I am part of the Windows Champions Program. As a Windows Champion on behalf of SpanglishBaby, I am loaned a laptop, and, on occasion, Microsoft products such as software to assist me in developing content for my blog posts. All opinions are my own.

Do you send out Christmas cards? This season is so busy that if you haven’t gotten around to it yet, you’re running out of time to get them to the post office and sent so that they arrive before the holiday. If you’re sending a card from the U.S. to anywhere in Latin America, you’re probably already too late. (Honestly, I don’t even attempt it anymore. I sent handmade cards to family in El Salvador around 2008 and they still haven’t arrived! Who knows what happened to them.)

One solution to consider is sending your holiday greeting online. The Hallmark “Go Cards” app is a free download from the Windows 8 app store, and they even have a few cards in Spanish.

Once you download the app, simply open it and choose “Winter Holidays.” Select a card, personalize it, and send! All the cards are $3.49, about the average cost of a printed card, but these are customizable so that you can write your message in whichever language your recipient might prefer and include a photo of the niños, too!

¡Feliz Navidad!

I have to admit there’s also a feeling of guilt embedded in me for not having outwardly expressed to my mom just how much I truly love her and value every single thing she did — and does — and decisions she took in her life to make sure my sisters and I had a comfortable, healthy, loving and well-guided life. I am, after all, my mother’s daughter and definitely take after her in the lack of being able to express that love through face-to-face words. We’ve always found a way to let the other one know, but I know it’s always better to say “I love you” when you can see that person in their eyes.

Mami, you can’t see me in the eyes right now, but know that my gift to you this Día de las Madres is this post and these words that come from a deep place of sincerity and a hope that we can find a way to spend this special day together again.

In El Salvador, Mother’s Day is celebrated on May 10th, which also happens to be the day of my birth. Every single year I would have to say “Felicidades” to my mom and get another “Felicidades” in return. As much as this was Mother’s Day, it was hard for me to stop feeling it was more my day. But this year I’m doing it different and I’m sending my mami this post to read before May 10th so I can be the first one to say “Felicidades” and to make sure you know that, just like this Hallmark Greeting above says:

“Today is a good day to honor you — a wonderful woman who’s always thinking of ways to make life better for others. What a gift you are.”

And that’s just it. It’s my turn to honor you. During my 41 years of life you’ve always given of yourself first. You pushed through as a single mom to give me the best bilingual education there was. You always somehow managed to be there for us, even though you had to make it work. Once you remarried things were a bit different for all, but you kept finding ways to make us come first and live a sheltered and protected life because that’s what love meant to you.

Porque

“Mamá Ama, Cuida, Enseña y Protege”

You always taught me to be kind, compassionate of others, and that a good demeanor, a smile and good taste can open many doors.

Even though the physical distance is huge, you managed to be here for me when my daughter was born and put up with my crazy first-time-mom idiosyncrasies without passing judgement (at least to my face!).

All Camila knows is that her Abuelita adores her because every moment you’ve shared with her you’ve been the ultimate giving abuelita. The kind of abuela that doesn’t think twice about getting down on her arms and legs to let her nieta ride on a horsey. The kind of abuela that will give the longest massages while reading a bedtime book.

“Gracias, Abuelita, por siempre darme una porción de alegría, una medida de dulzura…y todo, todo tu amor. ¡Te quiero mucho!”

This Mother’s Day, we send you from Los Angeles to El Salvador mucho amor del bueno and a promise to soon have it be said face to face.

Disclosure: We’re working with Hallmark on a series of posts for Mother’s Day for which we’re being compensated. As usual, all stories and opinions are our own.

Disclosure: We’re working with Hallmark on a series of posts for Mother’s Day for which we’re being compensated. As usual, all stories and opinions are our own.

Time and motherhood definitely play the biggest tricks on you. Just when you think you’re wise enough to have it all under control, a little being comes into your life to let you know that there’s still a whole lot of inner work to be done and lessons to be learned. I truly believe our children are here to teach us about ourselves as much as we are to lead them in life. Any single parenting obstacle I face, I’ve learned to reflect upon who I am at that moment and what I’m going through. In most cases, using the moment as my mirror, helps me realize why my daughter is “acting up” and what I can do to change myself in order to change the underlinings of the situation.

Then there are those not-so-zen or seemingly under control moments — which turn out to, admittedly, be more often than not — where I can hear myself react and say the exact same things my mom used to say and that, well, I don’t necessarily remember as the fondest memories. Can you remember that moment when you realized that as much as you thought your parenting style was so of-the-moment and so far off the way you were raised, you’re still la hija de tú mamá and those dichos are so part of you?

This is one I inherited from my mom:

Right hand index finger pointed in my girl’s direction;  left hand on my hip; my whole body slightly leaning towards her I say with a slightly exasperated tone: “Camila, es la última vez que te lo digo y ¡no te lo quiero decir más!”

And there’s the issues of my zoned-out “Mhhm’s.” Camila detests my “Mhhm’s” because she already knows they happen when I’m not really, really, like really hanging on to every little word that comes out of her mouth. She loves words and uses them a lot. I love that about her and her creativity is one to be reckoned with. I don’t want her to stop bursting out and sharing her thoughts and life with me at all, but in some moments my brain can only take so much and it will go on neutral to the “Mhhm” zone — just like my mother did and still does.

I keep discovering more and more simple nuances about myself — like how I purse my lips when I’m focused — that clearly prove that I’m my mother’s daughter. And then I see my little mini-me becoming more like me every day and become aware of the unbreakable spirit that binds us all through generations, countries and backgrounds. One born and raised in El Salvador; the other born in Houston and raised in El Salvador and the U.S. and the third one born in the U.S. with four different heritages in her blood. Yet, our spirit is the same — like mother, like daughter and like nieta — all with a fierce spirit to boot.

That spirit might make us feel like we’re not always “La Mejor Mamá del Mundo,” like this beautiful Hallmark card I got my mom says. I feel lucky that one thing my daughter has not inherited from me is the awkwardness to tell her mom or her abuelas (like she does to her Oma in the picture above created with Hallmark’s Pic n Props) how much she loves her. My girl shouts it out to me with joy (I do also get the reverse when things don’t go her way, in case you were wondering!) whenever she feels the urge: “You’re my  best mami ever!”

And here I am, using this post and this Hallmark card to finally tell my mom that she’s “La Mejor Mamá del Mundo” and I’m proud to be turning out just like you. Te quiero mucho, mamá.

“Es igualita al papá,” most will say when they meet my daughter and realize that her mischievous expressions, accompanied by a cynical laughter, are almost a complete replica of her dad’s. Much to her papi’s delight, Camila loves to tell and be told a good joke and is already on her way to being a very creative prankster.

I, on the other hand, wasn’t born, nor did I ever cultivate, an outwardly funny bone or jokester attitude. I can’t remember a good joke on cue to save my life, and have even had to download kid’s jokes apps just to have a healthy repertoire at hand to impress my girl.

Not only am I not the best at telling jokes, but I’ve found that I also need to learn to stop my frenetic pace and just laugh with my daughter a whole lot more. Lately, my push to be a successful mompreneur has got me on a whirlwind of emotions and a completely unbalanced life that makes me be much more reactive when my daughter is not doing what I ask her or what she’s expected to do. In those moments, her natural laughter and wacky cool attitude turn into the loudest of screams with a stubborn demeanor that sets off my impatience.

Many times, instead of responding calmly and just picking my battles, I try to control or just stop her emotions. It feels like the busier I get with trying to “do it all” and “be it all,” the more impatient and exasperated I become by the little things my beautiful and spirited child does.

I know for sure I’m not alone in feeling this way. No matter if we are stay-at-home, work-at-home, or working moms, we all need a constant reminder that with love and patience we can accomplish a lot more with our children. We know that it’s important to set discipline, but that in order for them to want to comply they need to feel loved and secured.

I would be fooling myself if I said that I could one day become the “perfect” mom because that just doesn’t exist. Just like I can’t hold up Camila to a fragmented standard of perfection, I can’t set myself up for failure either. What I can do, is give myself a reminder that no matter how difficult certain parenting moments can get, in the end every single moment between my daughter and I is an act of love.

If I keep going back to the love and both our needs to be loved, I can stop and laugh more with my daughter. I can eventually turn around those bursts of unwanted behavior into just another cry for love.

That picture of Camila holding up an “I Love You” sign, so easily created with a Hallmark Pics n Props, is just that reminder. I keep it in a special place in our home so I can turn to it when we both need the reassurance of love. All you need is love, right?

Disclosure: We’re working with Hallmark on a series of posts for Mother’s Day for which we’re being compensated. As usual, all stories and opinions are our own.

Today we kick off a week-long celebration of Latino-style birthdays we´re calling:  Bicultural Birthdays Celebration.

No Fiesta is complete without some outrageous gift-giving so we´ve put together four very, very generous giveaways of fantastic products for you to enter to win this week.

The best way to make sure you don´t miss any of the giveaways this week (or any other, for that matter!) is to subscribe either to our reader feed or the email feed.

The first giveaway comes courtesy of our friends at Hallmark, because we all, and I dare to generalize, think of Hallmark when thinking about celebrating loved ones.

Hallmark wants one of you to win a set of four of their most-loved Recordable Storybooks (that´s a value of $120 in total!).  These books are ideal for those of use that either travel a lot and can´t make it to read our kids a bedtime story every night or for our extended families, especially for those living far from us, to to be part of our child´s life in a turn of a page.

These classic tales can now come to life for your kid in a voice they love.  They do come in English only, but I´ve already recorded one in Spanish just by live-translating it as I read it, just like we do with most English-only books because my girl prefers to be read in Spanish most of the time.  

The Giveaway!

This giveaway is now closed. Congratulations to the winner:  Suzanne!

We’re giving away four Hallmark Recordable Storybooks (the four pictured above at a retail price of $120) to one lucky winner.  To enter just leave us a comment telling us who the books would be for and who would you want to record their voice.

That’s all you have to do to enter this giveaway. If you want to up your chances at winning, then this is how you can get additional entries (only after you’ve completed the step above):

**Please leave a separate comment for each so we can count them and avoid mistakes.

1. Subscribe to receive blog updates and subscriber-only content via email and leave us an extra comment letting us know you did so or that you’re already a subscriber. Make sure to leave the comment using the same email you subscribed with.

2. Follow us on Twitter and tweet about this giveaway including a link to the post, @SpanglishBaby and the hashtag #BiculturalBirthdays. Copy the link to the tweet in an additional comment on the giveaway’s post.

3. Like SpanglishBaby on Facebook and join a thriving community of parents.

This giveaway ends Sunday, August 7 at midnight PST and is open to everyone with a U.S. mailing address over 18 years of age. Check out the Giveaway Rules.