Morning Smiles

I'm a morning person,
cheerful as the sun opens the day.
"It's the early bird that gets the worm," they say.
I suppose it's true; I get a smiling wiggle worm.

Like a Cheshire cat
Her grin reaches from ear to ear
With a glimmer in her eyes as she looks up at me
"Good morning!" I sing
Her face lit with another half moon

With diapers to wash, milk to pump, and breakfast to prepare
What is it you like about those early hours? you ask
Morning smiles from my sweet little girl

September 10

Iris is four weeks old today!  

This is me when I was 4 weeks old wearing the same dress crocheted by my mom.

Iris is definitely a bit bigger than I was at the time.

In less than four months, Igor will finish his extremely long weeks at the hospital and be ready to do the last of his paperwork to become licensed to practice medicine here in Peru.  He loves talking to Iris in the evenings when he's home and helping get supper on the table.  Iris stays busy doing what young babies do best: eating and sleeping, although she's starting to be awake more often. And me? Well, I've just got a couple of weeks left before I go back to work, so in the meantime, I hang out with Iris, clean and work on my book of memoirs.   

What ten days can do...

Iris marks her tenth day with us today.  It's amazing what ten days can do.  With the ability to adapt rapidly and adjust our understanding of our identity or accept new circumstances as a given within a short amount of time, what once was unrealistic or non-existant becomes the norm.  

In these past ten days, Igor and I have been getting to know Iris better, have been sleeping less, and have enjoyed watching her very expressive mannerisms.  Igor is improving his diaper changing and burping skills, while I'm learning to eat and feed her at the same time.  If I'd been told a month ago that it wouldn't take long until I couldn't imagine my life without her, I'm not sure I would have believed it, but already I feel like she's been with us for a lot longer than ten days.  

As it is customary here to pierce a baby girl's ears when she is a day old, since we didn't do that and rarely dress her in pink, most people say, "Oh, what a cute little boy."  Yesterday, as we attempted unsuccessfully to get a birth certificate for her (something about not knowing how to register her, since her mother is a foreign resident).  We got her pictures taken for her national identity card, which we incidentally also could not apply for because she doesn't have a birth certificate.  Without asking, the photographers put her picture on a blue background with Mickey Mouse automatically asuming that she was a boy, so we had to take a few pictures with pink today. 

Our little Iris

A few hours home from the hospital

Several long days and nights took a lot out of us.  

We're thrilled to finally have her out in the world with us.

This proud uncle got his wish of meeting Iris before flying back to the States.

A little paint on our canvases

To color our days a little more, Ryan and I decided to buy some paint and canvases this week.  We covered them using almost solely combinations of black, white, blue and green and came out with completely different tangible results, but a fun time together.

Baby Shower

About a week and a half ago, my parents-in-law hosted a baby shower for our soon-to-be new family member.  I had little idea of what to expect ahead of time, as I'd never been to a baby shower in Peru, but from the sounds of it gathered that it was going to be a bigger deal than most baby showers I'd been to.  That was definitely a true conclusion.


First of all, there isn't a Spanish word for "baby shower" so everyone talks about it with a heavy accent, making it sound like (if you can read Spanish phonetically) beibi cháuer.  Peru, being a machistic country, left plenty of opportunities to demonstrate those sentiments.  Despite the baby's gender being a surprise and there being decorations of both baby boys and girls, the boys were at the forefront and we recieved heartfelt wishes that our first child be a son. Unlike at home, where usually only women are present and they take place at reasonable hours, in Peru, baby showers are supposed to begin at about 8 pm, meaning they really get started a little after 9 pm.  Men and women are present, as well as catered food and clowns.  Since my in-laws know that I absolutely hate clowns, they had a girl dressed as a jester (perhaps?) to entertain the party guests.  We had to play numerous games, and I was pleased that I at least figured out what to do most of the time.  It was so confusing and so loud.  The party games were unusual for the States, but typical of games here ... recognizing the melody of a song and beginning to belt it out karaoke style (but without the words in front of you), acting out a skit in numerous ways--slowly, quickly, aggessively, lovingly, and modeling.

Exhausted at mid-night after cutting the 5-tier cake, giving gifts to the guests, dancing and playing the games, Igor, Ryan and I retired, but the party went on until 4 am.  Many of the men enjoyed rounds of beer, while the women danced and giggled and gossiped.




Despite being overwhelmed, we had a nice time with friends (and strangers).  We then celebrated our anniversary with small surprises: Igor got to come home from the hospital for an hour and brought me flowers and I gave him four liters of homemade granola.

Ryan Time

     Ryan's been here a little over a week with me and we're enjoying our time together.  Igor finished up his rotation in pediatrics at the end of June and has been extremely busy since beginning gynecology.  Fortunately, he had some time on Sunday to accompany us on paseo Yortuque where we enjoyed the giant sculptures with Ryan.  He really enjoyed the detailed gods of Lambayequen history--especially the crab god.

     He also accompanied me to the university language center where he helped out with the oral exam for my students and they threw us a surprise party serving us the largest pieces of cake I've ever seen.  Very thoughtful of my students and they asked Ryan a lot of really great questions for students in their second month of English language learning.
     Other events of the week have included going to the markets, cooking together, visiting a botanical garden and enjoying watching the stars, moon and pan-American highway traffic from our roof at night.
     Ryan is also helping out with a youth soccer program on the weekends at the university that I work for and enjoyed his time with the littlest ones this morning.