Please Lie to Me

I went to get my hair cut and restored to it's natural blond glory the other day and here is a rough translation of my conversation with the salon owner and head stylist, Tulio Toledo.

TT: Have you seen us on channel XX, we've been on every Sunday giving style advice, etc.

Me: No, I never watch television, but what kinds of things are in your program?

TT: We analyze women's hair and faces and tell them what would work best for them.

Me: Oh yeah, what would you recommend for me then? I want a change, but I don't really want to cut it short.

TT: No, you should definitely NOT cut it short. You're tall and tall women look terrible with short hair. You, you're easy because you're a pretty girl. You could do almost anything with your hair because you're so cute. I mean, you're not perfect, your nose and all, but you're still a cute girl.

Me:.................. I was just thinking it was a good thing he clarified my nose issues or I might have run out to audition for America's Next Top Model.

Clearly Thumper's lesson on keeping your mouth shut is not a common part of Argentine childhood because they're all about TOTAL HONESTY here!!!

September Summary

Lots of bloggers like to do weekly summaries. I decided to take it a step further and just do a monthly summary. Maybe I'll keep it up, or maybe I'll go crazy and try to increase my commitment to a weekly summary...no promises. So, this is what we've been up to:

Gabe wants to do whatever I'm doing. If I'm cooking, he wants to cook, if I'm sweeping, he wants the broom, if I'm in the bathroom, he wants in, if I'm washing dishes, he especially wants in on the action. Thus at his young and innocent age I have already introduced him to the fabulousness of batter/dough. He takes after me, and loves anything in its not-yet-cooked stage.

Here is a video of Gabe actually trying to get INTO the sink.

*warning, you may have to be related to appreciate this

Gabe had two new teeth come in. He now has four on the top and four on the bottom, and his gums are terribly swollen so it appears his molars may be making their way up.
Gabe has also entered a stage where he loves things that go on his hands. He LOVES the hand puppets I made for our music/english class and seems to be equally happy with hot pads.
My friend Janette's son outgrew this little car so she gave it to Gabe. He loves it, I think it's bulky to store and annoying because he hasn't figured out how to get on or off himself yet, so it's NOT a toy he can play with alone. Thus we took it to abuela's house and he gets to play with it when he's there...
This is just a gratuitious photo of cute naked buns... and me demonstrating my genetic dispensation towards pinching them. I like to do it to Mario as well, he's not as amused by it as Gabe. I should also note that at almost 16 months, Gabe has a vocabularly of an astounding three words. Along with mama, he has added "ha" which would be hot, and is always followed by blowing at whatever object has been declared hot, and at long last, in the middle of sacrament meeting last week he looked up to the stand, pointed to Mario and yelled "papa!"

I introduced Mario to grilled kabobs on our mini indoor grill. And as spring has arrived, I have become engrossed in finding places to put flowers. This is difficult, as we have no yard and our patio doesn't get much sun. So I started with the front window.
(please note Gabe climbing the door while I go into the street to take the picture. We're all about safety in our family.)
I bought these nice little narrow planter boxes that would fit between the window and the bars and planted them with some lovely little flowers.
I was all excited, placed them in the window, and when I went to take the pictures realized they were ridiculously small. I was trying to figure out what to do about it, when not two days later they were stolen, giving me the perfect excuse to start over again.
This time I painted a bunch of old cans from Gabe's formula and planted geraniums. The first flowers just came out yesterday, and I love them, and even though this picture doesn't do them justice, they look great, and the cans don't fit through the bars so I don't think they can be stolen.
I also planted a few flowers on our patio that are supposedly shade varieties, and a bunch of basil which I'll probably have to take to Mario's parents because I think it needs more sun than it's getting.I found these flowers that I love. Now if only I can keep them alive...Mario seriously doubts my ability, which is all the motivation I need to put some effort into it...Yesterday we discovered this AMAZING kid's museum. It has all these interactive exhibits that kids cam climb on, build, play with, etc. based on art! Here Gabe is climbing the replica of an Argentine cubist painter, that was filled with different colored pillow cubes that the kids could then construct with (or in Gabe's case just throw around).In homage to Calder, they had all these statues with arms, and then a box full of wires and plastic shapes so the kids could experiment with balance and mobiles. Gabe is admirely another's work, lacking the dexterity himself to construct such a mobile...They had a special area dedicated to Miro just for kids under 5, all made to resemble one of his paintings.Gabe loved this toy, that I can't think what it's called.And this I have no idea what it was, but you could take all these crazy painted heads from behind and put them on this kind of game board. They also had a bid puzzle made out of all geometric shapes, a replica of a Mondrian painting, and tons of other cool stuff.Then outside, they had a sound garden which consisted of a big jungle gym with various levels and each level had a slide, and a wheel that when spun made a series of pipes chime. Gabe loved it. There were also all kinds of other things to spin, slide, move etc. that all produced music. The museum also had a huge pirate ship made out of net to climb around on and a hill/nature walk with animal sounds. Or something like that, we didn't get to those before it closed. So all in all, I was seriously impressed. It's fun to have a kid who's old enough to do things with...

Hi mom, I'm pretty sure you're the only one still reading this.

Snip Snip Snip

I love Gabe's hair. Perhaps because while mine may be longer, he has more. Thank goodness he did NOT inherit my hair! Although I loved his long hair and wanted to let it keep growing, it was tending to look like this:

Instead of like this:

So I took him to get it cut. I asked them to just clean it up a bit, not cut too much.
Gabe was a little leary, but overall behaved great. He played with a giant comb and sucked water from the squirt bottle.
And apparently we don't have the same understanding of "clean it up a little". It's taken me a few days to get used to it, but when he debuted it at church on Sunday everyone else seemed to be in favor.

Mario's response was "Now he looks like the bishop's son!"