Our Last Week in Chile

The day we left, Miguel's Uncle Juano decided the baby chicks were old enough for Curt to hold. I thought he was going to be ecstatic. Well, I stand corrected. He did love petting all of the other chickens and going in the hen house with Tio Juano, but when Miguel got out one baby chick for Curt to hold, he just started crying. I'm not sure if he just wanted both of the babies, or if he wanted the mom. Crazy. I can't believe he can pet the chickens on the head. I never dared to, I guess getting pecked at is more than I'm willing to risk, but Curt is much more daring than I am.

Tio Juano refused to let us take a picture of him with Curt, so I settled for this picture where you can see his profile and the back of Curt's head. He was so cute with Curt. He would just let him follow him around and Curt was in heaven. He was also very concerned with Curt's happiness. When I would be willing to let Curt cry, he would make sure Curt got whatever he wanted so he was happy.




This is the great photo of Curt and Miguel with the chick. It should have been such a happy moment for Curt and you can see his tears. Miguel was so frustrated, he just told me to take the picture quick.













Here is the photo of Miguel's Aunt Silvia that we took the night before we left. She loved Curt and she was really cute to play with him all the time. Sometimes he would walk around looking for her to play with. She played soccer with him and she gave him the farm animals for Christmas, which were probably his favorite gift.





This picture was taken the same night, Wednesday, December 30th, and Curt is mimicking his Tio Titi. He would do this everytime Romina would sing. He was enchanted by her voice. It was really sweet. Titi loved playing with Curt and sometimes it was a little too much for Curt, but he loved all of the attention.
We went to the Santiago zoo on the 30th. Pato drove us to the zoo and then we rode a little tram up to the entrance. Then we spent a few hours looking at all of the animals. This picture is of us looking face to face with the giraffes. It was cool how close we were to all of the animals. It seemed like if we reached out, we could touch them. Curt and I are wearing our obvious matching tourist hats embroidered with Chile on the front. Miguel told us we looked good, so we went with it. I was surprised how much Curt actually liked his hat. It must be this new hat craze thing. He loved the giraffes, and the zebra, but his favorite were the turtles. He stood in front of the window to their terrarium for 10 minutes. Miguel and I had both walked to a sitting spot, but he didn't want to come with us. They were really big turtles.
The zoo had a ton of steps and is on a hill, so we did a lot of walking and when we were really tired, we sat down and had ice cream and water-both big treats for me... and as we were watching the pigeons, we noticed one had a string tied to its leg and it was limping. Miguel caught the pigeon and went to the lady with the little treat shop and asked for some scissors, we then spent the next 10 or 15 minutes trying to cut the string from the pigeon's leg. It had been on for so long it was like part of its leg. Anyway, we took a picture of Curt next to it. Miguel was really happy to have saved the pigeon. We saw it later and it was still limping, but we decided we must have helped somehow. Then we had to start home and we walked to the metro and it was far away. This time Curt sat on my lap, so I got to sit on the bench which was nice, but he kept touching other people because the metro was crowded so they had to be so close to us.
On the 28-29 we went to the mountains and stayed with Pato's wife's aunt. They have a really nice cabin and they also had this little cabin that we got to stay in. The night we got there we had cheese and crackers and it was the best food I'd had-I don't know what kind of cheese it was, but I wish I could get some more. I absolutely loved it. Pato's aunt's husband is German and he speaks German, Spanish and English, but I still had a hard time understanding him because he had such a thick accent. They were really nice to invite us to stay with them and Curt loved all of the space they had to run around on.

December 27th we spent the evening visiting family. We visited some of Miguel's other uncles and we stopped to see his grandma too. We had gone to the beach on the 26th and we stayed overnight at a hotel which was right on the beach. This is a picture of Curt by our hotel room window. It was beautiful and we were so close to the beach that Curt loved it.

The next picture is of Curt playing on the beach and you can see our hotel in the background- it is the Gran Hotel. I don't know if Gran is something in Spanish or if they just didn't get the spelling quite right for Grand.
We stayed at the beach for a while and when I saw Curt pick up a cigarette butt and bring it to his mouth, I was ready to go. I guess it is hard to go to places like a beach where you don't know what you will find when you have such a little one with you. Luckily I was close enough to grab it from him before it touched his face.
Curt was much more daring with the ocean. He would play on the wet sand and we would walk around and when a wave came in we would run back to the dry sand. Most of the time we made it without getting wet, but the ocean got us a few times.
When we got up that morning Miguel decided to go running on the beach. When Curt saw him, he tried to follow him, but Miguel had no clue Curt wanted to be with him, so we just had to wave when Miguel ran by. It was cute to see Curt run after him, unfortunately Miguel was too fast for me to get them in the same picture.
On the 26th we were driving down the coast of Chile and we stopped in San Antonio. This is the same place where I was bitten by a sea lion last time. We kept our distance this time. This is a picture of Miguel and Curt on our boat ride we took. It was about 20 minutes and I think Curt was a little bored. It was really nice though. We watched birds on the water and then they would disappear under the water and Curt would say uh-oh and lift up his hands and then we would see the bird reappear and Curt thought it was a great game. He was also fascinated by a cat that was playing on the rocks by the pier.

Earlier in the day we stopped at another beach that has black sand. I know you probably can't tell by the picture, but the sand is the color of asphalt. Curt had fallen asleep in the car and I woke him up to play in the sand. He immediately laid down in the sand and reappeared with this lovely mustache/beard. Then he continued to lift his shirt and throw sand on his belly. He is a total sand baby. He was so happy at the beach. It was fun just to watch him. It makes me wish we were a little closer to a beach so he could spend more time there.
On Christmas we went to Miguel's sister-in-law's sister's house. They had made some American food and it was a real treat-I had fluffy white dinner rolls and she even had some funeral potatoes. Then for dessert there were cinnamon rolls. She told me that the cinnamon in Chile is not a flavorful as it is in America, so she brought back a few containers of cinnamon with her. Romina and Benjamin took Curt to the neighborhood playground and he played on the slide, the teeter-totter and the swings. He loved playing with his cousins. They lived in a gated community so it was a really nice and clean place.
On Christmas we had lunch with Miguel's dad. Here is a picture of us on Christmas. The tree in the corner has a dead snake wrapped around it and money tucked between the snake and the tree. Curt was unfortunately really interested in it. Miguel's dad had seen how much Curt loves hats and he let Curt play with his Chilean hat. Curt had a great time. We had turkey.





This is a picture of Curt after he had opened all of his gifts-sometime between midnight and 1:30am. He was so tired! He just wanted to go to bed, but he did enjoy ripping the wrapping paper and seeing what was inside. He spent time playing with all of his toys. He got two stuffed animals-a penguin and a Shrek. He liked the penguin, but he hit Shrek in the mouth and said, no no!
At midnight, we heard Santa yelling ho, ho, ho! and so we (mothers and children) went out in the street to see his sleigh. We ended up walking around the corner and I asked Curt where Santa was and this picture was his response----
Then after a few minutes we saw that other people already had gifts from Santa and that he had come and gone and we had missed him, so we went back home and opened all of the presents he had left under the tree.
I thought it was a little funny because the presents had tags on them that said who they were from-I guess kids don't read tags anyway.
This is a picture from Monday. We spent the day with Titi and Betzy. Titi built this little house for Romina. Curt absolutely loved it. He looks so cute in the little window and he would keep peeking out at us. We had lots of fruit for lunch-watermelon, peaches, bananas, and cherries. And for lunch we had a spinach/egg/cheese mixture-it was really good. Betzy did our wash for us while we watched a movie and Curt took a long and much needed nap. We ended up spending the entire day with them and that night Romina sang to Curt and he put his hands on his cheeks and just stared at her while she sang. It was really cute. We had a really great time.
For those of you who don't know, Miguel is still spending his last week in Chile. I am really hoping he makes it home this week. Curt and I miss him a lot.