A Scheduled Absence

as opposed to my regular, unscheduled absences. Tomorrow we're leaving to go here:

Caracas, Venezuela

and then here:

Curacao, Netherland Antilles

I have packed: 1 aquadoodle travel pad, 1 colorforms Thomas the Train, 1 magnetic farm friends pack, 1 set of crayons and coloring pad, 1 portable DVD player with 6 videos, 1 iPod full of kid's music, 2 favorite old books and 2 new "surprise" books...and one bottle of Benadryl nighttime. Wish us luck!

Christmas Recap

Gabe's annual picture with Santa. While in line he was waving, all friendly and excited to see the big man in red, but when it was our turn, he wanted NOTHING to do with Santa, and refused to stay up there without me. Thus I enter into this picture of a not-so-friendly santa and Gabe's not-so-disguised terror at being so close.

I have very strong feelings about Christmas, specifically Christmas happening exactly the way it did all the year's I spent it in my mother's house - which would be 32 of my 34 Christmases. But I've had to adapt a bit to incorporate Mario's traditions and form some of our own, and so far it's turned out better than anticipated. Their big celebration in Christmas Eve, and this year I got to host at my house.
I made Christmas crackers after the English tradition with a little gift for each person inside. We invited everyone for 9pm, and started the night with piña coladas and stuffed muchrooms, coconut shrimp and crab dip as appetizers.

After that we read an adaptation of "The Women Who Knew Christ" - the points of view of the shepard's wife, the wife of the inn keeper in Bethlehem, the mother of Joseph, the mother of Mary, and Mary about the night Christ was born, singing lots of Christmas songs in between each part. I love my family tradition of acting out the nativity, but with only 2 kids at our party, it wouldn't have been the same, so we did this instead.
We then feasted on grilled lamb, rosemary potatoes, and lots of amazing salads until almost 1am. Paco and Mario took Gabe and Pilar outside to watch the fireworks going off all over town (which we ended up not being able to see any!) and to light sparklers and throw "chakibooms". When they came back in the house, Pilar discovered that Santa had flown by and dropped a big bag of presents in the patio!!

By this point, Gabe was about at meltdown stage, but managed to open a few gifts before being put to bed.

Pilar expressed pure, unbridled joy with every gift.

It was 3am before we went to bed, so Christmas morning we slept in, then Gabe and Mario and I got up and opened Gabe's remaining gifts and our stockings just the three of us.
Then the family all came back over the eat left overs for lunch, work on Pilar's big puzzle,
and then we went to the local orphanage and made Gingerbread houses with the kids.
We divided into two groups. The other group's house was all nicely decorated, while our colapsed under the weight of all the cadies basically just thrown on...
We also delivered goodie plates to neighbors then just hung out and played with the kids' new toys. It was truly a wonderful holiday season, and I actually really like having it all centered on Christmas eve - I felt like the emphasis was so much more on the family gathering and dinner than the gifts, but maybe that was just due to the fact that I did all the planning/cooking this year!

Happy New Year to all!!

Worth It

If I had had time to write this blog yesterday, it would have gone something like this:

I am a terrible mom. Not only does my child find my sewing scissors (read: sharpest scissors in the house) in the 30 seconds I was going to the bathroom and scratch himself across the forehead...
...but he is driving me absolutely crazy. To the point that I think I should not have any more kids because if this is normal behavior, I'm just not cut out for it. I thought my house was child-proofed, but he manages to CLIMB and BREAK almost everything. Truly. And he must hate the heat as much as I do because he has made an ART of fussiness this week.

On top of that, I'm over Argentina. All kinds of really annoying things I could live with, like us finding out yesterday, and only because Mario's mom happened to read it in the newspaper, than in these last two, busiest weeks of the year, we also have to get our car inspected because 2005 cars were newly admitted to the inspection requirement, and to do so we have to take all the tinting off the windows and then pay to get it put back on (because by law it's not allowed but it's only enforced at inspections and it's too freaking hot here to live without it) and oh yeah, in this city of 1.5 million inhabants there are only 2 places you can do it so bring a few novels because it ain't likely the line will be short!

But that I could live with. What I cannot live with, is the shopping deficiency. I needed/wanted new shoes for the season, and to wear for Christmas, so I got a babysitter and set out. I went to the mall (most expensive), I went downtown to the hub of all shopping, I went in all the small shopping galleries and San Luis street (Rosario's equivalent to Canal Street in New York). And not only is there a total lack of variety, but they are so ridiculously expensive!! The cheapest passable pair I saw cost 150 pesos. That would be US $50, and they're PLASTIC!!!! Okay, I'm not above the ocassional cute plastic shoe to capture a season's trend. But only if I pay less than $25 for it!! Because I am apparently snobby and ridiculous, I wanted an actual leather shoe, so I ended up with the below pictures footware for the outrageous fee of...
260 pesos, or almost 90 dollars! I mean, they're cute, but certainly not $90 cute! And about 10 stores had the exact same shoes, each with their individual store logo stamped on the inside as if they're the only one that makes them. How is a girl supposed to live under such circumstances???

But then I went to a dinner at the church for all the current and former bishops in the stake, and realized even the "perfect" mothers are totally fed up with their kids in this horrible heat wave we're suffering through, and that I really love some of the people that I've met here, so I may survive a little bit longer. I came home and did some shopping online to make myself feel better.

And then this little monster got up this morning and cuddled with me for almost an hour, which makes it all worth it. Good thing I didn't post yesterday.

C is for...

Civil Unrest. Last week there was a huge riot on the corner of our street between two unions. One person was shot and 18 were wounded. Fortunately, we weren't home at the time, but here are all the police lined up about an hour later.
Cousins-Campo-Carne. My niece Victoria attended a private school focused on agriculture. On top of all the regular history/math/language type classes, she also had to work in the fields, learn about seeds, pesticides, watering, animals, dairy products, etc. Select Saturdays throughout the year she had to go help with the cows. She has very tan arms due to her field working. She graduated last weekend so we went to celebrate with her.

Victoria in the middle, with two friends

In a tradition I think the US should adopt, only the parents go to the boring diploma ceremony, and the rest of us jut go to a big dinner/dance/party afterwards. Because of the nature of her school, all of the food was locally produced at the school, with parents, teachers, students and directors cooking, serving, etc. (the students who help get out of one of their cow working saturdays...) we had pork, stuffed chicken and steak so tender you could cut it with a butter knife. The cheese on the appetizer plate was even made at the school, and it was all DELICIOUS.

Church Callings. Our church is run by volunteer assignments. We call these assignements "callings". Two weeks ago Mario was released as Bishop of our ward and called to be the 2nd counselor in the Stake Presidency. We both are having mixed emotions about it. He really loved being bishop, and I loved always having him in the ward. Plus, I used his position to thefullest and planned all the parties I wanted (i.e halloween)! He was only bishop for 2 years and 25 days and he was very sad to leave the position so quickly. His new stake calling will mean we hardly see him on Sundays, and it will be much more demanding on his time throughout the week. However, we both know that with new responsibilities come new blessings, and in this time of great unrest worldwide, we are particularly grateful for the promise that our family will always have what it needs. Saturday instead of leaving with us in the morning to go to Griselda's, he had to stay to attend a multi-stake leadership training meeting with a member of the quorum of the seventy. He really enjoyed the learning opportunity and the spirit that were present in the meeting, and took the bus to meet up with us in time for the party. And as the meetings were in our building, he was party responsible for preparing the building, food etc. He went over early to get everything ready, and even took some of my christmas decorations to decorate all of the tables. I am clearly rubbing off on him!

Mario and Franco

Christmas Trees. I finally have mine up, and Gabe is in LOVE with it. He waves to it, points to it showing me it's there, and TOUCHES it all day long. He points to the top and tells me "sta" for star, and then he points to the ornaments and says "Ba" and then he shakes his finger and says "no no no no no no no" because he knows he's not supposed to touch it. But curiosity overcomes him at times and he has to touch, and sometimes he has to take off the balls and throw them to see if they bounce. Good thing they're plastic!

Boy or Monkey??

Have I mentioned how I think my child is unusually strong?? Yesterday I put him down for a nap and as I was leaving his room he was expressing his disagreement with nap time by grabbing the rails on his bed and shaking them while hollering. As I have been sleep trained, I just left and shut the door. He settled down quickly and took a fabulous nap. When he woke up, I discovered that he had broken one of the wooden rails in half!!

Clearly he has outgrown this bed. While some may be tempted to say he is ready for a "big boy" bed, Mario and I are in agreement that we will just have taller, stronger bars made.

Pilar is visiting us this week, so Tuesday I took them to a museum. It wasn't airconditioned, so we didn't stay long. Pilar is a very quiet, orderly, obedient 4 year old, who is utterly confused as to why cher cousin should be so disobedient and rambunctous. I love this picture of them in the pool because Pilar's face expresses so well her feelings about having to play with Gabe. She was trying to keep her hair dry, and Gabe wash NOT cooperating.

Happy Thanksgiving to all! I normally like to import all holidays, but it's waaaay too hot here to even think about cooking or eating all that food.

Sweet November

November is nearly over and I can't believe it. This month we celebrated my niece Josefina's quinceñera. We spent hours decorating the backyard with paper flowers and filling the trees with candles hung in little glass jars.
It looked really fabulous... until about 45 minutes into the party when we were hit with a torrential downpour. It only lasted about 25 minutes, but that was long enough to destroy the decorations.

vicki - griselda - franco (in front) - josefina - eduardo

paco - deo - me/Gabe - susana
the lovely birthday girl, who really wants to go to Disney World instead of have a party...

Gabe captivating the "older women"

Gabe...will be 18 months old next week and is changing constantly. Since I don't seem to be capable of keeping his baby book updated, this will have to serve as record of his life milestones. He now boasts a variety of "words" in a bilingual vocabulary.

"ha" = hot

"zhou" = shoe

"doe" = toe

"mam" = mom

"ba" = bottle

"ba" = ball (he differentiates by pointing)

papa (his only clearly definable word to people other than his parents)

"bagua" = agua = water

"ma" which serves as both toma and dame, which are spanish for take this and give me. Mario thinks he is saying toma and dame. I think he is calling me, the person he feels is responsible for giving him things and receiving the things he doesn't want. It's possible he has a larger vocabulary in spanish and I don't recognize those words because I don't pay attention to them.

He is currently obsessed with shoes. He goes and finds his shoes and brings them to me to put on him anytime he is without, and find my shoes as well because he doesn't like me to be without.

He continues to be a major climber, scaling anything available anytime I am not looking. He also demonstrated incredible strength (to me at least) at the park this weekend where he hung from a bar for more than 10 second, multiple times. He also loves the swings and laughs histerically when I push him really hard - NOT afraid at all!

He loves buckles. on his stroller, on his highchair, on my backpack. any kind of buckles. He will clasp them, holler to me to undo them, clasp them again, holler again...it is the only activity at which he demonstrates any attention span.

We have reached the point where attending church is a mere exercise in habit. Gabe will no longer stay in his stroller during sacrament meeting. And he will also not stay on my lap, on the bench, or anywhere near the bench where I am sitting. He will not read books, play with puzzles/puppets/toys, snack peacefully or draw. He screams until I let him out, fights me off, and then runs as fast and far as he can before I catch him. If anyone has some advice here, I'm all ears.

He loves to go for walks outside (meaning him walking, not in the stroller). When I do not have a time constraint (meaning it's okay to take 45 minutes to walk one block) I let him. He stops at EVERY door, touches the lock and pulls on the handle. If there happen to be ants crawling around, he stops to inspect. He often likes to stop, sit down, and sometimes even lay down on doorsteps. He like to pick up cigarette butts and leaves - never a shortage of either.

And one last story not for the delicate of stomach... the other day I bought 5 kilos of strawberries to clean and freeze because they are going out of season and you can't buy frozen fruit here. They were small strawberries, and it was taking me FOREVER to clean them. Meanwhile, Gabe got all wet on the patio, so I took off his clothes. He then took off his diaper, and climbed up on a stool to join me with the strawberries. After a mind-numbing amount of time cleaning, I happen to glimpse him throwing something in the strawberries out of the corner of my eye. I looked closer. He had POOPED, PICKED it up, and THROWN it in the strawberries. I screamed in disgust. I had to wash all again.

The offended strawberries. Hope you have your hepatitis shot if you eat at my house!

Happy Halloween

The church was decorated with all the great things sent by my mom and Ashely.

Complete with a graveyard and ghosts, and I don't have the pictures but a really great haunted house.

And I even got Gabe to wear his costume - for a while anyways, and without the hood.

The pirate, his parrot and his treasure.

I don't think most people really understood mine or Gabe's costumes,

but I think Mario made the best pirate ever.Our great friends Claudio, Stephanie and Stephanie's mom also made it to the party.
And while there was no trick-or-treating, when I wasn't trying to control the monsters in the haunted house, we did get a good amount of dancing in!