Juli La Chuli: October 2005

Sitting Tall

Ho! As Shakira would squeal, "mi vida! mi vida!" No measuring my life in Nestle Nidina spoons like TS Eliot; it has been very chaotic and exciting lately. On Monday my parents left me at Yaya's for the day and just when I had resigned myself to spending the night there and drifted off to sleep, they suddenly showed up well past my bedtime and woke me up and spirited me away in my mom's car. The ride home was so funny that I was collapsed in guffaws the entire way because one minute my father wouldn't be there and then he would mysteriously reappear from behind the seat in front of me. There were also lights everywhere I looked because it was dark, so everything was vying for my attention and bemusement. Lately it gets dark before my bedtime, so if I am out in the afternoon, I get to see the city in a new vibrant light and that makes me happy. For example, on Tuesday night we went to Pili Carrera to buy me a new pair of shoes because I absent-mindedly kicked one of them off over the weekend when we were out walking and nobody was looking. My legs have grown so long that I like to put them up on the handle bars of the bugaboo now to stretch them and I guess I got a little too comfortable. The other big news is that I can sit up now from a lying down position with just a little bit of assistance from my father's index finger and can mostly stay up like that except when I get a little too casual or sloppy and fall backwards. That pisses me off and hurts my Spanish pride, but I get right back up again. It also makes it easier to lunge at things that I feel like grabbing, so sometimes I end up going over flat on my face and I still am not too sure how one deals with that position. It's also getting cooler outside now, so I mostly wear long pants or, on occasion, leotards, which I don't like it all because they preclude me from putting my toes in my mouth. I'm being a little more cooperative in diversifying my palate and eat pretty much everything that's thrown my way, but I really love yogurt. Mmmmmm. Yesterday there was a mix-up in feedings and I ended up getting to eat two whole ones before anybody realized it. That's about all for now. Rumor has it that my Tia Inma might be taking me for a whole day soon to find out how much fun it is to spend that much time with a personality as dynamic and expressive as mine.

Very Busy Lately

Well, this is my first update in a long time, but I have a lot of excuses. Last month, my paternal grandfather became very sick, so my father went back to Boston to be with him and my grandmother. This is the first time something truly sad and bad has happened in my young life and it affected me in a lot of ways. First my mother went to China because she is a very important business woman and then she also went to Boston because she is a very important wife. I still don't have my United States' passport and I do not want to enter the country as an "alien," so I was obliged to spend even more time than usual at my YaYa Cristina's house. She has a lot of things for me to do and look at, but I must confess that when I spend all of my time over there, I get a little bit spoiled. Let me put it to you this way: if you could pass your day either lying on your back and slapping your mobiles and drifting in and out of consciousness or being carried around and loved and kissed and told how wonderful you are while having a limitless number of things to grab and investigate, which situation would you be clamoring for? So adjusting to being back at home and having a little more discipline imposed on my life has been a difficult transition for me. I prefer to think that my needs have just become more complicated and, in response, I have developed a more diverse range of sounds and responses to communicate them. I have a new language all my own (an no, it's not esperanto) that is adequate for now and even relies heavily on the "da da da" sound, which I am told will come in handy later. It's useful for talking to myself - which I do a lot of when I am playing or when I first wake up in the morning in a good mood and don't wish to bother my parents yet. Sometimes when I get very spacey, I also make extended sounds like a creaky door or talk in the voice from "The Shining" (Danny's not here, Mrs. Torrance) to freak people out. More important than all that, however, is that my Grandpa Pablo was too sick to be able to ever come and see me again or have me visit him in France or Boston, so I will have to remember how he was the times we spent together and listen very carefully to what everybody who knows him says when they reminisce about what a good person he was and the funny and helpful things he said. As long as he is alive in the minds of all of the people that are very close to me, then I think I will feel like I knew him better and he will stay with me too.

I also went to my first birthday party last week. Actually, my friend Cosima was celebrating her first birthday. Our moms are very good friends, so we got along right away. You can see evidence of that in the picture posted below.

With respect to my personal maintenance, I have switched from five meals a day to four and I'm incorporating more things into my diet, which I do not like so much. It takes me a few days to get used to anything new and, to be honest, I was happier just drinking milk whenever the need came over me. I went to see that bastard Doctor Puy last week and aside from torturing me and giving me shots like he always does, he told my parents that I should start eating meat broth and add other boring foods to the pears, oranges, plums and kiwis that I quite like. He also gave me yet another shot in my butt, but promised that it will be the last one for eight months. Ya veremos. The good news of the day was that I am now nearly 75 centimeters tall, which is the average height for a girl of 11.5 months. As you may recall, I just turned seven months old, so I would like to start learning volleyball soon. Other than that, I have learned how to sit up and keep my balance pretty well and that helps me to lunge at the things that I feel like grabbing. I am still not very good at crawling on my belly like a reptile and tend to get frustrated pretty quickly when I can't get anywhere. By my next post, hopefully I'll have it together and be a mover and a shaker!