Our last morning

On this, our last morning, we toasted each other with cheerios and smashed black beans and celebrated by sleeping in until 9am. At 8am, Madelena Sofia rolled her little urine soaked bottom on top of my chest, where came to a rest for the next 40 minutes. As it soaked through my shirt and into my own skin, I was not annoyed or faint or gagging. I was just happy to have that fat little bottom up against me, with an occasional flailing arm batting me as she dreamed of gatitos or pachas or simply her newfound walking skills.

Electricity has been scarce today and tears are not, so I'll keep this short and once again, let the pictures do the talking.

More lessons learned

I have learned much in Antigua. Some things, per my earlier post, are not Fun Things. Some things are Language Things (like how to ask someone to write the price of something down because if left to your own devices and issues with numbers in Spanish, you will simply empty your wallet and ask them to take the money they need). And some things are Interesting and Confidence-Building Things.

I have learned that if Madelena does not like a particular food she can spit it out with a distance of at least 12 inches and with great velocity and glee.

I have learned that walking four miles with a baby strapped to your chest in 90 degree heat is beyond strenuous, but is nothing that a little Quiche Lorraine, a tall glass of Rosa de Jamaica and a baby who is happily occupied squishing a banana for 20 minutes can't fix.

I have learned to look away and pretend to be occupied when a cockroach scuttles across the common area, knowing it's probably on its way to someone else's kitchen.

I have learned how to sterilize bottles and nipples and spoons and more in less than three trips from the room to the purifier to the kitchen, and how to pick up nipples from boiling water using only two pre-sterilized baby spoons and a microwaved towel as a resting place.

I have learned where to get the best frozen coffee after a long, hot walk, which music Madelena will bounce to (salsa) and which she will ignore (classical), which shop imports Trader Joe's boxed soups, how to ease bug bites with toothpaste, where the one park with the swings can be found, where to get the best palmeros, which stores carry Spanish-language board books, how to talk to strangers who share the rooftop garden and even get a nice glass of Chilean red out of it as Madelena and I watch the sun set between the volcanoes, when to say yes, yes, you can watch my baby nap while I get one of the best massages of my life for $30 and just down the garden path from my sleeping baby, and how to one-handedly make a bottle, draw a baby bath, pour coffee and cream, eat a meal, sit down gracefully in a hammock and never drop the baby, her bottle, the jacket I must carry so the Guatemalans do not accuse me of negligence, and my own diet coke.

All in all, it was a very good day.

Thing I learned in Antigua today

Not everyone loves adoptive American parents.

Some missionaries who interrupt your breakfast think that 13 year olds should keep their babies, even if it's their second or third. Because God will provide.

90% of birth mothers in Guatemala are "paid off." According to the missionary, this is NOT what she means when she says God will provide.

American women do not know how to adequately dress their children for the 90-degree humidity - if there are less than three layers and a hat, you are clearly a negligent person who should be stopped on the street and told so in rapid fire Spanish.

Not all NPR reporters are all that bright, and when they interview you they sometimes are oblivious to your need to feed and pay attention to the very child who provides the reason for the interview.

The Mercado in Antigua is one of Dante's less well known circles of hell, where you can watch an animal being butchered next to a tall stack of toilet paper and fake Disney toys, all while enjoying an extra special 100+ degrees of humid, blood-fumed heat under the tin roofs.

Through a day of hell in which you have lost your joie de Antigua and are convinced that everyone hates your tall, white blond self when you stupidly wander out of the primary tourist area, you know your new baby girl thinks you're fabu. Even if it's just because you're fun to climb on, have a nose in which to stick fingers, apparently sneeze hi-lariously and will read the same five books over and over, easily changing one book for another every two pages. And with that knowledge, you can deal with the rants and raves of missionaries. Because in your case, god (not God) HAS provided.

Spit up smells the same, even in Guatemala

In the midst of the fiesta de amor, there have been a few minor trials and reminders that Madelena Sofia is as fallible and prone to human frailty as other, lesser babies.* At breakfast yesterday in the beautiful courtyard at Kaffe Fernando, she spit up all over herself and down the front of my shirt. Given that she is eating solids and had just eaten an egg, spit up is a euphemism that I used to dampen Gregg’s gag reflex. We left him at the table to finish his meal in peace, and walked the 100 yards to our Posada.

Back in our room, I stripped her down and prepared her bath. This is no easy feat in a room filled with tile and sharp corners and no jumpy seat or excersaucer in sight. But I was feeling confident – one armed though I was – sure that all my mama skills were back in high gear. Finally one of us was naked and the other shirtless and the smallest of us was settled in the bath. Still, the smell of spit up pervaded the room. As I began to consider the source, Madelena got on her hands and knees to explore. And to drop one of the most lengthy and colorful floaters ever seen by a horrified mother into the once-clean bath water.

It was scoop and run time, as she reached for this new fun toy in the water, something perhaps as squishable as the cereal she so loved to scoop out of her own mouth and mash into her fist and then hair. As I lifted her, she attempted to step on it on her way out of the tub and seemed truly chagrined to have missed out on this possibly fabulous tactile sensation.

Gregg, fabulous father and partner that he is, has one weakness: squishy things. Be it baby food, soft diapers or, in this case, the new kids now floating in the pool. I knew it was a matter of moments before he’d be home and see the evidence of our child’s lack of fealty to him and his delicate senses. As he entered the door and headed to the bathroom I screamed “don’t go in there!!!!” He looked at me kindly, sure that I was embarrassed by something I HAD left in the bathroom, some trace of my own humanity. I decided not to disabuse him of this notion — better he know that I am human than be afraid to ever bathe Madelena in case of an encore performance.

The rest of the day, no matter where we went, all I could smell was spit up. It haunted me at Nim Po’t, the fabulous gallery of Quiche arts and crafts where we picked up a beautiful huipil for our home, textiles to adorn Madelena’s walls, a wooden quetzal for Shawn Joaquin’s room and beautiful art work to mark this very special week in our lives. The spit up smell followed me into Frida’s, down the street to the Plaza, and back to our hotel. It was in my nose. It was in my lungs. And it was, as I ultimately found out four hours after the incident, in my hair. Ah, motherhood. All poop and spit up and lack of sleep and all, ultimately, vale le pena.


*I apologize to all the readers and friends who have perfectly beautiful, perfectly perfect babies. I am still in the throes of love and figure I can get a hall pass for 60 days of hyperbole.

It it gunfire or happy saints?

(DATELINE: ANTIGUA, GUATEMALA) We awoke at 1am last night to the sound of gunfire. This did not seem improbable, though highly frightening, since we had seen more than one man walking down the street here in Antigua with a pistol in his waistband. After multiple shots, in which we imagined someone whacking someone BUT GOOD a la Bobby "Bacala" Baccalieri in the Sopranos, we realized it was merely middle of the night fireworks. And that they appeared to be coming from the rooftop of our little Posada, which was only slighly less comforting than the Bobby scenario.

Today we learned that the Iglesia de Merced for which our Posada is named was setting off fireworks at random hours to either pay homage to or attract the attention of saints, Given that the explanation was given in rapid Spanish, it's also quite possible that the man I was speaking to said "did you know you are attractive"; my Spanish fluency, depending on my level of exhaustion or distraction, is either somewhat impressive or leads to interesting conversations in which I ask someone how long their child is and what towel they wear.

Madelena has been amazing - flirting with everyone, walking to strangers with her arms up to be picked up, snuggling into my chest and patting my arm as we walk through the cobblestone streets. Her arms are super stretchy, seeming to reach at least four feet at every table with hot plates, salsas, wine glasses or squishable food on it; her humor is dry, witty and occasionally she allows herself the slapstick moment when she pretends to drop a leaf over and over, as if it were not in her full control to grab it and eat it at her whim as she has illustrated so many times before.

We are enchanted. We are in love. We are joyful while being sick at the thought of leaving her. She is beautiful and loving and sweet and demanding. She is a force to be reckoned with, and already knows that she is not one to be confined to any playpen - the world and all its people and things are her playpen and toys to be kissed and petted and thrown down with a cocky little laugh as she throws back her head and grins at her good fortune.



She is Madelena Sofia Wheeler Fleury. And damnit, she's ready to show Oakland and the greater United States what she's all about.