letters from barcelona

Max has his cousins over. Big night! First ever sleepover! Too much TV, too much pizza, too much ice cream. But can you have more fun than a sleepover? No. Anyway, nothing goes with a sleepover and cousins like a delicious dose of arguing and bragging.

Cousin K: Well, the real party will be upstairs. We’ve got a laptop and can stay up all night.

Cousin S: No way. We will have the DS. We’ve got Super Mario Brothers!

Max gets a look on his face with the kind of smug that only a person who has no idea at all what he is talking about can get.

Max: Whatever, S. [Small, slightly superior laugh] Super Mario Brothers, ha! You don’t even have a brother.

The scene: It’s the day of the Superbowl (I know, but, honestly, who has the time?). Max falls asleep for nearly 3 hours on the couch. Oh well, we figure, he’ll be up late for the game. Did I mention the kid has become obsessed with football? He’s one of the seven people in the world to have watched the entire Pro Bowl. Anyway, too much sleep. At halftime, we put him to bed, but he couldn’t fall asleep.

I tried to leave his room – Abe had long since fallen asleep – but he started to freak out and insisted that I stay.

Max: Don’t go! Lay down on my bed.

Me: Ok, ok. A few minutes.

Max: No. Twenty minutes.

Me: Ok, sure. [He can't exactly tell time]

A few minutes pass. Max starts to snore a little. I try to sneak out.

Max: Don’t go!

Time passes. And passes. And passes. I try to sneak out twice more, to no avail. Finally…

Max: Ok, you can go.

Me: Great, I’m proud of you. You can totally go to sleep by yourself…

Max: [cutting me off] No, you just smell too much like beer.

Me: Uh, ok, goodnight.

Max: Don’t forget to record the rest of the game for me.

So, for the third year in a row, I decided it was time to teach Max to ski. He’s liked it each of the past two years, but learned very little other than that a ski lodge is an excellent place to whine for candy.

We headed out on Friday evening. After five minutes of talking excitedly about skiing and visiting his cousins, Max said, “I. Am. So. Bored.”

I suggested games, singing, sleeping, and eating. No dice.

“I know,” said Max.

“Yes?”

“I need a snack.”

“Chips? Clementine? Apple juice? Pretzels?”

The unmistakable sigh of the child cursed with exceptionally dumb parents came from the back seat. “Dad,” he said. “You know what I need: something chewy. And sour.”

“Hmm,” I said. “Lemon peels?”

“Dad!!! You know I mean Skittles.”

I did know that. Luckily, or unluckily, Route 2 in Lincoln is not a great place for skittles, the fancier towns outside of Boston having long since outlawed all candy not made in an artesanal manner. We drove and whined. It. Was. Super. Fun.

Finally we got off the highway and found our way to a gas station. Gas stations on the highway are essentially supermarkets of crap, and it makes it nearly impossible to take a kid in from a car trip to the bathroom without a candy-based argument. But we didn’t have an argument: we had a collapse by one side, mine, and a victory by Max’s. So it goes. I still am taller, for what its worth.

Skittles in hand, we continued on to VT. He used a flashlight to identify them by color.

“Dad, look at this one: half yellow, half green!”

“I’ll look when we get to Vermont.”

“Yes,” he said. “Please do.”

Finally Max fell asleep, then woke up, ready to rock, at 11 o’clock, and arriving at a ginormous mansion in the woods inhabited by his grandparents was plenty of stimulation to wake him up completely. Ninety minutes later, he was asleep. At 12:30 in the morning. Ok, father of the year nomination: locked up tight.

The next day we climbed up and down a teeny hill 1000 times and he sort of got it and then we took the chairlift up. I had him on a harness and we sort of picked our way down. I figured I was supposed to do some teaching, so I yelled helpful things like, “Turn left!” When I told Max that he could tell me to shut up if all my commands were bothering him he said, “Oh, I wish you had told me that before, because I really wanted to this morning.”

And then, oddly, by the end of the second day, he had done it: he wedged his tiny skis into a snowplow and made his little turns all the way down the bunny slope. And again. And again. More skittles, some gum, and 6 hot chocolates sealed the deal. No crap is too crappy for a skiing food.

Just before the crying. But still a good day.

Finally, my dad wanted to take a picture at the end of the day. Max stood and proudly smiled, until suddenly the thrill of skiing wore off. “Dad,” he wailed. “I am so cold that I can’t take it anymore! Get me inside!” So we did.

The ski harness has a handle, and I just lifted him up, slung him over my shoulder and carried him in. Ten minutes later, he was agitating for more gum. Apparently he had recovered.

Then he went to bed at 8, and slept until 9:30. 9:30! We should do this every weekend.

Ingredients:

• 6 cups apples
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/4 cup oats
• Dad, Max, Abe
• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
• laptop computer
• 5 tbsp butter
• cinnamon
• lemon juice
• apple juice
• one bowl pretzels
• one bowl chips

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Put children at dining room table. Put chips and pretzels in front of children. Put laptop far away from children, but not so far that they can’t see it. Responding to requests, start “the smashing things and all the paint” video. Remind children not to get snacks on laptop.
3. Peel and core apples. Restart video.
4. Try to convince Abe not to eat the apples, because soon they will be covered with sugar and butter. Realize how stupid this is. Give away one apple. Peel and core replacement. Sprinkle all apples except for the one Abe has with cinnamon, brown sugar, and lemon juice.
5. Break up small fight. Remind children not to touch computer. Wipe sticky hands. Start “funny dogs and all those garbage cans” video.
6. Mix oats, sugar, flour, cinnamon, and nuts.
7. Refill snack bowls. Start “guys falling off treadmills” video.
8. Cream butter into mixture. When children change their minds, do not reason with them. Wash hands, start “smashing things and all the paint” video.
9. Restart mixing butter into mixture.
10. Provide apple juice to both children, along with stern warning not to spill it on computer. Consider utility of this move; decide not to worry about nagging the children too much, because they are watching a sledgehammer hit a tv and therefore completely ignoring me.
11. Cover apples with butter-flour-sugar mixture. Tell children “it’s not good, wait until it’s cooked.”
12. Repeat.
13. Repeat.
14. Repeat.
15. Give each child one spoonful of butter mixed with brown sugar. Put crisp into oven before they can ask for more.
16. Restart “smashing things” video. Follow with “treadmills” video. Deny request to buy treadmills for house.
17. Serve with ice cream.

The scene: Abe is on the floor, smashing trucks into each other. Max is at a little table, drawing a roller coaster on a small white board. Abe notices Max. Hmm, thinks Abe, Max is doing something. I bet I could mess with that, and these trucks would still be here when I got back. Let’s go! Abe jumps up and smears the ink on the white board with his hand.

Max: Abe! Stop! (dramatic sigh) I wish I didn’t have a brother!

Abe: (huge smile – Abe has determined that, since he can smile in the face of almost any kind of angry voice, it is always the best move to just wait people out)

Max: (calming down a little) Well, I wish I didn’t have this whiteboard. (looks at the whiteboard, erases the smeared roller coaster, starts again)

Abe: (still grinning and waiting)

Max: Well, I guess what I wish is that Abe wouldn’t mess up my whiteboard.

Abe: (still grinning)

Max: (sigh) But that probably won’t happen.

We let the children watch lots of TV. Why? Because there are only two of us, and there are two of them, and TV sort of gives us a third grownup. The name of this grownup is Curious George. He does what we often cannot in the morning; make Abe stay in one place that is not the top of the dining room table or the counter next to the knife rack.

Figure 1

But today, while I was packing up his lunch, Abe came flying into the kitchen. He generally moves only in a run or a tumble. Note in Figure 1 how he is basically being held back to keep him from launching himself across the yard. He has already zipped right out of his shirt here. He moves fast and wonders about the consequences later, if at all.

Abe: Dad, come with me.

Me: Well, I’m making your lunch. In a minute.

Abe: (screaming, tears) No, now! Hold my hand!

Me: Ok, ok, calm down. What’s so exciting?

Abe pulls me into the living room to watch Curious George, then, using my hand for leverage, leaps up my body into my arms.

Abe: It has cows. Cows are very scary.

Not what I expected from Baby Deathwish. But it was true: he is terrified of cows.

How nice to have something exciting to do on a Sunday in Spain. When I travel, I tend to have an image of closed doors in a city that I don’t know very well. Not a very original image, clearly, but I always wind up jealous of people who have some kind of “in” – who know someone, or have some insider knowledge that gets them into places where tourists can’t go.

This is not about Fancy Nightclub Envy. When I was in Brazil we accidentally got into a Fashion Week Party, an occurrence I can only attribute to washing my clothes in the hotel sink for three weeks, and still this was boring. This is more about the fact that I already know that with a Visa card and a little effort, I can get into anything open to the public. No real challenge there. It’s just more fun to think about having put in the effort to get to know a place well enough to find stuff you just can’t pay to do.

Thus it is with Sundays in Spain. Listen, it isn’t 1986 – stuff is open. But people tend to hang out at home with their families. When we were here in 2003, we rarely saw our friends who had family in the area on Sunday. But this past Sunday we were reunited with our old friend Arancha. She’s now married and has two kids and a stepson; all three were there. Here she is with her husband, Kiko and youngest, Tonio:

Kiko whipped up a killer paella and Max was introduced to the joys of violent cartoons by his seven-year old counterpart, Roberto. All afternoon, the two of them managed to watch stuff or play soccer or swim together, asking us intermittently how to say this or that in English or Spanish to move things along. While Max clearly will not learn Spanish, per se, from this trip, he is definitely learning the pain of not being able to communicate and the joy of breaking through two different languages to be able to share a toy or agree on who will be goalie first. This is good stuff and I think that he is enjoying it, though he ends each day a puddle. Abe, of course, has no idea that he isn’t understood and he basically is flirting with all the Catalan moms in the courtyard and yelling with the other 2-year olds.

Having spent the entire afternoon in Spanish, we headed to Melissa and Colby’s for our sleepover. The boys marauded nicely together and the adults got to hang out without worrying that Abe was about to climb through a window or that Max and Colby were going to battle to the death over who had won an Uno game.

When we left, Abe was so worn out from partying that he napped for four and a half hours. Max and I played gin rummy with “the grown-up cards” and he was pretty darn proud of himself for using them, though he cannot hold a hand of cards without a plastic card holder thingy.

Today we decided halfheartedly that we should go do another outing and chose the Barcelona botanical gardens. Later, I asked our friend Jose, the tour guide, what he thought of them, and he said he had never been in his life. A wise move. Apparently an homage to semi-arid scrub, they featured numerous aloe plants and dying brownish bushes. See how excited Max was?

So. Freaking. Bored. Note the lame bushes in the background.

Things only got better when there was monkeying around and kissing. But this is true of many events.

Our friend Jose now lives outside the city, in Sitges, which is convenient for us because Sitges is on the beach and his apartment has a pool as well. This time, we did not leave all our luggage on the train, which made Max happy. When we went out there for the first time, a week or so ago, we were so addled by having to carry a sleepy Max and a wild Abe off the train that we forgot our, you know, stuff. Max was furious at us and basically told us that we should not be trusted to plan trips. But the train staff found the bags at the end of the line, I took the train 30 minutes to collect the bags, and we were back in business.

This time, as I said, we arrived without incident, and got quickly into the pool, like so:

Jose’s son, Colby, who is also 5, joined us for much of the festivities.

Max and Colby got along like 5 year old buddies do, which is to start 1000 fights, then, while the adults are trying to sort out the opposing sides, forget about said fights and tell us to stop talking. It was a relaxing three days. Even Abe got in on the action.

The best part of the little trip, though, was when we went out to dinner on the second night. Max and Colby went outside to play in the street, which is ok here, probably because the streets are 4 feet wide. They came back in, having run into Jose’s neighbors and their daughters, also 5 or 6 years old, with whom we had been playing in the pool all day. Well, “we” weren’t really playing with them – Colby was. Max was pretty shy about playing in a group of kids speaking Spanish. But at dinner, they all invented a game consisting of hitting each other with plastic bottles. Max did not have a bottle, but he put a pair of socks on his hands and everyone seemed to agree that that was fine by them. So he was in.

At the end, he said, “I’m so proud of myself!” So was I, for finding a way to communicate, but I wanted to hear him say that he had learned a lesson about how to join a group by just playing the game or being confident. He said, “I really hit Colby hard with my socks.” Perhaps the more important point. Lest you think, though, that they are not getting along, see how they play video games:

We are going to live to be 550 years old, now that Max is addicted to a few things.

Thing 1: Nutella. It can’t be worse than jelly, correct? And the jar says it is hazelnut paste, which is basically soy nut butter, which is essentially dirt and vitamins. Plus, after a hot morning kicking the ball around the courtyard, it dramatically improves his mood.

Can something that makes you smile like this be wrong?

Thing 2: Melon with jamon. A person needs protein (well, maybe not after all that hazelnut vitamin paste) and melon is a big green fruit and therefore clearly healthy. Together they are like the Wondertwins of breakfast. Look at it another way: if a little salty cured meat gets your kids to gorge themselves silly on nice healthy stuff, I say go for it.  Max and Abe are eating this stuff as if they do not know what a nice slice of jamon costs around here (30 Euros/kilo if you’re keeping score at home, but it is very light). Note the use of a fork as well, not something we get every day.

Serious consideration for the ham and melon breakfast. No smiling.

After breakfast we took our crazy stroller contraption and headed out of our courtyard and made our way to the metro. We are making this the Summer of the Hot Commute.

For the record, I push the stroller sometimes, too. It’s heavy. We headed for the University Gardens  but *surprise* it was closed. Thanks, Sunday. Whatever. We really just wanted to get lunch. Max ate even more pork and soon it was time to go home for Abe’s nap.

Max took the bus.

Actually, no. Usually it’s boring. But of course the World Cup comes with its own zip and of course people are a tidge more excited in Spain than in the US. Spain is, of course, nuts for soccer, and they had never even made the quarterfinals before this year, so they are sort of the Chicago Cubs or pre-2004 Red Sox of soccer. I suppose that should make it even more exciting than if we were in someplace that is used to winning, but since those places are Germany, Italy, and Brazil, probably not. Anyway, there were fireworks in the courtyard and, though Max has a touch of the world cup fever, he is scared of loud noises and therefore is rooting for Holland in the final.

More exciting for us has been his transformation from a sleep-deprived psychopath (the first seven days) to a well-rested and only occasionally insane kid. He has put away his mitt since a few days ago when he insisted that we buy him a soccer ball and it has not come out since. All his free time is spent kicking the ball against the walls of our courtyard. We would probably have preferred to have him just ask one of the 75 kids playing soccer in our courtyard if he could join them, since he plays only alone, and with a wide berth around him, or maybe with Abe if Abe is not chasing a dog, but Max is Max and he does not like crowds or kids taking the ball from him or anything like, you know, a pickup soccer game.

So we bash it off the wall for hours on end. But then two kids came to the courtyard with their dad around lunchtime and Max, out of nowhere, said in a whisper, “Dad, ask them if I can play.” Soon he was off to the races, only returning to us to report when he had understood a Spanish word. Here they are:

Max is about as good as any American 5-year old, but as he has been playing for 4 days straight, he can hold his own in kicking it around, so he had fun.

Later that week, we took him to the Aquarium. On the way, he went insane again and nearly had to return home, but he pulled it together long enough to be wowed by the sharks and stingrays. And then, after those, we popped out at the exit. For 50 Euros a family, the damn thing should last more than an hour.

We did better the next day, when we bought a little platform for the back of Abe’s stroller so Max no longer needs to walk. When all else fails, think,”if my kids were Renaissance princes, what would their parents do?” This preserved enough energy for him to make it to lunch, and he inhaled about $30 worth of tapas. Something about quince paste makes kids batty. Today he came with me to the water park, played in the sand, and then declared that he wanted…pickles. This can be bought from your neighborhood olive vendor, so we went off to find them, but he fell asleep on the way, then ate about 500 pickles when he woke up. Happy Hour!

Tomorrow we are unfortunately going to something like an air conditioned, indoor playground. Mostly this trip is doing the same crap we do at home with more Spanish, more meals out, and more pickle vendors. It is a good way to live.