The paper reported that when the paramedics arrived, a woman from the neighborhood was feeding the baby a bottle and several of the people asked if the paramedics could leave the baby with them, as she was “very beautiful”.

One look at the baby’s description and it seems likely that the reason the baby was abandoned is pretty clear . . . she’s white with light eyes. In the jealous world of Guatemala, that can only mean one thing . . . the mother cheated on her man.

The reason I know this is that many, MANY people have thought that our boys were the result of indiscretion with a gringo. When Irving came into the hospital and ran to see Dorian after his birth, the doctor told him, “This baby is very light, are you sure he’s yours?” Irving assured him that his wife was as white as they come, hence the coloring. These days, Dorian is darker and with his brown eyes, he can easily pass for Guatemalan. Dante, however, is another matter and poor Irving has been asked many times in the street when he’s carrying his son if the baby is his. It was worse back when Dante still had blue eyes!

The stigma attached to having a white baby, even if that baby is just a throwback, or one with different eye color, can be very strong and in this case, if that was the reason the mother left her daughter in the street, it means this little girl is doomed to grow up in an institution. Since adoptions are still closed to foreigners here, she’ll likely spend her life in an orphanage.

We’re not good at budgeting. Or, I should probably say . . . one of us is not.

As a result, it’s pretty common to run out of things near the end of the month, which causes a lot of stress and anxiety that, in my mind, is simply not necessary. So, I started doing what my mom did when I was a kid, once a month shopping.

Irving and I headed into Antigua and we SCOURED the area. We took a notebook and we wrote down prices for everything from various places, which someday I may be organized enough to share if anyone is interested. We discovered that the cheapest place to buy bulk food in general is not behind the market in the dark shadowy bodegas, as previously thought, but on the other side of the street where the buses bound for Guate come out. There is a huge store there with two giant doors and a very long glass counter. You order at the counter, pay at the hidden booth (I guess you can’t rob someone you can’t see, though it’s just blacked out plexiglass and they walk out a few feet away without protection) and then go back to get your stuff.

The other place to buy bulk is behind the market, the second booth piled high with soap and toilet paper, etc. We’ve bought diapers there for a very long time, so the guy was happy to give us a deal on everything . . . though I’m sure the fact we spent Q800 there had something to do with it, too.

Anyway. My point is that I wasn’t sure how much we’d use of everything. I just guessed. And it came out just perfectly! We did have to buy another package of diapers, but that is a virtually non-existent cost this month because the boys are not using diapers except at night now. And even then, they get up to pee half the time, saving even more diapers!

Several things ended up being more than enough to last for another while. Oil, for example. I bought a gallon and we haven’t even used half, thanks to the fact that I decided to try one of those cooking sprays, which was the best investment EVER. Q14 at the Bodegona (just under $2) and it’s lasted all month! So, no oil this month. The hard laundry soap that I bought a full box of is going to last another 3-5 months depending on how dirty my kids are, the toilet paper still has a couple of rolls left and there’s toothpaste galore. Flour, rice, beans and sugar are all still plentiful, too, so I don’t need to add those to the list either!

We even still have some chicken in the freezer and a couple packets of hamburger meat. All in all, it was a big success and this month we’ll definitely be doing this again.

1. Shower. Or, if there’s no water, which frequently happens, drop small children into the pila and pour the water over them, then let them throw guacales of water at you.

2. Soak your shirt. Take that sucker off, run it under the cool tap water, wring it out and put it back on. Repeat every five minutes, when the shirt dries.

3. Drape a cool cloth around your neck. Twisting a couple of ice cubes into the middle where it hangs against your neck will keep it moist longer.

4. Eat ice cream, Popsicles or ice cubes. Enough said.

5. Keep a jug of water in the fridge. For best results, don’t eat all morning, then chug it. Your belly will turn into a temp cooling facility.

6. Sleep on a damp towel. I take a nap every afternoon so I can work until 3 am (when, by the way, it is FREEZING!), but with the intense heat, it’s really hard to sleep. So I take a towel off the line that was washed in the morning and is still quite damp, lay that on the bed and pillow and sleep on it. Works wonders!

7. Put your feet in ice water. Only one part of your body needs to be cold in order for the rest of it to cool off. My mom used to say that if you put cold compresses on areas where the blood ran close to the skin (inside the elbows, back of the knees, jugular, etc.) then it would cool your whole body. No clue if that’s medically sound, but hey, it seems to work!

8. Get lots of fans. We’re constantly fighting over fans in our house. We have a broken one that is hung from the ceiling but does little good because we have a tin roof, so it’s just pushing hot air down, and a regular one which i usually commandeer because “my computer is overheating!”

9. Lie on the floor. If you come into our house any given day, you’re likely to find children and adults alike sprawled on the cool tile floor. Those tiles almost never warm up, so they are the perfect place to relax. You know, apart from the back breaking hardness. The boys even nap on the floor from time to time.

10. Hang out outside. If you have a tin roof like we do, then being outdoors in the shade is cooler than being inside. Which is why we have been eating and even working out in the breezeway lately!

And, once you’ve cooled down, don’t forget to stock up on blankets, hats and sweaters because it only lasts til 6pm and then the cold sets in!

It’s so neat when people want to bring things down and I really, really appreciate it. The biggest problem I’ve run into is being able to think of something in the moment, though I usually have a list in my head when no one is coming this way!

With that in mind, I’ve started a wishlist page on this blog, which you’ll see to the right in the sidebar. If anyone is heading this way and has a little extra space in their suitcase, we’d be THRILLED to fill your luggage up.

My maid said it was a “grillo” or cricket, but it’s like no other cricket I’ve ever seen and it was at least two inches long!

It was wounded since the maid found it in the bathroom and kicked it out the door, but when we got too close, it acted rather like a scorpion!

That nasty looking thing on the back end was very hard, but when I touched it with a stick, it just stuck it up further, but didn’t try to stab me or anything. Then again, maybe it knew it was just a stick and was waiting for a tender foot or something.

I’ve seen a lot of weird bugs in Guatemala, but this is definitely up there on the bizarre list!

However, recently, sugar prices have skyrocketed and today, we were informed that there will be no more sugar. That’s right, Guatemala is out of sugar. Apparently all the plantations have been selling to Mexico which pays more and leaving their own country without. Let me tell you that Guatemalans LOVE their sugar! They have it in their coffee, tea, and just about everything else, so this is a big deal.

We recently bought a “roba” of sugar, which is a big canvas bag, so we have enough for a few months if we ration it. However, I’m thinking this could be a good thing . . . we can start using alternative sweeteners like honey. Sometimes we find molassas here, as well, but it’s rare. If the sugar plantations were smart, they would start marketing this byproduct as a healthy sweetener and make a double profit, but I doubt they’ll think of that.

So, this is starting to feel more and more like a simple life!

Irving was looking at our budget and was horrified to see how much we spend on diapers, so last night he told me that we really should just take the diapers away . . . and that’s just what he did this morning. He put underwear on the boys, we set up the bathroom so they can easily get up to the toilet and he told them that the diapers were all gone.

Surprisingly, Dorian didn’t complain. He has been on the brink of training for a while, going when we remind him, but he always wears Pull-Ups or diapers and cries bitterly when we put him in underwear. Not today. He eagerly picked out underwear with cars on them and got dressed. Not a single complaint.

He then proceeded to go to the bathroom, tell me he deserved a sticker, flushed the toilet, moved the stool and washed his hands. All by himself.

We made some sticker charts and I told the boys that we had no stickers, but if they went five times in the toilet, or outside (we’re letting Dante be a bit more flexible since he isn’t that interested yet), they could have a tattoo. Fake, of course. Then we just didn’t remind them. Dante wet himself three times in a row before he finally realized that wasn’t doing him any good. Then we let him run around naked for a while and he did fine, going outside every time he needed and once on the toilet.

Dorian, on the other hand, required nothing. He would yell, “I’m gonna go pee, put it on my chart!” and he would streak past me to go to the bathroom. At one point, I followed to see if he needed help. “MAMA!” he said, “Don’t look at my pe’nis!” Oops. I guess we gained bladder control and modesty all in one day! He’s starting to look like a Guatemalan drug lord, with a pirate skull on his chest, a flaming face on his arm and he’s rapidly approaching the five marks he needs to get the next tattoo. Dante has two more to go before his first one.

Today, I was watching Brothers and there’s a scene where the family is skating outdoors. Dorian was watching with me and got very excited.

“Look at that! It’s so FUN! I want to go have fun!”

I said, “Well, we can’t really do that because they’re skating on ice and we don’t have ice here.”

“Oh, yeah, I have to wait for the snow. I just can’t WAIT for the snow to come!”

Hate to break it to him that he lives in a tropical country . . . sorry, son, no snow in your immediate future.

Here’s the outside of the box . . .

You’ll notice that these are shape and color flashcards. And so they were, though minus the Ben on the color side.

However, on the OTHER side of the flashcards, there were words. Apparently, you can use the cards to teach your kids important words, as well . . . a dual purpose deck. Except . . . they’re a little off.

Take these cards for example:

Running is fine, but I’m not sure “cool” and “defensive” are on my vocabulary list of must-know words.

But at least the pictures matched the words and were fairly recognizable. Look at these ones:

I’m thinking you’d be hard pressed to tell your kid that the “fierce” card wasn’t a monster . . .

But then it got weirder.

Nothing said “Honest” to me like a big monster sticking his chest out. And kicking? I always kick while taking a knee!

Then, the very last card in the deck. It defies explanation.

Huh?!?

We read “Just Go to Bed”, a Little Critter story for our bedtime story. As I was finishing up, Dorian ran, jumped onto his bed and yelled, “He’s a RODENT!”
I think he got that from the Chipmunks.

Then when I was about to tell them a story about Dojian and Daje, two brothers who live in the desert (our favorite adventuresome duo), I started out with “Once upon a time . . .” And Dorian chimed in, “In a land far far away . . . ”

Dante, on the other hand, had nothing much to say about the stories (except to cheer that his favorite character, Daje, was an expert camel driver), but he did have something to say later. I was about to put his shirt on and he was sitting topless and drooling, as he has been doing a lot lately and a drop of drool ran down his chest. “Oh no! Look, it’s waining on me!” I told him it was drool, but he was insistent that some rain had gotten into the house and dropped on him!

A little earlier today, the boys were out in the dirt and got very, very dirty, as little boys are wont to do. Then they paid a visit to their dirt-phobic abuelos. Dorian returned a little later, his face smudged, hands dirty and dusty from head to toe. He looked quite annoyed and I asked what was wrong.
“My abuelo told me to go have a bath!” He said. “That’s so RUDE!”