Christmas Wishes

I love Christmas cards, but for plethora reasons I did not send them this year. Please forgive me. The poor quality of the photos above can serve as partial explanation. So this will have to serve as our family Christmas card.

We have had a wonderful 2009, filled with many adventures and blessing, and we remain incredibly grateful to our fantastic families, amazing friends and our Heavenly Father for all that we have. We are looking forward to 2010 and hoping it brings visits from many of our loved ones that we don't see too often.

We wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Adrianne, Mario, Gabe & Lucia

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Snippets

I'm lacking the creative drive to turn any of these into an entire post on their own, so here are some snippets from our December.

Gabe has been invited to no less than 4 birthday parties in two weeks, and he has another one tonight. He likes the food, the games, the balloons and especially singing "Cumpleaños Feliz"...all as long as I am holding his hand.

In a young life highlight, the famed Alejandro came to babysit and he and Gabe show off their "Broken Jandros" together.

Gabe's preschool teacher plays the guitar and sings with them, and he has been asking for a guitar repeatedly. We finally made one out of a box and rubberbands. He loves it, but we'll have to see if Santa can upgrade it.
December 8th is the day of the virgin in Rosario, so no one has to work. We took advantage of Mario's mom being out of town and invited all our friends to her house to have an asado. Good thing Damian showed up to cook the meat!!

My friend Stephanie is pregnant so all the American girls (I like to refer to us as the Argentine sperm stealers) had a surprise baby shower for her. Cool shower games Janette planned: everyone brought a large bead and we each gave them to her with a wish and made a bead chain that she can then hold onto, throw across the room, whatever she wants during birth. We also planned to draw on her belly with henna, but we couldn't find henna here.

I made her a diaper cake with diapers, breast pads and enormous maxipads. Just trying to beautify the not so picturesque facts of childbirth! I went with Christmas theme b/c she isn't finding out the sex.

I think you're supposed to record your child's first bath. This is not her first, but the first one Mario was around to get a picture of.

She's chubbier and longer every day - she's already outgrown the sink!

Yeah for Carcinogen Spraying!!

We have a mosquito infestation here. Seriously. So. Bad. You can't open the doors to enter or exit without 50 flying in the house. Every night I walk around with the vacuum sucking them up (amazingly effective) and douse us all and Gabe's bed three times a day with Off! Lucia sleeps with a mosquito net over her bed.

The other day I was ranting (surprise surprise) that I couldn't believe the government wasn't fumigating. Especially since we have Dengue here. I don't know what I imagined spraying involved, but I certainly wasn't prepared for what I saw today: a pickup truck driving down the street with two guys and a tank in the back, letting out an enormous cloud of chemical smoke. It sprayed all over a huge crowd of people waiting for the bus! I was so confused it took me a few minutes to come to my wits and take out my camera to snap pictures while driving. I chased it for a few blocks trying to get a better picture but couldn't see well enough. This is about a block away.

And now it's raining so all the carcinogens released into the air are probably for naught.

Gabe's Preschool Graduation

Basically, that's what it was. They invite all the parents to come sit on tiny kid chairs for an hour, and try to get the kids to perform something. Then they call each kid's name and have them come to the front and get an evaluation and hug their teacher.

with teacher Fifi whom he LOVES

They had all the kids in another room, then they came out one-by-one and were supposed to jump in some circles then do a summersault. All while circus music was playing too loudly. Gabe came to the door, took one look at everyone, and turned and left only to return crying for us and refusing to participate. Some version of the same was repeated with every kid.

he kept tying to hug and kiss this girl, vicki.

While public performance is clearly not an achievement this year, he has learned to play with other kids, identify colors, count to three, learn body parts and relational words like front, back, up, down, and his verbal skills in both languages have exploded.

He had blood drawn that morning, and was way into showing off his new - real - injury (same girl).

He also apparently has learned to share, but pushes others "sometimes". There is a kid in his class that everyday he comes home telling me he has hit someone. I wonder if his evaluation says "sometimes" as well.