Christmas all round

Maya and I were kindly invited to spend Christmas Eve and Day with Anna's in-laws, Hector's parents and family. We had our small, stress-free Christmas celebration with Ahmed back in early December, but of course Christmas isn't the same without a bit of last-minute present buying, frantic wrapping, and lots of cooking. All in due time, and the day before Christmas Eve found me still trying to unpack our stuff from the move, lugging a clingy baby around in the front pack, baking, and tying ribbons. No doubt a sign of things to come in our future.

On Christmas Eve, Hector and Anna came and whisked us off to Hector's parents' house for a gigantic Christmas Eve dinner. We had: Romeritos (Nopal cactus in mole - very strong and not for the faint-hearted), smoked salmon, lobster (absolutely the best lobster I've ever eaten, blows Puerto Nuevo and all it's lobster-touting restaurants out of the water, pardon the pun), five different salads: potato salad, carrot salad, tuna salad, corn salad, and my contribution, a cous cous salad, which was eaten with curiousity, more than gusto! Nobody had heard of cous cous before. Followed up by flan and cheesecake. Phew. We were all wobbling afterwards.



Hector's parents have an enormous collection of Christmas paraphenalia, and Maya and Yara spent ages watching a swinging reindeer sing Frank Sinatra, a pot-bellied Santa swinging his beer gut, a house of elves busily churning out toys, a series of singing, dancing, drum-playing reindeer belting out Jingle Bells, and a whole host of other great Christmas kitsch. Even themed toilet seat covers! How's that for dedication?

Late at night, we all toddled off to bed, and Maya proceeded to keep the household awake most of the night with regularly intervalled waking up, crying and coughing. Poor thing was coming down with what ended up being one gigantic, never-ending cold.

On Christmas morning, we had a lovely huge breakfast, and then more family arrived, and a few prayers were said at the Nativity scene, and then it was chow-down-and-open-present time. All under-fives were suitably excited!



Later in the afternoon, we were kindly dropped back in Playas - poor Hector, it's about at 45 minute round trip - and then we had a lovely afternoon and evening, including another big meal, with the twins from next door and their parents. Yes, that's another family adopting here in Mexico, shoring themselves up for the rollercoaster ride that this process is, and going at it gung-ho, full steam ahead. If I ever get the feeling that, phew, the baby business is tiring, just have to think of Fiona next door with two seven-month old babies. She's a powerhouse.