Baby Learning to Speak, Constant Noise

The talking will come and I will do my best for patience. And for now I dream of bedtime and the hours I get to have filled with free thought.

Truthfully, the noise is killing me. Kurt is not a talker outside the house, but here I get the sole pleasure of hearing all his random thoughts, ideas, and music sounds as he invents some kind of song. I love all of it, provided those were the only sounds I heard. Iza is a constant babbling mess of sound bites – some Katchiquel, a few choice Spanish or English words, and some bizarre noises acquired from Baby Einstein. I can’t think straight for the majority of the day; my head is literally full of this endless stream of thoughts which are not my own. I often find myself at the end of the day wanting to literally cover my ears and jump into the lake to have a single moment of silence.

It is possible, I may have been like this as a child, but as an adult, I am not much of a talker inside the house. I use this time to be pensive, and I am very mindful of the time I have outside of work; the simple, rare moments that I don’t have to communicate with clients or vendors. I can just exist in solitude and not have to respond on command.

Children do not understand this need, and I get that. I have to remember that this learning phase of speaking is frustrating for Iza as well because she desperately wants to communicate, and life is very confusing for a child learning 3 languages. A little research shows a delay in speech when multiple languages are learned at the same time – I suppose she is trying to make sense of all the different words she hears, that mean the same thing;

MonkeyMonkey’ and ‘Mono’ both make the “ooo ooo ahhh ahhh,” but Mama says its ‘Monkey’ when she talks to me, and Kati says its ‘Mono,’ Papa says it is ‘Mono’ and ‘Monkey’ depending on the moment. Which one do I say?

Fresh Direct, Mayan Style

Fresh Direct

As we have lived in Guatemala there are only a few amenities we have missed from America. Fresh Direct stands out as the biggest one, Amazon second… and maybe Seamless as the 2nd runner up. We are so used to having everything just brought to us, and we have gotten really lazy (over time).

We are fortunate in our rental to have a great staff already built in. Matteo, our assistant gardner’s family has become a fixture in our life in more ways then one. His daughter has come to play with Iza, his dog sleeps on the property at night, his brother-in-law is Kurt’s assistant and now his mom has become my personal market shopper (i.e. Fresh Direct).

There is a town on top of the hill, away from the lake, called Santa Clara. Here is where Matteo is from and his mom still lives. On the weekends and on Wednesday’s there is a tremendous market. I give Matteo a list in Spanish on Tuesday’s and Friday’s and a bounty is returned on Wednesday and Saturday afternoon via Matteo. Since Matteo’s Mama doesn’t read or write Spanish (solo Katchiquel), Matteo translates for her and then he translates back with a receipt and the costs. Normally for a countertop full of food, including a watermelon, papaya and pineapple, it is about $13 and the delivery fee is built in.

We are thinking about starting a text-message based tuc tuc system where we can have a network of drivers working together. We would text the main guy and he would text his team to deliver. We are thinking we could do this in 2 shifts of 8 hours, so most of the day is covered.

Across the water from us is Salud Para Vida, which is the health food store that imports from Miami. Here we can buy most of the food that we would buy in a Whole Foods in the States. It is across the lake (about 20 minutes) and you would typically travel by boat to get there. You can take a Tuc Tuc however, but that takes about 40 minutes and it is quite rough terrain. If we get a boat system together and have coconut ice cream, organic popcorn and Chilean wine delivered at 9pm… just in time for a Netflix Movie.

How awesome would this all be?!

Sick Baby, Fungus on Walls, No Gas, No Drinking Water: Awesome Morning.

I just returned home on Saturday afternoon after a full week of work, a crazy overnight of travel and a 3-hour car ride which included a funeral procession for 4.5 miles to an even bigger and more exciting weekend of issues.

For starters, when Kurt and Iza greeted me at the dock I quickly realized how bad Iza really was. She had lost about 5lbs since I left. She was pale, almost green and definitely not herself. She had a fever of 102+ and wasn’t eating anything. When we got up our trail to the house I looked around with fresh eyes…. there was this weird wall mold/fungus coming off all the walls. Kurt went to take a shower but the water was freezing, so we pretty much went right to bed to make sure we could get some sleep. In the morning I went to make tea and the stove wouldn’t turn on. The drinking water was kicked, so I just started to cry. Pretty pathetic, but I had almost hit the end of my rope – baby crying, exhausted from travel, thirsty, throat closing in… recipe for disaster.

After Iza woke we decided very quickly that she was sick enough for the Hospital. I went online to research and found a great hospital on the other side of the lake in Santiago. The number on the site listed an American number so I called it and Dr. Larry answered in Maine. He was home, but he frequents Santiago as it is a hospital he founded. So, with his advice we went.

We first went to Pana where I had an absolute meltdown and cost us an extra 2-hours in my mania. When we got to Santiago it was nearly 1pm and our Tuk Tuk driver asked us if we wanted him to wait. We said, “no” (although we should have said, “yes”). After walking up the walkway we kind of realized we were absolutely in the middle of no where. Walking up to the door it was was locked to the Emergency Room and immediately we got discouraged, but we didn’t really know what else to do, so we waited.

Shortly a nurse showed up at the door. She welcomed us and opened the door, showing us to the infirmary to Bed 3. There were 4 beds. (I am familiar with an infirmary from High School at Mercersburg. When you got sick you were sent to the infirmary where you had to be in a shared bed space which is far too similar to an army infirmary… totally depressing. You can just imagine 35 sick soldiers lined up on either side of the room. I think I went to the infirmary 2x in the 4 years I was there and 1x was to say goodbye to a friend who got kicked out for smoking pot.) Around us were a series of American-style equipment and books. Lots of tools and familiar mechanisms. I have to say… definitely a sign of relief from us both. The doctor spoke very very little English, but he had some  Tz’utujil and Kaqchikel which are Mayan languages as well as fluent Spanish. Needless to say, we made do. We had to.

It turns out, after nearly 5 seconds of testing that Iza has an ear infection. So ridiculous that this had gone on for nearly 8 days at this point. Completely unnecessary. We got medicine and we were on our way. Of course we were in the middle of no where, so we grabbed the first Chicken Bus we found and headed into town.

1 issue down… like a MILLION to go. Stay tuned.