Tacos Arabes--because they deserve their own post

When most people think of authentic, Mexican tacos, tacos de pastor most often come to mind.  With reason, as they´re fabulous and easy to find just about anywhere.  At least, anywhere I´ve visited,

However, my first Mexican taco experience was with tacos arabes.  As much as I like tacos al pastor (and I LOVE them), tacos arabes are still my favorites.

Maybe it´s because I´m fron the US and I prefer wheat tortillas to corn tortillas.  But, to be honest, the tortillas used in tacos arabes are more of a pita bread than a wheat tortilla

Maybe it´s the chipotle-laden sauce that should be generously poured over the meat.  I´m a sucker for chipotles.  But who isn´t?

Whatever the reason, whenever I´m in Puebla, I just can´t get enough of these beauties.

Yet another reason that I thank the Lebanese-Mexican community´s contributions to this country.

Mmmm . . . just look at that porky goodness!

Where can one find tacos arabes?

Lots of taco places in the city of Puebla will sell them.  A big chain for tacos arabes is the Antigua Taquería Oriental.  They´ve got locations all over Puebla, but I´m guessing that the original is on the zócalo in Puebla, on the same side as the entrance to the cathedral.  It´s small and easy to miss (the other franchises are a great deal larger . . . if, indeed, they are the same franchise).  Whatever, they are, they´re all good!

New Year, New Blog

New Year, New Blog?

Not really.  

However, instead of making New Year´s Resolutions for myself, I´ve been spending more and more time lately thinking about this blog.  Therefore, I have New Year´s Resolutions for this blog.  

They seem easier achieve than losing the excess baby weight. 

What are my Blog Resolutions?  

In a nutshell, focus.  After writing this blog for a few years, I realize that there are some categories that interest me more than others.  For example: 

• Travel in Mexico     I have photos stockpiled from vacations over the last few years.  I took a lot of those pictures with the intention of highlighting a specific city on this blog, or an aspect of that city.  Then real life steamrolled right over me, and those pictures never saw the light of day.  

          Therefore, if a flurry of new destinations pop up on this blog,             don´t be surprised.  We haven´t just taken an epic tour of the             country.  I´ve simply been hoarding pictures and memories for              the last ten years, and it´s time to do something with them.  

• Parenting      Having a baby recently, I´ve had time on my hands to reflect and be awed by the huge responsibility that parenting is.  That, and I have multiple opportunities a day to reflect on the weirdness that is inherent in parenting.  Parenting is silly and messy and beautiful and lonely and hard and awe-inspiring.  Sometimes I need a place to write about those things--to remember them for the future, to share them with friends.  So many of us have been there.  Even thought we know we´re not alone, sometimes it´s helpful to put it out there, to have someone else comment that yes, they´ve been there, too.  

• Mexican Wines and Microbrews     On these vacations that I will be highlighting, one of my favorite parts is to find wineries and microbrews.  For far too long, Mexico´s beer selections have been dominated by two huge companies.  Sure, they often make good beer.  But in the last few years I´ve noticed the Mexican microbrew scene explode.  It seems everywhere I look, there´s a new beer from a city that I never realized made beer.  They can be hard to find, but the joy is in the search.

         And Mexican wine--where do I begin?  Look beyond Padre Kino--there is some AMAZING                wine out there, and not all of it is grown in Baja California.  I´m making it part of the mission of          my life to enjoy as much of it as I can.  And then to share the joy.  

What might no longer appear on this blog?  

       If I have information about Saltillo, I´ll generally share that on SaltilloExpats.  

      And sometimes I´ll be inspired and have an epiphany and spew over with evangelical fervor.  That´s all well and good, but I´ve decided to stow those musings at an entirely different site.  Click here to check it out, or on the "spirituality" subheading at the top of this blog.  

After not doing much with this page for the last year, I´m getting warmed up and ready to dig into this again!  

Multitasking While Breastfeeding

As the mother of a newborn, I  spend roughly sixteen hours a day on the couch.  Just sitting there.  Hands held hostage, because I´m holding someone whose life depends on my ability to hold him to my chest for those sixteen hours a day.

In some ways, this is the toughest part of having a baby.  While the boob and the baby may be working, the rest of me is idle.

Sure, there are ways to work around this.  For instance, I am starting to be an expert at one-handed internet surfing.  For the second and third week of Little Boy´s life, I locked myself in my room, reading my way through the War of the Roses (thank you, Philippa Gregory).

But once I polished off The White Princess for the second time, I was all read out.  And while I love the kid, there´s only so long I can stare at him in wonder.  Mostly, I just found myself thinking about all the other things I could have been doing, things I could have been doing if my hands were free.

As I kept ruminating on all those things that needed to be done, I was reminded of Philippians 4:6.

"Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God." 

Instead of worrying about those things that I couldn´t do anything about, I could pray about those things.

That, in turn, reminded me to pray for my baby, for my older children, and for the rest of my family.

With so much time almost literally on my hands, I have been reminded to pray for all kinds of people and situations I would have otherwise overlooked during my regularly-scheduled busy life.

Maybe that is the hardest thing about having a new baby--that abrupt halt of all the activities and routines that dominated our days up to the moment of the baby´s birth.  Then--BAM--life comes to a halt.  We´re forced to slow down dramatically.  We´re stuck on the couch for sixteen hours a day, feeding this new little person.

Stepping back and reflecting, it´s a huge job.  It´s an awesome responsibility--both the small person whose survival is dependant on my holding him steady, keeping me hostage on the couch, and the fact that I can simultaneously lift up numerous people, situations, needs, joys, and hurts and interceed on behalf of those directly to the God who has control over it all.

Up until recently, I haven´t been much of a "pray-er".  I like doing better.

But maybe prayer is just another form of doing.  Even though it doesn´t feel like I´m doing anything, I have faith that it is doing someone, somewhere, some good.  After all, that´s what faith is all about--the belief that prayers do work, even when there is no physical evidence to support that belief.

The Worst Word

Yesterday, Clara came up to me and declared, "my doll says a bad word."

Confident that we never acquired a doll with a potty mouth, I assured her that she must have misunderstood.  But Clara was convinced that the doll was providing a bad example.

"Want to know what she says?"

Curious what terrible word this piece of plastic was teaching my child, I agreed.  Clara drew close, whispering in my ear, in an attempt to expose as few people as possible to this doll´s poor manners.

"Stupid face."

Initially, I couldn´t believe that any toy company would sell a doll that would say "stupid face".  However, on listening to the culprit, I had to admit that Clara was right.

Oh, that made-in-China quality control!

However, the doll´s potty mouth was more offensive to Clara´s ears than mine on at least two levels:

1)  Within the four-to-eight-year-old age range, isn´t "stupid face" just about the biggest slam there is?  One might as well go all out and call someone "poopy face".

2)  Not only is my daughter six, but she´s a Mexican six-year-old.  Among Mexicans--of any age--"stupid" is the ultimate forbidden word.  There are swear words, and then there is stupid.

Now, even in English, it is pretty harsh to call another person stupid.  However, in other contexts, we throw the word around all the time.

The airplane is late?  Stupid plane.

The refrigerator doesn´t work?  Stupid refrigerator.

Any of those phrases are absolutely unacceptable in Spanish (at least, Mexican Spanish).  Therefore, under no circumstances should the S-word be applied to a person.

Or else Clara´s doll might call one a "stupid face", too.

Four Ounces of Sanity

I´m not a fan of extremists.  Or extremes, one way or another.

However, I have a newborn.  He doesn´t share my distain for extremism.

Because, let me tell you, this kid would be happy to hang on the boob ALL DAY.  And, for those who know newborns, you know that when I say all day, I mean all night, too.  It´s all the same around here, lately.

Now, there are plenty out there who get a little militant about breastfeeding.  Plenty of moms swear up and down that a bottle will NEVER touch their baby´s lips.  They happily feed their children around the clock, a lactating frenzy.  They eat with maximum production in mind.  They´ll even pump between latch-ons, stocking away "liquid gold".

If you are one of those moms, I congratulate you.  To be honest, I´d like to be you.

But I´m not.

I do believe in breastfeeding.  Having breastfed my other children, I know that pulling out the boob is much easier than heating a bottle.

And it´s free.  Can´t say enough about that.  

But during these first two weeks, breastfeeding can be really, really hard.

After all, when a mom is beginning to breastfeed, she is also:

• recovering from giving birth.  Depending on one´s experience, there may have been a bit of trauma involved.  So while the mother is dealing with the pain of recovering from her C-section, an episiotomy, or simply pushing another person´s head out of her body, she is simultaneously subjecting her sensitive nipples to being mangled every couple of hours.  

• really, really, really, really, really tired.  

• Hormonally out-of-whack, which often means that one´s emotions are all over the place.  

So if you are like me, and your child has been on the boob for five hours straight, and you´re about to throw him across the room BECAUSE he´s been on the boob for five hours, I´ve got a secret.  

It´s OK to give him a bottle.  

It´s even OK to give him a bottle of formula.  It´s not necessary to pump it out.  

Because, let´s face it--if the kid has been sucking for five hours, the tatas probably have not had a chance to replenish themselves and he probably isn´t getting much of anything anyway.  

My first child was born a little small, so the doctor suggested supplementing with formula.  Let me tell you, she sucked down bottle after bottle in the hospital.  While I did successfully breastfeed her, every bottle I gave her in those first few weeks felt like a symbol of my failure.   

My second baby didn´t touch a bottle at the hospital.  I was determined that he was going to be the perfect, breastfed-only baby. Then we brought him home.  He screamed for the first 24 hours.  I finally caved in and called the pharmacy so they could deliver some formula to our house.  I gave him the bottle and he finally fell asleep.  

Blessed relief!  

Yes, breastmilk is best for our babies.  I try to give mine as much as I possibly can.

But when he sucks away for hours at a time, I am done.  Those four ounces of magic might just be why I make it through those first six weeks on the upside of sane.*

Of course, if one does want to continue to breastfeed, take it easy--one or two bottles a day, max.  (Unless you kid is crazy, of course.)  Just keep in mind that if nothing comes out of the boobies for 24-48 hours, the magic will end.  The girls won´t work until baby has a sibling.

But if the baby has 4 ounces once or twice a day, no harm, no foul.

After a few weeks (or months, in my daughter´s case) both of my older children were exclusively breastfed.  In a few weeks, this baby will be, too.  But I´ll let him decide.

Watching me feed one of my babies the fake stuff, my mom told me in her saddest, most wistful voice, "I wish someone had told me I could haven given you a bottle now and then."

I´m passing on the secret.  Ain´t no shame.

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*This is in NO WAY a condemnation of those who´ve suffered post-partum depression.  That´s a whole different ball of wax.  There´s no shame in that, either, but do what you have to do to get through it.  And that´s the bitch about depression--it makes one not want to do anything to get through it.  Huge red flag right there.  Don´t blow it off.  

A Healthy Dose of Reality

I´ve lived here long enough that not much takes me by surprise anymore.

And then I´m flipping through my daughter´s homework and smacked up alongside the head with "Gee--we aren´t in Indiana anymore!"

Check out the illustration for a first grade test on life cycles:

Just in case you aren´t seeing what I saw, double-click on the picture.  Check out the top left corner.  

Yep, that´s a dead chicken.  

And not just a cartoon of a dead chicken--nope, that´s a photograph of a real, dead chicken.  (I just about wrote, "a real, live, dead chicken."  But that´s the point.  He is most certainly NOT alive.)  If I look close enough, I think I can see flies buzzing around it.  

Now, I´m not one to shy away from the realities of life.  Ever since Clara has been old enough to ask questions, she´s been well aware of where our food comes from.  A few years back, she was also fixated on the idea of death, or at least the realization that everything does come to an end, sooner or later.  

My sweet, little, six-year-old, whose head is filled with rainbows and puppies and glitter-filled hearts gets to stare at the grizzly remains of a chicken for her school work.  

Welcome to Mexico.  We don´t shy away from reality here.  

Death is part of the life cycle.  And well--this is what it looks like.  

However, being a sheltered midwesterner whose culture is generally in denial of the reality of death, the thoroughness of the diagram took my breath away a bit.   

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Civil Baptism?

Roughly 10 years ago, this commercial was pretty popular.  In a nutshell, it makes fun of the Mexican habit of putting lime on everything.


               


Toward the end of the commercial, where they´re squeezing lime on everything, even things that aren´t food, I thought to myself, "hmmm . . . so when Mexican babies have their birth certificates filed, do they get a little lime squeezed on their heads, as a kind of civil baptism?"

Can´t you just see it?  Mom and Dad and baby, all gathered in the Registro Civil, ink from fingerprinting still wet on their fingerprints, and as the official is about to hand the birth certificate over to the proud parents, the government offical takes a half of lime, squeezes a few drops onto the infant´s head, saying, "I now pronounce you officially Mexican!"

I love it.

As we just registered baby boy, I was really tempted to do just that.

But the comparison between filing a birth certificate and Catholic baptism is even more striking recently--because it is now necessary to bring witnesses to sign the birth certificate.

When we registered our oldest daughter, the people who worked at the Registro Civil served as the witnesses on her birth certificate, and (I´m guessing) on the majority of other kids´ certificates, too.  Or, if they Registry employees weren´t able to be witnesses, the Registry is right in front of a bus stop, so we could have just offered to pay someone their bus fare if they´d be willing to come in and sign their name on our kid´s birth certificate.

No longer.  We are now required to bring our own witnesses--no more picking random strangers off the street.

Thank goodness it worked out for us the way it did!  After all, we moved to Saltillo just two months before Clara was born--we simply didn´t have two people we knew who could serve as witnesses.  This time around, though, it was a whole other story.  First of all, Mario´s cousin lives with us.  Witness #1--check!  And Mario´s mom is visiting, to help take care of the baby.  Witness #2--check!

However, the day that Mario took off of work to file the baby´s birth certificate, both of our older kids were sick.  Since we couldn´t leave them at home alone, I was frantically on the phone, calling neighbors to see if they´d be willing to pay the Civil Registry a visit with us, taking Mario´s mom´s place as a witness.

Now that we´ve lived here for seven years, I had a number of people to call.  And at the last minute, one of my lovely neighbor friends was able to join us in a pinch.

As I told her and Paty (Mario´s cousin) as we were heading home with the birth certificate in our hands, "you guys are like Baby´s civil godmothers!"

And it´s true.  These women are, and will be, two of the more influential people in his life who will teach him, through example, how to be Mexican.  After all, as much as I enjoy and respect this country, I´m not Mexican and am therefore ill-equipped to teach him how to be Mexican.  I do my best, but--let´s face it--he needs a Paty and a Myra in his life.

His Mexican madrinas.