Aló, soy Ixchel y la estoy pasando bien en el Perú. Hello, I'm Ixchel living the vida loca in Peru.

Ixchel at 18 months

El 16 de febrero, Ixchel cumplió 18 meses y celebramos con "pichi" (pizza) y helado (sorri -- como dicen los peruanos -- a los hondureños: ixchel no dice "ays crim"). She just had a check-up a week ago and weighed in at a whopping 23 pounds! She's on the slim side, but very healthy. She is renowned throughout the parks in Miraflores for her fearless climbing and sliding (and slides in Peru are at about 80 degree angles!) on the playground equipment. She still gets distracted now and then on the swing and lets go and falls off, but there's plenty of sand luckily. Su vocabulario crece cada día (quien sabe, tal vez tiene 100 palabras, dichas de su manera) mas y ha empezado a formar oraciones cortas como "Ahí está papá". Está utilizando liberalmente las palabras "más" y "otr@"...más 'tas (galletas), por ejemplo, y "ota mamá' y "oto papá" a todas las mujeres y los hombres en calle...me maravilla, como angloparlante, que dice bien el género de las palabras cuando a veces todavía me equivoco! At this point, you can have little conversations with Ixchel (she answers questions like ¨Como te llamas¨ '' what´s you name¨ and Como estás¨¨how are you¨) and with her Ixchel-style Spanish, she can get her point across most of the time. If you ask her about certain things, she´ll even re-enact them, peppering the story with pertinent words, i.e. falling off the swing will include falling down, rubbing her head, ´ouch´ and she might throw in the ´avión´ and ´nanyas´ which she also saw at the park. Tambien habla español como suramericano, dice ¨palta¨pa´aguacate, ¨plátano¨ para guineo, y le dijo ¨toma¨ (o sea, la tuteó) a su mejor amiga Dora la Exploradora cuando le dio un juguete.
Her best friend is Dora la Exploradora, an Ixchel-sized doll that her grandma Orbe gave to her at Christmas, who lets Ixchel have her way on everything (why can´t all the nanyas be like this, Ixchel wonders). Por lo general Ixchel es un encanto, pero como dice acá, tiene su genio y es muy capaz de hacer un berrinche ocasional. And unfortunately, she is fully immersed in the "mío" (mine) stage which I was hoping to avoid...but I guess total isolation from society would be the only way to avoid it!
Le encanta andar en la calle, en el parque, en la playa ... siempre quiere estar afuera! Reguarly throughout the day, she throws herself against the door, screaming ¨allá!¨ (there!) and pointing to go outside. She LOVES her nido and tried to go unnoticed by Alex when he went to pick her up the other day. Es famosa en su nido por su afán por la canción criolla y es una gran bailerina.