Bug love

Last week we stumbled upon a "car show". Apparently there is a classic car club in the same town of the Wednesday market is, can you believe it? Anyway we were having breakfast there, and Uri wanted to look around, so I took some pics...

 Some of the cars were not so bad, and there were looooots of ugly dudes, he he.

The Virgin of course made an appearance. 

Below you will see our ride for the day (what I really wanted to show you) . It might not be the best looking car but I love it because Uri built it! One day he came to me, excited like a little boy with a new bike, and he told me he had found the best engine ever for his bug and it was dirt cheap. He said it was $150, I said "dollars? that's nothing!", but it was 150 pesos... And I could not believe it, an engine for $15 dollars, what?... And then he showed it to me. Let me tell y'all (ha ha) it was a big, ugly and rotten piece of grease. There was no evidence whatsoever that one could find any metal underneath. But Uri took it to our neighbors garage and he cleaned it with a little steel toothbrush-looking kinda tool, and he collected here and there any parts that were missing. He even fabricated some of the screws! In about 2 years he put our Baja Bug together, and he is very proud of it. It is definitely not my preferred ride, it is still dusty inside and it doesn't have much, but it sure can take the dirt road like no other car. Uri insists on taking it out, so I agree once in a while. I know what you are thinking... it does not accommodate a car seat for Adiel, but do not worry, we only take it to places that are very very close to home (nothing farther that 5 minutes), and I take her in the Ergo (still I panic).

This baby is a 1964 machine and I am SO proud of my man for building it from scratch!!

We are getting ready for our trip to Israel. I am nervous about the 17 hour flight. Any tips?

Adiel has been specially fussy lately. No idea if it's got to do with teething or if she is just testing our limits and tries to get more attention by crying her lungs out... Still very smiley though and melts my heart every time. 

Until soon,
Mercedes

A celebration of life...

Last weekend we celebrated the patriarch of the mountain! Our beloved neighbor Aris turned 90!

I have mentioned before that our neighbors are like family to us. Most of them come and go for a few months out of a year, some come for the weekends, but until very recently, and for a long time, we were only 4 people living full time in the mountain: Mike, Aris, Uri and me (now we added Adiel and a wonderful couple).

Mike is an amazing artist and a very colorful character, it's such fun to have him around. Mike and Aris came first to this place and it is because of them that we all came to find our own piece of heaven in the mountain. Most of the neighbors know each other for a veeeery long time, some even went to high school together or were at some point related to each other, so I get to hear pretty funny stories of their youth.

Aris  was born on March 10th, 1921, in Uruguay. He is an art teacher, critic and curator, acclaimed theater director, unstoppable and strong builder, devoted reader, sharp political analyst, amazing cook, fearless environmental activist, friendly translator, epic adventurer, crazy driver, animal lover, skillful researcher, gifted gardener, pizza oven guru and legendary pizza maker, mountain trail keeper, and a tremendous source of wisdom and inspiration to us all. Among his numerous anecdotes he met Botero, Igor Stravinsky and he frequented Manly P. Hall in San Francisco. He did so many things for art and culture in South America, including starting the Plastic Arts Movement of Colombia. The man is healthy as can be and he insists he owns it to never drinking water and eating no greens, haha... but that comes from a time when he lived in the Amazone where there were very unsanitary conditions. There is just so much to say about him... We love Aris.

So here is our mountain family (there is an extended mountain family that could not make it for the party) and Aris' celebration!

They all are art people in a way or another... below you see Aris, Mike, Adiel and Uri in the sangria pre-party and above are Mike's shoes, he always wears something funny like those. I like having these older close friends, gives me a different perspective on life (and they all looooove Adiel).

The view from Eddie's house on our way to the dinner party...

I decorated the place... you can't really see the decoration from the pics, but everyone liked it and I think Aris was happy. We ordered paella!! (Tough to make paella for such a great cook, Aris knows his way with saffron, but it was good)

After the dinner party we moved location again for cake and presents. Lots of love and signs of appreciation came through. There were poems to him, many toasts, thoughtful and creative presents and even a proclamation of a day in his honor! Aris was touched...

I think I always tell everyone else that our mountain neighbors are like family to us, but I guess I never told him before how lucky I feel to be a part of his family, so I told him that day...

It was nice to celebrate life after all those devastating images in the news... I am grateful we are safe, healthy and calm!

Until soon, 

Mercedes

Adieli's heart

I found this cute application for photo collages. It makes a nice grandparent gift. I might get it...

Have a great weekend!
Mercedes

Wednesday Market

Every Wednesday there is a market in a town close to us. I am not particularly fond of this town, but markets are always great, so I finally decided to take my new lens for a walk!

This week the market was exceptionally good featuring big red juicy yummy strawberries (a box for 2 bucks!).  You can always also find toys, vegetables, piñatas, shoes, underwear, corn on a stick, dried or fresh fish, sandals made from tires, candy, watches, homemade yellow, appliances, junk food, hair cuts, bicycles, pet fishes, pizzas, sombreros, tools, clothes, boots, furniture, suitcases, jewelry, cotton candy, fried pig skin, peanuts, beautiful fruits, corn or wheat tortillas, plants, cars, birds, tacos, homemade “wine”, computers, stickers and a few neighbors...

This is the Wednesday market, eccentric even for Mexico...

Muddy, mud, mud... 

While you are shopping there people approach you, they talk to you, they want to show you things, let you try their stuff. Uri and I usually stand out in the crowd, but me + Adiel in the Ergo + camera were a magnet to friendly strangers.

Here is a home-made-wheat-tortilla-selling family. The father advertises out loud 13 tortillas for 10 pesos. Also Uri and our neighbor Jan buying some veggies next to a pile of bras, and the enthusiastic  case of not gold rings.

 

 Mrs. Gossip cleaning nopales (those lovely cactus we like to eat).

For some reason people here loooooove the soldier haircut.

We usually have "aguas frescas" and fruits on a plastic glass.

And my favorite...

After de market we went to our beloved ceviche stand to get breakfast!

I enjoyed taking those pics, but I am sure I can do much better with that lens... I was very self conscious and was feeling a little awkward. I saw some funky looking people, but I could not take their picture. I am still just learning and experimenting. Which pic do you like the best?  

That was my morning in here!

Until soon,

Mercedes

Play date!

Living in the mountain has its pros and cons. It is beautiful and lovely, but we miss our friends and family, going to a movie, to a gallery, to a party, taking a walk to get amazing coffee, being able to buy stuff (anything), eating delicious food at an exotic restaurant (and by exotic I just mean not Mexican), taking a class... So, those few days a month we go to Los Angeles I enjoy a lot. I try to see as many people as possible, buy everything we need, eat at my favorite places and do something fun! 

This time we went to The Conga Room to see Balkan Beat Box and Soulico. What an amazing show! I danced all night on my high heels and had a blast!! The Israeli crowd was in the house so we also got to see lots of old friends. One of my favorite songs by BBB is called Mexico City. 

Adiel stayed with cousin Shane at his grandmother's (Shane's father is Uri's best friend). It is only the second time we go out and leave her with someone. Apparently she cried for half an hour and then fell asleep.

One of my LA mosts is to see the journey sisters. The girls are very mobile and vocal now. They laugh out hard and they are opinionated. They recognize each other, they play together. Us mamas, we hug and kiss all the little ones, we talk and confess, we relax and feed, we share and advice. It's so nice to see us all grow and discover the world together!

Adiel, Eva and Leona's play date...

Already you can see how different they are from each other, adding some unique flavors to the family!

The proud mamas

They are growing up beautifully

I am grateful they will have each other and that us mamas have each other too.

We had a great day, but Saskia, Ava and mamas were very much missed!

Adieli knows "No" very well now, she knows when she does something she is not supposed to do, and lately as soon as she hears the word she turns to me with a cute smile and starts clapping or waving hello... just before she goes right back to whatever she was doing!! She knows, she has me, she melts me.

Until soon,

Mercedes

life before Leona

when i think about it, even though i’ve been through more than 3 decades of life experiences - it is only now as a mom to leona, that i truly appreciate the meaning of life; which is to give and love unconditionally. but i titled this “life before leona” so i will try to be brief about myself (& her baba) in order to move quickly to the introduction of her deliciousness a.k.a. "leona juliette mihail"…

to truly introduce leona, i will try to briefly explain the journey that has brought us to her.

i was born in saigon vietnam, and left as a refugee with my mamie around 1 years old.

when i was still in my mamie's belly, my grandmother (dad’s mom), forced him to leave saigon without us. he never made it (but i didn’t find out until i was pre-teen), so it was me and my mamie until i was 4 yrs old.

i grew up in montreal canada, learned french as my first language, then vietnamese. i met my a stepdad and stepsister around 4 yrs old.

my parents moved us to los angeles when i was about 9/10 years old to start their own furniture business. i grew up in north hollywood and was a mall rat kid. instead of daycare, i spent most of my time after school at the mall with my parents. i was a tomboy growing up because i played video games in the food court and only hung out with boys. my brother was born around this time, we are 10 years apart.

jr. high school and high school were some of my fondest memories of childhood. i can’t recall anything else before that. i am still best friends with my best friend from 7th grade (Natasha – Leona’s godmother) and i met mike in 10th grade.

mike and i met at a sweet sixteen birthday party in 1995 and have been inseparable since. it's been a long journey for us as a young couple who met in high school.

when we were young, our challenges as a couple were about how much time we spent (or did not spend) with each other. we actually argued about it constantly! we went to different high schools and colleges, so we always made an effort to be together as much as possible (imagine if that were our biggest problems today?...oh how simple life can be at 16/17 years old!).

falling in love so young was wonderful. it was so simple. we used to write each other love letters and talk on the phone thru the night until we had to go to school in the morning. it was always a sweet love.

if you want to see more old and funny pictures of us throughout the 10 years of being together, here is our wedding slide show (warning it is 13 minutes long!)

eventually, our young love nurtured into our adult life of living together and then buying a town house in culver city and getting our first dog, athena. a few weeks after adopting her, mike proposed the night before our 10 year anniversary. i was completely surprised (as you can see from my red face in the picture below). the proposal was a coordinated surprise with a few close friends & family.

we did not rush into our wedding plans and had a two year engagement. after living in the townhouse with athena for less than a year, mike decided that it was time for us to move into a house with a yard. so during the real estate craze in 2006, we moved into a house in Tarzana, where we currently reside now. although we love our house, it was definitely an investment that we would later could not afford (like everyone else).

as we were planning for the wedding, we decided to go to pre-marital counseling. everything began to unfold for us in couples’ therapy as we talked about our hopes, dreams and family planning. it was not the same conversation that we used to have when we were kids. our hopes and dreams at 16/17 were so much different at 28/29 years old.

then the big greek/vietnamese wedding happened. we got married twice, the first time on our high school anniversary date (6.9.2007) - see picture to the right.

and then we walked down the aisles of lake shrine in the pacific palisades a week later (6.16.2007), it was a beautiful sunny june wedding. you can see the wedding montage below:

shortly after the wedding bliss, things got a bit rocky for us. there was a distance between us that we both knew, but could not explain at the time. marriage should have brought us closer but we were further apart for the first time in our lives.

so shortly after xmas, i discovered that mike had an affair. it broke me. it broke us. it was the most unbelieveable betrayal i had ever felt. i cried. we cried together. yet i was not surprised. i could go on and on… but we’ll save all the juicy and sad details for another blog post, if you guys want to know.

fast forward through a lot more couples' therapy, and eventually we forgave each other and started over. after we were able to mend our love, our love grew stronger each day as husband and wife. as our love grew stronger, so did our desire to start a family. that is where leona comes into our lives. she sprung out of pure love and hope from us. we wanted her more than anything.

it took about 6 months for me to get pregnant (all stress related to our house, our finances…again, another blog post if you guys want to know the juicy details).

that’s it’s for now. the next post will be the birth story of leona.

Mommy loves AVA!

You've all seen these photos on Facebook, but I just love them so.  My little raspberry and banana eater!

I can't believe how much she can eat at one go!  I guess I wasn't feeding her enough before.  She'd sign (and say!!) more ('moe' with a soft r on the end) and I thought, 'really, she can't still be hungry,' and I'd sign and say 'ALL DONE!'  But it dawned on me, SHE'LL stop eating when she's not hungry anymore.  It's funny the things I don't realize as a first time mom.  ;)

Well, I've been letting her go.  This morning for breakfast she fed herself: 1 whole banana cut into chunks, 1/2 an avocado cut into chunks, 1 piece of whole grain toast cut into bites and several ounces of water!  Later, she had two good sized snacks including our favorite, raspberries!  Cottage cheese, 1 rice rusk and a few bites of apple.  (I say snacks because she's napping at lunch and asleep for the night at dinner).

She loves to eat and feed herself :)  She's doing so well and it's exciting that I can feed her basically what I'm eating for the most part.  Yesterday, I went with some friends and their babies for Thai food and Ava had some Pad See Ew and some tofu from my soup.  Mmmmm

She still loves to nurse... a lot... ;)

It's so exciting watching her grow up!  It's happening so fast!

Lately, I've been even more overwhelmed with love for her.  She's been more and more interactive and we've been having so much fun playing.  We play chase.  She crawls and I say, "I'm gonna get you!" and I crawl after her.  She pants in her cute little baby pant while she high tails it away from me as fast as she can.  I let her go for a bit and then I GET HER! and she shrieks with giggles.  She's also ticklish... FINALLY!  And laughs at funny faces and voices.  I love it.  I LOVE IT!

I'm madly in love with her.  She's perfect.  All our little ones are!