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.