Chile Today, Hot Tamale

There is  much scurrying around the Above The Fold household.  There is a little bundle of joy headed our way. The stork is flying in to drop him off on the weekend after Thanksgiving. The spare bedroom has to be prepared for his arrival. New bedspreads and dresser decorations have to be purchased to reflect his specific gender and replace the frilly, girlie accoutrements that previously adorned the room.

Kate and Spence are about to be parents to a brand new, bouncing baby Chilean foreign exchange student named Emilio.  The proud parents are bubbling with excitement and are endlessly Googling his hometown of Talca in the Maule region of Chile.

Spence:  The first thing I'm going to do is teach him the American father/son tradition of "pull my finger."

Kate: I've found myself preparing for Emilio in a different way than I prepared for the three girls...and it's maddeningly gender-based.  My initial thought was I needed to find different chores for him than I had for the girls..that I couldn't ask HIM to unload the dishwasher.  Then I realized, OH YES I CAN.  Why shouldn't HE unload the dishwasher like all the girls had to do?  As a life-long feminist, I was unsettled by my gender-based reaction to a boy.  There is much to be learned about Emilio--and myself.

How much different will a boy be?  Will he listen to the same radio station that the girls tuned in to?  Will he obligingly follow our rules? What kind of groceries do we have to buy?  Will he eat us out of house and home? Or is a teenager a teenager?  Do gender and nationality have anything to do with it?

Did we mention he still doesn't speak English very well?  Yikes. 

It's starting to sound like a television sitcom in the making..."The Boys and Kate." Spence, Tucker and Emilio...and me.