| From: | Eric Siegel |
| To: | ..., "grandad@metaart.org" ... |
| Subject: | Happy New Year! |
| Date: | Thu, 31 Dec 1998 15:03:51 -0700 |
December 31, 1998
Dear Family and Friends:
Due to a broken computer cable we have not been able to do much with email for the past five weeks. Living in Costa Rica, this has made us feel a bit isolated at times. So please send us lots of email in 1999.
Speaking of new years, we recently received (from Utne Reader) a guide to surviving the Y2K problem, which is now one year away. Rather than easing our minds, it made us quite nervous, because we hadn't realized the possible severity of the problem. We don't get much news about it here, so if anyone has any reassuring things to say to us, it would be appreciated. If not, we may decide to stay in a country where food distribution is not dependent on microchips.
In the past five weeks, we have finally managed to make it the beach--twice! We had a great four day trip to Puerto Viejo, a still somewhat hidden treasure on the Atlantic side of the country, where most of the people are of Caribean origin (e.g., Jamaica). They speak English first and Spanish second, which was kind of a weird experience for us. The beaches were fabulous and practically empty.
More recently, we just returned from three days at Manuel Antonio, the most popular beach area in Costa Rica, located on the Pacific Coast. Rachel's mother is here visiting so we went with her, enjoyed more fabulous (but very crowded) beaches, and had a great time in the National Park looking for wildlife. As a result, Isabelle has now added the word mono (monkey) to her list of animals that previously included cow, horse, pig, chicken, duck, goose, dog, and cat. Monkeys are famous in Manuel Antonio. They come very close and the people feed them bananas even though they are not supposed to. Isabelle loved them. We also spotted sloths, iguanas, parrots, and a porcupine, but fortunately no boa constrictors.
One day in Manuel Antonio the four of us were taking a walk and we heard an animal noise and we were trying to figure out what kind of animal it was. We couldn't yet see the animals, but Isabelle started shouting goose, goose. Sure enough, when we got a little further we saw the geese. We have been wondering what sounds she would be able to identify if she was growing up in New York City instead?
Isabelle is rapidly approaching a year and half. Her vocabulary is now so large that we can no longer list everything she says. She is speaking mostly Spanish these days although some words she says in English (book, apple, eggs, toast, juice, milk, bottle, puppy, goose, bye-bye, to name a few). Some of her Spanish words and expressions are deme (give me, but she says it without the d), mia (mine), no se toca (don't touch), and all the above mentioned animals and many of their sounds.
In addition to talking, Isabelle is getting better and better at walking/running/climbing. Her increasing abilities combined with decreasing fear and a desire to keep up with the older children require us to watch her even more closely now. She can get down off anything now, and is getting better and better at climbing onto things. She loves to carry her little chair around the house so that she can stand on it to get closer to things she wants to reach.
Although we love to talk about Isabelle's new words and achievements, what we really love most about Isabelle is her personality. She seems to love life and to love people and it is wonderful to be part of her world. This is not to say she is always easy to care for. As she continues the transformation from baby to toddler, she is getting better at stating her demands and complaining when they are not met. Changing her diapers gets harder all the time and occasionally she throws fits for the silliest of reasons. But this is all normal, of course, and the hardest part for us at times is to take her seriously, rather than to laugh at her, because we generally find her pouting to be adorable. Perhaps this is our greatest reward this year--we have time to smile through the tantrums because we rarely have to be anywhere at any specific time.
We wish all of you enough time in 1999 to do all that you want to do. We miss you.
Eric, Rachel, and Isabelle