Baby Update with Some Cultural Oberservations Thrown In

We're almost to 24 weeks with this new baby.  Feels like it's been a lot longer than that.  For whatever reason, I had that aweful wanna puke but can't but that doesn't mean I can function all day sickness with this one for close to 17 weeks.  Quinn was this bad, but it only lasted, well, 15 weeks.  Whatever.  We'll blame it on the altitude.

While most of my pregnancy with Quinn was here in Costa Rica (we were in language school, remember that year?  ) this pregnancy has been even more Costa Rican, if that makes sense.  We live here now.  We have friends here, close friends.  My doctor this time around is Tico.  It just feels more Tico.  Add to that the fact that this baby will be born here (Quinn was born stateside)  it's just been different.

There are subtle differences in how the culture approaches pregnancy.  For example:  Ticos have absolutely no qualms about touching a pregnant belly.  No thought at all. I am not a touchy person to begin with and then to have 25 year old guys (yes, guys do it all the time!) rubbing my belly, well...it's just strange.

Something else I've noticed that is so very different is people don't ask how I am doing, they ask how the baby is doing.  The conversation typically goes something like this

I walk into a room
Tico friend:"How's the baby today?"

Which I never really know what to say. 
"Ummm, she's fine?" 
"Ummm, she really like dinner last night?"
 I don't know. I usually just say "she's growing!"

I think this points to a very big difference in how children are viewed in this culture.  Here, they are cherished and loved, to a fault some times. As in when one of mine throws a fit, someone is usually there to give them a piece of candy or a cookie to keep them from crying.

Kids aren't considered an inconvenience or annoyance.  We feel this even in the airports as we travel back and forth.  If we are sitting at the gate waiting to board a flight in Latin America, our kids get help putting shoes on, they are given cookies by strangers, no one bats an eye when one cries or gets wiggly.  That help and grace continues though the flight, but once we hit the ground in the US, the attitude is totally different.  Children are viewed as an inconvenience and people often give us looks and rolled eyes.  It's so striking the difference.  I've even heard people say in the US things like "kids shouldn't even be allowed on airplanes."  Here, if you have an infant with you, you are usually bumped to the front of whatever line you are in.

Everyone asks me if the baby is a boy or girl and once they find out it's a girl, they immediately want to know her name.  As in the doctor asked me this last week so he could write it down in my medical records.  I've heard him call babies by their name while he's doing the ultrasounds.   I mentioned to a friend that one of our boys was a couple hours old before he had a name and look of shock on her face was priceless!  She said "OH!! You CAN NOT do that to your daughter!!" 

Nombre Bebé:  Baby's Name

For the record, we haven't settled on a name just yet, and I doubt we'll share it before this little one is born, but you never know, we might cave to cultural norms here.

Speaking of cultural norms...earrings.  Yeah, here they do it at the hospital within the first 24 hours or so.  It was comical to me when I asked on Facebook for moms' opinions on this cultural custom.  Most of the responses were from friends and family in the States and the overwhelming response was "DON"T DO IT!  Let her choose."  The response from my Tica friends was "DO IT!  It won't be as painful and she won't remember the pain.  Plus she's a girl!"  I am not sure I've ever seen a little Tica without earrings.  So we'll see, not sure what we'll end up deciding. This is defiantly ones of those "it's not right or wrong, it's just different" cultural things.

So you never know, after living here almost 5 years, you just might know this little girl's name well before she's born and she might end up with earrings within the first hours of her life.  

Good Old Fashioned Cook Out

For the Fouth of July this year, we decided to have a good old fashion cook out.  We looked and looked for fireworks, but never did find any.  But there were three legged races, ring toss, sling shots and tin cans and FOOD!  Lots and lots of hot dogs, potatoe salad, chips, dip, ice tea, lemonade, watermelon and birthday cake for Noah!

Such a fun night!

New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve is always interesting when you have littles.  It's hard to go anywhere or do anything with anyone who has littles too.  I think my favorite, favorite, favorite New Year's Eve ever was the one where we went tubing at Barakel.  And that could only work because we all lived on the same property and so did all our babyistters.

But here in Costa Rica we have something we didn't at Barakel, our own fireworks display!

Because we have this amazing view from our deck of the central valley, and because everyone and their brother buys fireworks, we just get to sit out and enjoy.  If you look closely, you can see some of the fireworks in the city. 

Sometime, I want to get right down in the midst of it all.  But that probably is going to have to wait until the boys are are bit bigger.

Our Christmas

We apparently celebrate Christmas late for a family living in Costa Rica.  Here, the big celebration is Christmas Eve, where everyone eats tamales and opens presents and stays up until Midnight.

But I think a 6 am wake up with kids is better than Midnight, so we'll stick with the Christmas Morning bit for a while.  Anyway.

Christmas morning we were able to sleep until about 6:45 when the big boys got us up.  We actually had to wake Quinn up, which as you can imagine, we were conflicted on.  But who wants to let a kid sleep through their second Christmas?

We do stockings in our family and it was comical how different each boy approached them.  Forrest took everything out one by one, with a running commentary the whole time.  Quinn got as far as about two things and just played with the Duplo lady while watching his brothers.  And Elliot grabbed the stocking by the toe, dumped the entire contents onto the floor, shouting "WHOOHOOO!!!" and then precieded to throw the stocking in the air like a graduation cap.  We are nothing if not diverse.

This indeed was the year of the Lego, and both boys completed two sets (rated ages 8-12) in the matter of hours.  These children do indeed carry the engineering gene.

The funny thing about living here in Costa Rica is that most Ticos assume you are leaving the country for Christmas, and any expats or missionaries that can, do indeed leave.  We however, stayed.  We found another family that stayed too and we had Christmas Dinner with them and got to know them more.  It was a great lazy afternoon full of great food, chasing kids (there were 5 kids, most under 3 years old) playing games and just being.

Overall, it was a very nice Christmas.  Our second one here.  A bit strange to think that if all goes according to plan, next year, we'll be in the Mitten for Christmas!

All Things New Year's

I keep meaning to tell you about New Year's here. With all the excitement of the trip to Panama and Christmas, we decided to just hang out that night.  I bought some brie ( the only kind I could find had crushed black pepper all over it, and I decided I really didn't like that) we splurged on some crackers and we watched three movies that night.  And then!!

Someone once said that Americans use an inexcusable paltry amount of fireworks in their celebrations.  I concur.  New Year's Eve was incredible and we were 10 miles from the heart of it all.  

This video isn't the greatest, but hopefully it will give you some idea of how things looked from our deck.

Now, we have friends who live down in the city.  This is what it was like on their deck.  Yeah, pretty nuts!

New Year's Day we were invited to go to a church picnic with some of our neighbors.  The church had rented a place with a pool, a fútbol (errr...soccer) field, a playground and a covered pavilion.  It was a good time of playing as a family, the boys got to swim and Noah got to play a game of soccer.  The boys also got to go sledding.  Yep!  Sledding!!  We laughed so hard over this!

Sledding!!  And the dried leaves even flew up after the kids went over them, you know, just like the snow does.  So funny!!

 

The other funny thing to us was how concerned everyone was over the fact that Quinn didn't have a hat on.  Now remember, it was probably 75 and sunny.  Yes, there was a breeze and yes, we were up on the mountain side, but he had a onesie and sweatpants and socks on.  He was also wrapped in the Moby most of the day. 

He looks cold, doesn't he?  But I got chastised by more than one lady about how "that baby needs a hat!" and "he is going to get an ear ache" and "I would love to hold him, but he shouldn't be unwrapped, put him back in."  Frankly, I was way more concerned with him getting sunburned that developing an ear ache from the 75 degree wind. So funny what people think is cold!  There is no use in explaining to them about Elliot crawling in the snow with no boots on...

And there you have it. All things New Year's. Maybe next year we will try our hand at some of those crazy fireworks!

Making Tamales

Ok.  Now that we have a computer that is in working order, I can take some times and tell you about making tamales.

First off, I am not sure what you think of when you hear the word "tamale" but when talking about Costa Rican tamales, they are different than Mexican ones.  Here's a good example of the Costa Rican variety.

We bought these at church one Sunday.  A missions team was going to spend Christmas with an indigenous tribe in the southern part of Costa Rican and they were selling tamales to raise money. 

Tamales here are a twice a year thing.  Christmas and Semana Santa (Holy Week).  The Christmas ones have pork or chicken and the Semana Santa ones are just veggie because it's Lent. 

I really wanted to learn how to make these as it seemed like a great freezer meal option.  Just pull them out, heat them up and you got lunch.  So I asked our landlady if she could teach me sometime after Christmas.  To which she responded "yes, but before Christmas!!"  But then the trip to Panama happened and her family had things going on, so it did get put off until after Christmas.  For them it was strange, because tamales are the traditional Buena Noche (Good Night, or Christmas Eve) food. 

So two days after Christmas Milena brought over the stuff to make tamales.  I was naive.  I thought it might take two or three hours.  Ha!  Was I wrong. 

First we got the meat started.  There was posta de cerdo, which is some part of pork.  Roast maybe?  I haven't found a good translation for it yet.  To that we added skin, bone and we were suppose to add lard, but no place had any left two days AFTER Christmas.  There was also salt, pepper, celery, onion, Lizano (a sauce Costa Ricans add to almost anything), complete seasoning (which has all the spices and some bouillon in it), garlic paste, cilantro and chile dulce (por supesto!  Of course!)  and camomile(to help with the digestion Milena said.)  We let that cook in a huge pot on the stove for a couple of hours.  Gosh, that was a hard sentence to write in English.  I find that if I learn a recipe in Spanish, I can only talk about the ingredients in Spanish.  Language and the brain are weird things.

While the pork was cooking, I looked out and saw Milena's dad making a fire in my driveway.  And then I began to realize this wasn't just going to be an hour or two. 

A few minutes later I looked out and saw this.

 

Noah and Milena's mom were working on cleaning the banana leaves and cutting them down to the size needed for the tamales.  As they were doing that, Milena's sons were gathering firewood for the day.  Tamales really is a whole family affair.  Everyone comes over and works together.  The women work on cooking, the men on the fire, the kids can help with cleaning the leaves and staying out of the way.  We were told it's a time of unifying the family.  Everyone is together, working, and the stories start to be told, and it is all about the family.  I love it!  I feel like Milena and her family really let us in that day, to be part of such a family event.

Then there was the cutting and cooking of the vegetables to put in the tamales.  We used green beans, peas, carrots and chile dulces or red sweet peppers.  That part didn't take too long in comparison to the masa.

The masa.  Wow.  This is the corn meal that makes up the bulk of the tamale.  And what a process!  Milena bought the base masa in town and then we seasoned it accordingly.  There was more salt and pepper added as well as more Lizano.  Then we added the cooking water from the pork to it.  To blend it all together, we first had to run a batch through a sieve to make sure there weren't big chunks of corn still in the masa.  After one test batch, Milena decided that this was high quality masa and we didn't need to run the rest of the masa for 100 tamales through he sieve by hand.  Good. 

But lest you think that made the masa a quick step, read on.  To mix the masa with the cooking water required two people, a very large spoon, and an hour.  The goal was to make it as smooth as possible.  One person held the pot errr, caldron and the other beat the masa.  Como eso (like this)

This is one of Milena's sons, Christian and his grandmother.  We all took turns beating the masa.  At one point we put it over the fire to heat it up some.  And there was some discussion about the fact that it needed more fat (which was part of what the lard was for, so we used butter instead).  While we were beating it over the fire, the smoke was terrible and kept getting in my eyes making me cry.  At one point I said, "La gringa no puede hacerlo"  (The white woman can't do it!) and Milena said, "Ni la Tica!"  (Or the Costa Rican!)

We beat and beat and beat that masa.  And finally, it was deemed smooth enough.  Then the assembly line started.

We laid out banana leaves all around the table and each one of us put something on to them.  First was the masa, then the rice, pork, and veggies.

Oh so good!  After it's all assembled, we wrapped the banana leaves around it and put them together with another.  A pair of tamales is called a piña, 

After they were all wrapped, we tied them together with their twin, como eso

Christian and Carlos, Milena's sons, helped with this part too.  It so reminded me of canning. You know, when you first learn how tight to put the lids on before putting them in the water bath.   They kept tying and asking, "¿Mami, esta bien?" (Mommy, is this good?) 

Next it was time to cook the tamales.  Christian and Carlos put banana leaves in the pot over the fire before we added the 100 tamales we had just made.  As a lid, more banana leaves were put on top.  And then we let it cook for an hour or so. 

It was dark by the time we pulled them out of the pot.  Much like a day of canning.  The difference was at the end of a canning day, you still have to make dinner.  At the end of a tamale day, you have leftover rice with pork and veggies to eat.  No more cooking required.  Everyone kept asking me if I was tired from all the work, to which I said "yes, but it's normal right?  It's like canning."

We split the 100 tamales and now my freezer is full of them.  We will be eating them a lot on Sundays because it's an easy meal.

What a sweet day full of culture, Spanish, food and family.  ¡A mi me gusta los días de los tamales!  I like days of tamales!