The life and times of Oscar Marcos Perez-Cytron. Born Thanksgiving Day 11/22/01.
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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...
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Sunday, March 12, 2006
10:56 PM posted by Oscar
Oscar is eating a lot better these days. He seems to be putting on weight and generally seems to feel better. Though he still raises hell occasionally about eating. Tonight I made him dinner and he ranted at me because he wanted tacos. He said, "Mama, you hurt my feelings by not making tacos. I don't know if you are a good person now." Such a crazy drama queen at times. As Oscar should already know, Christian is the taco maker in this household. He makes the black beans and tortillas from scratch. No way am I going to do that! There's only room for one domestic god per family. But once he sat down at the table with the food in front of him, he was fine and ate his noodles with tofu, carrots and snow peas.
We had a long talk with his teacher--Rosa--last week. She said that he seems like a happy kid, always playing and laughing and constantly talking. Maybe too much, because he doesn't like to sit down and do his "table work." The day we went in, he had given another kid a bloody nose by playing too rambunctiously. Christian and I were scandalized, but she seemed to take it in stride. Oscar was on the "lista de no puedo" (the "I can't" list), which means he wasn't allowed to join in the reindeer games for the rest of the day. Rosa also told us that Oscar has the helper in the class--Mónica--wrapped around his finger and that he gets her to spoil him and baby him, which drives Rosa crazy. Any one who spends any time with Oscar will quickly learn that he has a nemesis at school named Pablo. He is always telling stories like "Pablo cracked my head playing bullfighting (jugando a toros)" or "Pablo took my hat off and threw it on the ground", etc., etc. We asked his teacher about Pablo and it seems that Pablo and another boy, Guillermo, have been friends for a while. Now Oscar and Guillermo are also friends and there seems to be some sort of triangle of jealously forming. Rosa said that Oscar and Pablo both seem to hold grudges and are nervous types. Apparently Guillermo doesn't seem to care one way or the other.
On a positive note, his motor skills seem to be improving a lot. From what I can tell, he's basically a year behind, but is making steady progress. He's just not all that interested in mastering new physical abilities, but luckily they work on a lot of this kind of stuff at school and they are constantly running around.
Rosa said he is speaking Spanish really well. I think he doesn't speak it as well as he does English--at least he doesn't seem to express complicated thoughts as well as he does in English--but he may be ahead of the game in that department. I really don't have any other English speaking kids his age to compare him to--the few that we know are also bilingual--so it's hard to say. His drawings are still kind of chaotic and messy, but that seems to be getting better. Right now, he and I are working on reading and writing and he's making a lot of progress when he is interested. One of his biggest problems seems to be that he gives up on trying something when it doesn't work for him right away. I'm trying to break him of that bad habit, but it's possible that he inherited this from me...
I'm still in school. I passed two of my classes from last semester--Phonetics and 20th Century Lit--which was a relief. I dropped Latin (it wasn't as easy as I thought it would be...). This semester, I'm taking Latin American Lit, Medieval Lit, Morphology, and Literary Theory, my favorite class. Looks like I'm going to be getting a lot of my transfer credits, so I may just manage to get a degree here, after all.
Christian is playing a lot and working very hard at things that don't come easily to him (strange experimental euro-jazz compositions in weird time signatures that he is playing with a big band). He's a full-time musician--something we weren't sure would ever be possible--so the work is paying off.
So things are really busy and crazy, but fundamentally good. And best of all spring is here and we can enjoy being outside again.
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
2:18 AM posted by Oscar
 Oscar to Christian, observing a flock of birds migrating:
"Look, at the sky, Papi. It's so beautiful. It's like a, a, a... a giant penis flying in the sky."
He's been complaining and lamenting a lot about school lately. He seems happy when he leaves school, but then when he gets home, he complains a lot about the other kids and says he feels sad, etc. Today I talked to his teacher and she said he has more fun than anyone in class and that he was constantly laughing and playing, etc. On the way home, I asked Oscar whether it was true that he was happy at school and he said "yes." Then I asked him why he always told stories about being sad and focused on the negative and he said: "because that's a lie and lies and sad stories are more interesting." I just don't know what to do with him sometimes.
He's also still obsessed with where meat comes from, hunters, carnivores/herbivores, and the like. He wants to know exactly what process everything he eats experienced/underwent before eating it. He also wants to know if the meat in question came from an animal that ate meat. Before I crack open an egg, he wants to know if there's a dead chick in it! Oh, and with the sad puppy dog eyes: "but why, mama, why do they have to kill the pig and cut off his leg and make ham?" I dread these unanswerable questions.
Did I mention that we have fish? Four guppies, four neons, two little orange fish, and a suckerfish (chupalgas). He named one of the neons "flecha" (arrow), another Christian and I named Jawbox, one of the guppies is named "guapetón/Mr. Fancy Pants", and I like to call the sucker chupacabras. I'll admit, the fish kind of stress me out. First of all they live under water and that's a paradigm that I don't understand. Second, they are always moving. Third, they fight amongst themselves when they think we aren't watching. Fourth, they have a very strange and rigid social stratification amongst themselves that I find troubling.
But Oscar loves them. He comes home and tells them about his day at school. He feeds them. He likes taking care of them.
Lots more going on, but it's late, so I'll keep it short. I posted a few pictures of Oscar's school's Carnaval parade here:
http://cubansandwich.shutterfly.com
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