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Imagination Alleke picked up a bread crumb off the table, dropped it on the floor, and leaned over to see where it had fallen.
"Here doggie," she said, "food," and pointed at the crumb.
April and I looked at each other. We didn't own a dog.
I peered under the table and looked for something that might have reminded Alleke of a dog. I didn't see anything, only more crumbs.
"Doggie, food!" Alleke shouted impatiently. She picked up another crumb and tossed it.
April and I watched Alleke feed the dog some more, as if we were playing charades and Alleke was acting out the same word or phrase until we guessed what it was. April finally guessed right. "I think she's using her imagination," she said.
I suppose it seems obvious that kids use their imaginations. Most of us return to our childhoods to think of a time when we used our imaginations. Still, not all kids use their imaginations—the smallest ones don't. The ability to imagine is something that's developed over time, meaning that up until now Alleke has been a very literal, concrete person. She could remember something that had happened to her, but she couldn't imagine a hypothetical situation, something that hadn't happened, but could have happened.
April and I were so used to Alleke only talking about things that were actually real that when Alleke said she was feeding the dog, I looked under the table.
So I started to play along. I broke the end off the baguette and pretended to feed the dog under the table, tearing off pieces and hiding them, then showing Alleke what was left so it actually looked like the dog was eating the bread.
Alleke's eyes went wide. She stood up in her high chair and pointed at what was left in my hand.
"Doggie, doggie," she chanted. She reached for me to set her down on the ground and ran around the table looking for the dog.
That's when I realized we weren't imagining anymore. Alleke had only begun learning how to imagine, and somehow in the process of me feeding the dog, the dog had became real. She thought I was actually feeding a dog.
I sighed. I didn't know how to break it to Alleke that there was no dog under the table.
"Doggie?" Alleke asked innocently, holding out her hands.
Today is Alleke's birthday, and we got her a goldfish.
When April first mentioned the idea of getting Alleke a goldfish a couple weeks ago, I said, "Don't you think we'll kill it?"
April shrugged. "I guess Alleke will have her first lesson about life and death," she said.
So, there you have it, we got Alleke a lesson about life and death for her birthday.
Last night on the way home from the pet store I also stopped in a book store and bought Alleke a book for her birthday. It's called When I'm Mad, and it's about how to control your anger. It seems rather odd now that I think about it, but I liked the book, and it seemed useful.
So, in sum, Alleke is getting a lesson about life and death for her birthday and then a book to help her deal with her emotions afterwards. It's a complete package.
Alleke screams now. It all began over a piece of birthday cake. I got the last one, topped with vanilla ice cream, and sat down on the couch to eat it when Alleke noticed me take my first bite. Immediately she was at my side, standing on her tippy toes, and peering into my dish.
I was hesitant to share. I'll admit it. I mean it was my birthday cake, and I was the one who had slaved away for an entire morning to make it, and well, this was the last piece.
I took another bite, expecting Alleke to do what she always does, which is to cock her head like a puppy, smile big for the camera, and ask politely, "Ice keem, peas?" Instead, she clinched her fists, pressed her eyes shut, and screamed.
A scream is so much more than noise. It's unfiltered emotion. It's like taking off the muffler or popping the hood and listening to the engine roaring inside of us. For a brief moment, it tells us what's going on inside someone, and almost always, we're startled by what we hear.
Alleke wanted ice cream, but instead of asking, this time she screamed because something had changed about her. The untamed creature inside of her called her will, which was not bound by reason or virtue, had finally been freed from its cage. It was a wild beast, roaming around inside of her, howling at the moon.
At bedtime I asked Alleke if I could brush her teeth, and she screamed in my face. I told her the sooner we brushed her teeth, the sooner she could have her blankie and read books, but I guess it was too important to her to sit there at the edge of her changing table holding her toothbrush and shrieking. So, I left her there. I came back a couple times to check on her, and she was still exercising her lungs. Eventually I lied and told her I was going to bed. I said "Night night," turned off the lights, and left her in the dark.
"Daddy?" I heard her ask quietly.
Sometimes I find it so difficult not to get mad at Alleke when she screams. I end up yelling at her for yelling at me. It's like trying to make peace in the Middle East with big guns. I'm such an emotional person, she gets me going immediately. I can only imagine what it's going to be like when she's a teenager. We won't need words, only fog horns.
I can't help feeling like we're starting over again as parents. Up until now we've relied on Alleke to tell us what she needed. We trusted that when she cried, she needed something. When she said she was hungry, she was hungry. When she looked tired, it was time for her nap. We took our cues from her. But that's not working anymore because of this wild beast that's loose inside her. Now Alleke not only needs things, she wants things too. She relies less on her instinct, and more on her will, and she's actually making decisions for herself. Some of her decisions are terrible, and April and I need to help her learn how to make good decisions for herself.
Alleke's metamorphosis caught me so off guard I actually dug through some boxes under our bed until I found my old Developmental Psychology textbook from college. I found this interesting part in the book about Erik Erikson's stages of psychosocial development. Basically, this guy says life can be boiled down to a series of eight challenges or crises. At each stage of life, there's a specific challenge we need to overcome. For a newborn, the challenge is trusting her parents, and by extension, the world around her. She wants to know if her needs will be met and if her parents care for her. Erikson calls this challenge Trust vs. Mistrust.
In the second challenge, which is where I think Alleke's at right now, a toddler realizes for the first time that she's an individual, and she can make decisions for herself. This challenge is called Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt. By exercising her will in all kinds of different situations, she learns that she can make good decisions with positive outcomes and bad decisions that carry consequences. She can do some things for herself, and for the rest she can rely on others like Mom and Dad to help her.
I looked up from the book. Adolescence starts earlier than I thought. For a brief moment, I imagined an independent Alleke backpacking through the jungles of Peru with dread locks and an eyebrow piercing.
The point was Alleke wasn't acting up, she was acting her age. She was supposed to start screaming now in the same way puppies are supposed to pee all over the floor—until you train them. Alleke needed to be trained too, and well, that's about as far as I've gotten in my thinking.
For now, the only thing I was certain about was Alleke wasn't getting any of my birthday cake.
Pan de Leche Alleke learned today that you can't drink bread through a straw.
Hey People! this photo taken of Alleke at a friend's house last year at this time
At the one end of our living room that looks out over the street, we have two tall windows that stretch from the floor almost to the ceiling. We always leave them open, and when I say always, I mean even when we leave the house. We live in the desert, so the chance of rain on any given day is about 1 to 9.7 trillion. (Does this number sound familiar to anyone else?).
Alleke hasn't paid much attention to the windows until last week when she got in the habit of standing in front of them, grabbing hold of the bars of the balcony, and yelling at the people crisscrossing the cobblestone street below.
"Hey people!" she likes to yell in English.
When the innocent bystanders finally discover that small voice coming from heaven is actually a toddler yelling at them from the window overhead, they always look relieved, and Alleke begins waving frantically. She's made a new friend.
I'm 29. I stopped by the bread shop on Tuesday and told everyone it was my birthday. I'm 29. Everyone cheered, Erica gave me kisses, and Cristina said, "Wait, I've got something for you!"
She ducked behind the counter and reappeared with a handful of candy bars and suckers.
"Here," she said. "They're for Alleke."
I left the bread shop with two baguettes under my arm and pushed Alleke down the street, still trying to find the logic for why Alleke should get presents on my birthday.
More Photos of Alleke The first few photos might be repeats if you looked at our recent beach photos, but the rest are new, including Alleke playing soccer and basketball, splashing around in the river, riding the metro, etc.
Alena Review As you've probably noticed, I don't normally write reviews for this blog. However, when Ari from Edgecliff Press emailed me, introduced himself as a work-from-home dad who started a publishing company, and asked if I would review a children's book called Alena about a dad and his daughter, he found a soft spot: I was curious to read this book featuring a dad like me.
I told Ari I would review the book on one condition: Alleke had to approve the book first. I've learned that just because I like a children's book doesn't mean my two-year-old daughter will like it too. I don't claim to understand the mind of a toddler, but after reading Alena with Alleke for four months, I can say she likes it.
The book is a bit long with 30 pages, so we often skip ahead, and most of the humor is directed towards the parent, but Alleke is absolutely fascinated by the illustrations. If I ever write a children's book, I will ask Jakub Kuzma to do the illustrations because they tell a story in themselves. I find something new hidden in the illustrations every time I read the book. Also, the text is actually woven through the illustrations, visibly tying the illustrations to the words of the story. It's unconventional, but surprisingly effective.
Also, as someone attempting to be an involved dad, I think it's helpful for Alleke and me to see other positive example of dads interacting with their kids. As pathetic as it might be, I feel like the book validates what I'm trying to do. If it's in a book, it must be legitimate, even if I'm usually the only dad out on the playground.
I recommend Alena, mostly for the illustrations, and for the opportunity to promote healthy and active relationships between dads and their kids. But, you don't have to take my word for it, you can actually read the entire story for yourself online before you consider buying the book.
A little boy and girl were shoveling sand into cups and serving them as lemon ice cream to anyone who walked by. I pointed them out to Alleke, who was pretending to ride a motorcycle on a spring, and asked if she wanted to play with them.
Alleke always says yes when I ask her if she wants to play with other kids. The only condition is I have to come too. So, I followed her over to the ice cream parlor where the little boy and girl were garnishing their cups of ice cream with dried leaves. I helped Alleke find a place to sit between them and showed her a plastic scoop she could use.
Alleke studied the situation for a moment, then got up, took a few steps back, and sat down again, far enough away that she didn't have to play with the little boy and girl, but she could still watch them.
This summer didn't turn out exactly how I had hoped. Because we were traveling so much, Alleke didn't get the opportunity to go to the playground on a regular basis and develop significant relationships with the kids there. As a result, I often feel like a dad on a leash. The other parents chat on benches around the perimeter of the playground while their kids run off to play, and then there's me, chasing Alleke. I've always loved the fact that Alleke wants to play with her daddy, but recently I've begun to wonder if I'm actually stopping her from playing with her peers.
While my Dutch friend Marlies pointed out that Alleke might just be shy and that's okay, I also want to make sure that I've given Alleke enough opportunities to be a social person if that's who she is. It would be one thing if Alleke was always around other kids, and she was still shy, but it's another thing if she's a social person, but feels awkward around other kids because she simply hasn't had the chance to get to know them and learn how to play with them. Alleke doesn't have siblings, she spends most of her time with her parents, and her parents don't have many friends who have kids, so she doesn't have the opportunity to interact with other kids very often.
So, April and I are thinking about sending Alleke to day care. We've never needed day care in the past because we made the decision to have one of us home at all times to care for Alleke. However, our current lifestyle doesn't give Alleke the opportunity to play with a group of kids on a regular basis and build friendships. If we could find a day care where Alleke could go maybe two mornings a week, that would be ideal.
Still, I'm not sure we can afford to send Alleke to day care, even two days a week. We've spent five years working for international churches here in Madrid, and our jobs allow us to include Alleke in much of what we do. But as our Spanish tutor pointed out yesterday, "You're obviously not here for the money." I didn't realize it was that obvious. He's right, though. We might not be able to pay someone else to help Alleke make friends. We might have to help her ourselves.
A handful of nuns run a day care in an old stone convent on the square down the street. My friend Joe used to send his daughter there, so I'll give him a call this morning and ask a few questions.
In the meantime, I'll try to give Alleke a little more space at the playground.
However, as of two weeks ago, I am a legal resident in Spain once again, which is why tonight April had our adoption folder open on the table trying to figure out what we have to do next.
At one point April slid one of the papers across the table to me, leaned back in her chair, and sighed.
I took a look at the piece of paper. It was a list of certificates we needed in order to officially begin our adoption, which included birth and marriage certificates, a certain kind of medical certificate, proof of insurance for our adopted child, a criminal history record, and a couple others I didn't recognize.
"You're right," April said, "it is more fun making babies the other way."
We spent two days at the beach last week, and apparently Alleke is a beach girl now because when I asked her if she wanted to go to the playground this morning, she shook her head and said, "No playground."
I gaped. "You don't want to go to the playground?" I asked.
"BEACH!" she screamed, as if the answer was obvious.
I didn't have the heart to tell her she lives in the middle of the desert in the one city in Spain farthest from any coast.
Motion Sickness Shani wrenched the steering wheel and bumbled off the highway towards a gas station. She brought the car to a screeching halt, the doors sprung open, and all six of us scrambled out—as if the car were swarming with bees.
In fact, Alleke had vomited in the car. She was too young to know to use the paper bag in front of her, so she had fought the car seat and swung her head around like a loose garden hose, retching all over herself, the seats, and those of us trying to help her. The backseat looked like a paintball park, my nose burned from the smell of ammonia, and Allleke was screaming hysterically, no doubt horrified that her body had gone into reverse.
One of the side effects of living in the city without a car, we've discovered, is motion sickness. April laments how she used to be able to ride in a car backwards reading a book for hours without a problem. Now, because she goes everywhere on foot, even the thought of getting in a car makes her stomach turn.
After that trip, we abandoned our car seat at a friend's house. We just left it there on their porch without even washing it. Six months passed. Then, a couple weeks ago our friends David and Daphne asked if we wanted to take a road trip to Valencia—in their car—and we said yes. Unfortunately we couldn't avoid cars forever.
The day before our road trip, we stopped by to pick up the car seat, wash it out, and take it home. While we stood in front of our apartment building and I dug around in my pockets for the keys, Alleke held up her hand and said, "No casa."
"You don't want to go home?" I asked.
"Where do you want to go?" April probed.
"Broom broom," Alleke replied, her chin up, pointing at the car seat sitting on the sidewalk.
I raised an eyebrow.
"You want to go in a broom broom," I said, as condescendingly as if she had asked me to buy her a pony. "Do you remember the last time you rode in a broom broom?"
Alleke nodded and giggled. "Broom broom," she said.
April and I spent the rest of the day explaining a new concept to Alleke called "tomorrow." Just when I thought Alleke understood she had to go "night night" before she could get in the car, she walked over and started dragging the car seat towards the front door, stopping occasionally to point at the door and say, "Broom broom."
The car trip to Valencia went fine. Alleke is finally old enough to take Dramamine, so she slept most of the way. I'm sitting here at the beach scribbling these words down in a notebook while I watch April and Alleke scamper back and forth down the beach collecting shells. Now that we're here, I think I'm beginning to understand why Alleke wanted to get in that car seat, even though it made her sick before.
Alleke has learned that getting in a car means being together as a family. It means she has Mom and Dad all to herself, and finally she gets all the attention she wants. It means Mom and Dad don't have to go to work. It means she gets to play all day. Ultimately, I think it means Alleke weighed the costs of getting sick again and decided it was still worth it to her to get in the car.
Parents make sacrifices for their kids, and sometimes, kids make sacrifices for their parents.
Alleke's Cooking Show On today's show Alleke demonstrates how to make Saturday morning pancakes from scratch.
Alleke scampered along behind us through the park picking up leaves, too busy to notice what was going on around her until a puppy bounded over, all wriggles, and sniffed the leaves in her hand.
Alleke froze, then dropped the leaves and made a run for it. I picked her up, and she wrapped her arm around my neck like I was her life preserver. Together we watched the puppy paw at the leaves.
"Alleke, what does a dog say?" I asked.
Selfishly, I take every opportunity to ask Alleke what dogs say because when she was less than a year old she started making this adorable noise that sounds a lot like a dog barking. It's "um um," and the sound is deep and muffled like someone drilling into the wall next door.
I suppose what makes Alleke's "um um" so adorable is watching her try to express what she is hearing around her, with the result being both remarkably accurate and uniquely Alleke.
Imagine my sadness, then, when Alleke pointed at the puppy playing in the leaves and answered, "Ruff ruff."
Parental Discretion Advised Last night we were watching TV before bed, and April had Alleke on her lap. The show we were watching seemed relatively harmless until one point when the main character's skin melted off his face, and he turned into a talking meatball. I grimaced, and April put her hand over Alleke's eyes.
When the scene changed, and April thought it was safe for Alleke to watch again, she took her hand away.
Alleke must have thought the show was still too scary because she took April's hand, put it back over her eyes, and held it there.
Madrid Plane Crash Our sympathies to those who were affected by the plane crash at the airport here in Madrid yesterday. At least 153 of the 172 passengers died. Some of the victims were children.
Heidi's 21st Birthday April's sister, Heidi, has been living with us since May. She flew back to Iowa yesterday so she could be home for her birthday, which is today, and start her Junior year of college next week.
We wanted to celebrate Heidi's birthday before we left, so we invited a few friends to the park on Sunday. Heidi doesn't like cake, but she loves Spanish tortilla (which is sort of like an omelet), so we stuck the candles in the Spanish tortilla instead. Rodrigo, who is from Madrid, commented that he had never seen that done before. I'm not surprised.
Anyway, I couldn't think of a better birthday gift for Heidi than to post this video of her birthday party, knowing full well that Alleke will ask to watch this video every single day of her toddler life. Heidi, your legacy as Alleke's aunt will live on.
Alleke misses you already, and April and I do too. I accidentally set a plate out for you at lunch today out of habit.
5,641 photos Today I was showing April some photos I had taken, and she noticed that it said on my computer that I have taken 5,641 photos since Alleke was born 22 months ago (which doesn't include the thousands I've taken and deleted).
I did the math and found out I take an average of 8 photos a day (mostly of Alleke).
There are two channels to choose from, and in full-screen mode the quality is actually better than my TV (We don't get great reception in our apartment).
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As you've probably noticed, I don't normally write reviews for this blog. However, when Ari from 
