Juanito's Austin sightseeing

The best part of arriving in a new city is beginning to discover its secrets. As a family, we love traveling and we have visited many places; but moving to a different city is nothing like traveling. Now we get to experience Austin as locals, at our own pace and not hurrying up with a checklist.

 The third weekend of August, my husband and I organized an outing to South Congress Avenue. We started in a place everyone should visit: Hopdoddy (www.hopdoddy.com). This burger bar was established in 2010 and they pride on their all-natural menu. You have never tried french fries until you try this Parmesan and Truffle Fries. They are a real piece of Heaven. They made us forget the hour and a half we spent in line waiting to get inside the restaurant. And they sure know how to serve customers! Everyone treated us as if we were their most important customer. Juanito sat on a booth for the first time and they brought him a water cup as if he were already a grown up.

 

Astonished, I couldn’t help but to compare the service with Chilean restaurants, where the waiter would give us his worst face just for entering the dinner. I mean we would ruin his day just for showing up. Imagine if you add an impatient baby, a huge stroller, … you get the idea. The waiter would be happy before with no customers and plenty of time to check his Facebook page.

Back to our outing, our next stop was a cute store called Uncommon Objects (www.uncommonobjects.com). It is an antiques store where you can find everything. It was established in 1991 and, though it is not big, we spent almost one hour staring at every unique piece. We almost bought a beautiful light blue wardrobe, but it was pricy compared to Ikea, so pragmatism defeated beauty. But Juanito did get himself a present. We bought him the prettiest baby boots and a belt with a huge longhorn buckle. In December, we are going back home to my sister’s wedding and I want him to go dressed as a handsome cowboy.

Our final stop was Congress Avenue Bridge were we waited for the bats to get out to hunt. I need to add that I hate bugs of all kinds, so I have found a new best friend in bats, which make it their life’s goal to eliminate bugs from mine by eating them. Around 7:30 pm, a black cloud came flying from under the bridge. Thousands of bats made their way trough the entrance of the cave. It was a breathtaking show. Juanito loved it. Amazed, he didn’t know where to look in order to not miss anything.

On our way home, he felt asleep immediately on the car seat, exhausted after everything we had done that day. We discovered great things about this city and it was only one street! If Austin keeps this pace, we won’t be able to unravel all its mysteries before we have to go back.

Juanito 10-12 months

Austinites in ACL

Last Sunday I went to ACL. I was reluctant to buy tickets at first because I didn’t know what we were going to do with Juanito. Also, my mom was visiting that week and her plane left Sunday afternoon so I imagined a complicated evening and I wanted to avoid it. My husband, who was really passionate about going, believed that we would have a great time: that we could manage to leave my mom at the airport and still get to enjoy Turnpike Trouvadours. I need to add that the only available tickets left were for that Sunday. I argued that in Chile we never bothered to go to events like this (Lollapalooza is held there every year), but he convinced me by saying that for that exact reason we should go to ACL: we made a promise to take advantage of every moment of our lives here in Austin.

Well, as you may imagine and as I said before, we did go to ACL last Sunday and we had a blast. We left my mother at the airport at 3:30 in the afternoon even though her flight wasn’t until 6 pm. Then we met some friends at their house and we took the bus to Zilker Park. Between my husband and my friends we managed to load the stroller and Juanito was thrilled in his first bus trip. The temperature there was perfect, but I had dressed him as if it was the middle of December, so I undressed him and he crawled freely on the grass.

What amazed me was that people around us found this so normal. There were maybe dozens of strollers with babies even younger than Juanito, and I couldn’t believe I had been so concerned before. Now I understand that in the US, since only few people have help in their homes, everyone takes their babies with them everywhere; otherwise having a baby would mean being a prisoner until the baby is old enough to go out. People were so relaxed laying on the grass, smiling at the baby, laughing and drinking beer that I soon got in the same mood too.

 

Fearing we wouldn’t get there on time, we forgot Juanito’s dinner in the car. But we noticed this when we were already in a chilled-out mood, so we bought him some ice cream, which he had never tried before, and as soon as Eddie Vedder started singing, Juanito fell asleep and didn’t wake up until Monday.

 

People have told us repeatedly that we are extremely lucky with the kid we have. They warn us to be prepared because this kind of luck vanishes as soon as the second child comes. I guess we’ll have to just wait and see.

Juanito 0 - 10 months

Hey there! I want to tell you about my experience raising a child in Chile. His name is Juanito and he just turned one year old. I come from a big family; for instance, I have five brothers and sisters, and we all live together until each one gets married.

I attended school and the university in Santiago, so I didn't have a real reason to move out from my parent's place. After that, I worked for one year and then I got married. Not even 10 months later Juanito was born. He was (and still is) the cutest baby on Earth!

Since 2011, the Chilean law has granted a very long and secure maternity leave. Each working mom is granted six weeks before the baby is born to stay at home to ensure the mother is relaxed and the house is ready to receive a newborn. After the baby is born, the law also gives her 24 weeks, almost six months, so that the mother can breastfeed the baby and rest before going back to work. During this whole time the mother receives the same salary she was getting while she worked. Fortunately for me, Juanito was born into this regime. I enjoyed every day with him and was able to breastfeed him for six months so he is now a very healthy (almost too healthy) baby. We even had time to practice together every stage of his development. He was slow at the beginning because we used to hold him all the time, but with different kinds of exercises, he learned to crawl so fast that now it is impossible to catch him.

I was working as a math teacher, but, since we were coming to the US, I quit before the academic year started (in Chile it starts in March) so the kids wouldn’t be left hanging when I left. Nevertheless I had to make money somehow from March to July, so I partnered up with a cousin and started our own business. You may imagine that this wasn’t easy, especially while having a kid to take care of. But, as I told you before, families in Chile are large and very supportive.

My mom would pick Juanito up whenever I had a meeting or needed to work without being distracted. If she couldn’t make it, I could rely on my mother-in-law, any of my sisters, or my friends. Everyone would literally fight for who got to babysit Juanito. It was very easy and fun raising a child with this kind of support. When we told my mom that we were coming to the US she offered nicely: “Why don’t you go by yourselves and I can give Juanito back to you when you return?” Haha like being away from my son for a year was really an option.

This was my Chilean experience. I got to share many moments with my family and friends and we all love Juanito very much. When he was ten months old we moved to Austin. Here the story has been different, but I will tell you all about it in another chapter.

See you soon!