Spain Dad, a baby blog

Yesterday morning I was working in my office at home and decided to take a break for a few minutes. I walked into the kitchen, poured myself a glass of water, and meandered out onto one of our balconies that looks out over the city center of Castellón. Nearly everyone in the city had the [...]

Castor-oil plant Photo by Facing North East. “Castor oil and a long walk,” Kari said, “worked every time. I was in labor by the end of the day.” Kari is a friend of ours who lives in Southern France, and she’s an expert at having babies–she had five. Not only did she have five babies, [...]

TAGS: april, mom, belly, photo, castellón, spain, pregnancy, 8 months, pregnant

P1010051 Photo by babazar. “The hoo-moos is just about ready,” I said, grabbing a spoon from the drawer in the kitchen and created a small cavity in the middle of the plate of mustard-colored dip. I filled the hole with olive oil and sprinkled the plate with paprika and parsley. “Since when did you start [...]

“If I told you giving birth wasn’t painful, I would be lying to you.” I should have thought something was up when our midwife said this. I think she was trying to give a disclaimer for the the VHS tape she was pressing into the VCR. She pressed play. The film appeared in black in [...]

TAGS: ultrasound, image, photo, baby, face, pregnancy, clinic, checkup

Our friends Robyn and Samuel and their one-and-half-year-old Josiah are staying with us for two weeks. They’ve lived in Spain for a couple of years and recently relocated to Seville. If there’s one thing you should know about Seville it’s that it’s the last place on earth you would want to be in August because [...]

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but every month I look forward to paying our water and electric bills. The reason I don’t mind paying the bills is it gives me an excuse to go and visit my landlady at her antique shop. Her name is Encarna. She’s Spanish (from León) and middle aged with [...]

All i need is just a little touch…(children from worldvision) Photo by Alicia Lim. This morning I remembered an interesting conversation I had last week with my friend Jeannette from Amsterdam. Jeannette’s daughter Manoah is one and a half, I think. Jeannette was telling me that when Manoah was born, she realized she actually knew [...]

his wedding ring Photo by monica semergiu. “Do you wear a wedding ring?” my friend Rogier asked me on Friday. Rogier lives in Rotterdam. He’s the father of three. I wasn’t sure why he was asking, but I showed him the white gold band around my finger anyway. Maybe he was wondering why I didn’t [...]