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Joni at eight months old today is too young to be impressed by roller coasters, but he was highly pleased by his first experience of donut. His newest skill learnt this week is blowing kisses. He is very generous and non-discriminatory over whom he bestows his kisses upon. Worthy recipients have included the lady serving in a corner shop, my parents' dog, and the sheep and lambs in the field we walked the dog through.







Since Christmas doesn't start in October here, our first event was last Monday, when we celebrated with the guys in the prison. I realised how famous Martin has become in the prison, when I was walking through the corridor with Joni, watching the guards pointing him out to each other as "son of Frost". We had a service, with some speeches given by sundry invitees, followed by sharing a large cake. It was a good atmosphere, and Joni was in his element being passed around between the infamous of Cordoba.
The same evening found us on a bus to San Marcos where we spent a few days sharing a cabaña with the family of our friend and team-leader, Priscilla, affectionately known as La Jefa (the Boss). We had some good working/not-working time; went to the childrens' home a couple of times, and bounced a few ideas around. Joni had his first dip, which he responded well to, after the original surprise; he's used to a slightly different bath-time routine....
This year the 25th began even less auspiciously than usual, with the discovery that we had a burst pipe leaking water down the kitchen wall. The small consolation was that clambering onto the roof to locate the stop-cock was probably slightly more interesting than watching the East-Enders special which is apparently what half of the UK population were actually doing. Our second discovery was that there was no food in the house because we'd taken it all to Ana and Oscar's the day before. Luckily, eating chocolate for breakfast on Christmas morning is an age old family tradition. Deciding that the day needed some improvement, we took the car out for a random drive into the back of beyond, and came across this rather cool range of mountains. Ambitiously named Los Gigantes, (The Giants), they aren't exactly Everest or even Aconcagua, but at 2,300 metres, to us Europeans they are a very respectable height.
Unlike most mountains in Europe, we were the only people there. And just a couple of kilometres away we found a little outpost selling the scrumiest empanadas (think Cornish pasty). Now I'm coveting a serious baby-carrier rucksack so we can go for a proper walk another time.
There are a lot of good reasons for using cloth nappies over disposables, price being one; here's a few more...
We had Joni's photos done for his UK passport so we can take him to meet the family next year. Passport photo rules say he has to have his eyes open, so we had to do mean things to him in the shop to wake him up, gathering ourselves an audience in the process. Then the rules say that no-one else has to be visible, so we were trying to contort the pair of us so that we could hold him up to the background cloth without being seen, only of course he can't hold his own head up yet so it didn't work too well. Eventually we took the background cloth thing off its runners and laid it on the counter, and put the baby on top of it, and then the guy taking the photo stood on a stool and looked down on his face.



I improvised us a sling using a single bed sheet, mostly for the times when he is grizzling but doesn't appear to want anything. It's not Joni's favourite mode of transport, but in the scale of things he likes it better than being abandoned to whinge in his cot. This is the view I have of him when I cross my eyes and look down my nose...
Here we are cleaning the bathroom together... To be honest he's not a great asset to the cleaning process. But he is quite useful as a fashion accessory to hide my "not quite yet back to pre-pregnancy" stomach.
Some lovely friends sent us some money for Joni, so we had fun shopping for presents. This is his favourite, a cot mobile with beany-animals, which spins around and plays a truly dire version of Frere Jacques. Joni loves it. Martin is hoping that his musical tastes might improve as he gets older. He played him Beethoven's Eroica the other day to try and help the refining process along a bit...
And this is a multi-sensory baby gym type affair including a textured mat, and things hanging over the top of it. He's just getting the idea that a good swipe at one of the hanging rattles makes for a satisfying noise. We're hoping that he might see this as an interesting environment for practising his skills, as an alternative to swiping the contents of the bathroom work-surface onto the floor, and rolling himself into the sink...
Now we have a car. It's not as photogenic as a baby, but it is more functional as a method of transport. We received some insurance money from Martin's road accident; and Dany, our friend and colleague in Latin Link Argentina was selling his car. It seemed like a good swop, and saved us from having to deal with dodgy secondhand-car-salesmen. Dany also did all the paperwork with us which was a big bonus, knowing what we already know about paperwork and Argentina.
This is us looking halfway scrubbed and presentable at Joni's official presentation at church, which took place on Sunday.
The presentation / dedication ceremony is a little rite of passage in practice in many churches, particularly those who reserve baptism for adult believers. We were brought to the front, Joni held up for all to see (imagine sound-track with lots of ooohs and ahhs), the elders prayed for him and for us, and he was officially welcomed into the family of the church.
Exodus 29:41 "Sacrifice the other lamb at twilight with the same grain offering and its drink offering as in the morning—a pleasing aroma, an offering made to the LORD by fire".... Oops.. wrong passage....
This little person in our lives is 40 cms long, he does nothing except eat and sleep, and yet he has taken over the universe. Forget WMDs, if you're looking for global domination, this is the real thing. How does he manage it? At three o'clock this morning while I was feeding him (need to have something to think about if we're going to be awake at three in the morning) I realised that eight out of every 24 hours are taken up with the feeding / changing thing. And that's before we factor in the washing, shopping, cooking, and all the other aspects of "general living".
Monday we were back to the civil registry for another "Argentina day". That took three hours. Then we thought we'd "pop" into the post office. That took another two hours during which we nearly lost the will to live a few times. Note to self; "pop" and "post-office" should not be used in the same sentence. We are very grateful for three things... one, that we live in a country where it is perfectly socially acceptable to breast-feed ones baby in any queue that one happens to be sitting in; two, that we managed to get out of the post-office alive; and most of all, that Joni now has his Argentinian DNI (ID document). We're ridiculously excited about that, if you think about Argentinian paper-work as a game of snakes and ladders, then we're like a pair of little kids who've rolled a six to go up one big ladder.
Thursday we went to the childrens' home in San Marcos for the first time since Joni was born. The kids have all charted the progress of my growing belly from gestation to three days before the birth, so it only seemed right that they should meet him in real life while he's still new and little. Inevitably we ended up doing some work, impossible not to, but mostly we spent the day playing outside in the sunshine, while Joni had a whale of a time being mauled and prodded by young and old. Luckily he really likes people, noise, movement, and going on the bus!
The Hospital Privado let us out again on Wednesday morning. Luckily mummy had managed to dash into town between feeds and more or less put the cot together. So now Joni has a proper bed, complete with orange Teddy, who was hand-made by David, one of the guys whom Martin visits in prison.
Latest addition to the list of complaints... being put in his cot. O perverse boy-child of your father...
Here he is, looking slightly surreal and purple. Latest list of complaints: having his clothes removed, being dumped into a plastic crate, being blindfolded. Parents also have a complaint to register: not being allowed to sleep last night... never mind, when he's fourteen we'll probably be looking fondly back on the nights when he kept us awake by staying in rather than by going out!
This is Jonathan, newly arrived in the world and registering his first list of complaints... being cleaned, being suctioned, being weighed, being measured, being injected, being dressed...
Here he is clothed and in his right mind, looking pink and cute in our room on the ward.
This is us released from hospital, arrived at home, and setting out on a whole new learning curve, encompassing the enormity of psalm 139 and being entrusted with the nurture of this little person whose every detail has been crafted and known by God since the beginning of time; to the "significant trivia", like how we don't yet have any sheets for the cot...
Training for the family business begins at an early age. Here he is having bonding time with Daddy, who by the way did a superb job yesterday gowned and scrubbed up in the delivery suite, and is fast becoming a dab hand with those nappies.
Click on image to see a larger version. Then click on larger version to see details.
Fattest! Martin and Cami are very jealous because they have been working for years on their stomachs and I have come in from behind and overtaken them both from no-where!
The cause of all the trouble. Blissfully unaware, at his seven month scan a couple of weeks ago. We saw him asleep with his foot in his mouth.... aaaah.
On Monday night I travelled out to San Marcos. Yesterday morning I visited the family and arranged the trip. Today we set off early to catch the bus to Cordoba. Funny the little things that one doesn't think about... I hadn't imagined that Isma has probably never been to a big city before. He loved the buses and lorries, and he laughed and laughed when we took him on the escalators in the bus station! Cilsa were giving out equipment to about twenty recipients and they had made a little event out of it, with celebratory cake and music. Our wheelchair was the smallest in the line. Isma seemed quite pleased with it, and I would estimate that it will take him all of about five minutes to figure out how to make it work. Having saved his mum's back on one hand, we have probably given her a whole new set of things to think about, starting with child-proofing the house, and issuing shin-guards to the rest of the family.
Gafcon Final Statement can be found in its entirety on www.gafcon.org
Rather a long way from being comforted and joyful, I sincerely hope that my continued employment never becomes conditional upon my signing this document or any other like it. Nor do I give permission for anyone else to sign it on my behalf. Dole office next week?