Boricua en la Lima

I think this has to be one of the most insightful ads I've seen in a long time. Talk about a 180 difference from Pepsi!

I cannot believe I've been a mother for 10 years. I didn't think I would make it past 1 year! In fact, I remember having conversations with friends before getting pregnant about NOT wanting to get pregnant because I was afraid of bringing kids into this messed up world and not being able to protect them from all the evil in the world.  In fact, a couple of weeks after we had brough Gabi home we rented the movie Crash on Netflix and I remember telling my husband while we were watching the movie, "OMG, what have I done? How could I have been so careless? How could I have brought her into this world!?".  That world in the movie was so scary and so messed up and so randomly cruel, I just couldn't believe I was going to have to raise a kid in it (let alone two!). But, ten years later, my kids have shown me how wrong (and selfish) I was to think that way. They have taught me that even in this messed up world they can be smart, caring, considerate, loving, and worr...

It has been a whirlwind of a month! First Mom came to visit for about a month and that usually coincides with one of our kid´s birthdays (this time it was Sebas´ turn). So there was a lot of running around in the beginning of April to create the most magical of Star Wars birthday parties! Except if you´re a girl or a boy under the age of 6 and then you pretty much hated the party because Darth Vader and Darth Maul were the scariest things you had ever seen in your life. Then Mom left right after the birthday party and Dad came with his wife about 2 days later to spend Easter weekend with us. It was a great visit, we did a lot of touristy things that I don´t normally get to do with Mom.   We went to the Ballesta Isles in Paracas to see the wildlife, we went to pisco tours to learn about that whole process, and we went to do the sand buggies in the Ica dessert, something I had never done before which was really cool and highly recommended, except a little scary much like this...

We're on our way back to the train station from Machu Picchu and I am so happy that I've gotten to enjoy a well deserved couple of days off as well as seeing the kids enjoy themselves in Cuzco so much when I get am email from the school administration that a kid in pre-kinder has passed away. No name, no explanation, just a note saying that they have rallied all the counseling support they can to deal with this thing on Monday morning when the kids go back to school. First thing I wonder is if the kid was in my kid's classroom, were they friends? How will they explain this to my kid, how will I explain this to my kid? Will all the kids react as if it was a non-event or will their little worlds be shattered? Obviously this is nothing compared to Newton but I find myself at a loss here too, not understanding how God can let something so tragic and sad happen. It's Father's Day tomorrow and I feel so horrible for the parents of this kid, what they must be going throu...

Now it's time for me to write an Olympics post from behind a TV set instead of from a nosebleed seat from some Olympic venue in London.  It's my penultimate night in Switzerland and we've been reported for a noise complaint.  This embodies my experience in Switzerland.  Controlled madness.  I can be excited for Puerto Rico's performance in the Olympic games but not enough to bother the neighbors (oh and by the way a lady next door kept me up half the night bawling at 2:30 am two nights ago, super weird).  What propelled this noise complaint? (Normally I would be shocked but when it comes to my voice and decibels of course I am not).  I just happened to be for the first time in many many months jumping up and down in front of my TV rooting for Puerto Rico's own Javier Culson in the 400m men's hurdle.  He was one of a handful of Puerto Rican athletes in the 2012 Olympics and happened to be a favorite in this event at the Olympics all along and came in 3...

This one made me cry not because of her ability to convey the sheer enormity of being a parent, but because it let me know that you don't have to be all TIGER MOM to get your kids to succeed in life, that you can just be supporting and let them grow on their own and not pressure them into success with constant criticism. And that the pride they feel in accomplishing things all by themselves is much greater than the feeling of just barely having avoided disappointing the critical eye of your parents. As a child of the TIGER MOM line of thinking I am happy there's another way. I struggle every day, sitting on both sides of the fence, pledging to be totally unlike my mother but realizing that what's been ingrained in me for almost 30 years is kinda hard to suppress. I hope I can spend more days on the supportive side of the fence than on the TIGER MOM one. And maybe then I will feel like as a parent I am deserving of the amazing kids I was lucky to have.