With a Rebel Yell

Some babies find their voices with pretty little coos and gurgles. Not Emil. He's found his voice, and it's more like a squealing piglet. It comes suddenly, without warning, and almost always in a public place wear we are hyper conscious of keeping the kids quiet, like a museum or nice restaurant. Seriously, he sounds like a wild animal. It's unnerving.

For the first three months, he was dubbed "my mellow baby boy" because that's what I had been praying for throughout the pregnancy. We have painful memories of Esme's first few months, when she cried endlessly through colicky nights. Emil seemed like an angel in comparison. They've traded the devil horns, though as the months have passed on. Whereas Esme grew more peaceful and easy as the months wore on, Emil gets wilder and more difficult to manage. Traveling with Esme at the 5 to 9 month period, and even beyond that, was incredibly smooth. We took it easy, of course, but she was relatively happy everywhere we went.

Emil, though, is a wild child. He has to be crawling and moving all the time, and is not content to just hang out anywhere. He is learning to show his displeasure when, for example, we take away a dirty plastic menu that he was eagerly chomping on. He gives us a look, eyes wide in disbelief, and then comes the squeal. It's a shriek, really. A high-pitched, ear drum-busting protest. There's no warning, no working up to the screaming. Just this obnoxious cry that grates the nerves. It's bad enough that it has me wondering why we had a second kid. Life would have been so easy if we were just traveling with Esme right now. But Emil, my god, that kid has lungs.

Yes, of course I love our son dearly. He is so cute as he crawls around. Today, as we took a break in the cafe of the Joan Miro museum, he was crawling on the floor and crawled straight into a clear glass door, not have realized it was there. It was one of those hilarious moments that you really wish had been captured of video. Even other onlookers started to laugh. He was a trooper, and took it in his dog-like stride. He has also taken to carrying his toys around in his mouth, increasing his resemblance to a puppy. He crawls around all over the place, a little finger puppet dangling from his lips, curved up into a grin, eyes all asparkling. Very cute. If only he didn't shriek like a wild animal.

We are closing in on the final leg of our trip. We've been in Barcelona for the past week or so, and have decided to stay here until Monday instead of moving on to Girona. We are revisiting this town that we fell in love with years ago, before we had children. It's amazing how well we remember our old haunts. We walked by our old apartment, visited the market where we used to shop, hiked around our favorite park, which even in the height of tourist season is deserted (it's a fabulous terraced garden just below the Miro museum, if you ever find yourself looking for a magic escape in this Catalan city). Esme has been enjoying the eggs, potatoes and ham. She loves the Spanish book store, and will sit perfectly content as we read story after story in Spanish to her. I don't think she understands most of it, but she is definitely picking up on many of the words and phrases, although she always responds in English.

With less than a week of our trip left, I'm starting to feel ready to head home. I miss our dog and our calm daily routine. Emil is waking now, so I'd better close. I probably won't be able to post again until we return to the States, so wish us a buen viaje. Cheers!