Almost Tico

Spiderman and IguanaBoy. Spent 1000 colones (about $2) on this used Spiderman costume. Best investment ever. I bought it at one of the many Ropa Americana stores here, where one can find mounds of clothes with old American thrift store labels still attached. I always wondered what happened to all those donated stone-washed jeans and stirrup-pants. Jocelynne likes to go with me when I visit these stores so she can jump from a mountain of unopened trash bags into a box filled with clothes in the center of the store. Since she's just one of many jumpers, I hold my tongue and try not to think about things like lice and pinworms.

The Royal Family.

David (from Brazil) with the kids in the park.

Logan balks at my second attempt at keeping him out of the cupboards. (The first stage was heavy-duty Velcro because I didn't want to damage the wood. Didn't work.) He soon learned he could pull the doors open hard enough to pop the tacks out of the wood, so I had to move to stage 3, which means I had to damage the wood. They can take it out of my deposit. It's worth every penny to keep his paws out of the sugar canister.

Chloe gets into character.

Logan can't bust into the cupboards now, so he's getting creative.

Once in a while he finds something good, like this stick of butter I caught him gnawing on.

Step stool AND hat.

Joss steals the hat for some camera action.

We've been here almost a year (on September 2nd), and in some ways I feel the kids have assimilated to Tico life. For instance, in perusing one of the kids' coloring book a while ago, I came across a Latin-looking mermaid. Joss had colored Ariel with brown skin. Also, Landon and I are hearing more and more conversations going on between Joss and Chloe in Spanish at the dinner table. They never say "neither" or "nor" in English anymore. They always say "ni", even if the rest of the sentence is in English.

On the other hand, Jocelynne has been regressing in other ways. She sometimes cries at school and church. She gets bored and upset because of the language barrier.

At least her limited Spanish hasn't hampered her popularity. She gets lots of waves and smiles from other kids when we walk through town together after school. "They all like me, Mom," she explained one day, "because I'm the cutest kid in my class."