Bloom, bloom, blooming!

After ten and a half weeks another gorgeous white Maia orchid is blooming.  Could it be because spring is here? Yesterday we saw the signs on our walk over the bridge.  Yellow crocus, purple daffodils, green shoots on trees.  Spring is my favourite season in Holland.   In Canada it was autumn and in Mexico I love the warm winters because they're like summer...

Flowers in bloom are so beautiful! My heart blooms too, opening more and more each day and bursting with colour!

Maia preciosa continues to be the center of the world.  She is my little shining sun by day and my brilliant little star by night.  As she grows, so does my love for her, how can i possibly love her more today than i did yesterday?

When she's in my arms, I cannot help but bury my nose in her neck, breathe in her delicious baby smell and shower her with a thousand kisses.

Butterfly kisses, Eskimo kisses,  soft kisses, loud kisses, kisses on her head, kisses on her soft cheeks, kisses on her bubble belly, kisses goodnight, kisses good morning, kisses she rewards with a smile...

She is a morning baby.  Wakes up happy as can be.  Babbling and cooing and smiling and laughing and kicking and waving her arms.  When she smiles the whole world smiles.   It's pure joy; eyes dancing, hearts melting, beating to the music of love.   Music.  Music calms her down and riles her up.  Papi Loco plays piano for her often.  He's discovered that Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin and Elton John all quieten her down immediately if she gets into a fussy crying fit.  I play Latin music for her while I change her and after each fresh diaper, we dance around her bedroom, twirling, laughing, loving.  My little salsa dancer.

Yesterday we spent the whole day in town.  Left the house at 10 am, sun shining bright.  Walked over the bridge with Patricia and Noa and got to the busy, busy market in town.   But just as we were about to line up for strawberries it started to rain.  We made a dash to a delicious new french bakery just a few steps away.  We found a perfect spot in the corner with comfy couches, capuccinos and pistache macarrons followed. Délicieux! Noa feasted on whipped cream and Maia snuggled under my shirt to drink her lechita.  With no changing table available, we left after I changed Maia's diaper on the table!  The rain had turned to a drizzle and we soon ditched the outdoor market to check out the sales at the V&D department store.  Along the way we picked up strawberries, cherry tomatoes and limes; date and fig balsamic vinager, spelt flour, a big organic chocolate Easter egg for papito, and some utensils to bake an apple pie on Friday.  We had nice crab sandwiches for lunch and met the baby daddys for an early dinner at our favourite all-you-can-eat sushi place.

Oh the joys of living are great and the blessings endless. Today I am grateful for daughters,  good friends and even the April showers.  I am so happy to be alive and loved and loving back.

Motherhood is love to the power of three.
Love cubed.
The most blessed of all my blessings...
Graaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaacias a Dios!

Love does not die...

Imagen: Melancolica Muerte, World Press.

El amor no muere,
simplemente se transforma.

Impermanencia:
es la ley de la naturaleza.

El universo entero
está cambiando constantemente.

Con amor,
Nos abrimos poco a poco,

o de golpe...

Creciendo, saltando;
experimentando
ser lo que somos.

El amor es

fluir, renacer,
buscar la verdad
de nosotros mismos,

Y encontrar el camino de regreso
una y otra vez,
a la fuente del amor.

Amar es tener esperanza
y creer en ángeles.

El fuego del dolor puede ser
extinguido por el amor,

El amor que tenemos
el uno para el otro,
y que no muere.

Estefi, el amor me llena de
tu presencia celestial.

Descansa en paz,

primita hermosa.

Hasta que nos volvamos a encontrar,
en el otro lado...

Vela por nosotros preciosa,
y guíanos con tu luz eterna.

Con amor,

p.

Love does not die,
It just transforms.

Impermanence

Is the law of nature.

The entire universe

is constantly changing.

With love,

We are continually opening,

Expanding, leaping;
Experiencing

being who we are.

Love is fluidity;
Blooming,
Seeking the Truth

Of our selves,

And finding our way back
Again and again,

To the source of love.

To love is to hope,

And to believe in angels.

The fire of pain can be

extinguished by love,

The love we have

for each other,

that cannot die.

Estefi, love fills me
with your heavenly presence.

May you rest in peace,

prima hermosa.

Until we meet again,

on the other side,

Watch over us primita,

and guide us with your light.

Con amor,

p.

101 million women

"A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle." --Erin Majors

I am a sister, a mother, a daughter, a woman.
A woman first.
A woman who cares about other women:
daughters, sisters, mothers.

But being a woman can be dangerous, even deadly.

I've started reading the Pulitzer-prize winning book HALF THE SKY by Nicholas D. Kristof and his wife Sheryl WuDunn. It is a passionate call to arms about our era's most pervasive human rights violation: the oppression of women and girls in the developing world.

They quote Amartya Sen, the Nobel prize winning economist, who wrote that "More than 100 million women are missing". Vanished. Taken. Every year 2 million girls worldwide go missing. These statistics leave me cold.

Being a girl is lethal in many parts of the globe.

More numbing facts:
It appears that more girls have been killed in the last 50 years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the battles of the 20th century. More girls are killed in this routine "gendercide" in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the 20th century. In China, just as many infant girls die every week as protesters died in Tiananmen square. In India, a "bride burning"-- to punish a woman for an inadequate dowry takes place every 2 hours; in Pakistan 5,000 women and girls have been doused in kerosene and set alight by family members or in-laws, or perhaps worse, seared with acid for perceived disobedience just in the last 9 years. One hundred thousand girls a day are routinely kidnapped and trafficked into brothels. Maternal mortality still claims the life of one woman per minute.

Besides these chilling stats, the book tells the stories of extraordinary women--
who struggle, are sold, are enslaved, are beaten, and suffer devastating experiences...
And then are transformed.
They escape, they get help, they build up from nothing, they thrive, they heal.
It is a book of frightening experiences but also of hope.
Pragmatic, inspirational and essential.
So I'm spreading the word...

I have a daughter now. A sweet vulnerable little girl.
I will raise her to be strong. Strong and smart and fearless.
Like my mother raised us.

I will teach her to read, study, meditate and think for herself.
I will teach her to defend herself too.
She can be a dancing Kung-fu master.

Education is a serious affair.
We must refine and hold on to our own values,
and pay the high price necessary to live those values.

What will I teach my daughter?
How will I help her unleash her potential?
And how will she help other women, her sisters do the same?

10 Datos sobre el tráfico de personas

1. Existen 27 milliones de esclavos alrededor del mundo. (1)
2. Al menos 14.500 esclavos son introducidos en los EE.UU cada año. (2)
3. El costo promedio de un esclavo es de $90. (3)
4. El gobierno de los EE.UU estima que entre 600,000-800,000 personas son traficadas cada año entre bordes internacionales. (4)
5. 1/6 to 1/2 de este grupo de personas son niños. (5)
6. En el 2004, 218 milliones de niños cayeron víctimas del trabajo infantil. (6)
7. Se puede encontrar esclavos en todos los países del mundo, inclusive en EE.UU. (7)
8. La decisiones que tomes y la manera como consumas afectarán la esclavitud a nivel global, depende de ti que sea de forma positiva, apoya el comercio justo.
9. Es posible eradicar la esclavitud en 25 años. (9)
10. "Productos manchados por la esclavitud probablemente ya forman parte de tu día a día."(8)

http://www.gentedesechable.com/

Planet motherhood

I, no We, come from a long line of women, of mothers and daughters whose bodies were created by a seamless web of nature and nurture, of biology and consciousness, tracing back to the beginning of time. Every daughter contains her mother and the women who came before her.

Daughter-mother, mother-daughter. I was born my mother's daughter and from her i learned how to be a creative, powerful intelligent and sensitive woman. Now that I am a mother, my daughter teaches me how to be a patient, caring, nurturing, loving, happy woman. Daughter-mother, mother-daughter... A divine legacy of teaching, loving and learning.

These days my daily lessons are in womanhood, motherhood, daughterhood. I learn to care for my body, my baby, my family of three. I learn to be grateful (I keep a gratitude journal now where I write the things I am grateful for every day). I learn to be thankful, for the little things, like:

• waking up to my baby's bubbly sounds
• having the time to cook a delicious meal
• the longer days that make way for spring
• the friends from afar who think of us and send us tokens of their love via air mail.

What does it mean to be a mother? It is to feel the power of an instinct so strong, so powerful, so inexplicably honed and natural that it opens us up to depths of feeling that we never knew we possessed. It is the most heart-melting love I could ever imagine. It is walking around with your heart outside your body. It is being in awe, constantly, at the miracle of life and love... Oh to have made this beautiful baby inside me, cells dividing to the beat of my heart, sharing air, water, blood, and emotion.

Last week Maia and I celebrated Women's Day quietly, in the comfort of our home. This woman's day was so different than all the previous ones I've celebrated with friends and colleagues in the past... But it was just like any other day in the last month and a half, totally taken up by my baby girl. We carried out our usual mother and daughter rituals: dancing around the house, morning yoga session, afternoon baby massage, a warm bath together, a long walk by the water, hours of breastfeeding, of looking into each others' eyes, and basking in togetherness.

The Wonder Weeks

These are the wonder weeks, the most wonderful, miraculous, and extraordinary weeks of my life.
My baby girl Maia is seven wondrous weeks old today! She has been changing daily since the day she was born, and now after almost fifty days on this planet, her pacific blue eyes are brighter than ever.

I notice things like the way her smiles have changed, from superficial into pure joy and delight! She is developing rapidly and becoming more and more interested in her surroundings. I imagine her world looks and feels different as it starts to come into focus... as she begins to distinguish sounds and faces and gets to know us. Other changes I can see are that she cries real tears, stays awake for longer periods, falls asleep on her own in her crib, and likes to listen to her daddy and me singing along. She is eager to start the day, my baby girl, happy to get out of bed and say good morning to the boats in the marina, the birds outside our window and the orchids in their pots.

She stares at me now for really long periods all wide-eyed, while she's on my breast or when I'm changing her diaper. She's fascinated when I eat or cook, looking intently from her cradle-chair.
This week we've started taking baths together and I was surprised to see how she's gone from being super tense in her baby bath to completely relaxing in the water when she's with me, letting go of her clenched fists and floating on her back while i hold her little head in the palm of my hand. My little star fish. She makes different happy sounds when I change her diaper, when we dance together in her room, or when we sit by the window in the light of day.

Other times she gets upset. She whimpers and cries and sometimes screams really, really loud. Her little mouth stretches tight and she cries with such emotion that it breaks my heart. As the tension mounts in her tiny body, I pick her up and hold her tight and tell her you're alright my darling, you're alright... I use my voice to help calm her down and feel comforted. Thankfully, it doesn't last long and soon she's falling asleep in my arms again. And so a brand new world opens up for my little baby and I'm right there next to her, comforting her when she gets more impressions than she can handle. We are observing, experimenting and discovering together.


This week Maia's greatest discovery has been her hands and she delights in putting not one, but all of her long fingers in her mouth. She tries to put in one fist and then the other and soothes herself that way. When I put her down for her nap she spends at least 15 minutes looking at her hands and waving them in the air like birds, my tiny flamenco dancer! She has started to hold on to things too with those precious little hands, like my hair, my necklace, my bra, daddy's nose and mouth... But the most heavenly hold of all is when she puts her tiny arms around my shoulder; it's like she hugs me! Nestling blissfully on my neck or on my bosom while I melt away. I breathe in her delicious caramel buttery smell and close my eyes. She is what heaven smells like... And her skin as soft as rose petals sends me floating through the clouds with a thousand smiles.