Wyatt...meet Santa!

So..this was Wyatt's first introduction to Santa. No tears..but there was definitely uncertainty on his face. I was wondering if the Santa at our local mall in Chile would be as jolly as the ones I've seen in the States..and I was pleasantly surprised that he pulled off Saint Nick pretty well. I still can't get into the Christmas spirit when I'm wearing sundresses and it's in the middle of summer. There are definitely some differences here besides the weather. No one puts lights on their houses for the holidays..and I haven't seen any wreaths on doors. Oh yeah..I didn't put socks on my little man b/c it was so hot outside and he gets so warm. Apparently, I've learned that Chileans think that babies without socks is a huge 'No-No' and I've had random people in elevators touch his feet while he's been in the carrier to be obvious in checking to see if they were cold. Weird! I know!

3 months old - What a cutie!

Our Babymoon...

This post is way over due since we took this trip back in July...but oh well. Matt and I took a trip to San Pedro de Atacama which is an oasis in the Atacaman desert in northern Chile. I was 7 months pregnant at the time and it was our last big trip as a family of 2. We had our own tour guide which was great! One of the places that we went to was a salt flat that herds of flamingoes flock to for food. It's crazy..because you can see snow capped volcanoes in the background.



A closer look at the salt flat


















Matt and me while I'm big and pregnant. Wyatt didn't want to miss out on a photo op.

















We went to some outlying areas that had lots of petroglyphs..which are drawings that were made by primitive people that lived in that region a long time ago. I was excited because I found a petroglyph of a pregnant llama. If you look hard, you can see the baby llama in her belly. I felt as if I had a large pack animal in my belly and wanted to pose alongside.

















I think this place is nicknamed "Dragons Scales" because of the crazy rock formations in the background. San Pedro is so great..b/c the setting can change so fast from desert to mountain.

















So...we went to this rural village where they were having a religious celebration and honoring a certain saint. They even had their pets and livestock get fancy for the occasion. Notice that the baby llama has a fabulous necklace on. I know..I'm sure you can feed llamas at petting zoos and it isn't that fascinating of an event...but they were just too cute not to include.

Happy Thanksgiving

So Wyatt celebrated his first Thanksgiving with his friend, Pierce, who is 5 weeks older than him. Wyatt and I enjoyed the holiday at the house of Pierce's mom and dad and it was great to be able to have some turkey while being down here in Santiago. At the end of it all, the tryptophan kicked in and Wyatt was out!

It's a hard life...

Matt and I thought we'd take a walk around the neighborhood with Wyatt the other day..and since we live in the foothills of the Andes..it's not really a leisure walk on flat terrain. So...we thought we'd take Wyatt in the carrier so we wouldn't have to push the stroller around on the steep hills. Much to Wyatt's chagrin, we had to load him up on baby sunscreen and mandatory sun hat. (It's late spring here...It's still hard to get used to. Christmases here consist of barbecues and laying out by the pool. )












Of course, the trip wasn't exciting enough for our little guy and either he's praying that he can get another set of parents that actually know what they are doing..or our plan really worked and the walk tired him out.























Wyatt sure does love taking a nap on his dad. We just went to have Wyatt's picture taken for his US passport and all of the posing for the camera sure is tiring for an 8 week old!

Bath anyone??

I thought that Wyatt enjoyed his baths, but looking back at the pics..all I see is a look of utter annoyance. Maybe it's the fact that his dad and I are laughing hysterically at his bare butt or making his hair into funny styles with the shampoo. All I know is that when I told Wyatt that bathtime was almost here...I received the following disgruntled look.







Once in the tub, the tension is mounting. It's a nail (or finger) biter. Will mom and dad start messing with me and make me look like a fool for the camera? Maybe this time they will act their age.

















At what age will they stop doing things like this to me? You think that they'd treat me like the mature 6 week old that I've become. I realize that sometimes I pee on walls and drool on pretty much everything..but those things build character, right?


















No...we weren't going for the Bride of Frankenstein look. This is Wyatt au naturel...uncombed and out of control. Eat your heart out, baby ladies.

Still sleeping...

So...I thought it would be a good idea to try to keep Wyatt awake through the stimulating fun of his Baby Einstein activity mat. Who can resist a squeaking octopus and fish mirror? Well..apparently Wyatt can't be bothered with expanding any of his five senses because as soon as I put him on the map..the following pic is what I got. Back to the drawing board.....

1 month old!

Our little man is a month old today! Time is going by so fast...and I'm hoping the time will come soon when I can sleep through the night again. (I will get to sleep again, right?!) Wyatt sleeps during the day and then wants to have a house party at night. I try to tell him that I'm too old and boring for such fun..but he seems to think that I'll eventually like the idea...so the night parties continue. His furrowed brow in the pic is the result of me waking him up from a marathon nap. I'm sure I'll pay for that tonight.











It's so hard being a baby! Either Wyatt is wiping the sweat from his brow or he has just realized that he's stuck with the parents he's got and we are non-returnable.

Our little man...smiling?

So I know that babies don't truly smile till around 3 months or so..but even a little gas grin is something important enough to be documented.

Wyatt pics

OK...so I couldn't resist adding this pic that I think the anesthesiologist took when they put Wyatt on my stomach. I love all those wrinkles! If you could see my face, it's one of shock.
































He still hasn't opened his eyes all the way. Maybe tomorrow we'll see more of those baby blues (or browns)...














Snuggling with Dad on the couch this afternoon.

Wyatt Mat Evatt has arrived!!

Let me start of by saying that pictures will soon be following...I am currently typing at 3:17am Chile time in our hospital room and find it impossible to sleep with everyone coming in along with the excitement of a new baby.
Wyatt was born yesterday, Sept 21, at 7:19pm at 8lb 11 oz and 21.9 inches long. Yeah...he pretty much came out looking like he wanted a steak for dinner instead of boring breast milk.
Let me just give you a quick rundown of how things went yesterday....
Our admission time for the hospital was 1pm..and since I was so eager to get on with things, we ended up getting here about 12:30. At about 2:30, they gave me Pitocin and I was still planning on sticking to my original plan of no anesthesia. It was a piece of cake..until the medicine kicked in and the contractions started coming hard and closer together fast. I was dilating rapidly and made it to 5cm before I waved the white flag and gave in to the epidural. Umm....definitely the way to go and for those of you out there who did it sans drugs...I have to hand it to you.
My midwife, Loreto, was great. She speaks about as much English as we speak Spanish..which is still relatively little....but we were all able to communicate with each other. (In case anyone needs it in the future...empuje=push).
I don't know if it was from exhaustion or what..but after that, things started to get lost in translation. The baby nurse would come in and explain what was going on and what we were supposed to do..but we couldn't conjugate any more nouns or verbs and the poor nurse would have to repeat herself or do the good old standby of charades, which includes pointing and some acting skills.
We'll be here for 3 nights and 4 days...which I at first was thinking would be too long...but as I'm laying here and having anything I want at a button away....I'm thinking that things aren't so bad. They have people stay longer to be able to consult them on breastfeeding and make sure that you are somewhat prepared to handle the kid on your own. Not a bad concept.
Another thing different here is that when you tell people the name of your baby...and it's not the typical Chilean name...(Claudio, Cristian, Mateo)...it's almost as if people can't understand that a gringa from the US would want a name that is familiar in the US. Going against the grain really isn't a concept here...everyone tries to fit in a certain mold. And..everyone has 4 names here...you receive names from your mother and father...So, currently, Wyatt's name is Wyatt Mat Evatt Evatt. We'll be changing that sometime this week.
Anyways...Matt and I are super excited about our new little one. Matt is going to be an excellent dad and I can't wait going through parenthood with him. We laugh alot which is great.
I'll post pictures in the next day or so....the baby is getting restless, so I suspect I will be needing to feed soon.

Wish us luck!
Love-
Kipley

Nursery Pics

We are really happy with the way that Wyatt's room has turned out. I shipped pretty much everything from the States, so it took more planning than I originally thought. Baby furniture and decor is so much different here than it is in the States, that it was just easier for me to order online and bring it in.

There are still a few more pictures that we want to hang on the wall..but it's pretty much finished. This is the view walking into his room. The stickers are a jungle theme and it was fun making up my own scenes as I applied them.












This was one of the things that I found here. It was great because it went with the whole jungle/animal theme.


















We got this piece of art at an art gala here. I liked the whimsical look of it. The baby's room seemed a perfect place for it. I just realized that I should have taken a more direct pic of it..but you can probably get the idea.














Our bassinet will be in our bedroom, but I just wanted to include it in the pic. I am really happy with it. I wanted something modern and I thought it had a great design. The base is curved so that it rocks.




















Since we are just going to be here for 3 years, we didn't want to break out the paint...so I found some great canvases online. (www.avalisa.com). They have tons of modern canvases in different sizes and categories. You can customize the color, too.




















I really liked the polka dot pattern of our crib bedding. It goes with so many things. I realized that I tended to gravitate toward things that are gender neutral. The mobile is from www.blablakids.com. They have great animal dolls and rattles there, too. I realize that I should have taken a closer pic..but it is a circus theme with jungle animals.

Baby Update

So...I realize that I'm a terrible blogger. Can I have the excuse that I've been preparing getting things ready for the baby?? I know, I know..I've read several of your blogs out there who are just as pregnant and somehow still manage to keep us all informed on a regular basis. Maybe that will be me one day...So here's the update.
I saw my doctor yesterday and the conditions of everything are looking good to where I could go into labor anytime between now and my due date (which is Monday, the 21st)..but if I don't go on my own..then we've already scheduled me to come in on Monday at noon to be induced...(!!!) My doctor says that he should just need to scrape my membranes and that's all I will need to get labor going. It's so crazy...so surreal that we're finally going to be having this baby. We actually were seeing an infertility specialist before I got pregnant in Houston and were told that our only solution to have a baby was to have IVF with ICSI. (It's a little more involved than normal IVF). Long story short, our doctor suggested that we try taking a medicine in pill form for a 6 month trial basis that had minimum/no side effects and was much less expensive than the IVF would be. She told us that the chances of success were very low, but that it couldn't hurt to try. We were pregnant within a month into the trial. Our doctor called the pregnancy a miracle.
I feel so fortunate that God has blessed us with the opportunity to be parents to this baby who I will meet in a few days. We are so excited!

You want me to bring what?!

So the hospital has a list on their website as to what expectant mothers need to bring to the hospital when they give birth. Google Translate is our friend in this household..but some words just don't translate. The 4th line down says that I need to bring 3 or 4 "ositos"....now apparently that comes across as "little bears"...which perplexed the rest of my expat friends over here..because surely they don't expect me to bring teddy bears to the hospital. I was thinking that I could modify some scrubs for Major and Molly and have them pose as the "little bears" that I'm supposed to bring with me. Apparently, ositos are the sleepers for the baby. I figured this out when I met with my midwife for the first time and things were getting lost in translation and so she did a good job of drawing the items on a piece of paper..until I was like "Oooh...you mean a onesie.." Lucky for her, I was good at Pictionary and she didn't have to go into too much detail before I caught on. Loretto (my midwife) may be asking for a raise by the time Wyatt gets here.

Baby Update - (Look at those cheeks!)

So this is the sonogram that we had on August 19th and I was excited to see that Wyatt was still enough to get some good pics. A direct quote from Dr. Carrillo -..."Well, we can definitely see that you don't have a skinny baby." Wyatt is probably still on US time and is thinking that he needs to store his food for the winter. I still get confused too, little man.
We have our next checkup with the doctor this Friday..and I realize that I need to fill in on how things are different here as opposed to the States in regards to having a baby. I'll be staying for 3 nights at the hospital where they'll give extra instruction on how to breastfeed, etc. Everyone says you get a completely pampered experience here..which is great. The language barrier is a slight issue..but I'm not really worried about it. My midwife doesn't speak English and my Spanish is a constant work in progress...but when I met with her by myself, we were both able to communicate what needed to be said. My doctor and my anesthesiologist both speak English so I won't be having to be having to act what I'm trying to say in the middle of labor.
One thing that I know is going to be difficult here is making sure that the names are written correctly on the birth certificate. People are used to hearing the same names down here..and unusual names are few and far between. You don't know how many times people have asked my name..and I've pulled out my ID card to show them that 'Yes, Kipley is my name..not the model of my car."....and they still call me by my middle name..Elizabeth. I even repeat the order of my name..but it's no use. I give myself a fake name at Starbucks (yes..they are everywhere here!) because I am tired of the confused looks. Sometimes I feel like being Claudia..the other day I was Maria.

New baby? Wake us when it gets here,,,,,,

It's true. While I'm scrambling to get stuff ready for the baby, our pups spend much of their time taking it easy and show not the least bit concern that things are going to be changing around here. Major is the white one and Molly is black. They are brother and sister Akita/Lab mix and will be turning 5 in December. So I don't know what age that makes them in people years...but I definitely feel that I live with a middle aged bachelor and his sister who are set in their routines. They can't keep their eyes open past 7:30pm and don't get up till 7am the next morning. They have a look of annoyance if you keep them up late and take big exaggerated sighs to let you know that they are not impressed. Those peaceful nights are about to change!

Paranal

I work at the Paranal Observatory in northern Chile. It's about 75 or 80 miles south of a little city called Antofagasta; it's in the middle of the Atacama Desert, the driest desert in the world. The observatory was built here because it's really far away from any sources of light pollution, and also because the atmospheric conditions here make for the best observing on earth. The downside to the remote location, of course, is that I'm up here for eight days at a time. But then I get six days off in Santiago with Kipley and our soon-to-be baby. The observatory is pretty amazing. We have a total of 10 telescopes at Paranal. There are four big telescopes called Unit Telecopes (UTs), four smaller mobile ones called Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs), and two other telescopes (VST and VISTA) that are used for making wide field of view surveys of the sky. The interesting thing about the UTs and the ATs is that they can be used together in ways that effectively make it like there's one gigantic telescope with a main mirror as big as the distance between the most distant telescopes. When they're used like that, they system is called the Very Large Telescope Interferometer, or VLTI. So anyway, the picture shows two of the UTs open at sunset, with a couple of the smaller ATs to the left.



The ATs look pretty small in that picture, but here's another picture that gives you an idea of how big they really are. That's me with the hard hat on learning how to move the telescope.

Pics of the view and our house in Chile

OK...so let me try to add pictures again.

The first 2 pics are views from our house. The first one is when it snowed last week and the other is a typical sunset that we see pretty much every day. They are gorgeous. The last pic is looking from our backyard to our house. I think this was taken when we were first looking at the property.

A new baby, a new country...what else can happen?!

It's true. I'm one of those people that still doesn't have a Facebook or a Myspace page and this is my first post on a blog that I have been meaning to start for a while now.
I will do my best to be a savvy blogger with all the cute graphics, etc...but....I apologize in advance if the layout is less than stellar.

So...where to begin...!!
Matt and I are having our first baby in the end of September and are super excited! It's a boy!
I don't have the picture taking gene in me..and I know that will have to change once the baby gets here..so take in account that most of the pics in this blog are of me very pregnant. Pre pregnancy..there aren't many pics. Seriously. I'm that person that never carries a camera with them and has people email them pics. Never again. I'm attempting to turn over a new leaf...but old habits are hard to break...

Next big news....
We have been living in Santiago, Chile since March and will be here for at least 3 years. Yes...I will be having my baby here. Some people have actually asked if I would be flying back to Houston to have the baby....(???!!)...My doctor here is great and I am not nervous at all about having my first baby here. My Spanish is slowing coming along. Chilean Spanish is very different from the Spanish from Mexico in that there are lots of slang in the Spanish in Chile and they talk very fast. They also leave out syllables in several words and Chileans tell us that they are horrible Spanish speakers. I am understanding more all the time, but it will take time before I don't have to pause between every word to think of how to conjugate the next verb.

So...there has definitely been some big transitions to deal with in the past several months. We are here because Matt got a job as a mechanical engineer for the European Southern Observatory. They have several different observatories in Chile...and the one he works at is in the Atacama Desert in the north of the country. He flies back and forth from Santiago. Most observatories are in the middle of nowhere since lights and pollution interfere with the astronomers being able to get a clear picture of things. I'll try to attach a pic of the place..but if I can't..there may be a chance that someone reading this may have seen the latest James Bond flick..Quantam of Solace (or something like that?)..Well, in the end of the movie..the villain's lair is in the middle of a desert in a modern looking compound that gets blown up. They filmed that at the Residencia where the staff lives while they are working in the desert. Matt is up there for 8 days and then is down here for 6. At first I had images of dorm life in college, but no..he's got it pretty good up there. Everything is indoors since they are in the desert and they have things like a pool, tennis courts, etc.

We live on the outskirts of Santiago in a municipality called Lo Barnechea. It's in the foothills of the Andes and is a definite contrast from the weather in Houston that I've been used to. It snowed last week here and the temp right now is in the mid 60s. Not bad for the middle of winter. It was really cold in late May/early June..but apparently it's been a really mild winter. I'm so glad that I'm pregnant in this weather than having to deal with the 100+ temps that I've heard about in the States. That's horrible!

I'll blog later about the food here...but I have food on the brain at the moment...and want to share a few things that I miss in the States that you can't get here. When I go back in Christmas..I'm going to go nuts!
1. Dr. Pepper - Coke is king here and they have a Coke Light that tastes much better than the Diet Coke in the States..but no Dr. Pepper anywhere.
2. Chipotle..and just Tex-Mex food in general. Don't think that I haven't already located the nearest Chipotle to the DFW airport when we fly in.
3. Curly fries....I think about those a lot.
There aren't nearly the amount of restaurants here than there are in the States, so I eat at home alot...which is good. I have a feeling that if I was still in Houston, I would be a whale at this point.