The only thing that is more challenging than spending all morning at a Mexican government office waiting for your visas to be processed is spending the whole morning at a Mexican government office waiting for your visas to be processed with a toddler…whose parents forgot her snack.

There is very little one can do about this kind of situation besides take a number, go to the bodega across the street, buy a couple bananas, and wait.

I write this as my daughter is crying in the bedroom. My husband is in there with her, trying to coax her to put on her pajamas and get into bed. At the surface is her desire to watch a cartoon show, a rare treat for her. We don’t own a television and rarely even show her our phones, but she is learning to use the potty and her reward for a good poop is to see an episode of a show about this friendly tiger kid she loves.

We have moved. Twice. Once from a tiny island across an ocean, then to a different country. My daughter is 2½, and cannot understand what would make us uproot everything she’s ever known and move to a place where her mother’s seven years of Spanish classes fail to meet all her needs.

It has been a very intense time of mothering. She cries for me nonstop. She clings to my neck like a 30-lb monkey, terrified about the way the stairs look, or that strange sound in the distance. She wakes in the night and yells my name. It is as if she needs to know that I did not sneak off while she was sleeping and hop on another airplane. Yes, my love, I say, Your mama is here.