Yesterday I ran around on a while turkey hunt, literally, looking for a turkey in every nook and cranny of the city, only to end up settling for chicken. I have never baked a turkey before, in fact, I don't think I have ever made Christmas dinner before, which is why I decided to volunteer last minute to make my first attempt. Sometimes I ask myself if there is not something neurologically wrong with me, WHAT WAS I THINKING!?! I stood, belly up to the stove for nearly 4 hours yesterday in the sweltering heat, perspiration dripping from every crease in my growing body to merely prepare for an entire day of baking today. God must have heard me bitching and complaining under my breath, for this morning the rain has come to wash away the heat. There is a fresh breeze that comes with the calling of the mud hut making swallows and I am happy to be preparing Christmas dinner, not only for my first time, but for what will be the first "Traditional North American" Christmas dinner for Claudio's family. (It is typically so hot here on Christmas, we eat salad and ice cream.) Lets just hope she also hears my pleas for this experimental meal to come out excruciatingly tasty!
The menu consists of baked chickens, stuffed with homemade hand cut bread stuffing (no prepackaging here folks) fresh hand cut french-style green bean casserole mini portobello mushrooms (again all fresh ingredients), and candied butter-nut squash topped with cinnamon toasted walnuts.
Finally, for dessert, I thought I would make pineapple upside cake, something that does not exist here and is sure to be the hit.
Where this sudden fire came from to prepare so last minute, I am not exactly sure, though I am grateful for it's burning sensation.
My baby shower was one of the most beautiful days of my life and something to be remembered for all time.
There is a group of ladies whom, like me, have fallen in love with an Argentine man, married him, and have decided to stay here in Argentina to build a family. All together I think we are about 7 that live here somewhat permanently. We have all met in different ways, and are all very different, but we all have one thing in common. We are foreigners in a culture that is not ours, that will never really be ours, who all miss our families and friends, and have found a special kind of friendship and support group amongst each other. From left to right: Kim, holding Lucia, Adrianne's youngest, Valeria (my best Argentine friend,) Susan, Me, Janette, Gordana and Anisa. Again from Left to right: Kim, holding Lucia, Gordana, Valeria, Me, Adrianne, Janette, and Anisa.
Adrianne, a lovely Mormon mother of two made me this two layered cake of diapers and pads to prepare me for the first week of being a mommy. Susan, an inspiring Human Resources consultant that has worked all over the world, made the real cakes, banana cream cheese cake, (the best ever ever!) and Chocolate poppy seed bunt cake. Susan used to live in Fiji where she owned and ran her own cafe, that is when she wasn't doing team building for th UN. Just an amazing woman!
As we found our seats around the table, we began by first stuffing our faces with sweets, and continued with a game that the ladies had organized. Adrianne had tracked my mother down, called her and questioned her on things like, "What was Stephanie's favorite toy as a kid?" "What was Stephanie's favorite food as a kid?" "Who was Stephanie's first best friend?" "What was Stephanie like as a little girl?" etc...
All the ladies had to write what they thought the correct answer was and then they read off the answer my mother gave to them. It was so beautiful to remember that my favorite toy when I was a kid, was not a toy at all, but were my books! I remember reading for hours and hours! Not much has changed I suppose. And how my favorite food was strawberries. Not only where they my favorite, but at 18 months old I apparently crawled into my mother's strawberry patch and ate every berry on the vine. Later that evening I broke out into a sort of alergic reaction of blisters all over my mouth, hence impeding me from continuing to suck my thumb.
The funniest thing of all is that I was very prissy as a child! Hahaha! According to my mother, I didn't like to get dirty, I always wanted to wear a dress, and I spent hours "primping" myself. A far stretch from the Stephanie of today. hehe
When we finished the story telling time, the girls did something I had never heard of before. They formed a birthing chain for me. This is where every woman places a bead of their choice onto a wire. While placing the bead on the wire they declared a wish or a desire they have for me and my soon to be born child. Making it's way full circle, it was then ended forming a chain to grip onto while I am in labor as well as a way for each one of my friends and loved ones to be present with me in the labor room. As you can imagine, there was a steady flow of tears that was only exaggerated when Adrianne appeared with the telephone in hand and my mother on the other end. They had set aside two beads, one for my mom and one for my sister so their wishes and presence could also be felt labor room.
Have you ever seen anything so lovely in all your life?
I could not stop touching it for the first few days, thinking of all the lovely things each one of my friends had hoped for me, feeling myself overflowing with love over and over again.
So many things have happened since the last time I wrote, I don't even know where to begin.First and foremost, the construction crew has finished!!!Now all that is left are the details that Claudio and I are choosing to do on our own...like...
laying the floors...
and painting...
The bathroom, though not completely without tragedy, is completely finished. The shower is made up of three slabs of granite called "Marron Malambo," weighing in at about 250 pounds each. You can imagine how difficult they were to hang...it took three construction workers and Claudio, all, of course, using great care.
The contractor, however, wasn't so lucky. As they lowered the slab, placing it on top of the first slab, he forgot to move his finger. They had to then use a crow bar to lift the slab and take his completely smashed finger out. The house of course was flooded with a roar of a scream that sent me running upstairs in a panick, only to discover th small river of blood flowing from his finger. I, nurse Stephanie, cleaned his wound with peroxide and recalled a home remedy my father always swore by...
I dabbed a bit of crazy glue on the tip of his finger, looking like something out the the Flintstones, in order to close his finger up long enough to get him to the the hospital where he later received 4 stitches.
I won't go into the ethical guilt trip Claudio and I took ourselves on after this whole event, but lets just say that there is something disturbing about a man being paid to place stones he will never be able to fathom having in his own home in the home of another and getting hurt, on top of it all, while doing so. We of course offered to pay for the doctors bills, though he wouldn't hear of it. Is that what you call "macho?"
So the rest of the virtual tour looks like this:
These stairs lead you from the living room downstair to a hallway upstairs, all naturally lit. We have yet to choose a railing, but have no fear, there will be one saftly welded in place before the little one begins to move about the living space. As you leave the stairwell you approach what will be the baby's room, with our room to the right and the guest room to the left. Then there is a small laundry station (also done in Marron Malambo,) illuminated by colored glass windows that lead out to the balcony that looks over our back patio and takes you up to the rooftop terrace.
Little by little it is coming together, though I wonder if one ever truly finishes remodel projects. It seems there is always one more thing to do be done.
By 28 weeks, they say my baby's lungs are developed to the point that survival is possible outside my womb. His/her eyelids open and close and he/she should be weighing in around 2.5 pounds and be approximately 15 inches long. We had a doctors appointment on Monday where my doctor confirmed that I have so far gained 15.5 pounds, my blood pressure is perfect, the baby's heart beat is strong and regulated, and most interestingly, the baby's head is already in the downward position. When he said this, I of course immediately thought, "But wait! does that mean I could go into labor early?" According to many baby books and websites, the baby doesn't typically position him or herself head down until the 32 week. But, of course, this poses no threat whatsoever. As it seems, I am simply having the easiest and most beautiful pregnancy possible, with absolutely no worries of any kind. The baby being "engaged," as they call it, can mean many things. Either the baby is simply swimming around and will continue to move and wiggle in and out of his required birthing position, he/she is quite large, and has been forced more or less into that position due to limited space, or he/she is just getting a head start on things, hehe. Either way, I am still counting on my due date to be February 22nd, my Grandpa Sherman's birthday, a Pisces, dreamy and independent. And if my motherly intuition does not fail me, the baby will be born a little boy. As for other news: Next week I begin my pre-natal classes, twice a week I will go to the hospital to learn how to breathe, Claudio will be attending as well in order to help remind me to breathe. (probably more important than me learning hehe) The house is so close to the finish! I can hardly wait to post photos for you all to see the fruit or our hard work! In the meantime, I love and miss you all and hope that Thanksgiving was fantastic, even if I wasn't there to celebrate it with you.
I am reading a book called the Gurnsey Literary and Potato Peal Pie Society, a novel based on a compilation of hand written correspondence during the second world war. All the while I am reading it, I stop to ask myself, "Have we really advanced thanks to technology?" With the newest and latest always out dating its predecessor, we just might communicate a bit quicker, maybe with more frequency even, but do we really communicate with the lost and loosing art form that we once did? When communicating from a distance required a pen and paper, silence and thought, and of course, time. When our thoughts were slower and more developed, did a hand written letter have more sentimental value? I, speaking from personal experience, find that receiving something in the mail certainly entertains a different kind of excitement than that of opening my electronic email account and seeing it full of small notes and spam.
So then why don't I take the first step, I ask myself, why don't I begin to write more hand written letters, why don't I, become an artist of a loosing art? Well, it isn't efficient, that is for sure, and cost wise, I would only be able to send 10 hand written letters per month for the same cost as having internet, and well, probably more importantly, and certainly selfishly, I want to receive hand written letters too! So in the end, the art is only beautiful if it is reciprocated. Perhaps this is the winning argument to the definition of art: For something to be artistic, it must be a two way street of communication, a reciprocity of the artist's confection and the viewer's reception.
It has been way too long since I have written and really, being busy is no valid excuse! It is just that there is so much going on! We are about two weeks from finally finishing the second level, which means my world will again begin to revolve around me and mine instead of turning in circles around unpunctual construction workers that say one thing and do another. I had a lovely visit with an old time friend who spent the last 2 weeks here with us in our chaotic home where we all three slept in the same room. And on top of it all, business is at it's best yet!
We have had three Australians, one Irish man, and two Germans this month!
Now, while I now you are all "oh so interested" in my day to day life, I am sure that what you are all anxiously awaiting are more belly shots...
You want `em, You got `em!
Doing what I do best... Cooking!
A little roof-top family love
Claudio had this great idea of making a certificate to honor Regan as a non-blood Aunt. We presented it to her on the roof-top rather than the boat tour, avoiding, at all costs, seasickness.
I am completely and totally perplexed by this thing called Life. Not, as in, "what is the meaning of life," more like, "why do we give life?" First and foremost, giving life is one of the strangest things one could possibly wrap their minds around. You make love, and BAM, a spontaneous combustion of cellular activity coagulates to form what will grow, little by little and with a little help, into what will, 9 months later, be a tiny little person, 100% dependent upon you, as it's socially ordained mother, not only for a matter of months, but for it's entire life! And what will life have in store for this soon to be person? How will we teach him/her that there is more to life than simply being a cog in the system of work and slaving to the capitalistic economy. Then I think, wait, is there more? I mean 1/3 of our lives, we are sleeping, resting up in order to return to work, so we can earn a piece paper called money, so that we can buy things, both necessary and necessary, to live. Is this life? WHAT?!?! Then I take the positive approach. The meaning of life can only be found in happiness, it is found in loving your slave like job, enjoying each minute that you are not contributing to the disastrous and vicious cycle that is economy, and resting peacefully for each coming day. So then, is the answer then to be: blissfully ignorant, or happily aware? Perhaps both. And when we plan to bring life to this life, what is it that propels us to do so? Is it biological? Is it socialized? Do women realllly have a biological clock, or is it just a silly myth we have grown to believe and repeat during centuries. A myth to influence our contribution to keeping the species of man kind alive? I wonder if it isn't something more emotional... Apart from your mid thirties, society labels you as "middle age" . Middle age means you are closer to "old," an unfortunate label turned negative thanks to our consumer nature. "I need new shoes, mine are so OLD." Throw away the old, get some new...but there was a time when "old" was cherished, when old was synonymous to wise. Maybe giving life acts as a sort of "rebirth," allowing one to start at the beginning again, not feel so "old" perhaps find their "inner-child" in their new child.
Maybe it is for all of these reasons and maybe it is for none of them, nonetheless, it is a thought that consumes me.
I am anxious to be a mommy. Not anxious in the nervous senses of things, anxious in the sense that "I can't wait" to hold my little one and look into it's eyes as it looks back at mine, and know, he/she was made of pure love and happiness. I have no fears or doubts about my journey into "motherhood." I only hope the journey is a long and beautiful one
