Sleepless in Queretaro

They say that other people can make you unhappy but only you can make yourself happy. I do believe we all are responsible for our own happiness but sometimes a little help is needed. For a month or so my baby was sleeping really poorly. He went from 5 hour sleeps at night to 1.5 hours. As a 40 something year old woman, waking up every 1.5/2 hours to calm your crying baby can be pure torture. It was to me. I slowly entered a dark tunnel of feeling helpless, hopeless, angry, sad and totally exhausted. When you almost hope you will die to get some rest, you are not doing good. Thankfully the sun was shining so at least I could  look up at a blue sky and feel thankful. I still kept on pushing myself to go to Zumba and I even went running in the evening despite my exhaustion. 

Because yes, looking at a beautiful sunset while running does give momentarily peace of mind and feelings of happiness. Or jumping around to music gives you good vibes for a bit. I was proud to be able to do this much activities despite the constant breastfeeding. And I do get to enjoy results in the mirror. While I look at my baby growing, I see myself shrinking back to how I looked before the pregnancy or a slightly thinner version of it. But no sleep does nasty things to an adult brain and I can only imagine what it does to a baby.

After struggling for over a month we finally took the decision of calling a doctor. We got an appointment the same day and at the hour we were given, the doctor called us in. Just this would never happen in Montreal. You have to wait for weeks to get an appointment and when you're at the clinic for your appointment you wait for hours to get to see the doctor. This applies as well for when you are pregnant or when you come there with a newborn. It's brutal and inhuman. 

But here we were greeted by a friendly nice male doctor. His room was full of cute toys including my favorite friends from Winnie the Pooh. That calmed down both mother and child. My husband was smiling when I pointed up at the stuffed animals. "Look my love, it's Winnie the pooh". This bear is as real to me as Hercule Poirot and seem to have the same calming effect.

During the time the doctor was examining my son he made sure a toy was there to distract and entertain him. After it he listened patiently to all our questions and conserns. Answering every single question and then handing us a solution. Then asking us if we are okay with the solution. If we feel that this is what we want to do as parents. None of "oh that's normal , "babies are like this", "it's just what you have to put up with as a mother". I was amazed by the wonderful treatment we got and the best part, well already after the first nights we are back to sleeping for a nice 5 hours, then a little breastfeeding session and back to sleep. 

So yes, it's for me to make sure I'm a strong and happy person but sometimes I need some help and I do feel so much better knowing I actually have a skilled doctor close by. After eight years in Quebec I have yet to meet a skilled doctor, dentist or massage therapist/osteopath. It's insane how poor health care you have in Quebec. I prefer not to say Canada as I believe it's much better in the other provinces. To them you're just a number and you get the feeling it doesn't matter if you make it alive or dead out of the clinic.

But right now we are lucky to be in Queretaro. Here I had a really wonderful doctor to take care of me because of the miscarriage and then a year later the pregnancy. We went to see him to give him a gift and show him the baby as most of my pregnancy and the actual birth of our baby happened in Montreal. He was the one who recommended this pediatrician. So we are lucky indeed to have great doctors, the sun shining down on us and our dear trio in good health and safe. All great ingredients to be happy.

Oh so tasty

I often play around with the idea of leaving Montreal and the entire province of Quebec. I've lived there for 8 years now and I feel that that's more than enough. I have really enjoyed our Mexican timeouts and I hope this particular timeout will refresh our heads enough to make the move in some direction. I often wonder what I will miss about Quebec other than maple syrup and the multicultural Montreal. I do love my maple syrup in my morning porridge but I don't think in the long-run that will be anything I will miss that much. And well humans, multicultural or not it's still just humans. But the breakfast culture in Quebec is something that I think I will miss. The place is filled with restaurants that serve the traditional english breakfast, waffles, pancakes or omelets . The restarants open 6 or 7 in the morning and people actually eat out strangly often. You don't have that in Finland nor here in Mexico. I can live without the pancakes and waffles but there's something about that traditional english breakfast with two eggs, potatoes and some toast, perhaps  little cheese or meat and you're good until 6pm. I miss it as I write. 
Here I wake up to the crow of a rooster or a barking dog and I have my morning coffee and some fruits. Absolutely healthier but you don't survive until 6pm with that.

We are getting to the season when all the fruits just gets so juicy and delicious. For me the king of fruits is definitely the pineapple but I don't say no to pears, mangos or kiwis either. I tend to sprinkle lime all over the place when I'm here and avocados are basically part of every meal. 

My husband grew up in Dominican so he often talks about a his childhood and how he would steal guayaba (eng. guava), from the neighbors or reach out the window and grab an avocado or drink jugo de tamarindo (tamarind juice). They would only get red apples at Christmas as it was something rare for them. Kinda the opposite of my childhood, where the only thing to steal from the neighbors were apples and I did it more for the adrenaline kick than anything else. 

So now here in Mexico our table often looks like this ...

We bought a beautiful handmade ceramic fruit plate ...

that is clearly not big enough but oh so pretty.

Our most resent culinary discovery wasn't a fruit even if it tasted a bit like one. After wondering about it for a long time, we finally tasted jicama. It grows the same way and looks a bit like a potato but it's often consumed raw and that's the way we enjoyed it this sunny day driving around the neighborhood of Juriquilla. 

Mexicans prefer it with chili salt but then again what don't they prefer with chili salt? I sprinkle a little lime on it as I do with everything else and enjoy the crispy refreshing taste. Oh so tasty!

el tonto de Megacable

In Spanish you have this word "tonto" and in Swedish you have the word "tönt". They mean the same thing and I find it funny how close they are to each other. In both languages depending on the context and your tone of voice it can be more or less harsh. Basically it means a person who is dumb, stupid or silly. The Swedish version of it is perhaps a bit softer but thankfully you can add a "jävla or satans" in front of it. In this text I definetly would put stanas tönt to describe the man who came to install our cables for internet and TV from the ever so idiotic company called Megacable.

It was a sunny day in Queretaro and I had done some laundry and battled to get my son to sleep when the doorbell rang. Thankfully I was properly dressed in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, clothing I could easily go out for a walk in. Some other days I could have been dressed in either my nightgown or just a bikini but this wasn't the case. At the door was a male claiming he was from Megacable.They are supposed to call and inform you that they are coming but this tonto just showed up.  

For the next 2.5 hours this idiot was in our apartment commenting on my clothing and my looks, pointing out how I don't look my age and on how I must do a lot of sports with this kind of body etc etc. Nothing most women haven't heard from an idiot in a bar but the little difference here was that this was in my own home, he was here to install our cables and my baby boy was sleeping in one of the rooms. In any other of the five languages I speak, I could have told him off but my Spanish is still on a very innocent level. While he unsuccessfully was installing the cables, he managed to insult me in every possible way both on my Spanish and my lack of knowledge in how internet cables are installed. He said that my husband wasn't a real man but a tonto because he wasn't home taking care of his family. My husband was at work, like a lot of loving husbands are on a weekday in the afternoon. This Megacable idiot wasn't able to install the cables properly because he claimed that the passages were blocked and that we should make a claim to the people who build this apartment and have them come and clean the passages so that he then could come and install the cables. I was scared he would never leave and just go on and on about his life and making assumptions about mine but thankfully my son woke up and started crying. There's nothing to scare off idiots than a crying baby and my son is equipped with a powerful set of lungs. 
A few days later we went to Megacable to make a complaint about their worker. The woman at the office was very understanding and told us that a supervisor would call us back and we could give all the details to him and he would then make sure somebody else would come and install the things for us. That phone call never came. We called Profeco, an organization who are supposed to defend consumer rights here but they didn't even bother to pick up the phone.
Another worker for Megacable was in our neighborhood installing the cables for our neighbor so my husband went and talked with him. He was kind enough to pass by to check on us. He told us there was nothing wrong and that we could have both TV and internet installed normally like everybody else. He showed us where the cables should go but unfortunately he couldn't do it as it needed to be the one who originally got our contract. 
We waited some more until we decided that we were better off getting our cables than getting justice. So we called back the Megacable tonto, told him that the passages had been cleaned by the maintenance guy and that everything was up and running and that he could come and install our dear TV and internet. I went to a shopping mall so I didn't have to see this darn Luis from Veracruz. After my husband more or less told the man how to do his job we finally ended up with TV and internet. A few days later we got a phone call from Megacable to give feedback of the service we received. When my husband told them that we received awful service, they hung up the phone. There are bad companies in all countries and Megacable definitely made it to the top of shittiest companies in Mexico. 

the blue hour

I have had "sininen hetki" on my mind lately. The blue hour as it's called in English, when the sun gets below the horizon far enough so the light becomes blue until slowly it sets completely and all turns dark and night falls. That peaceful calm moment in the evening.  I have been fortunate to enjoy a lot of sunsets here with a nice view of the horizon but that's not the reason "sininen hetki" has been on my mind. There's a Finnish company named Fazer making delicious chocolate and their classic milk chocolate is rapped in blue. They  advertise it using the blue hour as their slogan, at least they used to when I lived there. It's the world's best chocolate and I do miss it. I have been attracted to all things blue lately so the slogan has come to my head because of that. 

 I don't know if it's because I had a baby boy that my world turned blue or because I'm looking for peace and calm or a little bit of both. But our new home has a lot of blue in it.

We can't drink water from the tap here, so we buy it by the barrel and then poor it in this ceramic water dispenser.

These handmade glasses with the blue stripe has always been my eye candy.

We have now all the basic furniture so we can function in our apartment and we finally have cable properly installed as well. Internet for me and TV for my husband and son. They love their basketball and I love to be left alone.  I was so desperate to read a book that I bought a used Kindle on FB's Marketplace. This was after I went to the bookstore downtown Queretaro and asked for their English book section. They told me that they have 2 books in English. One was about English grammar and the other one "Smilla's  sense of snow". I know it's a nice book but I had just escaped winter in Montreal so snow wasn't an alternative in my head. We didn't have internet at the time, so I couldn't  google different tablets or facts about Kindle. I made a hasty decision and took an UBER and got the device. I then went to a cafe with wi-fi to register my account and download something to read. I quickly learned that I only had access to books on amazon. Mierda! My idea of reading books on Nextory and update myself on literature from my home country backed fired. But I'm not unhappy with my Kindle, in fact I'm very happy with it. I got to read about the Mayan Civilization and now I'm reading one after the next of Leena Lehtolainen, a Finnish crime writer who has been translated into English and can be found on amazon. To me, reading Finnish books in English is a bit like watching Hollywood movies in Spanish but then again it's better than not reading at all. The Kindle device is actually really nice to read with. Much lighter and easier to hold and has a backlight so you can turn off the light but still keep on reading. Really handy, especially if you like reading in bed before falling asleep. So my blue hour nowadays is when my baby is sleeping and I can pick up my Kindle and read.

figuring out the path

Like last time even this time we came here to Queretaro for my husbands work. I'm what they call a homemaker at the moment. When you have a baby you feel it's a bit more allowed to be home "doing nothing" (as men so respectfully say). 

My sweet baby does sleep a lot so I get to clean the house, do laundry etc quite undisturbed. I enjoy doing laundry here as I get to hang it out to dry in the sun. 

It feels like luxury to me as it's something that I haven't been able to do in either Finland nor Canada. Weather is one of the reasons and small apartments the other. 
I especially enjoy hanging the cute baby clothing to dry. I still have a hard time believing we have this tiny third member of the family... that he is actually here and not just a product of my vivid imagination. My husband still thanks me on daily basis for giving birth, so I don't think it has quite sunk in to him either.

Another thing that felt like luxury was to plant flowers outside in January ...

Now the challenge is to keep them alive. It has never been my strength and one of the reasons I thought motherhood was better left to others.

But to my sweet surprise the plants are already thanking me with some flowers, so maybe I'm not as bad at this as I thought.

My sweet son is 5 months and growing stronger and happier by the day. I admire his positivity and just hope I will be able to nurture it. 

To bring children to this world, the way our planet looks today, is pure madness. It's just horrible to think of all the challenges he has ahead of him. As a Swedish speaking Finn there is some kind of a justification for me to want procreate in order to keep our language and culture alive. We are slowly becoming extinct as having children is not very popular in my sweet country. The part that makes less sense is us being in Mexico ... one of the most populated countries in the world. Here the problem is not people not having children ... it's that people do not stop having children...   
But I know that this is temporary and I have a strong feeling that I will make it back to my roots eventually. 
When we flew here this time, we traveled for the first time ever as a Canadian family. I became a citizen a few weeks before and obviously my son was born Canadian. 

For the first time ever I had to put Canadian as nationality. It felt wrong in so many ways. I'm obviously grateful for dual citizenship. The Canadian flag is in my opinion really beautiful and maple syrup is extremely delicious but I felt I was traveling under false identity somehow. Sometimes one has to walk weird paths to reach one's destination. Especially when one is as lost as I am.

The paths I'm walking at the moment are definitely bumpy and certainly not stroller friendly, baby friendly or even human friendly but it gives me a strange sense of belonging.

And as I said, my baby sleeps a lot so I get to walk these bumpy roads quite undisturbed. He might wonder what on earth he is doing here ... but so do I