It will come as no surprise to you that my Spanish needs a little improvement should I really get the most out of the year here in Buenos Aires.

It did, however, come as a big surprise to me.

Friday night Ana and I enjoyed our first opportunity to go out without the kids. We left Isa and Sof with Antonia, our housekeeper who speaks no English. Isa, understandably, was nervous about this because “She doesn’t understand what I say.”

Now Antonia is a godsend. She shows up at our house and quietly starts taking care of things that we weren’t even really aware needed taking care. Then, without anyone even hinting at being hungry, she prepares an amazing dinner with whatever we happen to have in the house. And if we don’t happen to have anything, she tells us she needs to go grocery shopping for us. Of course, you might be thinking “Why would a Stay-at-home Dad need someone to do these things for you?” But if you are thinking this, then you are a) not a stay at home mom, b) do not appreciate your wife if she is a stay at home mom, and/or c) living in Leave It To Beaver. In which case, please bring me back some cheese cake, because I understand that Eddie Haskell makes the best cheese cake.

Anyway, back to Isa. Well, Isa, if you need water, say agua, and if you need the bathroom say baňo, and other than that you should be sleeping anyway. Isa could understand Antonia, but I wasn’t really concerned that Isa would wake up and smell smoke and not be able to communicate it with Antonia. (Although, an apartment a few blocks away blew up on Saturday from a gas leak….)

So Ana’s best friend in BA is Flor, and Flor and her brother Ro are in a band together, so we went to see them play. (Flor and Ro wrote and played a tango at our wedding.) The band is three guys on acoustic guitar (they each had their own guitar - they weren’t all sharing one guitar), and Flor singing. Their music is a modern tango, and she sings with a passionate bluesy style that could be compared to Janis Joplin. “Could be compared to” is an interesting phrase. Technically, she “could be compared to” Alanis Morriset, Billie Holliday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Peggy Lee. However, the comparison might sound like this: Flor and Peggy Lee are both female singers.

(For those who now need to google Peggy Lee, just suffice it to say that she was like Christina Aguillera or Brittany Spears back in the day. Only talented.)

Enough digression. Flor is in a band, the band has a CD, we have the CD, and I like it very much. I have listened to it a lot with Isa, and when it comes on, she will tell me “Daddy, this music is Tango.” (The only other music she recognizes is Bob Marley, and Bobby Darin, so I think Flor is in good company. Interestingly, Isa never compares Flor to Peggy Lee.)

So we are excited to see Flor and Ro and to hear them play live. Now Flor tells us the address but either doesn’t know the name of the place or doesn’t tell Ana – I don’t know which. When we get there, I’m convinced it’s actually because it doesn’t have a name. The address, though, is awesome: Pringles 753. (For some reason, here they have the name of the street first, and then the number.) So we go to Pringles 753, and walk in the door of a fairly non-descript place. (I’m sad to report that I saw no Pringles on Calle Pringles.) Inside, the place is like a bomb shelter - the walls are cinderblock – and not like when you were in elementary school, because those walls were cinderblock but painted with a nice glossy yellow that didn’t really match anything. These walls are actually bare cinderblock. And there enough seats in the place for like 35 people. Apparently 35 of Flor’s closest friends who showed up before us. It has this very art house feel to it, like straight out of the Beat movement. I’m half expecting Alan Ginsburg to stand up and start saying “I saw the best of my generation destroyed by debauchery” or whatever it was that caused the demise of the best of his generation. Certainly it wasn’t debauchery…. So we walk into this Beat bar and the bouncer – or this gentleman who appeared to be a bouncer – tells us it’s 5 pesos each. Whatever, I pay him 10 pesos for the two of us. Now there are no seats left so we stand next to the bar and I am using my American approach to getting us a beer. (Aside here – getting “us” a beer in Argentina is not the same. A beer in most places is actually a liter. So I’m not kidding when I say I bought “us” a beer – and it was only $2.) The American approach we all know well – for guys, you stand at the bar and try to get the bartender’s attention without actually leaning over the bar and yelling “HEY BARKEEP!” When there is only one or two other people at the bar, this approach will work very well in a bar in the US, as the bartender is acutely attuned into his or her patrons and aware that his or her tips are contingent upon the number of beverage he or she serves. For ladies, it usually involves a low-cut blouse, flirting, or getting some guy to yell “HEY BARKEEP!”

Yeah – not so much here. The bartender apparently is friends with everyone, and doesn’t work for tips, so unless I basically kiss the guy on the cheek, I’m just standing there looking like an idiot. Pucker up! Oh – and since people don’t drink that much here, if a bartender were working for tips, he’d starve.

Anyway, while all of this non-serving of alcohol is going on, Ana and I are starting to notice a few people coming in after us, talking to the would-be bouncer, and apparently not paying to get in. Now I’m thinking it was either the stupid tax or the American fee. Then I notice that at the end of the bar you can see into the kitchen. Where there is a cat walking around on the counter. Note to self: Don’t eat on Pringles St.

Back to my Spanish. So the show starts, and Flor is singing a very passionate series of songs. The second song is actually one of my favorites, so I’m stoked. After about the fourth song, I remember thinking that it’s funny I understand specific lines, but not really the whole context, and yet I still really like the music. And then the fifth song, Flor is very sincerely and passionately singing about some horrible experience in love, when all of the sudden, and quite unexpectedly, the audience starts laughing. Apparently, the best comparison to Flor is not Peggy Lee, Janis Joplin, nor Ella, but ARLO GUTHRIE!!! OK, so maybe it’s just this song that’s filled with irony.

Oh no, it keeps going. Several songs. D’oh.

And then we meet Maria. After the show, Flor introduces us to her friend Maria. Ana and I talked in the cab on the way home where I discovered I had had a very different conversation than I believed. Here’s what I understood from the conversation:

- Maria knows Flor because she used to date Alexis, Flor’s husband. I think it is odd, but I don’t say anything. She owns two apartments that she rents out, and lives with her mother. She used to work for Central as a consultant, and spent a lot of time in the US working on AT&T. We commiserate over long hours, travel for work, and taking laptops on vacation. She’s an economist, and just finished her thesis for her PhD. I gather that she used to work for or had a friend who worked for an airline, because she knows all about the benefits of working for an airline. Her family is Irish and she told me her family heritage.

Here’s what Ana understood (ie, what was actually said):

- Maria knows Flor because her ex-boyfriend is Alexis’ best friend. (Makes a little more sense now, doesn’t it?) She owns the house in which her ex-boyfriend lives (he owns half) and she wants to sell it to buy an apartment, but right now she is renting with a friend. (Not exactly the real estate baroness I imagined.) She used to work for ACCENTURE! This is quite embarrassing because we talked about this a lot and I kept thinking “What the hell is Central???) and has been to the US a lot for AT&T and other clients. She does have her PhD in Economics, and just finished writing someone else’s thesis for them. She got paid to write someone else’s PhD thesis…. She currently is a flight attendant for an airline because even though she has a PhD in Econ, she makes more money as a flight attendant than she would for Accenture or in Econ. And she’s Irish. Or rather, she’s as Irish as I am, in that she’s Argentine, but – oh hell, you get it.

Yeah – I was close. What’s great is you know how when people are talking about something you aren’t interested in and sometimes you sort of think about other things while the conversation covers areas you don’t care about? (For husbands – like when your wife and her friends talk about haircuts. For wives – like when your husbands talk. For all of my friends – like when I talk about soccer.) Well, I have to focus and try to get the conversation; because it may turn out they are talking about something completely different than I believe, only I think they are talking about haircuts.

Day 2 – The Good Airs get a Good Cleaning

So wait, what day of the week is it? I am already so confused I can’t even begin to say. I believe Bush is still president of the US, but I’m not really sure. Maybe it’s the wine speaking.

So anyway, we last left our fearless heroes stranded in Buenos Aires, stinky, and sans belongings. When Our Fearless Heroes (or OFH, pronounced “Awfuh”) awoke on … fill in the correct day of the week here… they quickly ascertained several very specific and dire needs before them.

1. Bottled water. One cannot make formula from a dry powder without bottled water. Well, I suppose one could make it from tap water, but this particular one drank some tap water on this particular one’s first trip to Buenos Aires because nobody ever told him (really bad fake Mexican accent here) “Don’t drink the water” and this particular one being so cocky and self-assured figured if nobody had ever said don’t drink the water it must be safe to drink. This particular one then suffered from an interesting malady involving – you guessed it – the intestinal tract, and after days of wondering what was wrong with this particular one, and having my dear uncle (by marriage) who is a doctor tell me I had appendicitis did Ana say, “NO! Don’t drink the water!!! Are you crazy? Why do you think we all have bottled water delivered to our houses???” Oh yeah…… Interesting point…. Anyway, this is a song about Alice’s Restaurant. Remember Alice? This is a song about Alice. She had no bottled water in her restaurant, and Arlo Guthrie went to the dump, only it was closed. Oh wait, wrong song.
2. Diapers. Now, those of you who are without child may not realize quite how dire this need can be. Actually, I’m guessing you probably do. How many of us have ever woken up without a need to use the diaper-esque facilities? Well, when the OFH are down to only a few diapers, the OFH go get more. Mind you, some lucky Norwegian elderly woman just back from her trip to the Vatican is now the recipient of 6 40 lbs bags, one of which contains a brand new bag of Huggies, which depending on her size, she may or may not be able to use in lieu of Depends (probably not unless she is an abnormally small lucky Norwegian elderly woman just back from the Vatican).
3. Wipes. You know, if you don’t have clean diapers, I guess you don’t really need wipes! Problem solved!
4. Clean clothes. Now clean clothes sometimes are not important. However, as I am not making the walk of shame (or fame, depending on the direction) back at William & Mary this particular morning, clean clothes are actually somewhat important. (For the record, this statement is not an indication that the author may or may not have any specific knowledge of any particular walks of shame and or fame. The author does not intend to convey to the reader that the author has in fact made, or had any specific relationship to, a walk of shame and or fame. Any speculation that the author at one time during his or her College years had any specific knowledge of any individual walking any particular path that may have been referred to as a walk of shame and or fame is completely arbitrary and in no way related to the comments made above. In fact, I’m not even admitting I know who the author is.)
5. Toiletries. Now, a lot of toiletries can be missed. For example, I don’t really need to floss my teeth this morning. I mean I should, and my dental hygienist wouldn’t be happy to hear me say that, but let’s call a spade a shovel here: if my gums don’t get poked and prodded this morning, it’s not the end of Western Civilization. However, if I don’t have soap, nor deodorant, and I were ,hypothetically speaking, in a country wherein appearances count a LOT – one like, say, Argentina – then being a smelly gringo with food in his teeth could be a bad thing.
6. Oh yeah – food and water. But then, we wouldn’t have had food and water anyway, so almost not worth mentioning. Except the whole “don’t drink the water” thing.
7. Lastly the internet. I mean, how else do I google “lost baggage” to find out what to do? Or who to call? Or pull down a satellite map of where my baggage may be?

So we prioritized. Points 1, 2, & 6 all vied strongly for most important. Eventually we decided a) you can’t poop if you don’t eat, and b) we could eat and get bottled water at the same time, thus breaking the PETA axiom that one should not kill any birds with a stone, much less two.

Having eaten, it quickly became even more obvious to us that not only were our clothes dirty and ourselves stinky, but in fact our dirty clothes were also stinky. For example, I had been wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and a sweatshirt that had been spit upon by a certain un-named four-month old (Sofia) approximately 47 times in three days. Normally she doesn’t spit up on me more than once a day, but literally within minutes of putting on my jeans, she spit up on them. And, seriously, I looked at it knowing the flight was 8 hours away and thought “You know, I should change or something, but I bet it will dry up and won’t be a problem.

Did you know dried spit up doesn’t smell so great?

Actually, somewhere above I went into the land of fiction – I just remembered our cousin Vero had given us a bottle of water. So we could feed our infant if she were hungry and wanted to spit up on our dirty clothes again. So we did, and she did.

Now, since we had literally no food in the house, we had to eat breakfast at the café around the corner before bathing. Our next priority was clean clothes, and we could at least bathe before we took off for that venture. So back to the house we went. And back at the house we go to bathe where I discover as I’m getting in the shower that we have no shampoo. Of course. But we do have soap. Soap, when you have a crew cut, is not a bad shampoo. Soap, when you desperately need a haircut because you look like Ringo Starr in the late sixties, is not a good shampoo. But hey, the Good Airs will wisk away any peculiar smells, right?

So, in the mean time, we needed clean clothes. Good thing we live near a store or 5,000. So off we went, to Callao y Sante Fe. “Honey, I’m sure it’s only a few blocks this way.” “Oh right, I forgot this plaza was before Santa Fe.” “So how many blocks was it?” “WHERE IS SANTA FE AND WHY DIDN’T WE TAKE A TAXI???”

Eventually we found Callao y Santa Fe (and I’m happy to say several places where Ana plans to get her hair cut in the next 12 months), a butcher (critical to the porteno experience), a few dozen cafes, and a place that will deliver a dozen empanadas for 7 pesos (or US$2). Oh – and a kids clothing store that we know. Only we didn’t know that it was absurdly expensive (well, on an Argentine budget – but on a DC budget it is only somewhat expensive), and had we stopped in the half a dozen other children’s clothes stores that we had passed in the 14 hour walk from one side of Buenos Aires to the other, we might have already been done and could have gone home.

Then we finally found a place for Ana to buy some clothes. And you know what, she looked awesome in her new outfit. I was stoked. I guess she was, too, but I think I never got around to asking her in between all the compliments I kept paying her in her new clothes.

And we found an Adidas store where I bought socks. You see, at this point, I wasn’t going to pay a lot for an Adidas shirt. But my socks and shoes were causing dogs to whimper at this point, so I was going to do the best thing I could: help the animals. Poor dogs shouldn’t have to suffer.

We head back home without having new clothes for anyone except for Ana and my feet in time to meet someone. When we arrive, guess who calls? The old woman in Oslo who read the tags on our luggage to ask if we would mind if she borrowed a diaper. Actually it was United saying “Hola, tenemos sus equipajes y vamos a llegar con ellas esta tarde.” I held out (quietly) knowing that there was no way they really found all 6 bags and ripped them out of the hands of the old woman in Oslo so that we could have a change of clothes.

Now at this point, one would be excited to learn that one was getting all of his or her earthly possessions (sans those in North America) back in a few hours. However, one then realized one had to meet a few people before then, and being in stinky spit upon clothes was not ideal for meeting a few people in a country where appearances are 125% and the rest are appearances.

But more importantly, I just realized I have written two and a half pages about stink and filth. I’m going to wrap it up quickly.

Bags arrived, we were happy. Isa went to her cousins house where she was very excited to play and finally bathe. I stayed home with Sof who napped during the entire Barcelona v Arsenal Champions League final (thank you Sof!), and our new housekeeper unpacked all of our 40 lbs bags including the 7^th bag that the old woman from Oslo apparently misplaced. Does anyone need a Norwegian woman’s belongings?

We called to get internet set up and they won’t come until Saturday. In the mean time, we have to make do with some neighbor whose unsecured wireless network named “NETGEAR” (very original name) connects to my laptop (not Ana’s) only when the wind is blowing in the right direction, the window is open, the kids are sleeping, and I hold my computer in one specific place in one specific room in our specific apartment. Otherwise, no luck. I have spent more time trying to get the connection to work than I have contemplating what the old woman in Oslo thinks of my stinky socks that I put in her bag and gave back to United to return to the Nordic dumping grounds.

Anyway, my point of all of this is to say: if you received any emails from me two or three times, it’s because my pirated internet connection keeps going in and out before Outlook can finish replicating. If you received some stinky socks in the mail, the odds that they are mine are very very low. Unless you are an elderly woman in Oslo who needs Depends. If you know a baggage handler for United that works at Dulles – tell them thanks for spoiling my shopping trip.

So we spent like 3 weeks dedicated to emptying our house, getting it cleaned, and packing our bags. A wee bit stressful, that process came to completion merely a few hours before we left for the airport (as these things tend to do). Our flight left Dulles at 9:45 PM, and in order to prevent nay problems from arising, we left DC at 4 – only 5 hours and 45 minutes before our flight.

For the first time in recent history in the metropolitan area, we did not hit any traffic whatsoever from DC all the way to Dulles. We arrived, got a porter, checked in with a short line in the international section, and even got through security with no incident worth mentioning – despite having 6 checked bags, 2 children, 4 carry-ons, and 1 stroller.

We found the gate, were happy to find Potbelly’s, and sat down for a cheap dinner (cheap at the airport? How awesome is that?) We had dinner, and even had plenty of time for ice cream (hey, why not feed the 4 year old sugar and milk? Our flight wasn’t even BOARDING for 2 more hours! By then, she’d crash….)

And then the fun started. (Not at all related to the ice cream, incidentally.)

Ana decided to go to Duty Free to get a gift for her aunt. Great idea, I said. She headed down towards our gate to take a gander at the goods, and walked right past the Departures screen with all that great information like destination, gates, time of departure and comments. Comments like “Go to Gate C12 for information.” Departure times like “10:30 AM.” Destinations like “Buenos Aires.”

Ana came right back without going to Duty Free and had that look on her face that none of us ever want to see on our spouses face. You know – the one where you just hope to God it wasn’t something you did. And your second thought is (at least mine is) “I hope this is something that she is completely wrong on and I can resolve it with minimal energy.” For the record, it rarely is. I guess I like to think that her facial expressions are half full…. Or the glass is concerned over nothing.

So, being the cocky, self-assured guy that I am, I said “I’m sure that’s just a typo or something, I’ll go check it out. But why don’t you go back to Duty Free – we have plenty of time – and then see if someone is at the gate and ask them about it.” So she went to Duty Free (didn’t find anything) and the gate (no agent) and came back.

So I walked down to the Departure screen to see it for myself (this is the point at which they added the “Go to Gate C12 for information”). OK, so it still says 10:30 AM. Hmmm, a mere 12 hours, and 45 minutes later. I’ll just go ask the nice agent at C12 if that is correct – they probably have a sign up behind the counter that says the 10:30 PM.

Or not.

And the friendly gate agent? Apparently she doesn’t work there anymore. In the nastiest tone I’ve ever heard – the one that people in charge of customer service for a major corporation would cringe at – she is nastily telling about 5 people when I walk up “I don’t know anything, it’s news to me, let me find something out so I can help you.” I figure I could sit here and wait for Ms Nasty (not Janet Jackson) or I could walk down to C22 where the Customer Service counter is and probably get better information and answers. Only the line there goes all the way back to C12, so that was a bad idea. Back at C12, she is now telling the 5 people in front of me “The plane has some mechanical problems, and we have to fix it before we can leave. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to have it ready to go until 10:30 tomorrow morning. Now if you are from the area, we ask that you return home. If not, we will try to put you up in a hotel.”

OK…. What if I am sort of no longer from the area as of now?

Anyway, I walk back to C1 where my family is doing their best to entertain themselves with hopes that I will come back and put their minds to rest. Or not. So I get there, pass on the interesting news, and we head back to C12 to stand in line for hotel rooms. You know, with 5 people it shouldn’t take long. Of course, that was 10 minutes ago, and now everyone sitting at C5 has figured out they need to be in C12, and they’ve all gotten in line. So now I have like 25 people in front of me, and Ms Nasty is not really helping people all that much. After ascending to Dante’s next plane of hell (no pun intended – oh, who am I kidding – it was intended), we finally get the hotel room – Holiday Inn Dulles, not a bad place – and by this time all the kids are asleep. So we realize now that if we were boarding now like we were supposed to at 9 PM, the kids would’ve slept through take off. Nice.

So we are waiting for the hotel shuttle van thing outside in the crisp (!?!) Spring air, along with all the other passengers going to BA (oh, by the way, we got the last room in the Holiday Inn Dulles – everyone after us had to go to Leesburg – and there were a LOT of people after us – like maybe 50…). Eventually it shows, and Ana and Sof jump right on, I carry Isa on (we are the first three) and the driver looks at me with a stroller and says “That stroller has to go in the back.” “OK….” “There are going to be a lot of people on this van….” (the tone of his voice insinuating that for some reason I would not want to ride this van because of that. So I said “Well, I guess I could walk to the hotel…” He got off his lazy ass at that point to go open the trunk for me. Sure enough, I get back on and have to stand in the aisle. Until he says “This van is going to Dulles – is anyone going to Leesburg?” When half a dozen Argentines in broken English realize they are on the wrong bus. And I get to sit next to Ana! Woohoo! God bless DC’s confusing suburbia!

Long line to check in at the hotel, of course, and eventually we make it to bed. At midnight. For those of you keeping score at home, we would’ve been halfway through our first inflight movie with two sleeping children and dinner consumed had we been in the air. Instead we are sleeping in a hotel room that is cold and has that musty hotel room air. Oh, but we have useless United vouchers for dinner – useless because the restaurant closed when we checked in. And we were too hungry to eat. And, oh by the way, sleeping.

Morning comes, no time for a shower, and no bags to change our clothes, and off to quick breakfast and the airport. Quick check-in – this time without 6 bags to check because they kept the checked luggage – and back through security. Again. Go to the gate (ironically, C1), board the plane and finally, we are off to Buenos Aires.

Now originally, we thought an overnight flight is perfect for two young children because they will be so tired that once you get over the hump of having small kids insanely tired they will crash and sleep through the night on the plane. The thought of departing at 1030 AM and arriving 10 hours later was a bit, well, unpleasant. But I have to admit, our little angels were quite entertaining throughout the flight. And we sat next to a woman travelling alone with her boy the same age as Sof, and she definitely made it look like we had the best kids in the world (not that her kid was bad, but she had her hands full at times). Plus, there is something about the comraderie of parents going through the same thing that makes it seem not so bad at times. Unless it's one of those parents who are so preoccupied with their 3 year old getting into Harvard or winning Wimbledon. Then, you just thank God your child won't have to spend as much money on therapy.

So wait, where was I? Or rather, where were we? Oh right - angels. So the angels and I arrive at Buenos Aires, sans incident. At this point, Ana and I are practically high fiving at how we have surpassed all the trauma of moving to Argentina. It's all downhill from here. Just go through immigration, get our bags, go through customs, back to the apartment, and start living the life of a porteno family. (For those of you not in the know, a porteno is a person from Buenos Aires. For those of you in the know, can someone tell me how to type an n with the squirrely thing above it?)

So we get off the plane with two kids, four carry-on bags, and get the stroller. Go to immigration, expecting at least some interesting questions about our newly attained permanent residency, and the guy laboriously goes through all our papers and after like 10 minutes of Isa patiently waiting and Sof just looking at Mama with those big blue eyes, he says "Buenos noches." Y vamos - just get our bags and go through customs. No problema.

Would've been nice if they had our bags. You know, I worked for US Airways - where the employees all know you never check your bags, but we had 6 40 lbs bags, so we had to check them. I figured hey - what are the odds they'd lose all of our bags? And even if they lost one, we'd still have a 1:6 chance that they'd lose the one really important bag.

Apparently, we hit the Dante's planes of hell lottery. They lost all 6 bags. Again, big props go to the princesses who patiently waited while mama and daddy had diverse reactions to the apparent loss of all of our earthly belongings. (Well, all if you exclude all those ones we have in North America.... And in our four carry-on bags....) Mama had the appropriate reaction - stay rational, be appropriately upset, handle it by taking it out on the airline employee who kindly tells her they believe the bags are in DC and will arrive tomorrow morning.

I, however, know better. I worked for an airline. I know for certain that our bags are on the original plane, which was fixed and diverted to another route, while our plane was borrowed from some other route. So our bags are now in Oslo. Where the plane will then go some place else, so they have to route them on another plane to get them to.... Dante's fourth plane of hell - the one where all lost baggage goes. Through my short life, I have learned something though. Keep my stupid mouth shut when I conject these ideas, because I don't really know that I will never see my bags again, it's just an idea. And if I plant the seeds of discontent in anyone else's minds (ie Ana's) then discontent will sprout up and cause great, well, discontent. So I take the approach that I have discovered works best for me.

I laugh it off. We walk out of Customs (which goes unbelievably smoothly because in Argentina, they actually have some sympathy and know enough to say that the passengers walking through Customs at midnight when they were supposed to have arrived 15 hours ago, and they have 2 kids, and they have no bags, there really is no reason to ask them if they have anything to declare. Well, anything to declare regarding physical property they are actually bringing into the country, as opposed to physical property they would like to be bringing into the country....) So we walk out of Customs and into the arms of our waiting cousin and aunt. Where we all have a great big laugh over how we arrived 15 hours late with 6 fewer bags than we started.

Every now and then - about as frequently as you pass a pill-box (another story for another time), I would chuckle softly having ascended to a new plane of Dante's Hell. And my happy thought was how big the check would be from United for replacing all our stuff. Especially my wetsuits - 'cuz I just bought a brand new wetsuit for surfing in Argentina, and I packed three, so if they lost three I would get to buy three more new ones, and the new Quicksilver wetsuits are sooooo sweet..... So we are driving to our new home (well, Tito and Nechy's home, but our long-term house guest home) with my delusional thoughts about our pending shopping spree.

But in the mean time, we have no clothes, no diapers, no wipes, no shampoo, no soap, no deodorant, and very little formula.

Home (or long-term house guest home) at last, we bleary-eyed make our entrance (which with only 2 children, four carry-on bags, and a stroller is far easier than if we also had 6 40 lbs bags), go up the elevator, and go to bed. Good night Isa. Good night Sof. Good night room. Good night moon. Good night stinky clothes I have been wearing for three days. Good night beautiful wife who hasn't said anything about the fact that I haven't showered since I don't remember.

Good night, Good Airs.*

*Buenos Aires, in case you don't know, translates to "the Good Airs" - which is another story for another day....