Twenty three years ago in November of 1996 I started dating what was to be my wife. We were children, both 17, myself a senior in high school, my girlfriend, Bonnie, a junior.
By this time in my life I had been an uncle since I was 12, and by the time my three older sisters were done, I’d have altogether ten nieces and nephews. I love babies and always wanted to be a dad. You learn what you see and are surrounded by and I was surrounded by very fertile family members. (Fertility we will get to later). I’m the youngest of four children and the only boy.
Bonnie on the other hand is the oldest of three, she has a younger brother and sister. She DID NOT want children when we started dating. I don’t remember the exact conversation with her but I made it abundantly clear that whoever I marry will want to have children. I challenged Bonnie one time where I said something to the effect of how she would feel when we are in our sixties and all alone without children or maybe even grandchildren. For some reason that was the conversation that started her heart to soften towards having children. Before kids, Bonnie gave me some very strict conditions I would need to meet before she got pregnant. That story is for another blog entry. Needless to say I met these conditions and now we have four children. To date they are 9,8,6, and 4 years old. For the sake of privacy I will not be using their names.
My wife is a clinical psychologist working with a population that predominantly speaks Spanish. She is school taught Spanish (she studied abroad in Spain during college) and claims to not be fluent, but she gives therapy to people in their native language so I think she is fluent. Teaching our future children Spanish was one of her conditions to having kids and I gladly agreed to her only speaking Spanish to our children as soon as they were born, she offered to teach me Spanish after I passed the bar exam, knowing full well I was not going to pass it. After I passed the bar (on my first attempt) I told her she could speak to me in Spanish only.
After day three of her speaking Spanish to me I told her she had to stop. I felt like I was cheating on her with a Spanish version of her. While we were in the season of making children Bonnie made it more clear to me that she was serious about wanting to move the kids out of country to Mexico so they could have an immersion experience not unlike her six months living in Spain. After a while I leaned into this idea and we decided the best time to go would be during our oldest child’s fourth grade year because when we get back she will have one more year in grade school instead of being plunged into middle school.
So many pieces have had to fall into place to get us to where we are right now and we will blog on that during the course of this adventure with our children. So many decisions had to be made, so many doors had to open for this to happen. On January 15, 2020 our family of six will be flying to Mexico to live there for six months. This adventure will be chronicled here on this blog. Our six months abroad.
Our Family Adventure 