Bicultural Vida

¡Hola! It’s been over a month since I posted — my daughter, Lucía, was born on January 29th and needless to say it’s been very busy times! But I’m slowly getting used to my life as a mamá of two and trying to manage it all. I’m still not sleeping much, but they say sleep is for the weak, right?! Anyway, back to business! This week I wanted to share something a little different. I often get asked, “how do youRead More ...

My second child is approaching his first birthday, and with this milestone comes the excitement of new words spoken and understood. Also, as it relates to our bilingual ambitions, this age is my favorite because success is defined in a measure that is achievable for our monolingual household. It’s cheating, I know, but at almost one year old, my hijo is completely bilingual! Actually, just today, he said “más” and used the sign for more. I was ecstatic! I continuedRead More ...

Not only is my daughter an only child, she’s also a mom blogger’s only child. You could correctly assume she’s a bit — okay, a lot! — spoiled. It’s just the nature of our life. She gets mom’s and dad’s undivided attention when we’re together, and there’s nothing we want to change about that. As a mom blogger’s daughter who lives in L.A., she’s gone to Disneyland and Disney World as a VIP more times than she should have atRead More ...

  My son Santiago suffers from second child syndrome. Have you ever heard of that? It refers to how most second children don’t get the same kind of attention first children get. It’s not like I’m neglecting Santiago or anything like that, I just haven’t done the same sort of things I did with Vanessa at his age. For starters, I’ve been working full-time since right before he turned one, which means I haven’t had nearly as much free timeRead More ...

In Costa Rica, I was always known as gringa or macha (Costa Rican speak for blonde), and my very American-sounding name was mangled every which way when I was growing up. Then I moved to the U.S., and my name was suddenly easily pronounceable, and blending in was much, much easier. I loved it. I don’t like drawing attention to myself — I can be shy, I’m not a natural-born storyteller at all, and although as an interpreter I oftenRead More ...

We moved into a new house last May. I was so excited since I knew that there were a lot of children in the neighborhood.  There were boys the same ages as my sons living on either side of us. I envisioned my children having many fun afternoons playing with the other children in the community. Unfortunately, my visions of our new life in the neighborhood never came about. Things started out well. The day that the moving truck officiallyRead More ...

My family loves to play juegos de mesa: from Candyland to Monopoly to dominó, it’s a chance to have fun as a family while speaking lots of Spanish. Some games that we love can be manipulated a bit to play in Spanish, such as Pictionary, Taboo and Scattegories. But here is a list of our favorite board games to play that encourage lots of communication and reinforcement of concepts, without the need to change anything or buy a “Spanish version.”Read More ...

February is a great month not only because I get to celebrate another year of life, but because it also marks SpanglishBaby’s anniversary. We’re on our fourth year now and in our constant effort to offer even more resources for parents raising bilingual and bicultural children, we’re super excited to announce our very first SpanglishBaby Live Google+ Hangout. WHAT: An opportunity for you to ask questions and discuss topics on bilingualism LIVE with Ana, myself and one of many experts onRead More ...