Don't Cry. You're Going to Argentina.

Because we said so - that's why.

The Planning

She’s known about this for a while, but later this spring the child is going to Argentina for 2 months, plus.

Photo by Angelica Reyes on Unsplash

While there, she will go to school.

Everybody that we tell this to is so excited for her and says it will be an excellent experience for her. Everybody is excited for her. Everybody except for the person that’s actually going : the child.

She’s not thrilled about this. You see, BW is working on her next book and needs to research there so the 3 generations are going to camp out together for 2 months in Argentina. The child will go to school, BW will research, and my mother-in-law will make sure everybody behaves.

Me? I’ll be home with the dog. Somebody has to mow the lawn.

Argentina. It’s happening. In fact, this morning I spent my morning downtown at the courthouse and state department getting her birth certificates all stamped and ready so she can travel without issue.

We’ve booked the accommodations there. It’s happening and she is going.

The child does not want to go for one big reason - it will be winter there.

The last time we went to Argentina it was summer because we went in January. She wants to go in the winter again, but the schedule does not line up so she’s going in the summer - which will be winter there.

Here’s the thing: The child thinks the winters there are like winters in Buffalo, but they’re not - some days could be 80 degrees there - or 50 degrees - which is still warm for Buffalo standards.

The Homework

When she got home from school, she was all about making us some math questions to answer and she came down with this:

If you can’t see it, she writes her twos and threes backwards. BW told her that it was wrong and we would not do the homework until she got the questions right.

This did not go over well with the child - she pouted and stomped and generally complained. BW told her that she needs to get this sorted out by the spring so when she goes to the school she can show her new friends how she writes the numbers correctly.

For those paying attention, telling a six-year-old that she has to learn how to write correctly before she can go on a trip she doesn’t want to go on didn’t work that well.

“I don’t want to go anyway”, she told us.

Oh, you’re going. We offered to help her with her homework and show her how to make 2’s and 3’s and I even got out my phone to show her images of the numbers so she could follow along but she hated being wrong and was making mistakes on purpose, so that failed.

About 10 minutes later, I hear a full on meltdown crying from her bedroom so I rush upstairs to find her crumpled up on the floor in full on tears and a paper with the questions written again. She got the two’s right but after she finished she realized that the 3’s were still backwards and she lost it.

“I don’t want to go to Argentina”, she told me.

“I want to go to France, ”she said.

I tried to sell Argentina, but when it comes down to it France might have better food so it wasn’t much of sales pitch on my part. It’s a tossup actually - If you could somehow combine France for the bread and Argentina for the steak then you would have a really good steak sandwich, if nothing else.

I don’t know how we got there, but she started calling it “Nevertina” instead while she was still settling down from the outburst. She was never going to Argentina she told me again in case I missed it.

Then she said she wanted to go to Nevada instead.

I told her that the odds were still in favor of Argentina. In fact there’s a better chance of us going to France than there is Nevada so she can scratch that off her bucket list.

“We could go to Montreal for a bagel”, I tell her.

Then BW called us down for dinner, which coincidentally was Empanadas.

Argentina came to our dinner table instead. For tonight, anyway.

So, yeah. Argentina - here she comes - she’s still going and she still writes her 3’s backwards. We’re still working on both issues.

Maybe tomorrow we’ll get the threes in the right direction.

Tired as always,

TH and Co.