Today the twins and I fulfilled what has become a family tradition: setting up our family Christmas trees at the end of October.

It started in 2007, the year we brought them home.  Because Fred and I had been hoping to get them here by Christmas 2006 or at least shortly thereafter, we never took down our trees.  (We have two – remnants of our pre-marital days when we each owned homes.)  Consequently, H & J came home on January 25th, 2007 to brightly lit trees and a bunch of wrapped gifts.  They liked how pretty they were but had no idea what Christmas meant here, so they actually left the gifts alone until we felt ready to host the extended family for a belated Christmas party. In mid-February.

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When Fred and I adopted Heriberto and José, we determined that we would do the best we could to keep them exposed to their native culture, make it our business to pursue more friendships with other Latino people than we had at the time, so our kids would grow up with role models who “look like them,” and that we would do everything we could to preserve and then build upon the little bit of Spanish they spoke.  Oh yeah, and parent them well in all the ordinary things at the same time. Read the rest of this entry

Fred and I had one of our (many) gringo moments the night we first set up this blog.  While we owe the name idea itself to a good friend (Hi, Chris!), we discovered that HOW we spelled it sends messages we didn’t even realize. 

Mamasita – according to UrbanDictionary.com (and confirmed among other sources), “is a misspelling of mamacita, the Spanish for ‘little mother.’”  It means “a hot mama; a hot babe; a ho of particularly hispanic/spanish but possibly other decent.” 

Whoops.  Yeah, not that one, thanks.

Mamacita – means “little mother.”  And “rather like the English word ‘momma,’ mamacita can mean a mother of both the standard and the red hot kind.”  UrbanDictionary is even so kind as to note: “If you spell it ‘mamasita,” you probably don’t speak Spanish.” 

So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen.  Spelling does count.  The English-major within me rejoices that we caught that one before I began snagging porn-seekers from all over the not-so-Spanish-speaking world!

For any parent, picking a child’s name is one of the most personal decisions we make in the beginning.  Bedding can be changed, rooms repainted; but we’ll be calling our kids by their names for the rest of our lives.  So we want to get it “right.”  Something that fits with our last name, something with a good meaning (if you’re into name meanings), something that doesn’t conjer up images of elementary school bullies or weirdos for either parent.

But what if your child comes pre-named?  Ours did, and so, like most adoptive parents, we had to make a different kind of naming decision: keep it? change it? modify it?  What’s the right answer? Read the rest of this entry

I play a game with my kids, “Do you want to know a secret?”  And of course they do.  So they come over and I whisper “You’re my favorite!” or “I love you so much it’s ridiculous!” or something along those lines.  And they love it, and I love it.  And just recently, they’ve gotten the hang of actually whispering, so now they do it back.

And tonight, at my Brother-in-law-in-law’s (the Hubs’ sister’s Hubs) birthday dinner, Heriberto whispered to me, “You’re the best mom in the whole word!” Read the rest of this entry