As a Spanglish baby myself, exposing my 2 year old daughter to the measure of Spanish necessary to develop a respectable level of fluency has been daunting. As her primary caregiver, and sole Spanish speaker in our home, my own weakness in fluency is ever present. But as I continue to expose, communicate and deposit our second language into my mini Latina, an entirely new question has been posed: can she even be considered a Latina?

My Alina is a 2 year old unlike most 2 year olds you might know. With sass and keen awareness uncommon for such a pint sized person, she artfully conveys her intended message to those willing to absorb it. I take pride in cultivating my free thinker. But when she approached and seemingly conquered issues of race, identity and with one flailing swoop ousted me as “different,” my urge to restrict this impending mindset took hold.

As a product of a loving union between me, a full blooded Cubana, and my African American husband, Alina is biracial. Bicultural, if you prefer. Or, according to my 2 year old, she is simply black like Daddy. And Mommy? She’s “different.” While I was prepared to one day discuss issues of racial identity with our beautiful daughter (albeit not this young), I had never considered that the questionable identity would be my own. And, I lament, my daughter’s classification that so casually stripped our sameness caused a stir in my heart. What mother wants to be different from their children, their daughter? Maybe because I am in an interracial marriage, with biracial children, it may surprise you to know: not this one. I don’t want to be different from my kids. And it just never occurred to me that I was.

What finally did occur to me is this: maybe Alina isn’t Latina just because her mom is Latina. In its purposed core, my dedication to bilingualism has always been somewhat self-serving. As Latinos, our language unifies us throughout a spectrum of cultures, skin colors and histories. I wanted Alina to speak Spanish so that, no matter what the world said, she could take ownership of her Latina, the part of her which is me. Bilingualism is wonderful for so many reasons, but my chore of exposure is motivated by the retention of the me in her, the different in her.

After some critical thinking and the foresight granted to those who allow time to bestow it, I realized that my heart’s pressing question to be or not to be Latina is not one centered on Alina’s identity. It rested heavily on my own.

As a Spanglish baby, all grown up, I have openly wondered if I am Latina enough to be considered Latina; if my lack luster command of our language restricts the ownership of my blood that I am privy to. And while I am not quite certain the answer of that yet, what remains a feverish passion is raising a daughter who one day can. Sure, at 2 years young, Alina is nowhere near ready to define her personal identity. But as the catalyst of awareness to the many struggles of identity that exist within me, Alina’s enjoyment and yearning to speak Spanish has reminded me that “different” can be Latina too.

So, from one different Latina to the next, we wish all our hermanas on their quest of Latina-hood a very joyous journey to self awareness. Different is beautiful. Alina and I are each uniquely different Latinas. And, as I remind my beautiful little girl, in our differences there lies so much of the same.

I love gazing at my two babies. I can sit idle for a long time watching Alina, my two year old, dance and sing or put a puzzle together. Her 8 week old brother’s sight is starting to focus, and I gawk as he processes the world for the first time. Since they are young, I am never further than my eye sight.

Whether a new parent or a seasoned pro, every mom knows how rewarding it is to watch your children grow. We know that keeping them safe takes a watchful eye, too. But for a worry wart like me, leaving them in their own rooms to fall asleep has always been a source of stress. Not anymore!

Graco True Focus Digital Video Monitor, available exclusively at Walmart.com, gives you eyes and ears behind closed doors, allowing you to give your child independence while keeping them safe. With its digital technology and unsurpassed performance for clarity and privacy {using a 2.4 GHz frequency}, your sweet bebe’s face is never far from your sight. Also, a high resolution 2.4inch color video screen allows for superior viewing. And since kids never stay in one place for long, the Graco True Focus Digital Video Monitor has real-time zoom, providing a clear and up-close view. An added plus that I’ve really enjoyed!

The monitor totes other parent-friendly features, such as vibration notification technology, which is exclusively Graco, a clock on the parent unit for quick reference and battery back-up on the child unit for added peace of mind. The display clock has been especially useful during midnight wake up calls; good thinking, Graco!

Although our littlest babe’s bassinet is still in our room, I’ve been able to use our Graco True Focus monitor in Alina’s room to watch over her independent play and ensure she stays in bed throughout the night. Becoming a new mom of two hasn’t meant a lack of safety since owning this video monitor. I’ve always got an eye on both of these kids now! And losing the stress of not knowing what goes on behind closed doors is great for worry wart parents like me, too.

The Giveaway

We’re giving away one Graco True Focus™ Digital Video Monitor to one lucky winner.

To enter, all you have to do is leave us a comment telling us about the little one you need to keep a watchful eye on.

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 http://bit.ly/L3k4ta  and @SpanglishBaby. Copy the link to the tweet in an additional comment on the giveaway’s post.

Click to Tweet Ex: Visit @SpanglishBaby to win a @GracoBaby True Focus Digital Video Monitor http://bit.ly/L3k4ta

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

This giveaway ends Thursday, June 21 at 11:59 p.m. EST and is open to everyone with a U.S. mailing address over 18 years of age. Check out the Giveaway Rules.

Disclosure: We received one product for review. As always, all opinions are our own.

Having just given birth to mi milagro, the importance of preserving my culture has been heavy on my mind. In addition, being the only Spanish speaking caretaker in our children’s lives presents its own set of challenges. Language is truly the most impactful way I celebrate and embrace my heritage with my children. For that reason, I am always on the look out for supportive and informed communities in which to engage with other like-minded parents. In celebrating our heritage, a parent can never have too many allies!

A new and exciting community was just launched by Pampers, Mi milagro. Nuestra herencia., providing Hispanic parents with a forum to connect and discuss all the wonderful ways that we celebrate our heritage with our children. Through the online initiative, parents connect with the Pampers Latino community to share baby care tips, cultural traditions or simply experiences from their own Latino childhood.

In order to get us excited about celebrating our culture and heritage, Pampers is giving away a cultural prize pack to one of our lucky SpanglishBaby readers. In the prize pack, you’ll find many ways a parent can express the love of our heritage with their children from classic baby books to traditional Spanish lullabies, and even a Latin American cook book.

We loved our cultural prize pack! Of all the fun items it was packed with, Alina loved the Spanish language books the best. Alina’s bedtime routine has always consisted of reading bedtime stories, so when our Pampers cultural prize pack included two Spanish language books in which Alina was very familiar with in English, she was ecstatic! Celebrating our culture and heritage through literature, and the ability to translate that into any language, is a valued opportunity.

{photo by:  favitia}

The Giveaway!

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

We’re giving away one cultural prize pack to one lucky winner. Prize pack includes:

• Spanish-language baby books
• Spanish-language lullabies
• Hispanic/Latin American cookbook
• A full-set game of Loteria
• Pampers’ cultural body suit

To enter, all you have to do is tell us who is your Milagro (miracle) and what is your Herencia (legacy) to him/her.

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 http://bit.ly/KtJh0g, @SpanglishBaby  and #Pampers hashtag. Copy the link to the tweet in an additional comment on the giveaway’s post.

Click to Tweet Ex: Visit @SpanglishBaby to win a #Pampers cultural prize pack http://bit.ly/KtJh0g

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

This giveaway ends Thursday, May 24th, at midnight PST and is open to everyone over 18 years of age in the continental U.S. Void where prohibited. No purchase necessary. Check out the Giveaway Rules.

 Being raised by generations of Spanish speaking women has established a solid foundation of kitchen know-how. And while I would not consider myself a fluent Spanish speaker, I can talk my way around a Latino cocina just fine. Spending much of my childhood centered on good food and loving family has ensured that I could always speak the language of la comida, la cocina y el amor de mi familia.

Since embarking into her toddler years, my sweet two year old has become a bundle of communication. As her mother, it has been exhilarating to watch Alina’s personality mature. But, as I have mentioned before, I worry that her Spanish exposure is not keeping up with her incredible development. That I, as the sole Spanish speaker in her life, am not keeping up.

In order to create more active, conversational dialogue opportunities in which to practice her Spanish, I decided to bring Alina’s lesson into the one room of the house that I felt most capable: the kitchen. I find it assuming that, while communicating efficiently in the worlds of politics or economics would be comedic adventures, my ability to engage in fluent levels of culinary conversation comes like second nature. And this type of conversational exposure is what Alina needs in order to excel in her fluency.

While chopping green and red peppers, Alina and I talked about colors. We inspected two cebollas, wondering why one was blanca while the other was roja. Each layer of our recipe was discussed in detail; every ingredient labeled its proper name. We discussed that tomato sauce was red because it comes from tomatoes. We counted each morsel of mushroom {she can count to ten in Spanish all by herself!} over and over again. I cautioned her to never touch un cuchillo without Mommy’s help. We snuck pedazos de queso too, because that’s what happens in a kitchen full of food and love. And at the end of our culinary experience, Alina and I had spent a solid hour engaging in highly fluent Spanish!

It may not be the most pivotal conversation she will ever have in her life, but by bringing Alina into an area of life in which I feel confident of my fluency levels, I was able to give her the best of me. And that felt amazing. Cooking with my Spanglish Baby has proven to be an invaluable bonding experience; one that has reaffirmed my motives in raising a bilingual and bicultural child. While although speaking Spanish is very important to me, the importance of creating memories of old into ones of new should not to be forgotten either. La cocina, la famila y amor are values I wish Alina is instilled with and becomes fluent in, regardless of which language she uses.

Newly pregnant with our first child, there were so many hopes and dreams I aspired to give my daughter: a secure sense of self, confidence in her womanhood and the ability to define her cultural identity in whichever way she chooses. Being of mixed races and cultures, I wondered who would win in the battle of personal identity definition…Alina or society at large. With that in mind, before Alina was born, I decided she would be bilingual in order to have ownership over her dual identity regardless of what the world thought she was.

And then, I became a real-life parent and learned that hopes and dreams were destined to remain aspirations if concrete goals and action plans were not established. For her first few months of life, Alina was exposed to very minimal Spanish. The chores of daily routines, the polarizing emotions of becoming a new mom, packing the husband’s lunch before he left for the day’s work, all took precedent over depositing a new language into my child’s ear. While I felt guilt over my lack of effort, I knew that it wasn’t for lack of love. Just lack of energy (and sleep)! Raising a bilingual child, in my case, requires support and resources that I needed to seek out deliberately. This was not going to be an easy task.

Determined to create any resemblance of bilingualism in my baby, I eventually stepped up the game. I read Spanish books to Alina. She loved (and still does) all her Little Pim videos. And while I am the only Spanish speaker in consistent contact with her, I made an effort to reinforce commonplace objects with their Spanish moniker. Throughout her first year of life, my Spanglish baby was able to identify most objects in both Spanish and English and respond to age appropriate commands. I was so proud!

Alina turned 2 years old in January, and like a true Cubana, she can talk up a storm! (I can’t be the only Cubana that loves to talk?!) I casually joke that being Latina is why Alina can speak in full sentences, give appropriate responses when spoken to and, in general, hold a conversation at such a young age, but the truth is, I am a very proud Mama. She has an amazing vocabulary and is incredibly smart.

Shortly after her second birthday, Alina and I were on the phone with my grandmother who was speaking to her in Spanish. I wanted for Mami to hear and connect with her great grandchild. To be as proud as I was. But when Mami presented a simple question to Alina (“¿qué estas haciendo?”), of which Alina always responds the same way (“naaaaathing”), there was only silence. Alina looked at me, confused. In that moment I realized that Alina did not understand the Spanish question she so readily responds to when asked in English. I had failed to evolve and expand her knowledge of Spanish alongside the development of her dominant language. Maybe it was because Alina’s language ability advanced so quickly that I found myself ill prepared? I took for granted that exposure to singular words would somehow translate to structural, moving sentences with verbs and adjectives. For as proud I once was for raising a Spanglish baby, I instantly felt like a failure to my sprouting Spanglish toddler.

But that is what is most amazing about language: there is no expiration date. You always have time to learn. You just get back up and keep climbing. And although my efforts in raising a Spanglish baby were great, they were mild compared to the commitment required to raise a Spanglish toddler and beyond. But, I am determined to make my bilingual aspirations a reality for Alina. Even if one sentence, one verb, one day at a time.

Today’s aspiration turned reality? “Yo como un manzana.”

Raising bilingual children is what brings us together as a community here on SpanglishBaby. The world of language immersion is not win or lose; as parents, we simply strive to expose and enrich the lives of our children. And doing so in a mostly monolingual culture is no easy feat. It takes plenty of motivation, dedication and, sometimes, the willingness to accept a Spanglish result. However, what sets our individual stories apart are the experiences that unearth our motivation to take on such a challenge to begin with.

This is where my personal motivation lays…

When my parents divorced, my grandparents held down the fort and made sure my mother had everything she needed to raise my brother and me. I remember many times my Papi (grandfather)ringing the doorbell, stuffing a bag of groceries in my arms, just to be on his way again. He wasn’t a man of many words, none of which were in English. So apart from all the support my grandfather provided me, he also persistently demanded his language be the only way we communicate. Staying connected to my Papi, as well as the older generation of my extended family, is the only reason I am able to speak Spanish today.

By the time I gave birth to Alina, Papi was mature in age and of poor health, but the excitement to meet his first great grandchild was alive and well. We lived in different states, and it was strange for me to hear of an emotional man awaiting the birth of my child when my whole life he had been the symbol of strength. It was strange to know that within me was something that he yearned for. After so many years of needing him, it felt satisfying to know that I could bring him the joy of a new generation. After her birth, I sent weekly photos of Alina to my grandparents through email and, according to Mami, they made him very happy.

Papi finally met Alina when she was three months old, at my brother’s wedding, and the moment was everything I had dreamed of. As I laid my sleeping angel in his arms, I watched as he gazed down at her in amazement. I worked the camera quickly, but had to stop every so often to let the heaviness of the moment pass me. I think I was holding my breath.

After a few minutes, I noticed his arms begin to shake under the weight of my infant, so I took her. In one sweeping movement, he grabbed my arm and said “Hija, por favor, enséñale español. Prométeme.” Papi wanted to be able to communicate with her, and begged me to expose Alina to his language. As I promised him, a quick prayer crossed my mind that he would live long enough to communicate with her at all.

As he left the reception moments later, I watched as he shook my husband’s hand, looked him straight in the eyes and said “Teach. Her. Spanish. Por favor.” I had never in my entire life seen my Papi ask another man for anything. And in English? Never.

Papi died a few hours later in his home while our family continued to celebrate my brother’s marriage. It was one the most profound moments of my life.

My grandfather was a remarkable man, one capable of conquering the American dream. He was a successful entrepreneur with incredible business savvy and an equally astounding work ethic. He was understated in his brilliance, however, and I was reminded of that when I walked into my grandparents’ home for the first time after his loss. Because despite the large, beautiful home in the Southern California beach town which he owned outright, he spent much of his final days in the garage.

As my Mami explained it, for hours Papi would sit on a folding chair in front of a boom box stereo, listening to classical Cuban music while staring at the pictures of my newborn child that he had taped to the furnace on his left. Every picture I had emailed to my grandparents had been taped to that furnace. In that exact moment, in the depths of my grief, I promised my child she would know Spanish and that she would know her Papi.

Writing this post opens deeply guarded wounds, but remembering the motivation behind my choice of language immersion has been important and has renewed my dedication to the sometimes daunting task. But I promised Papi. I promised Alina. No matter where they may find each other, I want them to hear, share, love and understand. I know we each have our unique reasons to raising bilingual children; Papi is mine.

Editor’s note: I am so happy to announce that we’ve invited one more regular contributor to our SpanglishBaby familia. Vanessa, of the beautifully written and illustrated blog De Su Mama, recently accepted our invitation to join us and we know you’re quickly going to see why we are thrilled. Vanessa has a different kind of story to tell, starting with what she writes about today. We hope you all welcome her to our family!

My grandparents immigrated to the United States from their beloved Cuba in the late 1960s, bringing their young children with them. And although my parents would never dismiss their birth country, spending the majority of their lives in our English speaking country equates to a lessening of my Spanish speaking abilities and cultural identity as a Cubana.

The exponential lessening of bilingualism and cultural identification is seen through the generations in my family. Speaking less-than-perfect Spanish has been a gradual shift, versus a concrete decision made by any one person at a specific moment in time. Every Latino family is different however. Some families cut out Spanish to assimilate, others stick to their roots like an evergreen in the Mojave. Others still, like mine, are somewhere in the middle: focused on education, economic mobility, providing ample opportunity for their children, while casually preserving family tradition, culture and language.

I could image it was difficult to balance the two priorities, especially in the 1980s. Growing up in the middle income, beach suburbs of Los Angeles, attending a private Catholic school, meant a distinct lack of diversity. There were no resources like multilingual playgroups, online communities or the social acceptance of bilingualism. I remember, as a freshman, going with my Mother to enroll in my high school classes. I had earned a spot in English I Honors {my family was ecstatic!}, but because I had listed Spanish as my first language, was enrolled in ESL instead. To boot, and although passing the written exam, I was given a verbal interview before being allowed into the classroom. I had a fabulous childhood, no disputing that. But one filled with the language and culture of my family? Not so much.

Given that scenario, you end up with me, the Spanglish baby; a full blooded Latina, 100% Cubana, who is bilingual in English and Spanglish {at best} and doesn’t always know how her heritage fits into her everyday reality. According to my Mami, I’m really just an American anyway.

Of course, I would prefer to be totally fluent in my family’s native tongue. I believe bilingualism provides a gateway to better education, more career opportunities and, in general, a worldly outlook. And to the many monolingual family and friends in my life, when they hear me speak Spanish, I am totally fluent. Usually, it’s when I’m on the phone with my Mami that my Spanish really gets going. I start to roll a few R’s, proclaim an “ay Dios mio”, and am then rewarded with “Wow, Vanessa! I didn’t know you could speak Spanish like that!” In those moments, I am brimming with Latino pride. My flesh is swollen with the assertion and desire to be Cubana.

Insert me in front of a few bona-fide Latinos {you know, the ones that are really fluent}, and all that bloating dissipates. I am no longer the proud Cuban girl. And you’ll likely not hear much Spanglish come out of my mouth. My Latino pride reverts to its proper place, balanced delicately upon my hyphen of brown skin in a white life. After all, I’m really just an American anyway.

And so folks, there you have it. I am your Spanglish Baby, all grown up. A soul deposited with the beauty and essence that is our language and culture, yet living a life that lacks much of its influence. There is an upside though: we aren’t in the ’80s anymore. Times are changing. Communities like the one we have here are supportive in nature and help to balance our hyphenated experiences. Bilingualism doesn’t have to equate to English being your “second” language, even if, by technicality, it is. The best part is that, to more and more Americans, being bilingual, to any degree, is seen as a desirable, sought after skill. Now that’s pretty cool.