Spain Dad, a baby blog

I always appreciate when the moms at the playground praise me for being a nurturing and involved father. I need the encouragement. Still, I often wonder what other dads think of me. How will I ever convince these men that I’m one of them?

Alleke celebrated her 4th birthday on Sunday. There was an 85% chance of rain, and of course we had planned an outdoor party and made 70+ cupcakes…without a Plan B. Watch the video below to find out how the party went… If you have problems with the video, try watching it on YouTube…

Empty Bucket at Punta Del Este by longhorndave. Alleke stood at the entrance to the playground swinging her bucket of sand toys. “Where would you like to play?” I asked, pointing out the various groups of kids busy raking and scooping sand into buckets. Alleke hesitated, then ran across the playground and sat down in [...]

Puppy Dog Eyes by ny156uk. Alleke scampered along behind us through the park picking up leaves, too busy to notice what was going on around her until a puppy bounded over, all wriggles, and sniffed the leaves in her hand. Alleke froze, then dropped the leaves and made a run for it. I picked her [...]

Two girls sat in the sand. The one was just old enough to be interested in what the other was doing, which was dragging a plastic rake in figure 8′s between them. I watched the girls while Alleke went up and down and around the slide like it was a merry-go-round. I was curious about [...]

Yesterday I was talking to this French guy named Franck at the playground. He asked me how long I had lived in the neighborhood. “Three years,” I told him. “You must know most of these people then,” he said. I look around. “I don’t know any of them,” I said. We talked some more, and [...]

A Young Entrepreneur on a Hot Day at Portland State by rachaelvoorhees. All you need to know to understand my neighborhood is that today when I took Alleke down to the playground, there were two little girls who had set up a little stand—not a lemonade stand, as perhaps I would have expected, but a [...]

April stood at the corner of the playground and blew bubbles. Alleke stood next to her and watched as one little girl left her shovel in the sand and started swatting at the small, crystal planets hovering in orbit over their heads. Two little boys on the teeter totter noticed next and came running. Before [...]

That way, my son by tinou bao. Alleke stood at the front door and pointed. I couldn’t help but notice her resemblance to the monument of Christopher Columbus in Barcelona pointing the way to the Americas. Ironically, the statue points in the wrong direction (towards Italy, not the New World), which gave me an idea. [...]

Alleke climbs to the summit. Play video on Vimeo.