Alps when you live in the middle of the city, but somehow we manage with tall buildings standing in as snow-capped peaks; fountains as waterfalls; and people as herds of goats.
Sunday, September 04, 2005
1:48 AM posted by Anonymous
I am trying to get back into writing here a little more. Megan has been doing a good job keeping it up, and I have enjoyed reading her entries so much I've neglected to add much. So here goes.
Recently Oscar has been making more advanced creations with his legos, then naming them. A few days ago Megan purchased a little sculpture of a "surrealist thing" from a street artist in the neighborhood (for 1 euro). It looks vaguely like a penguin, and its arms move, and it has a magnet where its feet would be. Oscar was captivated. Maybe this surreal thing inspired him to take his creations further.
We have been playing our guitar a little bit. We are learning "You Are My Sunshine" "American Pie" and "The Times They Are A-Changin". Megan is getting pretty good, but is suffering from sore fingers.
We are all keeping our fingers crossed for cousin Jonathan, maybe Oscar's recent drawing will help somehow...
1:07 AM posted by Oscar
Last night, the cafe downstairs--Cafe San Millan--had a fire and Oscar came to sleep in our bed, because the firemen were pounding on the walls and it sounded like a giant water lizard was coming to get us all.
This morning Oscar woke up yelling and told me that he had a dream that a "caballero me ha pinchado en la espalda con una espada" (that a knight stabbed me in the back with a sword). He has such vivid nightmares... Later in the day, he told me that there were pirates with swords, as well, and that in the end, he herded them all into a rocket shut the door and sent them into space. He also told me that the water lizard's teeth fell out, because he didn't brush them and that everything was safe now.
In the afternoon, we went to see Ludmila. She and Gullermo were visiting Madrid and we really wanted Oscar to see her. He misses her so much. She was at Complutense with her capoeira group. It was fun getting to see them do their thing and Oscar loved seeing her, but cried when it was time to say goodbye. They definitely have a special connection.
After, we went to Principe Pio to walk around in the air conditioning and bought Oscar some clothes he needed for school. He has gained some weight this summer, staying home with us and eating more. As have we. He's still pretty small for his age, the effects of which are exacerbated by being the youngest in his class. I hope he has a growth spurt soon and catches up a bit.
Still no word from Jonathan in NO... though we do know that the building he was in was evacuated yesterday via helicopter. Even though we haven't watched anything on TV, just talking about the flood and hurricane has scared Oscar. We keep trying to reassure him that he's safe here, but he somehow picked up on the scope of the disaster, even though we try not to talk about specifics around him. He got so upset about it, that Christian told him to go draw a picture of it (a tactic we now use when he gets upset about something that we can't really do anything about). He drew a perfect spiral hurricane that took up the entire page with waves of flood all around it and then drew a helicopter with Jonathan in it. More "Natural Disaster" art.... We'll send it to Jonathan when he has a home again.
Thursday, September 01, 2005
2:59 AM posted by Oscar
I think I lost a post or two...
This is a strange time. With too much time on my hands, I have suddenly gotten up to date on what is going on in the world and--as the fish in the Cat and the Hat says--I do not like it, not one little bit. I'm very heartbroken about the hurricane in New Orleans. That city has always been special to me--it's where Christian and I went on our first roadtrip to Jazzfest together and really fell in love with the place and each other. And it was our cultural haven when we lived in backwards Baton Rouge.
Christian's cousin, Jonathan, lives there and decided to ride the storm out and we still haven't heard from him. Though we do know that he was staying in a highrise, which is some consolation, given that 80% of the city is now under water. Just two days before the hurricane, an art show that Jonathan curated opened. It was entitled "Natural Disaster III". The third in a series that called on artists to contemplate nature, impending doom, and the reality of living below sea level. Prophetic.
And catching up on the news has been troubling on so many other fronts that I won't get into right now. I find myself cursing George Bush several times a day, as if he were some sort of gremlin who mucks up the philosophical works of the universe and causes nothing but chaos to issue forth. I need to get back into school so that I can retreat into 15th century Spanish literature again. And this is proving to be a gargantuan task. I still don't really know what I'll be doing this year and I won't know for quite a while. In fact if all goes as planned, I won't find out what I'm doing until two months after I've started.
Wait, this is Oscar's blog and I'm just rambling on about myself. Oscar is doing well. He can't wait to start school again and asks about it every day. He misses everyone so much. I know he feels like he is in exile here at home with us. When we go to the park or even just out for a walk, he goes around asking every kid "¿quieres jugar?" (Do you want to play?).
I can't remember if I posted this before, but we have two new snails: Spirata III and Happiness III. They are very happy snails and have been with us for a month now. They love to eat cucumber and melon. Happiness is the bigger and more sociable of the two. Spirata loves cucumber and eats a hole through the middle to make it doughnut shaped. And they love each other, too. A lot. In fact, we've caught them in the act several times. Snails are hermaphrodites, so it is really something to see. So far they haven't laid any eggs (shame on them for not procreating as god intended!). Their little cage has Oscar's rock collection in it along with a bit of cork tree from our "belen".
In other news, we bought a guitar to compensate ourselves for living without AC this summer. It has been great to have it around and has improved the quality of our lives a bit. I'm learning lots of songs. The little I knew before is coming back to me.
Christian is playing lots of gigs. Oscar likes to play his little harmonica that Shannon and Patrick gave him while Christian is practicing.
Right now Oscar has lots of preoccupations. The biggest embodiment of his many fears is a character he has invented called "the water lizard"--a.k.a. la lagartija del agua. I suppose you could say he is Oscar's "George Bush," except with the added terror that he eats human beings. I don't have any idea where this all comes from, but we're trying to work through the whole thing. This morning, I myself had a dream about him/it. In my dream, Oscar was running around in a circle chasing something. I, being somehow bigger than I normally would be, stepped on the thing he was chasing. I asked him what it was and he said "that was the water lizard, mama." I looked down and just saw a reptilian skeleton on the ground. Then I woke up. I told Oscar later about my dream and asked him whether it was bad or good that I killed the water lizard and he said it was "very good" in a somewhat awestruck voice.
Well that's all for tonight. It's 3:30am. I'm on a whacky schedule these days. Got to go do the Spanish crossword puzzle to put myself to sleep.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
