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I knew today would be a long one so I gave into it instead of fighting it. Tatjana left this morning for her excursion with the students and wont be home until midnight or later. So I met the challenges of Tin and his Señor No attitude with resolve that he was going to be him (a three year old) and I was going to be me (his mother).

We took a route to the beach that our friend had mentioned and at first headed down the street I thought this doesn’t seem like the right route and yet, we found ourselves suddenly in one of those amazing parks by the sea that Cadiz offers and there were giant topiary lining a path and as we had just been talking about topiary, it made for good conversation.

Then we kept walking and stumbled upon a playground crowded with kids Tin’s age and a gaggle of girls came to him and wanted to touch him, speak to him, play with him and they were immensely curious about this boy that is “tan guapo” (handsome) and who couldn’t speak their language. It turned out to be a summer camp of kids that were at the playground on their way to the beach. Note to self: where is this camp and how do I get Tin in?

After much time on the swing, we headed to the beach much to my chagrin at first because the wind was chilly and levante appeared to have arrived at Cadiz because sand was blowing all over at the playground but the beach had such a low tide that the wind was not blowing any sand up at all. We hung out and up came Paula, or rather Paula circled us for a while until finally Tin who kept craning his head to see this pretty little 5 year old prancing began to play sand castle with her.

Paula was there with her dad, who at one point sent her running to the woman pushing around ice cold beer to grab him one. And then she circled back to play with Tin. When we left the beach we stopped at one of the numerous fresh vege marts and got a big beautiful head of cauliflower and lettuce and peppers and tomatoes and cucumbers. I made a big salad and Tin had his pasta pesto and then I steamed the cauliflower and added guindilla (tiny cayenne peppers), honey, lemon, and salt and we had ourselves a feast.

And he napped. Lo and behold, I didn’t think it would happen but he napped for two hours which gave me some time to be.

Then later we went to San Antonio plaza, steps from our house, and played with a balloon till it popped and then he played with little Sarah and her ball – kicking it like a European football like he saw the other kids kicking. The plaza was crowded with kids, parents, elders, you name it, it was a typical European scene – people out, drinking, eating, talking, playing.

Then home where we ate and changed into pajamas. And now, a bottle of Luis Cañas rioja open and candles lit to resume my time to the sounds of kids and adults speaking loudly and motor scooters racing by. At last, some down time and a day that was well spent watching my little boy grow up and me calm down.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 5th, 2012 at 3:26 pm and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.