Small Victories

I'm so glad Brendan has the day off of work today. We're going to enjoy the three day weekend by watching some NCAA college basketball online, playing with Charlotte, maybe taking some walks if the weather clears up, and just generally being lazy...in a good way! I'm also getting around to writing this post that has been in my mind for a few weeks.

In a previous post I mentioned some of my small victories. "Small Victories" is this little phrase I've coined whenever I (or we) accomplish something here in Spain that helps make life a little more "normal". It could also be said that it applies to accomplishing things that I would normally take for granted - like how I do laundry.

So here, in no particular order, are some of my small victories since moving to Spain:

• Cooking a meal - when we were still in the temp apt and I was learning what was available in grocery stores, I was finally able to put together a soup...if you ask Brendan, it actually turned out more like a pasta dish but it was yummy and homemade.
• Figuring out how to operate the nasal aspirator we bought for Charlotte - both of the awesome bulb syringes we got from the hospital when Charlotte was born broke, so we had to find something here in Spain to clear out her nose. The lady who showed us apts when we first moved here helped us get one at the store called Farmacia (like CVS but NOT b/c EVERYTHING seems to be behind the counter...not cool when you don't speak the language!). This nasal aspirator was not a bulb syringe and the directions weren't in English so we stared at it for quite some time trying to figure out how it worked. When Brendan finally figured it out, he came in to me laughing, "We have to suck the stuff out of her nose!!"
• Laundry in our new apartment
• Riding the bus on my own with Charlotte - I've done this a few times now and have actually gotten the hang of it
• Getting groceries delivered to our apartment - Ok, so this may seem like a luxury rather than normal life, but imagine trying to get a large amount of groceries home without a car and with a baby in a stroller. Brendan and I weren't sure how this was going to work, but we just pushed our cart full of groceries up to the checkout line and somehow managed to get things delivered to our apartment later that day!
• Getting cable & internet set-up - Remember:  We don't speak Spanish...enough said.
• Buying bath mats for our non-heated, very cold, tiled-floor bathroom